Malaysian, Chinese And Australian Officials Say They Have Done All They Can

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 vanished from radar nearly three years ago, leaving the world wondering what had happened to the Boeing 777 on a flight from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur.

The world may now never know. Malaysian, Chinese and Australian officials issued a joint statement Tuesday saying they had "done all they can" to locate the missing airliner, and the search was being indefinitely suspended.

"Despite every effort using the best science available ... the search has not been able to locate the aircraft," the officials said in the statement. "The decision to suspend the underwater search has not been taken lightly nor without sadness."

Reuters reports that the last search vessel departed the region of the Indian Ocean authorities say is the most likely place the airplane went down on Tuesday. Over the multi-year search, more than 46,000 square miles of ocean were searched to find the main wreckage of the aircraft.

Several pieces of wreckage considered to almost certainly be parts of the missing airliner have washed up on beaches over a wide area. But with no new clues uncovered since July of last year, the $145 million effort to find the plane has been ended.

A support group for the families of those lost with the aircraft said in a statement that the mystery should not be left unsolved. "In our view, extending the search to the new area defined by the experts is an inescapable duty owed to the flying public in the interest of aviation safety," Voice 370 said in a statement.

Malaysia Airlines says that it believes the search has been "thorough and comprehensive" and it "stands guided by the decision of the three governments to suspend the search."

(Images from file. Top image not accident airplane)

FMI: www.atsb.gov.au/mh370-pages/updates/operational-update