Timeline for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370

March 8,

00:41: Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 takes off from Kuala Lumpur with 227 passengers (including 154Chinese citizens) and 12 crew members aboard the Boeing 777, and is scheduled to arrive in Beijing just under six hours later.

1:20: Contact with the flight is lost when it is believed to be in Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh air traffic control area.

8:44: Malaysia Airlines confirms the plane is missing.

14:00: Relatives of Chinese passengers on Flight MH370 arrive at Beijing Lido Hotel, waiting for further news. 20:00: Two passengers are reported to have boarded the plane using stolen passports.

March 9

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

March 10

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

March 11

The first group of relatives of Chinese passengers on Flight MH370 arrives at Kuala Lumpur.

Ships and planes from about 10 countries and regions scour the waters to search for the missing flight. No wreckage is found.

March 12

Malaysia's air force chief denies reports that military radar tracked Flight MH370flying over the Strait of Malacca, but the possibility that the aircraft turned back before it vanished from radar screens is not ruled out.

March 13

A White House spokesman says the United States will search the Indian Ocean west of Malaysia.

March 15

Satellite data show the plane flew for at least five hours after communication equipment was turned off, the International Maritime Satellite Organization reports. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak says the disappearance of the missing jet was deliberate. Malaysian authorities try to trace the missing jet in one of 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 that "All right, good night", spoken by the copilot, are the last words from the missing plane. Police raid the homes of pilots Zaharie Ahmad Shah and Fariq Abdul Hamid.

March 20

Australia says it has spotted two objects possibly related to the missing plane in the southern Indian Ocean on satellite images, about 2,500 km southwest of Perth.

March 21

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

March 24

Malaysian Prime Minister Razak says fresh analysis of satellite data tracking Flight MH370 shows the flight went down with its passengers and crew in the southern Indian Ocean, west of Perth-in a remote location far from any possible landing sites. Malaysia Airlines sends text messages to families saying it has to be assumed that none of those on board Flight MH370 survived.

April 29

Air searches for the missing flight are halted. The underwater search, led by Australia, starts in the southern Indian Ocean.

May 2

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

Nov 26

Australia says it searched 7,000 sq km of seabed but found nothing.

Jan 28, 2015

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

Jan 29

Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation declares the disappearance of Flight MH370 to be an accident.