Malaysia: If missing MH370 not found, back to drawing board

Malaysia’s transport minister Liow Tiong Lai said that while he remains hopeful that the search for MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean will produce results, they will be forced to “go back to the drawing board” if nothing is recovered by the end of May. The news comes almost exactly a year after the aircraft disappeared, which occurred on March 8, 2014. In January, the Malaysian government formally declared the the case an accident and the 239 passengers are presumed deceased.

I can’t promise that the search will go on at this intensity forever. [W]e will continue our very best efforts to resolve this mystery and provide some answers.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott

Meanwhile, the search for MH370 continues. Australia, China, and Malaysia have been scouring a 23,166-square-mile (60,000-square-kilometer) section of the southern Indian Ocean in search of debris. Thus far, they have covered about 44 percent of the area, and in that time have discovered multiple hard objects, 10 of which still need to be analyzed. However, the common discoveries have to this point been cargo containers fallen from passing ships and garbage. No trace of the missing plane has been found. The mysterious disappearance of the aircraft has prompted the industry to look hard at how to track jets when over the open sea. Airlines and regulators spent the past year debating how much flight tracking is necessary, balancing the economic costs against reassuring travelers another plane won’t disappear. Now a plan is moving forward that would require airlines, by the end of 2016, to know their jets’ positions every 15 minutes.

We are in so much pain at this time that we still have no news of our loved ones.

Grace Subathirai Nathan, the daughter of missing MH370 passenger Anne Catherine Daisy

World MH370