KUALA
LUMPUR, Malaysia,-- Officials
on Monday suspended the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 after three
years of searching for the airplane thought to have gone down somewhere over
the Indian Ocean.
Officials in Australia, China and Malaysia announced in a joint statement that the last search vessel has left
the Southern Indian Ocean and the underwater search there for the plane was
being suspended because nothing has been found and there are no new leads.
The three countries decided to suspend the search after it covered a roughly
46,000-square-mile area in the Indian Ocean where the plane is believed to have
gone down, though no explanation for why it crashed there -- nor evidence the
area is where it actually crashed -- has presented itself.
"Despite every effort using the best science available,
cutting-edge technology, as well as modelling and advice from highly skilled
professionals who are the best in their field, unfortunately, the search has
not been able to locate the aircraft," transport ministers from Australia,
China and Malaysia said in the joint statement. "Accordingly, the
underwater search for MH370 has been suspended."
The plane left its expected flight route from Kuala Lumpur to
China with 239 people on board in March 2014, taking a hard turn in the
opposite direction and spending six hours over the Indian Ocean before
officials believe it crashed somewhere into the water.
In July 2016, after more than two years of searching, officials
narrowed down the search to a 46,000-square-mile area based on evidence from
the pilot's personal home simulator tracking a path there.
The officials said
at the time, however, that if the plane was not found in the massive area of
ocean, the search would be suspended.
The search, which has been difficult from the start, combined
scientific studies of how and where the doomed flight dropped out of the sky,
or was intentionally flown, into the Indian Ocean.
The officials say they are hopeful new information comes to
light to help find the aircraft, but say that even with the assistance of
nations around the world, beyond the three heading the investigation, they have
been unable to locate the plane.
For family members of those aboard the flight, the end of the
search -- even in the absence of new evidence as to where it is -- comes as
unwelcome news.
"They said they are quite sure that they are searching the
right place, but it seems that they are wrong," Steve Wang, whose mother
was on the flight, told CNN. "I think
it is their responsibility, not only for the 239 passengers on the plane, or
for the next of kin like us, but also they have to give an answer to the whole
world... what really happened to MH370."
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