Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 disappeared on March 8, 2014 after it took off from Kuala Lampur, Malaysia with 239 passengers headed to Beijing, China. After weeks of searches that covered the South China Sea, Strait of Malacca, and sections of the South Indian Ocean off the coast of Australia, satellite data revealed that the missing plane was last detected in a “remote location” of the southern Indian Ocean. During a media briefing on March 24, 2014, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak regretfully informed the families of the passengers on flight MH370 that the plane had disappeared in a location that was far away from any possible landing sites, indicating that the flight ended in the southern Indian Ocean.
The latest information on the flight came from a British satellite maker, Inmarsat. Inmarsat used a new type of analysis, performing calculations on existing data, to pinpoint the plane’s last known location. Based on the analysis, Inmarsat was able to conclude that MH370 traveled along the southern corridor of the search area. Its last recorded position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
An Australian plane found two objects, one described as gray or green and circular and another as orange and rectangular, early on March 24 in the search being conducted off the coast of Australia. This comes in addition to the other objects, believed to be wooden pallets, search crews found in the Indian Ocean over the weekend. The Malaysian government indicated that the missing plane was carrying wooden pallets, but they could not be sure that the pallets found matched the ones onboard the missing aircraft.
What happened to flight MH370 is still unclear. The flight left Kuala Lumpur around midnight and disappeared from the radar just after one in the morning. According to satellite data, which was reviewed later, the plane continued to fly for seven hours. Malaysian authorities are considering hijacking, sabotage terrorism, or issues related to the mental health of the pilots as explanations as to what happened to flight MH370.
For more information about flight MH370 please visit http://abcnews.go.com/International/missing-malaysia-airlines-plane-ended-south-indian-ocean/story?id=23033246.