Flight MH370: Families won't give up

The search for the wreckage mustn't be called off, said Grace Nathan (left) shortly before she flew to Madagascar. Her mother was on board flight MH370. The official search is due to be abandoned in February 2017 if nothing is found before then. Relatives of those on board are protesting. "We'll pay for it ourselves," Nathan said. "The search must go on."

In March 2014, for reasons that are still unclear, MH370 deviated from its course from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and flew south for hours without making radio contact. Investigators believe that the Boeing with 239 people on board went down over the Indian Ocean when its fuel ran out. Experts disagree as to the precise location of the crash.

Some of the passengers' relatives have formed a group called "Voice370." They are critical of the official proceedings. They say "no systematic, organized search" is taking place in the western Indian Ocean, although pieces of wreckage thought to be part of the plane have been found there. Seven of the relatives are now heading to Madagascar, where they themselves plan to search until December 11.

The official search is concentrating on an area of 120,000 kilometers in the southern Indian Ocean. Australia, Malaysia and China are taking part in what is one of the biggest search operations in aviation history. There's been talk of calling it off since the middle of 2016.

On 29 July 2015, a wing flap about two meters long washed up on the tropical French island of La Reunion. The wreckage was subsequently identified as part of the missing Boeing 777. Other possible pieces of wreckage have been found in Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa and on the island of Mauritius.

At the end of January 2015, Malaysia's civil aviation authority officially classified the unresolved incident an "accident" and declared all 239 people on board dead. But many people don't believe it really was an accident. Relatives have been demonstrating publicly - as here, in China - because they don't feel they're being given all the information.

In July 2015 the New York Magazine reported that a few weeks before the disaster the captain had practiced - on a flight simulator - the route the passenger jet is believed to have taken over the southern Indian Ocean. The magazine cited confidential records from the Malaysian police probe. Despite this discovery, the plane's disappearance remains one of the greatest mysteries in aviation history.