Malaysia Airlines flight MH370: Timeline of events
Flight MH370 departs from Kuala Lumpur
March 8, 2014
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 departs from Kuala Lumpur International Airport and is due to land in Beijing at 6:30am later that day. On board the plane are 227 passengers and 12 crew.
One of two pilots in the cockpit said "Goodnight," to Malaysian air traffic control (ATC). These were the last words heard from flight MH370.
The crew was expected to contact ATC in Ho Chi Minh City when the plane moved into Vietnamese airspace.
A transmission from the plane's communication transponder was sent shortly before the plane vanished from the ATC radar.
MH370 fails to land
March 8, 2014
Flight MH370 is due to land at Beijing Capital International Airport, but fails to appear.
Malaysia Airlines later released a statement to confirm flight MH370 had lost contact with Subyang Air Traffic Control. The airline pledged to provide regular updates on the plane's disappearance.
A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said Australian consular officials were in "urgent and ongoing" contact with Malaysia Airlines.
He said Malaysia Airlines had advised it was contacting relatives of the passengers on the flight.
Malaysia Airlines later released the details of the pilots of the missing plane. The flight was piloted by Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, and first officer was Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27.
Malaysia Airlines Group chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya held a press conference at a hotel near Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
The search begins
March 9, 2014
A full-scale international search and rescue operation begins to find the aircraft with attention focusing on waters between southern Vietnam and Malaysia.
Malaysia Airlines said it feared the worst and was working with a US company which specialises in disaster recovery.
There were reports of oil slicks in the ocean off Vietnam in what could be the first sign of the plane's whereabouts.
Malaysia deployed 15 air force aircraft, six navy ships and three coast guard vessels. Australia pledged two RAAF P-3C maritime surveillance aircraft to help with the search.
Passport security questioned
March 10, 2014
Questions arise and an investigation is launched regarding two passengers who boarded the plane with stolen passports, and are linked to a stolen passport syndicate.
Interpol confirmed that at least two passengers used stolen passports and said it was checking whether others aboard had used false identity documents.
The passenger manifest issued by the airline included the names of two Europeans - Austrian Christian Kozel and Italian Luigi Maraldi - who were not on the plane.
Their passports had been stolen in Thailand sometime in the past two years.
Investigators later confirmed the two men were Iranian nationals, but said the disappearance was not believed to be a terrorist incident.
Air force denies plane was detected on radar
March 12, 2014
The Malaysian air force denies reports MH370 was detected on radar far west of its flight path.
Air force chief General Rodzali Daud was quoted by Malaysian media as saying that radar had last detected the plane over the Strait of Malacca off western Malaysia.
That location would have indicated the flight had banked far to the west of its intended flight path over the South China Sea.
But Mr Rodzali said he "did not make any such statements," and that newspaper Berita Harian published "what is clearly an inaccurate and incorrect report".
Search planes fail to find debris after Chinese satellite reports
March 13, 2014
Search planes find no trace of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 near the site where Chinese satellites spotted three large "floating objects" in the sea.
China said one of its satellites detected three objects in a region of the South China Sea where it suspected the plane had crashed.
The pictures were taken the day after the plane went missing.
China said the objects were spread across an area with a radius of 20 kilometres, in sizes that appeared to be up to 22 x 24m. However, subsequent searches failed to recover the objects.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported it had information from two security sources, saying the plane could have remained flying for about four hours after it was last detected.
It said US counter-terrorism officers were considering whether the plane was diverted to another location with the intention of using it later for another purpose.
Analysis shows flight could have run out of fuel
March 15, 2014
Analysis of electronic pulses picked up from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight shows it could have run out of fuel and crashed into the Indian Ocean after it flew hundreds of miles off course, a source familiar with the US's official search data said.
The source said the other, less likely possibility was that it flew on toward India.
The data obtained from pulses the plane sent to satellites had been interpreted to provide two different analyses because it was ambiguous, the source who declined to be identified was quoted as saying.
Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak later said someone on board the missing plane deliberately shut off its communications and tracking systems and flew it off course for nearly seven hours after it vanished.
Mr Najib confirmed the plane's systems were gradually switched off and the plane was flown far to the west of its flight path before disappearing.
