Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was a flight operated by Malaysia Airlines that disappeared on 8 March 2014 while flying from Kuala Lumpur International Airport to its planned destination, Beijing Capital International Airport. The crew of the Boeing 777-200ER aircraft 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. It left radar range when 200 nautical miles (370 km) northwest of Penang Island in northwestern Peninsular Malaysia. 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 was shot down while flying over eastern Ukraine four months later. The combined loss caused significant financial problems for Malaysia Airlines, which was renationalised by the Malaysian government in December 2014.

Aircraft
Flight 370 was operated with a Boeing 777-2H6ER, registration 9M-MRO. It was the 404th Boeing 777 produced, first flown on 14 May 2002, and was delivered new to Malaysia Airlines on 31 May 2002. The aircraft was powered by two Rolls-Royce Trent 892 engines and could carry 282 passengers in total. It had accumulated 53,471 hours and 7,526 flights while in service and had not previously been involved in any major incidents, though a minor incident while taxiing at Shanghai Pudong International Airport in August 2012 resulted in a broken wing tip. Its last maintenance "A check" was carried out on 23 February 2014.

Crew
The pilot in command was 53-year-old Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah. He joined Malaysia Airlines as a cadet pilot in 1981 and, after training and receiving his commercial pilot's licence, he became a second officer with the airline in 1983. He 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 had been a Type Rating Instructor and a Type Rating Examiner since 2007. Zaharie had a total of 18,365 hours of flying experience.

The co-pilot was 27-year-old First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid. He joined Malaysia Airlines as a cadet pilot in 2007. after becoming a second officer of Boeing 737-400 airliners, he was promoted to first officer of the Boeing 737-400 in 2010 and then transitioned to the Airbus A330-300 in 2012. In November 2013, he began training as first officer of Boeing 777-200 aircraft. Flight 370 was his final training flight and he was scheduled to be examined on his next flight. Fariq had accumulated 2,763 hours of flying experience.

There were ten cabin crew members on the flight.

Departure
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 took of from runway 23R at Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 00:40 MYT. The aircraft was cleared by air traffic control to climb to flight level 180 on a direct path to navigational waypoint IGARI. Voice analysis has determined that the First Officer communicated with ATC while the flight was on the ground and that the Captain communicated with ATC after departure. Shortly after departure, the flight was transferred from the airport's ATC to "Lumpur Radar" air traffic control on frequency 132.6 MHz. ATC over peninsular Malaysia and adjacent waters is provided by the Kuala Lumpur Area Control Centre (ACC); Lumpur Radar is the name of the frequency used for en route air traffic. At 00:46, Lumpur Radar cleared Flight 370 to flight level 350—approximately 35,000 ft (10,700 m). At 01:01, Flight 370's crew reported to Lumpur Radar that they had reached flight level 350, which they confirmed again at 01:08.

Communication lost
The aircraft last made voice contact with air traffic control at 01:19:30 MYT, 8 March (17:19 UTC, 7 March) when when Captain Zaharie acknowledged a transition from Lumpur Radar to Ho Chi Minh Area Control Center:

Lumpur Radar: "Malaysian three seven zero, contact Ho Chi Minh one two zero decimal nine. Good night."

Flight 370: "Good night. Malaysian three seven zero."

The crew was expected to signal air traffic control in Ho Chi Minh City as the aircraft passed into Vietnamese airspace, just north of the point where contact was lost. The captain of another aircraft attempted to contact 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 said he was able to establish communication, but only heard "mumbling" and static. Calls made to Flight 370's cockpit at 02:39 and 07:13 were unanswered but acknowledged by the aircraft's satellite data unit.

Radar
At 01:20:31 MYT, Flight 370 was observed on radar at the Kuala Lumpur ACC as it passed the navigational waypoint IGARI in the Gulf of Thailand. Five seconds later, the Mode-S symbol disappeared from radar screens. At 01:20:15, Flight 370 disappeared from the radar screen at Kuala Lumpur ACC and was lost at about the same time on radar at Ho Chi Minh ACC, which reported that the aircraft was at the nearby waypoint BITOD. Air traffic control uses secondary radar, which relies on a signal emitted by a transponder on each aircraft; therefore, the transponder was no longer functioning on Flight 370 after 01:21. The final transponder data indicated that the aircraft was flying at its assigned cruise altitude of flight level 350 and was travelling at 471 knots (872 km/h; 542 mph) true airspeed. Later analysis estimated that Flight 370 had 41,500 kg (91,500 lb) of fuel when it disappeared from secondary radar.

