Every day throughout the world, more than eight million people board planes to fly to their destinations.
In the 21st century, air travel is one of the safest forms of transportation thanks to the sophistication of aircraft, the professionalism of Air Traffic Controllers, and strict monitoring by safety regulators.
Furthermore, Malaysia Airlines had a strong safety record, and an enviable reputation within the airline industry as a world class premium carrier.
On board the Boeing 777 was the usual mix of travellers - business people, holiday makers, lovers, relatives looking forward to family reunions.
The plane took off without incident at 12.41am local time.
Less than an hour later, the aircraft had lost contact with Air Traffic Control and disappeared from standard radars.
Military radars showed the plane had in fact diverted from its planned flight path back over the Malay Peninsula.
Its last confirmed position before going out of radar range was 370km north-west of Penang, in north-western Malaysia.
Exactly what was occurring on board at that time remains unknown.
AT 85, Irene Burrows is hoping she lives long enough to find out what happened to MH370.
The mother and mother-in-law of Australian passengers Rodney and Mary Burrows, Irene has long accepted she will never see her son and his wife again.
But she has not given up hope the jet will be found and an explanation provided for its mysterious disappearance.
“I was hoping before Christmas (it would be found) and then before Rodney’s 60th,” says Irene from her central Queensland home at Biloela.
“You’re always hoping you’ll hear something.
“For the first week, we thought they’d find it.
“Now I hope that it happens in our lifetime. My husband (George) is 87, and I’m 85.
“That’s probably the only thing that keeps us going. I’d love to know before I go.”
Incredibly in an age of sophisticated technology, where satellite dishes can reportedly spot a cricket ball in a desert, there are more questions than answers about MH370’s fate.
Hard facts about the aircraft’s disappearance are so few they barely fill a page.
We know the Malaysia Airlines’ flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing took off at 12.41am local time.
We know the weather conditions were good, and the pilot and copilot were well respected with 40-years’ flying experience between them.
We know that the first 38-minutes of the flight were unremarkable, at least as far as those on the ground were concerned.
We know that after the aircraft’s final transmission to Kuala Lumpur Air Traffic Control — “Goodnight Malaysian three-seven-zero” — the Boeing 777 was never heard from again other than a series of satellite pings.
Beyond that, piecing together the fate of MH370 has been an exercise bogged down in confusion and contradictions, wild speculation and for the next-of-kin, enormous grief and frustration.
For the first week after the flight’s disappearance it was thought the plane had crashed into the South China Sea or Gulf of Thailand.
It took the release of military radar data followed by satellite information for the search focus to shift to a remote stretch of the southern Indian Ocean.
Now after extensive air searches and a costly and ongoing underwater search, nothing of the Boeing 777 has been found. Not so much as a lifejacket, a seat or an oil slick.
Detailed drift modelling forecast wreckage would start washing up on the shores of western Indonesia late last year. Nothing appeared.
Last moth Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief Martin Dolan said they were reviewing the drift modelling to try to work out where something might materialise.
But he admitted it was more likely any surface debris had now sunk.
The question of the absent wreckage is just one of many facing searchers who are the first to point out they are working with estimates and probabilities — not certainties in relation to the missing aircraft.
To put the size of the challenge into context, Commissioner Dolan points out that in the 2009 case of Air France Flight 447 they knew where the A330 crashed in the Atlantic Ocean but it still took two years to find it.
For the first week after the flight’s disappearance it was thought the plane had crashed into the South China Sea or Gulf of Thailand.
It took the release of military radar data followed by satellite information for the search focus to shift to a remote stretch of the southern Indian Ocean.
Now after extensive air searches and a costly and ongoing underwater search, nothing of the Boeing 777 has been found. Not so much as a lifejacket, a seat or an oil slick.
Detailed drift modelling forecast wreckage would start washing up on the shores of western Indonesia late last year. Nothing appeared.
Last moth Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief Martin Dolan said they were reviewing the drift modelling to try to work out where something might materialise.
But he admitted it was more likely any surface debris had now sunk.
The question of the absent wreckage is just one of many facing searchers who are the first to point out they are working with estimates and probabilities — not certainties in relation to the missing aircraft.
To put the size of the challenge into context, Commissioner Dolan points out that in the 2009 case of Air France Flight 447 they knew where the A330 crashed in the Atlantic Ocean but it still took two years to find it.
“The search equipment and the search in terms of the area being covered is all meeting and in some cases exceeding our expectations,” Dolan says.
“If all goes in accordance to plan as we expect it will, we’ll have completed our search by the end of May.”
The exercise has not been cheap.
Australia’s government allocated $89.9 million towards the search, being jointly funded by Malaysia’s government.
What happens when the money runs out and the plane still hasn’t been found, is one of the multitude of questions hanging over MH370.
First and foremost — why did the plane divert so dramatically from its path in the first place?
Was it in some strife?
Was it a deliberate act by the pilot or first officer?
Was it under control by someone other than the pilots?
They are not the only questions that have gone unanswered in the last year.
Why didn’t Malaysia send up fighter jets to escort the plane — when it stopped communicating with ATC and diverted from its course?
Why did it take four-hours for the plane’s disappearance to be referred by Air Traffic Control to Malaysian search and rescue authorities?
And the most confounding — how could an aircraft as sophisticated as a Boeing 777-200ER carrying 239 people simply disappear without a trace?
So baffling is the mystery of MH370, no-one has been able to come up with an explanation considered plausible.
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