What really happened to MH370?

The accident aircraft. By Laurent ERRERA from L'Union, France - Boeing 777-200ER Malaysia AL (MAS) 9M-MRO - MSN 28420/404, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29838624 

NB 23 January 2022: I originally published this post in October of 2014; MH370 disappeared in March of that year. I've updated the article to fix formatting issues and to repair broken links. I'm gonna resist the temptation to edit anything that I wrote; When I get sufficiently motivated I'll write another post about the events that have transpired in the intervening years. As of this writing it still appears as though MH370 will never be found. I can only imagine what that kind of endless anguish must be like for the families of the victims. May all of their souls rest in peace. 

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It’s no longer possible to think about the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 without also pondering its twin tragedy, Malaysian Airlines Flight 17. In a span of just nineteen weeks in 2014, Malaysian Airlines lost two almost-identical Boeing airliners, and everyone on board both planes perished - a total of 537 souls. Yet beyond those similarities, the two catastrophes could not be more different. Anyone who’s studied the loss of Flight 17 knows beyond a reasonable doubt that it was shot down by a Russian Buk anti-aircraft missile in eastern Ukraine. The Dutch Safety Board implied as much in a preliminary report in September 2014, writing that "the damage observed in the forward section of the aircraft appears to indicate that the aircraft was penetrated by a large number of high-energy objects from outside the aircraft." Given that Buk missiles were reported to have been in the area when the aircraft was struck, and that no other known weapon could have inflicted the kind of damage that the Dutch described, it’s almost certain that their final report will reach the conclusion that a Buk was to blame. Albeit a gruesome task, the Dutch commission’s work on Flight 17 is fairly straightforward because, as in most aviation accidents, there is an abundance of physical evidence that allows them to precisely determine its cause. By contrast, so little evidence is available to analyze the mystery of Flight 370 that it’s distinctly possible that a definitive cause will never be found. Absent any new information, an industry that is used to precision may someday be forced to accept a certain degree of conjecture about a jumbo jet that simply vanished. If MH370 is never found, then the final report on its fate may have to focus on what probably happened rather than what definitely did. 

What we do know is that MH370, a Boeing 777 with 12 crew members and 227 passengers on board, departed Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 8 2014 at 01:20 in the morning local time, bound for Beijing. Less than an hour later, communications with the aircraft were lost. The plane was never heard from again, and despite an exhaustive search, no trace of the airliner has yet been found.

Ever since MH370 vanished, an endless number of theories have been proposed to explain its disappearance. Some of those theories are self-serving, while others are beyond absurd. Most ideas can be easily debunked, but the ones that cannot center on one incontrovertible fact: That someone with a great deal of aeronautical experience wanted the plane to disappear. Why someone would want to do that may forever remain a matter of speculation. 

So what is the most likely explanation for MH370’s disappearance? This article will focus on a bizarre yet very plausible scenario: That the “someone” who wanted the plane to disappear was its pilot. Though most investigators are leery of laying blame on the flight’s captain, his culpability has to be considered as the most probable reason for the plane’s disappearance. 

Here is what likely happened: A man is despondent because his wife and children have just left him. The man happens to be an airline pilot, and so he hatches a plot to commit suicide in a spectacular and macabre fashion: He decides to hijack an airliner that he commands and fly it into oblivion. After takeoff on the last flight of his career, the veteran captain carries out his plan. He locks his co-pilot out of the cockpit, disables the plane’s electronics to evade detection, and he diverts his jet far off course. He climbs as high as he can, and then he depressurizes the cabin in order to kill everyone on board but himself. He takes the airliner over the open ocean, flies the jet to the limits of its endurance, and finally he ditches it at sea. The airliner sinks intact to the bottom, and it comes to rest in a place so remote and so deep that the plane, its passengers, and its crew will never be found. 

