Chinese ship pulls out of search for missing Malaysian airliner MH370
Only one survey ship now still searching in area of the Indian Ocean more than two years after the aircraft carrying 239 people disappeared
The sea bed search for the missing Malaysian airliner MH370 has been left to a single ship, with a Chinese vessel heading home to Shanghai, officials said on Wednesday.
A Dutch survey ship would finish the search of the southern Indian Ocean for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 alone after resupplying at the southwest Australian port of Fremantle, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which coordinates the search, said in a statement.
The Chinese ship Dong Hai Jiu 101 finished searching a 120,000 square kilometre area last weekend and was headed back to Fremantle to drop off equipment before returning to its home port of Shanghai, the statement said.
The Chinese ship joined three search vessels operated by the Dutch underwater survey company Fugro in February in the hunt for the Boeing 777, which the authorities say crashed with 239 people on board far off the southwest coast of Australia in March 2014.
Fugro Equator is expected to finish its search by February, the statement said. The ship is using a highly manoeuvrable drone known as an autonomous underwater vehicle to get sonar images of difficult terrain.
A group of victims’ relatives travelled to the island nation of Madagascar off the southeast coast of Africa earlier this month and offered possible financial rewards to search for debris from the plane.
A Malaysian official investigating the disappearance visited Madagascar’s capital, Antananarivo, to pick up debris that has already been found and it will be analysed to see if it came from the aircraft.
Confirmation that the plane crashed came last year when a wing part washed ashore on Reunion Island in the western Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar.
The authorities have offered no explanation as to why the plane flew off course during a flight from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to Beijing.
