Search for Flight MH370 Marred by Bad Information and Bad Leads

March 13, 2014— -- The frustration of the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has been compounded early mistakes, incorrect information and bad leads.

No trace of the Boeing 777 and the 239 people on board have been found and few details about what could have happened to the plane have been confirmed.

Photos: Search For Missing Plane

Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin said today officials "have looked at every lead and in most cases — in fact in all cases — that we have pursued, we have not found anything positive."

Here's a look at what information has been incorrect and the dead-end leads that have been dismissed.

Timeline of Events

Airline officials said on Saturday they lost contact with the plane two hours into the Kuala Lumpur-to-Beijing flight, at 2:40 am local time.

Officials later corrected the record to say the flight completely disappeared from radar at 1:30 a.m.

The time discrepancy had initially led to speculation the flight could have crashed somewhere between Vietnam and China.

No-Show Passengers

Officials initially said four or five passengers had checked in for the flight, didn't board and had to have their luggage taken off the plane before it departed for Beijing.

The mysterious passengers caused speculation about possible terrorism. On Wednesday, officials said some passengers with reservations never checked in but their seats were given to standby passengers and no baggage was removed

Who Is the Man With the Stolen Passport?

Malaysia's Civil Aviation Chief Azaharuddin Abdul Rahman said officials had reviewed surveillance tape of the plane's boarding and got a look at two men on board who used stolen passports.

When pressed to describe them, Rahman said on Monday that one of the men is black.

The next day, Malaysian Police Chief Khalid Abu Bakar said the first man, named Pouria Nour Mohammad Mehrdad, 19, was likely trying to enter Germany to seek asylum. His mother contacted authorities after he didn't arrive in Frankfurt. Interpol later identified the other man as Delavar Syed Mohammad Reza, 29.

Both men were Iranian and neither was black.

Satellite Photos

Satellite images posted on a Chinese government website appear to show three unidentified floating objects in the waters between Malaysia and Vietnam east of the flight path of the missing plane.

The blurry images were taken by Chinese satellites on Sunday and loaded onto a website operated by China's national defense science and technology ministry. It described one of the images as "some debris in the area where the Malaysian Airlines passenger plane lost contact and was suspected to crash."

Malaysian officials said today that photos were posted by mistake and the objects had nothing to do with flight MH370. Nevertheless, a Malaysian plane was sent to check out the objects and found nothing.

Did the Plane Keep Flying?

Hishamuddin dismissed a report by the Wall Street Journal that signals sent by the plane's Rolls Royce engine indicated the plane kept flying for up to five hours.

He didn't dispute the plane could have kept flying, but said Rolls Royce did not receive any signals from the engine after it vanished from radar.

Oil Slicks

Two large oil slicks were spotted off the southern tip of Vietnam on Saturday, suggesting the airplane had crashed into the ocean without sending a distress call.

It was later determined through samples from the oil slick that it was not from the plane.

Orange Object

An orange object spotted floating in the ocean was originally thought to be a life raft from the plane.

Vietnam's National Committee for Search and Rescue later told ABC News the object had nothing to do with the plane wreckage