What Happened to MH370, the Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight?

The aircraft's disappearance made global headlines on March 8, 2014, as the search for the 239 people onboard attracted worldwide attention. The aircraft's location was a mystery since several technological anomalies made triangulating the potential crash site in the southern Indian Ocean nearly impossible.

Although the commercial flight began typically — reaching a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet (10,700 meters) roughly 20 minutes after its 12:41 a.m. departure — things quickly worsened.

At 1:07 a.m., the Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) sent its last transmission before being shut off.

The last voice communication with air traffic control occurred at 1:19 a.m. before the transponder was turned off permanently at 1:21 a.m., just before the aircraft entered Vietnamese airspace.

The aircraft vanished shortly after it left Malaysian airspace, with the last radar contact occurring at 2:22 a.m. over the Andaman Sea. However, an Inmarsat satellite received hourly pings until the plane went silent roughly six hours later.

The initial search area focused on the South China Sea until teams pivoted toward the Andaman Sea in the Western Indian Ocean. Investigators found no aircraft debris nor potential crash site in that area.

Although tragic, any signs of the aircraft would have provided the victims' families with closure. However, based on the lack of information, a simulated flight path through remote ocean areas and the amount of time that has passed without credible new evidence, there were likely no survivors.

This sad story resurfaced when people found 27 pieces of debris along the East African shores of Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa, Madagascar and Mauritius, beginning in July 2015. Roughly 20 pieces are believed to have come from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

This sparked a new search effort, but no more evidence was found.

A 2017 statement from the Malaysian government deduced that the deviation from the planned flight path was likely caused by manual inputs, causing investigators and conspiracy theorists to dig further into the cause of the accident.

Two unusual pieces of the puzzle still remain: a flight simulator and stolen passports.

Was MH370 Hijacked?

Among the passengers of flight MH370 were two young men, Seyed Mohammed Reza Delavar and Pouria Nourmohammadi, who boarded the flight using stolen Italian and Australian passports. Although suspicious, no terrorist organizations have tried to take credit for an attack.

This doesn't mean that a forceful entry into the cockpit was not a possible cause of the flight path deviation, but the pattern definitely contradicts the typical model of previous terrorist attacks that aim to shock and awe.

Was It a Crew Member?

Apart from the strange coincidence of one of the pilots making a similar "rogue" flight pattern on his home flight simulator, there were no signs that anyone in the crew was exhibiting suspicious behavior before the flight.

Since the aircraft and its "black box" have never been recovered, similar theories of potential tampering with systems or cabin depressurization are merely speculative.

Was MH370 Shot Down?

One common theory of the airplane's disappearance is connected to flight MH17 — another commercial Boeing 777 that was shot down by Russian-backed forces in July 2014, just a few months after the MH370 tragedy.

Although the flight was headed to Kuala Lumpur and it was a Malaysian Airlines flight, there are few other connections between the two tragedies to warrant a cohesive conspiracy.