On Saturday, March 8th, 2014, Flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur en route to reach Beijing. However, the plane mysteriously disappeared from the radar shortly after take off. For years, this mystery has been confusing many professionals, and still remains one of the most mysterious events in history. There are a handful of conspiracies, but the most blamed is decorated captain Zaharie Ahmed Shah, who was commonly accused for a mass murder suicidal plot.
Many people have thrown away this idea because Captain Shah was a “very seasoned pilot with an excellent record.” (Dunleavy, 2014) However, when an investigator visited Shah's house shortly after the incident, they found a flight simulator. That wasn’t really unusual, as many pilots have these in their homes to practice or predict their flight path for safe outcomes. However, on Shah's simulator, there was a flight plan mapped out, that was eerily similar to the actual flight path that MH370 took. This is not just a simple coincidence. Shah must have been planning something to try and get the plane to the Southwest Indian Ocean, away from its intended path.
Many people believe that the plane was left on autopilot, however, a retried British engineer, Richard Godfrey, did a study that proves otherwise; it was indeed manual activity. He used WSPR (Weak Signal Propagation Reporter) to track the exact flight path. WSPR is a type of technology that can catch weak radio waves reflected from the atmosphere. If a plane happened to pass through such waves, it will disrupt these frequencies, which can easily be tracked. Godfrey collected this data, and made a chart showing every exact spot where the plane had gone through a radio wave. This was used to figure out the flight path, which, unlike a straight line caused by autopilot, was extremely swayed, like a human behind the wheel.
The Flight attempted communication with satellites 7 times. Researchers used the angle of the plane in relation to satellites and calculated 7 large circles of where the plane could be. These circles were huge, and contained a lot of unexplored oceans. However, many scientists were able to narrow this down to an arc, famously called the “7th Arc.” This was calculated based on the speed and remaining fuel of the plane. The plane most probably crashed right after the 7th signal. This is because altitude and fuel were running low and could not sustain flight for much longer. These communications were indeed manual, as autopilot has no such capabilities of communicating with satellites.
There are also multiple counter-arguments to this claim. One of the most popular, being that the plane ran into some problems as it entered the Vietnamese airspace, which turned off multiple things, including the transponder. It is said that the pilot tried to turn the plane 180 degrees to fly back to Malaysia, however, he ran into some more technical failures which lead to oxygen deficiency, which then made everyone on board faint; including the pilot and his co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid. The plane was to run on autopilot until it crashed. However, the claim that oxygen deficiency caused autopilot to take over can be easily proved wrong. Firstly, the plane tried to communicate with the satellite 7 times. Autopilot cannot do this. Secondly, according to Godfrey’s study, the plane went in a very swayed, not straight direction, meaning it was actively controlled.
This is a mystery that has kept experts merely scratching their heads for a solution for years. Though no one truly knows the true story of what occurred that night, one of the most probable solutions could be the doing of the pilot himself. However, this is not confirmed, as Shah died and was recognized as a respectable veteran pilot for Malaysia. May one day we will truly find the solution, or maybe we'll be left to forever wonder about the unknown.
Works Cited
“Biggest Mystery in Aviation | What Happened to MH370 Flight? | Dhruv Rathee.” Www.youtube.com, 31 Jan. 2022, www.youtube.com/watch?v=890wWM0lg94. Accessed 25 Nov. 2022.
“FINDING MH370: New Breakthrough Could Finally Solve Missing Flight Mystery | 60 Minutes Australia.” Www.youtube.com, 20 Feb. 2022, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq-d4Kl8Xh4.
Gregersen, Erik. “Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Disappearance | Description & Facts.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 1 Mar. 2019, www.britannica.com/event/Malaysia-Airlines-flight-370-disappearance.
“The Search for MH370 | Serving the MH370 Global Community.” The Search for MH370, www.mh370search.com/. Accessed 25 Nov. 2022.
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