Hunt for flight MH370 to be most expensive in history, say Chinese scientists

The hunt for doomed Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is likely to be the most expensive in aviation history, Chinese scientists warned yesterday, as Thailand said it had spotted hundreds of objects near the search area in the Indian Ocean.

The annual bill could run to 10 times that of the two-year hunt for an Air France plane five years ago and would cost hundreds of millions of US dollars, they said.

France and Brazil spent more than US$40 million over two years to recover the black boxes from Air France flight 447, which crashed in the Atlantic Ocean in 2009 en route to Rio de Janeiro from Paris. Officials halted the operation, which used underwater robots to scour the seabed, after search crews found 50 of the 228 bodies.

But Zhao Chaofang , an oceanographer at the Ocean University of China in Qingdao , estimated that the cost of finding MH370 could total more than 10 times that of the Air France search annually.

Some scientists believe China alone has already spent hundreds of millions of yuan, he added. "If the operation is stretched to a long-term search for years, US$200 million per year is barely enough to maintain the multinational effort," Zhao said.

A senior researcher at the Civil Aviation University of China, who declined to be named, agreed the cost would "far, far exceed" that of the Air France search. Experts said it was unclear who might ultimately foot the cost of finding MH370.