T H E M Y S T E RY

OF THE LOST
MH370 FLIGHT

Deepanshu 21csu481
INDEX
• About the MH-370
• Disappearance and Search
• The Debris Recovery
• Theories
• Conclusion
• Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (MH370/MAS370) was a scheduled
international passenger flight operated by Malaysia Airlines that
disappeared on 8 March 2014 while flying from Kuala Lumpur
International Airport in Malaysia to its planned destination, Beijing
Capital International Airport.
• The crew of the Boeing 777-200ER registered as 9M-MRO, last
communicated with air traffic control (ATC) around 38 minutes
after takeoff when the flight was over the South China Sea. The
aircraft was lost from ATC radar screens minutes later, but was
tracked by military radar for another hour, deviating westwards
from its planned flight path, crossing the Malay Peninsula and
Andaman Sea.
• With all 227 passengers and 12 crew aboard presumed dead, the
disappearance of Flight 370 was the deadliest incident involving a
Boeing 777 and the deadliest in Malaysia Airlines' history until it
was surpassed in both regards by Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which The missing aircraft, 9M-MRO,
was shot down while flying over conflict-stricken Eastern Ukraine taking off from Paris in 2011
four months later.
• The combined loss caused significant financial problems for
Malaysia Airlines, which was re-nationalized by the Malaysian
government in August 2014.
• Initial searches for the plane concentrated on the
South China Sea. After it was determined that flight
370 had turned to the west shortly after the
transponder was switched off, search efforts moved
to the Strait of Malacca and the Andaman Sea.
• On March 15, a week after the plane had
disappeared, the Inmarsat contact was disclosed.
Analysis of the signal could not locate the plane
precisely but did determine that the plane might
have been anywhere on two arcs, one stretching
from Java southward into the Indian Ocean
southwest of Australia and the other stretching
northward across Asia from Vietnam to
Turkmenistan.
• The search area was then expanded to the Indian
Ocean southwest of Australia on the southern arc
and Southeast Asia, western China, the Indian
subcontinent, and Central Asia on the northern arc.
• On March 24 Malaysian Prime Minister Najib
Razak announced that, based on analysis of the
final signals, Inmarsat and the U.K. Air Accidents
Investigation Branch (AAIB) had concluded that
the flight crashed in a remote part of the Indian
Ocean 2,500 km (1,500 miles) southwest of
Australia. Thus, it was extremely unlikely that
anyone on board survived.
• The search for wreckage was hampered by the remote
location of the crash site. Beginning on April 6, an Australian
ship detected several acoustic pings possibly from the Boeing
777’s flight recorder (or “black box”) about 2,000 km (1,200
miles) northwest of Perth, Western Australia.
• Further analysis by the AAIB of the Inmarsat data also found
a partial signal from the plane at 8:19 AM consistent with the
location of the acoustic pings, the last of which were heard on
April 8. If the signals were from flight 370, the flight
recorder was likely at the end of its battery life. Further
searches were conducted using a robotic submarine.
• However, the pings had been spread over a wide area, the
submarine found no debris, and tests found that a faulty cable
in the acoustic equipment could have produced the pings.
• The first piece of debris was not found until July
29, 2015, when the right wing flaperon was
discovered on a beach on the French island of
Réunion, about 3,700 km (2,300 miles) west of the
Indian Ocean area that was being searched by
Australian authorities.
• Over the next year and a half, 26 more pieces of
debris were found on the shores of Tanzania,
Mozambique, South Africa, Madagascar, and
Mauritius. Three of the 27 pieces were positively
identified as coming from flight 370, and 17 were
thought to have likely come from the plane.
• Two pieces came from the cabin interior,
suggesting that the plane had broken up, but
whether the plane broke up in the air or on impact
with the ocean could not be determined. Study of
the Réunion wing flaperon and a piece of the right-
wing flap found in Tanzania showed that the plane
had not undergone a controlled descent; that is, the
plane had not been guided to a water landing.
• Some researchers note that flight 370 could have
struck the water vertically, a possibility in which
the results of one modeling study conducted before
the flaperon’s discovery suggests could explain the
dearth of physical evidence.
T H E O RY

• In the weeks following flight 370’s disappearance,

theories ranged from mechanical failure to pilot
suicide. The loss of the ACARS and transponder
signals spurred ongoing speculation about some
form of hijacking, but no individual or group
claimed responsibility, and it seemed unlikely that
hijackers would have flown the plane to the southern
Indian Ocean.
• That the signals had likely been switched off from
inside the aircraft suggested suicide by one of the
crew - a possibility that Malaysian authorities have Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah Officer Fariq Hamid
yet to rule out—but nothing suspicious was found in
the behavior of the captain, the first officer, or the
cabin crew prior to the flight. After the discovery of
the debris, some speculated that flight 370 was shot
down, but no evidence of shrapnel from a missile or
other projectiles has been found.
CONCLUSION
• Disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet on March 8, 2014, during a flight from Kuala Lumpur
to Beijing. Flight 370 took off at 12:41 AM local time and reached a cruising altitude of 35,000 ft (10,700
m) at 1:01 AM.
• The plane’s transponder was switched off just as the plane was about to enter Vietnamese airspace.
Malaysian military and civilian radar began tracking the plane as it turned around and then flew southwest
over the Malay Peninsula and then northwest over the Strait of Malacca. At 2:22 AM Malaysian radar lost
contact with the plane over the Andaman Sea.
• An Inmarsat satellite in geostationary orbit over the Indian Ocean received hourly signals from flight 370
and last detected the plane at 8:11 AM. On March 24 Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced
that, based on analysis of the final signals, Inmarsat and the U.K.’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch
(AAIB) had concluded that the flight crashed in a remote part of the Indian Ocean 2,500 km (1,500 mi)
southwest of Australia.
• The search for wreckage was hampered by the remote location of the crash site. Beginning in 2015, pieces
of wreckage that suggested the plane had broken up were found washed ashore in Africa and on islands in
the Indian Ocean.
• In 2018 the Malaysian government concluded that the change in flight path had been done manually from
inside the plane, but why the plane disappeared remained a mystery.
THAN K Y OU
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