A typical red-eye trip from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing marked the beginning of the mystery. On March 8, 2014, 42 minutes after the stroke of midnight, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a Boeing 777 aircraft designated MH370, rose into the moonlight night and made a north-east turn into the South China Sea. Fariq Hamid, the first officer, was 27 years old and needed one more training flight to obtain full certification. Zaharie Ahmad Shah, the pilot in charge, was one of Malaysia Airlines' most experienced and well-respected pilots at the age of 53. They transported 227 passengers while overseeing a team of 10 Malaysian flight attendants. Together with 38 Malaysians and nationals of Indonesia, Australia, India, France, the United States, Iran, Ukraine, Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands, taiwan and Russia, the bulk of those travelling were Chinese.

The flight's first 40 minutes were uneventful. Around 1.19 am, MH370 was getting close to leaving Malaysian airspace. Ho Chi Minh was informed through radio by Malaysian air traffic control of the flight transfer. "Good night," Zaharie said in response. Malaysian three-seven-zero" was the frequency, which he didn't repeat, although it was typical. The flight was silent after that, according to everyone. Zaharie never contacted Vietnamese controllers to check in. As MH370 entered Vietnamese airspace, it vanished from radar seconds later. All subsequent efforts to get in touch with it failed. Commercial aircraft are meant to be recognised, trackable, and approachable at all times, yet MH370 went missing.

What followed, as recounted in a new Netflix series on the disappearance, was delayed confusion, on the part of Malaysian controllers and the airline. Shock, as officials scrambled to find the aircraft and loved ones waited in Beijing for a flight that never arrived. Obsession, as the disappearance transfixed international audiences and prompted armchair theories for a seemingly impossible mystery. Devastation, as next of kin suffered through hours, then days, then weeks, months and years of question marks and inconclusive searches. And speculation, as aviation experts, engineers, data scientists, journalists, hobbyists and more tried for years to piece together a confounding puzzle of evidence into an explanation for the disappearance of MH370.