Missing flight MH370 vanished more than a decade ago. Now, a new search area has been identified

Malaysia has agreed in principle to resume the search for the wreckage of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, its transport minister says, more than 10 years after it disappeared in one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries.

The Boeing 777 was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, including six Australian citizens and one New Zealand resident of Western Australia, when it vanished on the way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014.

Transport Minister Anthony Loke said the proposal to search a new area in the southern Indian Ocean came from exploration firm Ocean Infinity, which had also conducted the last search for the plane that ended in 2018.

The firm would receive $US70 million ($A112 million) if wreckage found is substantive, Loke told a news conference on Friday.

“Our responsibility and obligation and commitment is to the next of kin,” he said.

“We hope this time will be positive, that the wreckage will be found and give closure to the families.”

Malaysian investigators initially did not rule out the possibility that the aircraft had been deliberately taken off course.

Debris, some confirmed and some believed to be from the aircraft, has washed up along the coast of Africa and on islands in the Indian Ocean.

More than 150 Chinese passengers were on the flight, with relatives demanding compensation from Malaysia Airlines, Boeing, aircraft engine maker Rolls-Royce and the Allianz insurance group among others.

Malaysia engaged Ocean Infinity in 2018 to search in the southern Indian Ocean, offering to pay up to $US70 million if it found the plane, but it failed on two attempts.

That followed an underwater search by Malaysia, Australia and China in a 120,000-square-kilometre area of the southern Indian Ocean, based on data of automatic connections between an Inmarsat satellite and the plane.

with AAP