CANBERRA, Australia (AP) Australia said today it was holding out hope that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 would one day be found, as the last search of the seabed in the remote Indian Ocean where the plane was believed to have been lost was scheduled to end.
Malaysia said last week that the search by Texas-based company Ocean Infinity would end today after two extensions of the original 90-day time limit.
Australian Transport Minister Michael McCormack said the four-year search had been the largest in aviation history and tested the limits of technology and the capacity of experts and people at sea.
Our thoughts are with the families and loved ones of the 239 people on board MH370, McCormacks office said in a statement. We will always remain hopeful that one day the aircraft will be located.
Malaysia signed a no cure, no fee deal with Ocean Infinity in January to resume the hunt for the plane, a year after the official search in the southern Indian Ocean by Australia, Malaysia and China was called off. No other search is scheduled.
Australia, Malaysia and China agreed in 2016 that an official search would only resume if the three countries had credible evidence that identified a specific location for the wreckage.
Malaysia said last week that an Ocean Infinity ship Seabed Contractor operating underwater sonar drones had searched more than 37,000 square miles of sea. The search area deemed by experts to be the most likely crash site was only 9,650 square miles, roughly the size of Vermont.
Ocean Infinity did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The Boeing 777 vanished on March 8, 2014, while flying from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing. The original search focused on the South China Sea before analysis revealed that the plane had made an unexpected turn west and then south.
Australia coordinated an official search on Malaysias behalf that scoured 46,000 square miles and $150 million before it ended last year.
Danica Weeks, an Australian resident who lost her husband on Flight 370, urged Foreign Minister Julie Bishop to call on Malaysias new government to be more transparent about what they knew about the mysterious disappearance.
Thereve been so many theories and rumors and … we dont know what is true and what isnt, Weeks told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
I want Julie Bishop to say to the Malaysian counterparts now: What do you have? Where is the investigation at? she added.
The director of the official seabed hunt that ended last year, Peter Foley, told an Australian Senate committee hearing last week that he still hoped that Ocean Infinity would be successful.
