MH370 search to end on May 29 after four years

By Angela Dewan

CNN

The search for flight MH370 will come to a close on May 29 after more than four years and little sign of what happened to the ill-fated plane.

Malaysia’s cabinet agreed to a request by the US company operating the search, Ocean Infinity, to extend the hunt until May 29. Malaysian Minister of Transport Anthony Loke Siew Fook told reporters in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday there would be no more extensions after that.

The Malaysian Airlines flight disappeared in 2014 carrying 239 passengers from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Australian investigators who led the international search for the flight over four years have defended their theory that the plane’s disappearance was due to an accident.

Peter Foley and Greg Hood from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau told a parliamentary hearing Tuesday that the plane had likely crashed into the Indian Ocean after running out of fuel.

The initial search, carried out by Malaysia, China, and Australia, was called off in January last year after failing to find any trace of the plane within a 710,000-plus square kilometer area of the Indian Ocean.