A Texas-based marine robotics company embarked on an intermittent 55-day mission Tuesday to try and locate the elusive wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which vanished with 239 people on board in 2014.
Ocean Infinity, a marine robotics company based in Austin, Texas, struck the coveted deal with the Malaysian government, the country’s Ministry of Transport announced in early December.
The company will employ its own underwater vehicles, deep sea drones and advanced scanning technology on the mission, but only for the 55-days that the Malaysian government permitted.
The remote-operated machinery will scan 6,000-square-miles down in the Indian Ocean seabed.
The Malaysia Airlines plane, a Boeing 777, disappeared from air traffic radar on March 8, 2014 shortly after departing from Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur. The 239 passengers and crew were set to arrive in Beijing that same day.
Two-thirds of the passengers were Chinese. There were also Malaysians, Americans, Australians and other nationalities on board.
The confounding disappearance of the entire plane rocked the world and remains one of the single-largest unsolved mysteries to date.
No bodies or wreckage were ever found, and the pilots didn’t issue a distress call. The plane’s location-tracking transponder stopped broadcasting entirely shortly after departing from Kuala Lumpur.
Satellite data showed the plane turned from its flight path and headed south toward the Indian Ocean, where officials believed it had crashed.
The immediate search for the plane was called off after just 22 days because of bad weather. It never resumed, and everyone aboard the plane was presumed dead.
Sparse pieces of suspected debris have washed up on Indian Ocean islands and along the African coast, but no human remains or any significant portions of wreckage have been found.
The governments of Australia, Malaysia and China launched a joint underwater search in 2014 — the largest and most expensive in aviation history. They covered a 46,000-square-mile area in the southern Indian Ocean.
The operation concluded in 2017 and produced very little relevant discoveries.
In 2018, Ocean Infinity assumed control over the search for three months and promised to only accept payment if they found the actual wreckage. The same “no-find, no-fee” contract still stands for the current search.
Should Ocean Infinity locate the aircraft, it will receive a payment of $70 million.
The victims’ families, meanwhile, are still embroiled in lawsuits against Malaysia Airlines. A Beijing court ordered compensation for eight Chinese families in early December, marking a major victory in the years-long stall.
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