KUALA LUMPUR, April 25 ― The search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has cost the US military US$11.4 million (RM37.26 million), US news website NBC News reported today.
Citing officials from US’s Pentagon, NBC News reported that the figure includes a US$3.6 million for the underwater search by a US Navy submarine.
The US also pays US$4,200 for each hour of flight that its P-8 Orion surveillance planes spend checking the southern Indian Ocean where MH370 is assumed to have ended.
The US is a key partner in the multinational search for the plane that went missing on March 8 with 239 people from 14 countries on board.
No concrete clue has been found on the Boeing 777-200 ER plane’s exact location 49 days later although the search area has been narrowed down over the weeks.
US president Barack Obama will visit Malaysia this weekend, the first US president to do so in 48 years.
On Wednesday, Australia ― which is the lead coordinator in the search and ― said that cost was not an issue now.
On April 21, Malaysia’s Deputy Transport Minister Datuk Ab Aziz Kaprawi said the Malaysian government has yet to determine the total cost of the MH370 search, saying that the cost would be split between all the countries conducting the search.
On April 18, Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific’s aviation expert Ravikumar Madavaram told news agency AFP that he estimated the total cost of the search at this point of time to be around US$100 million.
On March 30, The Malay Mail Online reported that experts have told various news agencies that the MH370 search could exceed the US$40 million spent to recover the remains of the Air France flight AF447 jet.
