Where Is Flight MH370? Search For Missing Malaysia Airlines Plane Ends In 2 Weeks

The underwater search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 ends in two weeks, Malaysia's transport minister said Friday as no concrete clues have been found about the plane's whereabouts. Last month, investigators said in a report that the missing Boeing 777-200 won't be found in the area searched for the past two years.

"We're at the final lap within these two weeks," Liow Tiong Lai told reporters, according to the Straits Times. "We hope we can find the plane." Liow added that a tripartite meeting will be held after a final report is released when the 46,000-square-mile search ends, but did not mention a date.

Investigators with the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), the agency leading the hunt for the missing plane, said this week that bad weather was hampering the final stage of the search.

Flight MH370 went missing on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board while on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Authorities earlier said that the plane may have crashed in a remote part of the southern Indian Ocean. A $145 million search for the aircraft has yielded no clues as to what happened to the plane.

Over the last few months, several debris pieces have been found, of which six pieces have been considered certain or highly likely to have come from the missing Flight MH370.

The families of those on board the jet have urged authorities to continue the search for the plane, and also blamed officials for not taking debris pieces found in Madagascar, Tanzania and other nearby islands seriously. Last month, some relatives of victims traveled to Madagascar to conduct an independent search for the plane debris.

While several conspiracy theories have surfaced since the plane's disappearance, ATSB said in November that the plane was likely out of control when it plunged into the ocean with its wing flaps not prepared for landing, casting doubt on theories a pilot deliberately crashed the plane.