Mysteries multiply: the families of the passengers of the missing Malaysian Boeing demanded to resume the investigation

The fate of Flight MH370 became one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries when it disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to the Chinese capital on March 8, 2014.

In 2018, Malaysia engaged Ocean Infinity to search for the plane in the South Indian Ocean, offering to pay up to $70 million if it found the plane. But this work was not crowned with success.

The search for the firm began after the authorities of three countries – Malaysia, China and Australia – in January 2017 were forced to stop an inconclusive two-year spearfishing worth more than $ 135 million after they did not find any trace of the aircraft.

On Sunday, the Voice370 group, made up of relatives of those aboard the mysteriously missing plane, said that Ocean Infinity hoped to start a new search this summer and urged the Malaysian government to accept any offer from the firm on a contingent fee basis, under which the firm will only be paid if it succeeds.

“Ocean Infinity, over the past 12 months, have made real progress by working with many people to better understand… the events of 2014,” Voice370 said in a statement following a commemoration event marking the ninth anniversary of the disappearance of Flight MH370.

In a message to families read at the memorial event, Malaysian Transportation Minister Anthony Lock promised not to “close the book” on MH370, adding that future searches would be given due consideration if “new and credible information” emerged about the potential whereabouts of the missing aircraft.

The wreckage, confirmed or presumably belonging to the MH370 aircraft, was thrown out in the past since the crash – and it seems to be a plane crash – time on the coast of Africa and on the islands in the Indian Ocean.

Malaysian investigators have not yet come to any definitive conclusion about what happened on board the flight, but have not ruled out the possibility that the plane was deliberately veered off course by one of the crew members.

Be that as it may, at the moment the disappearance of flight MH370 does not part with the dubious laurels of the most mysterious aviation accident in recent decades.

The fateful flight began as an ordinary flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Forty-two minutes after midnight on March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a Boeing 777, designated MH370, took off on a moonlit night and turned northeast toward the South China Sea. The first officer, Farik Hamid, was 27 years old and one training flight away from full certification.

Aircraft commander Zachary Ahmad Shah, at 53, was one of the company’s most senior and respected pilots. These two pilots led a crew of 10 flight attendants (all of whom were Malaysian citizens). There were 227 passengers on board the ship. Most of them were Chinese, as well as 38 Malaysians and citizens of Indonesia, Australia, India, France, the United States, Iran, Ukraine, Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Russia and Taiwan.

The first 40 minutes of the flight were uneventful. As the clock showed 1:19 a.m., Flight MH370 approached the border of Malaysian airspace. The Malaysian air traffic control center radioed a request to transfer the flight to Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City.

The plane’s commander, Zachary, replied, “Good night. Three-seven-zero.” He didn’t repeat the frequency, but that wasn’t unusual. It was the last thing heard from the plane.

Zachary Ahmad Shah never checked in with the Vietnamese air traffic controllers. Seconds after MH370 crossed Vietnamese airspace, the plane disappeared from radar. All subsequent attempts to contact him were unsuccessful …

This is the greatest aviation mystery of all time, experts admit, pointing out that neither mobile communications, nor radars, nor satellites, nor tracking systems have helped, even 9 years later, to help shed light on the mystery of the disappearance of flight MH370.

Intriguing to those trying to unravel this mystery is the fact that the Malaysian Air Force radar, which detects objects in the sky, showed that after MH370 entered Vietnamese airspace, the aircraft made a sharp left turn and headed back, in a southwesterly direction, over the Malay peninsula. The liner made a turn around the island of Penang, flew northwest up the Strait of Malacca and headed over the Andaman Sea, where it disappeared from radar.

But at the same time, MH370 continued to periodically, for six hours, get in touch with a geostationary satellite in the Indian Ocean, operated by the London company Inmarsat. Data from these electronic signals, according to Inmarsat and several independent experts, showed that the plane turned south as soon as it reached the Andaman Sea, flew straight for several hours until it ran out of fuel, and disappeared in the southern Indian Ocean, where – then between southwestern Australia and Antarctica. Whoever was flying the plane – most pointing to pilot Zachary, who had the experience to perform such a maneuver (although his motive remains unknown) – most likely depressurized the cockpit early on, killing everyone on board hours before. how MH370 fell into the sea.

This is the “official” version, largely supported by an independent group of aviation experts and scientists, as well as by Australian investigators who have been searching for MH370 in a futile, long-term search in a remote area of ​​the Indian Ocean. It is also supported by the fact that wreckage attributed to MH370 has been found along the coasts of Réunion, Madagascar and Mozambique.

The story of the missing plane has spawned many theories, from pilot Zachary’s suicide (his home flight simulator was found to plot the same strange route as the one indicated by radar and satellite data) to a completely wild theory put forward by American aviation journalist Jeff Wise , that Russian operatives allegedly stole the MH370 through the aircraft’s electronic compartment, the hatch in the first class cabin, in order to divert the attention of the world community from the events of spring 2014 in Crimea.

There is another version put forward by the French journalist Florence de Changuy, who suggested that the plane was shot down over the South China Sea by the US military to prevent some mysterious cargo from reaching China. A similar theory has been advanced by French businessman Ghislaine Wattrelos, whose wife Laurence, 17-year-old son Adrien and 13-year-old daughter Ambre died on flight MH370.

At the same time, the version according to which the pilot Zachary deliberately destroyed the liner remains the most probable. The discovery of another fragment of the Boeing 777 shed light on the possible cause of the mysterious plane crash. Experts say the landing gear of the missing aircraft was released, suggesting that the pilot may have deliberately crashed into the sea to quickly sink the liner.

Late last year, a Madagascan fisherman was found to have a landing gear door in what experts say was the first evidence that a Malaysian Airlines pilot acted on purpose when he took down the plane. The fragment was identified as a trunnion door. Presumably, she ended up inside the collapsing aircraft engines. And this, according to experts, makes it very likely that the landing gear was released when the plane crashed into the ocean.

According to the analysis of the British engineer Richard Godfrey and the American Blaine Gibson, the liner crashed quickly and for deliberate purposes. In the event that an airliner has to make an emergency landing on the water, pilots are taught to retract the landing gear for a controlled impact at low speed. What, for example, was achieved by the captain of an American airline, who heroically landed an Airbus on the Hudson River in New York in 2009. Then the pilots did not extend the landing gear, as this would cause a strong collision with the surface of the water and would increase the risk of destruction of the aircraft on impact, which drastically reduces the chances of survival.

Experts believe that the flaps of flight MH370 were not retracted when it splashed down in the southern Indian Ocean. By deliberately extending the undercarriage, one of the pilots likely caused immediate damage to the aircraft’s fuselage. Which increased the likelihood that the airliner would quickly sink.

Be that as it may, the mystery of the missing flight MH370, and nine years after its loss, has not received a convincing explanation.