Malaysia calls on 25 countries as search area expands
March 16, 2014
Malaysia calls for help from 25 countries as the search for missing flight MH370 expands across a vast area of land and ocean.
The US, France and China were all asked for more satellite information to help find the missing Malaysia Airlines passenger jet.
The search area covers large tracts of land and sea across 11 countries and Malaysia has asked for more ships and spotter planes.
"It is our hope that parties that can be of assistance to us can come forward and help us to narrow the search," Malaysia's transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein said.
Australia's Defence Force Chief, General David Hurley, said an Australian RAAF Orion had commenced searching the Indian Ocean to the north and west of the Cocos Islands.
Australia takes charge of multinational search
March 18, 2014
Australia leads a new search for the wreckage of the missing plane in an area 3,000 kilometres south-west of Perth, authorities announce.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said the search zone would cover 600,000 square kilometres of ocean and was plotted using data based on the last satellite relay signals sent by the plane.
Ships and aircraft from Australia, New Zealand and the United States take part in the search, which represented a narrowing down of the previous Indian Ocean search area.
The same information provided a mirror image of an area the same distance from the equator in the Northern Hemisphere.
The southern search included four Orion search planes from the RAAF, one New Zealand Orion, and a Poseidon operated by the US.
AMSA said the "sheer size" of the search area "poses a huge challenge" and the search could drag on for weeks.
Thailand detected jet minutes after it changed course
March 19, 2014
Thailand's military announces it detected the missing Malaysia Airlines jet flying off course just minutes after it changed direction shortly after take-off, but did not share the information with Malaysia.
It emerged that Thai radar identified the plane heading south-west.
Thailand said it did not pass on the information to Malaysia at the time because it was not asked for it.
Meanwhile, residents of a remote island in the Maldives report seeing a "low-flying jumbo jet" on the morning the plane disappeared.
Dozens of planes and ships search the South China Sea to Malaysia's east before the country's prime minister announced that investigators concluded that the plane had in fact been flown west over Peninsular Malaysia.
The Thai air force did not check its records because the aircraft was not in "Thai airspace and it was not a threat to Thailand", Air Marshal Monthon said, denying it had been "withholding information".
Malaysia announces flight crashed into Indian Ocean
March 25, 2014
Britain's Inmarsat uses a wave phenomenon discovered in the 19th century to analyse the seven pings its satellite picked up from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 to determine its final destination.
The new findings led Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak to conclude the Boeing 777, which disappeared more than two weeks ago, crashed thousands of miles away in the southern Indian Ocean, killing all 239 people on board including six Australians.
The pings, automatically transmitted every hour from the aircraft after the rest of its communications systems stopped, indicated it continued flying for hours after it disappeared from its flight path from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
"It is therefore with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that in light of this new data, MH370 flight ended in the southern Indian Ocean," Mr Najib said.
Australian authorities suspend the search until further notice because of poor weather conditions, including 80 kilometre per hour gale-force winds and four-metre swell.
New objects spotted in search
March 27, 2014
Thailand spots 300 floating objects in the southern Indian Ocean during the search for the missing flight, as authorities sought to resume large-scale searches.
Thailand's Geo-Informatics Space Technology Development Agency said the objects, ranging from two to 15 metres in size, were scattered over an area about 2,700 kilometres south-west of Perth.
This is within the search area for the plane and is not far from where other satellite images of possible debris have been taken.
"But we cannot - dare not - confirm they are debris from the plane," the agency's executive director Anond Snidvongs said.
Search zone shifts
March 28, 2014
The search area for MH370 shifts after a "credible lead" indicates the plane did not travel as far south into the Indian Ocean as first thought.
AMSA said new information suggested the plane was travelling at a higher speed than previously thought, which would increase fuel use and cut the distance it could travel.
Ten aircraft and six vessels go to the new search location, which is closer to the West Australian coast than the previous search zone.
More possible debris is sighted, but fails to provide any leads.
Malaysia releases transcript
April 4, 2014
Malaysian authorities release the full transcript of communications between the pilots of missing flight MH370 and air traffic controllers, saying the exchanges showed nothing unusual.
