The seabed search for the missing Malaysian airliner has been left to a
single ship, with a Chinese vessel heading home to Shanghai, officials
said on Wednesday.
A Dutch survey ship Fugro Equator will finish the search of the southern Indian Ocean for Malaysia Airlines
Flight 370 alone after resupplying at the southwest Australian port of
Fremantle, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which coordinates the
search, said in a statement.
The Chinese ship Dong Hai Jiu 101 had finished searching the
120,000-square-kilometer (46,000-square-mile) expanse last weekend and
was headed back to Fremantle to drop off equipment before returning to
its home port of Shanghai, the statement said.
The Chinese ship in February joined three search vessels operated by the
Dutch underwater survey company Fugro in the hunt for the Boeing 777
that authorities say crashed with 239 people aboard far off the
southwest coast of Australia on March 8, 2014.
Fugro Equator is expected to finish the search by February, the
statement said. The ship is using a highly maneuverable drone known as
an autonomous underwater vehicle to get sonar images of difficult
terrain.
A group of victims' relatives traveled to the island nation of Madagascar off the southeast coast of Africa and this week offered locals possible financial rewards to search for debris from the plane.
A Malaysian official investigating the disappearance visited
Madagascar's capital, Antananarivo, to pick up debris that has already
been found and will be analyzed to see if it came from the aircraft.
Confirmation that the plane crashed came last year when a wing part
washed ashore on Reunion Island in the western Indian Ocean, east of
Madagascar. Authorities have offered no explanation of why the plane
flew off course during a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing.
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