Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said on Monday he would be “happy to restart” the search for Flight MH370 if there is “convincing” evidence, nearly a decade after the plane disappeared in the Indian Ocean.
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The Malaysia Airlines flight, a Boeing 777, disappeared from radar screens while connecting Kuala Lumpur with Beijing on March 8, 2014, and remains one of the greatest mysteries in civil aviation history.
Responding to a question about the search for the missing plane with 239 passengers on board, Mr Ibrahim said: “If there is convincing evidence that it needs to be restarted, we will undoubtedly be happy to do so.”
“This is an issue that affects people's lives and whatever needs to be done must be done,” said Ibrahim, who is visiting Melbourne, Australia.
For his part, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese expressed his deep “regret” that the plane could not be located.
“We understand that people are going through a very difficult time because they did not have the certainty that a successful search mission would give them,” he commented.
The Australian, Malaysian and Chinese governments' underwater search was halted in January 2017 after authorities decided the wreck was unlikely to be within the 120,000 km2 search area.
“Certainly”
On Sunday, around 500 relatives and supporters gathered at a shopping center near the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur for a “day of remembrance”, many of them visibly overcome with grief.
Some of the relatives came from China, where almost two-thirds of the passengers came from.
“The last ten years have been a constant emotional roller coaster for me,” Grace Nathan, a 36-year-old Malaysian lawyer whose mother Anne Daisy, 56, was on the plane, told AFP.
She addressed the crowd and called on the Malaysian government to investigate further.
Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke told reporters: “Malaysia is committed to finding the plane,” adding that “cost is not the issue.”
He said he would meet with representatives of the Texas-based marine research company Ocean Infinity, which has previously conducted unsuccessful searches, to discuss a new operation.
When Malaysia called off the search in 2017, experts identified another likely area of 25,000 square kilometers, but both Australia and Malaysia believed the chances of finding the plane there were insufficient to expand operations.