What happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370? (2024)

The final location of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 remains one of the largest unanswered questions in aviation- but new research has shown promise for the search that has now lasted almost a decade.

Flight MH370, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, vanished from radar screens on March 8, 2014, prompting a multinational search. Despite extensive efforts, including underwater searches along the "seventh arc"—an area determined by the aircraft's last satellite communication—the primary wreckage has not been found. Almost ten years later, only a few debris pieces confirmed to belong to MH370 have been found when they washed ashore on islands in the western Indian Ocean.

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Now, researchers have made new breakthroughs in the search using hydroacoustic technology, and data from infrastructure across the Indian Ocean. The proposed plan uses hydrophones, a form of underwater microphone, to detect pressure changes in the water. these hydrophones, which were in use at Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization stations near the seventh arc at the time of the crash, could have picked up any potential signals from the impact of the plane.

Researchers picked up one relevant signal in the direction of the seventh arc, recorded at the Cape Leeuwin station near Western Australia. Due to the small number of crashes to compare the data to, the team clarified that the findings were not conclusive, but further control tests could be used to test it further.

Dr Usama Kadri, a researcher at Cardiff University who led the new study, told Newsweek: "Airplane crashes in the sea are rare, and mostly found within a short time. Crashes involve many variables, from size, speed, to mode of impact which can result in different signals, to no signals at all.

"In the case of MH370, the proposed field experiments can help shading some light on the nature of the signals that should be recorded. The idea is to carry out field experiments comprising controlled explosions, air guns, or any other form of energy release that replicates the energy believed to be released from MH370 impacting the water surface."

Dr Kadri stressed that due to the lack of knowledge on the nature of the signal that should be recorded, none of the current signals can be associated with MH370.

What happened to Flight MH370?

The flight, which was carrying 239 people, has been the source of a great number of theories, made worse by the fact that so little of the wreckage has been identified. Officials maintain that the plane deviated from the planned route to Beijing, flying southwest before crashing somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Beyond that, specifics of the event are hazy, leading to several theories about why and how the flight disappeared.

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The most commonly accepted theories suggest that the plane suffered a mechanical failure of some kind, while other, more conspiratorial theories claim that staff aboard the flight planned to hijack the plane for other purposes.

Mechanical failure

This is the theory that Malaysian officals and initial investigators were most amenable to. At some point after takeoff, the flight could have suffered significant failure or damage that made it impossible to stay in the air, forcing the plane to crash land into the Indian Ocean. This theory attributes the drastic change in route to damaged navigation systems.

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Malaysian authorities last identified the flight before it crossed over the border into Vietnamese airspace, which is the same point it dropped off of civilian radar. Other tracking data suggests that it was also located by surveillance systems near the northern tip of Sumatra, an Indonesian island. However, no issues with the plane were found during routine inspection.

Hijack

Other investigators have focused on the role of Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, the pilot of the flight. This theory posits that Shah purposefully redirected the flight for unknown reasons, which resulted in the eventual crash in the Indian Ocean. Shah reportedly tested a route similar to MH370's deviation on his in-home flight simulator a few weeks before takeoff, leading some to believe the change in course was a deliberate hijack.

This theory accounts for the change in route for the plane, but investigators have not been able to find any motivation for a hijack in Shah's background or history, or among any of the other passengers or staff.

Other fringe theories

Some who have taken an interest in the case have attempted to explain the crash in the context of Shah's mental health. Instead of assuming the disappearance was an accident, as many initial investigations did, they argued that the redirection and the plane crash were intentional actions from Shah or another person on board, as part of a murder-suicide plan.

Shah had no record of mental health problems, but some MH370 theorists have pointed to the findings of researchers about the general mental health of pilots in the industry. A 2016 study published by the Journal of Environmental Health found that 13.5 per cent of pilots who reported working as an airline pilot met the threshold for depression.

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