FAQ

No one knows with certainty. Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 departed Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 00:41 local time on 8 March 2014, bound for Beijing. At 01:21, the aircraft turned sharply back over the South China Sea, its transponder was disabled, and contact was lost. Satellite data confirmed the aircraft continued flying for approximately 7 hours after the last radar contact, ending somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean. The aircraft has not been located.

239 people: 227 passengers and 12 crew. They represented 14 nationalities, with the largest group being 153 Chinese citizens. The captain was Zaharie Ahmad Shah (53) and the first officer was Fariq Abdul Hamid (27), both Malaysian.

The "seventh arc" refers to the final Inmarsat satellite handshake position calculated for MH370. The aircraft made periodic automated satellite handshakes throughout its flight. The seventh and final handshake, at approximately 00:19 UTC on 8 March 2014, placed the aircraft on a curved arc (an arc of equal distance from the Inmarsat satellite) in the southern Indian Ocean. This arc is the primary constraint on where the aircraft ended its flight — the actual impact point lies somewhere along this arc, but pinpointing the exact location requires knowing the aircraft's precise speed and heading at that moment.

Yes — over 30 pieces of debris have been recovered from Indian Ocean coastlines, primarily in Réunion Island, Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa, Madagascar, and Mauritius. Three pieces have been formally confirmed as being from MH370 (including the flaperon found on Réunion in July 2015 and the outboard flap found in Tanzania in 2016). Approximately 20 more have been assessed as very likely from the aircraft. The main wreckage — including the fuselage and flight recorders — has not been located.

Several compounding factors make this the hardest aviation search in history: the search zone in the southern Indian Ocean sits above some of the deepest, most rugged, and least-charted seabed on Earth (depths of 4,000–6,000 metres); the exact end point within the 7th arc is still uncertain, meaning the wreckage could be in an area not yet searched; the hostile weather limits operations to roughly 5–6 months per year; and the flight recorders' acoustic pinger batteries expired 30 days after the crash — long before any vessel was close enough to detect them.

Yes. Malaysia extended its search agreement with US company Ocean Infinity on 29 June 2026. Under the agreement, running from 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027, Ocean Infinity will return to search the remaining approximately 7,428 km² of the defined priority zone not yet covered. The contract remains "no find, no fee" — meaning Malaysia pays nothing unless significant wreckage is located.

Survival is considered extraordinarily unlikely. The debris fracture patterns indicate a high-speed, high-energy impact with the water surface — not a controlled landing. Even if the aircraft had somehow landed intact, survival in the remote southern Indian Ocean for any extended period would be virtually impossible. Malaysia officially declared the disappearance an accident and all 239 occupants lost on 29 January 2015.

No official determination of individual responsibility has been made. The 2018 Malaysian Safety Investigation Report concluded that the change in flight path "was the result of deliberate action by someone on the aircraft" but stopped short of naming any individual. The investigation remains open in that no criminal charges have been filed and no formal legal proceedings related to the diversion have been concluded.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau is Australia's independent transport safety investigator. Australia led the deep-water search from 2014–2017 under a tripartite agreement with Malaysia and China, and the ATSB published the definitive technical reports on the search. Their reports remain the most comprehensive public record of what is known about MH370's final flight path.

Inmarsat is a British satellite communications company. MH370 was connected to Inmarsat's satellite network via an ACARS (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System) terminal. Even after ACARS data transmissions stopped, the terminal continued making automated "handshakes" with the Inmarsat satellite every hour. Analysts used the timing and signal characteristics of these seven handshakes — specifically the Burst Timing Offset and Burst Frequency Offset — to deduce the aircraft's approximate location over time and conclude it flew south into the Indian Ocean.

This is an independent, non-commercial site maintained to keep accurate and up-to-date information about MH370 publicly available in one place. The name reflects the ongoing mission: the aircraft has not yet been found, and this site exists to track the search until it is. See the About page for more.