One day, perhaps, a rainbow-coloured luggage strap or a royal blue seat cover will wash up on a pristine west Australian beach. But until then, we might never be sure what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.
The shocking disappearance of the Boeing 777 a year ago tomorrow still baffles the experts, who cannot find a trace of wreckage or come up with a definitive explanation for its sudden disappearance. More tragically, its loss still haunts the lives of those whose friends and family were aboard the doomed plane.
Here, we round up the key theories – and the few facts – that could help explain one of international air travel’s most disturbing and enduring mysteries.
Before the flight disappeared
Sunday 8 March 2014, 00:41 local time (MYT).
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 departs Kuala Lumpur for Beijing with 227 passengers and 12 crew on board.
Piloted by Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, the plane was due to fly north-east from Kuala Lumpur across Malaysia.
Its usual path should have taken it across the Gulf of Thailand, then over Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and mainland China, before landing just under six hours later at 6.30am. Instead, final contact with air traffic control occurs at 01:19, when a co-pilot, believed to be Fariq Abdul Hamid, radios: “Alright, good night.”
Two minutes later, the plane fails to check in as scheduled with air traffic control in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. No distress signal is received.
Radar shows that the plane makes a sharp left turn, from north-east to almost due west.
According to a report released by the Malaysian Government last May, 17 minutes later, at 01:38, Vietnamese air traffic control become concerned and asks other countries and nearby aircraft to attempt to make contact.
Some 37 minutes later, at 02:15, MH370’s position is picked up for the final time - by Malaysian military radar. The aircraft is heading north-west, across the Andaman Sea. Finally, after four hours of mounting panic and confusion the alarm is raised at 05:30 and a search and rescue operation launched.
Initial searches focus on the South China Sea, south of Vietnam’s Ca Mau peninsula. The loss of aircraft is confirmed at a press conference at 11.14am.
What happened to the plane after contact was lost?
Theory A
It continued on a northwards trajectory
At 02:15, Malaysian military radar plots MH370 at a point south of Phuket in the Strait of Malacca, west of its last known location. Thai military radar logs also then confirmed that the plane turned west and then north over the Andaman Sea. A week later, it was revealed that satellites above the Indian Ocean reported seven contacts – known as ‘handshakes’ – during the night of March 8, with the last occurring at 08.19am. This makes it possible that the jet travelled along a flight corridor stretching north between Thailand, as far north as Kazakhstan.
Theory B: It headed west
The plane’s sharp turn left after contact is lost could mean that the plane was being flown to Diego Garcia, the tiny British-owned island in the Indian Ocean which is used as a military base by the US. Haveeru, a leading Maldives newspaper, reported that several islanders on Kudahuvadhoo in Dhaalu Atoll, spotted a low-flying jet over their territory at about 06:15 in the morning the plane was reported missing. The residents claimed the plane was flying towards the Addu Atoll, the southern tip of the Maldives.
Theory C: It turned south
Satellite ‘handshakes’ could indicate that the plane flew south between Indonesia and the southern Indian Ocean. Two objects spotted on satellite in the Southern Indian Ocean some 12 days later appeared to confirm this theory. As a result, the search operation was focused on the Roaring Forties, one of the world’s roughest stretches of oceans, 1,800kms off the coast of Western Australia. However, 40 per cent of the targeted 60,000 sq km zone has yet to offer up any trace of the Boeing 777. This week, a British pilot, captain Simon Hardy, claimed to have calculated the location of the aircraft, following a six-month examination of flight data and using a unique mathematical technique. According to Hardy, the resting point is 100 nautical miles away from where the Australian Transport Safety Board (ATSB) is currently carrying out its search.
Why did it crash?
It suffered a structural failure
MH370’s violent turn west after contact is lost could be explained by a sudden decompression in the cabin. Its violent left turn after contact was lost could have been the crew’s failed attempt to reach the safety of the 13,000ft runway at Pulau Langkawi, an archipelago 30km off the mainland coast of northwestern Malaysia.
There was a fire in the cargo hold
Among the passenger suitcases and four tonnes of mangosteen included on the official inventory carried by MH370 was a 200kg consignment of lithium-ion batteries. The power supplies, which used in mobile phones and laptops, have been known to catch fire. Earlier this week, United Airlines announced that it will no longer carry bulk shipments of the batteries after new tests highlighed safety concernes. Malaysia Airlines only admitted the plane was carrying the batteries two weeks after it disappeared, and having first denied it.
