Malaysian Airlines Search Destined to Be Most Costly Ever
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Nick Perry – Pool/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — The search for the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is already on track to becoming the most expensive operation of its kind in aviation history, according to The New York Times.
There is speculation that the cost has already surpassed the search and recovery for Air France Flight 447 that crashed in the Atlantic Ocean in 2009. The price tag for the two-year effort was approximately $160 million.
So far, none of the countries involved in the search have discussed cost in the month since Flight 370 vanished with 239 people on board on its way from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Beijing.
However, officials familiar with the ongoing mission in the southern Indian Ocean say that the daily expense of operating a single vessel can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars while some of the planes involved in the search cost thousands of dollars per hour.
As of now, the lion’s share of the work and equipment being supplied to find any trace of Flight 370 is being performed by Australia, China, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Korea and the U.S..
However, if hopes start to fade about ever locating the black boxes that might hold important clues to the plane’s whereabouts and what might have happened on March 8, governments involved in the search may have to decide how much help they can afford to keep offering.
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