Where is MH370? An Update in 2023

[Music] what you have just heard was the last radio transmission made by the captain of malaysian370 before the flight vanished seemingly without a trace the whereabouts of the boeing triple 7 remains one of the greatest aviation mysteries of our time join me as we take a detailed look at the disappearance of mh370 welcome to airspace shortly after midnight on march 8 2014 malaysia airlines flight 370 departed from kuala lumpur international airport for its daily scheduled flight to beijing china the flight was piloted by 53 year old captain sahari ahmad shah and 27 year old first officer farig abdul hamid in the cabin 10 flight attendants cared for the needs of the 227 passengers on this night flight after departure the boeing triple 7 tracked on a direct path to a waypoint called igari which is situated on the border between the malaysian and vietnamese airspaces when the flight reached this waypoint 39 minutes after takeoff kuala lumpur air traffic control initiated the handover to the vietnamese controllers with the communication snippet you heard in the intro [Music] however malaysian370 never called ho chi minh control and never responded to any further queries from various air traffic control centers one minute after the last communication took place the flight's information vanished from the radar screens this information is referred to as secondary radar it relies on active transmissions of aircraft transponders and is very precise its disappearance from radar screens could either be due to an equipment failure or someone deliberately turning it off military and civil raiders continue tracking the aircraft using common primary radar technology which solely relies on radar waves from ground antennae being reflected of the aircraft almost immediately after the secondary radar information had disappeared the plane's radar track showed it turning to the right slightly then it initiated a rather sea 180 degrees turn to the left back towards the malay peninsula it crossed it entirely passed south of the island of penang turned right onto a northwesterly heading and entered an area with no radar coverage somewhere here in the strait of malacca there it disappeared from the radar screens of the air traffic controllers over the following days a multinational search of a vast area was initiated covering parts of the bay of bengal the adamant sea the strait of malacca and even parts of the south china sea several items of interest were cited from the air but upon retrieval and analysis none of these could be identified as belonging to the vanished triple seven a few days later it was discovered however that while the plane had disappeared from radar screens over the strait of moleca it had continued to send login attempts to a satellite communication called inmarsat for almost seven hours after it had escaped radar coverage therefore search efforts in the area were halted and data from inmarsat was processed long-range aircraft such as the boeing triple seven use satellite communications for various purposes such as information exchange via a-cars which is a transmission protocol that allows transmission of text messages either over conventional radio or satellite communications but there are other applications for satellite communications such as voice communications over satellite or even services for passengers allowing text messages or email to be sent from the aircraft after mh370 had vanished it was discovered that the aircraft systems had maintained hourly handshakes with inmarsat satellite 3 which is in a geostationary orbit over the indian ocean these early hand checks are done automatically by the system to check whether an aircraft is still using the satellite communication system by analyzing diagnostic data transmitted in these handshake messages as well as the travel times of the signals the team of investigators was able to determine arcs of possible locations in which the aircraft could be using this method and considering the performance state of the triple 7 it was soon determined that the aircraft must have crashed somewhere along the so-called 7th arc the ingenuity of this method is astonishing investigators sort of turned a communication system into a positioning system cross-checks with past actual flight data and computed flight paths from satcom logon messages were very consistent after this discovery the search effort was concentrated along the 7th arc however the area is one of the remotest places on earth and it took search vessels at least 6 days to get there meanwhile oceanographers discovered that hydrophones which are basically underwater microphones had discovered something that might have been the sound of an object striking the water at high speed however when the investigators determined the location of the sound it was found that it had most likely originated outside the possible flight path of mh370 it probably stemmed from tectonic activity in addition to that various companies undertook bathymetric surveys of 710 square kilometers of the sea floor with 120 000 square kilometers being very high resolution data the search revealed several beautiful and interesting underwater formations such as this 2200 meter high volcano [Music] or this rocket area called the diamantina trench it also revealed sunken 19th century ships and many smaller items such as whale bones barrels or ship ropes however not a trace of mh370 was found during the underwater search phase a search vessel suddenly picked up ping signals that sounded like they were coming from an underwater locator beacon these beacons are fitted to flight