On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, while flying from Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, to Beijing, deviated from the scheduled route and turned westward over the Malay Peninsula.
The Boeing 777 plane, carrying 239 people from 15 countries, is believed to have veered off course and flown south for several hours after losing contact with radar. Some officials believe it may have crashed somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean after running out of fuel, but years of extensive search efforts have yielded no answers, no victims, and no plane.
Why the plane veered off course and its exact location today remain one of the greatest aviation mysteries of all time. This week, officials suggested a new search operation might be conducted.
Here’s a brief look back at what we know about the plane’s disappearance 10 years later.
Investigators searched by air and sea.
The first phase of the search lasted 52 days and was conducted primarily from the air, covering 1.7 million square miles and involving 334 search flights.
In January 2017, the governments of Australia, Malaysia and China officially called off the underwater search for the plane after scouring more than 46,000 square miles of the Indian Ocean seafloor. The effort cost $150 million.
The following January, after pressure from the families of the missing passengers and crew, the Malaysian government launched another search in partnership with Ocean Infinity. Months later, the Ocean Infinity-led search ended with no evidence of the plane’s whereabouts.
Were any fragments found?
Although the crashed plane has not been found, about 20 pieces of debris believed to be from the plane have been found along the coast of the African continent and on the islands of Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion and Rodrigues.
In the summer of 2015, investigators determined that a large object that washed up on the coast of the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean was the aileron of a Boeing 777 and therefore likely the wreckage of Flight 370.
In February 2016, another fragment was discovered on an uninhabited sandbar off the coast of Mozambique, a triangular piece made of fiberglass composite and aluminum with the words “No Step” written on its side.
Subsequently, the Australian government confirmed in September 2016 that a flap that washed up on a Tanzanian island was from Flight 370. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau matched its identification number to that of the missing Boeing 777.
What are the theories about the missing plane?
There are many theories as to why the plane disappeared, ranging from the bizarre to the provocative. In fact, there are so many examples here. The lack of information about what happened on the flight has the public and investigators thrown in several directions.
Some officials believe the plane ran out of fuel, and one theory is that the pilot attempted an emergency landing at sea. Others believe that one or both pilots lost control of the plane, that one of the pilots was a rogue pilot, or that the plane was hijacked.
What does the official government report say?
After more than four years of search and investigation, a 495-page report released in 2018 did not provide a conclusive answer to the fate of the airliner. Frustrated by the lack of concrete answers, the victims’ families have been hoping for some resolution.
Kok Soo Chon, head of the safety investigation team, said available evidence – including the plane’s manual deviation from its course and turning off its transponder – “points irresistibly” to “unlawful interference”, which may indicate the plane was subject to unlawful interference. Being hijacked. But there was no evidence of who might have intervened or why.
The report also scrutinized all passengers and pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah and co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid. The report examined the men’s finances, health, the tone of their radio communications and even their gait as they walked to work that day. No abnormalities were found.
What happens next?
Now, ten years after the plane disappeared, there are still no concrete answers and the plane has not been found, and a new search may soon begin.
Malaysian officials said in a statement this week that the government was ready to discuss a new search operation after being approached by Ocean Infinity.
Ocean Infinity CEO Oliver Plunkett said in a statement that six years after previous efforts yielded no answers, the company can now search again.
“This search is arguably the most challenging and indeed relevant,” he said. “We have been working with a number of experts, some from outside Ocean Infinity, to continue to analyze the data in hopes of narrowing the search to one that has the potential to be successful.”