Update on search for MH370 as government resumes investigation 11 years after plane’s disappearance
William Morgan
Featured Image Credit: Sanjit Das/Bloomberg via Getty Images
2026 could be the year that one of the greatest mysteries in modern aviation is finally solved, with a fresh search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 now underway in the Indian Ocean.
This new search, which began on December 31, is taking place 11 years after the Beijing-bound Boeing 777 took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport carrying 239 people who would never be seen again.
Around an hour after takeoff, flight MH370 took a sharp westward deviation from its course and headed out over the Andaman Sea, eventually vanishing from all radars and leaving dozens of families with questions that have gone unanswered for over a decade.
Authorities in Malaysia have approved an intermittent 55-day search for the presumably wrecked vessel, with Texas-based robotics firm Ocean Infinity deploying a search vessel and two underwater drones to help them track down some trace of the plane, along with its 227 passengers and 12 crew.
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The firm, which has engaged in previous high-tech attempts to locate the MH370 somewhere on the seabed of the Indian Ocean, was given the official government green light for the project on December 3.
A previous effort in March had to be called off due to poor conditions for the search team in the vast stretch of water, and with no major wreckage or bodies recovered in over a decade, officials have agreed to a 'no find, no fee' contract with the firm.
If they do manage to locate substantial wreckage of MH370, they will be paid $70 million. Otherwise, they get nothing despite the considerable costs involved in their high-tech search.
In the meantime, Ocean Infinity has kept quiet about the location and parameters of their search due to the 'important and sensitive nature' of their operation, which will attempt to do what an international coalition could not in the wake of the plane's disappearance in 2014.
What we do know is the firm will be targeting a much smaller area than any of the previous attempts to locate the plane, having worked with multiple MH370 experts to reduce the size of the search area to the most probable location.
But what we still do not know, and might never know, is what caused the MH370 to deviate from its flight path on that fateful day in 2014.
Multiple theories have gained popularity in the years since, ranging from a deliberate act of pilot sabotage to the belief that a sudden technical fault took out the crew and passengers.
Without any information about where the plane ended up after flying for several hours in an unnatural straight line, or any evidence from the wreckage, the aviation tragedy will remain a mystery.
But victims' families began hoping against hope for some answers once more on Wednesday, December 31, as Ocean Infinity's Armada 86 05 vessel announced it had reached its designated search area and was beginning its work to solve the 11-year mystery of the missing plane.