NewsContent:2014/Day 001/MSM
Source: Compiled from several chronologies, listed here
Flight MH370, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, left the KL International Airport at 12.41am and disappeared from radar screens about an hour later while flying over the South China Sea. It was to have landed in Beijing at 6.30am on the same day.
- A search and rescue (SAR) operation for the missing aircraft was launched at 5.30am, involving 15 RMAF aircraft, including four Hercules C130, a CN 235, four EC 725 and two Augusta helicopters, and nine ships comprising six from the Royal Malaysian Navy (RMN) and three from the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA).
- MAS group chief executive officer Ahmad Jauhari Yahya confirmed the disappearance of the aircraft at 7.30am. The passengers comprised 38 Malaysians, China (153), Indonesia (seven), Australia (seven), France (three), United States (three), New Zealand (two), Ukraine (two), Canada (two), Russia (one), Italy (one), Taiwan (one), Holland (one) and Austria (one).
March 8 - Search and rescue (SAR) operation for the missing aircraft launched in the South China Sea.
March 8, 2014: Air traffic control loses contact with the plane 40 minutes into a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing. An air and sea search begins four hours later in the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea. (SCMP -heck ref to gulf of Thailand)
•Missing plane last has contact with air traffic controllers 120 nautical miles off the east coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu. •Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam says plane failed to check in as scheduled at 17:21 GMT while flying over sea between Malaysia and Ho Chi Minh City. •Flight tracking website flightaware.com shows plane flew northeast over Malaysia after take off and climbed to altitude of 35,000 feet. The flight vanished from website's tracking records a minute later while still climbing. •Malaysia search ships see no sign of wreckage in area where flights last made contact. Vietnam says giant oil slick and column of smoke seen in its waters. •Two men from Austria and Italy, listed among the passengers on a missing Malaysia Airlines flight, are not in fact on board. They say their passports were stolen</A> .