Aviation’s Great Mystery - Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (MH370)

March 8th, 2014

Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

23:32

About flight

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (MH370) is preparing a flight to Beijing, China. The aircraft operating flight 370 is an 11 year and 10-month-old Boeing 777-2H6ER registered 9M-MRO.

Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah

In command of flight 370 is Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah (Age 53) from Penang, Malaysia. He joined Malaysia Airlines as a cadet pilot in 1981 and, after training and receiving his commercial pilot’s license, he became a second officer with the airline in 1983. He then was promoted to captain of Boeing 737-400 airliners in 1991, captain of Airbus a330-300 in 1996, and captain of Boeing 777-200 in 1998. He was a type rating instructor and a type rating examiner since 2007. Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah has a total of 18,365 hours of flying experience.

First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid

The co-pilot was First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid (Age 27). He joined Malaysia Airlines as a cadet pilot in 2007. In November 2013, he began training as first officer of the Boeing 777-200 aircraft. Flight 370 is his final training flight, and he is scheduled to be examined on his next flight. First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid has accumulated 2,736 hours of flying experience.

23:48

227 passengers are now boarding flight 370. There are 12 crew members on board.

Radio between MH370 and ATC (Kuala Lumpur International Airport)

First Officer: Tower MAS370. Morning.
Kuala Lumpur Tower: MAS370. Good morning. Lumpur Tower. Holding point… 10, 32R.
First Officer: 110, MAS370.
Kuala Lumpur Tower: 370 line up, 32R, A10.
First Officer: Line up 32R, A10. MAS370.

Takeoff

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is Ready to takeoff.

Takeoff: Radio

Kuala Lumpur: 370, 32R. Cleared for takeoff. Goodnight
First Officer: 32R. Cleared for takeoff. Thank you. Bye.

00:42

At 00:42 local time, flight 370 takes off from runway 32R and is therefore cleared by the air traffic control to climb to 18,000ft on a direct path to navigational waypoint IGARI. Shortly after departure, the flight is transferred from the airport’s ATC to “Lumpur Radar”, the frequency for en-route traffic.

00:46

At 00:46, Lumpur Radar clears flight 370 to climb to 35,000ft

Radio: Lumpur Radar and Captain

Lumpur Radar: MAS370, climb FL350.
Captain: FL350, MAS370.

1:01

The flight reaches flight level 350 at 01:01

1:19

As the aircraft leaves Malaysian airspace at 01:19, Lumpur Radar transfers the plane over to Ho Chi Minh Area Control Center.

Radio: Kuala Lumpur Tower and Captain

Kuala Lumpur tower: Malaysian 370, contact Ho Chi Minh 120.9. Goodnight.
Captain: Good night. Malaysian 370.

Disappearance

Two minutes later, flight 370 is observed on the radar screen of the Kuala Lumpur Radar Controller as it passes over waypoint IGARI in the Gulf of Thailand. Nine seconds later, however, the radar label for MH370 disappears from the radar screen. Air Traffic Control uses secondary radar, which relies on a signal emitted by a transponder on each aircraft. Therefore, the transponder is no longer functioning, and it was presumably switched off on flight 370 after 01:21. Despite disappearing on the civilian secondary radar, flight 370 is still being tracked by military Radar. At the timeshare the transponder stopped functioning, military radar shows flight 370 turning right, but then beginning a left turn to a southwesterly direction. After the suspicious turn, a captain of another aircraft attempts to signal the crew of flight 370 shortly after 01:30, using the international air distress (IAD) frequency, to relay Vietnamese Air Traffic Control’s request for the crew to contact them. The captain successfully establishes communication with flight 370, although he can only hear “mumbling” and static. From 01:30 until 01:35, military Radar shows flight 370 at 35,700ft and a heading of 231°. Flight 370 continues across the Malay Peninsula, fluctuating between 31,000ft and 33,000ft in altitude. A civilian radar at Sultan Ismail Petra Airport makes four detections of an unidentified aircraft, probably MH370, between 01:30 and 01:52. At 01:52, flight 370 is detected passing just south of the island of Penang. From there, the aircraft turns right and flies across the Strait of Malacca, passing close to waypoint VAMPI, and Pulau Perak at 02:03. The last known radar detection, from a point near the limits of Malaysian Military Radar, is at 02:22, 247 NMI northwest of Penang Airport at the attitude of 29,500ft.

