The families of passengers lost aboard Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 say the two-year search for the missing aircraft must go on beyond a June deadline, as new hope emerged last week of resolving the aviation mystery. Debris found off the African coast rekindled hope for many, prompting relatives such as Grace Subathirai Nathan to demand investigators go back over mistakes made early on.
“A lot of it was based on calculations that had never been used before, where there’s room for human error,” Nathan said in an interview. Nathan’s mother, Anne Daisy, was on board MH370 which disappeared on its way to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur on March 8, 2014, with 239 passengers and crew on board. About 120,000 sq km (46,300 sq mi) of the sea floor is being searched at an estimated cost of about AUD$170 million (UD$124.17 million), but no trace of the missing Boeing 777 has been found except for a wing part which surfaced on Reunion island off Madagascar last July.
Australia said in August that initial drift models of where debris from the jet might first wash up had incorrectly identified Indonesia as the most likely location. “If that could be wrong, what else could be wrong?” Nathan, a 28-year-old lawyer, said.
A meeting set for June between Australia, Malaysia, and China will determine whether to extend the search. But families are calling for the search to continue after the discovery off the coast of Mozambique last week of a chunk of white metal suspected to be from MH370.
As they prepare to mark the two-year anniversary of the jet’s disappearance, the relatives are asking for efforts to focus on the southeast African coast. Voice370, a support group for MH370 next-of-kin, said last week in a statement that the claims of funds drying up was “unacceptable” as a reason for ending the investigation, which they say could benefit the broader industry and increase safety.
News & Image Sources: Internet.