data recorders so that they can be located when submerged however the signal seized before anything could be found probably because the battery of the device ran out an interesting detail here is that malaysia airlines maintenance department had not replaced this locator battery even though it had expired two years before the accident apparently this part was not properly transferred into the maintenance scheduling system when the department undertook a system update to a new software one year and four months after the disappearance of the aircraft first pieces of debris started washing ashore on various locations along the eastern african coast and islands especially the island of la reunion madagascar and pemba island off the coast of tanzania so far 27 items were found and catalogued by comparing serial numbers inside or on the parts three of these items are confirmed to originate from the vanish point triple seven by the way speaking of serial numbers it is probably a strange coincidence boeing's manufacturer line number of the aircraft that flew as mh370 was 404 the well-known error code for websites that cannot be found the three parts that were positively identified as belonging to the accident aircraft are a control surface called a flapper on part of a left outboard flap and the right outboard flap other items that are highly likely to originate from mh370 are parts of a nose lining gear door and several parts of engine cowling still sporting the rolls-royce logo the australian transportation safety board conducted various drift analyses considering winds and currents prevailing in the indian ocean and concluded that indeed the parts could very well have originated from the place where search efforts were being concentrated on the omnius 7th arc however after the high resolution sonar search ended without any major finds the search efforts were terminated in january 2017 after a joint decision was taken by the governments of malaysia australia and china up to that point the search effort had cost upwards of 110 million us dollars and therefore was the most expensive air crash investigation of all times but how did the plane disappear in the first place let's look at several theories out there one can easily understand why the sudden loss of communications with the fly crew followed by the suspicious loss of transponder data and turn away from the intended flight path could spark the theory that the plane was hijacked attempted hijackings are not as infrequent as i thought on average there seems to be about one attempt made by someone every year after some media outlets had reported that apparently these two individuals traveled aboard mh370 with falsify passports these rumors quickly gained traction upon closer investigation it was however revealed that while the two men indeed were using falsified documents their intent was to seek asylum in china in pursuit of a better lifestyle nothing pointed towards stem or any other passengers of the flight having planned something malicious the investigators took a very close look into the lives of the two pilots of the flight and tried to determine whether one of them would have had a motive for hijacking the aircraft captain zaharia marcha was 53 years old married and had three children he owned two houses and three cars and his financial situation was stable and good neither his wife nor his relatives or friends reported that he had any kind of marital disputes or recent changes in behavior in malaysia airlines he was known as a very diligent and good pilot which is why he was promoted to type rating instructor in 2007 allowing him to train other pilots on the boeing triple seven in fact flight mh370 had been such an instruction flight captain shaw instructed 27 year old first officer fariq abdul hamid on his last training flight before the latter would go on to be a fully checked out boeing triple 7 first officer the young man had performed admirably up to this point in time in his private life there were no bad things either his financial situation was stable and he was soon to be married to a fellow first officer the team even went so far as they analyzed security camera footage from the parking lot at the airport to deduce whether pilots appeared more stressed on the night of the flight of mh370 but this did not seem to be the case at all an analysis of routine communications during the departure of the boeing triple 7 also did not reveal any abnormalities that is except for one little detail the last transmission made by the captain is incomplete in fact when the air traffic controller radioed malaysian 3 0 0 1 2 0 9. the answer by the captain is missing the repack of the frequency which he was to call next this might well be a minor oversight but the investigators thought it was noteworthy but soon captain zahari ahmad shah would become the focus of the public media and thus the team of investigators when it became known that he had owned a quite sophisticated flight simulator at home while owning a flight simulator as a pilot is definitely not uncommon as you can see from my videos the investigator just discovered something baffling among the 2500 saved waypoints the investigators discovered in a log file seven were hand programmed by the captain these while unrelated that not found in any context result in a flight path that looks like this one can clearly see the similarities to the suspected flight path for many media outlets this was proof enough that he must have hijacked the plane with intent of murdering everyone on board but the team thought otherwise and saw no compelling evidence that the captain had