The passengers and crew of MH370 were the largest group of people ever to disappear in this way, but they were not the first. Records dating back to 1948 show at least 105 flights, carrying 1,615 people, which have never been found. Those are just the ones we know about.  Obviously, all positions are very much approximate. In some cases there is so little information about where a plane ended up that you might as well throw darts at a map.  Still, from the Indian Ocean to the Caspian Sea, from the Gulf of Persia to the Gulf of Mexico, there is barely a body of water on this earth which in which humanity has not somehow lost a plane.  The database was compiled by Harro Ranter, a Dutch enthusiast who now runs the Aviation Safety Network. He assembled his record from official accident investigation reports, and, when those failed, old news clippings.  About 500 passengers die in crashes involving scheduled commercial flights every year, but these are the planes of which no trace has ever been found. Even if a plane's wreckage was found only decades later, that excludes it from the list.  It only goes back to January 1, 1948, and it only counts aircraft which were certified to carry fourteen or more passengers, ord corporate jets of any size.  Mr Ranter told the Telegraph his database is "the most complete in the aviation industry", but warned that in some cases "it is very hard to establish with certainty that no trace has ever been found."  Like the photographer Trevor Paglen, who traced the "black world" of the US intelligence community by tracking its secret passenger flights, you can actually see some of the key conflicts of the the 20th century unfold on the map above.  In the mid-1960s, US Air Force planes vanished above North Vietnam as America's undeclared war with that country began to heat up.  Meanwhile, US and Soviet planes disappearing near the Arctic circle testify to the long cold war between the two superpowers, which saw regular training flights and dummy bombing runs.  Some, however, are real oddities. On February 13, 2006, a private Gulfstream jet registered to one Maria de Jesus Morano was lost over Guatemala. The flight was illegal, its base and destination unknown. An accident aboard a drug lord's private plane? A deliberate attempt to fake death? We'll probably never know.  Nearly six decades before that, on January 27, 1950, a US military transport carrying 44 people disappeared somewhere between Alaska and Montana. A 350,000 square mile search operation failed to find any wreckage, and was called off soon it was called off after just 16 days. Why? Another plane had vanished, this time carrying a nuclear bomb.  Perhaps, in time, MH370 will be found, and therefore taken off Mr Ranter's list.  Other flights will probably be on it forever.
On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight 370 and its 239 passengers   disappeared. In doing so it joined a long list of aircraft which have   vanished without a trace. Mouse over or tap the dots on the map to find out   more about each one