By P Prem Kumar
KUALA LUMPUR
Malaysia has spent $22 million on the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, the transport minister announced on Thursday.
The cost of the search, 79 million ringgits, was calculated to the end of 2014 and equals half the amount spent on the world’s most expensive search for a missing airliner – the hunt for the Air France flight that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, which cost $44 million over three years.
Australia and Malaysia had previously agreed to share the total cost of the search. Australia has not said how much it has spent on the operation.
Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said search operations for the ill-fated flight, which vanished from radar on March 8 last year without trace, will continue.
"Any decision to stop the operations has to be mutually agreed by the governments of Malaysia, China and Australia after getting a technical advice from a satellite expert team," Liow told the Malaysian parliament.
Beijing-bound MH370, which vanished an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport, was carrying 239 passengers and crew members.
The search and rescue operation has involved around 65 aircraft and 95 ships as well as experts from 25 countries.
After a 10-month intensive undersea search for the vanished flight, on Jan. 29 Malaysia declared that Flight MH370 was lost in an accident, with all on board killed.
On Wednesday, the Australia Transportation Safety Bureau announced that more than 60 percent of the area of the Indian Ocean where the Boeing 777 crashed had been searched. The area search would be completed by May, the bureau added.
