It's 8 March 2014: MH370 is a scheduled flight operated by a Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777-200ER, from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The captain is Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53 years old and the first officer is Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27 years old and there are 10 cabin crew members, with 227 passengers on board.
Flight 370 took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 00:42 local time. The weather was clear and there was perfect visibility. At 1:19, while Flight 370 was over the South China Sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, Malaysian Air Traffic Control (ATC) instructed Flight 370 to contact the ATC in Vietnam. The captain acknowledged the instructions and said "Good night. Malaysian Three Seven Zero".
One minute and forty-three seconds after the last communication, the Boeing 777 disappeared from the ATC radar, meaning that the two aircraft transponders were either broken or switched off manually. However the Malaysian military radar continued to track the aircraft as it turned left, crossed the Malay Peninsula near the Malaysia–Thailand border, and travelled over the Andaman Sea.
At 2:22, the aircraft disappeared from Malaysian military radar, but at 2:25, the aircraft's satellite data communication, which was lost sometime between 01:07 and 02:03, was re-established. This meant that the aircraft, although its position was unknown, was still airborne. This automatic data transmission between the aircraft and network satellite, is common in every modern commercial airline, and in this case went on for almost 5 hours, meaning that the aircraft flew for a lot of time, until perhaps, it ran out of fuel and sank into the ocean.
Four hours later, the plane still hadn't reached its destination in Beijing and was officially declared missing. At 8:19, the satellite received the last automatic transmission by the flight 370.
Tracing the locations of the automatic communications between the network satellite and the Boeing 777 on a map while measuring the distance of the signal, fuel consumption and speed of the aircraft, shows that it presumably crashed in a large area in the south of the Indian Ocean. The disappearance initiated a multi-national search effort, firstly taken in charge by the Australian government. The search of any debris of the aircraft continued for several months during which two 19th century shipwrecks were found. Nothing was discovered for 16 months, until 29 July 2015 when a flaperon, later confirmed from the right wing of Flight 370 according to the serial numbers and dates written on it, was found on a beach in Réunion (near Madagascar), approximately 4000 km west of the search area. This discovery meant that the ocean currents could have carried the wreckage for several kilometers away.
In late 2018, a french team of experts, suggested a new possible flight path, during which, in attempt to make an emergency landing, the aircraft crashed near the Christmas Island, far North of the search area. Although this site was checked by the surface search, the underwater search never reached that area.
Scientists from the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change published a paper analysing where wreckage was found with ocean drift. This predicted an area for the crash site, further north than the search area already chosen. However, the Australian government, which carried on for years at the time, stated that the search would not be extended beyond the current search area without new evidence, in order to save money.
The underwater search for the wreckage of Flight 370 was officially suspended in early 2017 after an underwater survey of 120,000 square kilometers in the southern Indian Ocean. The search is reported to have cost $160 million, making it the most expensive in all of aviation history.
The debris found were 31 "small pieces" of the aircraft, but only 3 were certainly confirmed by experts of being part of the Boeing 777.
After the main search was officially terminated, a private company, the Ocean Infinity, started searching for the aircraft themselves. However, after just one year, the search was also suspended.
The aircraft hasn't been found yet, so the reasons of the accident remain unknown. Despite this, there are a few details that could explain a valid theory for the cause of the crash.
First, a sudden turn to the left, just after the transponders were turned off: It couldn't have been done by the autopilot, because it is beyond its capabilities. So it was almost certain that the left turn was done manually by the pilots, or maybe by a person that could have been hijacking it. Then, the second and third turn could be done automatically or manually, but if done by the autopilot, it should have been instructed by a person with an adequate knowledge.
The next step during the investigations, was to look into Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah's background. Investigators searched his house, and found very interesting evidence. The pilot had a flight simulator, within which its history showed a flight route which ended in the Indian Ocean.
Could the captain be guilty? However it is still unknown why the captain could have chosen to commit suicide, killing everyone on board. He was married with three children and his monthly expenses a month before the crash, indicated nothing unusual. Also, he accumulated almost 18000 hours of flight and he was a respected pilot within the airline. There was no story of apathy, anxiety or mental illness during his whole career as a pilot, he was calm and respectful of his cabin crew. Some theories explained how the captain could have committed suicide because of political issues or maybe family problems but they were contradicted by later investigations.
The first officer, Fariq Abdul Hamid, was only 27 and had just married a fellow pilot. He was mentally stable and financially set. The only relevant information was that at the time of the accident he had only 39 hours of flight on the Boeing 777 and a total of 3000 hours of total flight time.
In conclusion in 2018, the Malaysian government released the final report of the accident, stating that it had not occurred by a malfunction of the plane but instead someone manually manipulated the aircraft systems in order to divert it from its scheduled destination. Despite this, due to the lack of evidence, the report never clearly stated that the aircraft was hijacked, with the report adding that, "the team is unable to determine the real cause of the disappearance of flight MH370".
Today, as it still remains unsolved, it has become one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history.
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