The Search for MH370 Has Officially Been Called Off (Again)

More than four years after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 went missing, the second official search for the aircraft has ended. On Tuesday, Ocean Infinity, the private company that led the most recent search efforts called off the hunt for MH370.

For the past 90 days, Ocean Infinity had used a deep-sea vessel to scour the Indian Ocean's floor — searching for any signs of the Malaysian 777-200. The aircraft went missing in March 2014 after it took off from Kuala Lumpur (KUL) en route to Beijing (PEK), carrying 239 people on board.

"I would firstly like to extend the thoughts of everyone at Ocean Infinity to the families of those who have lost loved ones on MH370," said Ocean Infinity CEO Oliver Plunkett. "Part of our motivation for renewing the search was to try to provide some answers to those affected. It is therefore with a heavy heart that we end our current search without having achieved that aim."

Ocean Infinity combed through more than 112,000 square kilometers of ocean floor but found nothing — a far bigger area than the initial 25,000-square-kilometer sweep that the governments of Australia, Malaysia and China had performed.

The original two-and-a-half year search had turned up fruitless, with the majority of wreckage washing up on the islands of Mozambique, Mauritius, Reunion and Zanzibar.

"Whilst clearly the outcome so far is extremely disappointing, as a company, we are truly proud of what we have achieved both in terms of the quality of data we've produced and the speed with which we covered such a vast area," said Plunkett. "There simply has not been a subsea search on this scale carried out as efficiently or as effectively ever before."

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Aviation experts recently stated that they believed the pilot of the aircraft intentionally crashed the plane on a suicide mission while Australian investigators said it was the cause of an accident.

The Malaysian Transportation Minister says the government will eventually issue a full report on the incident. It's possible the search will resume, but only if credible evidence of the plane's location is found.