Drones dive into aviation's deepest enigma as MH370 hunt restarts

Washington: Nearly 12 years after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished with 239 people on board, the search for answers to one of aviation s most h...

Washington: Nearly 12 years after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished with 239 people on board, the search for answers to one of aviation's most haunting riddles resumed Tuesday in the remote southern Indian Ocean.

Armed with cutting-edge deep-sea robots and smarter data, US investigators are scouring the seabed for clues that have eluded governments, experts and grieving families for more than a decade.

MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur just after midnight on March 8, 2014, bound for Beijing on what should have been an uneventful six-hour flight. Less than an hour later, its transponder went dark, wiping the Boeing 777 from civilian radar. Military screens later showed the aircraft veering sharply west, crossing back over Malaysia before heading south over the vast Indian Ocean.

What followed was the most ambitious and costly search in aviation history, as multinational teams combed more than more than 46,000 square miles (120,000 square kilometers) of seabed off Western Australia with ships, aircraft and sonar. They found nothing.

The hunt was called off in 2017, leaving families with heartbreak and a mystery that spawned theories ranging from hijacking to deliberate pilot action. Now, the Malaysian government has given the green light for a fresh attempt led by Texas-based marine robotics firm Ocean Infinity under a "no find, no fee" contract, according to a statement from Malaysia's transport ministry.