The theory may seem far-fetched, but the scant hard evidence that is available supports it. And oddly, the lack of evidence supports the theory as well. The only bits of hard evidence in hand are the transcript of the flight’s cockpit communications, along with some satellite and radar data that imprecisely define the path that MH370 took. A great deal of attention has been given to the satellite and radar data, but the value of the transcript may have been overlooked. Given the dearth of other evidence, the communications merit renewed scrutiny. 

At the beginning of April 2014 the Malaysian government released the full text of conversations between MH370 and air traffic control, along with a statement asserting that there was “no indication of anything abnormal…" A close examination of the transcript nevertheless reveals some subtle oddities, and these may provide additional clues as to what happened when Flight MH370 mysteriously vanished. At first glance, the document shows only that an earlier report about crew communication was erroneous. The first report stated that the crew’s last transmission was, “all right, good night.” That phrase raised some eyebrows in aviation circles due to its non-professional nature; It’s standard practice for an aircrew to read back a controller’s instructions and to include their flight’s call sign as a way of verifying that information has been correctly received. The earlier, inaccurate report probably resulted from the transcript being translated from English to Mandarin and then back to English before being published. 

When the original English-language transcript was finally released, the last transmission from MH370 was found to have been, “Good Night Malaysian Three Seven Zero.” That correction seems to have satisfied most observers that the transmission was normal. There is however one problem with that conclusion; The pilots were responding to a directive from a Kuala Lumpur controller to contact Ho Chi Minh City, and they failed to read back the assigned radio frequency. The final exchange is as follows (the transcript uses the International Civil Aviation Organization’s designation for Malaysian Airlines, “MAS.” “MH” is the designation used by the International Air Traffic Association): 

01:19:24 ATC Malaysian Three Seven Zero contact Ho Chi Minh 120 decimal 9 Good Night
01:19:29 MAS370 Good Night Malaysian Three Seven Zero 

The crew’s final response marks the only time during the flight that they failed to completely read back a controller’s instructions. For example, shortly after takeoff, the Kuala Lumpur tower instructed MH370 to contact departure control: 

12:42:52 ATC Malaysian Three Seven Zero contact Lumpur Radar One Three Two Six good night

MAS 370 Night One Three Two Six Malaysian Three Seven Zero 

In this case the crew properly acknowledged the directive to contact departure control on a frequency of 132.6 MHz by reading back the frequency along with their flight’s call sign. There is another slight oddity in the transcript involving communications about altitudes. After takeoff, Kuala Lumpur departure control issued two altitude assignments to MH370. The first was a directive to climb to 25,000 feet, designated as “flight level two five zero”: 

12:46:51 ATC Malaysian Three Seven Zero Lumpur radar Good Morning climb flight level two five zero
12:46:54 MAS370 Morning level two five zero Malaysian Three Seven Zero 

Note that the crew’s response properly included a read-back of the altitude assignment along with the flight’s call sign. A few minutes later, departure control directed the flight to climb to its desired cruising altitude of 35,000 feet: 

12:50:06 ATC Malaysian Three Seven Zero climb flight level three five zero
12:50:09 MAS370 Flight level three five zero Malaysian Three Seven Zero 

Once again, the crew’s read-back of instructions from air traffic control followed standard procedure. Eleven minutes later, MH370 reached its assigned cruising altitude, and the crew reported that fact:

01:01:14 MAS370 Malaysian Three Seven Zero maintaining level three five zero
01:01:19 ATC Malaysian Three Seven Zero 

The slightly odd nature of that transmission is that it was superfluous. Along with other flight information, an aircraft’s transponder reports its altitude to radar systems, and it’s generally not necessary for pilots to state an altitude that they are maintaining. If a controller wants an aircraft to climb or descend to a specific altitude and then verify that it has been reached, the phrase “report reaching” will be added to the directive. Such was not the case with MH370, but the pilots chose to report it anyway. That fact in itself isn't so very odd, but what happened six minutes later is. The crew repeated their verification that they had reached 35,000 feet, in spite of the fact that the controller acknowledged their earlier, already-unnecessary report: 

