The government of Malaysia announced on Wednesday its plan to resume the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which disappeared with 239 people on board in March 2014 shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing.
"(The company) Ocean Infinity and the Malaysian government confirm that they will begin (on December 30) the search operations for a total of 55 days, intermittently," points out the statement from the Malaysian Ministry of Transport, dated this Wednesday.
Ocean Infinity is a robotics and seabed exploration company based in the USA and the UK that has been collaborating in the search for the plane, which disappeared on March 8, 2014, about 40 minutes after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for the Chinese capital.
The aircraft was lost from sight after leaving Malaysian airspace and entering Vietnamese airspace, when it initially deviated from its route towards the southern Indian Ocean, with the causes still unknown.
On board the Boeing 777 were 153 Chinese, 50 Malaysians (12 of whom were crew members), seven Indonesians, six Australians, five Indians, four French, three Americans, two New Zealanders, two Ukrainians, two Canadians, two Iranians, one Russian, one Dutch, and one Taiwanese.
Initially, Malaysia, China, and Australia conducted a joint search over an area of about 120,000 square kilometers in the Indian Ocean, but ended the operations in January 2017 without finding any wreckage.
Ocean Infinity also tried to locate the plane in an area of about 100,000 square kilometers between January and June 2018 without success.
Last April, the Malaysian government stated that the operation to search for the aircraft had been paused because it was "not the right time," but it announced that it would resume at the end of this year.
Today's statement says that the search will be carried out in a "specific area with the highest probability of locating the aircraft" under the agreement between Ocean Infinity and the Malaysian government, without giving further details.
Last February, the company stated that the search is based on "credible" information and will focus on an area that was "overlooked" during past missions.
