Chinese vessel departs search for flight MH370

By Recep Sakar

MELBOURNE, Australia (AA) - A Chinese survey vessel has concluded its missions in the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, leaving only a Dutch ship to continue the underwater hunt.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which coordinates the search for the plane that vanished in 2018, said in a statement Wednesday that China’s Dong Hai Jiu 101 departed the search area in the southern Indian Ocean on Saturday.

While the Chinese ship is set to return to Shanghai, the Dutch Fugro Equator vessel is scheduled to complete its mission in remaining parts of the 120,000 square-kilometer search area in the first new months of 2017.

The Fugro Equator paused its operations Tuesday to travel to Fremantle, a port city in Western Australia, for a routine re-supply.

Flight MH370, carrying 239 passengers and crew, disappeared from radar shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur enroute to Beijing on March 8, 2014.

The jetliner has yet to be found despite massive search operations in the southern Indian Ocean where the aircraft was believed to have ended its flight after diverting from its original route.

To-date, at least six pieces of aircraft debris found along Africa’s east coast have been confirmed as “almost certainly” coming from MH370.

Over the weekend, seven family members of passengers on board MH370 left for Africa to push for continued search operations for potential debris from the aircraft.

After 10 months of intensive undersea search for the vanished flight, on Jan. 29, 2015 Malaysia declared that MH370 was lost in an accident, killing all passengers.

On July 29 last year, a piece of aircraft debris was found washed ashore on the French island, east of Madagascar. The debris -- believed to be from a Boeing 777 -- was sent to Toulouse, France, for analysis the following day.

Days after, Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that the flaperon was from MH370, and that the flight indeed ended in the Indian Ocean.

In October, authorities from Malaysia, Australia and China released a report saying that the hunt is now predicted to continue into 2017 as the search of 120,000 square kilometers of the southern Indian Ocean continues to be hampered by bad weather.

The hunt was originally intended to be completed by mid-2016, but the report said the search of the remaining less than 10,000 sq km of the area will now be completed "around January/February 2017".