MH370 disappeared ten years ago. Here’s what we know today.

On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was en route from Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, to Beijing, when it deviated from its planned route and turned west over the Malaysian Peninsula.

The plane, a Boeing 777 carrying 239 people from 15 countries, is said to have veered off course and flew south for several hours after radar contact was lost. Some officials believe it crashed somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean after running out of fuel, but extensive search efforts in recent years have yielded no answers, no casualties and no aircraft.

The reason why the plane went off course and its exact location remain today one of the greatest aviation mysteries of all time. This week, officials suggested a renewed search could be launched.

Here’s a quick look at what we know about the plane’s disappearance ten years later.

Researchers searched by air and sea.

The first phase of the search lasted 52 days and was conducted largely from the air. It covered 2.7 million square kilometers and included 334 search flights.

In January 2017, the governments of Australia, Malaysia and China officially halted the underwater search for the plane after combing more than 46,000 square kilometers of the bottom of the Indian Ocean. That effort cost $150 million.

The following January, the Malaysian government began a new search in partnership with Ocean Infinity after receiving pressure from the families of the missing passengers and crew. After a few months, the search led by Ocean Infinity ended as no evidence of the plane’s whereabouts was found.

Have any debris ever been found?

Although no destroyed aircraft was ever found, approximately twenty pieces of debris believed to be from the aircraft were located along the coasts of mainland Africa and on the islands of Madagascar, Mauritius, Réunion and Rodrigues.

In the summer of 2015, researchers determined that a large object that washed up on the coast of Réunion, a French island in the Indian Ocean, was a flaperon from a Boeing 777, making it likely that the debris was from Flight 370 .

Another piece of debris, a triangular piece of fiberglass composite and aluminum with the words “No Step” written on the side, was found in February 2016 on an uninhabited sandbar along the coast of Mozambique.

Then, in September 2016, the Australian government confirmed that a wing flap that washed up on a Tanzanian island came from Flight 370. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau linked its identification numbers to those of the missing Boeing 777.

What are the theories surrounding the plane’s disappearance?

There are a host of theories, ranging from bizarre to provocative, about what caused the plane’s disappearance. Actually there are too many to mention here. The lack of information about what happened to the flight led the public and investigators in different directions.

Some officials believe the plane ran out of fuel, and one theory states that the pilots attempted an emergency landing at sea. Others suggest that one or both pilots lost control of the plane, that one of the pilots was a rogue pilot, or that the plane was hijacked.

What did the official government report say?

After more than four years of searches and investigations, a 495-page report released in 2018 did not provide a conclusive answer to the fate of the plane. The lack of concrete answers devastated the victims’ families, who had hoped for some closure.

Kok Soo Chon, head of the security investigation team, said the available evidence – including the manual deviation of the plane’s flight course and the disabling of a transponder – “irresistibly points” to “unlawful interference”, which could indicate that the plane hyjacked. But there was no evidence of who might have intervened, or why.

The report also closely examined all passengers and the pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, and the first officer, Fariq Abdul Hamid. The report looked at the men’s financial status, health, the tone of their voice on radio communications and even their gait as they walked to work that day. No abnormalities were noted.

What happens now?

Now, ten years after the plane’s disappearance, with no concrete answers or found plane, a new search could soon begin.

Malaysian officials said in a statement this week that the government was willing to discuss a new search operation after being contacted by Ocean Infinity.

Ocean Infinity CEO Oliver Plunkett said in a statement that the company was now in a position to search again, some six years after its previous efforts failed to yield answers.

“This search may be the most challenging and even relevant search out there,” he said. “We have worked with many experts, some outside of Ocean Infinity, to continue analyzing the data in hopes of narrowing the search scope to an area where success may become achievable.”