Ocean Infinity’s offer to search for MH370 still being studied

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MALAYSIA is studying the offer from United States-based seabed exploration company Ocean Infinity to launch a new mission to search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane MH370, specifically concerning payment.

Deputy Transport Minister Datuk Ab Aziz Kaprawi said the matter must be studied in detail as it involved a payment of between US$20 million and US$70 million, which the company was seeking.

“We are discussing the details of the company’s ‘No Cure, No Fee’ term so that payment will only be made when the debris of the plane MH370 is found and confirmed by a third party.

“We are also looking at the details of the payment sought as it involves a very large amount of money,” he said during the question-and-answer session at the Dewan Rakyat yesterday.

He was replying to a supplementary question from Tan Seng Giaw (DAP-Kepong) who wanted to know if the government had agreed to the offer from a seabed exploration company to continue the search for the debris of the MH370.

Replying to Tan’s original question on the measures taken by the government following the MH370 tragedy, Ab Aziz said the Department of Civil Aviatiion (DCA) had taken additional steps in line with the policies of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO).

He said this included steps to detect the location of an aircraft using a real-time global tracking system, which is every 15 minutes compared to the previous 30 minutes.

In addition, DCA had increased the training of the work operations of aircraft officers to be more focused on emergencies and unforeseen incidences,  even though the current standard operating procedure (SOP) met with the minimum standards set out by the ICAO.

Ab Aziz also said a team of investigators was drawing up the final report of the investigations into the cause for the loss of MH370, and it is expected to be released within a year from the date the search for the plane was suspended.

The decision to suspend the search was made after a ministerial tripartite meeting between Malaysia, Australia and China on July 22,  but a further search could be considered if there were new indications which were valid and concrete.

Flight MH370 disappeared while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014.

It had 239 passengers and crew members on board. — Bernama