March 20 (UPI) — Malaysia’s government Wednesday authorized a new search for flight MH370 which went down in March 2014 and was never found.
Marine robotics company Ocean Infinity will conduct the search for the Malaysian Airlines plane believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.
Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke said in a Wednesday statement that government Cabinet ministers approved the new search on “no-fund, no fee” terms.
“The government is committed to continuing the search operation and providing closure for the families of the passengers of flight MH370,” Loke said in a statement.
Ocean Infinity, with operations in the United States and Britain, will be paid $70 million only if flight wreckage is found.
The search is expected to get underway in coming months at a new 5,791 square-mile site.
“This Cabinet decision allows the seabed search operation to commence to locate the wreckage of flight MH370 at a new location estimated to be 15,000 square kilometers in the Southern Indian Ocean based the principle of ‘no find, no fee,'” The Malaysian Transport Ministry said.
Malaysia agreed in principle to the renewed search in December.
It carried out a two-year search ending in 2017 at a cost of $150 million but that search failed to locate the wreckage.
MH370 had 239 people aboard when the Boeing 777-200ER airliner vanished less than an hour after takeoff from Kuala Lumpur as it headed to Beijing.
The new search will initially last for 18 months.
A 2018 investigation into possible causes for the jet’s crash found that controls on the aircraft were likely deliberately adjusted to fly off the planned flight path, but investigators did not determine why that was done.
