Within the early hours of March 8, 2014, pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah sent Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 into air just before 12:45 a.m. local time.
Every little thing was routine onboard the Boeing 777 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, China, because the plane readied to go away Malaysian airspace and fly towards Vietnam across the South China Sea.
“Good night, Malaysian 370,” Shah tells air traffic controllers as they able to relay communications duties to the Vietnamese.
Those were the ultimate words ever heard from the 239 people onboard flight MH370, which mysteriously lost all radar contact a mere minute and a half later.
The flight had vanished and not using a trace and to this present day, what actually happened within the air stays one among the largest mysteries in aviation history.
A latest Netflix docuseries, “MH370: The Plane That Disappeared,” examines several theories as to what happened that night.
The flight had about seven hours of fuel, Fuad Sharuji, former crisis director for Malaysia Airlines, says in archived footage.
Although MH370 had lost all radar communications, the plane was still electronically talking to a satellite run by a British company called Inmarsat.
“Every hour, the Inmarsat system was checking that the satellite terminal on the aircraft was responding … these pings continued for as much as six hours after last contact,” Inmarsat representative Mark Dickinson says within the docuseries.
However the Inmarsat data could only confirm that the flight was still within the air because it didn’t possess GPS-tracking capabilities. Still, it was capable of determine how distant the aircraft was from the satellite with which it had been communicating.
Based on this information, two speculative routes have been drafted showing how and where the plane diverted off target. In each scenarios, MH370 didn’t proceed towards mainland Vietnam, but as an alternative veered westbound back over Malaysia. From there, it’s projected that the flight either went north over central Asia — or down towards the South Indian Ocean by Australia.
The latter route is the likeliest scenario, widely agreed upon by experts. But what actually happened within the air continues to be in dispute. Had Shah gone rogue? Or was one other state accountable for the flight’s unknown fate? A final commission report on MH370 noted “the team is unable to find out the actual cause for the disappearance.”
The pilot
Essentially the most incriminating piece of evidence to the idea that Shah, a veteran pilot, intended to commit a mass-murder suicide by putting the plane down into the Indian Ocean was found on a flight simulator he had inside his home, which made headlines in 2016.
It was there that Shah had reportedly flown a simulation just like the airplane’s suspected, off-charted final course over the ocean a mere month before MH370 was airborne.
However the home simulator data just isn’t be quite the “smoking gun” it seems, says Mike Exner of the Independent Group, a watchdog panel of aviation experts established to get the reality on the flight’s final hours.
“It’s very odd you’ll have a simulation end with fuel exhaustion within the Southern Indian Ocean,” Exner admits. “I don’t think taking the simulator data by itself proves an entire lot … The simulator data just isn’t the entire puzzle, it’s only one piece within the puzzle that matches.”
Jeff Clever, an aviation journalist whose theories on the flight became controversial amongst experts, claims that the FBI had known of the route within the flight simulator back in 2014.
Clever says that the practicality of Shah single-handedly taking the plane would require an “aggressive and complex” plot, involving locking his co-pilot out of the cockpit, killing radar communications and depressurizing the cabin to forestall interference.
Meanwhile, a possible motive stays unclear.
The ultimate report on MH370 found that “there isn’t any evidence to suggest any recent behavioral changes for the [pilot].”
Russian hijackers
Clever, a former member of the Independent Group, has one other working theory on the whereabouts of MH370 — however it sounds closer to the plot of a James Bond movie than the rest.
Just a few months after the flight was lost, Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, one other 777, was shot down by a surface-to-air missile over the Ukraine at the identical time Russia was invading nearby Crimea.
Checking flight logs, Clever observed that there have been three Russian passengers on board MH370 — all of whom were seated near an electrical hatch. He theorized that two of the three created a diversion while the opposite member snuck below deck to remotely control the plane’s flight.
As a substitute of it being sent south, Clever theorizes it was delivered to the previous Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan.
But that theory was quickly grounded.
“Anyone who gets into the hatch can disable the transponder and disable the communications systems,” Sharuji says. “But it surely is unimaginable to fly the aircraft from the avionics compartment.”
Colleagues of Clever also were quick to debunk the concept.
“[The group is] absolutely certain that the plane turned south and never north. It was surprising that Jeff decided to take off on this route,” says Exner.
Clever’s conjectures ended along with his removal from the Independent Group.
American interception
One other wild theory is that the American military, which was doing training exercises on the time within the South China Sea, had downed MH370 at the purpose where it had first lost radar contact in between Malaysian and Vietnamese airspace.
French journalist Florence de Changy has observed that the cargo carried — and delivered “under escort” — by MH370 included 2.5 tons of electronic devices without being scanned prior to loading.
“It’s public knowledge that China was very wanting to acquire highly sensitive US technology in the sphere of surveillance, stealth, drone technology,” de Changy says. “This could possibly be at the center of what happened to MH370.”
The USA had two radar jamming planes suited with an Airborne Warning & Control System (AWAC) within the vicinity the night MH370 took off. De Changy theorizes that they were used to knock the plane electronically off radar and instructed Shah to land.
When he decided to maintain the flight on track, she claims that “either through a missile strike or a midair collision, MH370 met its fate.”
But, like Clever, de Changy has no proof for her theory — and it’s not backed by the Inmarsat data projections, either. Exner can be critical that she can be using the inflammatory thesis to advertise her 2021 book, “The Disappearing Act: The Inconceivable Case of MH370.”
“I’m just reluctant to discuss Florence or Jeff or these conspiracy advocates,” Exner, who believes the most obvious conclusion doesn’t read like a Tom Clancy novel and lies inside the Indian Ocean.
“They’re just such a distraction … These are folks that don’t really understand the facts and the information.”
