The announcement by a team of searchers that they were ending the comb for the ill-fated MH370 jetliner brought to an end an enduring three-year search, leaving relatives of the passengers of the jet with nothing but the only possible assurance of death of their relatives. These past three years have been exhausting, emotionally for family members, and materially and financially for the three countries that have engaged in the search for the period of time.
The ill-fated airliner was flying to Beijing China from Malaysia on March 8, 2014, when it disappeared from radar barely an hour after taking off. An analysis of satellite radar led analysts to believe the final resting place of the plane is the Indian Ocean. Australia, Malaysia, and China have since constituted a team that has combed the Southern Indian Ocean for the past three years with little or no success. More than twenty pieces of debris have so far been discovered, with only about seven having been confirmed as belonging to the plane, while the major part of the debris is still lying in an unknown final resting place.
In July 2015, a couple of months after the search began, the first debris supposedly belonging to the plane was found on Reunion Island. After a laboratory examination, it was later confirmed to be a flaperon of the MH370. The search appeared to have found a coveted part of the plane when one of the underwater devices used in the search reportedly picked up pings from what was thought to be one of the black boxes of the plane. Another couple of weeks of search, however, produced no result. The latest of the debris, an outboard wing flap, was found in Tanzania in June 2016 after it was washed ashore by sea currents. This was the last positive from the search before the team released a joint statement indicating the search would be coming to an end after the 46,000 SQ km area of the Southern Indian Ocean had been covered. With no new evidence to suggest the need for an extension, the search team has now ended the three-year-long investigation into the fate of the jet, with no positive results.
Technically, the search for the flight from the official team of searchers made up of Malaysia, China, and Australia ended in July 2016 when the team released a statement indicating a scheduled end. At that point, they appeared to have concluded that no other thing could come from the fund-gulping search. And having rejected a report of a possible final resting place of the MH370 up north the search area in the Indian Ocean as being less specific, the team of searchers appeared to have lost interest in the project.
As an end has now been pronounced on the search and with the team having little or no interest in an extension, the only hope for families and sympathizers of the passengers on board the flight appears to rest with the ability of nature to succeed where technology fails. The fact that some debris of missing airliners have reappeared years after search ended, as well as the fact that some of the debris found so far, were washed ashore is a pointer to the ability of nature providing the much-needed answers in the search for the missing jetliner.
If the words of John Goglia, a member of the US National Transportation Safety Board are anything to go by, there remains a possibility of a privately funded search. However, at the moment, the only hope of ever finding the debris of the jet remains with nature.
