Away from home, you just finished showcasing your work in Kuala Lumpur. The excitement has died down, and you want nothing more than to return to the comfort of your own home. You board the plane along with family and colleagues, however the plane never reaches its final destination. Even worse. You, your plane, your family, everyone are just gone. No one knows where you are. You have become part of the mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
On March 8, 2014, at 12:41am, flight 370 took off from Kuala Lumpur, on its way to Beijing. The First Officer was in contact with Air Traffic Control before take off, and the Captain took over once they were in the air. The flight was cleared to climb to approximately 18,000 feet (5,500 metres) before being transferred from the airport’s ATC to “Lumpur Radar” air traffic control. At 12:46am, Lumpur Radar cleared the flight to flight level 350. The Boeing 777 reached its cruising altitude of 35,000 feet (10,700 metres) at 1:01am.
The Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), which transmitted data about the aircraft’s performance, sent its last transmission at 1:07am indicating that the total fuel remaining was 96,000 pounds (43,000 kg), and was subsequently switched off.
The final voice communication from the crew occurred at 1:19am, where Captain Zaharie acknowledged a transition from Lumpur Radio to Ho Chi Minh ACC.
Lumpur Radar: “Malaysian three seven zero, contact Ho Chi Minh one two zero decimal nine. Good night.”
Flight 370: “Good night. Malaysian three seven zero.”
At 1:21am, the plane’s transponder which communicated with ATC, was switched off just as the plane was about to enter Vietnamese airspace over the South China Sea, despite the fact that the crew was expected to signal ATC in Ho Chi Minh City at that time.
It was shortly after 1:30am when the captain of another aircraft attempted to signal the crew of Flight 370, using the International Air Distress (IAD) frequency. Their goal: to relay Vietnamese air traffic control’s request for the crew to contact them. While the captain said he was able to establish communication, he only heard “mumbling” and static.
The Malaysian military and civilian radar began tracking the plane as it turned around and then flew southwest over the Malay Peninsula. After crossing the peninsula, the plane turned northwest over the Strait of Malacca, and at 2:22am, Malaysian military radar lost contact with the plane over the Andaman Sea.
Although Indonesia has an early-warning radar system, its ATC did not register any aircraft with the transponder code used by Flight 370, despite the aircraft having flown in close proximity to the northern tip of Sumatra. Indonesian military radar tracked Flight 370 earlier when en route to waypoint IGARI before the transponder is thought to have been turned off, but never indicated whether it had tracked at anytime afterwards. Thailand and Vietnam also detected Flight 370 on radar before the transponder stopped working. The radar position symbols for the transponder code used by Flight 370 vanished after the transponder is thought to have been turned off
Then, at 2:25am, the aircraft’s satellite communication system sent a “log-on request” message—the first message since the ACARS transmission at 01:07—which was relayed by satellite to a ground station, both operated by satellite telecommunications company Inmarsat. After logging on to the network, the Satellite Data Unit aboard the aircraft responded to hourly status requests from Inmarsat. Two ground-to-aircraft telephone calls, at 2:39am and 7:13am, went unanswered by the cockpit although acknowledged by the SDU.
An Inmarsat satellite in geostationary orbit over the Indian Ocean detected the plane for the final time at 8:11am, 1 hour and 40 minutes after the flight was scheduled to arrive in Beijing.
At 8:19am, the aircraft sent another log-on request, and after receiving a response from the ground station, a “log-on acknowledgement” message was received at 08:19:37. The log-on acknowledgement is the last piece of data available from Flight 370. The aircraft did not respond to a status request from Inmarsat at 09:15am.
Malaysia Airlines issued a media statement, stating that communication with the flight had been lost by Malaysian ATC at 2:40, and the government had initiated search-and-rescue operations (they later corrected the time when contact was lost to 1:21). Neither the crew, nor the aircraft’s communication systems relayed a distress signal, indications of bad weather, or technical problems before it disappeared from radar.
Initial searches focused on the South China Sea. However, once it was determined that Flight 370 had turned west shortly after the transponder was switched off, efforts moved to the Strait of Malacca and the Andaman Sea. On March 15, one week after the plane disappeared, the Inmarsat contact was disclosed. Analysis of the signal could not locate the plane precisely but did determine that the plane might have been anywhere on two arcs, one stretching from Java southward into the Indian Ocean southwest of Australia and the other stretching northward across Asia from Vietnam to Turkmenistan. The search area was then expanded to encompass the Indian Ocean southwest of Australia on the southern arc and Southeast Asia, western China, the Indian subcontinent, and Central Asia on the northern arc. Between March 18 and April 28, nineteen vessels and 345 sorties by military aircraft searched over 1,800,000 sq mi (4,600,000 km2).
The final phase of the search was a bathymetric survey and sonar search of the sea floor, about 1,100 mi (970 nmi; 1,800 kilometres) southwest of Perth, Western Australia.
On March 24 Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that, based on analysis of the final signals, Inmarsat and the U.K. Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) had concluded that the flight crashed in a remote part of the Indian Ocean 2,500 km (1,500 miles) southwest of Australia. Thus, it was extremely unlikely that anyone on board survived. From then, the search was coordinated by the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC), an Australian government agency that was established specifically to co-ordinate the search effort to locate and recover Flight 370, which primarily involved the Malaysian, Chinese, and Australian governments.
