Malaysia Airlines (MH) Flight MH370 has now been missing for twelve years, and the most recent deep-sea search to find it has ended without success. 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 Sunday. The search was conducted by Ocean Infinity, a marine robotics company, under a “no-find, no-fee” contract worth $70 million — payable only if the wreckage was found. It was not.
The 2025–2026 Ocean Infinity Search
On 25 February 2025, Malaysia announced the start of a new search for MH370, to be conducted by Ocean Infinity. The mission was planned to cover an area of 15,000 km² in the southern Indian Ocean, to be searched over 18 months. The search was conducted under a “no find, no fee” agreement with the Malaysian government, which pledged a $70 million reward for the discovery of the wreckage.
According to the AAIB official statement, the latest search was carried out for 28 days in two phases between 25–28 March 2025 and 31 December 2025 to 23 January 2026. The search area covered approximately 7,571 square kilometres of seabed. Poor weather had periodically hampered search operations.
On 23 January 2026, Ocean Infinity departed the search area in the Indian Ocean. Since first embarking on this mission in 2018, the company has spent 151 days at sea and mapped more than 140,000 square kilometres of seafloor.
Ocean Infinity CEO Oliver Plunkett addressed the outcome directly. As published on the company’s official website, he said the company had taken advantage of every available piece of information and data and revisited the search area, but despite its efforts, it had been unable to locate the aircraft. He described the geographical and technological scale of the challenge as almost impossible to comprehend, while expressing pride in the expertise and advanced technology deployed during the search.
Plunkett added that the company could say with confidence that the aircraft was not located in the areas it had searched. He said this finding brings greater clarity and could help researchers studying the evidence refine their theories and shape future search strategies.
Malaysia’s Air Accident Investigation Bureau Issues Formal Statement
Malaysia’s Air Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) said that the latest seabed search conducted by specialist marine robotics company Ocean Infinity between March 2025 and January 2026 had scanned thousands of square kilometres of the ocean floor but had failed to identify any signs of wreckage from the lost Boeing 777-200ER.
The AAIB statement read:
” The search activities undertaken have not yielded any findings that confirm the location of the aircraft wreckage. The government remains committed to keeping the families informed and will continue to provide updates as appropriate.”
No further details were provided by the AAIB as to when the search might resume, or indeed, any confirmation that it would. Although Ocean Infinity’s contract runs until June 2026, the company has since said that its dedicated search vessel has now been deployed on other seaborne missions. It is not currently scheduled to return to the Indian Ocean.
Families Of Victims: Voice370 Urges Contract Extension
The announcement fell on the 12th anniversary of the disappearance, and the grief of families remains unresolved. Voice370, a campaign group representing families of passengers and crew onboard MH370, acknowledged that it was unlikely that any new search would resume before the contract ends due to sea conditions in the search area. However, it urged the Malaysian government to grant any request for Ocean Infinity to extend its agreement, as well as expand the same terms to other interested deep-sea exploration firms.
In an emotional statement, Voice370 insisted they would “never give up” on finding their loved ones: “We will continue the search for MH370, and we will continue the fight for answers.” Relatives also paid tribute to the 239 passengers and crew, whose “absence continues to be felt every single day.”
The Barnacle Evidence and New Theories Behind MH370
While robot submarines have failed to find the wreck, science is quietly approaching the mystery from a different direction — through barnacles. In July 2015, a flaperon from MH370’s right wing washed ashore on Réunion Island in the western Indian Ocean. Attached to it were small crustaceans called Lepas anatifera — gooseneck barnacles.
According to a 2023 paper published in AGU Advances, researchers demonstrated that barnacle shells function as chemical archives of the water they grow in. As each shell layer forms, its chemistry shifts according to the surrounding ocean temperature, which in the Indian Ocean fluctuates with location and season. Scientists believe that larger, older barnacles found on additional MH370 debris could extend this chemical drift record further back in time — potentially pointing toward where the aircraft first entered the water.
A separate scientific challenge came in December 2024. Retired University of Tasmania scientist Vincent Lyne published a paper in The Journal of Navigation challenging one of the investigation’s foundational assumptions. Lyne argued that MH370’s final two satellite signals are more consistent with a controlled, eastward descent than with the widely accepted theory that the aircraft ran out of fuel and entered a rapid, uncontrolled dive into the southern Indian Ocean. He described that prevailing interpretation as “fundamentally flawed.” That hypothesis, if validated, would mean the aircraft may not even lie where search teams have been looking.
How This Search Compares with the Broader MH370 Search History
The 2025–2026 Ocean Infinity mission is the fourth major search phase since 2014. Across all phases, the total scale of the effort is staggering:
- 2014: Multinational initial search across the Gulf of Thailand, South China Sea, Strait of Malacca, and Andaman Sea — 50 aircraft, nearly 60 ships from 26 nations
- 2014–2017: Seabed survey of 120,000 km² led by Australia, involving China and Malaysia — found nothing
- 2018: First Ocean Infinity mission — covered a high-probability area with autonomous underwater drones, ended June 2018 without success
- 2025–2026: Second Ocean Infinity mission — surveyed 7,571 km² in two phases, ended January 2026 without success
The southern Indian Ocean features some of the world’s most hostile deep-sea environments. Decades of seabed shifting, underwater currents, and the sheer vastness of the zone complicate wreckage detection. Previous broad searches covering over 120,000 km² yielded only debris washed ashore — not the main fuselage or aircraft recorders.
All in All
Ocean Infinity’s contract with the Malaysian government runs until June 2026. Voice370 urged the Malaysian government to extend the contract period, which ends in June 2026, to allow a continued search after the winter months in the southern hemisphere and deteriorating sea conditions.