planned any malicious activities and that the waypoints could have originated from several separate unconnected flights still the atsb considered a possibility anyway and widened the search area to accommodate scenarios in which the captain either prolonged or shortened a resulting glide after the triple seven would have run out of fuel [Music] while taking a closer look at the loading manifest of mh370 only two items are of note for one a large shipment of mangosteen on the other hand a shipment of electronics containing lithium batteries these batteries are notorious for their combustibility and have caused aircraft accidents in the past such as the crash of ups 6 in dubai while the onset of a fire could explain the sudden turn back towards the malay peninsula in an attempt to make an emergency landing the fact that pilots never radioed in to declare their intentions is odd to say the least one theory that attempts to explain this is that maybe the pilots are quickly overwhelmed by smoke or other gases and became incapacitated but this would not explain how the plane could have flown on for 7 more hours or how the aircraft performed turns without pilot input simulator tests conducted by test pilots also further contradict this theory as at least one of the turns flown namely the 180 degrees turn shortly after igari was apparently so tight that it could only have been flown manually since the other pilot is not allowed to take turns at a bank angle this high also none of the pieces of debris that were washed ashore showed any signs of fire or explosives another theory suggests there might have been a decompression on board of mh370 that went undetected a similar case happened to helios 522 when the captain of the 737 did not pressurize after takeoff the pilots did not realize this and were quickly overwhelmed by hypoxia a lack of oxygen the plane then continued flying on autopilot until it ran out of fuel and crashed into a hillside near athens this theory is further fueled by the fact that the operations department of malaysia airlines tried to call mh370 via satellite phone twice but the calls remained unanswered log files from inmarsat showed that the phone did indeed ring in the cockpit of the lost aircraft but nobody answered it also the satellite communication system was operational during almost the entire time which could have allowed passengers to use the service for email or text messaging but not a single message was sent this could just be because nobody wanted to send something during this night flight or maybe just maybe everyone was unconscious due to oxygen deprivation an eerie thought [Music] there are many myths that have grown around this very strange and frankly incomprehensible disappearance of mh370 and many open questions remain why did the transponder of mh370 stop sending signals was it deliberately turned off just before the aircraft turned or was there a lasting power interruption the final report mentioned several such possible power interruptions that might have resulted in two re-attempted satcom logons which are normally uncommon during flight these are different from the normal handshakes and do normally not happen in flight also the last saccum handshake contained incomplete data suggesting that some systems namely the inflight entertainment system had already been shut down or failed most likely the aircraft was running out of fuel at that time and had maybe already shared unessential loads such as the in-flight entertainment system while a more crucial system like the satellite communication system remained available the seventh arc seems to be the most likely final resting place of mh370 as it coincides with the possible location derived from satellite data as well as the maximum range calculated from the fuel load atmospheric data and aircraft performance factors still it is somewhat remarkable that the aircraft was not found during this unprecedented search effort that managed to turn up items as small as a barrel at an oceanic depth of over 4000 meters either the aircraft is in a slightly different place or there are other factors at play here that investigators simply did not consider in early 2021 an aerospace engineer named richard godfrey reported that he had conducted an updated drift analysis of the debris found in the various african states and he concluded that indeed the aircraft should be at a position along the 7th arc he however suggested to look again in the area depicted here in this red circle slightly larger than the previous search area however no new search effort was launched even though the government of malaysia previously announced to do so should compelling new evidence be uncovered it remains to be seen what exactly constitutes such compelling new evidence until then this case remains what it is one of aviation's greatest mysteries so where do you think mh370 is do you even have your own theory that you would like to discuss if you do i have good news for you i have just launched my own discord where aviation enthusiasts can discuss this and other cases in the future head over if you are interested the link is in the description also i'm very excited to announce that i am now offering patreon subscriptions check out the link in the outro or the description if you'd like to support the channel that's it thank you all very much for watching my channel went past the 10 000 subscriber mark on this tuesday and i'm humbled by the fact that the small stadium of people apparently likes to hear me ramble about aviation incidents check back next week for more interesting aviation content see you all in the next one

