Zaharie Ahmad Shah
Captain, Flight 370
The 53-year-old pilot in command. Public debate has treated his home simulator and his last hours as clues. The 2018 safety report did not find a cause and did not charge him.
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Evidence48
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Quick answers
What was Malaysia Airlines Flight 370?
A scheduled Boeing 777-200ER service, 9M-MRO, from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on 8 March 2014. It carried 227 passengers and 12 crew. It never arrived. The wreck has not been found.
When did contact end?
The last ATC voice call was shortly after 01:19 MYT near waypoint IGARI. Secondary radar then ceased. Military primary radar later showed a westward and then southward track. Inmarsat handshakes continued for hours.
Why do officials say the southern Indian Ocean?
Inmarsat handshake timing and frequency-offset analysis, announced by Malaysia on 24 March 2014 and later used by the ATSB, placed the end of flight on a southern arc. Debris later found on western Indian Ocean shores is consistent with that ocean, not with a landing in China.
Has any of the aircraft been found?
Yes, fragments. A right flaperon on Réunion in July 2015 was identified as from 9M-MRO. Other pieces were later accepted or treated as almost certain. The main wreckage and the recorders have not been located.
What did the 2018 Malaysian report conclude?
The Annex 13 safety investigation could not determine the cause. It recorded the reconstructed track, the debris and the limits of the evidence. It did not name a person as responsible.
Who led the ocean search?
After the southern-arc announcement, Australia’s JACC coordinated and the ATSB led the official seabed search west of Australia, with Malaysia and China as partners. That search ended in January 2017. Ocean Infinity searched again in 2018.
The missing were 239 people on a scheduled flight. The living file is ministers, search chiefs and next of kin.
Amateur accusations against named crew are omitted here unless they appear as dated official findings — and the 2018 report has none.
People
Fariq Abdul Hamid
First officer, Flight 370
The 27-year-old copilot on the Beijing sector. He is on the crew list and in the last radio minutes as part of a two-person flight deck. He has not been found.
Najib Razak
Prime Minister of Malaysia, 2014
Announced on 24 March 2014 that satellite analysis placed the end of flight in the southern Indian Ocean. That statement moved the world’s search and did not produce a wreck.
Angus Houston
Chief coordinator, JACC
The retired Australian air chief who became the English-language face of the southern search. His briefings are primary sources for how the ATSB box was explained to the public.
Martin Dolan
Chief commissioner, ATSB
Led the Australian safety agency during the main seabed survey. ATSB technical papers on Inmarsat arcs and search planning are the core English engineering file.
Jiang Hui
Family advocate
A Beijing-based next-of-kin voice often quoted in English and Chinese press. Family groups treated the missing wreck as an unfinished official duty, not as a closed story.
Ministers and searchers left paper. The 239 people left a manifest and unlocated recorders.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.