International News

KUALA LUMPUR, (APP/AFP) – Investigators probing what
happened to flight MH370 said Tuesday the cause of the plane’s disappearance remained a mystery as its second anniversary passed with no end in sight for
devastated next-of-kin.
The Malaysia-led international team of aviation experts set up to
investigate issued an annual progress report, but the brief statement contained no new insights into what caused the Malaysia Airlines jet to vanish.
“To date, the MH370 wreckage has still not been found despite the
continuing search in the south Indian Ocean,” said the statement.
It was the second straight year that the team of investigators, which
includes seven representatives from the likes of the US National Transportation
Safety Board (NTSB) and its counterparts, had nothing to offer.
Malaysia and Australia, however, said they remained optimistic that
the painstaking search for an Indian Ocean crash site will find something that could lead to the recovery of MH370’s flight data recorders, and eventually reveal what caused the plane’s disappearance.
“The current search operation is expected to be completed later this
year, and we remain hopeful that MH370 will be found,” Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said in a statement.
If nothing turns up by the time the scheduled search ends, Malaysia,
Australia and China will meet “to determine the way forward”, he added, without elaborating.
The jet vanished on March 8, 2014 en route from Kuala Lumpur to
Beijing with 239 passengers and crew onboard, mostly Chinese and Malaysian nationals.
Authorities believe the Boeing 777 flew far out over the remote
southern Indian Ocean and went down.
A wing fragment later confirmed to be from MH370 was found on an
island thousands of kilometres (miles) from the search area last July.
It was the first proof the plane went down, but brought authorities
no closer to finding a crash site.
The three nations have already indicated they will end the biggest
and most expensive search effort in history if its high-tech scanning of a designated swathe of seafloor comes up empty.
The search zone is expected to be fully scoured within a few months.