Channel: Airspace

Views: 2,631,008

Keywords: aviation, accidents, air crash investigation, mayday, air disaster, cockpit mystery, plane crash, airplane crash documentary, plane crash documentary, plane crash investigation, aviation documentary, flight mh370, malaysia airlines, malaysia airlines flight 370, mh370, disappearance, zaharie ahmad shah, flaperon, malaysian 370, malaysian 370 air crash investigation, mh370 documentary, mh370 flight, mh370 found, missing, flight 370, what happened to malaysia airlines flight 370

Id: egRS1dznH-Y

Length: 17min 12sec (1032 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 23 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Hattix]

This really does need to be no longer considered a mystery. The Captain could have only written a suicide note to give any more evidence it was deliberate murder-suicide.

Captain Zaharie was technologically literate, had a YouTube channel, had a flight simulator PC built at home. His YouTube channel showed him a little socially awkward, but very intelligent and knowledgable. Suspicion fell on Zaharie when Malaysian police found a saved route in his flight simulator which almost exactly matched the incient flight in 2014. Malaysian police hid this evidence, not wishing to bring the spectre of blame on a fellow Malaysian. The saved track wasn't a full flight (which is incredibly boring, seven hours of flying straight and level over ocean) but brief intervals of control and then fast-forward. All flight simulators allow you to set up an autopilot and then skip through.

This became almost physical evidence of Zaharie's involvement, a virtual suicide note. There is no reason why anyone would want to fly a seemingly normal flight along an air corridor, same as the incident flight, then swerve out to fly south to nowhere until you crash of fuel exhaustion in the open ocean, thousands of kilometers from anywhere. Yet, MH370 did this, and the Captain of MH370 had almost the exact same flight on his home flight simulator.

Zaharie's social life was also not as perfect as Malaysian authorites tried to portray. He was separated from his wife, making inappropriate comments at young women on social media, and had a string of mistresses.

At 01:20, Zaharie had just said his goodnight to Kuala Lumpur. He asks his First Officer to get him something from the galley, or says someone wanted to talk to him, any of a million ways a Captain can make a First Office leave the cockpit. Zaharie then locks the cockpit door.

Since 9/11, cockpit doors have been reinforced and almost fortress-like in their strength and Zaharie would join a lengthening list of pilots who used this to kill: The impregnable doors have now killed more people than the 9/11 attacks have.

Systematically, from 01:20 to 01:30, Zaharie shuts off (by pulling the breakers) all systems able to track a plane. The transponder. The air data system. He cuts pressurisation to the cabin and cuts the lights. He almost certainly cuts the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder.

Oxygen masks automatically come down, but it's hard to get them and they give you 12 minutes at best. Zaharie, a very skilled pilot, flies the plane to the very edge of its abilility, doing a 180 degree turn to the left in just 130 seconds, which pilots in the simulator could only match, not beat.

Fariq, not in his seat, is thrown around the cabin, likely injured. Anyone who did not reach an oxygen mask in the two minutes of terror is now unconscious and will soon be dead.

Zaharie then threads the line between Malaysia and Thailand, hoping each will see the unidentified plane as the other's problem. Perhaps he knows, given the link between Malaysia's flag carrier and its military, thart Malaysia's state of readiness leaves a lot to be desired.

When he's sure he isn't being intercepted, he makes one last pass over Penang, the town he grew up in and loved. The First Officer's phone connects to a cellular tower here, but it's likely that nobody other than Zaharie is alive on the flight.

He then flies Airway Route N571 up the Strait of Malacca. Anyone with primary radar, the militaries of the area, would not know him from the hundreds of other airliners passing the same way.

Zaharie checks everyone is dead, then powers the AC bus back and repressurises the airliner. The satellite comms system comes back online, something hardly anyone at the time knew about, and Zaharie didn't. It marks this event at 02:25. He set the autpilot to south, where the wreckage would be nearly impossible to find, and from his simulator runs he knows how long he has and roughly where the airliner will come down.

It is not known what he does in the meantime. He had a plane full of provisions and over two hundred freshly dead bodies. Maybe he killed himself there and then.

The debris recovered is consistent with the aircraft being unpiloted when it ran out of fuel, went into a hard spiral, and hit the ocean hard. Parts, such as the recovered flaperon, were consistent with having been torn off in flight as the plane exceeded its maximum speed in a dive.

[u/pradeep23]

Although its clear it was a pilot suicide, this is still a mystery. Hope they find the wreckage at some point in near future along with black box