Philip Wood, an IBM executive, was one of the passengers on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Here are some of their stories. (Photo: The Wood family/AP)
As night fell last Friday in Kuala Lumpur, businessman Philip Wood hurried to gather his bags for a trip to Beijing. He had confused the dates, but his girlfriend in China texted him to make sure he got on the plane.
A group of Chinese artists capped off their exhibition at a local cultural center in Malaysia's capital city with a day of sightseeing and a banquet lunch of duck soup, fried shrimp and pork in brown sauce.
Norli Akmar Hamid finished packing for her long-overdue honeymoon and posted a photograph on Facebook of her cat trying to sneak into her suitcase. The cat chewed the lining near the administrative assistant's neatly folded blue T-shirt and beige towel.
Family members looked at a wedding album of Norli Akmar Hamid and Muhammad Razahan Zamani, two of the passengers on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Neither of them had been on a plane before, friends say.Agenge France-Presse/Getty Images
All of them boarded Malaysia Airlines 3786.KU -4.08% Flight 370 late Friday night and flew away shortly after midnight in the tropical night sky toward Beijing. Soon after, the widebody Boeing 777 jet carrying 239 people vanished from radar screens.
The flight manifest included Americans, Australians, Indians and passengers from a host of other countries. There were more than 150 Chinese on board, many of them tourists who belong to China's burgeoning middle class. A country between Thailand and Singapore, Malaysia has emerged in recent years as a major transit hub and tourist destination for globe-trotting travelers.
Flight 370 took off carrying 239 life stories, each filled with moments big and small, ordinary lives soon to be swept up in a tragic mystery. Now, as the hopes for a miracle fade by the day, memory transforms the random and routine into the meaningful and momentous.
Dozens of interviews with friends, relatives and colleagues show that some passengers fretted about whether to get on the plane—and then decided to. Other passengers were running late and rushed to the airport to make the flight. Still others changed their plans without knowing their decision would likely save their lives.

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Flight 370 was supposed to carry 51-year-old Philip Wood to see his longtime partner, an expatriate schoolteacher in Beijing. They were making plans for their new life together in Malaysia.
Relatives of the missing passengers of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 speak about their loved ones. Photo: Getty Images.
Mr. Wood, a fit International Business Machines Corp. IBM -1.25% employee with blue eyes and salt-and-pepper hair, had moved to Beijing a few years earlier following stints in New York and Texas. A devout Christian, he raised two sons with a former wife, but Asia was his future now.
Known as Phil, he had a new post with IBM as a technical storage executive in Kuala Lumpur. His 48-year-old partner Sarah Bajc, a divorced mother of three from Atlanta, planned to join him in Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur topped their list of potential places to move, a vibrant place full of new things to discover.
For now, the couple's plan called for Mr. Wood to go back and forth between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing for the first six months of 2014, until Ms. Bajc's move to the Malaysian capital, where she also had found a job.
Mr. Wood recently made a return trip to the U.S. to see his parents, brothers and two adult children in Keller, Texas, near Dallas. Mr. Wood's brother, James Wood, says Phil was excited about the place in Kuala Lumpur where the couple had chosen to live.
It was a little apartment near restaurants, shopping and both of their jobs. "It was kind of a new beginning for him," James Wood says.
Soon, Phil Wood was back in Kuala Lumpur, settling into his new job. He bought a ticket for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 to Beijing, where Ms. Bajc was packing their things in boxes for movers, who were scheduled to arrive early Saturday.
But there was a problem. He mistakenly thought he was supposed to leave on Saturday night. Ms. Bajc says she spotted the error Friday afternoon and set Mr. Wood straight. She says he was slightly discombobulated after his trip to the U.S. despite being a hardy, experienced traveler.
"Wow," he replied in a text message to Ms. Bajc on Friday at about 3:30 p.m. "Crazy, so busy didn't even realize…tonight!"
"Would have missed my flight," he added.
She replied: "Go rush love."
Mr. Wood moved quickly to get his things together. Ms. Bajc ordered a driver to meet Mr. Wood when Flight 370 landed at the Beijing airport.

