On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 departed from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia headed for Beijing, China with 239 people on board. Shortly before 1 a.m., the aircraft vanished.
12 years later, the disappearance of flight MH370 remains one of aviation’s greatest mysteries, and a new search is now underway to determine how and where the aircraft disappeared.
What actually happened on March 8th, 2014?
At 2:22 a.m., after turning west, away from its flight path, MH370 vanished from radar coverage while over the Andaman Sea.
Despite this, satellites continued to receive hourly signals from the plane, indicating it was still airborne until just after 8 a.m.
Based on the hourly signals sent until 8 a.m., satellite data suggests that the aircraft crashed in the Southern Indian Ocean, somewhere off the coast of Western Australia.
The last radio transmission occurred approximately 40 minutes after takeoff, when Captain Zaharie Ahmed Shah, signed off with “Goodnight Malaysian three seven zero” as the plane entered Vietnamese airspace.
Shortly after the announcement, the plane’s transponder switched off, which meant it could not be easily tracked.
With the help of military radars, it was determined that the plane left its flight path to fly back over northern Malaysia and Penang Island and then into the Andaman Sea towards the tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, before turning south, where all contact was eventually lost.
Renewed Search Efforts and Previous Investigations
Today, the search has resumed with the company Ocean Infinity, a US-based marine robotics and seabed survey company, which signed a “no find, no fee” contract with the Malaysian government, which means that the government will pay the company $100 million, only if the wreckage of the plane is found.
Ocean Infinity previously achieved success in 2022, when it located Sir Ernest Shackleton’s lost ship, Endurance, in the Falkland Islands with submersible experts and underwater robots.
Earlier investigations into the disappearance of MH370 have failed to produce conclusive results.
The first investigation, a joint effort by Malaysia, Australia, and China, cost around $200 million and was called off after two years in 2017, after the wreckage was not located.
The second investigation in 2018 was conducted over three months by Ocean Infinity and also failed to find the wreckage.
Over the years, along the coast of Africa as well as in the islands of the Indian Ocean, there have been 30 fragments of suspected aircraft debris have been found, but only three wing fragments were confirmed to be from MH370.
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