Authorities have announced that the exhaustive search for infamous missing Malaysian airliner MH370 will be suspended by the end of the year if the downed plane is not found.
A coalition of Malaysian, Japanese, and Australian forces have spent the last two years scouring a massive patch of the Indian Ocean in the hopes of locating the lost airliner.
And, with only 3,861 square miles left of the enormous 46,332 search area, the odds of finding MH370 in the region are decreasing rapidly.
As such, the team of nations have decided that they will stop looking for the plane once the Indian Ocean search is completed.
The $135 million dollar search, expected to finish in December, is the most expensive in aviation history.
The decision raised concerns among family members of the MH370 passengers, since the coalition did not indicate any plans to search anywhere else for the plane.
They did, however, stress that the search will only be suspended rather that stopped altogether and may resume if new evidence on the airliner's location emerges.
The inability to find the plane in the Indian Ocean and subsequent plans to stop searching will no strengthen conspiracy theories that the fate of MH370 was not what the mainstream media and Malaysian government have told us.
Should the search be suspended in December, the group plans to release all of their data to the public, allowing private researchers to pursue finding the notorious lost airliner.
If history is any indication, the future of the MH370 mystery will likely feature countless theories on what happened to the plane and, every so often, a tantalizing clue that will be trumpeted as a breakthrough only to be forgotten when that turns out not to be the case.
One only has to look at the mystifying Amelia Earhart disappearance to see how the months, years, and probably decades will unfold.
Coast Insiders looking to learn more about the MH370 mystery should check out Richard Belzer's 3/10/2015 appearance on the program to discuss Someone is Hiding Something, the book he co-authored with George Noory about the case.
Not a Coast Insider yet? Sign up today.
Source: Daily Mail