At the time that the transponder stopped functioning, military radar showed Flight 370 turning right, but then beginning a left turn to a southwesterly direction. From 01:30:35 until 01:35, military radar showed Flight 370 at 35,700 ft (10,900 m) on a 231° magnetic heading, with a ground speed of 496 knots (919 km/h; 571 mph). Flight 370 continued across the Malay Peninsula, fluctuating between 31,000 and 33,000 ft (9,400 and 10,100 m) in altitude. A civilian primary radar at Sultan Ismail Petra Airport with a 60 nmi (110 km; 69 mi) range made four detections of an unidentified aircraft between 01:30:37 and 01:52:35; the tracks of the unidentified aircraft are "consistent with those of the military data". At 01:52, Flight 370 was detected passing just south of the island of Penang. From there, the aircraft flew across the Strait of Malacca, passing close to the waypoint VAMPI, and Pulau Perak at 02:03, after which it flew along air route N571 to waypoints MEKAR, NILAM, and possibly IGOGU. The last known radar detection, from a point near the limits of Malaysian military radar, was at 02:22, 10 nmi (19 km; 12 mi) after passing waypoint MEKAR (which is 237 nmi (439 km; 273 mi) from Penang) and 247.3 nmi (458.0 km; 284.6 mi) northwest of Penang airport at an altitude of 29,500 ft (9,000 m).

Countries were reluctant to release information collected from military radar because of sensitivity about revealing their capabilities. Indonesia has an early-warning radar system, but its air traffic control radar did not register any aircraft with the transponder code used by Flight 370, despite the aircraft possibly having flown near, or over, the northern tip of Sumatra. Indonesian military radar tracked Flight 370 earlier when en route to waypoint IGARI before the transponder is thought to have been turned off, but did not provide information on whether it was detected afterwards. Thailand and Vietnam also detected Flight 370 on radar before the transponder stopped working. The radar position symbols for the transponder code used by Flight 370 vanished after the transponder is thought to have been turned off. Vietnam deputy minister of transport Pham Quy Tieu stated that Vietnam noticed MH370 turn back towards the west and Vietnam operators had informed Malaysian authorities twice the same day, 8 March. Thai military radar detected an aircraft that might have been Flight 370, but it is not known at what time the last radar contact was made, and the signal did not include identifying data. Also, the flight was not detected by Australia's conventional system or its long-range JORN over-the-horizon radar system (which has an official range of 3,000 km); the latter was not in operation on the night of the disappearance.

Satellite Communication
At 02:25 MYT, 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 acknowledgement occurred at 08:10, about 1 hour and 40 minutes after it was scheduled to arrive 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 acknowledgement" message at 08:19:37. The log-on acknowledgement is the last piece of data available from Flight 370. The aircraft did not respond to a status request from Inmarsat at 09:15.

Search
The multinational search effort for the aircraft—which was to become the most expensive aviation search in history—began in the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, where the aircraft's signal was last detected on secondary surveillance radar, and was soon extended to the Strait of Malacca and Andaman Sea. Analysis of satellite communications between the aircraft and Inmarsat's satellite communications network concluded that the flight continued until at least 08:19 and flew south into the southern Indian Ocean, although the precise location cannot be determined. Australia assumed charge of the search on 17 March, when the search effort began to emphasize the southern Indian Ocean. On 24 March, the Malaysian government noted that the final location determined by the satellite communication was far from any possible landing sites, and concluded that "Flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean." From October 2014 to January 2017, a comprehensive survey of 120,000 km2 (46,000 sq mi) of sea floor about 1,800 km (1,100 mi; 970 nmi) southwest of Perth, Western Australia, yielded no evidence of the aircraft. Several pieces of marine debris found on the coast of Africa and on Indian Ocean islands off the coast of Africa—the first discovered on 29 July 2015 on Réunion—have all been confirmed as pieces of Flight 370. The bulk of the aircraft has not been located, prompting many theories about its disappearance.

