The search for MH370, the Malaysia Airlines jet that vanished in March 2014, will be suspended by the end of the year when crews complete their current phase of operations in the Indian Ocean, officials announced Friday. Unless new information comes to light to help direct the search for the Boeing 777, the ships hired to scan 100,000 square kilometers of the rugged ocean floor are expected to cease their work between October and December as conditions allow, CNN reported. “This does not mean we have given up on looking,” Malaysian officials said. The flight, carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, dropped from radar over the ocean. All are presumed dead and while pieces of debris believed to be from the jet have been found, investigators have had little to go on in determining what happened — fueling a range of conflicting theories.
Meanwhile, a Dutch company leading the search in the targeted area has raised the possibility that the jet glided under control farther beyond the search area instead of crashing into the waters where crews have been looking. “If it’s not there, it means it’s somewhere else,” the project director for Fugro told Reuters this week. “If it was manned it could glide for a long way.” Investigators, including those from the NTSB, don’t support that theory and the coordinating agency, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, has said evidence points to the jet crashing within the search area. “All survey data collected from the search for missing flight MH370 will be released,” the bureau told Reuters.
