MH370 search vessel leaves Australia for one last time

Whether the voyage is the ship’s final month-long deployment from Fremantle before the search was completed after more than two years will depend on the weather.

A lone survey vessel left an Australian port for perhaps the final time to search for the Malaysian airliner which mysteriously crashed into the southern Indian Ocean two years ago, officials said on Tuesday.

HMAS Success scans the southern Indian Ocean, near the coast of Western Australia, searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in 2014. (AP file photo)

The Dutch survey ship Fugro Equator left Fremantle on Monday night to continue the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 alone, minister for infrastructure and transport Darren Chester’s office said.

Whether the voyage is the ship’s final month-long deployment from Fremantle before the search was completed after more than two years would depend on the weather, Chester’s office said.

Chester thanked China for the services of a Chinese ship that in February joined the search of a 120,000-square-kilometer area where authorities calculate that the Boeing 777 crashed with 239 people aboard on March 8, 2014. The Chinese ship started making its way back to Shanghai this month.

Fugro Equator is using a highly maneuverable drone known as an autonomous underwater vehicle to get sonar images of difficult terrain that could not be reliably searched with towed sonar equipment.

Australia is overseeing the search on Malaysia’s behalf. The two governments agreed with China in July that if the aircraft was not located in the current search zone, the search would be suspended in the absence of credible new evidence leading to the identification of a specific location.

Passengers’ relatives hope that drift analysis of the washed-up debris will provide the new evidence to continue the search.