Missing Malaysia Airlines Plane: What We Know Now
Chinese families are outraged at Malaysian authorities during investigatoin.
March 25, 2014, 10:32 AM ET
• 1 min read
March 25, 2014— -- The search for evidence of Malaysia Airlines flight #MH370 was suspended today because of rough weather, but the number of ships and planes heading to the area to hunt for the missing plane is growing.
The lack of concrete data about what happened to the plane and its 239 passengers has left their families - and the world - with more questions than answers.
Here's what we know now as of now about the investigation into missing flight MH370.
Check out ABC News' photos of the search for the flight here, too.
The Malaysian government announced Monday that new data, analyzed in a groundbreaking way by British company Inmarsat, showed the flight ended in the south Indian Ocean, 1,500 miles off the coast of Perth, Australia. The data also showed that the plane went down between 8:10 a.m. and 9:15 a.m. local time. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Monday that there were likely no survivors of the flight, sending shock waves through the families of passengers who had gathered in Beijing to await word on the search for the plane. Many family members protested Malaysia's handling of the investigation and accused the government of lying and hiding the truth. The search along a possible "northern corridor" has been called off. Search teams are now squarely focused on the area in the south Indian Ocean. The current search area is some 469,407 square nautical miles, which is equal to 621,000 square miles on land. It is an area about the size of Alaska. Reports of objects floating on the sea in the search area have trickled in over recent days. The sightings have come from military and civilian aircraft searching the area. No ships have been able to locate floating objects on water to see if they match the plane. The difficulty of the search was expressed by Australia's Deputy Defense Chief Air Marshal Mark Binskin when he said today, "We're not searching for a needle in a haystack. We're still trying to define where the haystack is." No parts of the plane or concrete evidence of a crash has been obtained. The FBI is still probing the pilot's at-home flight simulator for clues, but initial looks into the simulator found nothing suspicious. Angry Chinese family members of those on board Malaysia Airlines flight 370 defied China's ban on protests today to demonstrate outside the Malaysian embassy and demand proof that the plane had plunged into the sea with no hope of survivors."We want them to give us the truth," one man who said he had a family member on board but declined to give his name told ABC News. "There is no evidence to say anything." Lawyers have arrived at the hotel seeking to represent families in lawsuits against various stakeholders in the plane's disappearance, including U.S. company Boeing. 239 people were on board the flight, including 227 passengers (including one infant and one toddler) and 12 crew members. Three Americans, including two children, are among the missing. Philip Wood, 50, an IBM executive, had just come from Texas where he was visiting family on his way to Beijing. There was a total of 14 nationalities on board, but 152 passengers were Chinese. Twenty passengers on the plane worked for the Austin, Texas, company Freescale Semiconductor. Another passenger, Chng Mei Ling, worked as an engineer for the Pennsylvania company Flexsys America LP. Pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, was a veteran pilot who joined Malaysia Airlines in 1981 and had over 18,000 flying hours.