It’s one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries. Ten years on, it remains unsolved, leaving many pleading for answers.
On 8 March 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 left Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing.
The plane vanished from air traffic control radar with 239 people on board, including six Australian citizens. Military radar appeared to show the plane turning west from its planned flight path.
Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong and Infrastructure Minister Catherine King said on Friday Australia’s sympathies remained with the families and loved ones.
“We recognise their ongoing heartache and grief without the answers they seek,” they said in a joint statement.
Australia is “supportive of all practical efforts to find MH370” and would assist in a , they said.
“Australia stands ready to assist the Malaysian Government if it considers that Australian agencies are able to offer technical information as a result of their involvement in previous searches,” they said.
Family members of passengers and crew onboard missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 and Malaysia’s Transport Minister Loke Siew Fook during an event in Malaysia on Sunday marking the 10th anniversary of its disappearance. Source: AAP / Nazri Mohamad/EPA
Multiple searches, including one coordinated by Australia, — believed to have crashed somewhere in the vast southern reaches of the Indian Ocean — or to establish a reason for its disappearance.
But several theories — and counter theories — have emerged. Many have been discredited.
A possible case of hypoxia
The first search was coordinated by Australia in 2014 and involved the Malaysian and Chinese governments — after analysis showed the aircraft had turned south to the southern Indian Ocean.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) said in a report in June 2014 that the plane kept flying until it ran out of fuel, most likely because the passengers and crew had died from oxygen deprivation — hypoxia.
It noted the absence of communications, the steady flight path and a number of other key abnormalities in the course of the ill-fated flight.
“Given these observations, the final stages of the unresponsive crew/hypoxia event type appeared to best fit the available evidence for the final period of MH370’s flight when it was heading in a generally southerly direction,” the report said.
Investigators at the time said what little evidence they had to work with suggested the plane was deliberately diverted thousands of kilometres from its scheduled route before plunging into the Indian Ocean.
They later narrowed, and then expanded, the search area for the plane further south in the Indian Ocean — to around 2,000km west of Perth.
Leading Seaman William Sharkey of the Australian Defence Force searches for debris from flight MH370 in April 2014. Source: AAP / Australian Defence Department/PR
But despite efforts involving hundreds of people, the aircraft was not found and the search was suspended in 2017. The ATSB’s final report was published in October that year.
The Malaysian government announced a second search in January 2018, led by a team of Malaysian investigators and US company Ocean Infinity. This search came to an end in March that year.
A rogue pilot
A key theory has centred on the plane’s pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, and whether he was to blame. He had been a pilot with the airline for over three decades.
In 2016, a document from the Malaysian police investigation, obtained by a US media outlet, showed the captain had conducted a simulated flight into the remote southern Indian Ocean less than a month before MH370 vanished.
Some saw the revelation as evidence Shah had diverted the plane as part of a planned murder-suicide.
An ATSB statement at the time said: “there is no evidence to support the claim”.
“The simulator information shows only the possibility of planning. It does not reveal what happened on the night of its disappearance nor where the aircraft is located,” the statement read.
“While the FBI data provides a piece of information, the best available evidence of the aircraft’s location is based on what we know from the last satellite communications with the aircraft.”
The Malaysian government’s final report, released in 2018, reportedly dismissed the theory, saying neither Shah, nor his first officer, Fariq Abdul Hamid, showed psychological signs of a deliberate act.
“We have examined the pilot and the first officer and we are quite satisfied with their background, with their training, with their mental health,” the lead investigator said.
Names of missing passengers written on candle plate holders at a Day of Remembrance for MH370 in Malaysia on Sunday. Source: Getty / NurPhoto
A controlled ditching
It was widely believed the aircraft had run out of fuel and crashed into the sea at high speed.
Another theory presents an alternate scenario — where the captain could have guided the aircraft in a soft landing known as a “controlled ditching”.
Since early in the search, fuel exhaustion was seen as the most likely explanation for the aircraft’s power interruption, according to the ATSB’s final report.
However, it noted this could be explained in other ways — for example, a much less likely scenario: “if there was someone active in the cockpit and preparing the aircraft for a controlled ditching”.
“If the aircraft was being actively controlled during the final segment of the flight south into the Indian Ocean, a series of step climbs (which must be initiated by someone active in the cockpit) could have resulted in enough fuel at the end of flight to perform a controlled ditching under power rather than an unpowered glide,” the report said.
However, while no firm conclusions could be drawn at the time, it said evidence generally indicated there was a “significant amount of energy” at the time the aircraft entered the water, and this was not consistent with a successful controlled ditching.
Conspiracy theories
Over the years, other controversial theories have circulated and taken hold.
In one case, US science journalist Jeff Wise put forward that the aircraft was hijacked, on instruction from Russian President Vladimir Putin, and flown to an airport in Kazakhstan.
Wise explained the theory in a feature for US media outlet New York Magazine, and also published a book.
Other theories suggest the plane was shot down, apparently by US-Thai fighters in a joint military exercise, or was the product of the world’s first cyber hijacking.
There has been no evidence come to light to support these theories.
With the main aircraft wreckage unable to be located, the Malaysian government’s report said the investigation was unable to draw definitive conclusions as to what happened to MH370.
Li Eryou’s son Li Yanlin was on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. Source: AAP / Emily Wang Fujiyama/AP
What now? Family members hold onto hope
The prospect of another search for MH370 has given the families of hundreds of passengers and a dozen crew new hope for closure.
Ocean Infinity has offered to look again, but the Malaysian government has requested new evidence before agreeing to another effort.
“If there’s a compelling case, evidence that (it) needs to be reopened, we will certainly be happy to reopen,” Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said .
“It is (an) issue affecting lives of people and whatever needs to be done, must be done.”
Li Eryou’s 27-year-old son Li Yanlin was on the flight, and said he still holds out hope his son will be found.
“I believe my son is still on the flight, that he’s still around. Or he is living on a remote island like Robinson Crusoe. That’s what I’ve always believed,” he told the Associated Press.
Jiang Hui is the son of one of the passengers aboard MH370. He said family members are willing to invest their own money in the search — at their own risk.
“Because the plane won’t appear on its own if we don’t search for it. There has been zero progress since 2018. If this continues, there will never be an answer on MH370.”
