The PowerPoint presentation wasn't enough. The analysis by British investigators that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was lost at sea wasn't enough. The relatives of Chinese passengers gathered in a hotel banquet hall on Wednesday were still skeptical -- and hostile.

"It's all lies. Not a shred of truth!" said a man who identified himself as Mr. Zhang from the Chinese city of Harbin. He said afterward that he had wanted to pummel everyone giving the presentation -- a delegation of Malaysian government and airline officials.

The officials came to Beijing a day after China demanded more details on how the missing plane was pronounced lost, and after Chinese authorities allowed the relatives to vent frustrations in a rare public march Tuesday to Malaysia's embassy in Beijing to denounce that country's handling of the disappearance.

Before an audience of several hundred relatives and their supporters, the Malaysian delegation read a report by investigators from Britain's Air Accidents Investigation Branch concluding the plane went down in the southern Indian Ocean based on faint signals -- or pings -- from the plane to a British satellite.

During a nearly two-hour question-and-answer session, audience members asked how investigators could have reached conclusions about the direction and speed of the plane, and delegation members said they didn't have the technical expertise to answer.

One woman retorted, "I thought this was a high-level team!" to applause from the crowd.

They stare out at a punishingly unbroken expanse of gray water that seems, at times, to blend into the clouds. Occasionally, they press their foreheads against the plane's windows so hard they leave grease marks, their eyes darting up and down, left and right, looking for something -- anything -- that could explain the fate of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane. 

 

The hunt for Flight 370, which vanished on March 8 during a trip from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, is complicated in just about every way imaginable, from the vastness of the search area to its distance from land to the brutal weather that plagues it. But for all the fancy technology on board the planes and vessels scouring the swirling waters, the best tool searchers have are their own eyes.

 

Those eyes can spot things man-made equipment cannot. But they are also subject to the peculiarities of the human brain. They can play tricks. They can blink at the wrong moment. They can, and often do, grow weary.

 

"It is incredibly fatiguing work," says Flight Lt. Stephen Graham, tactical coordinator for the crew on board a Royal New Zealand Air Force P-3 Orion that has made six sorties into the southern Indian Ocean search zone. "If it's bright and glaring obviously sunglasses help, but there's only so much you can do."

The passengers aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 included a Canadian couple living in Beijing, a group of famous Chinese artists, 20 employees of a Texas semiconductor firm, a Hollywood stuntman and a pair of Malaysian honeymooners.

Here’s a closer a look at the stories of some of the passengers on the missing plane:

Malaysia Airlines MH370 passengers include stuntman, honeymooners

The passengers on board the missing Malaysia Airlines plane include a Canadian couple living in Beijing, a group of famous Chinese artists, 20 employees of a Texas semiconductor firm, a Hollywood stuntman and a pair of Malaysian honeymooners. CBC News takes a closer look at their stories.