Search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 search may be used for oil, gas, and mineral exploration. Two features within the search area—Broken Ridge and the Kerguelen Plateau—potentially contain oil and gas deposits, while a field of manganese nodules—which also contain iron ore, nickel, copper, and cobalt—on the seafloor could also be exploited. Geoscience Australia published some of the underwater survey data in March 2017. Search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The disappearance on 8 March 2014 of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a scheduled international passenger flight from Kuala Lumpur International Airport to Beijing Capital International Airport, prompted a large, multinational search in Asia and the southern
Timeline of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 soon discounted and a search of a remote region of the southern Indian Ocean, led by Australia, began on 18 March. On 24 March, Malaysia Airlines and Najib announced that the flight had ended in the Southern Indian Ocean without survivors. In early April, an intense effort—the "acoustic search"— was made to detect the acoustic signals generated by underwater locator beacons (ULBs, also known as "pingers") attached to the flight recorders on Flight 370. After immersion in water, the ULBs emit an acoustic signal (also called a "ping") at a specific frequency once per second and have a battery life