The cost to the U.S. military in the hunt for missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 has risen to $11.4 million and is now mostly driven by the operations of search planes, Pentagon officials said Thursday.
The cost to the U.S. military in the hunt for missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 has risen to $11.4 million and is now mostly driven by the operations of search planes, Pentagon officials said Thursday.
The costs included $3.6 million for the operation of the Bluefin-21 underwater search drone, $4.6 million for operations and maintenance of the ships and planes involved, and $3.2 million for personnel and humanitarian assistance, said Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman.
The Bluefin-21 was completing its 12th mission in the Indian Ocean about 1,000 miles northwest of Perth, Australia, and had covered about 90 percent of its assigned search area without finding a trace of the plane, Australian officials said.
There were no immediate plans to replace the Bluefin-21 with the Navy's Orion towed side scan sonar system if the Bluefin's mission was unsuccessful, Warren said.
A major cost for the U.S. now was in the operations of the two P-8 Poseidon surveillance plans that are still searching for a debris field off Australia at $4,200 per flight hour, Warren said.
Flight 370 went missing on March 8 while on a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing with 227 passengers and 12 Malaysian crew members aboard. At the peak of the search for Boeing 777-200ER, at least 26 countries were involved in the hunt.
-- Richard Sisk can be reached at richard.sisk@monster.com