On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 took off into clear skies on a routine trip from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and vanished somewhere over the South China Sea about forty minutes after being in the air.
The plane was carrying 227 passengers and a dozen or so crew members, none of whom were ever seen again. The disappearance of MH370 has been deemed the biggest aviation mystery of all time.
Countless theories about what could’ve happened to the aircraft and all 239 people onboard have emerged over the years. Here’s what we know for sure.
MH370 left Malaysian airspace shortly after one o’clock in the morning. The plane was a Boeing 777, the world’s largest twin-engine jet. The last communication that Malaysian air traffic controllers heard from the pilot was when he said “goodnight” at 1:20.
But somewhere between Malaysia and Vietnam, the plane went electronically dark and disappeared from radar screens. When the plane still hadn’t contacted air traffic controllers in Vietnam by 1:30, another pilot attempted to reach out to them. He claimed that when he did, only “mumbling and static” could be heard.
Authorities scrambled to figure out what had happened to the plane, but as time passed, it became less likely that they would receive any clear answers.
It was not until March 10 that officials came across the first clue regarding the flight’s disappearance. Military radar was able to pick up the plane’s trajectory an hour after they lost communication.
The plane had made a U-turn, flying hundreds of miles off course toward India. This meant that the search zone had widened, and efforts to locate the plane became increasingly complicated.
Fortunately, authorities narrowed the field a bit. MH370 had left radar coverage, but its satellite communications system turned back on. It emitted signals that investigators used to trace the plane’s possible location.