Ocean Infinity launches fresh search for MH370 with new maritime tech

A fresh search is underway for the wreckage of missing Malaysian airliner MH370 and two maritime experts say radical new tech could finally bring some closure to aviation’s most haunting mystery.

Flight MH370 disappeared on March 8 in 2014 while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 227 and 12 crew on board.

Six Australians were on board MH370: Rodney and Mary Burrows, Robert and Catherine Lawton, Yuan Li and Naijun Gu.

A New Zealand citizen living in Australia, Paul Weeks, was also on the flight.

The Boeing 777 departed the Malaysian capital about 12.45am and disappeared in airspace over the South China Sea.

Now, US robotics company Ocean Infinity is scouring a 15,000km zone in the Indian Ocean over an 18-month timeframe.

The company searched for and failed to find MH370 in 2018, but experts Craig Wallace and Peter Waring, speaking with 60 Minutes on Sunday evening, say this time is different.

“What these vessels, what these new ocean infinity vessels represent frankly is as big a transition in maritime technology as the movement from sail to steam in, in the 1800s,” Mr Waring, a former Australian naval officer told the program.

“It is a giant leap in, in maritime technology.”

The new tech is centred on sophisticated underwater drones, which sink down six kilometres down and scan the sea floor for up to one hundred hours at a time.

The drones are controlled remotely, 60 states, and when seabed anomalies are found, the machine is redeployed to capture sonar images.

“The first thing is trepidation because you see a potential target and you’ll see so many targets that you’ll be let down over and over and over again,” Mr Wallace said.

“You get quite emotional. And it won’t be until people get those camera images that we actually believe they found the wreckage.

“Once you’ve confirmed it’s the wreckage, we then need to map out the debris field and that’ll be done in several stages.”

The operation will be challenging and both the experts express caution about the outcome.

“The Indian Ocean that they’re working in is, is among the worst in the world,” Mr Wallace said.

They’ve recorded wave heights of 20 meters, so 60 feet. It’s extreme conditions and there will be a lot of times where they simply cannot launch or recover the vehicle.”

The Malaysian government announced the new search in December last year, agreeing to a “no find, no fee” contract with Ocean Infinity.

Malaysian transportation minister Anthony Loke said the government would pay the company $112m if a substantial discovery was made.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau led an initial underwater search for the plane in the southern Indian Ocean between October 2014 and January 2017.

The three-year search operation covered a 120,000 square kilometre zone.

Some debris from the plane has washed up in East Africa and on islands in the Indian Ocean, but the final resting place of the airliner is still unknown.

A haunting mystery has enveloped the flight, with investigators still unsure about what happened.

The aircraft dropped off the radar 38 minutes after takeoff and vanished.

The final recorded message, sent at 1.19am, was from the captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, who said: “Good night, Malaysian three seven zero.”

The plane soon diverted back over Malaysia, the opposite direction from the intended flight path.

Primary civilian and military radar data reported the plane travelling back over the Malacca Strait and into the vast Indian Ocean.

After about 7.5 hours, MH370 ran out of fuel and subsequently crashed 11 minutes later into the ocean.

Mr Waring said he hoped the 2025 search would not prove to be another “false dawn”.

“We’ve been here before, there’s been lots of searches in the past,” he said.

“There’s been lots of promises made and I’m really hoping this time that we find the aircraft and that we can

put it all to rest.”

He said it would be a “huge day” if the airliner was found.

“This is a mystery that really tears at the fabric of reality and maybe it’ll stitch it back together again slightly,” he said.