At Kuala Lumpur International Airport, a Boeing
777 is preparing for departure. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is a daily passenger flight
between Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Beijing, China. Forty-two minutes past midnight, Flight 370
is given clearance to depart. On board are Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah,
First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid, ten cabin crew members,
and 227 passengers. Less than an hour into the flight, the plane is cruising
over the South China Sea at an altitude of 35,000 feet. The night sky is clear and the weather is calm. Flight 370 is then instructed to signal air
traffic control in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam as it is about to enter Vietnamese airspace. The flight controller in Kuala Lumpur says good night
with no sign that anything should be amiss. One minute and forty-three seconds later,
the aircraft suddenly vanish from radar screens at Kuala Lumpur, Ho Chi Minh, and Bangkok. This form of positional tracking depends on
a signal being emitted by one of two transponders aboard the plane, and so its disappearance
would suggest both transponders ceased to function, or the system was manually deactivated
by someone onboard. All subsequent attempts to contact and ascertain
the whereabouts of Flight 370 are unsuccessful. The aircraft has seemingly vanished without
a trace. After missing its scheduled time of arrival
in Beijing some four hours later, Flight 370 is officially declared missing,
and in the wake of that announcement, the most expensive search effort
in aviation history is about to commence. The search was initially concentrated around
the location of the flight's disappearance between the South China Sea
and the Gulf of Thailand. The search area was soon expanded, however, after
the Malaysian military disclosed additional information. Unlike the radar system employed by Air Traffic Control,
long-range military radar does not rely on transponders but use reflectance to track
the position of aerial targets. A review of the data collected by the Malaysian
military revealed that moments after contact with Flight 370 was lost, the aircraft had
deviated from its scheduled flight path with a subtle turn to the right
followed by a prolonged turn to the left. The aircraft had then flown back towards and
across the Malaysian peninsula before turning right near the island of Penang. It maintained this northwesterly heading until
it escaped the radar's coverage. Over the next few days, the Strait of Malacca,
the Andaman Sea, and the Bay of Bengal was scoured by a multinational fleet of aircraft
and vessels, but there was no trace of Flight 370. Meanwhile, investigators began to analyze
the aircraft's satellite communication records. Like all modern airliners, Flight 370 was
equipped with a satellite communications terminal, or SATCOM, to send and received transmissions
to and from the ground. Prior to departure, the SATCOM terminal had
logged on to the satellite network and established a connection
with a ground station in Perth, Australia. That station then maintained a detailed record
of all the incoming and outgoing traffic between it and Flight 370. This is what it contained. Prior to the flight's disappearance
over the South China Sea, everything appeared to be working as intended. Then, at some point during this portion of
the flight, the SATCOM link was severed. For whatever reason, the terminal ceased to respond. But three minutes after the flight vanished
over the Andaman Sea the terminal requested to log back on to the network. The SATCOM link was successfully reestablished
and was not disrupted again until nearly six hours later when the flight is presumed
to have crashed due to fuel exhaustion. During these final hours, two attempts were
made to contact the plane via satellite telephone. Both calls were acknowledged by the SATCOM
terminal and would've been routed to the cockpit, yet they went unanswered. The terminal had also responded
to five automatic status requests. In short, if the ground station had not heard
from the aircraft in over an hour, it would transmit a signal
to confirm the terminal was still online. While these transmissions did not contain
any information about the flight's position, investigators were able to measure the distance
between the satellite and the aircraft at the time of each transmission based on how
long it took those transmissions to be sent and received. This generated seven rings of possible locations from which seven of these transmissions
are thought to have originated. By taking fuel consumption, speed,
and other factors into account, flight path analysis indicated the most probable origin of the final transmission to be somewhere along this arc
in the southern Indian Ocean. The search effort shifted accordingly, and
as the region fell within the jurisdiction of Australia, the Australian government took
charge of the operation. Over the next few weeks, the search area was
progressively refined to account for oceanic drift as well as improved estimations of the flight path. But this part of the southern Indian Ocean
is so remote it took six days just to get there. A new fleet of aircraft and vessels gradually
covered more than 4,500,000 km2 of ocean, but Flight 370 was nowhere to be found. If the impact with the ocean had been sufficiently
