A missing black box, potential onboard suspects, and some terrifying sightings on the day of
the disappearance.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 seemingly disappeared without a trace, and so many mysteries remain.
It goes without saying that it's extremely concerning for a commercial airplane to mysteriously
vanish, seemingly into the blue, while full of passengers.
When that plane is a Boeing 777 fitted with all the high-end tracking and navigation technology
the 21st century has to offer, it's more than a little sketchy.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was carrying 239 people when it disappeared in March 2014.
The flight left Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, and was supposed to land in Beijing.
Within an hour, the plane lost contact, without giving any indication as to what might be
happening on board, and without sending a distress signal.
On the day that Flight 370 vanished, several people across a vast area stretching from
Southeast Asia to the Maldives claimed to have seen the aircraft, and none of the accounts
sounded like the flight was going according to plan.
Most described an aircraft flying extremely low.
Mike McKay, a worker on an offshore oil rig near Vietnam, told CNN that he observed an
object in the sky that was on fire.
In Indonesia, the state news agency reported that there were sightings of a crash from
local fishermen.
The disappearance is considered one of the biggest aviation mysteries to happen this
millennium, and it continues to boggle investigators.
A multitude of theories have been suggested regarding what might have happened to Malaysia
Airlines Flight 370 and the 239 people who were on board when the plane vanished into
thin air.
"It's all consistent with someone that simply wanted to vanish from the face of the earth
and make sure the ultimate crash site was never found."
In 2020, Malaysian leadership suggested that Flight 370's disappearance might have been
a murder-suicide, but it was unclear who could have allegedly perpetrated it.
If it was a terrorist hijacking, for instance, many thought that an organization would come
forward and claim the tragic incident, but no-one did.
Another proposed theory suggested that the plane's disappearance could have been an attack
by malicious hackers.
Jeff Wise's book, "The Plane That Wasn't There," suggested that hackers only could have taken
control of the plane via satellite link.
They would have needed to put the plane into autopilot, and take it off course, while also
stopping the pilots from resuming control.
As a result, this theory lacks credibility, as there weren't many possibilities to exploit
the flight system, especially as the plane's satellite link went down before it disappeared.
Because of the unlikelihood of this scenario playing out, investigators concluded that
the person or people responsible for Flight 370's disappearance had to be on board when
the plane vanished.
It might never be clear what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 until the plane's black
box is recovered.
Black boxes, also known as flight recorders, are governmentally-mandated devices installed
on all planes to track and analyze flight data in case tragedies occur.
The evidence held within that particular recording device could be invaluable to understanding
what occurred.
If it's ever located, the wreckage of the flight itself might conceivably point investigators
in the right direction.
Unfortunately, investigators can't even seem to find the plane.
A year after the plane's disappearance, it was also discovered that the black box on
Flight 370 had expired more than a year earlier.
As a result, the battery wasn't charged, meaning that the black box onboard Malaysia Airlines
Flight 370 may have struggled to relay or preserve the flight data to the central control
center on land, even if it was found.
One major reason that the disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370 has generated so much
mystery is that very little debris has been found.
In 2015, a year after the incident, mathematician Goong Chen ran data through computer simulations
to figure out why.
His results concluded that a vertical crash would have caused the plane to sink rapidly
to the bottom of the ocean floor.
This scenario would leave the plane largely intact, but it would be difficult to recover
Flight 370 from the depths of the oceans, per CNN.
Over the years, almost two dozen fragments believed to be part of the plane have made
it to the coasts of Madagascar.
By far, the most significant piece recovered has been the trunnion door of the landing
gear found in 2022.
Damage to both the interior and exterior of the find indicates the grim reality that the
equipment was extended before impact, which would only increase devastation.
The find also suggests that whoever was flying the aircraft crashed it on purpose.
Amateur wreckage hunter Blaine Gibson and British engineer Richard Godfrey came to that
horrific conclusion, explaining in a self-released report,
"The combination of the high speed impact designed to break up the aircraft and the
extended landing gear designed to sink the aircraft as fast as possible both show a clear
intent to hide the evidence of the crash."
Flight 370 may have been a Malaysian Airlines flight leaving the country's capital city,
but most of the people on board were not Malaysian.
Instead, the 227 passengers who mysteriously perished were from 14 different countries,
leaving grieving family members across the globe with lots of unanswered questions about
their missing loved ones, per The Atlantic.
Five of the individuals on the flight were children.
Outside of the crew, there were only 38 Malaysians on board.
Some of the passengers were from the countries of Indonesia, Australia, India, France, the
U.S., Iran, Ukraine, Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Russia, and Taiwan.
The vast majority of passengers were from China, and were presumably on their way home.
Following the disaster, teams of law enforcement officials from both Malaysia and China carried
out investigations of every single passenger with assistance from the FBI.
All were cleared of suspicion, which means that if something nefarious occurred, it's
unlikely that anyone outside of the crew was involved.
"In other words, the suspicion falls on the two pilots."
Of the two pilots on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the first was 27-year-old Fariq Hamid.
The trip to Beijing was his last training flight before earning his certification.
