MH370: Conspiracy theories, unanswered questions about the missing plane
THE final report on the world’s greatest aviation mystery was handed down today. We look back at the theories and unanswered questions about MH370.
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THE world’s greatest aviation mystery has continued to spark anger and anguish for those who lost loved ones on Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.
Today, for the first time, Malaysia handed down its written report — promising no secrecy.
Transport Minister Anthony Loke has said: “Every word recorded by the investigation team will be tabled in this report,” he told reporters, adding that a news conference would follow the closed-door briefing.
“We are committed to the transparency of this report. It will be tabled fully, without any editing, additions, or redactions.”
In May, Malaysia called off a privately-funded underwater search for the aircraft after it vanished with 239 aboard en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur on March 8, 2014.
It had a “no find, no fee” mantra, as it searched the latest area pinpointed by experts — 35 degrees south in the Indian Ocean.
The latest search came after an Australian-led search was suspended on January 17 last year.
Private company Ocean Infinity was briefed by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), which identified the most likely location of the aircraft “with unprecedented precision and certainty” at 35.6°S, 92.8°E — in between Western Australia and Madagascar.
Some of the conspiracy theories and unanswered questions about the missing plane include:
*IT WAS A PILOT MURDER-SUICIDE
This is the most popular theory among former and current pilots. MH370 pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah could have ditched the plane in a suicidal plunge. There is evidence that he had practised flying a similar route to the one the missing plane took on a flight simulator at home.
So far, a theory adopted by Malaysia and the ATSB has been that is that everyone on MH370 were somehow incapacitated by an oxygen deficiency.
On one hand, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, may have fallen unconscious. If he was on a suicide mission, then he would have cut off communication before sending the flight into the ocean. Members of his family have rejected claims he would have done this.
If he weren’t on such a mission, the plane would have gone into autopilot mode after it ran out of fuel, before it crashed.
All eyes have been on Captain Shah, given his First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid was young, and had everything to live for, with little motive to crash the plane. At 27, friends say he was set to propose to his girlfriend Nadira Ramli, who was also a pilot.
This theory seems to match investigators’ suggestions that MH370 became a “ghost plane” flying for hours on autopilot, with people unconscious or dead by oxygen starvation.
But many experts have blasted the ATSB for accepting this theory, saying the ATSB is complicit to a crime if it sticks to its “ghost flight” theory.
Byron Bailey, a former RAAF fighter pilot and trainer, who was a senior captain with Emirates for 15 years, told The Australian the ATSB’s “ghost flight” theory of pilots being made unresponsive and its “death dive” theory of the plane crashing down rapidly after fuel exhaustion, are all based on an eight-second satellite communication “ping”.
“But that one skerrick of “evidence” the ATSB uses for its ‘death dive’ theory can be explained easily by a pilot being at the controls and pointing the nose down. The problem with the ATSB is that not only does it lack professional senior airline pilots in its ranks, but it appears to have not even consulted any,” he wrote.
In May, Mike Keane, a former chief pilot of Britain’s largest airline easyJet, also told The Australian the ATSB should publicly admit the captain hijacked his own aircraft, flew it until it crashed and abandoned it so it couldn’t be found.
“Put bluntly, the MH370 ‘crash’ is undoubtedly a crime of the unlawful killing of 238 innocent people. The Australian government has also been remiss, they should have put pressure on the ATSB to listen, and act, on professional advice from the aviation community,” he said.
Former senior investigator with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, Larry Vance, said in his book MH370: Mystery Solved: “The evidence confirms it was a criminal act, committed by one individual who, as a pilot in the aeroplane, had a simple means to carry it out. That is what happened, and that is a fact.”
*IT WAS HIJACKED BY SOMEONE
Unicorn Aerospace firm owner Andre Milne has suggested an unaccounted passenger aboard took the plane down. His theory is that the passenger could have been a hijacker who “likely acted in conjunction with larger external operational support and control of the cockpit of MH370”.
Milne has previously said the plane ended up in the Bay of Bengal while en route to deliberately engage with “provocative action” with the US military base on the island of Diego Garcia. Australian authorities have disputed this, saying it is not possible.
Historian and writer Norman Davies also suggested MH370 could have been remotely hacked and flown to a secret location as a result of sensitive material being carried on-board.
French ex-airline director Marc Dugain has also accused the US military of shooting down MH370 because they feared it had been hijacked.
But no one knows for sure who it may have been hijacked by.
*A FATAL TOILET BREAK
Aviation journalist Christine Negroni has suggested in her book The Crash Detectives that Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah left the cockpit to go to the toilet. Sometime around then, an explosive decompression sucked the air out of the jet’s cabin and set its passengers and crew on course for disaster.
