After extensive searches, Australian and Asian authorities still haven’t solved one of aviation’s most enduring mysteries. Why?
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More than 11 years ago, a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport with 227 passengers and 12 crewmembers. During this routine flight to Beijing, tragedy would strike when the aircraft and its occupants vanished without any trace of wreckage or bodies.
Since that day, March 8, 2014, viewers across the world have regarded Flight MH370 as both infamous and intriguing. Was there international interference? Was there a mechanical failure or environmental accident? Could the plane have been deliberately crashed?
Perhaps one of the worst aspects of this conundrum is the absence of closure for the hundreds of families whose loved ones disappeared. This is why investigations continue today. Even 11 years later, forensic specialists and investigators are compiling and uncovering facts about what happened to the plane.
For a deep dive into the MH370 investigation, check out this probing MagellanTV documentary.
Facts Gleaned from Initial Searches
We don’t know everything, but some things we know for sure. MH370 reached cruising altitude at around 1:00 a.m., sending its final voice message to local air traffic control 20 minutes later. The plane veered west at 1:30 a.m. without notification, attracting attention from the Malaysian military, which began to monitor the unauthorized movement of the plane.
The sudden detour would severely hamper the search effort. Malaysia’s Inmarsat satellite was on the case, but it would receive only weak signals from the plane no more than once an hour for the next seven hours. So, nearly the entire Indian Ocean required search efforts by China, Malaysia, and Australia, the last of which volunteered submarines to search deeper in the water.
Two weeks after the disappearance, the Malaysian prime minister officially announced that the flight had likely crashed into a remote part of the Indian Ocean, leaving no survivors. However, this is not to say that nobody has encountered any evidence or wreckage.
In April 2014, an Australian ship that wasn’t looking for the wreckage received a curious ping from no more than a few hundred miles away. Could it have been the black box? If so, the device would have been nearing the end of its battery life. Australian authorities sent a remotely controlled submarine to investigate the ping, but, because pings can indicate such large areas, the drone found no wreckage. The very condition of the ship’s acoustic equipment was called into question by some.
Over a year later, the first chunk of debris appeared on the shores of Reunion Island. In fact, from 2015 through 2016, almost 30 unusually large specimens of wreckage would reach the shores of countries along the east coast of Africa, over a dozen of which were identifiable as being part of the plane.
From the irreparable condition of the debris, investigators concluded that the pilot hadn’t actually controlled the plane’s descent. The plane may have hit the ocean vertically. This pointed to a shocking, yet plausible possibility: The pilot had intentionally plunged himself, along with his passengers and crewmembers, into the ocean, hoping to leave no trace of evidence.
Did the supposedly suicidal pilot exhibit strange behavior before take-off? Of course not. Those with suicidal thoughts smile countless times before taking their own lives. But as a commercial pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah trained with a home flight simulator. According to New York Magazine, he flew over the Indian Ocean from Malaysia in the simulation a month before the crash. Was this a coincidence? Maybe, but it’s a much more likely explanation than the plane having been shot down, for example, as no evidence of such a crime has ever surfaced.
Messages of hope and prayer for MH370's passengers (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Will the Search for MH370 Continue?
Eleven years isn’t a long time, but technology has advanced significantly during that period. Powered by artificial intelligence, new algorithms process datasets from satellite transmissions, ocean currents, and previous search areas to detect patterns faster than a human ever could. In particular, IBM has used quantum computing to model the plane’s path during the final hours of the flight.
Drones have improved, too. Investigators can use capable, high-resolution data from drones to aid in the search for MH370. Furthermore, AI has become complex enough to pilot many of these drones, keeping some of the pressure off human labor.
Finally, in addition to these advancements is a simpler explanation. Vincent Lyne of the University of Tasmania’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies surmises that part of the pilot’s plan was to crash the plane where no one would or could ever look: in an area called Broken Ridge, a rough plateau beneath the Indian Ocean that’s difficult for vessels to navigate. This location would’ve been the perfect hiding place for the plane.
Ocean Infinity, a U.K.-based robotics and maritime exploration company, is embarking on the latest expedition this year, its research team employing cutting-edge examples of the above technologies. Perhaps they will succeed in finally solving this great mystery – for historians, for the governments involved, and especially for the families of those who died.
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Title Image: A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
