Flight MH370 Investigation Not Over: New Malaysian Team To Analyze Debris Amid Calls For Extended Search

The search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 may have ended last week in the Indian Ocean, but the investigation was not over.

Malaysia Transport Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai told reporters this week he planned to set up a response team to continue studying the case of MH370, which vanished in March 2014 with 239 people on board. The group, led by the department of civil aviation, Australian Transport Safety Bureau and Malaysia Airlines, will sort through debris turned in by amateur searchers over the past three years, according to the New Straits Times.

"The response team will have to analyze data by the ATSB expert team, as well identify the recovered debris," Liow said. "If the debris is similar to material from the missing aircraft, we will send it to Australia for further analysis. The team will be responsible for finding more details of the search for MH370."

When MH370, a Boeing 777 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, disappeared, authorities in China, Australia and Malaysia launched an international search of the Indian Ocean in hopes of discovering the aircraft. But after sweeping about 120,000 square miles of the seafloor without results, the search was suspended last week — just after investigators came out to suggest they'd been searching in the wrong area.

The trio of ministers had long said that, without new evidence, they were suspending the hunt when it covered the predetermined zone. Authorities' theories about an adjusted area where MH370 might be weren't detailed enough to extend the search, the Associated Press reported.

"It's highly likely that the area now defined by the experts contains the aircraft, but that's not absolutely for certain," bureau chief Greg Hood told media Monday.

Despite this, families of the victims on board the plane have continued to lobby for a longer search. Voice370, an organization of MH370 relatives, delivered more than 100 letters to Liow Monday urging him to restart the hunt.

They've also begun circulating a Change.org petition asking for authorities "to not only continue the search until it provides the answers the world and the families' demand but to diversify the search and re-investigate, re-evaluate and re-start, if necessary, in order to leave no stone unturned in the aftermath of this unprecedented disaster."