Will MH370 Be Found? Private Search For Missing Plane Ends, Families Unhappy

The privately funded search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 ended Tuesday after the U.S. company Ocean Infinity completed the underwater search with no trace of the plane's wreckage. Malaysia government had hired the company under the "no cure, no fee" structure in January.

Despite calls for fresh search for the jetliner, Malaysian government said that it has no plans to begin any new searches. Flight MH370 went missing on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board while on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. A multimillion-dollar search for the plane in a remote part of the southern Indian Ocean was called off last year.

The mystery about the plane's disappearance continues as families of those on board the doomed jet wait for a closure. Grace Nathan, whose mother was on the missing Boeing 777-200, said she was opposed to ending the hunt.

"People might think: 'Why are these people still harping on about this, it's been four years'. It's important for people to remember that MH370 is not history," she told the Guardian.

Last week, Malaysia's new transport minister Anthony Loke said he wanted to abandon looking for the plane and seek “closure.”

KS Narendran, whose wife was on MH370, said Loke’s offer of closure was “simply closing the case file, not resolving the case because someone got tired... I am barely able to contain my deep sense of betrayal. It is barely possible to conceal anger at a decision taken without the courtesy of a meeting and consultation with affected families.”

Australian Transport Minister Michael McCormack said the four-year search for the jet had been the largest in aviation history.

"Our thoughts are with the families and loved ones of the 239 people on board MH370," McCormack's office said in a statement. "We will always remain hopeful that one day the aircraft will be located."

Since the plane went missing, several conspiracy theories emerged about the fate of the jet. Most recently, reports claimed the plane's pilot Captain Zaharie Amad Shah deliberately crashed the jet in the Indian Ocean as part of his "murder-suicide" plan. The pilot “was killing himself” and took the plane to the most remote spot he could in the southern Indian Ocean so it would “disappear,” experts said. However, Australian officials rejected the theory.

The theory of murder-suicide started making the rounds days after John Dawson, a lawyer who represented nine families from MH370 and MH17, told News Corp Australia: “In MH370, you have the pilot flying between Malaysia and Beijing who turns back the aircraft. The evidence is so heavily weighted to involvement by one of the aircrew taking this aircraft down... That aircraft has probably depressurized, the people died of asphyxiation, it was premeditated murder."

Other theories about the plane's disappearance included claims of the plane being hijacked, the plane being shot down, and a possible electrical issue resulting in a fire on board the plane, among many others.