The Timeline for Missing Flight MH370

A minute-by-minute account of Flight MH 370 before it vanished.

By
GILLIAN MOHNEY
March 14, 2014, 11:23 AM ET
1 min read

March 14, 2014— -- Nearly a week after Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 went missing, officials are still at a loss for what happened to the jetliner carrying 239 people.

What the fate and the location of the plane remains a mystery, investigators have been able to reconstruct is a timeline of the plane's last contacts.

Follow All the Latest News on Missing Flight MH 370

  • 12:41 a.m.: Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 takes off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia heading for Beijing, China. The plane shows up on radar two minutes after taking off.
  • 1:07 a.m.: The last automated data transmission is sent from the plane. U.S officials told ABC News they believe that sometime after this transmission the data reporting system was shut down. Sometime after this transmission Kuala Lumpur's air traffic control tells the plane's pilot they are handing off to air traffic control based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The pilot responds, "All right. Good night."
  • 1:21 a.m.: The plane's transponder, which transmits location and altitude, shuts down. Sources told ABC News that U.S. officials are “convinced that there was a manual intervention.”
  • 1:22 a.m.: MH370 should have come to the navigational way-point called Igari point. Before it reached this point, Vietnamese air traffic control noticed they had lost contact with MH370, according to the Vietnam’s Civil Aviation Authority.
  • 1:30 a.m.: The last moment that the plane was seen by Malaysian radar.
  • 1:38 a.m.: Air traffic control in Ho Chi Minh City informs Kuala Lumpur air traffic control about the signal loss. Ho Chi Minh City asks two other planes to contact MH370. Neither plane is able to raise the pilot of MH370. At least of the planes report getting a “buzz signal” and no voices, then losing the signal.
  • 2:15 a.m.: A Malaysian military defense radar pick up a plane that is hundreds of miles west of MH370’s last contact point. It’s unclear if that is the missing plane.
  • Following hours: In the hours after contact was lost MH370 "pings" a satellite several times. It's not clear if those pings include data that could reveal the plane's location.
  • 6:32 a.m.: A broadcast call was made from Kuala Lumpur's air traffic control on emergency frequencies asking MH370 to call them.
  • 6:51 a.m.: A broadcast call was made from Ho Chi Minh City's air traffic control on emergency frequencies asking MH370 to call them.

    • ABC News’ Martha Raddatz, David Kerley, Gloria Riviera, Colleen Curry, Molly Hunter Joohee Cho contributed to this report.