Twelve years after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared with 239 people on board, a renewed deep-sea search in the southern Indian Ocean has yet to locate the missing aircraft, Malaysian authorities confirmed on Sunday.

This news comes as families of those lost continue to press for the search efforts to persist.

The Air Accident Investigation Bureau stated that a seabed search, undertaken by marine robotics firm Ocean Infinity between March 2025 and January 2026, covered thousands of square kilometres of the ocean floor.

However, this extensive operation has not yielded any confirmed findings of the aircraft’s wreckage.

Malaysia had previously given approval to the Texas-based company last year to restart the search for Flight 370.

A member of Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue scans the horizon during a search in the Andaman sea area around the northern tip of Indonesia’s Sumatra island for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in 2014 (AFP/Getty)

This was under a “no-find, no-fee” agreement, focusing on a new 15,000-square-kilometre (5,800-square-mile) site in the southern Indian Ocean, where the plane is widely believed to have crashed. Ocean Infinity is only due to receive $70 million if the wreckage is successfully discovered.

The search was carried out for 28 days in two phases — March 25–28 last year and Dec 31, 2025, to Jan 23 this year, covering about 7,571 square kilometers (2,923 square miles) of seabed, the bureau said. Weather periodically disrupted operations, it said.

“The search activities undertaken have not yielded any findings that confirm the location of the aircraft wreckage,” it said in a statement. It didn’t give details on when the search will resume.

The Boeing 777 plane vanished from radar shortly after taking off on March 8, 2014, carrying 239 people, mostly Chinese nationals, on a flight from Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur, to Beijing. Satellite data showed the plane turned from its flight path and headed south to the far-southern Indian Ocean, where it is believed to have crashed.

An expensive multinational search failed to turn up any clues to its location, although debris washed ashore on the east African coast and Indian Ocean islands. A private search in 2018 by Ocean Infinity also found nothing.

Voice 370, представляющая семьи некоторых из тех, кто находился на пропавшей самолёте, призвала правительство продлить контракт с Ocean Infinity и рассмотреть аналогичные соглашения с другими компаниями, занимающимися глубоководными исследованиями.

Хотя контракт с Ocean Infinity истекает в июне, группа заявила, что судно компании было передислоцировано для выполнения других работ и, вероятно, не вернется вскоре, чтобы завершить оставшиеся поисковые зоны из-за приближающихся зимних месяцев и ухудшающихся морских условий.

“Правительство ничего не платит, если самолет не будет найден. Поэтому любой запрос от Ocean Infinity о продлении контракта на поиски следует удовлетворять без колебаний”, – говорится в заявлении. “Если текущие поиски окажутся неудачными, мы также призываем Малайзию рассмотреть возможность предоставления аналогичных условий “без нахождения – без оплаты” другим компетентным компаниям, занимающимся глубоководными исследованиями”.

Группа пообещала “продолжать борьбу за ответы. Мы никогда не сдадимся!”