Timeline: The search for missing plane MH370

MH370 has been missing for a year Credit: REUTERS/Olivia Harris

This Sunday will mark a year since Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 disappeared while travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.

As the world prepares to remember those who went missing without a trace ITV News takes a look at the timeline of events surrounding MH370's 'disappearance':

  • 8th March, 2014 at 12.41am - Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 takes off from Kuala Lumpur, headed for Beijing, with 227 passengers and 12 crew on board

  • 8th March, 2014 at 2.14am - The Boeing 777 plane is last seen on military radar. Half an hour later the public are told contact with the plane has been lost

  • 10th March, 2014 - A plane door is reportedly spotted in Vietnamese waters but aircraft searches find nothing

  • 11th March, 2014 - The search for the missing plane is widened to cover a 115-nautical mile radius as 34 aircraft and 40 ships from several countries join the search

  • 13th March, 2014 - The search area is expanded to cover the Andaman Sea and beyond

  • 15th March, 2014 - Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak says the missing airliner was deliberately diverted and continued flying for more than six hours after losing contact with the ground

  • 24th April, 2014 - 'Search and rescue' efforts officially become a 'search and recovery' mission ahead of an underwater search

  • June 2014 - A preliminary report issued by Australian authorities suggests MH370's crew became incapacitated, possibly due to oxygen starvation, and plane continued on autopilot

  • 28th August, 2014 - Suggestion from Australian government that MH370 "might have turned south a little earlier than we have previously expected"

  • October 2014 - New underwater search for the plane is underway, after four-month lull, and involves ships dragging sonar devices through the water about 100m above the seabed to hunt for wreckage

  • 28th January, 2015 - The disappearance of MH370 is officially declared an "accident" by Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation as it is concluded the aircraft exhausted its fuel "over a defined area of the southern Indian Ocean"

  • 7th March, 2015 - Malaysia's transport minister, Liow Tiong Lai, says data will be re-examined and a new plan formulated if the plane is not found by the end of May

  • 8th March, 2015 - Malaysian investigation team release interim report on the first anniversary of the disappearance