The search for the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 is set to restart more than 10 years after the plane mysteriously vanished.

The flight, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014 - sparking a continental-scale search effort.

Malaysia's transport minister Athony Loke said exploration firm Ocean Infinity, which had also conducted the last search for the plane that ended in 2018, tabled the proposal - and the southeast Asian state has agreed.

Ocean Infinity will receive as much as $70million (£56million) if it finds any substantive wreckage, Loke told a press conference.

The aircraft, pictured in 2011, vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014

PICTURED: Visitors look at the wreckage believed to be from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 during a remembrance event marking the 10th anniversary of its disappearance

"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.

'Our responsibility and obligation and commitment is to the next of kin,' Anthony Loke said

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.

Satellite data analysis at the time showed the plane likely crashed somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean, off the coast of western Australia. But two major searches, including Ocean Infinity's last, failed to come up with any significant findings.