Dec. 31, 2025, update:
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — A deep-sea search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 began in the Indian Ocean on Wednesday (Dec. 31, 2025), reviving efforts to solve one of aviation’s greatest mysteries more than a decade after the jet vanished with 239 people on board.
Malaysia’s Transport Ministry said Wednesday that a search vessel, the Armada 86 05, arrived at a designated search area with two autonomous underwater vehicles.
The location of the search area was not disclosed in the statement. It said the vessel had prepared for the search in Fremantle Port in Western Australia.
The government did not specifically mention Ocean Infinity, the company that helmed a previous search and had long been slated to lead the new one. But the craft that the government specified by number has been widely identified by maritime and aviation websites as belonging to Ocean Infinity.
Earlier in December, the Malaysian government said that the Texas-based marine robotics firm would begin searching targeted areas of the seabed under a renewed “no-find, no-fee” agreement.
Ocean Infinity has confirmed it was resuming the search for MH370 but refused to comment further, citing the “important and sensitive nature” of the operation.
Ocean Infinity previously searched the seabed in 2018, under a similar contract but found no trace of the plane. The company has said it has since upgraded its technology and refined its analysis. Its CEO Oliver Plunkett said last year the firm was working with multiple experts and had narrowed the search zone to what it believes is the most probable crash site.
Earlier this year, Ocean Infinity briefly restarted seabed search operations in a new 15,000-square-kilometer (5,800-square-mile) area of the southern Indian Ocean after receiving approval from Malaysia, but the effort was suspended in April because of poor weather.
The Malaysia Airlines plane disappeared from radar shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing on March 8, 2014. Satellite data later showed the aircraft veered from its planned route and flew south toward the remote southern Indian Ocean, where investigators believe it crashed. There has never been an explanation for the course change.
A costly and protracted multinational search effort failed to locate the aircraft, though pieces of debris believed to be from the plane later washed up along the East Africa coast and on Indian Ocean islands. No main wreckage or bodies have ever been recovered.
Dec. 31, 2025:
UNDATED-AP- More than a decade ago, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished without a trace, sparking one of aviation’s most baffling mysteries.
Despite years of multinational searches, investigators still do not know exactly what happened to the plane or its 239 passengers and crew.
On Wednesday , the Malaysian government said a vessel began a new search operation for the missing plane, reigniting hopes the aircraft might finally be found.
A previous, massive search in the southern Indian Ocean, where the jet is believed to have gone down, turned up almost nothing. Apart from a few small fragments that washed ashore, no bodies or large wreckage have ever been recovered.
Here is what to know about the deadly aviation tragedy.
Flight goes missing
The Boeing 777 disappeared from air-traffic radar 39 minutes after departing Kuala Lumpur for Beijing on March 8, 2014.
“Good night, Malaysian Three Seven Zero,” the pilot said in the last radio call to Kuala Lumpur and the final communication before the plane crossed into Vietnamese airspace and failed to check in with controllers there.
Minutes later, the aircraft’s transponder stopped broadcasting its location. Military radar showed the jet turn back over the Andaman Sea. Satellite data suggested it continued flying for hours, possibly until fuel exhaustion, before crashing into a remote section of the southern Indian Ocean.
Theories about what happened range from hijacking to cabin depressurization or power failure. There was no distress call, ransom demand, evidence of technical failure or severe weather.
Malaysian investigators in 2018 cleared the passengers and crew but did not rule out “unlawful interference.” Authorities have said someone deliberately severed communications and diverted the plane.
The passengers came from around the world
MH370 carried 12 crew members and 227 passengers, including five young children. Most passengers were Chinese, but there also were citizens of the United States, Indonesia, France, Russia and elsewhere.
Among those aboard were two young Iranians traveling on stolen passports, a group of Chinese calligraphy artists, 20 employees of U.S. tech firm Freescale Semiconductor, a stunt double for actor Jet Li and several families with young children.
Many families lost multiple members.
The search covered a vast area
Search operations began in the South China Sea between Malaysia and Vietnam before expanding to the Andaman Sea and the southern Indian Ocean.
Australia, Malaysia and China coordinated the largest underwater search in history, covering roughly 120,000 square kilometers (46,000 square miles) of seabed off western Australia. Aircraft, vessels equipped with sonar and robotic submarines scoured the ocean for signs of the plane.
Signals thought to be from the plane’s black box turned out to be from other sources and no wreckage was found. The first confirmed debris was a wing fragment, known as a flaperon, discovered on remote Réunion Island in July 2015, with additional fragments later found along the east coast of Africa.
The search was suspended in January 2017.
In 2018, U.S. marine robotics company Ocean Infinity resumed the hunt, under a “no-find, no-fee” agreement, focusing on areas identified through debris drift studies. The effort ended without success.
The search faced enormous challenges
One reason why such an extensive search failed to turn up clues is that no one knows exactly where to look.
The Indian Ocean is the world’s third largest and the search was conducted in a difficult area where searchers encountered bad weather and average depths of around 4 kilometers (2.5 miles).
It’s not common for planes to disappear in the deep sea, but when they do remains can be very hard to locate. Over the past 50 years, dozens of planes have vanished, according to the Aviation Safety Network.
The hunt is renewed
Malaysia’s government gave the green light in March for another “no-find, no-fee” contract with Ocean Infinity to resume the seabed search operation at a new site stretching over 15,000 square kilometers (5,800 square miles) of water. Ocean Infinity will be paid $70 million only if wreckage is discovered.
However, the search was suspended in April due to bad weather. The government said Wednesday that Ocean Infinity will resume the search intermittently from Dec. 30 for 55 days in targeted areas believed to have the highest likelihood of finding the missing aircraft.
It is unclear if Ocean Infinity has new evidence of the plane’s location. The company has said it would utilize new technology and has worked with many experts to analyze data and narrow the search area to the most likely site.
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