MH370: A decade of unanswered questions, the search resumes

MORE than a decade after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 vanished into thin air, one of the greatest aviation mysteries of all time is set to be revisited.

The search for the missing Boeing 777, which disappeared on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board, is resuming in the remote stretches of the southern Indian Ocean.

This latest effort, led by the American maritime survey company Ocean Infinity, marks the third major attempt to locate the wreckage and solve the enduring puzzle of what happened to the ill-fated flight.

Flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia at 12.41am local time on March 8, 2014, bound for Beijing, China.

About 40 minutes into the flight, as the plane entered Vietnamese airspace, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah signed off with a routine message: "Good night, Malaysian three-seven-zero." Moments later, the plane's transponder was turned off and all contact was lost.

Military radar tracked the aircraft deviating from its planned route, swinging back over northern Malaysia and Penang Island before heading northwest towards the tip of Indonesia's Sumatra Island.

It then made a sharp turn south, disappearing from radar screens forever.

Satellite data later revealed that the plane likely crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, off the coast of western Australia.

The search efforts

• Initial searches (2014-2017)

A massive, multinational underwater search, spearheaded by Australia, covered a staggering 120,000 square kilometres. Despite utilising advanced sonar technology, no trace of the main wreckage was found. Only a few confirmed pieces of debris, primarily wing fragments, washed ashore on the coasts of Africa and the Indian Ocean islands. No major pieces of the aircraft or its black boxes were recovered.

• The second search (2018)

In 2018, Ocean Infinity stepped in with a bold offer: It would conduct a new search at no cost to the Malaysian government unless it successfully located the wreckage. Using advanced autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), the company scanned an area nearly as large as the first search in a fraction of the time. However, this effort also ended in disappointment and the search was called off in May 2018.

• The third search

Now, six years later, Ocean Infinity is back. Its state-of-the-art ship, Armada 78 06 arrived in the search zone and deployed a trio of AUVs to scan the seabed. This time, the search area is much smaller—less than a tenth of the size of previous efforts—but it focuses on a region where independent researchers believe the wreckage may have been missed due to the rugged ocean floor.

Ocean Infinity has earned a reputation as a leader in underwater survey technology. Its fleet of eight autonomous ships, including Armada 78 06, is equipped with cutting-edge AUVs capable of operating at depths of up to three miles. These robots use sonar waves to create detailed maps of the seabed, increasing the chances of locating even the smallest debris.

If the wreckage is found, the company plans to deploy remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to retrieve the black boxes—the flight-data recorder and cockpit voice recorder. These devices could provide critical insights into the plane's final moments, including its speed, altitude and any communications between the pilots.

The stakes: What’s at risk?

The search for MH370 is not just about solving a mystery; it’s about closure for the families of the 239 passengers and crew who vanished without a trace. It’s also about ensuring that such a tragedy never happens again. If the wreckage is found, it could provide answers to key questions: Was the plane deliberately diverted? Did it run out of fuel? What caused it to crash?

However, if the search fails, it will raise troubling questions about the accuracy of the data analysis that has guided the search efforts so far. The absence of wreckage in the current search zone would suggest that investigators made fundamental errors in their assumptions, potentially rendering all previous efforts futile.

As the world watches and waits, one thing is clear: The story of MH370 is far from over. Whether this latest search brings closure or raises new questions, it serves as a reminder of the enduring human spirit and our relentless pursuit of truth in the face of the unknown.