Families of the 239 passengers and crew provided DNA last week to help identify victims when plane is found

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Investigators searching for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 say they could finish scouring the priority zone by May, more than a year after it vanished, if there are no delays with vessels, equipment and weather.



The Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre (Jacc) said on Sunday that decisions about the future of the search would continue to be made in collaboration with Malaysia, China and Australia.

Last week families of the 239 passengers and crew on board the 8 March flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing provided DNA samples to help identify victims once the plane was found.

A computer-animated video and sonar images of the Indian Ocean seabed where the search has been focused has also been released.

The latest Jacc update said the survey vessel Fugro Equator was mapping the ocean floor and would return to Fremantle when it completes this month’s phase.

About 200,000 square kilometres of the search area has been surveyed.

Fugro Discovery arrived back in the search area on 4 December and GO Phoenix returned last Tuesday.

Danica Weeks, whose husband, Paul, was on the missing flight, wrote an article for the Sunday Times.

She said when she and her two young children said goodbye to him they never thought it would be for the last time.

“But now, March 7 is permanently engraved in my mind, and often on rewind,” she wrote.

“Not only as the day we kissed Paul goodbye at Perth airport, but because mentally, for me, it is still March 7.”

Weeks said not knowing what happened to her husband continues to haunt her.

“Every waking minute your mind runs scenarios of what might have happened,” she said.

“You are searching the news constantly for any small piece of information that may give you a clue to their whereabouts, and your heart pounds every time the phone rings. Is this it? Have they found something?”