One year later: What we do, don't know about MH370

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[h=4]One year later: What we do, don't know about MH370[/h]Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished while en route from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing on March 8, 2014, with no signals or warnings of anything wrong. Its disappearance remains the greatest commercial aviation mystery ever.

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Very little new information has surfaced one year after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing. Here's a look back at what has happened since it disappeared with 239 people on board. VPC


Kelly Wen, wife of a Chinese passenger onboard the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 looks at an airplane poster during an event to mark one year anniversary of the pane disappearance in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on March 6, 2015.(Photo: Vincent Thian, AP)


Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished while en route from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing on March 8, 2014, with no signals or warnings of anything wrong. Its disappearance remains the greatest commercial aviation mystery ever.
Here's a look at what we do and don't know about the plane, one year later.
WHAT WE KNOW:
There were 239 people aboard. More than half were Chinese, and three were Americans, including one infant. The pilot, Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, had 8,365 flying hours and joined the airline in 1981. The first officer, Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, of Malaysia joined the airline in 2007 and had 2,763 total flight hours. The Boeing 777 last made contact with air traffic control at 2:40 a.m. local time (1:40 p.m. ET), about two hours after taking off.
• We may learn more Saturday: Malaysia's government has said it will release an interim report about what happened on Saturday. However, The report — required by the United Nations' International Civil Aviation Organization within a year of an air accident — will focus on the technical investigation but won't draw conclusions about the jet's fate.

The ship HMAS Success is viewed from a Royal New Zealand Air Force P3 Orion while both search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the southern Indian Ocean, near the coast of Western Australia, on March 31, 2014.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Rob Griffith, AP)

• The search is ongoing: Four ships are currently deploying submersibles with sonar to scan for any sign of debris. So far they have scoured more than 10,000 square miles, an area nearly the size of Massachusetts. The goal is to search a total of 23,000 square miles — the size of West Virginia — by May.
• It could take years to find the wreckage: Many point to Air France Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, which crashed into the Atlantic on June 1, 2009, with 228 people on board. Floating debris from that crash was found after a few days, but it took another two years before locating the wreckage and recovering the "black boxes."

Relatives of Chinese passengers onboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 offer prayers during a candlelight vigil for their loved ones at a hotel in Beijing, China, on April 8, 2014.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Andy Wong, AP)

• It's officially an 'accident': Malaysian investigators declared the disappearance of Flight 370 an accident in January, clearing the way for families to obtain death certificates and pursue compensation claims, such as life insurance beyond the $50,000 the airline had already offered. But we don't really know what happened.
USA TODAY
Malaysia declares Flight 370 disappearance an 'accident'



• Theories abound: Ideas about what happened on the Beijing-bound flight include catastrophic failure, mechanical failure or pilot error. At one point, a link to terrorism or possible piracy was being considered, but that appears to have been largely ruled out. Pilot sabotage is another theory because of reports the flight's data reporting system and transponder were shut down before the plane disappeared.
USA TODAY
6 theories on what happened to Malaysia Flight 370

A young Malaysian boy prays at an event for the missing Malaysia Airline Flight 370, at a shopping mallnon the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on March 18, 2014.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Joshua Paul, AP)

• Three large, commercial planes faced catastrophe in past year: Four months after Flight 370 disappeared, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17, killing all 298 passengers and crew aboard the jet flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. Then, AirAsia Flight 8501 crashed into the Java Sea on Dec. 28 while flying from Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city, to Singapore. All 162 people on board were killed.
USA TODAY
Hard for Malaysia Airlines to survive after two disasters



• Families cling to hope: Some of the relatives of those aboard the jetliner hope the plane will yet be found with passengers alive. "The reality is there's no proof they're dead or that the plane crashed," said Sarah Bajc, a U.S. citizen whose partner Philip Wood, 50, an IBM executive from Texas, was the only American on the flight.
USA TODAY
China's MH370 relatives cling to hope 10 months later



WHAT WE DON'T KNOW
• Location of plane when it vanished: Air traffic controllers don't know where the jet went. Radar and satellite data suggest it veered west off course and then south toward the Indian Ocean. And some observers have questioned whether satellite pings from the plane during its flight really point to where it went down.
USA TODAY
One year later, vanished Flight 370 still a mystery



• Debris and location of crash: Not a single scrap of debris has been found despite a non-stop search along the depths of the southern Indian Ocean, where authorities believe the airliner crashed after it ran out of fuel. But evidence of the plane's route is so scant that even the suspected crash region could be off the mark.

Chinese family members of passengers on board the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 rest after praying at a temple in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on March 1, 2015.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Vincent Thian, AP)

• When the search will end: The hunt cannot go on forever, Australian Transport Minister Warren Truss told Reuters this week. He said a decision must be made soon whether to abandon the search or expand it to an even more vast area.
Contributing: Calum Macleod, Bart Jansen, Alia Dastagir
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