On 22 January 2018, a search by private US marine exploration company Ocean Infinity began in the search zone around 35.6°S 92.8°E, the most likely crash site according to the drift study published in 2017.

Marine debris
On July 19th 2015 a group of people cleaning up a beach on the island of Réunion when they discovered a two-meter-long metallic object, later identified to be a section of an aircraft wing known as a flaperon. Internal markings including date and serial numbers conclusively ascertained the flaperon belonged to Flight 370. Even though Réunion Island is 4000 km west of the search area, the location was consistent with simulations of debris dispersal patterns based on the currents in the Southern Indian Ocean. The discovery of the flaperon prompted numerous searches along beaches and shorelines of Southeastern Africa and to date 31 additional items have been recovered and examined. The debris were sorted into five categories depending on the certainty that they were from Flight 370:


 * Confirmed: 3
 * Almost certain: 7
 * Highly likely: 8
 * Likely: 3
 * Unidentifiable: 11

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 of 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.

Investigation
In a previous search attempt, Malaysia had established the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to investigate the incident, working with foreign aviation authorities and experts. Malaysia released a final report concerning Flight 370 in October 2017. Neither the crew nor the aircraft's communication systems relayed a distress signal, indications of bad weather, or technical problems before the aircraft vanished. Power was lost to the aircraft's satellite data unit (SDU) at some point between 01:07 and 02:03; the SDU logged onto Inmarsat's satellite communication network at 02:25, which was three minutes after the aircraft had left the range of radar. Based on analysis of the satellite communications, it was postulated that the aircraft turned south after passing north of Sumatra and the flight continued for six hours with little deviation in its track, ending when its fuel was exhausted.

Unresponsive crew or hypoxia
An analysis by the ATSB comparing the evidence available for Flight 370 with three categories of accidents—an in-flight upset (e.g., stall), a glide event (e.g., engine failure, fuel exhaustion), and an unresponsive crew or hypoxia event—concluded that an unresponsive crew or hypoxia event "best fit the available evidence" for the five-hour period of the flight as it travelled south over the Indian Ocean without communication or significant deviations in its track, likely on autopilot. No consensus exists among investigators on the unresponsive crew or hypoxia theory. If no control inputs were made following flameout and the disengagement of autopilot, the aircraft would likely have entered a spiral dive and entered the ocean within 20 nmi (37 km; 23 mi) of the flameout and disengagement of autopilot.

The analysis of the flaperon showed that the landing flaps were not extended, supporting the spiral dive at high speed theory. In May 2018, the ATSB again asserted that the flight was not in control when it crashed, its spokesperson adding that "We have quite a bit of data to tell us that the aircraft, if it was being controlled at the end, it wasn't very successfully being controlled."

Human involvement
Two passengers travelling on stolen passports were investigated, but eliminated as suspects as they were not linked to any terrorist organizations and were simply determined to be seeking asylum. An investigation into the background of all crew members turned up nothing unusual, including no recent behavior changes, financial or marriage problems and no record of psychological issues. United States and Malaysian officials reviewed the backgrounds of every passenger named on the manifest. On 18 March, the Chinese government announced that it had checked all of the Chinese citizens on the aircraft and had ruled out the possibility that any were involved in "destruction or terror attacks". One passenger, who worked as a flight engineer for a Swiss jet charter company, was briefly under suspicion as a potential hijacker because he was thought to have the relevant "aviation skills". Malaysian police identified the captain as the prime suspect if human intervention was the cause of the disappearance, after clearing all others on the flight of suspicion over possible motives. However authorities identified no marriage or financial problems related to the captain, nor was there any record of psychological issues or behavioral changes. Peter Chong, a close friend of Captain Zaharie, quoted in his interview with 60 Minutes Australia that Zaharie was "politically concerned". Hours before Flight 370 took off Anwar Ibrahim, whom Zaharie believed was "Malaysia's political saviour" was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison, which might have provided a motive for Zaharie to hijack and crash the plane. Zaharie was raised on the island of Penang, which lead some to believe that the second turn made by Flight 370 around the island of Penang might be the captain getting a last view of his home town. A search of the captain's home was conducted and investigators recovered a record of seven waypoints from the hard drive of his flight simulator. Two of these waypoints were located in Kuala Lumpur, two in the Strait of Malacca, one in the Bay of Bengal and two in the Southern Indian Ocean where Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was predicted to have crashed. The data was reconstructed from a file that had been automatically saved by the simulation software a month before Flight 370 disappeared. However this was not proof of premeditation as it might not be correct to simply trace a continuous line between these seven waypoints as they could be from seperate flight 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". There were no known conflicts between the captain and first officer.

