The search for wreckage from missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 will go one for at least another 12 months, the Malaysian government confirmed Monday.
The Boeing 777 aircraft was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew when it vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in 2014.
Most passengers were Chinese, but there also were citizens of the United States, Indonesia, France, Russia and elsewhere.
Among those aboard were two young Iranians traveling on stolen passports, a group of Chinese calligraphy artists, 20 employees of U.S. tech firm Freescale Semiconductor, a stunt double for actor Jet Li and several families with young children.
INTERPOL’s National Central Bureau in Tehran later confirmed the identity of the two Iranian nationals who used authentic passports to travel to Kuala Lumpur before using stolen Austrian and Italian passports to board MH 370.
INTERPOL confirmed the identities of the two Iranian men who used stolen passports to board MH370. They were as Seyed Mohammed Reza Delavar, aged 29 and Pouria Nourmohammadi, aged 18. (INTERPOL pic)
Multiple search operations conducted for the plane in the southern Indian Ocean have since proved fruitless with countless theories aired – and dismissed – as to exactly what happened to the commercial flight that created one of the world’s enduring aviation mysteries.
The Malaysian government cabinet gave the green light to the extension of a “no-find, no-fee” agreement with Ocean Infinity until June 30 next year, Transport Minister Anthony Loke said Monday.
“This decision is a manifestation of the government’s continuous and unwavering commitment to provide a closure for the next of kin of the passengers aboard flight MH370,” he said in a statement, as seen by AP.
The extension enables U.S. exploration firm Ocean Infinity to complete the remaining 2,868-square-mile search area, after temporarily redeploying its primary search assets to fulfill other commercial contracts, he said.
File/A Malaysian man holds up his tshirt adorn with best wishes for the missing Malaysia Airline, MH370 for the camera at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang, outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Saturday, March 22, 2014. (Joshua Paul/NurPhoto/Corbis via Getty Images)
All that is positively known is satellite data showed the plane turned from its flight path and headed south to the far-southern Indian Ocean, where it is believed to have crashed.
An expensive multinational search failed to turn up any clues to its location, although debris washed ashore on the East African coast and Indian Ocean islands.
A private search in 2018 by Ocean Infinity also turned up nothing of interest.
In a BBC documentary Why Planes Vanish: The Hunt for MH370, Jean Luc Marchand, former air traffic manager at Eurocontrol and retired commercial pilot Captain Patrick Belly, say they are convinced the plane was steered off-course by an experienced pilot.
AP contributed to this report