Malaysia’s transport ministry said Wednesday that a private firm will resume a deep-sea hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 later this month, more than a decade after the jet vanished without a trace.
The search will be carried out by Texas-based marine robotics firm Ocean Infinity, which signed a new “no-find, no-fee” contract with Malaysia’s government in March.
It is unclear if the company has new evidence of the plane’s location. Ocean Infinity CEO Oliver Punkett reportedly said last year that the company had improved its technology since 2018, when the firm made its first seabed search operation under a similar deal and found nothing. Punkett has said the firm is working with many experts to analyze data and had narrowed the search area to the most likely site.
Earlier this year the firm restarted the seabed search operation at a new 15,000-square-kilometer (5,800-square-mile) site in the Indian Ocean after Malaysia’s government gave it the greenlight, but the search was halted in April due to bad weather.
Ocean Infinity will be paid $70 million only if wreckage is discovered.
The Boeing 777 plane disappeared from radar shortly after taking off on March 8, 2014, carrying 239 people, mostly Chinese nationals, on a flight from Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur, to Beijing. Satellite data showed the plane turned from its flight path and headed south to the far-southern Indian Ocean, where it is believed to have crashed.