Malaysia will share the cost of the latest effort to uncover signs of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 with Australia, the beleaguered airline said on Thursday. Months of searches have failed to turn up any trace of the missing Boeing 777 aircraft, which disappeared on March 8, carrying 239 passengers and crew after taking off from the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, bound for Beijing. The two countries would evenly split the costs of the new search phase, estimated at up to A$52 million ($48.65 million).
The latest phase of the search is expected to start within a month and take up to a year, focusing on a 23,000- sq-mile patch of sea floor some 1,000 miles west of Perth. New information suggested that the jetliner may have turned south earlier than previously believed, according to Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss. That information was based in part on an attempt to map the position of the plane at the time of a failed satellite telephone call by Malaysia Airlines on the ground to the jetliner.
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