It was sabotaged
According to a preliminary report by Australian air crash investigators, the Boeing 777 suffered a mysterious power outage during the early stages of its flight, which experts believed could have been part of an attempt to avoid radar detection. The plane’s satellite data unit made an unexpected “log-on” request - or ‘handshake’ - to a satellite less than 90 minutes into its flight. This could have been caused by an interruption of electrical power on board the plane.
The theory was given credence by the belated discovery that two Iranian passengers on board MH370 were travelling on false passports. However, further investigation revealed that Pouria Nour Mohammad Mehrdad, 19, and Delavar Seyed Mohammadreza, 29, were headed for Europe via Beijing, but had no apparent links to terrorist groups.
It was shot down accidentally
According to this theory - advanced in a book called Flight MH370: The Mystery by Nigel Cawthorne, a UK-based writer - MH370 could have been targeted in error during a joint military exercise between the United States and Thailand in the South China Sea. A military drill involving mock warfare involving land, sea and air, would include live-fire exercises. A malfunctioning heat-seeking missile could have had disastrous consquences.
It was shot down on purpose
Did US forces see the unexpected jet approaching Diego Garcia, a remote island in the Indian Ocean that is home to a US military base (and with a runway long enough to land a Boeing 777), and think another 9/11 style attack was underway on American soil? Former French airline boss Marc Dugain says locals on the Maldives have told of a “huge plane at a really low altitude” with Malaysian Airlines colours flying toward Diego Garcia.
It was captured by terrorists for “future use”
The so-called “9/11/14” theory suggests that MH370 did not crash at all, but landed safely and is in fact being “retrofitted” for its parts in a terrorist spectacular. In a widely viewed YouTube video, Christopher Greene, a member of a group called “Alternative Media Television (AMTV)”, suggested that terrorists or even a rogue state could have hijacked the aircraft and could now be “arming it with a nuclear bomb for a later attack that could literally destroy and blow up an entire American city”.
It was captured by the CIA
According to He Xin, a Chinese blogger, the MH370 mystery is the result of a CIA special operation to gain control of some “special person” or “special object” on the plane. Mr He has claimed the plane was forced to land at Diego Garcia, which explains why relatives believed the mobile phones of their loved ones were still ringing in the hours following the plane’s disappearance.
It was captured by the Russians
Last month, science writer Jeff Wise suggested on CNN that the plane may have been hijacked on the orders of Vladimir Putin. Wise believed it could have been deliberately flown along national borders, to avoid radar detection, and landed at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, which has a runway built for space shuttles. When asked what Russia would want with the plane, Wise said there were three “ethnically Russian” men on board: “Could any of these men be special forces or covert operatives?” he asked.
It landed safely… somewhere
Also known as the Lost theory. Many families of those on board the flight refuse to believe there was a crash at all, as no debris has been found. “All of us still believe that our families’ members are still alive,” says Jack Song, from Beijing, whose sister Chunling was on board. “If the plane crashed, there should be lots of wreckage, just like MH17 [another Malaysia Airlines flight that crashed last year in eastern Ukraine], just like other crashes. But for MH370, you can’t find anything. So we don’t believe the airplane is in the ocean.”
The theory gained so much traction that US officials were forced to deny it.
What happened to the pilot?
He killed himself mid-flight
It has been widely suggested that Captain Shah, 53, had been unhappy following a marital rift. Last September, Ewan Wilson, former chief executive of Kiwi International Airlines, claims Shah deliberately killed himself and 227 passengers on board the doomed flight by turning off the oxygen supply. But this week, Shah’s sister urged the public to stop blaming him for the disappearance of the plane, saying he “was no different from normal” in the lead-up to the flight, and that claims his marriage was failing were “rubbish”. However, since 1976, eight plane crashes have been blamed on pilot suicide.
He deliberately hijacked his own plane
A flight simulator recovered from Captain Shah’s home revealed a deleted flight path to a remote island far into the southern Indian Ocean. Investigators suggest he may have deliberately diverted his own plane from its approved flight path to Beijing, but fellow pilots say such practice is routine during long-haul flights.
Daily Telegraph
