Two hundred thirty-nine passengers disappeared on Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 somewhere over Southeast Asia after departing from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia en route to Beijing, China on March 8, 2014.

According to CNN, the flight’s being turned off course is considered a “criminal act”. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott gave a statement to abcnews.com claiming that the hunt for the plane has turned up nothing, but there is no time restriction for the involved countries’ military base to search for it.

“I’m certainly not putting a time limit on it. … We can keep searching for quite some time to come,” Abbott said at RAAF Pearce, the Perth military base coordinating the operation.

The main suspects of the plane disappearance are the pilots Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah and 1st Officer Fariq Ab Hamid based off of their ability to fly an aircraft and to disable communication systems. However, it could also be one or more of the passengers aboard.

“Airline pilots are not trained for radar avoidance,” said aviation expert Keith Wolzinger, a former 777 pilot. This ensures that the plane is always visible on radar.

After 23 days of searching for the missing airline, it has been discovered that 29 of the 154 Chinese citizens aboard the flight were artists coming back from the “Chinese Dream: Red and Green Painting” art exhibition that was held March 4 to 6. Ladue AP World History teacher Eric Hahn sees the disappearance of the artists as a setback to China.

“Many people that were attending the show were important Chinese artists like calligraphers. This is a big loss for China,” Hahn said.

The families of the missing Chinese people have been protesting to the Malaysian government for the lack of information they’re getting, according to independent.co.uk. Hahn sympathizes with the frustrations coming from the families of the missing.

“As you can understand, families of the missing people are very upset about the process of being told that there could be a recovery, then that it’s absolutely missing, and now there is no new information.” Hahn said. “They’re upset at the Malaysian airline.”

According to U.S. History teacher Mike Hill, the U.S. government is not fully participating in the search for the plane. In fact, only major countries around Malaysia are helping with the disappearance.

“If they [the U.S. government] were asked to do whatever they could to help in the search they would do that,” Hill said. “It’s mostly the local governments of Malaysia, Australia, China and everyone in that area. It’s unfortunate because the place they’re scouring for evidence is about the size of Poland which makes it very difficult. It’s like the plane just vanished off the face of the earth.”