On April 6, an Australian ship detected several acoustic pings, believed to possibly be from the Boeing 777’s flight recorder, about 1,200 mi (2,000 km) northwest of Perth, Western Australia. Further analysis by the AAIB of the Inmarsat data also found a partial signal from the plane at 8:19am that was consistent with the location of the acoustic pings. The last acoustic pings were heard on April 8.
If the signals were from flight 370, the flight recorder was most likely at the end of its battery life. Further searches were conducted using a robotic submarine, however, the pings had been spread over a wide area, and no debris was found in the area searched by the submarine. Worse, tests found that a faulty cable in the acoustic equipment could have produced a ping like those detected.
On July 29, 2015, the right wing flaperon was discovered on a beach on the French island of Réunion, about 2,300 miles (3,700 km) west of the Indian Ocean area that was being searched by Australian authorities. Over the next 18 months, 26 more pieces of debris were found on the shores of Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa, Madagascar, and Mauritius.
Of the 27 pieces of debris found, only 3 were positively identified as coming from flight 370. Another 17 others were likely come from the plane, however that could not be 100% confirmed. Two pieces of debris came from the cabin interior, suggesting that the plane had broken up, but it could not be determined whether the breakup had happened in the air or on impact with the ocean.
Study of the wing flaperon found on Réunion and a piece of the right wing flap found in Tanzania indicated that the plane did not go down easy.
On January 17, 2017, the governments of Malaysia, Australia, and China called off the search for flight 370. The final ATSB report, published on October 3, 2017, stated that the underwater search for the aircraft as of June 30, 2017, had cost a total of $155 million. The underwater search accounted for 86% of this amount, bathymetry 10%, and program management 4%. Malaysia had supported 58% of the total cost, Australia 32%, and China 10%. The report also concluded that the location where the aircraft went down had been narrowed to an area of 9,700 sq mi (25,000 km2), by using satellite images and debris drift analysis.
In January 2018, Ocean Infinity, a private US marine exploration company, resumed the search for Flight 370 in the narrowed 9,700 sq mi area, using the Norwegian ship Seabed Constructor. The search area was significantly extended during the course of the search, and by the end of May 2018, the vessel had searched a total area of over 43,000 sq mi (112,000 km2), using eight autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). The contract with the Malaysian government ended soon afterwards and the search was concluded without success on June 9, 2018.
In July 2018 the Malaysian government issued its final report on flight 370’s disappearance. Mechanical malfunction was deemed extremely unlikely, and “the change in flight path likely resulted from manual inputs,” but the investigators could not determine why flight 370 disappeared.
The loss of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 meant the loss of 239 lives. 12 Malaysian crew members, including 2 pilots; 153 Chinese citizens, including a group of 19 artists with six family members and four staff, returning from a calligraphy exhibition of their work in Kuala Lumpur; 38 Malaysian citizens, and the remaining passengers from twelve different countries.
In the weeks following the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, explanations of what might have happened ranged from mechanical failure to pilot suicide. The loss of the plane’s ACARS and transponder signals spurred ongoing speculation about some form of hijacking as a likely possibility. However, there were no immediate claims of responsibility by any individual or group, and it seemed unlikely that hijackers would have flown the plane to the southern Indian Ocean. That the signals had likely been switched off from inside the aircraft suggested suicide by one of the crew, but nothing suspicious was found in the behaviour of the captain, the first officer, or the cabin crew prior to the flight.
Here are just a few other theories that have come up since March 8, 2014
Fire
A number of theories suggest that the disappearance may have been the result of a cockpit, cargo compartment, landing gear, or other onboard fire.
Shot-down
According to CNN, Political commentator Rush Limbaugh speculated that the aircraft may have been shot down. Supporters of this theory have noted that civilian aircraft have been shot down by military forces in the past, with Iran Air Flight 655 by the United States in 1988 and KAL 007 by the Soviet Union in 1983 being two frequently cited examples. On 19 March 2014, news reporter Scott Mayerowitz of Associated Press described “Accidental Shootdown” as one of seven “leading, plausible theories,” but added that there was “no evidence that Flight 370 was brought down by a government entity.” A Malaysian defense official, Ackbal bin Haji Abdul Samad, said it was “highly not possible” that his country’s air force had shot down the plane. According to The Financial Express, the Malaysian Air Force detected the plane on radar while it was in flight, but took no action because it was believed to be a “friendly” aircraft.
Cyber Attack
Could a Cyber Attack have been carried out on Flight 370? Sally Leivesley, a former scientific advisor to the UK government, proposed that hackers may have changed the plane’s speed, direction, and altitude using radio signals to the plane’s flight management system. Whether existing security on commercial flights is sufficient to prevent such an attack is also a matter of debate, although Boeing has dismissed the possibility. A spokeswoman for the company, Gayla Keller, said that they were “confident in the robust protection of all flight critical systems and inability for a hacker to gain access by either external or internal means on the 777 and all Boeing airplanes.”
Black Hole
Some theorists question whether the plane could have been consumed by a Black Hole. There is no evidence to support this theory, although it is interesting.
Alien Abduction
Could Aliens have stepped in and zapped the plane out of the skies? This could explain why only some pieces have been found, nowhere near an entire plane.
Time Travelers or Beings from Another Dimension
Again, not likely, but what are the chances a time traveler took the plane, or someone moved it into another dimension?
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