MH370: New Deep-Sea Hunt Begins for the Jet That Vanished Nine Years Ago

Back to the Indian Ocean

It is 5:47 a.m. on the deck of the Seabed Constructor and the winches are already groaning. A yellow, torpedo-shaped autonomous submersible—painted, half-jokingly, with a Malaysian flag—slides into the grey swell. Somewhere 6,000 metres below, the shattered pieces of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 are believed to be waiting.

The Contract That Re-started the Clock

Ocean Infinity, the Texas-based seabed-data company, signed a “no-find, no-fee” deal with the Malaysian government late last month. If the wreck is not positively identified within ten weeks, Kuala Lumpur owes nothing. If the team delivers, the payday is reportedly north of $70 million—money insurers have already set aside but refused to release without hard evidence.

"We are not here for monuments or medals," chief executive Oliver Pluckett told reporters before departure. "We are here because sonar never forgets a shape it has once seen."

What Is Different This Time?

• Arctic-grade AUVs: Six revamped submersibles can map 1,200 sq km a day—triple the speed of the 2018 search.
• AI-driven analysis: On-board servers compare fresh sonar strips with a classified Royal Navy database of 300 intact and crashed aircraft signatures.
• Weather window: The austral winter calm historically peaks in February; crews have 72 days before cyclonic storms return.

The Families Watching From Shore

In Kuala Lumpur, Grace Nathan keeps her phone on speaker while packing lunchboxes for her two children. Her mother, Anne Daisy, was Flight 370’s lead stewardess. Nathan co-founded Voice370, a kinship alliance that lobbied for this renewed mission. "Every night I draw the curtains and imagine the Indian Ocean as a piece of black silk," she says. "Now someone is finally running a lit candle across it."

Political Headwinds

Malaysia’s unity government, fragile and cash-strapped, approved the search only after Australia quietly offered logistical support and China pledged satellite bandwidth. Critics call it election-year theatre; officials counter that 1,800 days of satellite handshake data still point to a 25,000-sq-km arc 1,200 km west of Perth.

The Countdown Begins

By sundown the first AUV had completed its initial 30-hour dive, resurfacing with 11 terabytes of side-scan imagery. On the bridge, analysts huddle over monitors hunting the tell-tale straight lines of aluminium fuselage. Somewhere amid the blur of silt and basalt could be the answer to modern aviation’s most stubborn riddle: how a Boeing 777 carrying 239 people simply disappeared—until now.