MH370: The timeline

00:41 am
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 takes off from Kuala Lumpur with 227 passengers (154 Chinese citizens) and 12 crew members, scheduled to arrive in Beijing just under six hours later.

1:20 am
Contact with the flight is lost believed to be in Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh air traffic control area. 8:44 am Malaysia confirms the plane has gone missing.

8:44 am
Malaysia confirms the plane has gone missing.

Around 14:00 pm
Relatives of Chinese passengers on MH370 arrive at Beijing Lido Hotel, waiting for further news.

20:00 pm
Two passengers reportedly boarded the plane using stolen passports.

March 9

Chinese rescue vessels and medical teams arrive at the search site in South China Sea.

March 10

China sends four patrol and rescue vessels, two naval warships, and adjusts high-resolution satellites.

March 11

First group of relatives of Chinese passengers on MH370 arrive in Kuala Lumpur. Ships and planes from about 10 countries and regions scour the waters to search for the missing flight. No solid clues are found.

March 12

Malaysia's air force chief denies reports that military radar tracked MH370 flying over the Strait of Malacca, but the possibility that the aircraft turned back before it vanished from radar screens not ruled out.

March 13

The White House spokesman said the United States will search the Indian Ocean, west of Malaysia.

March 15

Satellite data shows the plane flew for at least five hours after communications equipment was turned off, International Maritime Satellite Organization reported.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak says the disappearance of the missing jet was deliberate.

The Malaysian authorities try to trace the missing jet in one of the two possible corridors -- a northern one from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand and a southern one stretching from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean.

March 17

Malaysian officials confirm "All right, good night", spoken by the co-pilot, were the last words from the missing plane. Police raid homes of suspected pilots Zaharie Ahmad Shah and Fariq Abdul Hamid.

March 18

Background checks on all passengers from the Chinese mainland on board the flight find no evidence of links to sabotage or terrorism.

March 20

Australia said it has spotted two objects possibly related to the missing plane in the southern Indian Ocean on satellite images, about 2,500 kilometers southwest of the Australian port city of Perth.

March 21

Chinese icebreaker Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, participates in the hunt for signs of MH370.

March 24

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak says fresh analysis of satellite data tracking MH370 shows the flight went down with passengers and crew members in the southern Indian Ocean, west of Perth - a remote location, far from any possible landing sites.

Malaysia Airlines sends text messages to families saying it has to be assumed that that none of those on board MH370 survived.

April 29

Air search for the missing flight stopped. Lead by Australia, the underwater search in the south Indian Ocean starts.

May 2

The recovery center in Lido Hotel in Beijing closed. Most of missing passengers' relatives and friends, who had been waiting for further information since the incident in the center, went back home.

August 8

Australia searches the seabed for possible clues. Nov. 26 Australia claims they searched 7,000 square kilometers of seabed but found nothing.

Jan 28

2015 Malaysia's deputy transport minister Aziz Kaprawi says the Department of Civil Aviation will release an interim report on the investigation into the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 on March 7, a day before the one-year anniversary of the disappearance.