What we know about the loss of MH370

KEY FACTS ABOUT MALAYSIA AIRLINES FLIGHT MH370

PASSENGERS AND CREW

- The Boeing 777-200 plane was carrying 227 passengers and a crew of 12

- The flight manifest includes 14 nationalities. Two-thirds of the passengers were Chinese citizens

- Veteran pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah headed an all-Malaysian crew

- Seven people from Australia were on board: Rodney and Mary Burrows; Catherine and Robert Lawton; Li Yuan; Gu Naijun; and New Zealander Paul Weeks.

ROUTE

- Flying a commonly used route, MH370 departed from Kuala Lumpur airport at 12.21am March 8, 2014, and was scheduled to land in Beijing at 6.30am.

DISAPPEARANCE

- Less than an hour after take-off contact with the plane was lost

- "Good night Malaysian three seven zero" were the last words spoken from the cockpit

- No distress signal was transmitted

- Malaysian authorities said the aircraft's transponders were manually shut off as it crossed from Malaysian into Vietnamese airspace.

- Analysis of flight data led search authorities to believe the plane headed to the Southern Indian Ocean and crashed into the sea.

- In March 2016 it was announced that two pieces of debris found off the coast of east Africa were consistent with panels from the Boeing 777 aircraft.