A Canadian couple returning from vacation in Vietnam. An American who worked in Asia for IBM. A group of Chinese calligraphers who had attended an exhibition in Malaysia.

All of them were aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which remained unaccounted for on Saturday, many hours after it should have landed at dawn in Beijing with 239 people on board, most of them from China.

By Saturday night, the families of the passengers had few answers about what happened and dwindling hope that they would see their loved ones again.

One passenger was Philip Wood, 50, an IBM employee who was living in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, where the flight originated.