Malaysia OKs new search for MH370

KUALA LUMPUR - The Malaysian government has agreed to an offer by a US exploration company to resume the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, Transportation Minister Liow Tiong Lai said on Saturday.

The company, Ocean Infinity, said earlier this week that it was "hopeful of receiving the final contract award for the resumption of the search for MH370 over the coming days".

"The basis of the offer from Ocean Infinity is based on 'no cure, no fee'," Lai said, meaning that payment will be made only if the company finds the wreckage.

"That means they are willing to search the area of 25,000 square kilometers pointed out by the expert group near the Australian waters."

However, he added, "I don't want to give too much hope... to the (next of kin)."

He said his government was committed to continuing with the search.

He did not offer other details.

Flight MH370, carrying 239 people, disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014. Australia, China and Malaysia ended a fruitless search in January last year.

An email, sent from the MH Family Support Centre and seen by Reuters, said the government had accepted an offer by the company, Ocean Infinity, to resume the search on a "no cure, no fee" basis, meaning the company will only get paid if they find the plane.

A government spokesman declined to confirm that an email had been sent to families but said more details on the deal would be forthcoming. Ocean Infinity did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The company said on Wednesday it had moved a vessel closer to a possible search area. The vessel left Durban, South Africa, on Tuesday and was headed to Perth, Australia, Reuters shipping data showed.

In the initial search for the plane, a 52-day surface search covered an area of several million square kilometers in the Indian Ocean west of Australia, before an underwater search mapped 710,000 square kilometers of seabed at depths of up to 6,000 meters. They were the largest aviation searches of their kind in history, according to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.

However, the ATSB's report said the understanding of where the plane may be is "better now than it has ever been", partly as a result of studying debris that washed ashore in 2015 and 2016 that showed the plane was "not configured for a ditching at the end-of-flight," meaning it had run out of fuel.

Xinhua - Ap - Reuters