The recent search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has been put on hold, 11 years after the Boeing 777 disappeared without a trace.
Malaysia’s Transport Minister Anthony Loke has announced that the search is to be paused due to unfavorable weather conditions.
“I think right now it’s not the season,” Malaysia’s Transport Minister Anthony Loke said during a press conference seen by state news agency Bernama on April 3, 2025. “I think they [Ocean Infinity] have stopped the operation for the time being and will resume the search at the end of this year.”
The announcement follows the Cabinet of Malaysia’s recent decision to restart the search for the wreckage of flight MH370. In March 2025, the Malaysian government reached an agreement with Ocean Infinity, a private marine robotics company, to continue the search efforts.
Ocean Infinity previously conducted an unsuccessful search in 2018 before agreeing to initiate the new search in 2025. The earlier search covered 112,000 square kilometers of the southern Indian Ocean seabed, but only a few pieces of debris were found.
In 2025, the new search was set to focus on an unexamined area of about 15,000 square kilometers in the southern Indian Ocean under a ‘no find, no fee’ arrangement.
On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight carrying 239 people vanished from air traffic control radars less than an hour into its six-hour flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. It is believed that all passengers and crew members lost their lives.
The exact cause of the disappearance has never been established, with theories ranging from mechanical failure to a hijacking attempt, or a deliberate intervention by those in the cockpit.
