THE disappearance of flight MH370 is one of aviation’s biggest mysteries and has led to a number of theories.
Just 39 minutes into the journey from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, Malaysia Flight 370 lost contact with ground control and crashed at an unknown location, killing all 239 people on board.
What happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370?
On March 8, 2014 at 12:42 MYT, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 departed Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing, China. The passengers included Chinese calligraphers, a couple returning home to their sons after a long-delayed honeymoon, and a construction worker who had not been home in a year.
But at 1:21 a.m. the plane lost contact with the Kuala Lumpur Area Control Center while en route to Beijing over the South China Sea.
Previously, Malaysian authorities believed that the last words they heard from the plane, whether from the pilot or co-pilot, were “Good night Malaysian three seven zero”.
Satellite signals from the plane indicate that it continued flying for about seven hours while it reportedly ran out of fuel.
Experts have calculated the most likely crash site to be about 1,000 kilometers west of Perth, Australia, but an exhaustive search of the area failed to turn up any wreckage.
The timeline of the March 8, 2014 crash:
- 1:21 a.m.: About 39 minutes after takeoff, Malaysian Flight 370 was flying over the South China Sea when the plane’s position disappeared from radar at the Kuala Lumpur Area Control Center. Data from Malaysian military radar shows that the aircraft almost immediately turned southwest and returned to the Malaysian Peninsula.
- 2:22 a.m.: After crossing the peninsula and heading north toward the Bay of Bengal, the plane made its last contact with military radar and satellite data shows the plane making its last major turn south into the Indian Ocean .
- 2:39 a.m.: A ground-to-air phone call, made via the plane’s satellite link, goes unanswered.
- 5:30 am: A search and rescue operation is launched.
- 7:24 a.m.: Malaysia Airlines released a statement announcing that Flight 370 is missing.
- In the following weeks: A major search operation searched 1.7 million square kilometers over a period of 52 days.
- April 28: The search is called off because no debris from the plane has been found. A new phase is launched using sonar to scan the ocean floor.
- Late July: Debris that investigators say is definitely from the plane is found washed up on Réunion, a landmass that is part of the Mascarene Islands and about 420 miles east of Madagascar.
- January 2017: Nearly three years after the crash, the underwater search for the plane is officially suspended. The search covered more than 46,000 square kilometers of the Indian Ocean floor but was unable to locate the wreckage.
- October 2020: Airplane remains are found on an Australian beach, sparking the theory that it is from the missing plane.
What are the theories about what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370?
Vladimir Putin
Some feared that Russian President Vladimir Putin was involved in the hijacking of MH370.
American science writer Jeff Wise claimed that Putin had ‘faked’ the plane’s navigation data so it could fly undetected to the Baikonur Cosmodrome and ‘hurt the West’.
American shooting
French ex-aviation director Marc Dugain accused the US military of shooting down the plane because they feared it had been hijacked.
A book called Flight MH370 – The Mystery also suggested that it had been accidentally shot down by US-Thai joint fighter jets during a military exercise and that the incident had been covered up.
Suicide
Malaysia’s police chief Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar suggested the disappearance could be the result of suicide.
He claimed that someone on board could have taken out a large life insurance package before boarding the plane so that he could treat his family or pay back the money owed.
In hiding
Historian and writer Norman Davies suggested that MH370 could have been hacked remotely and flown to a secret location as a result of the carriage of sensitive material on board the aircraft.
Cracks in the plane
Malaysia Airlines discovered a 15-inch crack in the fuselage of one of its planes days before MH370 disappeared.
The Federal Aviation Administration insists it issued a final warning two days before the disappearance.
But the Daily mirror claimed that the missing plane “didn’t have the same antenna as the rest of the Boeing 777s” so it didn’t receive the warning.
Stowaway
An engineer claimed a “mysterious 14th charge” was added to the flight list after takeoff, sparking theories that there was a stowaway.
Aviation safety expert Tim Termini told Channel 5’s Flight program that a stowaway is one of the possible hijacking scenarios.
Ghost plane
Aviation expert Christine Negroni has speculated that the plane’s cabin suddenly depressurized.
She said that if Captain Shah had had a break at the time, co-pilot Abdul Hamid would have been the only person alive for hours before the plane crashed.
Speaking to the Star, she said: “The sudden lack of oxygen would have killed all the passengers and crew within 15 minutes.
“Hamid, however, was isolated from the worst consequences in the cockpit.”
She said some degree of Hamid’s lack of oxygen would explain why the plane made a series of such dramatic turns before disappearing.
The pilot planned the incident
Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull unexpectedly said it was “highly likely that the captain had planned this shocking event.”
He claimed the pilot wanted to “create the world’s greatest mystery.”
Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott also claimed that it was made “crystal clear” to him within a week of the infamous disappearance that the plane had almost certainly been deliberately shot down by the pilot.
Another theory claimed that he hijacked his own plane in protest against the imprisonment of then Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, and as a way to destabilize the corrupt government of Najib Razak.
Another conspiracy theory said the pilot deliberately crashed the plane to cover his trail as he parachuted out of the plane so he could spend the rest of his life with his girlfriend waiting in a boat in the sea.
North Korea took the plane
In the aftermath of the incident, South Korea noted that North Korea nearly took out a Chinese airliner with 220 passengers on board on March 5, 2014.
Some fear Pyongyang shot down the plane, but others believe it was hijacked and diverted to the communist country.
Victims’ cell phones ring
Another theory claims that many family members could hear a ringing tone for up to four days after the crash, so the doomed plane could not have crashed into the Indian Ocean.
Nineteen families have claimed that their loved ones’ devices continued to ring for four days after the plane went missing.
However, wireless analysts claim that phone companies sometimes use a ghost sound when the device is idle Daily star reported.
Snowden revelations
One theory links the plane’s disappearance to Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations about the extent of US surveillance. The week reported.
At issue is the fact that on board the plane were 20 employees from a company called Freescale Semiconductor, which the Snowden documents suggested could have helped the National Security Agency develop technologies used in surveillance.
Reddit user DarkSpectre discussed the theory, writing: “This bunch of American chip guys work together for a world leader in embedded processing solutions (embedded smartphone technology and defense contracts)… on a plane… and disappeared. Coincidence?”
Crashed in the Cambodian jungle
In September 2018, British video producer Ian Wilson claimed to have found the missing plane using Google Maps.
Despite millions spent searching for the wreckage, British investigators believe they have found the plane in a mountainous area of the Cambodian jungle.
In response, the Chinese government deployed the observation company Space View to focus on the high-altitude area on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.
However, the company claims there was no trace of any aircraft, especially all Malaysian Airlines planes that have gone missing since March 2014.
An MH370 tracker has claimed that locals in Cambodia told him they saw a plane believed to be the doomed Malaysia Airlines flight crashing in the jungle.
CIA claims by ex-Malaysian PM
Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has speculated without evidence that the CIA was involved in the incident.
“Planes don’t just disappear,” he wrote in a blog post.
“Certainly not nowadays with all those powerful communication systems, radio and satellite tracking and filmless cameras that work almost indefinitely and have enormous storage capacities.
“For some reason the media won’t publish anything involving Boeing or the CIA.”
The plane was on its way to Kazakhstan
If the plane were to fly north, possible crash sites could extend from the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan border to Thailand.
Former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak originally asked Kazakhstani leader Nursultan Nazarbayev to mount a search operation in the country, but it was quickly sidelined as rescue efforts focused on the Indian Ocean.
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