The aftermath of the disappearance

Malaysia Airlines issued a media statement at 07:24 MYT, one hour after the scheduled arrival time of the flight at Beijing, stating that communication with the flight has been lost by Malaysian ATC at 01:21 and that the government had initiated search-and-rescue operations. A search-and-rescue effort was launched in the Gulf of Thailand and South China soon after the disappearance of flight 370. However, ten days after MH370 vanished, engineers at Britain’s Inmarsat shocked the world. Records of signals sent between the aircraft’s engine and communications satellite over the Indian Ocean revealed that the aircraft continued flying for almost six hours after its final sighting on Malaysian Radar. The signals were meant for the engines manufacturer to monitor them in flight and never designed to provide location data for the aircraft. At 02:25, the aircraft’s satellite communication system sent a “log-on request” message which was relayed by satellite to a ground station, both operated by satellite telecommunications company Inmarsat. After logging on to the network, the satellite data unit aboard the aircraft responded to hourly status requests from Inmarsat and two ground-to-aircraft telephone calls, at 02:39 and 07:13, which were unanswered by the cockpit. The final status request and aircraft acknowledgment occurred at 08:10, about 1 hour, and 40 minutes after was scheduled time arrival in Beijing. The aircraft sent a log-on request at 08:19:29, which was followed, after a response from the ground station, by a "log-on acknowledgment" message at 08:19:32. The log-on acknowledgment is the last piece of data available from flight 370. Investigators believe the 08:19 messages were made between the time of fuel exhaustion and the time the aircraft crashed. An analysis of the time difference between the transmission of the ping and the aircraft's response allowed Inmarsat to determine the distance of the plane from that satellite at each of the signals. Plotting those distances gave them seven arcs through which the plane must have passed. The seventh and last arc put the plane's final location (at the time of its last complete handshake at 08:11) somewhere in a vast air corridor that ran north as far as Kazakhstan (northern corridor) and south deep into the Indian Ocean (southern corridor). Using an "innovative technique" that has "never before used in an investigation of this sort", the team determines the aircraft's speed and position along the identified arcs. Inmarsat cross-checked its methodology to known flight data from six Boeing 777 aircraft flying in various directions on the same day and found a good match. Applying the technique to the handshake signals from flight 370 gave results that correlated strongly with the expected and actual measurements of a southern trajectory over the Indian Ocean, but poorly with a northern trajectory. Further revised calculations to account for movements of the satellite relative to the earth allowed the northern corridor to be ruled out completely. Following Inmarsat's conclusion that flight 370 flew along the southern corridor, the emphasis of the search was shifted to the southern Indian Ocean west of Australia. The multi-national search for the missing aircraft soon became the largest and most expensive in aviation's history. Between 18 March and 28 April, nineteen vessels and 345 sorties by military aircraft searched over 4,600,00 km2 without finding any evidence. The final phase of the search was a bathymetric survey and sonar search of the seafloor, about 1,800 kilometers southwest of Perth, Western Australia. On 17 January 2017, the official search for flight 370, was suspended after yielding no evidence of the aircraft other than some marine debris on the coast of Africa. The final ATSB report, published on 3 October 2017, stated that the underwater search for the aircraft, as of 30 June 2017, had cost a total of US$155 million. The report also concluded that the location where the aircraft went down had been narrowed to an area of 25,000 km2, by using satellite images and debris drift analysis. In January 2018, a private US marine exploration company called ocean infinity resumed the search for MH370 in the narrowed 25,000 km2 area, using the Norwegian ship seabed constructor. The search area was significantly extended during the search, and by the end of May 2018, the vessel had searched a total area of over 112,000 km2, using eight autonomous underwater vehicles. The contract with the Malaysian Government ended soon afterward, and the search was concluded without success on 9 June 2018. US officials believe the most likely explanation to be that someone in the cockpit of flight 370re-programmed the aircraft's autopilot to travel south across the Indian Ocean. Media reports claimed that Malaysian Police had identified Captain Zahaire as the prime suspect if human intervention eventually proven to the cause of flight 370's disappearance. Indeed in 2016, a leaked document stated that a route on the pilot's home flight simulator, which closely matched the projected flight over the Indian Ocean, was found during the FBI analysis of the flight simulator's computer hard drive. ATSB investigators have cast doubt in claims that the captain was conscious at the moment the plane crashed into the ocean, saying such a scenario was "unlikely". However, the man in charge of coordinating the international search did not rule out that Pilot Zaharie deliberately crashed the 777 in a carefully planned mission. Indeed, sources claim that Zaharie aimed to keep the plane largely intact so it would disappear as completely as possible in the remote southern ocean. The final report from the Malaysian Ministry of transport, release in July 2018, did not provide any new information concerning the fate of MH370. Investigators from Malaysia claim that lack of access to the aircraft's cockpit voice recorder, flight data recorder, and main wreckage prevent them from establishing conclusive evidence as to what caused the aircraft to disappear from Air Traffic Control radar screens. The fact that, in a digitally-connected world, a modern aircraft could disappear was met with surprise and disbelief by the public. While changes in the aviation industry often take years to be implemented, airlines and air transport authorities responded swiftly to take action on several measures to reduce the likelihood of a similar incident. The International Air Transportation Association (IATA), an industry trade organisation requesting over 240 airlines, and the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), the United Nation’s civil aviation body, began working on implementing new measures to track aircraft in flight in real-time. Flight 370 remains one of the biggest aviation mysteries of all time.

In memory of all the passengers and crew members onboard MH370...

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