forceful, it was possible the resulting sound had been recorded by underwater listening
devices known as hydrophones. This possibility was investigated, and four hydroacoustic monitoring stations had recorded something... While the timing and direction of the sound
were reasonably consistent with the final satellite transmission,
the estimated origin was not. The sound was in all likelihood caused by
nothing more than geological activity. Flight 370 was also equipped with two
underwater locator beacons which had a battery life of some 40 days,
and as the deadline approached in early April, signals with a pulse and frequency somewhat
similar to the signal emitted by the beacons were detected at depths of up to 3,000 meters. An autonomous submersible
then spent weeks scanning the seafloor where the signals had been detected,
but no wreckage was ever found. And nothing would be found until more than
16 months later when a discovery was made on the opposite side of the Indian Ocean. On the 29th of July, 2015, a group of people
was cleaning up a beach in Réunion, a small island to the east of Madagascar,
when they stumbled upon this 2-meter-long metallic object covered in barnacles. Aviation experts quickly identified the object
as a section of an aircraft wing known as a flaperon. Upon closer inspection, internal markings,
including dates and serial numbers, conclusively ascertained
the flaperon belonged to Flight 370. Even though Réunion Island is some
4,000 km west of the search area, and more than a year had gone by
since the flight disappeared, the location was consistent
with simulations of debris dispersal patterns. There was now tangible evidence that Flight 370
had crashed somewhere in the Indian Ocean. The discovery of the flaperon
prompted numerous searches along beaches and shorelines
of southeastern Africa, and at least 31 additional items of
interest have since been recovered and examined. Some of these items include: A section of the outboard flap from the right wing. A piece of cowling from one of the two engines. A partial door from the nose landing gear. A section of the vertical stabilizer. And a mangled casing from one of the embedded
headrest monitors. Eighteen of these items were identified as either
likely, highly likely, or almost certain to have originated from Flight 370,
whereas only three could be confirmed. The remaining eleven could not be identified. There were no traces of an explosion
found on any of the debris tested nor was there any evidence of a fire except for three small burn marks on one of the unidentifiable items. The search for debris was further aided by
Earth observation satellites. Analyses of satellite imagery from March of 2014
uncovered a number of images which appeared to feature man-made objects floating on or
just below the surface in the southern Indian Ocean. However, the images were not nearly sharp
enough to resolve any identifiable markings, and multiple searches notwithstanding,
this debris was never recovered. A satellite image taken mere hours
after the final transmission, also captured what appeared to be a contrail
some distance away from the search area. A later analysis, however,
concluded it was most likely a shadow from a somewhat linear cloud formation. The underwater portion of the search continued
for months and eventually years before it was finally suspended in early 2017. By which point some 120,000 km2 of seabed
had been scrutinized. The search effort was then resumed by an American
salvage company known as Ocean Infinity, but after more than a year of searching,
they too came up emptyhanded. Unless the final resting place of Flight 370
can be located, it may be impossible to determine
exactly why it crashed. Nevertheless, there has been no shortage of theories. On the day of the disappearance, two of the passengers
raised suspicion as they had boarded the flight with stolen passports which immediately
prompted concerns of a hijacking. But investigators were unable to link the
two men to any terrorist organizations and soon determined they had traveled under false
identities because they were seeking asylum, not due to any nefarious intent. Similar suspicions were raised when one of
the passengers were identified as a flight engineer who might have possessed the necessary
expertise to take control of a Boeing 777. Apart from the 239 persons onboard,
Flight 370 carried nearly 11 metric tons of cargo. Among the items listed on the flight manifest
was a shipment of lithium-ion batteries, which lead some to suspect
a fire might have broken out mid-flight. For instance, the crash of UPS Airlines Flight 6
in September of 2010 was the result of a fire that was ignited by a pallet of lithium-ion batteries. Another potential source of ignition would
be an electrical malfunction. The crash of Swissair Flight 111 in September of 1998 is thought to have been caused by a fire
within the electrical wiring above the cockpit. The fire damaged and disabled multiple avionic
systems, including the transponders and SATCOM. In the case of Flight 370,
the sudden loss of communication and subsequent deviation from its scheduled flight path
might have been a direct response to a fire. The two pilots may have turned back towards
Malaysia to attempt an emergency landing at the nearest suitable airport. But no such attempt was ever made. Instead, Flight 370 kept going
and remained aloft for another six hours. Some have theorized
