A Malaysia Airlines aircraft lands at Kuala Lumpur Airport in December 2014 -© AFP
The last 14 months has seen a series of high profile air crashes, a worrying number of which remain unresolved.
11 February, 2014: A military transport plane — a Hercules C-130 — carrying 78 people crashes in a mountainous part of north-eastern Algeria. Reports suggest there is one survivor from among the military personnel, family members and crew.
8 March, 2014: The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines MH370 during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing leads to the largest and most expensive search in aviation history. Despite vast efforts, notably in the hostile South Indian Ocean, to date no debris of any kind has been found from the flight.
17 July, 2014: Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crashes near Grabove in eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board, 193 of them Dutch. Pro-Russian rebels are widely accused of shooting the plane down using a surface-to-air missile; they deny responsibility.
23 July, 2014: Forty-eight people die when a Taiwanese ATR-72 plane crashes into stormy seas during a short flight. TransAsia Airways GE222 was carrying 54 passengers and four crew to the island of Penghu. It made an abortive attempt to land before crashing on a second attempt.
24 July, 2014: Air Algerie AH5017 disappears over Mali amid poor weather near the border with Burkina Faso. The McDonnell Douglas MD-83 was operated by Spain’s Swiftair, and was heading from Ouagadougou to Algiers carrying 116 passengers, 51 of them French. All are thought to have died.
28 December, 2014: AirAsia QZ8501 flying from Surabaya in Indonesia to Singapore goes missing over the Java Sea. The pilot radioed for permission to divert around bad weather but no mayday alert was issued. There were 162 passengers and crew on board.
24 March, 2015: A Germanwings Airbus A320 airliner crashes in the French Alps near Digne, on a flight from Barcelona to Dusseldorf. All 148 people on board were feared dead. -AFP