KUALA LUMPUR, March 8 ― 1. A search for the plane is launched in waters off Vietnam on March 9 according to the location from which the last message from the Boeing 777 was sent to air traffic control. The plane had just crossed into Vietnam airspace and Vietnamese air authorities had contacted Malaysian authorities when the plane failed to turn up on their radar as expected. The search is eventually expanded up the Vietnamese coast into the South China Sea.
2. Attention is soon turned to the Straits of Malacca and the Andaman Sea after a number of discoveries where investigators claimed they found sections of the plane. This was also in line with claims that the plane was detected by the military making a “u-turn” into Malaysian airspace before it went missing.
3. The Indian Ocean remains the biggest and longest search area. It commenced on March 14, after the White House cited “new information” MH370 might have flown on after losing contact. The South China Sea search is called off.
Analysis of satellite data and “electronic handshakes” emitted by the plane suggested that the plane's last known location was somewhere along one of two huge arcs stretching north into Central Asia and south into the Indian Ocean.
A Chinese search ship detects an underwater “pulse signal” in the Indian Ocean on April 5. More “pings” are detected by other vessels in subsequent days, but they cease before they are pinpointed. Some experts later express doubt they were related to MH370.
Weeks later, an unmanned submarine known as Bluefin-21, which uses side-scan sonar to capture images of the ocean bottom, is launched.
4. French officials on Reunion Island notify the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) on July 29, 2015, of the discovery of what appears to be part of a plane wing. Based on photos, the wreckage appears to have come from a Boeing 777, the same model as MH370. On August 6, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak confirmed that the part, a flaperon, was from the ill-fated plane.
“Today, 515 days since the plane disappeared, it is with a very heavy heart that I must tell you an international team of experts has conclusively confirmed the aircraft debris found on Reunion Island is indeed from MH370,” he said.
“We now have physical evidence that, as I announced on March 24 last year, Flight MH370 tragically ended in the southern Indian Ocean.”
The flaperon was found by council worker Johnny Beque while cleaning the beach. On Sunday, Begue revealed he had handed a new suspected object to police immediately after finding it last Thursday.
He said he was out jogging by the sea shore when he found the object measuring about 40cm by 20cm, which had a blue mark on the surface and was grey underneath.
Begue said it was of the same lightweight “honeycomb” construction as the flaperon piece.
5. On March 2, a piece of suspected MH370 debris is found on a sandbank off Mozambique by American lawyer, Blaine Gibson, who is on a self-funded mission to find the plane. It had the words “No step” written on it and is believed to be from the horizontal part of an airliner's tail. It is being sent to Australia for analysis.
Earlier this year, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau announced on Jan 13 that the team investigating the disappearance will not expand its search zone without new clues about the plane’s location. Malaysian authorities confirmed that it was not from MH370.
