Information On Vanished MH370

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 30 (Bernama) -- The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines (MAS) Flight MH370 in the early hours of March 8, last year, remains a mystery. The Boeing 777-200ER aircraft was enroute to Beijing, China from the KL International Airport with 239 passengers and crew on board, when it lost contact with the Air Tower Control, barely an hour after taking off at 12.41am. The following are particulars and relevant information on the ill-fated flight: Aircraft -------- * The aircraft was powered by two Rolls Royce Trent 892 engines. * Delivered to MAS in May, 2002, it had since recorded 53,465.21 hours with a total of 7,525 cycles. * Underwent maintenance on Feb 23, 2014 and the next scheduled maintenance was on June 19, 2014. * It was piloted by Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah and first officer Fariq Abdul Hamid. * Took off from KLIA at 12.41am and scheduled to arrive in Beijing at 6.30am the same day. * Lost contact with the Air Traffic Control at 1.30am. * On March 24, 2014, Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that the flight path of MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean. Passengers : 239 ---------- * Crew: 12 (all Malaysians) * Passengers: 227 (including two infants) comprised 13 nationalities : ** Malaysia - 38 ** China - 152 ** Indonesia - 7 ** Australia - 7 ** France - 4 ** United States - 3 ** New Zealand - 2 ** Ukraine - 2 ** Canada - 2 ** Russia - 1 ** Taiwan - 1 ** The Netherlands - 1 ** India - 5 ** Iran - 2 Search and Rescue ----------------- * At least 26 countries were involved in the Search and Rescue operation and numerous companies such as Petronas, Boustead and Deftech provided technological assitance in the search. * Initial search areas included the South China Sea and Melaka Strait. Search was later expanded to two corridors, totalling 7.68 million square kilometers. The northern corridors covered north of Thailand to the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan while the southern corridor covered Indonesia right up to the southern part of the Indian Ocean. * Subsequently, focus of the search was shifted to the Indian Ocean after satellite data showed that the flight ended there. * As at Jan 28, 2015, a total of 18,000 square kilometres of the sea floor of the Indian Ocean had been scoured. -- BERNAMA