Flight MH370 can be found by May: Malaysia Transport Minister

KUALA LUMPUR — Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai has given Malaysia’s commitment that flight MH370 can be found by the time search efforts in a remote region of the southern Indian Ocean are completed.

Mr Liow said in an interview with US broadcaster CNN that the Malaysian government’s confidence is guided by experts who determined that the Malaysia Airlines jetliner had ended its journey within a 60,000sqkm are off the coast of Western Australia.

“Yes, yes (the plane can be found by May). This is what the expert told us, that’s the reason why we have to really focus on these 60,000sqkm,” he said in the interview posted on the broadcaster’s website.

Mr Liow stressed that all the data obtained from satellite telecommunications company Inmarsat and air traffic control centres “all point out” that the plane is somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean.

He said search teams have so far scoured 26,000sqkm, or 43 per cent of the search area.

“We are confident. We hope we can complete this by May this year and we can get the plane, we can find the plane... we can find it,” he said.

Mr Liow, however, sidestepped a question on whether a contingency has been put in place should the search yield nothing, insisting that it is for the experts to guide their next course of action.

“We will rely on the expert. As you see we have the expert team guiding us. As the government, we would like the expert view before we continue further.

“I am saying that, if the expert views that it’s not this area, then the expert has to tell us where is it,” he said.

He also said the Malaysian government will take pains to “further engage” families of the 239 people who were aboard Flight MH370, amid claims that the next-of-kin have been side-lined and treated like a “nuisance”.

He denied that they have not been in touch with or updated the families on the on-going search for the Malaysia Airlines jetliner, stressing that they share progress reports with the next-of-kin every week.

He, however, conceded that Putrajaya could do more if the situation warranted it.

“If you said so, if the next-of-kin feel they are not given enough, we will do more,” he said when asked if he believed more could be done for the families of those missing.

Flight MH370 vanished while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing last March, along with 239 passengers and crew.

It is believed to have gone down in one of the deepest and most remote areas of the Indian Ocean, several hundred kilometres off the coast of Western Australia, where search efforts are underway. THE MALAY MAIL ONLINE