KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 25 — The families of passengers and crew of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which vanished en route to Beijing almost 11 years ago, are following the fresh search on the mysterious disappearance of the aircraft via a dedicated webpage.
It was widely reported that a British marine robotics company, Ocean Infinity, has launched what is expected to be the final search for the ill-fated Flight 370.
The ‘MH370 Families’ Facebook page, in its latest post, shared the webpage for the families to track the search progress of Ocean Infinity’s Armada 78-06 ship.
“It is available here: https://www.mh370-caption.net/index.php/armada-tracking/
“The ship’s progress is updated at 30 minutes past every hour with a time difference of one hour 30 minutes. The search and search zones are also illustrated. This will work as long as the AIS (Automatic Identification System) is available,” the post stated.
The Facebook page also expressed gratitude for the webpage, saying, “Our appreciation to the authors of this page. God Bless.”
On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, carrying 239 people-comprising 227 passengers and 12 crew members-disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Since then, several countries have launched large-scale search operations in the southern Indian Ocean but have found no wreckage.
In October 2017, the Malaysian government released a statement that it was in discussion with Ocean Infinity to make a further underwater search in the area — on the basis of no fee if the wreckage was not found.
The search commenced in January 2018 and ended in June 2018 without finding the aircraft.
In December last year, Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim assured that the MADANI Government would provide full cooperation if efforts to locate Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 yield results.
This assurance followed Transport Minister Anthony Loke’s announcement that the Cabinet had agreed in principle to accept an offer from Ocean Infinity to resume the search for the wreckage.
He stated that the deep-sea search would focus on a new location spanning approximately 15,000 square kilometres in the southern Indian Ocean, under a “no find, no fee” agreement — meaning the government would not incur any costs if the wreckage was not found.
Meanwhile, a Facebook page named ‘Ocean Infinity News and Updates’ posted on Feb 14 that Armada 78-06 had departed the Mauritius area and was heading southeast, with its destination set to offshore Australia.
Under its privacy and legal information section, the page states that its “mission is to follow various companies as they conduct interesting seabed searches around the world.”
In its latest Facebook post today, the page stated, “Armada 78-06 now appears on the Fremantle, Australia port schedule as arriving on March 5th and departing again on March 6th.”
It appended the post with the port schedule. — Bernama