‘We need to go again’: Australian who led MH370 search joins calls for fresh effort to find plane

The man who led Australia’s search for MH370 has urged the Australian government to support any new effort to find the plane, which disappeared 10 years ago on Friday. On Sunday the Malaysian government said it was in talks with the US marine robotics company Ocean Infinity to discuss a new search. The company says it is willing and able to return to the search and has submitted a proposal to the Malaysian government. The Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 departed Kuala Lumpur on 8 March 2014, bound for Beijing with 12 crew and 227 passengers on board – including seven Australians. About 40 minutes later it disappeared from the radar and its fate remains unknown. The Malaysian government initially did a surface search in the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca. But electronic blips picked up by satellites indicated the plane had turned around, flown until it ran out of fuel, then plunged into the Indian Ocean between Western Australia and Antarctica. At that point Australia took over, with the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) leading the Indian Ocean underwater search effort from May 2014 to early 2017. Peter Foley, the program director for the ATSB-led search, said the longer any search was delayed, the smaller the chance that flight data recorders would still be useful. He would like to see the Australian government support a new effort. “It’s been six years,” Foley said. “We know that it’s close to the seventh arc in the southern Indian Ocean,” he added, referring to a band of water where the plane made its final satellite “handshakes”. “We just need another search.”<br/>