The Malaysian Government has approved a new attempt to find the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines flight 370 in the Indian Ocean and solve one of the world's greatest aviation mysteries.

Key points: Payment will be made only if the US-based company finds the wreckage

Payment will be made only if the US-based company finds the wreckage An area of less than 25,000 square km has the highest likelihood of containing MH370

An area of less than 25,000 square km has the highest likelihood of containing MH370 In the initial search several million square kilometres were covered

US-based company Ocean Infinity early this week dispatched the search vessel Seabed Constructor to look for debris in the southern Indian Ocean, more than three years after the Boeing 777 disappeared on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard.

Australia, China and Malaysia ended a fruitless $200-million search almost a year ago after 1,046 days of hunting, with the final report concluding authorities were no closer to knowing why the plane disappeared, or its exact location

But in October, Malaysia said it was in talks with Ocean Infinity to resume the search.

"The basis of the offer from Ocean Infinity is based on 'no cure, no fee,'" Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said on Saturday.

It means that payment will be made only if the company finds the wreckage.

"That means they are willing to search the area of 25,000 square kilometres pointed out by the expert group near the Australian waters," he said.

"I don't want to give too much hope … to the [next of kin]."

He said his Government was committed to continue with the search, but did not offer other details.

Ocean Infinity earlier said the vessel, which left the South African port of Durban on Tuesday, was taking advantage of favourable weather to move toward "the vicinity of the possible search zone".

In the initial search for the plane, a 52-day surface search covered an area of several million square kilometres in the Indian Ocean west of Australia, before an underwater search mapped 710,000 square kilometres of seabed at depths of up to 6,000 metres.

They were the largest aviation searches of their kind in history, according to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.

Better understanding of where MH370 might be

The ATSB's final report last year said the understanding of where the plane might be is "better now than it has ever been".

This is partly as a result of studying debris that washed ashore in 2015 and 2016 that showed the plane was, "not configured for a ditching at the end-of-flight", meaning it had run out of fuel.

The original search team also looked back at satellite imagery that showed objects in the ocean that may have been MH370 debris.

The report said this analysis complemented work detailed in a 2016 review and identified an area of less than 25,000 square kilometres that "has the highest likelihood of containing MH370".

The search was extremely difficult because no transmissions were received from the aircraft after its first 38 minutes of flight.

Systems designed to automatically transmit the flight's position failed to work after this point, the report said.

AP