the crew might have been incapacitated by a sudden or gradual loss of cabin pressure. For instance, when Helios Airways Flight 522
failed to pressurize in August of 2005, the pilots quickly fell unconscious, yet the aircraft
continued to fly on autopilot for more than two hours until it ran out of fuel. Airline pilots are of course trained for such an event. In the event of cabin depressurization, an automatic
system is designed to deploy oxygen masks to give the pilots enough time to perform
an emergency descent to a more breathable altitude. The data recorded by the Malaysian military radar
does indeed contain altitude information, but it is highly inconsistent. In fact, a Boeing 777 is incapable of performing
the extreme altitude fluctuations recorded. At one point the aircraft exceeded its maximum
operating altitude by more than 15,000 feet before making a 50,000 feet nosedive
in less than a minute. Attempts to recreate these maneuvers on a
flight simulator were unsuccessful, and thus the data
was deemed inaccurate and unreliable. If Flight 370 did loose cabin pressure at 35,000 feet and the pilots were incapacitated before descending
to a more oxygenated altitude, it might explain why the aircraft
remained aloft for as long as it did. What is a bit more difficult to explain, however,
are these alterations in heading. Flight simulations have established the aircraft
must have been under manual control during the initial left turn as the bank angle,
or inclination, of that turn, was beyond the limits of the autopilot. Subsequent turns, however, could have been
either manual or automatic. But for the autopilot to have made these course
corrections, someone with the requisite knowledge must have programmed it to do so. The only other alternative is that the aircraft
was in fact under manual control. In late June of 2014, several news outlets
reported that a special investigation had identified the captain of Flight 370
as a prime suspect. A search of the captain's home
had uncovered a flight simulator which supposedly contained a suspicious route
which ended in the southern Indian Ocean. At the time, there was no official acknowledgment
that such a route had been recovered, and a lengthy public report,
issued by the Malaysian government in 2015, made no mention of such a discovery. Then, in 2016, confidential documents
pertaining to a forensic examination conducted by the Royal Malaysia Police in May of 2014
was leaked to the media. These documents made it clear that such a route
had not only been recovered but thoroughly examined. Soon thereafter, the Malaysian government
confirmed the existence of this simulated flight path and this is what it looks like. It should come as no surprise that many regard
this as damning evidence of premeditation, but according to investigators
it is not quite so evident. The data recovered consists of seven coordinates. Two in Kuala Lumpur. Two in the Strait of Malacca. One in the Bay of Bengal. And two in the southern Indian Ocean. The data was reconstructed from a file that
had been automatically generated and saved by the simulation software
a month before the incident. However, it's not clear whether the coordinates
originate from the same flight session. In other words, it might not be correct to
simply trace a continuous line between these seven coordinates
as they could be from separate sessions. The forensic examination by the
Royal Malaysia Police simply concluded: "No activity captured conclusively indicate
any kind of premeditated act pertaining to the incident of MH370." Even so, the similarities between this simulated
route and the presumed route of Flight 370 directly influenced the search operation. Australian investigators
considered the possibility of someone deliberately extending the range of the flight
by gliding the aircraft after fuel exhaustion. If so, the plane could have traveled
an additional 200 kilometers. Alternatively, the range could have been reduced
by a controlled ditching prior to fuel exhaustion. While ultimately deemed unlikely, these two
scenarios did affect the search effort. If the captain steered Flight 370 off-course
with the intention of crashing in a remote part of the southern Indian Ocean,
his motive is an even greater mystery. Zaharie Ahmad Shah was 53
and married with three children. He had more than 18,000 hours of flight experience
and a spotless track record. Investigators found no evidence of financial issues and his monthly expenses before the disappearance
indicated nothing unusual. He had no history of mental illness nor had
he displayed any recent changes in lifestyle or behavior. He was raised on the island of Penang
which has led some to speculate the flight's second turn to the southwest of Penang
was the captain getting a final view of his hometown. Some believe a hijacking
could have been politically motivated as Zaharie was an avid supporter of a
democratic opposition leader who was sentenced to five years in prison
mere hours before Flight 370 took off. Others point to unconfirmed reports of marital issues,
but this is contradicted by the official investigation and disputed by family members. The only real inconsistency noted by the final report is that the captain failed to repeat the assigned
radio frequency during the last verbal communication. It would have been standard procedure
to repeat the assigned frequency as the captain had correctly done a few minutes prior. Whether this omission is indicative of anything
