SYDNEY: A Chinese ship is set to join the search for Malaysia Airlines MH370, Australia’s deputy prime minister said Friday, as the jet’s fate remains a mystery almost two years after it vanished.
The Dong Hai Jiu 101 will join three other vessels contracted from Dutch firm Fugro — Fugro Discovery, Fugro Equator and Havila Harmony — currently scouring the depths of the southern Indian Ocean off Western Australia where the plane is believed to have crashed after diverting from its flight path.
Carrying 239 passengers and crew, the plane disappeared during a Kuala Lumpur-Beijing flight on March 8, 2014.
So far, only a two-metre-long (almost seven-foot) flaperon wing part that washed up on a beach on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion in July has been confirmed to have come from aircraft.
“The ship, offered to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull by Premier Li Keqiang of the People’s Republic of China in November 2015, will undertake search operations in the southern Indian Ocean,” Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said in a statement.
