New search for missing flight MH370 comes to naught as families press for answers

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia — Twelve years after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared with 239 people on board, a renewed deep-sea search in the southern Indian Ocean has so far failed to locate the missing plane, Malaysian officials said Sunday, urging families to continue trying.

A seabed search by ocean robotics company Ocean Infinity between March 2025 and January 2026 surveyed thousands of square kilometers of ocean floor but yielded no confirmed findings of plane debris, the Air Accidents Investigation Bureau said in a statement.

Last year, Malaysia agreed to a Texas-based company to renew the search for Flight 370 under a “no-find, no-fee” agreement at a new 15,000-square-kilometer (5,800-square-mile) site in the southern Indian Ocean. Ocean Infinity will be paid $70 million only if the wreckage is found.

The search, which was conducted over 28 days in two phases from March 25-28 last year and December 31, 2025 to January 23 this year, covered about 7,571 square kilometers (2,923 square miles) of seabed, the bureau said. It said weather periodically disrupts operations.

“The search activities conducted have not yielded any findings confirming the location of the wreckage,” it said in a statement. It did not give details on when the search would resume.

The Boeing 777 disappeared from radar on March 8, 2014 shortly after taking off from the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur to Beijing carrying 239 people, mostly Chinese nationals. Satellite data indicated the plane veered off its flight path and headed south into the far-south Indian Ocean, where it is believed to have crashed.

Although debris washed ashore on East African coasts and islands in the Indian Ocean, an expensive multinational search failed to turn up any clues to its location. A private search of Ocean Infinity in 2018 found nothing.

Voice 370, representing the families of some of those on the missing plane, urged the government to extend Ocean Infinity’s contract and consider similar arrangements with other deep-sea exploration companies.

Although Ocean Infinity’s contract runs through June, the company’s vessel has been reassigned for other work and is unlikely to return soon to complete the remaining search areas due to the winter months and deteriorating sea conditions, the group said.

“The government will pay nothing unless the aircraft is found. Any request by Ocean Infinity to extend the search contract should be granted without hesitation,” it said in a statement. “If the current search is unsuccessful, we urge Malaysia to kindly consider extending any similar search, fee opportunities to other competent deep-sea exploration companies.”

The group vows to “continue to fight for answers. We will never give up!”