In the 10 years since Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 suddenly vanished, what exactly happened to the plane has become one of the biggest mysteries of our time.
The ill-fated aircraft vanished on March 8, 2014 after it took off from from Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia on its way to Beijing.
All 239 people aboard are thought to have died shortly after the plane mysteriously veered westwards off course over the Andaman Sea in the Indian Ocean.
Although many theories about what happened to MH370 verge into bizarre conspiracy, a handful appear more credible than others.
MailOnline has spoken to aerospace scientists and aviation experts about the most compelling hypotheses – and whether there’s any truth to them.
Although many theories surrounding the circumstances of the planes last moments verge into conspiracy, there are several rational hypotheses
On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 and the 239 people on-board took off into the night’s sky from Kuala Lumpur, never to be seen or heard from again. The missing aircraft is pictured here in December 2011
PILOT SABOTAGE
The last transmission from MH370 was about 40 minutes after it took off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing.
Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah signed off with ‘Good night, Malaysian three seven zero’, as the plane entered Vietnamese air space.
Shortly thereafter, its transponder – a device that sends and exchanges signals – was turned off, which meant it could not be easily tracked.
Military radar showed the plane left its flight path to fly back over northern Malaysia and Penang island, and then out into the Andaman Sea towards the tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
It then turned south and all contact was lost when it left radar range.
Since the MH370 was lost, theories have persistently centred on Mr Shah the captain, a veteran aviator who joined Malaysia Airlines in 1981.
The state of his mental state has since been the subject of much speculation, following reports quoting his friends that he was ‘clinically depressed’.
Richard Godfrey is a British aerospace engineer and a founding member of the MH370 Independent Group investigating the plane’s disappearance.
He told MailOnline that ‘there was an active pilot to the end of the flight of MH370’.
Theories have persistently centred on MH370 pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah (pictured), whose mental state has since been the subject of much speculation
MH370 – a Boeing 777 – left Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 12:41am local time on March 8, destined for Beijing Capital International Airport. Crew last communicated with air traffic control 38 minutes after takeoff, around halfway between Malaysia and Vietnam. Minutes after, it is believed to have suddenly deviated westward from its planned flight path. Military radar tracked MH370 across the Malay Peninsular and over the Andaman Sea, before it left radar range 230 miles northwest of Penang Island
‘This fact is confirmed by the WSPR [radio software] data, as there were changes of track, climbs and changes of speed of MH370 during its flight for almost six hours over the Indian Ocean,’ Mr Godfrey told MailOnline.
While the identity of the active pilot may not necessarily have been Captain Zaharie Shah, he appears the most likely, the expert added.
‘It is theoretically possible, although less likely, it was the co-pilot or a hijacker,’ Mr Godfrey told MailOnline.
‘Only DNA evidence from a skeleton in the cockpit of the MH370 wreckage or possibly from the cockpit voice recorder might give us certainty, that would hold up in a court of law.
Back in 2021, Mr Godfrey published a report describing how the pilot ‘avoided giving a clear idea where he was heading by using a fight path with a number of changes of direction’.
‘The flight path seems well planned and avoids commercial flight routes,’ he says in the report.
Pictured, authorities stand near a piece of barnacle-covered plane debris (part of the wing known as a flaperon) in Saint-Andre, on the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion, July 29, 2015. The Malaysian Prime Minister said early on August 6, 2015 the flaperon was confirmed as coming from missing flight MH370
READ MORE MH370 – the mystery that stunned the world 10 years on
Indian sand artist Sudarsan Pattnaik creates a sand sculpture of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 on Puri beach in eastern Odisha state on March 7, 2015
<!—->
Advertisement
‘The pilot appears not so concerned about fuel usage and much more concerned about leaving false trails.’
HIJACKING
Dr Guy Gratton, professor of aviation at Cranfield University, thinks MH370 was ‘in some form a hijacking that went wrong’ by someone other than the pilot.
‘My best guess – and I freely admit it’s a poorly informed guess because of how little information we have – is that it was a hijacking by a person or persons who didn’t really know what they were doing,’ he told MailOnline.
‘Evidence suggests that the aeroplane flew a long way under some form of control before ditching at low speed (so again, under some kind of control – not a high speed crash).
‘Also it seems that various electrical systems were deliberately shut down – the failure to shut down the satcom antenna being the sole exception.’
Dr Gratton doesn’t agree with the theory that captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah was responsible, following reports of his troubled personal life leading up to the flight.
‘Irrespective of his mental state or any malign intent on his part, the captain was extremely experienced and competent, he knew the aeroplane very well,’ Dr Gratton said.
Although no one knows exactly what happened to MH370, it’s widely believed the plane hit the Indian Ocean because of several bits of washed-up debris that were confirmed to have been part of the plane
‘I’m quite certain that if he’d had a mind to he could have singlehandedly flown the aeroplane and put it on a beach, an island, or any airport within that part of the world, or even committed a terrorist offence with it, but he did none of those things.