The remainder of the crew consisted of 10 flight attendants and senior captain, Zaharie
Ahmad Shah, who was one of the most experienced pilots in the country.
The 53-year-old Captain Zaharie reportedly lived alone since his kids had grown up and
moved out.
Meanwhile, his wife had reportedly left, and there was little chance that she would return.
A close friend alleged to The Atlantic,
"Zaharie's marriage was bad.
In the past he slept with some of the flight attendants.
[...] You're flying all over the world with these beautiful girls in the back.
But his wife knew."
More than one friend reportedly described Zaharie as being sad, and bordering on depression,
while others defended the pilot.
"I would believe that he would have made sure of the safety and welfare of everyone else
before he thinks about himself."
Even more disturbing were the results uncovered from forensic examinations of a flight simulator
the pilot frequently used in his periods of isolation.
In particular, there was a path he played through which had a trajectory that was eerily
similar to that of MH370 before it vanished, as if he could have been practicing for the
tragic flight.
While no solid evidence has even been discovered that proves Zaharie was responsible, the possibility
hasn't been ruled out.
"Somebody made this happen and that somebody had to have sophisticated flying skills."
Electrical engineer Mike Exner thoroughly examined the radar data from Malaysia Airlines
Flight 370, and came to an absolutely chilling conclusion.
Exner found that, when the plane was at 40,000 feet, the emergency oxygen masks in the cabin
no longer functioned.
He discovered that the plane flew at that height for more than enough time for depressurization
to take full effect, causing the lethal condition hypoxia to occur outside of the cockpit.
"At the very least, they would be incapacitated."
Federal Aviation Administration guidelines require any flights above 10,000 feet to be
pressurized.
Otherwise, passengers can be at risk of not getting enough oxygen to their blood, tissues,
and cells for their bodies to function.
The resulting hypoxia then creeps up unnoticed, causing passengers to lose consciousness within
a matter of minutes and then die in their sleep soon after.
If someone purposefully flew Flight 370 at such a high altitude, it may have been to
prevent any passengers from interfering in the tragedy.
In the desperate struggle to find answers, a bizarre and terrifying, yet somehow logical,
theory arose that a fire may have ignited in the cargo bay, leading to disaster.
To spark the flames, the likely culprit was thought to be a container of lithium-ion batteries.
This reportedly caused Boeing, the FAA, and most pilots to advocate for changes in how
potentially dangerous goods would be stored in the future.
Others voiced concerns that a container held mangosteens that were out of season, which
allegedly could have contributed to the growing flames.
However, in 2018, an investigation was carried out by an international team from seven countries
who examined the evidence and conducted comprehensive tests.
In their "Safety Investigation Report," the investigators determined that all of the cargo
was packaged safely.
They also found that mangosteens and lithium batteries are flown so frequently without
incident that the items were unlikely responsible for any disaster.
Tests also confirmed that even if the two items came into contact, the short duration
of the flight made it nearly impossible for such a volatile reaction to occur.
The fact that very little of the wreckage from Flight 370 has been recovered is especially
disturbing given the massive amount of time, money, and resources spent in the initial
search operation.
An international effort put together $150 million to fund crews from Malaysia, Australia,
and China to scan the sea floor of one of the largest bodies of water in the world,
the Indian Ocean.
The teams were able to cover a vast amount of territory that added up to 46,000 square
miles located 1,100 miles west of Australia, as reported by The Washington Post.
By 2017, officials had realized that they were likely searching 200 miles too far south.
By then, the governments supporting the operation decided that too much money had already been
spent without finding any substantial evidence.
As a result, the search was tragically halted.
"So why haven't we found it, why aren't we looking, and why haven't we provides answers
to 239 families?"
When the international mission to recover Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 ended in 2017,
it was done so with the understanding that new evidence would restart the search.
However, Peter Foley, the program director of the initial operation, told The Guardian
in early 2023,
"We should be searching, and this time we need to search until we find it."
With governmental authorities failing to act, specialists at Ocean Infinity hope to find
the wreckage using a considerably cheaper budget of just $30 million.
In an interview with 60 Minutes, Foley showed his full support for the private effort and
said,
"The more pressure that's applied to the Malaysian government by families, the more likely they
are to say yes.
They need to get behind Ocean Infinity on this."
Foley and Ocean Infinity remain committed to continuing the search, even if governmental
support is absent.
"Anyone involved in the search feels the same way I do."
The Malaysia Airlines tragedy changed aviation, by forcing the aviation industry to adopt
new measures that could have prevented the disaster in the first place.
Possibly the most critical change instituted by the International Civil Aviation Organization
of the United Nations was to create a technology that could track flights globally from orbit,
no matter how remote the location.
Aireon, the company responsible for the new technology, uses 66 satellites to cover the
entire planet.
The CEO of Aireon told CNN,
"This will be the first time ever that all aircraft are being tracked around the world
in real time."
Before, there was a frightening amount of territory that aircraft could get lost in,
not just over oceans, but in equally isolated regions such as deserts, mountains, and dense
forests.
Now, the interconnected devices in orbit make it far more difficult to lose track of a plane.