The search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 has taken another strange twist after the vessel currently tasked with combing the ocean floor for its wreckage mysteriously disappeared for three days. The vessel Seabed Constructor has only just reconnected its Automatic Identification System, with the system having gone dark for approximately 80 hours prior.
Seabed Constructor (formerly much more majestically called the Olympic Athene) left the South African city of Durban on January 2 and began its exploration of the newly designated search area on January 21, doing so without a hitch for 10 days until the AIS switched off.
So far Ocean Infinity, the survey company in charge of the operation, has yet to comment on the outage, and speculation on the subreddit dedicated to keeping abreast of the search has been rife, with some suggesting just an irregularly updating AIS (although this doesn’t seem hugely likely) and others suggesting that they switched it off to go covertly plunder the wreckage of downed 18th century Peruvian transport vessel the S.V Inca (which seems much, much less likely than the dodgy AIS thing).
Ocean Infinity has a pretty vested interest in finding the vessel, given that their more than AUD$70 million pay cheque from the Malaysian government will only be paid if they find the vessel within 90 days of the starting the search.
It is expected that Ocean Infinity will give an update on the situation soon.
