MH370: The On-going Mystery of the Vanishing Airliner

At 12:41AM, on the 8th of March 2014, around 11 years ago, a Boeing 777 under the call sign of Malaysia 3-7-0, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members, lifted off the ground bound for Beijing, from Kuala Lumpur international airport’s runway 32R. The plane continued its climb to FL350, proceeding directly to the boundary between Malaysian Airspace and Vietnamese airspace. The route towards this boundary was completely uneventful, and then the aircraft was instructed to contact Vietnamese airspace. The captain replied with the final words heard from the aircraft - “Goodnight. Malaysian three seven zero.” 

From here, radar contact is lost with the aircraft. The initial red flag investigators picked up is that the captain did not read back the instruction to contact Vietnamese airspace, the usual procedure when transferring airspaces. However, Malaysian military radar continued to track the aircraft’s flight path, showing that almost immediately after the aircraft lost communication it made a sharp turn in a south-west direction, completely different to the flight path it was supposed to take. The plane continued to fly and reached the island of Penang, as one of the pilot’s cellphones registered with a cell tower below. The plane made a small turn over the island, now flying in a north-west direction before making its last appearance on any radar, northeast of Penang. 

At 6:30AM Malaysia time, the plane missed its scheduled arrival in Beijing, still unheard of. An hour later, Malaysia Airlines released an official statement: the plane was officially missing.  

Almost immediately after, a search and rescue mission was initiated over the Andaman Sea, where the plane had its last reported position on military radar. Some passengers were found with stolen passports raising suspicions of foul play, however, they were later found to be asylum seekers. Inmarsat satellite detected that the flight may have travelled southwards over the Indian Ocean. This evidence created the most expensive search in the history of aviation. The search covered over 120,000km2 of ocean, to the west of Perth, Western Australia. 

In 2015 and 2016, several pieces of debris confirmed to be from the same flight was washed ashore in the western Indian Ocean, which further confirmed that the plane headed south over the Indian Ocean. After three long and tiring years of searching, the wreck of the plane was still not found. In January 2017, the search was closed due to the lack of progress. 

Several theories have been heavily evaluated by both the ATSB and the general public, including a hypoxia event, hijacking, pilot suicide, and dangerous cargo onboard, however, no one has come to a conclusion yet, which is impossible without data from the aircraft itself. After angry families of the 239 passengers demanded for answers, the Malaysian government announced the search has resumed, very recently. The search will be continued by Ocean Infinity, who are very confident about the precision of their search.