Timeline of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 of seafloor topography and continued until December that year. An underwater search began in October 2014 but failed to recover anything of value and was suspended in January 2017 after searching of the southern Indian Ocean. On 29 July 2015, a flaperon from Flight 370 was discovered on a beach in Réunion, approximately west of the underwater search area; this location is consistent with drift from the underwater search area over the intervening 16 months. Flight 370 took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 00:42 local time (MYT; ) en route to Beijing Capital International Airport, where it was
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Airlines from China, where the majority of passengers were from, were down 60% in March. In late March, several major Chinese ticketing agencies—eLong, LY.com, Qunar and Mango—discontinued the sale of airline tickets to Malaysia and several large Chinese travel agencies reported a 50-percent drop in tourists compared to the same period the year before. China was the third largest source of visitors to Malaysia prior to Flight 370's disappearance, accounting for 1.79 million tourists in 2013. One market analyst predicted a 20–40% drop in Chinese tourists to Malaysia, resulting in a loss of 4–8 billion yuan (RM2.1–4.2 billion; US$0.65–1.3 billion).