Friday marks ten years since Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished without a trace, tragically becoming one of the world’s great aviation mysteries.
The plane carrying 239 people bound for Beijing disappeared from radar screens on March 8, 2014, shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur.
Despite the largest search in aviation history, which combed 46,332 square miles of the sea floor of the southern Indian Ocean, only a few fragments of the Boeing 777-200ER plane have been found, scattered on beaches thousands of miles apart.
The operation was suspended in January 2017.
The families of those who were lost to the abyss have long hoped that by finding the missing plane, authorities would finally be able to give them an answer to the question that has haunted them for a decade: What happened to their loved ones?
In the years since, the void left by the missing wreckage has been filled by speculation and outlandish conspiracy theories, when the fact is that still – after ten years – no one alive today truly knows beyond reasonable doubt what happened.
Hopes were once again raised this week that the question could be answered with the announcement that Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim would be ‘happy to reopen’ the search if ‘compelling’ evidence emerged.
This came after Texas robotics firm Ocean Infinity said it had proposed a new search for the missing jetliner to the Malaysian government while claiming to have new evidence – six years after carrying out an unsuccessful search in 2018.
While it remains to be seen whether a new search will unearth any new clues, the families of the victims remain in limbo. Today, as they mark 10 years since their loved ones were lost, MailOnline looks back at the MH370 tragedy.
Hellbound and Down 