Timeline of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

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The timeline of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 lists events associated with the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370^[a]—a scheduled, commercial flight operated by Malaysia Airlines from Kuala Lumpur International Airport to Beijing Capital International Airport on 8 March 2014 with 227 passengers and 12 crew. Air traffic control lost contact with Flight 370 less than an hour into the flight, after which it was tracked by military radar crossing the Malay Peninsula and was last located over the Andaman Sea. Analysis of automated communications between the aircraft and a satellite communications network has determined that the aircraft flew into the southern Indian Ocean, before communication ended shortly after 08:19 (UTC+8:00). The disappearance initiated a multi-national search effort that became the most expensive search in aviation history.^[2][3][4][5]

In the weeks after Flight 370's disappearance, the search focused on waters in Southeast Asia and an investigation into the disappearance was opened. After a week of searching, Malaysia announced that analysis of communications between the aircraft and a satellite communications network had found that Flight 370 continued to fly for several hours after it lost contact with air traffic control. Its last communication on the network was made along one of two arcs stretching north-west into Central Asia and southwest into the southern Indian Ocean. The northern arc was discounted and the focus of the search shifted to a remote area of the southern Indian Ocean.

On 18 March, a surface search in the southern Indian Ocean, led by Australia, began; it continued until 28 April and searched 4,500,000 square kilometres (1,700,000 sq mi) of ocean.^[6] On 24 March 2014, Malaysia's Prime Minister announced that Flight 370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean with no survivors. In early April, an effort to find the signals emitted from underwater locator beacons (ULBs) attached to the aircraft's flight recorders, which have a 30- to 40-day battery life, was made. Some possible ULB detections were made and a seafloor sonar survey in the vicinity of the detections to scan the seafloor was initiated. The seafloor sonar survey ended on 28 May and scanned 860 km² (330 sq mi) of seafloor.^[7] Neither the surface search nor the seafloor sonar survey found any objects related to Flight 370.

In May 2014, planning for the next phase of the search was initiated. A bathymetric survey was carried out to measure the seafloor topography in the areas where the next phase was conducted; the survey charted 208,000 km² (80,000 sq mi) of seafloor topography and continued until December that year.^[8] An underwater search began in October 2014 but failed to recover anything of value and was suspended in January 2017 after searching 120,000 km² (46,000 sq mi) of the southern Indian Ocean.^[9] On 29 July 2015, a flaperon from Flight 370 was discovered on a beach in Réunion, approximately 4,000 km (2,500 mi) west of the underwater search area; this location is consistent with drift from the underwater search area over the intervening 16 months.

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