KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 31 — The inexperienced firm awarded the US$41 million (RM149 million) contract to find MH370 is struggling to overcome lack of equipment and bad weather in its search for the plane now missing for nearly a year, the Wall Street Journal reported.

According to the US daily, Dutch firm Fugro NV — an oil and gas company with little experience in deep-sea salvage— negotiated and won the deal to locate the plane in August, but did not acquire the necessary sonar fittings for its first search ship until October.

It has also struggled for months to similarly equip another vessel, delaying the search until the current monsoon season when it must battle rough storms and high seas.

These factors and other glitches have caused the search to fall behind schedule, covering barely a third of the 60,000-sq km zone where the plane is believed to be located instead of at least half the space that Australian authorities expected would have been checked by now.

“What was the point of selecting a company that is not equipped to do the search? Isn’t that a waste of time?” the WSJ quoted Sharil Shaari, who spoke for the next-of-kin of Malaysian couple Norli Akmar Hamid and Muhammad Razahan Zamani who were travelling on MH370 for a honeymoon in Beijing.

According to the deadline set by Australia, Fugro is supposed to complete the search by May, but industry experts believe that is now impossible or at least not with a properly conducted search given Fugro’s equipment.

The sonar scanners the company has are capable of seeing 1,200m at a time, much lower than the 3,000m to 6,000m widths that salvage experts commonly scan when looking for wreckage in deep waters, as such requiring more a time-consuming search.

“There are people who have better experience with their equipment,” Paul-Henry Nargeolet, the leader of the team that located Air France Flight AF447, told the WSJ.

“If Fugro is spending half their time fixing their problems — that’s not good,” Nargolet said, expressing surprise that Australia chose to go with Fugro.

Despite being late to start and expected to miss the scheduled finish, Fugro maintains that it is sufficiently equipped and experienced to conduct the search in the most mysterious disappearance in aviation history.

A Fugro manager also dismissed concerns by other firms as a case of “sour grapes”.

“We have carefully followed the tender procedures and have responded with what we believe is the best combination of capability and reliability,” Fugro representative Rob Luijnenburg told the WSJ.

Beijing-bound Flight MH370 disappeared on March 8 with 239 people on board and remains missing till today.

On Friday, the Malaysian government declared MH370 an “accident” according to guidelines set by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO).