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MH370 has been shrouded in mystery for the last 10 years. Nobody knows what happened to the 239 passengers on board the Malaysian Airlines’ flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8. The cliffhanger has spawned several theories, books and documentaries, making MH370 disappearance one of the modern era’s biggest mysteries.
The 40 Minutes After the Take-Off
The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200 was an overnight flight that had the last transmission from Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah as the aircraft moved to Vietnamese airspace in the early hours of March 8, 40 minutes after taking-off from Kuala Lumpur.
Shah’s last words recorded were “Good Night Malaysian three seven zero”, after which, there had been radio silence till today.
Reports hinted that the plane continued to fly for hours before disappearing from the radar.
Early searches in South China Sea suggest that the plane had shifted to the remote part of the Indian Ocean, with satellite information suggesting it went down after running out of fuel.
After MH370 went dark, its transponders were turned off and its tracking system was disabled. Military radar showed the plane left its path to fly over Malaysian and Penang Island, and then out of the Andaman Sea towards the tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, as mentioned in a report by Al Jazeera.
The plane was last spotted on the military radar on March 8 at 2:22am Malaysian time (18:22 GMT, March 7). From there, the aircraft turned south –into the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean, the report added.
Apparently, smaller pieces of fuselage were found on the eastern coast of Africa and the islands in the Indian Ocean in 2014, but nothing has been corroborated or confirmed.
To date, the body of the aircraft and black box have never been found.
Another Search?
After shattered families of those on board the flight urged and pressured the local authorities in Malaysia, a new search into the mystery is likely to be launched.
“There have been ships lost that are found after hundreds of years. So we cannot say that this plane will never be found,” one family member VPR Nathan told Reuters during a recent commemorative event. His wife Anne Daisy was on board MH370.
Aviation experts have given hope that with better technology the new search would bring the relatives closer to the missing plane but that will not be cheap, as quoted by CNN.
Expensive Expedition
So far, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent in the searches into the Indian Ocean that first began on March 18 and covered an area of 4.5 million sq km. Several countries, including Australia, failed to find any trace of the plane and ended the search in six weeks.
The search was then carried out into the inhospitable seabed, some 2,800 km off the coast of Western Australia.
The search, covering some 120,000 sq km (46,332 square miles), involved ships, submarines and aircraft, and cost $147m.
The initial search carried out by Malaysia, China, and Australia, estimated to have cost $132 million, was called off in January 2017 after failing to find any trace. Ocean Infinity was brought in by the Malaysian government on a “no-find, no-fee basis”. But it did not show any results, and was called off within 90 days of search in 2018.
What are the Theories So Far?
Malaysia’s officials in 2018 found that while foul play was involved into the disappearance of the aircraft, it was not possible to say who could turn off the transponders and turned the plane around, as mentioned by an Al Jazeera report.
Another set of experts are more intrigued in understanding what happened in the 40 minutes’ flight after the take-off. Some believe that the plane’s transponders stopped transmitting, and it soon disappeared from the military and civilian radar, which made experts conclude that MH370 would have flown off course.
According to aviation experts, the plane might have glided south to the Indian Ocean instead of flying northeast across the South China Sea. The Indian Ocean Region is one of the world’s remotest locations in terms of flight monitoring.
A 440-page report by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) in 2017 said the pilot had flown a route on his home flight simulator six weeks before MH370 disappeared that was initially similar to the one actually flown on March 8, as quoted by Al Jazeera.
Is There Any Hope to Find the Plane?
Charitha Pattiaratchi, a professor of coastal oceanography at the University of Western Australia, said with the advancement in technology in the last 10 years, there is a high probability of finding MH370, Al Jazeera quoted as saying.
“In the area where the search is to take place, the ocean is around 4,000 metres deep,” Pattiaratchi wrote in the Conversation newsletter earlier this week. “The water temperatures are one to two degrees Celcius [33.8 – 35.6 degrees Fahrenheit], with low currents. This means that even after 10 years, the debris field would be relatively intact.”
Some aviation experts have mentioned about Weak Signal Propagation Reporter technology released in 2008, which uses radio amateurs to track the strength of radio signals around the world, and catch anomalies.
Retired British Aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey said he traced WSPR data back to the time when MH370 disappeared and concluded the aircraft may be lying between 3,000 and 4,000 metres (9,800 to 13,000 feet) below the Indian Ocean, about 1,500 km (930 miles) off the coast of Perth, Australia, as quoted by CNN.
“I certainly believe MH370 can be found,” he said as quoted by CNN.
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