KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia has spent a total of 27.6m ringgit ($8.6m) so far on the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, authorities said yesterday, giving a specific cost figure for the first time.
“The figure of 27.6m ringgit was only the sum spent by Malaysian agencies, we do not know how much other countries spent,” Department of Civil Aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman told a news conference, saying he was unsure of the cost breakdown.
The search for MH370, which disappeared on March 8, is set to be the most costly in aviation history and spending will rise significantly as the search expands to a wider swathe of the Indian Ocean off Australia.
The search has been dealt setbacks, most recently when Australian officials said last month that wreckage from the aircraft was not on the seabed in the area they had identified, based on acoustic pings thought to be from the plane’s black box recorders.
Azharuddin said Malaysian officials would travel to Australia today and China later this week to discuss the latest analysis of satellite and other data being used to refine the new search area.
A Wall Street Journal report on Sunday cited sources as saying investigators were revising some of their basic assumptions about the plane’s last position and could make an announcement on the new search area by mid-June.
The search area has already been extended to a 60,000 sq km zone that is being surveyed by a Chinese vessel. It will then be searched by a commercial operator in a mission expected to start in August and take up to a year, at a cost of A$60m ($55m) or more.
Reuters
