MH370 mystery deepens as search vessel vanishes off radar for three days sending conspiracy theorists into a frenzy
The plane had 239 people on board when it went missing in 2014 an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur
THE search vessel hunting for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 disappeared from radars for 80 hours, sparking more conspiracy theories about the fate of the doomed aircraft.
The Seabed Constructor’s sophisticated Automatic Identification System (AIS) went offline on January 31 after turning off its tracker.
The AIS system came back online 80 hours later, but the reason for its disconnection remains unclear, with its whereabouts during this period undocumented.
The mysterious move came just ten days into the search for the missing Malaysian plane, which vanished en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur on March 8, 2014.
MH370 disappeared after its communication systems were switched off an hour after taking off.
The aircraft, which had 239 people on board, has never been found.
The Seabed Constructor search vessel was contracted on a “no find, no fee” deal by Ocean Infinity, a Texan exploration firm.
In a statement, the company said that the search vessel was taking advantage of favourable weather to move toward "the vicinity of the possible search zone."
The company was offered in excess of £39.5 million if it found the missing plane within 90 days.
The vessel set off from the Port of Durban on January 2, 2018, and arrived at the search site on January 21.
The crew will use sonar scanning equipment as part of its search efforts.
The disabling of the search vessel's AIS transmission has led to a number of conspiracy theories, as well as comparisons to MH370 itself, which had also vanished from radar systems.
One social media user speculated that the vessel had found MH370 but planned to keep its location secret until it had confirmed its government-funded fee.
Another claimed the company had failed to find the missing Boeing 777, secretly detouring towards the wreckage of what is believed to be the S.V Inca - a Peruvian transport ship that vanished on the way to Sydney more than 100 years ago.
The Ocean Infinity team was recruited after the last multinational search effort left the Australian, Malaysian and Chinese governments £144 million out of pocket.
The Seabed Constructor’s designated search area is located just outside the 46 square miles previously searched along the 7th arc – the zone aviation experts believe to be the likely place MH370 would have run out of fuel.
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No signs of the doomed aircraft were found during the Australian-led search for the plane, which was called off last January.
It was the largest search ever carried out in aviation history.
Only three confirmed fragments of the MH370 aircraft have ever been found.
The fragments included a two-metre wing part, and were all discovered on western Indian Ocean shores.
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