01:07:55 MAS370 Malaysian...Three Seven Zero maintaining level three five zero
01:08:00 ATC Malaysian Three Seven Zero 

Both communications may be innocuous, but given what happened to MH370, they merit extra scrutiny. Why would the crew repeatedly transmit unnecessary altitude information? One possible explanation is that they were soliciting an early hand-off from Malaysian to Vietnamese air traffic control. Control centers have designated areas of airspace for which they are responsible, and those areas have clearly defined boundaries. There is however overlap in radar coverage, and it’s possible, though somewhat unusual, for a controller to make an early hand-off of a flight that is about to leave his or her airspace. In the case of MH370, the aircraft had reached its assigned cruising altitude, and it was flying over open water on its way north. If there were no other aircraft in the area, the Malaysian departure controller could conceivably have been prodded into an early hand-off to the next area controller in Ho Chi Minh City. 

In any event, the final transmission between MH370 and Kuala Lumpur occurred eleven minutes later, during which the crew failed to read back the frequency assignment during hand-off to Ho Chi Minh City. It may be nitpicking, but the final transmissions from the cockpit of Flight MH370 do appear to have a deliberate component – And that is that they were designed to sow the seeds of confusion. The oddities in MH370’s final radio transmissions support the leading theory that someone in the cockpit wanted the flight to disappear, and that they chose the moment of the hand-off to initiate an intentional evasion. Less than two minutes after someone uttered the words, “Good Night Malaysian Three Seven Zero,” MH370’s transponder as well as its ADS-B, a satellite-based location system, were turned off. At about the same time, the aircraft turned sharply west across the Malaysian Peninsula and headed towards the Bay of Bengal. It followed a standard route that’s used by airliners in the area, probably so that its appearance on radar would not raise suspicion. In fact, military controllers apparently spotted the flight’s primary radar return but failed to investigate it. 

Probable flight path of MH370 before contact was lost. Image from an article in the UK Daily Mail. 

By not reading back their last frequency assignment, whoever was controlling MH370 created a plausible explanation for their failure to contact air traffic control in Ho Chi Minh City. Deliberate or not, the omission also bought them some time in order to initiate their escape. Mistakes in frequency assignments are not unheard of, and an aircraft’s failure to report to a new controller would not immediately raise an alarm. The Ho Chi Minh controller would probably contact Kuala Lumpur on a “land line” to verify the frequency that was assigned. If communications still could not be established, the controller would spend a few minutes in an attempt to contact the flight on other frequencies that are used in the area. Radio frequencies are published in navigation documents, and if pilots cannot reach a controller on an assigned frequency, they’ll often try the other published frequencies. Pilots can also reestablish contact with their previous controller and ask for an alternate frequency. If all else fails, a controller solicits help from other aircraft in the area, and that is what the controller at Ho Chi Minh City did. Several aircraft attempted to reach the flight by using the international emergency frequency of 121.5MHz, which all commercial airliners monitor. The pilot of a flight bound for Narita Japan claims to have made contact with MH370, although he also acknowledged that transmissions from the flight were unintelligible. 

Once outside of radar coverage over open water, we know that MH370 eventually turned further south, and that its flight ended somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean. Investigators made that determination because of a little-known characteristic of an on-board system for aircraft maintenance known as ACARS. Most modern airliners are equipped with some version of ACARS, which transmits information about engine health and other maintenance data to ground-based systems for analysis. The system normally reports at 30 minute intervals; A complete ACARS broadcast from MH370 was received 26 minutes after takeoff, but the next scheduled broadcast never occurred. Investigators feel certain that the ACARS system was also deliberately disabled. It’s worth noting that disabling ACARS may have been routine for Malaysian Airlines along the route that MH370 flew, as it’s been reported that their coverage for ACARS data services does not extend to China. In any event, even when ACARS data reporting is turned off, the system continues to transmit a “keep-alive” signal much as a mobile phone regularly seeks a cellular tower with which to communicate. Before MH370, even many professional pilots were not aware of the system’s “keep-alive” mode, which cannot be disabled from the cockpit. It’s therefore possible, and even likely, that the perpetrators of MH370’s disappearance did not know that the ACARS system would be used to trace the final hours of their flight. 

