Malaysia extends MH370 search contract with Ocean Infinity for one year

Malaysia has given Ocean Infinity another year to search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, renewing a no-find-no-fee contract that keeps the hunt alive more than 12 years after the Boeing 777 vanished. The extension runs from July 1, 2026, to June 30, 2027, and covers the remaining search area of about 7,428.54 square kilometres in the southern Indian Ocean.

The decision extends a search that has outlasted every earlier effort to locate the main wreckage. Flight MH370 disappeared in 2014 while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 227 passengers and 12 crew members aboard, triggering an international operation that has already consumed years of coordinated work across multiple governments. Malaysia’s Ministry of Transport formed an independent safety investigation team on April 25, 2014 under International Civil Aviation Organization Annex 13, with accredited representatives from Australia, China, France, Singapore, the United States, Indonesia and the United Kingdom.

Australia accepted responsibility for the initial search and recovery effort in the southern Indian Ocean on March 17, 2014. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority ended the surface search on April 28, 2014, and the Australian Transport Safety Bureau then assumed underwater search responsibility. That multinational effort lasted 1,046 days before being suspended on January 17, 2017. Malaysia’s official safety investigation report was issued on July 2, 2018 and released on July 30, 2018.

The renewed contract points to the narrow set of circumstances under which governments are still willing to finance this case. Ocean Infinity is paid only if wreckage is found, a structure that shifts financial risk onto the company while preserving the possibility of a breakthrough. Transport Minister Anthony Loke said the extension also takes into account Ocean Infinity’s commercial commitments, which will move its main assets to another location between November 2026 and April 2027.

For families of those on board, the deal is more than symbolic. Relatives urged Malaysia on March 8, 2026, the 12th anniversary of the disappearance, to keep the search going. Ocean Infinity said its latest search effort ended on January 23, 2026, and that since first embarking on the mission in 2018 it has spent 151 days at sea and mapped more than 140,000 square kilometres of seafloor. That record is now central to Malaysia’s bet that modern survey tools can still do what earlier multinational searches could not: find MH370 and finally fix the aircraft’s last known resting place.