Search for MH370 may be suspended

If it wasn’t found soon, they would halt the search, officials said.

The Malaysian transport minister was meeting with his counterparts from China, where numerous passengers were from, and Australia, which is leading the search. In represents a change of thought because, in April past year, the countries’ representatives had agreed to end the search of the Indian Ocean seabed if no further credible information was found.

MH370 was traveling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and carrying 239 passengers and crew when it disappeared on March 8, 2014.

Ms Jeanette Maguire, whose sister and brother-in-law, Cathy and Bob Lawton, from Brisbane, Australia, were on board MH370, said that while the decision is “very hard to accept” she understood searchers needed more information to continue “because it’s costing an absolute fortune”.

“Attention was particularly focused on delays to the search as a result of damaged equipment and recent poor weather, as well as discussion about the discovery of aircraft debris and what it meant in relation to search efforts and the investigation”, it said.

On July 29 previous year, a piece of aircraft debris was found washed ashore east of Madagascar.

Malaysian Transport Minister, Liow Lai, confirmed the decision to suspend the search.

The decision was taken after transport ministers from Malaysia, China and Australia met Friday to deliberate on the next course of action, after the current search operations within a 120,000 square kilometer area wrap up.

The use of the term “suspended” at the conference was an apparent nod to anguished families who have stepped up demands recently for authorities not to fully abandon efforts to locate the aircraft.

The pilot of doomed Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 conducted a simulated flight deep into the remote southern Indian Ocean less than a month before the plane disappeared from radar in the same area, according to the New York Magazine.

The meeting, involving transport ministers of Malaysia, China and Australia, disclosed that the search was to be suspended as there were no new credible information in identifying a specific location of the aircraft.

They say that the current search, of an area of 120,000 square kilometers, is almost at an end, and the chances are slim that it will prove fruitful.

“At the moment, we do not have evidence to confirm that it was a controlled ditching”, he replied. “I read into it a commitment to stay engaged in the search and to hold themselves accountable to pursue the truth”. “We will definitely gather to protest it and I have lost confidence in the Malaysian government”.

Several pieces of debris have been recovered – one off the coast of Reunion Island, which sits east of Madagascar, and other pieces in Mauritius, South Africa and Mozambique.

If the theory that someone glided the plane down onto the surface of the ocean is true, it could more than double the size of the search area.