All times are Malaysia time (MYT) on 8 March 2014 unless stated. This timeline reflects what official investigations established; where a step is inferred from data rather than directly observed, it says so.
The flight
- 00:42 — MH370 departs Kuala Lumpur for Beijing. Boeing 777-200ER, 227 passengers, 12 crew.
- 01:07 — Final ACARS transmission received. ACARS is the automated system that reports maintenance and status data to the airline.
- 01:19 — Final voice transmission from the cockpit, as the flight is handed from Malaysian to Vietnamese air traffic control.
- 01:21 — The transponder stops transmitting. The aircraft disappears from secondary radar.
- 01:22 onwards — Malaysian military primary radar tracks an unidentified aircraft turning back across the Malay Peninsula, then northwest up the Strait of Malacca. This track is later assessed as MH370.
- 02:22 — Last primary radar contact, northwest of Penang.
- 02:25 — The satellite terminal aboard logs on to the Inmarsat network — consistent with power being restored to it after an interruption.
- 02:25 to 08:11 — Six further automated handshakes with the satellite. These are not position reports, but their timing and frequency shift constrain the aircraft's distance and speed relative to the satellite.
- 08:11 — Final complete handshake. The analysis of this exchange defines the "seventh arc" in the southern Indian Ocean.
- 08:19 — A partial, unanswered transmission from the aircraft, consistent with the satellite terminal rebooting after a power interruption — which is what happens when engines flame out from fuel exhaustion and the auxiliary power unit starts.
- 09:15 — The next scheduled handshake receives no response. The aircraft is gone.
The searching
- March 2014 — Initial search concentrates in the South China Sea, on the planned route. It is in the wrong ocean; the Inmarsat analysis has not yet been completed.
- Late March 2014 — Analysis of the handshakes redirects the search to the southern Indian Ocean, thousands of kilometres away.
- April 2014 — Acoustic signals detected and initially thought to be from the flight recorders. They are later assessed as not from the aircraft. The recorder beacons' 30-day life expires around this point.
- Oct 2014 – Jan 2017 — Australian-led underwater search covers roughly 120,000 square kilometres of the seventh arc. Nothing is found.
- July 2015 — A flaperon washes ashore on Réunion and is confirmed as MH370. Further debris is later recovered in Mozambique, Tanzania, Madagascar and South Africa.
- 2018 — Ocean Infinity conducts a private search on a no-find-no-fee basis, covering additional area to the north. Nothing is found.
- July 2018 — The Malaysian safety investigation report is published. It cannot determine the cause, does not rule out third-party interference, and does not conclude the crew were responsible.
- 2025 — Ocean Infinity returns to the search area under a renewed arrangement with Malaysia, using improved autonomous vehicles and refined drift analysis.
What the timeline shows
Two things stand out. The first is how much is known: the aircraft's movements are constrained far more tightly than the phrase "vanished without trace" suggests. The second is the gap between 02:22 and 08:11 — nearly six hours during which the only information is seven automated handshakes never designed to locate anything.