“Good night Malaysia”, said the 52-year-old Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, before disappearing into a mystery with all 227 passengers and 12 crew aboard.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (MH370/MAS370) was an international passenger flight operated by Malaysia Airlines that vanished from all radar at 12:41 a.m. on March 8, 2014, while flying from Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia to its planned destination, Beijing Capital International Airport in China.
The flight was going smoothly, with no errors or irregular activity reported. It wasn’t until 38 minutes after takeoff, as the plane was entering Thailand’s airspace, Shah wished Malaysian air traffic control a good night. Shortly after this, the aircraft started travelling outside of its designated route and then got lost from both Thailand and Malaysia’s radar.
Captain Shah manoeuvred the plane right back to his hometown, Penang Island before vanishing into thin air. It was also revealed the captain was trying to connect a satellite owned by Inmarsat, one of the biggest satellite companies, in his last minutes.
For the longest time, the disappearance of the plane remained a mystery. After a three-year search across 120,000 km2 (46,000 sq mi) of ocean failed to locate the aircraft, the Joint Agency Coordination Centre heading the operation suspended its activities in January 2017. A second search launched in January 2018 by private contractor Ocean Infinity also ended without success after six months. Only some debris was found.
Relying mostly on the analysis of data from the Inmarsat satellite with which the aircraft last communicated, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) initially proposed that a hypoxia event was the most likely cause given the available evidence, although no consensus has been reached among investigators concerning this theory.
There have been rumours such as the captain having this exact flight scenario in his flight simulation several times before and this was all planned or the plane travelling into another dimension and that explains why after all the search nothing was completely found.
What are your thoughts? Leave them in the comment section.
Sources: https://www.wikipedia.org, Public opinion.
Thank you for this thoughtful and well-articulated piece. It’s clear that a lot of care and effort went into writing it, and I truly appreciate the clarity and depth you brought to the topic. Looking forward to reading more of your work.
This was such a well-written and engaging article! Really impressive work — well done!
This was a very insightful piece. Thank you for sharing.
It remains one of the most baffling events in aviation history !