Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: Disappearance and Investigation

MH370 was the designation for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared on March 8, 2014, on a flight scheduled to take it from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China. Investigators determined that the plane had deviated from its course and, within a short time, turned south on a path that would have taken it over the Southern Indian Ocean. A search of nearly three years failed to locate the plane, and the cause of its disappearance has not been determined.

A Boeing 777-200ER, MH370 carried 239 people, including a crew of 12. The plane’s captain was Zaharie Ahmad Shah, who had logged over 18,000 hours as a pilot, with more than 8,000 of them on 777s. His first officer, or copilot, was Fariq Abdul Hamid, who had fewer than 3,000 hours of flying experience, practically none of them on a 777.

MH370 took off at 12:41 a.m., Malaysia Standard Time, expecting to arrive in Beijing at 6:30. At 1:07, the plane’s Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) made a routine automatic transmission, and at 1:19, someone in the cockpit checked in verbally with air traffic controllers as the plane apparently left Malaysian airspace. Two minutes later, however, someone also turned off the plane’s transponder, a system relaying flight number, altitude, speed, and heading. At 1:37, the plane’s ACARS failed to make an automatic transmission. Attempts by Malaysia Airlines staff to reach the plane by satellite phone were unsuccessful.

Radar readings later revealed that rather than proceeding to Beijing, MH370 had flown back across the Malay Peninsula, then turned west-northwest along the Strait of Malacca between the Malay Peninsula and the island of Sumatra. It disappeared from radar shortly afterward but reappeared more than an hour later, at which time it was heading south. Satellite data indicated that the plane flew for about seven hours after its last verbal communication.

An initial search over the Gulf of Thailand was soon widened to the South China Sea and then to the Southeastern Indian Ocean. By early April, however, hopes of locating the plane’s flight recorders faded after the batteries of the attached beacons were expected to go dead.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) began coordination of a massive underwater search in the deep, stormy waters southwest of Australia in October 2014. However, independent researchers disagreed with the ATSB’s timing of the plane’s southern turn, a factor that would have made a significant difference in the location at which its fuel ran out. Another dispute involved whether the plane had hit the water in a long glide or a steep dive—a factor that would have affected the location of the crash, as well as the amount and condition of the resulting debris. The first piece of such debris to be recovered was a piece of the wing found on a beach of the Western Indian Ocean island of Reunion on July 29, 2015.

Given the mystery of the plane’s disappearance, suspicions regarding its crew inevitably arose. A simulator belonging to the pilot had recorded a flight into the Southern Indian Ocean that closely resembled the path that investigators believe MH370 took. There were also reports that the pilot’s wife had moved out of the house with the couple’s children the day before the flight. Although some investigators argue that Zaharie may have crashed the plane in an act of suicide, others suggest the possibility of hijacking or sabotage. Another scenario involves a sudden depressurization leading to hypoxia (lack of oxygen) and impaired judgment.

By the time the deep-sea search for MH370 was suspended in January 2017, the effort had lasted nearly three years and cost about $160 million, setting a record for the most expensive and extensive search in the history of flight. Crashes of commercial aircraft are extremely rare, and those over the oceans are rarer still. Until the disappearance of MH370, the best known involved Air France Flight 447, which crashed into the South Atlantic in 2009, apparently due to equipment failure and pilot error. In that case, wreckage was spotted a day after the crash, but it was two years before the plane’s flight recorders were recovered. If MH370’s recorders should ever be found, their files may turn out to have been corrupted by the high pressure at the bottom of the Indian Ocean.

FURTHER READING: Negroni, Christine. 2016. “What Went Wrong on Flight MH370?” Air & Space Smithsonian (Sep.): 30-5.

Pleter, Octavian Thor, Cristian Emil Constantinescu, and Barna Istvan Jakab. 2016. “Reconstructing the Malaysian 370 Flight Trajectory by Optimal Search.” Journal of Navigation 69 (1): 1-23.

Quest, Richard. 2016. The Vanishing of Flight MH370: The True Story of the Hunt for the Missing Malaysian Plane. New York: Berkley.

Thompson, Maurice, James Cooper, and Jess Harman. 2016. “The Search for MH370: Where Are We Now?” Air & Space Law 41 (6): 459-74.