Malaysian government urged to take lead in hunt five years after flight’s disappearance

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Family members of those lost on Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have asked the Malaysian government to be more proactive after one of its ministers hinted at a potential new search for the missing plane.

In the lead-up to the five-year anniversary on Friday of MH370’s disappearance, the Malaysian transport minister, Anthony Loke, said this week he was “willing” to restart the search if there were “specific proposals”.

However, KS Narendran, whose wife was on MH370, said the government should be displaying more than just “a passive stance” and should take the lead on a new hunt for the plane.

Two large-scale searches, covering a total of 200,000 sq km, have so far failed to find MH370 since it disappeared on 8 March 2014, with 239 people on board.

The most recent search ended in June 2018. American company Ocean Infinity searched the southern Indian Ocean for roughly four months, starting at the end of January 2018.

A year on, Ocean Infinity said it is willing to start again, and Loke said he would be open to another search.

MH370: five years of theories about one of aviation's greatest mysteries Read more

At a memorial event organised by the family members of those on board MH370, Loke said he was “more than willing” to look at any “credible leads or specific proposals”, according to the Associated Press.

In a video played at the same event, the chief executive of Ocean Infinity, Oliver Plunkett, said the company was looking into new technology to improve its second attempt.

“We haven’t given up hope,” he said. “We hope we can continue the search in due course.”

Loke told the meeting: “If they can convince us that the new technology can be more efficient in terms of the search, then we are more than willing to restart.”

Narendran told Guardian Australia he welcomed the sentiment but wanted further action.

“I am encouraged by Ocean Infinity’s willingness to return to the search for MH370. They have demonstrated search capability that lends confidence. I am equally encouraged by Minister Loke’s words regarding the search.

“However, I believe a serious commitment to search and finding the plane cannot be reflected in a passive stance. Instead, it is best demonstrated in letting the families and the public know what [Loke’s] government is doing to find ‘credible evidence’ and how this will be followed up.”

Narendran said Loke’s comments “convey the impression that [Malaysia] is not taking a lead here”.

“In this process, we have lost the current search window and effectively put off the possibility of search until September or October this year, assuming that the southern Indian Ocean remains the area of interest,” Narendran said.

He also called on the Malaysian government to release more information, including radar and satellite data.

The 2018 search had been commissioned on a “no find, no fee” arrangement, whereby Ocean Infinity would only be paid by the Malaysian government if it found the plane.

The company initially set out to search a small, 25,000 sq km “priority area”, but after no result, expanded the search northward, eventually covering 112,000 sq km of the ocean floor.

The “priority area” had been identified in 2017 by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau and the CSIRO as the most likely resting place of MH370.

Prior to 2018, the ATSB had conducted an extensive three-year search, starting in 2014, with no success. After calling off their search, their final report offered the “priority area” as the next place to look.

While no conclusive evidence has been found as to the cause of MH370’s disappearance, the current official theory is that the plane crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, off the coast of Western Australia.

This is based on a series of transmissions that MH370 made to a satellite owned by the British company Inmarsat.

On the day it disappeared, MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur on a scheduled route to Beijing. But 40 minutes into what should have been a six-hour flight, it turned off its transponder and turned from its course.

After making more turns, MH370 flew for nearly eight hours uninterrupted. The Inmarsat satellite made a series of successful transmissions to MH370 – known as “handshakes” – that showed the plane was flying south into the Indian Ocean.

MH370’s onboard computer responded to six of these handshakes – and then instigated a seventh, which occurred when the computer rebooted. Investigators believe this reboot was caused by the plane running out of fuel.

Missing flight MH370 – a visual guide to the parts and debris found so far Read more

It did not respond to an eighth handshake, sent an hour later, which investigators say means it had crashed by that point.

The spot where MH370’s fuel supposedly ran out, known as the “seventh arc” is where the search efforts have focused. Satellite data cannot pinpoint a plane’s position, but places it in a range that forms a circle. Analysis of ocean currents, based on where MH370 debris washed up, narrowed that circle to a small arc.

The current official theory, adopted by both the Malaysian government and the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, is that the pilot was unconscious at the seventh handshake, thus the plane dived sharply to land in a location near the seventh arc.

However, the failure of Ocean Infinity to find the plane in 2018 led other experts to claim the pilot was conscious at the time and could have glided the plane after it ran out of fuel. If MH370 was put in a controlled glide, it could have travelled up to 200km away from the arc.