Vessel leaves for final sweep for MH370 sea search

The last vessel searching for missing MH370 has left on its final sweep across the southern Indian Ocean, Australia said yesterday, as the transport minister cautioned the airliner might not be found in coming weeks

Family members of passengers onboard the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 address the media prior to departing for Madagascar from Kuala Lumpur International Airport. File pic

Sydney: The last vessel searching for missing MH370 has left on its final sweep across the southern Indian Ocean, Australia said yesterday, as the transport minister cautioned the airliner might not be found in coming weeks.

Fugro Equator sailed from Fremantle port on Australia’s western coast on Monday for the 120,000 square-kilometre zone, where investigators believe the Malaysian Airlines jet disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, carrying 239 passengers and crew.

No trace has been found in the massive undersea hunt off Australia but investigators have confirmed that three pieces of debris recovered on western Indian Ocean shorelines came from MH370.

“It has been a heroic undertaking, but we have to prepare ourselves for the prospect that we may not find MH370 in the coming weeks, although we remain hopeful,” Transport Minister Darren Chester told The West Australian on Tuesday.

It added that the ship’s final hunt would involve examining some 200 small areas, which were either too deep for previous sweeps or were not properly examined due to poor sonar readings.

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