Last Thursday, Malaysia’s Deputy Transport Minister Abdul Aziz Kaprawi said Putrajaya was open to the idea of having credible private companies continue the search for the missing aircraft, and pay out a reward should any such company be successful in finding the fuselage.
However, in Fremantle, Western Australia today, Malaysia’s Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai denied any decision on giving a reward was made.
“The government has not made any decision … it was the deputy minister’s personal view, not the government’s,” he said, according to the portal.
Liow and his Australian counterpart Darren Chester were at the Fremantle dock to meet the search vessel Fugro Equator, which undertook the search for the Boeing 777 that disappeared in March 2014 with 239 people on board.
The three-year underwater search officially ended with the vessel docking in Fremantle today.
“This has been an extraordinary search effort, it’s been in some of the most inhospitable oceans in the world,” ABC News quoted Chester as saying.
He added that the search for MH370 had been at the very cutting edge of technology and scientific expertise, but also had been quite a heroic human endeavour, as it had covered an area of 120,000 sq km.
While some experts believe the plane is likely to be located just outside the vast area that was searched, the investigation will now take a different turn.
“Work will continue in relation to further analysis of data and if any more debris comes forward, we’ll work with our Malaysian counterparts in assessing debris of interest and work is also going on in terms of further analysis of satellite imagery,” Chester told ABC News.
Meanwhile, Liow thanked the crew, as well as the Australian and Chinese governments for their help in the A$200 million (RM672 million) search effort, of which Australia contributed about A$60 million.
“It is one of the biggest search missions ever carried out in the history of aviation,” he was quoted as saying by ABC News.
Some 25 pieces of debris have been found along the coast of southern Africa and a few have been confirmed as belonging to the missing plane.
Liow said the Malaysian government would continue to work with countries along southern Africa and the surrounding islands to retrieve more debris and analyse ocean drift patterns.