Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
LessMore
Last reviewed Sources & creditsMedia creditsMethodology
Quick answers
What was Malaysia Airlines Flight 370?
A scheduled Boeing 777-200ER service, 9M-MRO, from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on 8 March 2014. It carried 227 passengers and 12 crew. It never arrived. The wreck has not been found.
When did contact end?
The last ATC voice call was shortly after 01:19 MYT near waypoint IGARI. Secondary radar then ceased. Military primary radar later showed a westward and then southward track. Inmarsat handshakes continued for hours.
Why do officials say the southern Indian Ocean?
Inmarsat handshake timing and frequency-offset analysis, announced by Malaysia on 24 March 2014 and later used by the ATSB, placed the end of flight on a southern arc. Debris later found on western Indian Ocean shores is consistent with that ocean, not with a landing in China.
Has any of the aircraft been found?
Yes, fragments. A right flaperon on Réunion in July 2015 was identified as from 9M-MRO. Other pieces were later accepted or treated as almost certain. The main wreckage and the recorders have not been located.
What did the 2018 Malaysian report conclude?
The Annex 13 safety investigation could not determine the cause. It recorded the reconstructed track, the debris and the limits of the evidence. It did not name a person as responsible.
Who led the ocean search?
After the southern-arc announcement, Australia’s JACC coordinated and the ATSB led the official seabed search west of Australia, with Malaysia and China as partners. That search ended in January 2017. Ocean Infinity searched again in 2018.
Investigation was first a confused regional search, then a satellite reconstruction, then a years-long seabed survey.
It is described here as what agencies did after the fact, not as a guide to leaving a route unseen.
Agencies
- Malaysia Ministry of Transport / DCA — State of registry and operator; ran the Annex 13 safety investigation and the first week’s briefings.
- Australian Transport Safety Bureau — Led the official southern Indian Ocean seabed search and published the technical search papers.
- Joint Agency Coordination Centre — Australia’s public coordination body for the southern search, chaired in the English briefings by Angus Houston.
- Inmarsat — Satellite operator whose handshake records produced the southern-arc analysis used on 24 March 2014.
What followed
- Establish the aircraft is missing
Hours passed on 8 March while Malaysia and Vietnam reconciled frequencies. That delay is part of the public file.
- Search the first boxes
Ships and aircraft worked the South China Sea and later the Strait of Malacca on early radar readings.
- Read the satellite handshakes
Inmarsat and investigating states turned hourly pings into a southern-arc end-of-flight estimate.
- Move the search south
After 24 March 2014 the official effort shifted to the Indian Ocean west of Australia under JACC and ATSB.
- Identify beach debris
France, Australia and others examined fragments. The Réunion flaperon became the first certified piece of 9M-MRO.
- Publish without a wreck
The 2017 search suspension and the 2018 safety report left cause and location open.
Turning points
- The 24 March announcement — Once Malaysia adopted the southern-ocean ending, the world’s search map changed and the South China Sea theory became a first-week episode.
- The Réunion flaperon — A physical object from 9M-MRO on a western Indian Ocean island confirmed that the satellite ocean was not only a model.
- The 2018 report — An official narrative that recorded everything known and still declined to name a cause.
The investigation found a corridor and failed to find an aircraft.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.