Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Summary

On 8 March 2014 a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard dropped off air traffic control radar over the South China Sea. Military radar and satellite data later showed that it had turned back and flown on for about seven hours, ending in the southern Indian Ocean.

Debris from the aircraft began washing up on the western shores of the Indian Ocean in July 2015. Where it ended, in broad terms, is known. Why it turned back, who was flying it, and where exactly it lies are not.

Searches between 2014 and 2018 covered close to 200,000 square kilometres of seabed without finding the wreck. The latest, by the seabed survey company Ocean Infinity under a "no find, no fee" contract, ended its second phase in January 2026 without result. In June 2026 Malaysia extended the contract to June 2027, with about 7,400 square kilometres of the contracted area left to search.

What is documented

The flight. Flight MH370, a Boeing 777-200ER registered 9M-MRO, left Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 12.42 am local time on 8 March 2014, bound for Beijing. It carried 12 crew, all Malaysian, and 227 passengers, 153 of them Chinese citizens and 38 Malaysian.

The last contact. At 1.19 am, as the aircraft was handed over from Malaysian to Vietnamese air traffic control, the crew acknowledged with "Good night. Malaysian three seven zero." It passed waypoint IGARI at about 1.20 am, and within a minute its transponder signal was lost. The aircraft made no call to the Vietnamese controllers. Ho Chi Minh City's air traffic control centre queried Kuala Lumpur about it at 1.38 am. Malaysia Airlines announced at 7.24 am that contact had been lost.

The turn back. Malaysian military radar tracked an aircraft, later accepted as MH370, turning back west across the Malay Peninsula and heading north-west up the Strait of Malacca. The last military radar contact was at 2.22 am, about 247 nautical miles north-west of Penang. Malaysia's safety investigation later concluded that the turn back had been made under manual control, and could not say whether by the pilot or by someone else.

The satellite handshakes. At 2.25 am the aircraft's satellite communications terminal, which had been silent since shortly after 1 am, logged back on to the Inmarsat-3 F1 satellite over the Indian Ocean. Between 2.25 am and 8.19 am there were seven of these brief automatic exchanges, or "handshakes"; the last was a log-on from the aircraft. A routine status request at 9.15 am went unanswered. The messages carried no position. Inmarsat's engineers, publishing their method in the Journal of Navigation in 2014, used two properties of each signal: its timing, which gives the aircraft's distance from the satellite and so places it on an arc, and its frequency offset, which carries the Doppler shift of the aircraft's motion. The frequency data favoured a southern route over a northern one. The last arc, the "seventh arc", runs through the southern Indian Ocean west of Australia. Inmarsat's engineers read the final log-on as a sign of power interruption consistent with the engines stopping from fuel exhaustion.

The debris. In late July 2015 a flaperon, a control surface from the trailing edge of a Boeing 777's wing, was found on a beach at Saint-André on Réunion, about 4,000 kilometres west of the underwater search area. In September 2015 French judicial authorities announced that serial numbers inside it linked it with certainty to MH370. Further pieces were found on the coasts of Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania and Madagascar; by October 2017 about twenty had been assessed, most as almost certainly or very likely from the aircraft. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) examined a section of the right outboard flap. Drift modelling by Australia's CSIRO placed the most likely impact point around 35.6° S, 92.8° E.

The first underwater search. The ATSB led an underwater search, funded jointly by Malaysia, Australia and China, from October 2014 to 17 January 2017. It covered more than 120,000 square kilometres of seabed without finding the aircraft. In December 2016 an ATSB review identified a further area of about 25,000 square kilometres, on the northern edge of the searched zone, as the remaining prospective area. The ATSB's final report, The Operational Search for MH370, was published on 3 October 2017.

The 2018 search. On 16 January 2018 Malaysia announced a second search by Ocean Infinity on a "no find, no fee" basis, immediately north of the earlier area. It ended on 29 May 2018 without finding the aircraft. The ATSB puts the seabed searched by both efforts at close to 200,000 square kilometres, in a band more than 1,800 kilometres long.

The investigation report. Malaysia's safety investigation team released its report on 30 July 2018. It confirmed the manual turn-back. As the ATSB summarised it, because the main wreckage and the flight recorders had not been found, the investigation was unable to draw definitive conclusions about what happened. The report also described failings in air traffic control, and the chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia resigned the next day.

The 2025 to 2026 search. On 13 December 2024 Malaysia's Cabinet approved in principle a new Ocean Infinity search of about 15,000 square kilometres, in an area the company proposed on the basis of new analysis, again on a "no find, no fee" basis; Malaysia would pay US$70 million if the wreck was found. Ocean Infinity began mobilising in February 2025 while the contract was being finalised. The search was suspended in early April 2025 because of bad weather. A second phase began at the end of December 2025 and, according to Ocean Infinity's chief executive, Oliver Plunkett, ended on 23 January 2026 without any new findings. In March 2026 he said that "we can say with confidence that it isn't where we looked".

The current position. On 29 June 2026 Malaysia's transport minister, Anthony Loke, announced that the Cabinet had agreed at its meeting on 26 June to extend the contract for 12 months, from 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027, on the same "no find, no fee" terms, to cover the remaining 7,428.54 square kilometres. According to the announcement, the search vessel could only be assigned between November 2026 and April 2027, the season of calmer seas. As of September 2026 no part of the main wreckage has been found.

Leading explanations

The explanations below concern different questions: where the aircraft ended its flight, and why it went there.

The flight ended in the southern Indian Ocean after its fuel ran out (the investigators' consensus; established in outline by the satellite data and the debris). The seventh arc and the debris drift both point to the southern Indian Ocean west of Australia. This is as solid as anything in the case. It does not locate the wreck, because an arc is a line, and the searches along it have so far eliminated areas rather than found anything.

A deliberate diversion by someone on board (consistent with the evidence; not established). The turn back was made manually, the transponder signal stopped, the satellite terminal was silent for more than an hour, and the aircraft then flew on for hours. The Malaysian investigation said the turn was made either by the pilot or by a third party, and could not determine which, or why. Without the flight recorders, this cannot be settled. The registry does not attribute the act to anyone.

An emergency on board, such as a fire or a failure, after which the aircraft flew on with no one in control (proposed; not established). Variants of this were widely discussed in 2014, some proposing that the crew turned back towards an airport and were then overcome. The investigation could not draw definitive conclusions either way.

A landing somewhere, or a secret diversion to a named airfield (ruled out by the debris and the satellite data). Wreckage from the aircraft has washed up on Indian Ocean shores, and the satellite data end over the southern Indian Ocean. None of these claims rests on evidence that has survived examination.

Current status

Partially explained. The broad course of events is established: a manual turn back, some seven hours of further flight, and an end in the southern Indian Ocean, confirmed by recovered debris. What is not established is why the aircraft turned back, who was flying it, and where it lies. Those questions are unlikely to be answered without the wreck and its flight recorders. The record will change on any find by the extended Ocean Infinity search, whose next window runs from November 2026 to April 2027, or by any later search.

Last reviewed: September 2026. Records are provisional. Where the evidence changes, the entry changes. Found an error? Tell us.