*DELIBERATE CRASH LANDING
Australian aviation expert Michael Gilbert has suggested MH370 Captain Shah sacrificed the jet after a fire occurred mid-flight. Scorch marks on debris found in Madagascar by MH370 wreck hunter Blaine Gibson suggest the plane was exposed to a fire or great heat.
He could have ditched the plane into the sea to avoid causing mass casualties on land. But what led to that fire is not clear.
*PUTIN WAS INVOLVED
This is one of the more extreme theories, but Russian president Vladimir Putin was accused of being involved by US science writer Jeff Wise, who claimed he “spoofed” the plane’s navigation data so it could fly unnoticed into Baikonur Cosmodrome so he could “hurt the West”. Milne also said that the Russian president was aware of this from the start. “Satellites that were placed by the Russians saw the wreckage, he said. “Putin would have been given that information”.
He went on: “The reason President Putin did not raise his hand and march in and say we found it is because technically he would have been admitting committing espionage.”
Based on witness statements, Milne claimed that if a search party went to the Bay of Bengal, they would find “wreckage with no flaperon” on the sea floor.
*IT WAS SHOT DOWN
A book called Flight MH370 — The Mystery has claimed it had been shot down accidentally by US-Thai joint jet fighters during a military exercise and was covered up. Twisted debris, possibly from MH370, that was found off the coast of Mozambique has sparked a theory that the plane exploded before it crashed.
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
*WHY DID MH370 DEVIATE FROM ITS ROUTE?
Just 27 minutes after takeoff at 1.01am, the plane was at 35,000 feet.
Control of the flight appeared to have been transferred to Captain Shah from MH370 First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid.
He confirmed to air traffic control that the plane was flying at cruise altitude.
“Good night, Malaysian three seven zero,” Captain Shah said at 1.19am. His voice was calm, according to a stress analyst who listened to the recording.
The plane then stopped communicating with ground control.
It deviated from its planned route two hours after takeoff, according to data from military radar.
It then turned back in the direction of Malaysia, before going towards the Indian Ocean.
It’s unclear why this occurred but the head of the ATSB’s underwater search for MH370, Peter Foley, suggested to a Senate estimates hearing it was deliberate. But the reason isn’t clear. He said: “it’s absolutely evident … an aircraft doesn’t turn itself”.
HAVE WE BEEN LOOKING IN THE WRONG AREA?
After more than four years, we’ve only found pieces of debris, but no wreckage site.
Many have disputed the search area and if investigators have been looking in the wrong area.
In 2016, a panel of experts recommended extending the search for MH370 after concluding the missing Boeing 777 was not in the right search zone.
The First Principles Review released by the ATSB found searching another 25,000 square kilometres of the Southern Indian Ocean to the north of area they had looked.
Experts from Boeing, the CSIRO, the US National Transportation Safety Board, the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch, the Defence science and Technology Group, Inmarsat and the Malaysian Government took part in a three-day review.
“The experts also agreed that CSIRO’s debris drift modelling results present strong evidence that the aircraft is most likely to be located to the north of the current indicative underwater search area,” a statement from the ATSB said at the time.
In January an Australian oceanographer at the CSIRO suggested a new search area for MH370, where the Ocean Infinity vessel has focused its efforts.
Dr David Griffin, an Australian oceanographer at the CSIRO, has told the ABC that the missing plane could only be 35 degrees south in the southern Indian Ocean.
“The oceanographic reason for why 35 [degrees south] is more likely than say 34, or 33, or 32, is that at all those latitudes the current is going to the east,” he said.
“So if the crash had been in any of those latitudes then there’d be a high chance of at least one or two things turning up in Australia. Whereas there’ve been 20 or 30 or so items turned up in Africa, and not a single one come to Australia.
“Once you start looking in the vicinity of 36 to 32, then 35 is the only option.”
Ocean Infinity has also searched more than 125,000sq km of ocean between about 35 degrees South and 26 degrees South, without finding anything either.
According to a report by The West Australian in July, a new study by MH370 Independent Group member Richard Godfrey has completed a new drift analysis that asks if the plane may have crashed further north off Exmouth.
On the website, Radiant Physics IG lead Victor Iannello said that Mr Godfey concluded: “that the recovered aircraft debris from the beaches of East Africa could have originated from potential impact sites as far north as 20.5°S latitude.”
“He is recommending that a new subsea search cover the part of the 7th arc between 25°S and 20°S latitudes based on his new drift analysis,” Mr Iannello said.
Originally published as MH370: Conspiracy theories, unanswered questions about the missing plane
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