but a mistake is anyone's best guess. By all accounts, Captain Zaharie
was an affable and well-respected pilot who was passionate about aviation as evident by the
photos and videos he shared on social media. Captain Zaharie:
Hi everyone. This is a YouTube video that I've made Captain Zaharie:
as a community service. The copilot was found to be even less conspicuous. Fariq Abdul Hamid was only 27
and due to marry a fellow pilot. He had nearly 3,000 hours of flight experience,
although only 39 hours in this type of aircraft. Much like Zaharie, Fariq had no financial,
mental, or interpersonal issues of note, nor was there any evidence of conflict
between the two of them. Some question the plausibility of a
pilot-instigated hijacking due to the apparent lack of interference
by the other pilot. Well, when Ethiopian Airlines Flight 702 was
hijacked by the copilot in February of 2014, he did so by merely waiting for the captain
to take a bathroom break before locking the cockpit door behind him. The copilot was then free to divert the Italy-bound
flight to Switzerland to seek asylum. The only noteworthy piece of evidence in regards
to the copilot of Flight 370 is his phone. You see, when the confidential documents were leaked,
they also confirmed another long-circulated rumor. Namely, that a cellphone tower had briefly
established a connection with an iPhone 5S belonging to the copilot
as Flight 370 approached the island of Penang. According to investigators, it was not a phone
call, as has been widely reported by the media, but merely an automatic location signal. Why this information was omitted from public reports,
we may never know. So what is one to make of all of this? On the one hand, the simulated flight path
seems suspicions. On the other, it is difficult to cast any substantial
doubt on either of the two pilots' character. It is equally difficult to deny a hijacking
is consistent with the available evidence. Then again, we're missing some quite major
and literal pieces of evidence. The final report issued by the Malaysian government
in 2018 could not attribute the loss of communication nor diversion of Flight 370 to a malfunction. Instead, it is believed that someone manually
manipulated the aircraft and its systems. For instance, investigators believe SATCOM
was manually disabled by a sudden and prolonged interruption of power. Then, once power was restored, the terminal
simply rebooted. Likewise, the alterations in heading are believed
to be the result of manual inputs. With that being said, the uncertainty of these
findings are repeatedly emphasized due to the limited evidence available, and the report
does never explicitly state the flight was hijacked. In fact, no real conclusion is reached. Both the Malaysian and Australian government agree
that Flight 370 crashed in the southern Indian Ocean but that the cause is indeterminable
without a wreckage. The location of which has managed to elude
some of the foremost aviation experts in the world as well as an impressive arsenal of cutting edge
technology for more than half a decade. Authors, aviation experts, and independent
investigators have all chimed in to offer their own thoughts and theories as to the nature of the crash
and the location of the wreckage. Some believe there was no crash but that the
aircraft was shot down by an American naval base in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The satellite transmissions where then supposedly
forged as part of a massive cover up. Others believe the aircraft turned right towards
India and traveled as far north as Kazakhstan completely undetected. Debris was then supposedly planted along shorelines
of southeastern Africa as part of a massive cover up. Another theory suggest the aircraft was remotely
hijacked and controlled by someone on the ground. While Boeing and other companies
have experimented with technology that would allow for an aircraft
to be remotely controlled, no commercial airliner
is known to be outfitted with such a system. On the less conspiratorial side,
the assumption that Flight 370 flew in a straight line and at a constant speed after turning left
towards the southern Indian Ocean might simply be incorrect. In early 2018, a French team of independent
investigators proposed an alternate flight path whereby an attempted landing on Christmas
Island lead to a crash site much further north than the region identified by the official investigation. While a surface search of this area was conducted
about a week after the disappearance, the underwater phase never reached this far north. As of the making of this video, the search
operation has been suspended, but there have been talks of
potentially resuming the search. For now, it seems, the vanishing of Flight
370 will remain a mystery.
See you all in winter for the next vid!
The way he manages to lay down all the facts in front of you is astounding. Without a doubt, the best solo content creator on any platform.
Awesome documentary as always, u/LEMMiNO. Thank you.
A Kurzgesagt and a LEMMiNO video in the same afternoon... Today is a good day
Dude, I'm watching this at night and I'm so scared.
EDIT: Yeah, I'm not sleeping tonight.
HE’S ALIVE
I wonder how do the family of the passengers feel
I thought Lemmino vanished like the plane.
lemmino uploads > christmas
Reposted because the link on the other post was broken.