New theories on MH370 mystery surface in Netflix documentary

The plane’s disappearance was one of those tragedies that asked us to confront our own fears of death and annihilation. It all begs the question: who was the abhorrent mind behind it?

The Netflix documentary on MH370: The Plane That Disappeared

True crime is fast becoming the most ubiquitous genre on our TV screens. There’s now a seemingly endless churn of stories demonstrating the thrill of viewing morally transgressive behaviour. It is done in the hope, many argue, that the state of hyper-awareness engendered might just protect oneself from harm from either the devil inside us or the masked assailant lurking in the garden outside the back door.

These sensationalist crime accounts build their emotional potency on both a visceral response to violence itself and the quasi-religious dilemma posed by transgression of core values. We are simply fascinated by extreme violations of social norms and the mysteries surrounding them.

A scene from MH370: The Plane That Disappeared

The latest series built in this image is Netflix’s MH370: The Plane That Disappeared – at the time of writing it was the second rating show locally on the streamer – following on from, as it turns out, the perfectly timed Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal, which documented the lead-up to the just-completed trial of disgraced South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh for the murder of his wife Maggie and son Paul.

This series reminded one so much of the great Greg Iles’s best-selling “southern gothic” novels, those densely plotted accounts of historical perfidies, race, violence, abuse and manipulation of the legal system and an incestuous living relationship with the past.

MH370 is quite different but filmmaker Louise Malkinson and her producer Harry Hewland also are obsessed with steadily stripping away layer upon layer of a mystery that so gruesomely captured the world’s attention.

It was one of those terrible tragedies that provided an occasion to confront our own fears of death and annihilation; one of those “If I was in that situation, how would I cope?” emotional skirmishes. Then there was the puzzle – just how was it done? And who was the abhorrent mind behind it?

As Hewland says, what is so fascinating is “the effect that an unsolved mystery can have on people – that can take the heart and the mind to dark places. It’s really about the suction power of the rabbit hole”.

The series is another from British production company RAW, which produces an eclectic range of programs ranging from Gold Rush on Discovery to the delightful Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy for CNN, to the smash Netflix hit The Tinder Swindler. They also gave us Don’t F..k With Cats, that compelling story of the way internet sleuths searched for a serial killer.

A scene from MH370: The Plane That Disappeared

“More than anything, we want to pull the hidden truths about MH370 out from the carpet under which they’ve been swept, and remind people that this is still a story with no ending – a mystery that hasn’t been solved, that somebody out there knows more than the world has been told,” Hewland says of the series.

He and Malkinson look at a range of possible explanations for the disappearance, theories that were largely brushed aside in the nine years since the plane simply evanesced. Both have a true crime background and were drawn in by the mystery of how in an era of mobile phones, satellites and sophisticated tracking technology this tragic puzzle has never been solved.

“I think people can understand a missing person story – without wishing to trivialise that, it’s heart-rending – but when a 200-foot airliner goes missing, it’s almost inconceivable that that can happen, and that it can stay missing for nine years.”

As aviation journalist Greg Wise, a kind of de facto narrator of the first episode, The Pilot, says, “MH270 is a mystery whose malevolence is still with us today; it is a snake that still is alive.”

The Boeing 777, the world’s largest twin-jet, took off in March 2014 on a routine “red eye” flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew. The journey was supposed to take five hours and 34 minutes.

The travel route took the plane north beyond Malaysia, past the coast of Vietnam, across the South China Sea and then over China. It had accumulated almost 53 and a half thousand hours in service and had not been involved in any major incidents.

Further, the aircraft was in compliance with all applicable Airworthiness Directives, though the co-pilot, 27-year-old First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid, was a little inexperienced. MH370 was his final training flight, and he was scheduled to be examined on his next. The pilot in command, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, was, at 53, one of the most senior and respected pilots for Malaysia Airlines.

It is a clear night. The plane routinely proceeds north, the pilots programmed to call into air-traffic control from Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. The captain calmly wishes the air traffic controllers in Malaysia goodnight as he leaves their space.

But suddenly the plane’s transponder stops broadcasting and the military radar of both Vietnam and Malaysia show the massive plane travelling north, but then surprisingly turning west towards the Andaman Sea and the Indian Ocean. The last voice contact was at 1.19am Malaysian Standard Time, and at 2.22am, about 300km from Penang, it disappeared.

Despite extensive search operations, the MH370 was never found.

As is the way with this kind of almost generic Netflix docuseries, Malkinson and Hewland act as kind of private detectives, doubling down on the minutiae of the case, reconstructing time lines as forensically as possible, and re-examining what evidence there is on the record. Digging down into those rabbit holes. There are the facts and a great deal of colourful speculation, some of it obviously hyperbolic.

They talk with aviation experts, journalists who covered the disappearance, airline officials and, of course, family members. Along the way are taciturn officials, politicians unable to look anyone in the eye, and as Hewland says, “journalists baying for blood in every press conference.”

Then there are the tenacious amateur sleuths on their computers looking for debris or signs of life, examining the schematics of the plane, determined to solve The Great Aviation Mystery.

They let their followers dissect every piece of unverified theory with a kind of exhilarating intimacy. “These are people that have been involved in the story from the very beginning, and they are questioning what has been deemed the official narrative,” says Malkinson. “They’ve written extensively on it, they’ve done a huge amount of research, and yes, they may be joining their dots together in a way that people don’t agree with, but they have definitely put the time and effort into it, and they are posing questions that haven’t necessarily always been answered.”

The filmmakers make cinematic use of archival news footage, which these days is a pretty standard convention, but they don’t overdo the dramatic re-enactments and they use some commendably helpful graphics.

Their approach is hardly innovative but Malkinson directs with a kind of visceral energy that carries us along briskly, pausing to allow just the right respectful space for the family interviews, which are full of not only grief but anger, especially at the Malaysian government’s obvious inefficiency and confusion.

As the series shows with quiet sympathy and empathy, these relatives have suffered through years of speculation – of false hope and promises. As Malkinson suggests, her show is not just about what happened, “it was about the people that have been consumed by this for the past nine years … what does a mystery like this do to the people who are involved in it?”.

Those on board were eventually declared dead by the Malaysian government. It was a decision that enraged many. “Never in the history of human existence have 239 people been declared dead on the basis of mathematics,” says Wise. There was only satellite data, no physical evidence and to many it looked like the officials were hiding something and simply wanted the whole tragedy to move away.

At the series’ centre are the three main theories for the death of so many. The first episode, The Pilot, examines the theory that Shah, whose home flight simulator was found to have mapped a similar strange path to the one indicated by radar and satellite data, had destroyed the aircraft in a mass murder suicide.

The second, The Hijack, follows Wise’s hypothetical theory that MH370 was stolen by Russian operatives. And the series wraps up with The Intercept, which interrogates the theory of French journalist LeMond’s Florence de Changy that the plane was shot down over the South China Sea by the US military to prevent mysterious cargo from reaching China. It’s an idea met with a great deal of criticism and ridicule.

The series veers at times on the murky and absurd side of journalism, edging into the world of the speculative movie thriller, but it’s obvious the filmmakers present it all with some scepticism. (There are aviation experts who vehemently disagree.)

I found it interesting and certainly watchable, moved by the almost insufferable sense of frustration still felt by the families and their fury over the way this mystery was handled and the way they were forced to cope with the unbelievable.

MH370: The Plane That Disappeared streaming on Netflix