What Really Happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: Latest Facts on the Ongoing Mystery as Search Resumes This December

The mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 is entering a new phase. Malaysia's Ministry of Transport has confirmed that seabed operations will restart in the southern Indian Ocean on 30 December 2025, led by marine robotics firm Ocean Infinity. The new mission will run intermittently for a total of 55 days in areas judged to have the highest probability of finding the aircraft.

The operation forms part of a service agreement signed between Malaysia and Ocean Infinity in March 2025, reviving a partnership first formed during a privately funded search in 2018. Under that earlier 'no find, no fee' model, the company used autonomous underwater vehicles to comb remote stretches of seafloor but found no wreckage, forcing the search to be suspended.

The renewed effort underscores Malaysia's stated commitment to giving answers – and, where possible, closure – to the families of the 239 people who were on board the Boeing 777 when it vanished on 8 March 2014.

What We Know About MH370's Final Flight

MH370 departed Kuala Lumpur for Beijing just after midnight on 8 March 2014 with 227 passengers and 12 crew members. It reached cruising altitude at 35,000 feet within about 20 minutes. Around 1:07am local time, the aircraft's ACARS data-link system sent its final transmission before being manually switched off. At 1:19am, air-traffic control received the last known words from the cockpit: a routine sign-off as the jet neared Vietnamese airspace. Shortly afterwards, the transponder signal also disappeared.

Military radar later showed the aircraft turning sharply back across the Malay Peninsula, flying southwest over the Strait of Malacca and then northwest towards the Andaman Sea. Contact was lost from Malaysian radar at about 2:22am. After that, the only trace was a series of automated 'handshakes' between the aircraft and an Inmarsat satellite over the Indian Ocean, with the final signal received at 8:11am. Analysis of those pings led investigators to conclude that the jet likely flew south into a remote swathe of the southern Indian Ocean until its fuel was exhausted.

Despite what became the most expensive search in aviation history, covering tens of thousands of square miles of seafloor west of Australia, no main wreckage or flight recorders have been found.

Debris Finds: What Has Actually Been Recovered

For more than a year after the disappearance, no confirmed debris surfaced. That changed on 29 July 2015, when a flaperon from the right wing was discovered on a beach on Réunion Island in the western Indian Ocean. Over the next 18 months, more than two dozen pieces of possible debris washed up on coastlines in Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa, Madagascar and Mauritius. Investigators formally confirmed three of those pieces as belonging to MH370, with many others considered highly likely matches.

Some fragments came from the cabin interior, indicating the aircraft broke apart, but available evidence could not show whether the breakup occurred in the air or on impact with the ocean. The distribution of debris helped narrow candidate crash zones but still left a large search area in deep, rugged waters.

Earlier Searches and Why They Stopped

From 2014 to early 2017, a multinational search involving Australia, Malaysia and China used ships, aircraft and deep-tow sonar to scan the southern Indian Ocean along what became known as the seventh arc – a curve derived from the satellite handshake analysis. When that official search ended without success, Australia's transport safety bureau acknowledged the aircraft was 'very likely' in the wider region but said the specific area surveyed had been exhausted with the tools then available.

In 2018, Ocean Infinity mounted a privately funded mission under a 'no find, no fee' agreement with Malaysia, deploying fleets of autonomous underwater vehicles to search new high-probability zones. That effort also ended without locating the wreckage, though it produced detailed sea-floor maps that will inform the new 2025-26 campaign.

Theories and What Investigators Actually Say

Over the past decade, MH370 has generated a wave of theories – ranging from catastrophic mechanical failure to hijacking, pilot suicide or even a shoot-down. Some books and independent studies have argued that the captain may have deliberately depressurised the cabin, causing passengers to lose consciousness early in the flight, before directing the aircraft into the southern Indian Ocean.

However, Malaysia's official safety investigation report in 2018 stopped short of naming a cause. It found mechanical malfunction 'extremely unlikely,' noted that changes in flight path were likely the result of manual inputs, but concluded there was insufficient evidence to determine why the aircraft disappeared.

For many families, the lack of physical wreckage and flight recorders has made it impossible to fully accept or reject any scenario. The renewed search is therefore seen not just as a technical mission, but as a moral obligation.

Why This December's Search Matters

The new Ocean Infinity mission will again target the deepest, most remote corners of the southern Indian Ocean – areas where rough undersea terrain, strong currents and extreme depth have challenged past searches. Equipped with updated autonomous underwater vehicles and refined drift and satellite models, the company hopes to narrow in on previously unsearched corridors that align with debris patterns and fuel-range calculations.

If successful, the mission could finally locate the main wreckage, allowing recovery of the flight data and cockpit voice recorders and providing the clearest evidence yet of what really happened on MH370's final hours, giving at least an explanation and closure to the victims' bereaved families.

If not, the flight may remain one of history's most enduring aviation mysteries – even as technology keeps pushing the boundaries of how far into the deep ocean humanity can search.