LONDON: A new or fresh attempt to locate the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, almost 11 years after the plane disappeared, comes as a breath of fresh air to the victims’ families, even as underwater mapping and autonomous search technologies have further evolved and matured, permitting investigators to reassess the aircraft’s final trajectory with greater precision and detail.
Aviation experts said Ocean Infinity’s renewed seabed search reflects advances in deep sea exploration, including improved mapping and autonomous underwater vehicles.
Professor Mohd Harridon Mohamed Suffian said previous searches were constrained by technological limitations, particularly in accurately mapping the ocean floor across immensely vast and uneven terrain.
“While previous efforts managed to chart large areas of the seabed, the accuracy, resolution and consistency of the data were not always sufficient to confidently identify smaller or fragmented bits of wreckage,” he said.
MH370, which went missing with 239 people on board on March 8, 2014, has been searched for in multiple phases since then, including an extensive multinational underwater search that ended in 2017 and a private Ocean Infinity-led effort in 2018, before the latest search was announced in 2025.
Prof Harridon added that newer autonomous systems now allow for more detailed and systematic surveys, reducing the likelihood of missing debris in complex underwater environments.
The search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 will resume this month, the Malaysian transport ministry has said, more than a decade after the plane disappeared in one of aviation’s greatest mysteries.
In a statement on Wednesday, the transport ministry confirmed that the marine robotics company Ocean Infinity, based in the UK and US, would resume a search of the seabed from 30 December, over a period of 55 days, with operations conducted intermittently.
It said the new search would target areas where it is believed there is the highest likelihood of finding the missing aircraft, though details of the exact locations have not been given.
Flight MH370 veered off course and vanished from air traffic radar on 8 March 2014, during a routine flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. It was carrying 12 Malaysian crew and 227 passengers, most of whom were Chinese citizens. Thirty-eight Malaysian passengers were on board, along with seven Australian citizens and residents, plus citizens from Indonesia, India, France, the US, Iran, Ukraine, Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Russia and Taiwan.
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