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| Search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Is Called Off After Nearly 3 Years | Search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Is Called Off After Nearly 3 Years |
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| HONG KONG — Almost three years after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared with 239 people on board, officials said on Tuesday that they had called off the underwater search for the plane after finding no trace of it. | |
| The decision, which had been expected, indefinitely suspends an intensive deep-sea search in the southern Indian Ocean for remnants of the plane, a Boeing 777, assuring that its fate will remain a mystery for the foreseeable future. | |
| Flight 370 disappeared on the way from Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, to Beijing on March 8, 2014, prompting the largest and costliest search in aviation history. Investigators determined that the plane had veered off course and flown south for several hours, for reasons that remain unknown. | |
| “Today the last search vessel has left the underwater search area,” the governments of Australia, China and Malaysia, the three countries that oversaw the search, said in a joint statement on Tuesday. “Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has not been located in the 120,000-square kilometer underwater search area in the southern Indian Ocean,” a zone of more than 46,000 square miles. | “Today the last search vessel has left the underwater search area,” the governments of Australia, China and Malaysia, the three countries that oversaw the search, said in a joint statement on Tuesday. “Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has not been located in the 120,000-square kilometer underwater search area in the southern Indian Ocean,” a zone of more than 46,000 square miles. |
| “Despite every effort using the best science available, cutting-edge technology, as well as modeling and advice from highly skilled professionals who are the best in their field, unfortunately, the search has not been able to locate the aircraft,” the statement said. “Accordingly, the underwater search for MH370 has been suspended. The decision to suspend the underwater search has not been taken lightly nor without sadness.” | |
| Investigators have come up with several theories about what happened to the plane. They believe it ran out of fuel, and one theory holds that the pilots may have tried to make an emergency landing at sea. | |
| What they do know from radar and satellite communications data is that the plane made several turns, then flew south for five hours. That information led investigators to concentrate the search along a 400-mile arc from which the plane most likely sent its last signal. | |
| Australia, China and Malaysia have said since July that the search would end if the plane were not found in that search area. China is involved in the search because most of the passengers on the plane were Chinese. | |
| In December, investigators said they may have been looking too far south and recommended expanding the search zone. But the Australian government said that without more credible evidence identifying the specific location of the jet, the search would be called off this month. | |
| “We remain hopeful that new information will come to light and that at some point in the future the aircraft will be located,” the statement on Tuesday said. | |
| While the underwater search proved fruitless, about 20 pieces of debris believed to be from the missing jet have been recovered, including a wing part, known as a flaperon, that was found on Réunion Island, east of Madagascar, in July 2015. That location, combined with analysis of ocean currents, supported the theory that the plane had crashed in the southern Indian Ocean. Other parts were found as far away as the coast of Africa. |