Paul Kennedy, the search director for Fugro Survey — a division of a Dutch company hired by Australia to conduct the seabed search for the Malaysia Airlines aircraft — said he believed it can be found, The Weekend Australian reported yesterday.
He also said if Fugro got a new commission to look for the plane, “it wouldn’t take us long at all” to get the resources ready.
This is because the company already has 350 staff as well as equipment stationed in Perth, including a $10-million torpedo-like autonomous sonar imaging vehicle.
“She’ll be found, for sure,” Kennedy said in reference to MH370.
His statement came following calls to have the search renewed, after all three governments involved in the search decided to suspend it.
Australian, China and Malaysia announced the suspension of the search for MH370 earlier this month, nearly three years after the plane vanished over the Indian Ocean.
The plane disappeared on the way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which led the underwater search, has said it was “highly likely” that MH370 is in a new 25,000 sq km area that a panel of international experts identified last month, reported The Weekend Australian.
Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai was recently reported as saying that although the search has been suspended, experts were going back to the drawing board to locate the wreckage.
He said that when authorities are confident of the plane’s exact location, they could resume the search.