The final words said by MH370 were “Goodnight, Malaysian 370”. Then it vanished. It remains one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries to this day. What occurred on MH370? To unravel this puzzle and trace this 64-meter-long aircraft, numerous investigations and search efforts were undertaken. However, what actually occurred on that flight is still unknown to the world.
At 12:42 a.m., Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 departed Kuala Lumpur. Beijing was the destination of this flight. There were two pilots, ten flight attendants, and 227 passengers. The majority of passengers were Chinese. One of the most senior captains of Malaysian Airlines is Zaharie Ahmed Shah who was 53 years old.. His experience was excellent. And the 27-year-old first officer, Fariq Hamid. He was on a training flight.
For roughly twenty minutes, this flight travels in the correct direction. At 1:08am, the plane crossed the Malaysian coastline. It flew across the South China Sea toward Vietnam. As Zaharie informed, everything was operating perfectly as it should. That time the aircraft was 35,000 feet above the ground. The aircraft came under radar amese air traffic control’s jurisdiction approximately eleven minutes later. The plane suddenly vanished from the radar just thirty seconds after it had entered this area at 1:21 a.m. They attempted to contact the aircraft but received no reply. Vietnamese controllers reported to Kuala Lumpur that MH370 had abruptly vanished after 18 minutes of searching.
The search operation began its search after 4 hours of its disappearance. It started to search in the South China sea to look for the plane. This search operation was an international effort. 34 ships and 28 aircrafts from 7 different countries tried to look for this plane that morning. But there was no trace of the plane. 4 days later, on 12th March, it was reported that, though the plane had disappeared from the civilian radar, a military radar had spotted the plane that night. And surprisingly, according to this military radar, this plane was last seen at 2:22am. But it wasn’t located above the South China Sea, rather it was near the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Some days later, a new piece of information was discovered from satellite data. It was found that the plane was trying to automatically communicate with a satellite. The satellite was simply aware that this plane tried to communicate but nothing more about its location. Surface level searches and deep ocean searches both were conducted in order to find this plane. After 3 years of searching and spending 160 million dollars, they called off this operation. This operation was deemed a failure.
In July 2015, the first piece of debris was found from this plane. The debris reached the Island of Reunion by floating. The right wing flaperon of the plane was found here.
Many theories and assumptions were made about what really had happened to this plane.
- Pilot suicide: Captain Zaharie is being accused. It is said that the captain intentionally disabled communication and took the plane, then crashed it into the ocean. Some people say he may not have been in the right mental state. The plane turned nearly 180° from Vietnam to Malaysia. Autopilot couldn’t have done this on its own. It had to be done manually. The airplane was flown directly above the border between Thailand and Malaysia so that they could escape the airspace radar of both countries. Though this theory was rejected.
- Hijack: 2 passengers on that flight were under suspicion. Pouria Nour Mohammad Mehdad and Delvar Seyed Mohammad Reza. They were Iranian. They were suspicious because they were travelling with fake passports. This theory got also rejected because other than this, there was no proof.
- Cabin Depressurization: The most probable theory. According to this theory, the passengers and the crew including 2 pilots on MH370 fainted because of Oxygen deficiency. The plane kept running on autopilot until the fuel ran out.
Other than these theories, many people assume that maybe a new Barmuda Triangle had appeared or maybe this was a paranormal incident. Many people even believe that it was taken by aliens. Till this date, 27 pieces of the plane have been found on different islands. So what happened to MH370? What really caused the crash? Even after 10 years of its disappearance, the mystery lies with the people on that flight.
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Writer
Ummay Tasnim Sifat
Intern, Content Writing Department
YSSE