The Australian Transport Safety Board (ATSB) released a statement today, saying that a Chinese vessel will be heading home to Shanghai, leaving only Dutch survey ship Fugro Equator to complete the seabed search for the missing Boeing 777.
ATSB, which has been coordinating the search efforts by three countries – Malaysia, Australia and China – said Fugro Equator will finish the search of the southern Indian Ocean for the missing aircraft alone after resupplying at the southwest Australian port of Fremantle, AP reported.
“The Chinese ship Dong Hai Jiu 101 had finished searching the 120,000-square-kilometer expanse last weekend and was headed back to Fremantle to drop off equipment before returning to its home port of Shanghai,” ATSB said.
Last February, the Chinese ship joined Fugro Equator and two more search vessels from the Dutch underwater survey company to comb the seabed in the southern Indian Ocean, about 2,000km off the coast of Western Australia in search of the missing plane.
ATSB said the Fugro Equator, which is using a highly manoeuvrable drone known as an autonomous underwater vehicle to get sonar images of difficult terrain, is expected to finish the search by February.
There have been no announcements on what will take place next should the search, that has taken almost two years, be unsuccessful.
Meanwhile, the only proof that MAS flight MH370 did go down in the Indian Ocean came to light in July 2015 when a part of the wing was discovered on Reunion Island, which is off the coast of Madagascar.
Based on other findings of debris that may or may not be from the ill-fated aircraft, seven family members of the victims decided to take matters into the own hands and arrived in Madagascar on Sunday.
They met investigators connected with the search on Monday to take custody of six pieces of debris that had washed up on Madagascar over the past six months.
A total of 33 pieces suspected to be from the plane have been found so far, including parts of the wings and tail, in La Reunion, Mozambique, South Africa, Mauritius and Tanzania.
Three pieces have been confirmed by the Malaysian authorities as belonging to MH370, including a flaperon from the tail which they said showed the pilots were not in control of the plane when it crashed.