A Year In, Search Officials Confident That Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 Will Be Found

One year after the mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 over the South China Sea, officials overseeing the search and recovery operations are still optimistic about the possibility of finding the missing aircraft.

According to a report by The Guardian, Angus Houston, the chief of the joint agency coordination center overseeing the search said that he is still optimistic about finding what happened to flight MH370 and eventually recover the aircraft. In another interview to the BBC, a senior Malaysian official has said he is confident that the remains of Flight MH370 will be found. The Malaysian official, the country’s Transport Minister, Liow Tiong Lai, added that they are not concealing any information from the media or the family members of the victims.

Angus Houston who recently met several family members of the victims told ABC News that they were anxious to get an answer from the investigating team.

“It’s very important that we continue the search to try and find the aircraft, and hopefully find the aircraft, so that they can reach that closure that they so much desire,” Angus told reporters on Friday.

Angus also shared information on the efforts that are being taken to find the lost aircraft — now missing for a year. He said that the search team have scoured 43 percent of what he calls a “high priority area” where officials suspect the aircraft crashed.

“I think on the balance of probabilities at the moment, the chances of finding it are still good, and we should be patient and persist with the search. I’m still quietly optimistic that… one day, hopefully very soon, we might wake up and hear that it’s been found,” Houston said.

It was on March 8, 2014, that the doomed flight took off from Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur on a routine trip to Beijing, China. Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 had 239 passengers and crew on-board. The Aircraft was a Boeing 777 – until then known to be among the most advanced and safest aircraft currently in service.

A few hours after the flight took off, it mysteriously disappeared from the radar while flying over the South China Sea. A year in, officials have no clue as to what happened to the aircraft and to the people on board. Several theories have been propagated online as to what could have happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, with some saying that the plane landed safely somewhere and others saying that it was a case of hijacking.

Nevertheless, a year after the tragedy, family members have still not found a sense of closure owing to the circumstances in which Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared.

[Photo by How Foo Yeen/Getty Images]