March 8, 2014 12:41 AM – What at first seemed like a normal flight turned into tragedy after Flight MH370 took off from the runway at Kuala Lumpur airport in Malaysia, headed for Beijing, China. Two hours into the flight, Malaysia Airlines confirmed that the Boeing 777-200 aircraft lost contact with Subang Air Traffic Control.
As of April 13th, the airplane is still missing.
The passenger jet was carrying 239 people, including two infants. 154 of the passengers were citizens of China or Taiwan, 38 were Malaysian citizens, and three were U.S. nationals.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Soaring Speculations
According to Malaysia Airlines, the plane had just recently passed inspection, the authorities had not received any signals of distress from the aircraft, and there was no harmful weather. So, what happened? With a lack of evidence and little cooperation from the Malaysian authorities, several theories are floating around about this bizarre disappearance.
1. Pilot Suicide
The last confirmed pilot suicide occurred in 1999 on an EgyptAir flight taking 217 people from Los Angeles to New York to Cairo; the plane crashed in the Atlantic Ocean. U.S. officials held the pilot himself accountable, who pointed the plane downward while repeating a prayer.
It is plausible that one of the pilots of Flight MH 370 had a meltdown or destructive intentions. Co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid already breached protocol in 2011 when he allowed two young women to cruise in the cockpit on a flight from Phuket, Thailand to Kuala Lumpur. Jonti Roos, one of the women who had an unauthorized seat in the cockpit, said, “We boarded the plane normally with all the other passengers and went to our seats. A short while after taking our seats, an air hostess came to us and asked us if we would like to move into the cockpit, after which we did. And that’s where we spent the flight.” Ross continued, “[The pilots] were smoking, and yes, they were posing for pictures.”
With 33 years of experience and 18,000 flying hours, family and friends of Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah deny that he would be moved to put himself or his passengers in danger.
2. Hijacking
Interpol (International Criminal Police Organization) investigators discovered two Iranian passengers aboard the missing plane carrying stolen passports. After seeing their names on the list of missing passengers, the two true owners of the passports contacted the authorities. As a result, officials cannot rule out terrorism as a possibility of the flight’s disappearance.
No evidence has been gained through phone taps of extremists nor is any terrorist group claiming responsibility for the attack. However, some people still theorize that the plane was hijacked and taken to a hidden location.
3. Mechanical Failure
It is possible that there was a mechanical malfunction or power failure on the Boeing 777-200 aircraft, although Boeing planes are known to have many generators aboard that act as a sort of safety net.
Kit Darby, an aviation consultant and former United Airlines captain said, “Perhaps there was a power problem, and then there’s a backup power system. That backup power system is designed to last about an hour. It’s natural for the pilot, in my view, to return to where he knows, the airports and a region he knows. So turning around makes sense, and about an hour later, the airplane could become unflyable.”
A window or door could have failed, which would cause everyone aboard to become incapacitated. The temperature would drop to 60 degrees below zero and the aircraft would be filled with a freezing fog.
4. Premeditated Harm
To the shock of officials, the path of the flight was found to have been altered on the computer either before or after takeoff by someone in the rank between the first officer and captain. The change in the computer resulted in the plane diverting its course. In addition, all of the communication devices on the plane had been manually turned off.
Hopeful Findings
The grueling search for this missing plane is being shared by several countries in addition
to Malaysia; they include China, United States, France, Australia, Thailand, and Indonesia.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Malaysia, Vietnam, and the United States sent ships and aircrafts to the Gulf of Thailand on the Saturday that the flight was announced missing.
On Sunday, March 9th, China dispatched a Coast Guard vessel, two ships, and a team of scuba divers while Australia and Indonesia divided the waters of the southeastern Indian Ocean.
The investigation was focused in the waters of the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, but military radar suggests that the plane had turned westward to the Strait of Malacca and Andaman Sea. The focus was then put on the southern Indian Ocean. However, a little over a month has elapsed since the time of the crash, giving way to the possibility that some debris may not have been visible in the water.
On March 26th and 27th, new satellite images provided by the French and Thai, respectively, show several objects floating in the southern Indian Ocean. When ten military planes, nine ships , and a civilian jet raided the Indian Ocean, in an area that spans 46,300 square miles to follow up on the promising images shown by both satellites, it turned out that those objects were actually garbage and fishing gear.
Dreaded Declaration
“It is therefore with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that, according to this new data, Flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean,” Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak announced on Monday, March 24th.
The search is still ongoing, but many relatives of flight passengers still do not believe that the aircraft is lost. Some think that the Malaysian government is withholding information. Chinese celebrities such as Chen Kun, famous actor and singer, and Ziyi Zhang, a notable actress, are taking to social media to encourage the Chinese public to boycott Malaysian products and not to travel to Malaysia since about two-thirds of the passengers on board were Chinese citizens.
Precious Pings
Investigators are currently searching for a black box detector that every plane has in case of a crash; this black box emits a ping for up to 30 days after a plane has crashed for searchers to detect it.
Four pings have been identified so far, narrowing the search area to 18,000 square miles from the expanse of the entire Indian Ocean. The first two pings were picked up on Saturday, April 5th, and the next two pings were detected on Tuesday, April 8th. Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, says,”We have very much narrowed down the search area, and we are very confident that the signals that we are detecting are from the black box.”
No, investigators are in a race against time to find this black box, and everyone hopes that time doesn’t win.