Sophia Michaels
It has been almost a decade since the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, and yet there are still more questions than answers surrounding this tragic event. The flight, known as MH370, has been the subject of numerous podcasts, fictional series (“Manifest”), and documentaries, such as Netflix’s “MH370: The Plane That Disappeared,” which was released on March 8. This documentary examines the mysterious disappearance of the flight, presents evidence that points to mistakes made during the initial investigation, and explores a few theories that attempt to make sense of the tragedy.
On the morning of March 8, 2014, MH370 departed Kuala Lumpur International Airport with 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board, headed for Beijing Capital International Airport. At 1:08 a.m., the flight traveled over the South China Sea towards Vietnam, and the pilot in command (PIC), Zaharie Ahmad Shah, reported to air traffic control (ATC) that the plane had leveled off at 35,000 feet. 11 minutes later, ATC contacted Shah and his co-pilot, Fariq Hamid, and Shah responded with “Good night Malaysian three seven zero.” This was the last known communication between ATC and MH370 before the plane’s transponder stopped sending its position to ATC and disappeared off the primary radar at 1:21 a.m.
Vietnamese ATC noticed the plane in their airspace, but it quickly vanished from their radar. When they notified controllers in Kuala Lumpur, 18 minutes had passed. Military radar across different countries tracked MH370 at various points, and its last known coordinates were somewhere over the Indian Ocean. An emergency search-and-rescue effort was launched at 6:32 a.m., and 34 ships and 28 aircrafts from seven different countries began searching the South China Sea between Vietnam and Malaysia. No sign of MH370 was found, but an investigation into the flight records revealed that shortly after it disappeared off the radar, the plane had turned sharply to the southwest, flown back across the Malay Peninsula, and banked around the island of Penang before heading northwest up the Strait of Malacca and out across the Andaman Sea.
On March 24, 2014, the Malaysian government concluded that MH370 had crashed somewhere in the Indian Ocean. In response to this, two notable groups have been responsible for investigating the disappearance: the Independent Group and Ocean Infinity. Along with these organizations, individuals have also been dedicated to solving the mystery of MH370, such as Blaine Gibson who found pieces of the plane on the shores of Mozambique and Madagascar in 2016.
There are many conspiracy theories surrounding MH370’s disappearance, but little evidence supports them. One central theory suggests that PIC Zaharie Ahmad Shah switched off the autopilot settings, depressurized the cabin, and quickly ascended to 40,000 feet, depriving all cabin passengers of oxygen and killing them within minutes sometime after MH370 disappeared off the radar. According to evidence found throughout the various investigations, the plane remained in the air for six hours before eventually running out of fuel and crashing into the Indian Ocean. However, all of this evidence and proposed theories do not provide a clear picture of what happened to MH370.
Watch “MH370: The Plane That Disappeared” to form your own hypothesis about this doomed airplane and catch the trailer below.
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Image Source: Getty / Rahman Roslan