By analyzing the ACARS signal, the British satellite company Inmarsat was able to determine an approximate location where MH370’s flight ended. That analysis has led investigators to focus their search efforts in a large area of the Indian Ocean more than 1000 miles west and southwest of Perth Australia. The prevailing opinion is that the aircraft crashed there, but that assumption may also turn out to be erroneous. Given the deliberate actions in the cockpit, and the fact that no debris has yet been found, another theory is slowly gaining credence – That the aircraft did not crash at all, and that it was intentionally ditched at sea. 

Almost everyone remembers the dramatic “Miracle on the Hudson,” when pilots Chesley Sullenberger and Jeffrey Skiles safely guided an Airbus A320 to a water landing on the Hudson River near New York City. Shortly after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport on January 15, 2009, the Airbus struck a large flock of Canada Geese. The impacts disabled both of the plane’s engines, and the pilots were forced to ditch their aircraft in the only available space that offered them a chance of survival. During the water landing the left engine of the Airbus was torn from its wing mount, but otherwise the aircraft remained largely intact, and everyone on board survived. Landing a much-larger Boeing 777 in the open ocean would be considerably trickier, but it’s within reason to assume that it could be done, particularly if the aircraft’s engines were still operational. Conditions for an ocean ditching also appear to have been favorable; By the time MH370’s flight ended around 1:00 AM UTC, the region of the southern Indian Ocean was once again in daylight. The nearest weather reporting station in Perth Australia shows that the weather was relatively benign at the time, and that it remained so for several days afterward. Given the westerly nature of weather patterns in the southern Indian Ocean, it’s reasonable to assume that the weather was also fair in the area where the flight ended. 

It now seems obvious that someone with a great deal of aeronautical knowledge went to extraordinary lengths to make Flight MH370 disappear. If such is the case, then it stands to reason that the perpetrators would not leave the final phase of their actions to chance, and that they would carefully plan the end of the flight as well. A successful ditching would result in the aircraft remaining relatively intact, after which it would sink to the bottom of the Indian Ocean in one of its deepest parts. The aircraft’s fuel was almost or completely depleted, and any remnants that leaked to the surface would quickly disperse. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau speculates that the final ACARS “handshake” with an Inmarsat satellite prove that the aircraft’s fuel was exhausted, and that the aircraft crashed. Yet if the structural integrity of the cabin were maintained during a water landing, with or without power, then buoyant objects would remain inside and sink along with the rest of the aircraft. Whoever caused MH370’s disappearance meant for it to never be found. 

If MH370 was in fact ditched in the ocean, then what happened to the passengers and crew? The macabre probability is that everyone but the pilot died of oxygen deprivation shortly after the flight was diverted. There is some evidence from military radar data that MH370 climbed to 45,000 feet almost as soon as it turned off course. If the cabin were depressurized at that altitude, something that can easily be done from the cockpit, then passengers might not even have had time to don emergency oxygen masks before they were incapacitated. Useful consciousness at 45,000 feet could be as little as a few seconds, depending on the rapidity of the cabin’s depressurization. Even if they were able to use their masks, the oxygen supply for passengers is only designed to last for ten to fifteen minutes – enough time to descend to a breathable altitude if the cabin pressure system did malfunction. The high altitude would also preclude the use of cell phones, and no communications from any of the passengers were received during the flight of MH370. The endurance of the cockpit’s emergency oxygen supply is considerably longer than that of the cabin, and it would allow the crew to survive what the passengers in the cabin unfortunately could not. 

