Australia has been spearheading the hunt for the missing aircraft
Oil and gas subsea specialists are bidding for a major contract to help find missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.
Oceaneering and Fugro are two of the four firms looking to win an Australian Government deal to find the wreckage fo the flight, which vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8.
The Australians have set a 300 day target for contractors to find the plane, which was carrying 239 people.
The case of MH370 is difficult because of the lack of physical evidence.
The searchers for MH370 will be working at depths of more than 3 miles in waters and biologists say that human remains and non-metallic materials will be well-preserved by the cold and the absence of life.
Aviation crash investigators predict that the plane’s two Rolls-Royce engines will be the easiest parts to find.
Typically, the engines break off on impact with the ocean and sink rapidly.
The fuselage and wing frameworks, by contrast, often smash into fragments that disperse over a wide area.
Oceaneering has previously helped find the Titanic and Odyssey Marine Exploration, which found £300million of treasure in a Spanish wreck.
Oil firms bid to find missing Malaysian Airlines plane