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Members of a Chinese artists' group before they flew home from an exhibit in Kuala Lumpur. Provided by Zheng Wenbin
After a successful trip to show their work in Kuala Lumpur, two dozen members of a Chinese artists' tour group geared up last Friday for sightseeing, shopping and then a triumphant return home.
None of them had been to Malaysia. Their trip was organized by Chinese online commerce group IBICN and a Malaysian arts organization, Art Peninsular Enterprise, to promote ties between the two countries.
Some of the artists are considered heavyweights in the Chinese art scene. One of them has a soft spot for painting chickens with daubs of black ink that turn into tiny claws and wings. Another person on the trip is known for his mastery of portraiture, birds and flowers, particularly grapes and plum blossoms.
A painting by Liu Rusheng, who was flying home to China on Flight 370. The words on the painting mean 'Welcoming Spring.' Provided by Zheng Wenbin
For most of the week, they hung out in the Kuala Lumpur and Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall, a two-story building with classical columns. Their work, a mixture of calligraphy, traditional Chinese ink drawing and oil paintings, was exhibited in a giant room festooned with red lanterns and drapes.
Some of the Chinese artists complained about the heat in Kuala Lumpur, which hit 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit). Some of them sweated profusely whenever they went outside the air-conditioned exhibition hall.
Older painters on the trip, hesitant about trying Malaysia's food, sometimes asked for traditional Chinese steamed buns and soup for breakfast.
They had trouble communicating in English but enjoyed basking in the positive reception their work received. On Thursday night, several artists kicked back with a bottle of Xifengjiu, a brand of fiery Chinese liquor, to toast the end of the show.
On Friday morning, some members of the group wished they didn't have to leave so soon. The day was unusually fresh and cool after a rain shower Thursday night. The rain left behind a perfectly blue sky that seemed far away from Beijing's smog.
Dressed in short sleeves and T-shirts, the Chinese artists boarded a white-and-green tour bus and set off to see the sights of Kuala Lumpur.
They stopped at the Chinese embassy, where a cultural attaché honored them in a sweeping, single-story building. They visited the iconic Petronas Towers, briefly the world's tallest buildings when completed in the late 1990s, and took pictures of red-uniformed cavalry at a royal palace.
The artists also went shopping, buying a local medicinal balm and key chains with scenes of Malaysia.
Zhu Junyan, a 41-year-old female painter from China's western Xinjiang region, bought a loose yellow blouse and green trousers to wear on the plane home, recalls another artist, Zheng Wenbin. She told the group she wanted clothes with "local characteristics," not made in China.
Mr. Zheng says lunch last Friday was their best meal in days. They ate duck soup, steamed fish and fried shrimp with salt and pepper, braised pork in brown sauce and Hakka tofu.
On the way to the airport, Liu Rusheng, 76, began singing snatches of Chinese songs on the bus to entertain everyone. At a dinner stop, Ms. Zhu talked about plans to stay in Beijing for a few days, where she hoped to fulfill a personal dream of visiting the Central Academy of Fine Arts.
The ride to the airport from dinner took about an hour. Some of the artists in the group took short naps.

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Norli Akmar Hamid and her husband, Muhammad Razahan Zamani, were finally heading out for their honeymoon—and time to recover from a tragedy.
Ms. Norli, 33, and Mr. Razahan, 24, are part of Malaysia's rising middle class. They met at AEON, a Japanese supermarket chain in Kuala Lumpur.
He worked there as a sales assistant and then moved on to another job. She moved on to a job as an administrative assistant at Prima Elite Technology, an aviation maintenance and repair company.
They got married Oct. 6, 2012, about a year after falling in love.
Mr. Razahan is tall and solidly built. He posted notes on Facebook attesting to his love of soccer and the film "Titanic," and rode a motorcycle, according to a work colleague. Ms. Norli, a petite Muslim, wears a hijab, has at least five cats and watches crime dramas like "NCIS" and "Criminal Minds," according to her Facebook page.
Norli Akmar Hamid, second from right, and her husband, Muhammad Razahan Zamani, right, posed with relatives at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Friday. Ms. Norli hoped for a 'new life' with her husband. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
The couple originally planned to honeymoon in Cameron Highlands, a Malaysian resort area known for green, rolling hills. But Ms. Norli got sick, co-workers say. So Ms. Norli and Mr. Razahan started planning a trip to Beijing, where Ms. Norli told a friend she dreamed of bumping into Leon Lai, a Chinese actor and pop star she likes.
Then Ms. Norli got pregnant and began to worry about traveling, says a friend of hers. "She hesitated to go to Beijing because she was in an early stage of pregnancy," says the friend.
Ms. Norli asked for advice. The friend says she told her to check with a gynecologist—and told Ms. Norli that she thought she should go.
Just weeks before boarding Flight 370, Ms. Norli had a miscarriage, she told friends and colleagues. "She was a bit lost," the friend says. "She is dying to have a baby."
Ms. Norli and Mr. Razahan decided to press ahead with the trip. She asked her boss for two weeks off. "She said that when she came back, she would start a new life," says her boss, who asked to be identified by her middle name, Ediana.
As Friday neared, Ms. Norli posted a photo on Facebook of one of her cats sitting in the suitcase she was packing for Beijing. She had bought warm clothes, including socks and a shawl for Beijing, where nighttime temperatures were close to freezing.
Finally, it was time to go. Her parents, Sarah Mohamad Nor and Hamid Ramlan, drove the couple to the airport. The father made a wrong turn but then found his way, friends say. Ms. Norli and Mr. Razahan said goodbye. Neither of them had been on a plane before, according to two friends.