So who would want to make an airliner disappear, and why? There is nothing in the communications transcript to indicate that a hijacking took place, and the deliberate frequency omission and superfluous altitude reports were most certainly made by the crew. Could someone else have taken control of MH370 without a struggle? After the flight’s disappearance, reports surfaced that on a 2011 flight from Phuket to Kuala Lumpur, MH370’s 27-year-old co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid allowed young women to travel in the cockpit. If either Hamid or MH370’s Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah allowed someone to do the same, then that person could have acted as a "Trojan Horse” to open the cockpit door. Doing so might allow hijackers the element of surprise while taking control of the flight, but such a scenario seems highly unlikely. In addition, a thorough investigation of the passengers on board, including two Iranian men who were traveling with stolen passports, turned up no evidence of terrorist connections. Other than exercising poor judgment by letting pretty girls into the cockpit, there is nothing in Hamid’s history to suggest that he would want to make an airliner disappear. 

The focus therefore has to be on Zaharie Ahmad Shah. Captain Shah was so in love with flying that he built a Boeing 777 simulator in his house, and he posted numerous YouTube videos about flight simulation as well as a variety of other topics. The simulator was briefly the focus of investigator’s attention, as it was thought that perhaps Shah used it to plan the disappearance of MH370. Although data was found to have been erased from the simulator, no suspicious evidence was ever obtained from it. There are however questions about Shah’s personal life; There are reports that his marriage was in trouble, and that his wife and children moved out of their house in Kuala Lumpur the day before MH370’s last flight. It would also be far easier for Captain Shah to order his first officer out of the cockpit on a pretense rather than the other way around, if in fact he acted alone. There is also some evidence that Hamid may have attempted to use his cell phone after the flight was diverted. Shah's wife has also reportedly confirmed that the last words from the cockpit were spoken by her husband. Given the timing of MH370’s diversion, it seems improbable that one member of the crew would wait for the other to leave the cockpit of their own volition, as happened recently on an Ethiopian Airlines flight that was hijacked by its copilot. 

MH370 First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid (left) and Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah. From various media outlets.
 I'm assuming that fair use applies here, as the photos were taken from their Facebook and Twitter pages. 

Could a wrecked marriage be enough to trigger an apparently normal human being to engage in bizarre, homicidal, and suicidal behavior? Unfortunately, history is replete with cases where the answer is yes. Although Captain Shah didn't seem capable of such an act to the people who knew him, perhaps in his case there were other, unknown factors that might have affected his mental state. There is speculation that he may have been upset by his government’s arrest of an opposition leader. If some other circumstance were to threaten Shah’s flying career, then the loss of his beloved profession on top of his other issues might have been enough to push him over the edge. 

What else could have been going wrong in Shah’s life? One possibility would be his health. Airline transport pilots are required to submit to medical examinations every six months, and there are a large number physical and mental conditions that can result in a pilot being grounded. If Shah knew that his flying career was about to end due to the loss of his medical license, then he might have been driven to plot the end his life. For someone who loved flying so much to simply vanish, like the legendary pilots Amelia Earhart and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, might have been an appealing proposition to an aviation enthusiast whose mind had been debilitated. To take 227 passengers and 11 other crew members with him would require an extraordinarily tragic degree of debilitation. 

The search for the missing airliner may drag on for years and as it does, the anguish of the families whose relatives were lost will unfortunately continue to be driven by uncertainty. They may also have to endure the indignity of watching as a cottage industry of books, films, and even a stage play begin to exploit the tragedy. Sadly, the families themselves will probably take increasingly desperate measures in an attempt to uncover a truth that may forever remain hidden. 

Whatever the causes of MH370’s disappearance, the incident is likely to bring additional focus on the human factors that are involved in commercial aviation. Although rare, there have been enough cases of pilot suicide that new rules may be imposed that bar pilots from being left alone at the controls. In the wake of the 9/11 tragedies, security was considerably strengthened in order to keep hijackers out of the cockpit. In the aftermath of MH370, the aviation industry may be confronted with addressing the dangers that remain inside.

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