User:AHeneen/sandbox/Search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
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The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is an ongoing effort to locate Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a Boeing 777 aircraft carrying 239 passengers and crew which disappeared on the night of 8 March 2014. It is the largest and most expensive search and rescue effort in modern history. The search has not yielded any confirmed debris from the aircraft.
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![Main map shows southeastern Indian Ocean and western Australia, with the locations of search zones, sonobouy drops, and calculated flight paths. The main map & all three inset maps are bathymetric with land displayed in one color with borders. An inset in the upper left shows the path of the ADV Ocean Shield which towed a Towed Pinger Locator and where it detected acoustic signals; the same inset also shows the seafloor sonar search performed in April-May 2014. An inset in the bottom right shows southeast Asia with the search area along with Flight 370's path and stars noting where it disappeared from secondary radar and disappeared from military radar. A third inset (bottom center) depicts most of the eastern hemisphere and shows Flight 370's planned flight path (Kuala Lumpur to Beijing), the ping corridors announced in mid-March, and locator boxes for the main map and southeast Asia inset.](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/21/MH370_search_March_through_October_2014.svg/640px-MH370_search_March_through_October_2014.svg.png)
The search began soon after Malaysia Airlines issued a media statement at 7:24 MYT that contact had been lost with the aircraft, with a focus on the Gulf of Thailand and South China Sea near the last known location of Flight 370. Flight 370 had departed Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 00:41 MYT (16:41 UTC, 7 March) and last communicated with air traffic control (ATC) at 01:19 MYT while transitioning from Malaysian to Vietnamese controlled airspace. The search was later expanded to the Strait of Malacca and Andaman Sea after a review of military radar revealed that Flight 370 made a sharp left turn and crossed the Malay Peninsula.
On 15 March, based on military radar data and transmissions between the aircraft and an Inmarsat satellite, investigators concluded that the aircraft had diverted from its intended course and headed west across the Malay Peninsula, then continued on a northern or southern track for around seven hours. The focus of the search shifted to the southern part of the Indian Ocean, west of Australia. In the first two weeks of April, aircraft and ships deployed equipment to listen for signals from the underwater locator beacons attached to the aircraft's "black boxes". Four unconfirmed signals were detected between 6 and 8 April near the time the beacons' batteries were were likely to have been exhausted. A robotic submarine searched the seabed near the detected pings until 28 May, with no debris being found.
An analysis of possible flight paths was conducted, identifying a 60,000 square kilometres (23,000 sq mi) search area, approximately 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) west of Perth, Australia, as the most likely region Flight 370 ended. The underwater search of this area is expected to begin in August 2014 and last up to 12 months at a cost of A$60 million (approximately US$56 million or €41 million).