Boeing 777 debris found on the island of Reunion, confirmed by Malaysia’s leader today to be from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, proves it crashed in the Indian Ocean. The cause of the disaster however remains unknown.
Below are key things we know, and still don’t know, in the mysterious case of MH370.
What we know
1. We know MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur with 227 passengers and 12 crew at 12.41 am on March 8 last year, climbing out over the South China Sea on a clear night, bound for Beijing.
2. We know the plane was piloted by Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, a highly respected airman with 33 years of experience at the state flag carrier. Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, was his co-pilot.
3. We know that just before MH370 was to pass into Vietnam’s air-traffic control region, someone in the cockpit sent the final voice message back to Malaysian controllers: “Good night, Malaysian Three Seven Zero,” at 1.19am.
4. We know that around 1.30 am, tracking systems such as the jet’s transponder were shut off, yet the plane appeared on military radar until 2.15 am as it turned back over Malaysia and flew out to the Indian Ocean.
5. We know that the 30-day beacon battery on MH370’s flight data recorder was later discovered to have expired more than a year before take-off, raising questions over whether this contributed to the inability of a multi-nation search to find an Indian Ocean crash site.