Malaysia insists it is being transparent, but has yet to release any details of its investigation into what happened, which has included probing the backgrounds of everyone on the flight, including its crew.
In the early days of their daily press briefings after the plane went missing, Malaysian officials made a series of contradictory statements that added to the confusion.
Notably, there have been about-turns regarding the crucial sequence of events in the plane’s cockpit before it veered off course, and Malaysia’s armed forces have been criticised for failing to intercept the diverted plane when it appeared on military radar.
Such mis-steps have fuelled relatives’ anger, with families of Chinese passengers accusing Malaysian officials of incompetence and deceit.
A massive international search for the plane is currently focused on the southern Indian Ocean, where the aircraft is thought to have crashed after mysteriously veering off course.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak is heading to Australia to witness the race-against-time bid to locate the crash site.
Ships and planes from seven nations are engaged in the massive search operation in a vast zone far off western Australia but so far the hunt for debris that would prove the jet crashed in the Indian Ocean has turned up nothing.
Experts warn debris must be found within days to nail down a crash site in order for any use of a US-supplied black box detector – known as a towed pinger locator (TPL) – to be feasible.
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