A LAST-DITCH attempt to find the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is set to resume today after vanishing without a trace 11 years ago.
The search is formed of a final £50million bid to bring “closure” to families of the 239 people who were on board the doomed flight.
The final push for answers is due to last for 55 days and will cover a vast area of 5,790 square miles in the southern Indian Ocean.
Flight MH370, a Boeing 777, disappeared in 2014 while travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
It disappeared off flight radars with none of the passengers, crew or the aircraft being found during the largest search in aviation history.
Several searches are yet to produce any clear explanations but now a whopping £56million is being spent in a final bid for the truth.
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INTO THIN AIR
Seven theories behind MH370 disappearance from hijacking to ‘ghost dive’
Exploration firm Ocean Infinity has offered its services to Malaysian officials on a “no find, no fee” basis – meaning it only gets the cash if the wreckage is found.
Ocean Infinity is expected to dispatch its cutting-edge mothership, the Armada 7806, to a newly identified high-priority zone sat 1,200 miles off Perth, Australia.
Armed with state-of-the-art autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and high-resolution sonar, the vessel will systematically scan the seabed.
Despite having 55 days to search, the crew are expected to go out intermittently across the next two months.
Experts believe this is the last realistic chance of solving aviation’s wildest disappearance.
Only around 33 pieces of debris — either confirmed or deemed highly likely to be from MH370 — have ever been found.
They’ve turned up in The Reunion, Mauritius, Madagascar, Tanzania and South Africa.
Another suspected piece, part of a wing spoiler, was found in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, in 2021.
Experts say after all this time currents would have washed them there from the presumed crash site on the other side of the Indian Ocean near Western Australia.
Analysis of one piece of the wreckage suggested the missing plane spiralled into the sea in an uncontrolled “ghost dive”.
Experts say part of a wing spoiler was ripped off – dismissing a past theory that the plane glided to the surface in a controlled ditching.
A last-ditch probe had begun in March but was cut short by bad weather – and so organisers decide to kickstart the mission again today.
Malaysia’s transport ministry said at the start of the month: “The latest development underscores the [Malaysia’s] commitment to providing closure to the families affected by this tragedy.”
This is the third major search for MH370, following two large-scale missions that ended in failure.
The first was a multinational effort covering 120,000 sq km of seabed.
The second was through Ocean Infinity who tried to locate the plane in a 2018 expedition but it ended after three months without success.
Search efforts have been led by Australia and Malaysia due to the nationalities of those on board.
Twelve Malaysian crew and 227 passengers, most of whom were Chinese citizens, were on the flight.
Elsewhere, there were 38 Malaysian passengers, seven Australian nationals and residents from Indonesia, India, France, the US, Iran, Ukraine, Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Russia and Taiwan.
Families of the victims on board have refused to give up hope and have constantly campaigned for more searches of the Indian Ocean.
Danica Weeks, whose husband Paul was one of the Australian passengers, says her family have “never stopped wishing for answers”.
She said: “I truly hope this next phase gives us the clarity and peace we’ve been so desperately longing for, for us and our loved ones, since March 8th 2014.”
It comes as many of the families as well as aviation experts continue to dispute the official reason given by Malaysian officials over the cause of the disappearance.
A 2018 investigation concluded the plane was manually turned around mid-air instead of it being on autopilot mode at the time.
They also refused to rule out “unlawful interference by a third party” amid speculation over if the plane could have been hijacked by foreign players.
However, the report did dismiss theories that had suggested the pilot and first officer brought the flight MH370 down in a suicide mission.
Mechanical failure was also ruled out as a cause.
Seven bombshell theories behind MH370 disappearance
AS the hunt for missing flight MH370 resumes, theories about what happened to the doomed plane are emerging once again.
Here are some of the wildest and unfounded takes about what happened to MH370…
US shot down plane
Investigative journalist Florence de Changy claims in her book The Disappearing Act: The Impossible Case of MH370, that the plane was shot down by the US Air Force in a bid to stop secret tech reaching China.
De Changy claims the US tried to intercept the plane by using technology to jam the signal.
She branded it “the biggest cover-up in recent times”.
Pilot’s ‘death dive’
It has also been alleged that the plane’s pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, may have steered the jet to its doom.
According to a life-long friend of Shah, who is also a pilot, his mental state was worsening by the day and could have impacted his decision to down the jet.
The unnamed pilot said it would have been easy to divert co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, out of the cockpit and then lock the door.
The theory claims Shah may have slowly suffocated his passengers by depressurising the plane before crashing into the sea.
UFO abduction
One of the more wild theories suggests the plane could have been abducted by a UFO.
A video went viral online showing an unidentified object following a plane.
Amateur sleuths became adamant the jet in the bizarre clip was MH370 and that it had been kidnapped by aliens.
Hijacking fears
Several theories about a possible hijacking, either on board or remotely, have also swirled for years.
One conspiracy theory suggests MH370 could have been hijacked by a stowaway.
Investigators did discover a “mysterious 14st load” added to the flight list after take-off, according to an engineer.
Foreign sabotage
A bizarre theory has suggested that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un was behind the jet’s fate.
Another conspiracy theory tables that the disappearance was at the hands of Russia with aviation expert Jeff Wise believing the Kremlin had means and motive.
In his 2015 book The Plane Wasn’t There, Wise argued that Russia is one of few countries with the tech to carry out such an attack.