The latest search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has been suspended due to unfavorable seasonal conditions, according to Malaysia’s transport minister, marking yet another setback in the decade-long mystery surrounding the missing aircraft, as per Al Jazeera.
The decision comes just weeks after authorities announced the resumption of the search, following previous unsuccessful attempts to locate the Boeing 777, which vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in 2014 with 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board.
An initial search, led by Australia, covered 46,300 square miles of the Indian Ocean over three years, recovering only a few pieces of debris. In 2018, maritime exploration firm Ocean Infinity, headquartered in the United Kingdom and the United States, conducted an unsuccessful search. The company agreed to launch a new search effort this year.
Ocean Infinity’s most recent mission operated under the same “no find, no fee” agreement as its previous attempt, meaning the Malaysian government would only compensate the firm if the aircraft was located.
The disappearance of MH370 has spawned numerous theories, ranging from plausible scenarios to outlandish claims, including one alleging that veteran pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah intentionally went off course.
A final report released in 2018 highlighted failures by air traffic control and indicated that the plane’s course was manually altered. However, the 495-page report concluded that investigators still did not know the reason for the plane’s disappearance, and refused to rule out the possibility that someone other than the pilots diverted the jet.
Relatives of the missing passengers continue to demand answers from Malaysian authorities. Two-thirds of the passengers were Chinese, while the others were from Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, and other countries.
Last month, family members of the Chinese passengers gathered in Beijing outside government offices and the Malaysian embassy to mark the 11th anniversary of the flight’s disappearance.
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