Aviation accidents and incidents cause of the crash; the minority report suggests an explosion was the likely cause. 239: On March 8, 2014, a Boeing 777-200ER, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, flying from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China, lost contact with air traffic controllers over the South China Sea, deviated from its planned route, and was presumed lost in the southern Indian Ocean. It carried 12 Malaysian crew members and 227 passengers from 15 nations. A multinational search effort, the most extensive and expensive in aviation history, has thus far failed to locate them, though debris from the aircraft were recovered on July 29,
Analysis of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 satellite communications China Standard Time (CST) on 8 March (06:30 MYT; 22:30 UTC, 7 March). At 7:24 MYT/CST, Malaysia Airlines issued a media statement that Flight 370 was missing. The datalink for Malaysia Airline's avionics communications at the time of the incident was supplied by SITA, which contracted with Inmarsat to provide a satellite communication link using Inmarsat's "Classic Aero" service. Aeronautical satellite communication (SATCOM) systems are used to transmit messages from the aircraft cockpit as well as automated messages from on-board systems using the ACARS communications protocol, but may also be used to transmit FANS and ATN messages and provide voice,