If you don’t have a mouse then it doesn’t work, neither in the beta nor the live build. There is no virtual cursor, you have to press “Y” to navigate to “the panels” (the top bar on the world map), there you have to navigate to the search bar with the d-pad, and enter the icao code or anything you’re searching for. Then the results appear but you can’t select any of them with the d-pad. Again, no cursor. 
And this has been the case ever since release.
If you use a mouse then you don’t meet these issues because you use the mouse pointer for everything. The UI was made for that and they never accounted for mouse-less console players.
Edit: In case of the EFB, you can’t even search for anything because when you press the Enter key on the virtual keyboard, nothing happens. It works inconsistently, you have to “go back” with the “B” button or so, that closes the search field, etc. It’s just a mess, unusable without a mouse.