Where are we in search for Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 as Brit sailor 'saw it in sky just before crash'

For 11 years, the mystery of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 hasn't gone away, given that the full wreckage of the plane was never found.

On 8 March 2014, it was announced that the 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board the Boeing 777 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing were presumed dead.

The aircraft lost contact with air traffic control at 1:19 a.m. over the South China Sea, and investigators say the plane deviated from its planned route and flew west for several hours before disappearing.

Since its disappearance, many theories as to how this happened have been put forward, including hijacking or the plane being deliberately flown into a 'black hole'.

The new search for Flight MH370

In 2024, Southampton-based marine robotics firm Ocean Infinity announced that it would be resuming its search in a new area of the southern Indian Ocean.

If the company, which ended a previous search in 2018, were able to locate significant wreckage - with some believed to have belonged to the plane having been discovered over the years - it would have been awarded $70 million (£56 million), according to Malaysia's Transport Minister, Anthony Loke.

227 passengers and 12 crew members on board the Boeing 777 were presumed dead (Mohd Samsul Mohd Said/Getty Images)

"Our responsibility and obligation and commitment is to the next of kin," Loke said. "We hope this time will be positive, that the wreckage will be found and give closure to the families."

However, it appears that Ocean Infinity's search has been postponed since April of this year, according to the transport minister.

"They (Ocean Infinity) have stopped the operation for the time being, they will resume the search at the end of this year," Loke said (via France24).

"Right now, it's not the season. Whether or not it will be found will be subject to the search, nobody can anticipate."

Brit sailor 'saw MH370 in sky just before it crashed'

British sailor Katherine Tee said in 2014 that she and her husband Marc Horn were travelling from Cochin, India, to Phuket on 8 March when they spotted something crossing the Indian Ocean.

The wing flap found on Pemba Island, Tanzania, which has been identified a missing part of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 (Adli Ghazali/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

That evening, she said she saw what looked like a plane with orange lights flying across the sky.

"I saw something that looked like a plane on fire," Tee claimed. "That’s what I thought it was. Then, I thought I must be mad… It caught my attention because I had never seen a plane with orange lights before, so I wondered what they were."

After initially keeping quiet for a few months, the Liverpool native went on to make an official report of her sightings.

She added: "I could see the outline of the plane, it looked longer than planes usually do. There was what appeared to be black smoke streaming from behind it.

"I remember thinking that if it was a plane on fire that I was seeing, the other aircraft would report it.

"I wondered again why it had such bright orange lights. They reminded me of sodium lights. I thought it could be some anomaly or just a meteor."