[Peetwo]

MH370 & a no find, no fee search proposal -

Via Yahoo7 News...

Seabed exploration firm offers to hunt for MH370
AFP on August 3, 2017, 6:50 pm


Kuala Lumpur (AFP) - A US exploration company has offered to take on the search for flight MH370 which was suspended earlier this year, the firm and a Malaysian minister said Thursday, offering new hope to families of the missing.

No trace of the Boeing 777, which disappeared in March 2014 with 239 people on board, was found during a lengthy deep sea hunt in the southern Indian Ocean off western Australia, with the search called off in January.

Ocean Infinity, a seabed exploration firm which says it has the world's largest and most advanced commercial fleet of underwater vehicles for conducting searches, said it had proposed continuing the hunt.

"I can confirm that we have made an offer," a spokesman said in an emailed statement to AFP, without giving further details.

Malaysia's Deputy Transport Minister Aziz Kaprawi confirmed a company had made an approach and was only asking for payment in the event they find the plane.

He said the firm had made a "good offer", and added negotiations were ongoing with the country's Department of Civil Aviation.

"The company is demanding payment in the event the wreckage is found," he told AFP.
"We have to work out the details, what we want most is the wreckage and the black box."

He added that the agreement of Australia and China would be needed for a deal to be reached. China, where most of the passengers came from, and Australia were both involved in the search.

Grace Nathan, a Malaysian lawyer whose mother Anne Daisy was on the plane, urged authorities to accept the offer.

"There is no point waiting any longer, we really do not lose anything," she said. "It seems to be a perfect offer from a company that is equipped to undertake this search."

So far, three fragments of MH370 have been found on western Indian Ocean shores, including a two-metre wing part known as a flaperon.

Australia's national science body CSIRO said in April that MH370 was "most likely" lying north of the former search zone -- a 120,000 square kilometre (46,000 square mile) area largely defined through satellite "pings" and the flight's estimated fuel load.

But the country's transport minister previously said the underwater probe would not resume unless new evidence about the specific location of the aircraft emerge.

Ocean Infinity has a fleet of six underwater vehicles which can collect seabed data at a depth of 6,000 metres (19,700 feet).

..But the country's transport minister previously said the underwater probe would not resume unless new evidence about the specific location of the aircraft emerge...  
Yet another potential aviation embarrassment for minister Chester...

& also via PT:

What happens if private MH370 search is launched by new tech US firm?

An apparently well resourced privately funded offer to keep looking for MH370 puts the Australian, Malaysian and Chinese authorities on the spot

Ben Sandilands
Editor of Plane Talking

An Ocean Infinity website graphic

An American oceanographic exploration firm, Ocean Infinity, has offered to launch a radically faster seabed search for the sunk wreckage of missing flight MH370 for an undisclosed fee paid only if it succeeds in finding the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 that vanished with 239 people on board on March 8, 2014.

The offer, publicised by independent MH370 researcher Victor Iannello puts authorities in Malaysia, Australia and China on the spot in terms of support, given the controversial suspension of the official tripartite search in January contrary to a recommendation by Australian scientists to make a final examination of a comparatively small section of the southern Indian Ocean seabed to the southwest of Perth, Western Australia.

The Australian transport safety investigator, the ATSB, managed the now suspended oceanic search on behalf of its Malaysia and China partners in the quest to find the wreckage, and locate and recover, if possible, the flight data and cockpit voice recorders.

There is nothing to prevent any entity from searching for the main wreckage from MH370, although there are long standing internationally agreed rules that seek to avoid disturbing any aircraft wreckage pending a examination by an accident inquiry that conforms to the protocols of the International Civil Aviation Organisation which was founded in 1947.
[url=http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/tag/mh370][/url]
MH370 was over the Gulf of Thailand early on March 8, 2014, on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, when it abruptly ceased to be visible to air  traffic control systems as a transponder identified flight.

Automatically generated signals from MH370 picked up by an Inmarsat communications satellite indicated that the jet eventually flew into southern Indian Ocean airspace before running out of fuel.

MTF...P2