‘The aeroplane instead flew for hours into an area over deep ocean until the fuel ran out and/or a controlled ditching was flown just before the fuel ran out.
‘That implies to me a degree of incompetence that he probably didn’t suffer from.’
SOARED INTO EARTH’S ATMOPSHERE
Most theories suggest MH370 maintained normal flight altitude before descending towards the Earth’s surface, either steadily or dramatically nosediving.
But 10 years ago there were suggestions that the opposite happened – that it kept rising higher and higher before burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere.
The remaining fragments of the plane fell back down to Earth before some of them were found in the Indian Ocean, the theory goes.
However, Dr Gratton said this could not happen, because commercial planes reach a ‘service ceiling’, typically around 45,000 feet, where they cannot go any higher.
The inability to locate MH370’s crash site has fuelled numerous conspiracy theories, ranging from mechanical error or a remote-controlled crash, to more bizarre explanations like alien abduction and a Russian plot
This is due to air density getting lower as the altitude increases.
‘As we climb, the air gets less dense, lower pressure, and colder,’ Dr Gratton said.
‘The lower density means the engines are capable of generating less thrust, and thus the higher you go, the poorer the climb rate.
‘Eventually you reach a height – which we call the ceiling – where the aeroplane can’t climb any more.’
MH370 spawned a huge multinational search effort – the most expensive search in the history of aviation at $200 million – that was controversially suspended in January 2017.
It’s widely believed MH370 hit the Indian Ocean because of several bits of washed-up debris that were confirmed to have been part of the plane.
CYBER ATTACK
Dr Sally Leivesley, a risk management consultant and former scientific advisor to the UK government, has hypothesised that the plane may have been victim of a cyber attack.
She told MailOnline that planes under automatic pilot can potentially be taken command of and controlled remotely in a similar way to drones via computer chips.
‘The best way to understand a cyber hijack is to consider what we now understand with drones,’ Dr Leivesley told MailOnline.
‘In the same way that you see with drones, you have whole computing systems controlling where the drone goes, what it does under certain conditions and how it reacts.
An expert said planes can potentially be taken command of and controlled remotely in a similar way to drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, pictured)
The search for MH370 spanned several thousands of miles along a north-south corridor deemed ‘the seventh arc’ (shown here) where investigators believe the plane could have glided after running out of fuel
‘Seeing drones flying in an automated system should help you understand that a plane can fly as a remote object.’
She first put forward this theory in 2014 with the intention to start a full cyber forensics investigation, but the lack of any such efforts has been ‘negligent’.
‘When MH370 disappeared the concept of cyber hijack was just unbelievable,’ she said.
‘We now have a much greater understanding of the vulnerabilities of controlled systems.’
Dr Leivesley also said there’s no information that has led her to assume the pilot had any kind of ‘psychological condition that made this an aggressive suicide’.
SHOT DOWN
According to another theory, the US feared MH370 had been hijacked and was about to be used to attack the US military base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
At the time, the US – under Barack Obama’s administration – was withdrawing troops from Afghanistan.
So the US government supposedly had the plane shot down, although this doesn’t explain the peculiar deviation in the plane’s flight path.
Dai Whittingham, a former RAF pilot and CEO of the UK Flight Safety Committee, said such a theory ‘lacks any credibility at all’.
‘For the US to shoot down the aircraft they would need to have cause and the means to do so,’ he told MailOnline.
‘But there were no fighters based at Diego Garcia throughout ops into Afghanistan, only long range bombers which were withdrawn from theatre in 2006.’
Officers carrying pieces of debris from an unidentified aircraft apparently washed ashore in Saint-Andre de la Reunion, eastern La Reunion island, France on July 29, 2015
A similar theory was put forward by French journalist Florence de Changy, who said MH370 was brought down by the US Air Force after a failed attempt to intercept the plane and seize a shipment of ‘electronic equipment’ en-route to Beijing.
The US, she writes, did not want China – under the new leadership of Xi Jinping at the time – to have the equipment.
So two US Airborne Early Warning (Awacs) planes sandwiched MH370 from above and below, completely blocking its magnetic field and all communications, rendering it invisible, de Changy alleges.
Pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah, at this point, would have been ordered by the US to land the plane at a nearby airbase, likely airbase U-Tapao in Thailand.
Mr Whittingham also called this theory ‘laughable’.
Meanwhile, other experts still aren’t sure enough to form a solid theory or prefer not to be drawn into speculation.
Mark Lowenberg, professor of flight dynamics at the University of Bristol, said he hopes more evidence is still to be revealed.
‘I too am very interested to know what happened to flight MH370 and hope that more factual detail will come to light that will allow investigators to finally agree a most-probable cause and course of events,’ he told MailOnline.
Dr Gratton at Cranfield University added: ‘I’m sorry to say, I think that this will remain a mystery and we can only really conject.
‘It’s not a good position to be in.’
