If a new search of the southern Indian Ocean goes ahead as proposed, the expedition may clear up once and for all the most perplexing aviation mystery since the second world war: the fate of the missing Flight MH370, and all 239 people lost with it.

The majority of those on board the lost flight – which took off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing more than ten years ago – were Malaysian or Chinese. Now Malaysian transport minister Anthony Loke has provisionally accepted a “no find, no fee” bid by Southampton, UK-based survey company Ocean Infinity, to search a new area of the remote southern Indian Ocean, where previously rejected data suggests the MH370 wreck could be resting on the sea bed.

Loke explained his rationale for a new search: “Our responsibility and obligation and commitment is to the next of kin…We hope [the search] this time will be positive, that the wreckage will be found and give closure to the families.”

Ocean Infinity vessels took part in a previous search near the planned fresh objective, but they were carried out under the direction of government agencies from Malaysia, China and Australia, and were unsuccessful. This time the company will be using independently supplied data from multiple expert sources, and it will consider alternative theories as to how the aircraft was directed in the last sector of its flight before it finally entered the ocean. This will take the search further south than Ocean Infinity’s vessels have scanned before.

On 8 March 2014, the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 took off from Kuala Lumpur on a scheduled flight to Beijing. Over the South China Sea, only 39 minutes into the flight, all radio communication with air traffic control was lost, and the aircraft’s data disappeared from ATC radar.

Military radar later revealed that, when it disappeared from ATC radar because the aircraft’s transponder had been switched off, MH370 almost did a U-turn and headed back across Malaysia, out into the northern Andaman Sea, and finally went out of radar range. What it did then has been the subject of endless speculation, but all plausible theories led to the south-eastern Indian Ocean, where the previous (unsuccessful) searches have taken place.

Since that time a few pieces of wreckage identified as part of the missing Boeing 777 have been found washed up on beaches around the Indian Ocean, thousands of miles from the aircraft’s flight planned route.

But the resting place of the wreckage and the remains of 239 people who had set off innocently on a commercial flight are, to this day, still undiscovered.

If the Malaysian government confirms its planned agreement with Ocean Infinity, the world may finally learn the fascinating truth about this mysterious flight.