The 43 separate transmissions over nearly 54 minutes were thick with air-traffic and navigational jargon and gave no hint of trouble aboard the ill-fated plane.
The transcript - and particularly the final words from MH370 - have been the subject of much speculation following earlier statements by authorities and the airline that the last transmission from the plane was a casual "All right, goodnight".
That apparent non-standard sign-off fuelled speculation that one of the pilots - either captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, or first officer Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27 - diverted the plane on purpose.
Possible black box signals detected
April 6, 2014
Multiple signals are detected that could have been emitted from the black box of the missing flight.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said searchers were confident they were picking up the right signals, and narrowed down the search areato "within some kilometres".
The search for the flight recorders focused on a 600 square kilometre area, 1,670 kilometres north-west of Perth, where dozens of acoustic sonobuoys were dropped.
The signals fall silent a few days later, and a submarine sent to locate the source failed to find any trace of the missing plane.
Aerial search ends
April 30, 2014
The intensive aerial search for surface wreckage from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 officially ends, with ships also moving out of the remote Indian Ocean area where the plane is believed to have gone down.
Australian authorities said the focus would transition "over the coming weeks" to a more intensified underwater search in the quest to find out what happened to the aircraft.
Eight nations have been involved in the unprecedented hunt - Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, the United States, Britain and China - with more than 300 sorties flown across a vast expanse of remote ocean looking for debris.
But with nothing to show for their efforts from scanning more than 4.5 million square kilometres from the air since March 18, the planes were stood down.
Preliminary report released
May 1, 2014
It took authorities four hours to activate a search and rescue operation after they lost contact with flight MH370, according to a preliminary report made public by the Malaysian government.
The brief, five-page document, emailed to media organisations, also revealed it took 17 minutes to realise the plane had gone off the air traffic control radar.
The report provided no details on what authorities were doing during that time except that Kuala Lumpur contacted Singapore, Hong Kong, and Cambodia.
International aviation authorities received the report within a month of the flight's March 8 disappearance but its public release was delayed more than three weeks by Malaysia's government.
The report recommended the International Civil Aviation Authority, the United Nations body that oversees global aviation, examine the safety benefits of introducing a standard for real-time tracking of commercial air transport aircraft.
Coordinator says search could take two years
June 10, 2014
Retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, who coordinated the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, said whilst it could take more than two years to find the plane, authorities were making progress.
Air Chief Marshal Houston said it was an even harder task than the search for an Air France jet that was eventually located just 6.5 nautical miles from its last known location.
Authorities had previously claimed they were closing in on the plane's debris. Weeks before authorities concluded pings picked up in the southern Indian Ocean did not come from the black box as suspected.
Air Chief Marshal Houston said there was a lot of number-crunching being done to narrow the search area along the arc in the Indian Ocean, and $60 million had been set aside for the search itself.
New data prompts revisit to search area
June 20, 2014
The search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 returns to an area off Perth that was first searched three months ago.
Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) chief commissioner Martin Dolan said new data showed the area of highest probability of where the plane crashed into the Indian Ocean was 1,800 kilometres west of Perth.
Only aerial searches of the area were conducted in late March before the search moved further north.
The new search zone came asDutch engineers began a survey to map uncharted deep sea terrain at the bottom of the Indian Ocean in search of the plane.
A survey ship from Dutch engineering company Fugro, carrying 40 crew and technicians, began mapping out an area larger than the Netherlands, some 1,600 kilometres off the West Australian coast.
Malaysia transport minister pledges support
August 24, 2014
Malaysia's transport minister Liow Tiong Lai moves to reassure the loved ones of passengers on the missing flight that the search would go on.
He said the Malaysian government would sign a memorandum of understanding with its Australian counterpart to "solidify the collaboration for the search for MH370".
Mr Abbott earlier confirmed an underwater search for flight MH370 would resume off Western Australian in September.
Australia signed a contract worth more than $50 million with Dutch company Fugro, which would use two vessels towing submerged vehicles to scan the search area, an area which is about the size of Tasmania.
Search area moves south
October 8, 2014
Investigators confirm the new priority search area for MH370 is moved further south as end-of-flight scenarios indicate it may have spiralled into the southern Indian Ocean.