Cargo
Flight 370 was carrying 10,806 kg (23,823 lb) of cargo, of which four ULDs of mangosteens (total 4,566 kg (10,066 lb)) and 221 kg (487 lb) of lithium-ion batteries are of interest, according to Malaysian investigators. The four ULDs of mangosteens were loaded into the aft cargo bay of the aircraft. The lithium-ion batteries were divided among two pallets in the forward cargo bay and one pallet placed in the rear of the aft cargo bay.

The lithium-ion batteries were contained in a 2,453 kg (5,408 lb) consignment being transported between Motorola Solutions facilities in Bayan Lepas, Malaysia, and Tianjin, China; the rest of the consignment consisted of walkie-talkie chargers and accessories. The batteries were assembled on 7 March and transported to the Penang Cargo Complex to be transported by MASkargo—Malaysia Airlines' cargo subsidiary—to be loaded onto a lorry to transport it to Kuala Lumpur International Airport and onwards by air to Beijing. At the Penang Cargo Complex, the consignment was inspected by MASkargo employees and Malaysian customs officials, but did not go through a security screening before the truck was sealed for transfer to the airport. The consignment did not go through any additional inspections at Kuala Lumpur International Airport before it was loaded onto Flight 370. Because the batteries were packaged in accordance with IATA guidelines, they were not regulated as dangerous goods. Lithium-ion batteries can cause intense fires if they overheat and ignite, which has led to strict regulations on their transport aboard aircraft. A fire fuelled by lithium-ion batteries caused the crash of UPS Airlines Flight 6, and lithium-ion batteries are suspected to have caused a fire which resulted in the crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 991; both were cargo aircraft. Some airlines have stopped carrying bulk shipments of lithium-ion batteries on passenger aircraft, citing safety concerns.

A 4,566 kg (10,066 lb) consignment of mangosteens was aboard Flight 370. The mangosteens were loaded into four ULDs at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, and inspected by officials from Malaysia's Federal Agriculture Marketing Authority before being loaded onto Flight 370. According to the head of Malaysian police, Khalid Abu Bakar, the people who handled the mangosteens and the Chinese importers were questioned to rule out sabotage.

Aftermath
With the loss of all 239 aboard, Flight 370 is the second-deadliest incident involving a Boeing 777 and the second-deadliest incident of Malaysia Airlines' history, second to Flight 17 in both categories. Malaysia Airlines was struggling financially, a problem that was exacerbated by a decrease of ticket sales after the disappearance of Flight 370 and the downing of Flight 17; the airline was re-nationalised by the end of 2014. The Malaysian government received significant criticism, especially from China, for failing to disclose information promptly during the early weeks of the search. Flight 370's disappearance brought to public attention the limits of aircraft tracking and flight recorders, including the limited battery life of Underwater Locator Beacons (an issue that had been raised about four years earlier following the loss of Air France Flight 447, but had never been resolved). In response to Flight 370's disappearance, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) adopted new standards for aircraft position reporting over open ocean, extended recording time for cockpit voice recorders, and, starting from 2020, new aircraft designs will be required to have a means of recovering the flight recorders, or the information they contain, before they sink into the water.

Trivia

 * Zaharie Shah (the captain) had a YouTube channel.