The search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 may soon come to an end.

Australia is now in talks with China and Malaysia on whether to call off the search, a move that will completely end hopes of relatives that the bodies of their loved ones may one day be found.

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"We clearly cannot keep searching forever, but we want to do everything that's reasonably possible to locate the aircraft," Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said, as authorities still grapple to find the aircraft.

On March 8, MH370 would have been gone missing for a year.  To this day, no trace has yet been found of the Boeing 777 aircraft. 

MH370, bound for Beijing, disappeared on March 8, 2014 shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur. 

All 239 people on board are now presumed dead, with Malaysia recently declaring the plane's disappearance an accident.

Investigators believe it flew thousands of miles off course before crashing into the Indian Ocean.  

The search was refined into a 60,000 square kilometer area of sea floor west of the Australian city of Perth, where the plane is believed to have sunk. 

That search is expected to be completed by May.

Truss wants a decision to be made soon as to whether the search will continue or not, if nothing is found until May.

"For many of the families onboard, they won't have closure unless they have certain knowledge that the aircraft has been located and perhaps their loved ones' remains have been recovered," Truss said.

Truss said the search for MH370 has been the most expensive of its kind in aviation history, comparable to the hunt for the missing aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart.

Australia and Malaysia have agreed to split the tab estimated to have reached $40.5 million.

Truss expressed fears that the search cannot proceed any further without help from the international community.

"We put in the amount of money that we believed was necessary to do this job well and thoroughly with the best available equipment," he said.

"We have to make other decisions, then, about how long the search should continue." Truss added.

Martin Dolan, Chief Commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, the agency that is leading the search, said there is high probability that the plane will be found within the focused area.

However, should there be a need to expand the search, the cost could be unimagineable.

"It's almost impossible to get your head around the scale of what's involved here," Dolan said.

China had expressed its deepest gratitude toward Australia for all the resources and effort it had put through to find the missing aircraft. 

Of the 227 passengers on board MH370, 153 were Chinese.  But China still hopes that the huge amount of work won't be in vain. 

Tagsmh370, plane crash, Malaysia, Australia, Indian Ocean