The ATSB released a report detailing how the latest analysis of satellite and flight data had narrowed down the search area.
Seven months since the aircraft disappeared, the underwater search phase would focus on the southern extremity of a wide area about 1,000 kilometres off Western Australia's northern coast and more than 2,000 kilometres off its southern coast.
One vessel, GO Phoenix, started operations while another, Fugro Discovery, was expected to leave the Fremantle Port days later and head to the most remote part of the search zone to join Fugro Equator, which was already carrying out survey work.
First lawsuit filed over disappearance
October 31, 2014
A Malaysian family sues the government and beleaguered national carrier for negligence in the disappearance of flight MH370, in what is believed to be the first lawsuit filed over the disaster.
The suit is filed by lawyers on behalf of the two underage sons of Jee Jing Hang, who was on board the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines flight.
The family is suing Malaysia Airlines for breach of contract, saying the carrier failed in its contractual responsibility to deliver Mr Jee to his destination.
The family is also suing Malaysia's government, civil aviation authorities, immigration department and air force for negligence.
Their lawyer said the family would seek damages but declined to specify a figure.
Families frustrated over lack of progress
January 9, 2015
Relatives of the Chinese passengers on board missing flight MH370 are becoming increasingly frustrated over the mystery of the plane's disappearance.
Malaysia's transport minister said about 26 per cent of the priority search area in the southern Indian Ocean had been covered so far.
But some family members have taken it upon themselves to search for answers by hiring a private investigator and approaching authorities in China and abroad.
In a statement, Malaysia Airlines said it would "spare no expense or effort" to take care of the affected families.
But members of an informal support network have little intention of accepting the $US50,000 offered by the airline.
Flight declared an accident
January 29, 2015
Malaysia announces all 239 passengers and crew on board the missing flight are presumed dead.
The head of the nation's civil aviation authority made the statement at a press conference, declaring the disappearance an accident.
He also said the plane was located on the sea floor of the Indian Ocean.
An interim report into MH370's disappearance will be made public on March 7, a day before the one-year anniversary of the plane going missing.
The announcement freed up the way for families to launch compensation claims.
Families call for Malaysia to retract statement
February 13, 2015
Relatives of those on board the missing airliner call on the Malaysian government to withdraw a statement that all passengers are presumed dead.
For some of the families of those on board the statement has not brought the closure it was supposed to, and many decide to reject compensation offers.
Chinese relatives descended on the headquarters of Malaysia Airlines in Kuala Lumpur, carrying signs reading 'MH370 Cry for Truth' and 'Today it's us, tomorrow it could be you'.
French businessman Ghyslain Watterlos, whose wife was on board along with two of his three children, said Malaysia's statement that the plane was lost and all passengers were dead has brought no closure.
He said there has been no offer of compensation from the airline, although he would not accept it anyway.
Truss announces aircraft tracking trial
March 1, 2015
Australia will take part in a joint trial to improve aircraft tracking in response to the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 nearly a year ago, Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss announces.
Under the new system, planes flying over remote oceanic areas will be tracked every 15 minutes, rather than at intervals of 30 to 40 minutes.
Airservices Australia chairman Sir Angus Houston said the new measures will allow authorities to track planes more accurately and respond more quickly to any abnormal events.
Both the International Civil Aviation Organisation and the International Air Transport Association have announced their endorsement of moves toward increased surveillance of aircraft in remote airspace in the future.
No guarantee on search future
March 5, 2015
Mr Abbott tells Parliament he cannot promise the search for the missing plane will continue with the same intensity indefinitely.
"But we will continue our very best efforts to resolve this mystery and provide some answers," he said.
He extended his sympathies to the families of the Australians onboard MH370, some of whom were in Parliament, for the "harrowing nightmare" they had endured.
Meanwhile, searchers combing the ocean for the missing flight said vessels have a "one shot" chance to find the missing plane in a specific search area.
The team coordinating the recovery effort released an interview with Paul Kennedy, the project director for the search on behalf of contractor Fugro, who said the team "never go back" to an area once searched.
"It's a very expensive search, we want to know that if we run over it, we know we don't miss it by accident because we will never go back there again for a second look ... it's a one shot deal."
