Relatives of passengers lost on the 2014 flight have continued to demand answers from Malaysian authorities.
The latest search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has been suspended as it is “not the season”, according to the country’s transport minister, more than a decade after the plane went missing.
“They have stopped the operation for the time being, they will resume the search at the end of this year,” Anthony Loke said in a voice recording sent to the AFP news agency on Thursday. “Right now, it’s not the season.”
Flight MH370, a Boeing 777, was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members when it vanished en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur in 2014 in one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries.
The decision came a couple of weeks after authorities said the search for the missing flight had resumed, following earlier failed attempts that covered vast swaths of the Indian Ocean.
An initial Australia-led search covered 120,000sq km (46,300sq miles) in the ocean over three years, but hardly found any trace of the plane other than a few pieces of debris.
Maritime exploration firm Ocean Infinity, based in the United Kingdom and the United States, led an unsuccessful hunt in 2018, before agreeing to launch a new search this year.
Last month, Ocean Infinity resumed the search for the wreckage of the missing flight.
Its most recent mission was conducted on the same “no find, no fee” principle as its previous search, with the Malaysian government paying out only if the firm finds the aircraft.
“Whether or not it will be found will be subject to the search, nobody can anticipate,” Loke said on Thursday, referring to the wreckage of the plane.
MH370’s disappearance has long been the subject of theories – ranging from the credible to outlandish – including that veteran pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah had gone rogue.
A final report into the tragedy released in 2018 pointed to failings by air traffic control and said the course of the plane was changed manually.
Investigators said in the 495-page report that they still did not know why the plane vanished and refused to rule out that someone other than the pilots had diverted the jet.
Relatives of the missing passengers of the flight have continued to demand answers from Malaysian authorities.
Two-thirds of the passengers were Chinese, while the others were from Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, and elsewhere.
Last month, family members of Chinese passengers gathered in Beijing outside government offices and the Malaysian embassy on the 11th anniversary of the flight’s disappearance.
Attendees of the gathering shouted, “Give us back our loved ones!”
Some held placards asking, “When will the 11 years of waiting and torment end?”