12 years on, renewed hunt for missing Flight MH370 comes up empty as families press for answers

A renewed search for missing Flight MH370 yields no results, as families demand continued efforts for answers after 12 years.

Twelve years after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 vanished with 239 people aboard, a renewed deep-sea search in the southern Indian Ocean has so far failed to locate the missing aircraft, Malaysian authorities said on Sunday (March 8, 2026), as families pressed for the effort to continue.

The Air Accident Investigation Bureau said in a statement that a seabed search conducted by marine robotics company Ocean Infinity between March 2025 and January 2026 surveyed thousands of square kilometres of ocean floor but has not produced any confirmed findings of the aircraft wreckage.

Malaysia gave the nod to the Texas-based company last year to renew the search for Flight 370 under a "no-find, no-fee” contract at a new 15,000-square-kilometre site in the southern Indian Ocean where it was believed to have crashed. Ocean Infinity will be paid USD 70 million only if wreckage is 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 kilometres (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.