Kuala Lumpur: The Malaysia Airlines plane with 239 people on board that went missing March 8 “is lost” and there are no hopes of survivors, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced Monday.
He said at a press conference here that British investigators from its Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) have confirmed that the flight of Malaysia Airlines “flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean”.
According to Razak, Immarsat, the company that indicated the plane flew along either a northern or southern corridor, has managed to trace the jetliner’s final flight path using sophisticated technology.
“Using a type of analysis never before used in an investigation of this sort, they have been able to shed more light on MH370’s flight path,” the Malaysian Star quoted Prime Minister Razak as saying.
He said that Malaysia Airlines, together with AAIB, determined that the Boeing 777-200ER flew along the southern corridor, and its last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean west of Perth, the capital of Western Australia.
“With deep sadness and regret I must inform you that, according to this new data, flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean,” Razak said.
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished mysteriously about an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur shortly after midnight March 8.
The plane was initially presumed to have crashed off the Vietnamese coast in the South China Sea. The plane was scheduled to land in Beijing at 6.30 a.m. the same day. The 227 passengers on board included five Indians, 154 Chinese and 38 Malaysians.
Contact with the plane was lost along with its radar signal at 1.40 a.m. when it was flying over the air traffic control area of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.