OAN Staff Cory Hawkins
11:13 AM – Friday, January 2, 2025
Texas-based marine robotics company Ocean Infinity embarked on a 55-day intermittent seabed search mission this week with the goal of locating the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which hit news headlines in 2014 after “vanishing without a trace” while carrying 239 people on board.
The company says that it plans to remotely operate the machinery to scan an area of approximately 5,800 square miles in the southern Indian Ocean.
The search is being led by the Armada 86 05, a highly advanced, lean-crewed robotic survey ship. It is currently on station approximately 1,100 nautical miles west of Perth, Australia.
Ocean Infinity struck a deal with the Malaysian government to deploy its own underwater drones, deep-sea vehicles, and advanced scanning technology for the mission, which is limited to 55 days by the Malaysian government. It is a performance-based contract, meaning they will only be paid if they locate the main wreckage or the flight data recorders (black boxes).
However, if successful, the Malaysian government will pay $70 million.
Since the agreement is considered a “no find-no deal,” the private company is taking on 100% of the financial risk — though it will be awarded the $70 million if they can find the main wreckage or the flight recorders.
Despite years of exhaustive and relentless searches, including harrowing deep-sea dives, investigators remain baffled by the mysterious vanishing of the plane and the fate of its 239 passengers and crew. The mission reignites hope of finally discovering the plane’s location after years of searching, during which only a few small fragments washed ashore and no bodies or significant wreckage were ever found.
The global prestige of solving the greatest mystery in aviation history would seemingly crown Ocean Infinity as the most famous underwater search firm in the world.
The Malaysia Airlines aircraft, a Boeing 777, vanished from air traffic radar on March 8th, 2014, shortly after taking off from Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur, en route to Beijing. The flight was carrying 239 people, the majority of whom were Chinese nationals. The remaining passengers and crew represented 13 other nations, including 50 Malaysians, seven Indonesians, six Australians, and three Americans.
The pilots never issued a distress call, and the plane’s location tracking transponder stopped broadcasting entirely shortly after takeoff. Satellite data showed the plane changed its flight path and headed south toward the Indian Ocean, where officials assumed it had crashed.
The initial surface search transitioned to underwater efforts after about 52 days due to bad weather, with the presumption that everyone aboard had perished. Pieces of debris with matching serial numbers to the aircraft have washed on Indian Ocean islands along the African coast, but no human remains or any large portions of wreckage have been located.
In 2014, the governments of Australia, Malaysia, and China launched the largest and most expensive aviation search in history. Despite scouring a 46,000-square-mile area of the southern Indian Ocean, the operation concluded in 2017 having found no trace of the aircraft.
Ocean Infinity says that it has refined its search by collaborating with a global panel of experts to narrow the target zone.
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