New MH370 Search Launched: Map Shows Where They're Looking

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Another search has been launched to scour the ocean floor 1,200 miles off the coast of Perth, Australia, in an attempt to locate the remains of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

Newsweek has reached out to Ocean Infinity, the company conducting the search, by email for comment.

Why It Matters

The final location of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 remains one of the biggest unanswered questions in aviation.

MH370 left Kuala Lumpur on its way to Beijing on March 8, 2014. However, the plane vanished from radar, prompting a multinational search. There were 239 people on board the Boeing 777.

What to Know

Although there were extensive efforts, including underwater searches along the "seventh arc"—an area determined by the aircraft's last satellite communication—the primary wreckage has never been found. More than 10 years later, only a few pieces of debris confirmed to belong to MH370 have been found when they washed ashore on islands in the western Indian Ocean.

Despite prior searches being unsuccessful in locating the flight's remains, Ocean Infinity has launched a new search to scour the ocean floor off the western coast of Perth, Australia.

The location was not in the plane's intended flight path, but it is along the seventh arc. Reports show the plane doubling back before it reached Vietnam. Last images show it heading southwest toward the Indian Ocean before it left radar range.

Newsweek previously reported that officials believe the plane deviated from its planned route and then flew southwest before crashing in the Indian Ocean. However, specifics behind why the plane crashed are unclear, sparking numerous theories on what might have caused the plane to go off course.

Some suggest that the plane suffered a mechanical failure of some kind, while other, more conspiratorial, theories claim that staff aboard the flight planned to hijack the plane for other purposes.

Ocean Infinity, a marine robotics company based in Austin, Texas, and Southampton, England, is hoping to solve some aspects of the mystery by locating the downed aircraft on the ocean floor, an effort that has so far proved unsuccessful despite various searches launched over the past decade.

Armada 7806, the deep-water support vessel being used for the search, arrived at the search site in the Indian Ocean last weekend, The Telegraph reported, and has since deployed autonomous underwater vehicles to begin searching the ocean floor where parts of the plane's fuselage could be.

Late last year, Kuala Lumpur announced a tentative plan in which it would pay Ocean Infinity $70 million if it found the aircraft, but The Telegraph reported the deal was never finalized.

What People Are Saying

Ocean Infinity's CEO, Oliver Plunkett said in a press release during a previous search in 2018: "We are pleased that our offer to continue the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has been accepted by the government of Malaysia, who I would like to thank for giving us the opportunity.

"Whilst there can be no guarantees of locating the aircraft, we believe our system of multiple autonomous vehicles working simultaneously is well suited to the task at hand. I wish our team the best of luck in their endeavors and sincerely hope that we will be able to play a part in providing some answers to the many people affected by this tragedy."

Dr. Usama Kadri, a researcher at Cardiff University previously told Newsweek: "Airplane crashes in the sea are rare and mostly found within a short time. Crashes involve many variables, from size, speed, to mode of impact which can result in different signals, to no signals at all."