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Passengers booked on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 sped down a brightly lighted highway past miles of palm trees. Kuala Lumpur has a futuristic international airport built in the 1990s as part of the country's modernization.
A banner stretched across an overpass told travelers to enjoy a pleasant journey with Malaysia Airlines. Another said: "Selamat Jalan. See you again."
The Chinese artists arrived shortly after 8 p.m. for the plane's scheduled departure near 12:30 a.m. Daniel Liau, a Malaysian artist and gallery owner who helped organize their tour, helped them get their economy-class tickets and check in their luggage.
Around 9 p.m., a staff member from the Chinese organizer handed six of the artists a fresh itinerary. The smaller group, which included Mr. Zheng, had asked to take a different return flight because they lived far from Beijing. Members of the smaller group were told they now had seats on a Shanghai-bound flight leaving half an hour after the rest of the group.
The six artists heading for Shanghai said goodbye and promised to stay in touch with the artists still booked on Flight 370. They discussed setting up a common email account where all of them could post photos from the trip.
The 18 artists, seven relatives and four IBICN employees bound for Beijing continued to gate C1. Hou Bo, 33, a pale, bespectacled IBICN employee, helped shepherd them through immigration checks.
"I called Hou Bo at around midnight," Mr. Liau says. "He said they were fine. They were just having their tickets checked before boarding. I wished them well." The group thanked him for all his help in Kuala Lumpur.

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Ms. Norli was stressing over work she had left undone before the trip. She was supposed to finish an important letter to a client, her boss recalls. The boss asked about the letter in a note sent through the messaging service WhatsApp.
At 10:47 p.m. last Friday, Ms. Norli replied: "Sorry, I forgot to do it." She asked her boss to forgive the mistake and give her another chance, the boss recalls.
Before the flight took off, Mr. Wood kept exchanging messages with Ms. Bajc in Beijing. At 8:05 p.m., she updated him on the progress packing up their apartment to move.
"All prepped except my clothes. Kitchen, bar, knickknacks. Set out cleaned ready to pack," she wrote. Her back ached from all the lifting.
"I'm ready to be there to help…Understand. Tomorrow I'll rub your back ... :-) thank you for working so hard! You are greatly appreciated and loved!" he replied.
She answered just after midnight: "Thank u baby."
Soon, Flight 370 took off and began cruising toward the Gulf of Thailand and Vietnam. Movie choices for passengers on the same route this week included "Gravity" and "Dallas Buyers Club." The in-flight magazine, titled "Going Places," has articles about "Ethereal Istanbul" and an Australian version of the Grand Canyon.
On Saturday morning, Ms. Norli's boss sent her a WhatsApp message saying it would be fine to finish the client letter later. Mr. Wood's boxes were waiting in the apartment with Ms. Bajc.
—Miguel Bustillo, Ana Campoy, Fanfan Wang, Kersten Zhang, Celine Fernandez and Jake Maxwell Watts contributed to this article.
Write to Te-Ping Chen at te-ping.chen@wsj.com, Chuin-Wei Yap at chuin-wei.yap@wsj.com, Chun Han Wong at chunhan.wong@wsj.com and Newley Purnell atnewley.purnell @wsj.com