MALAYSIA Airlines Flight MH370 is regarded as one of the “grappling” mysteries in aviation history. Questions and theories have abounded as to how the airliner vanished into thin air while en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur.
The mysterious route taken by the plane before it vanished with 239 passengers, mostly Chinese nationals, on March 8, 2014, has been re-examined by several aviation experts, who all claimed to have made startling discoveries.
Incredibly, there are 70 books attempting to unravel the mystery of MH370. Titles include Someone is Hiding Something, MH370 the Secret Files, Goodnight MH370, MH370 Lost in the Dark, Into Oblivion MH370, Life After MH370, The Crash of MH370, MH370 We Know Where You Are, The Plane That Never Was, MH370 The Truth, Putin and MH370/MH17, Into Thin Air, Flight 370, Flight MH370 Mystery Plane, Mystery Solved, The Truth and even Eye Witness. One book was titled more accountably: A psychic look at MH370.
Efforts to find the missing MH370 have come to an end. However, many are hoping that the plane wreckage could one day be discovered. The Malaysian government will only consider re-launching the search if solid, new evidence comes to light.
Last week, Ocean Infinity confirmed that the Seabed Constructor would remain for a few days “to sweep an area in which a Chinese vessel detected a ping”. This was an area where a Chinese patrol ship detected a pulse in 2014 that at the time was thought to be possibly from one of the aircraft’s black boxes.
In an interview with Australian media, Blaine Gibson, a self-styled investigator who has been described as an “Indiana Jones crusader”, has been credited with discovering over two dozen pieces of the MH370 plane. According to news portal news.com.au, Gibson has claimed criminal methods are being used to prevent more debris from being handed to Malaysian authorities. He alluded to the notion that the crash was deliberate. He also claimed that his own search was subjected to “intimidation, stalking, death threats, defamation and assassination”.
Gibson also alleged that some illegal acts included the murder of Houssenaly Zahid Raza, the Honorary Malaysian consul in Madagascar. Zahid was rumoured to have been murdered in the centre of the island nation’s capital, Antananarivo, on Aug 24. The Independent reported that the timing of Zahid’s death was “suspicious” as he had been scheduled to visit the Malagasy Ministry of Transport to retrieve the debris and return it to Malaysia.
One of the pieces was said to be the “baseplate of an aerodynamic fin”, from the top of a Boeing engine that should have stayed intact. Others speculated that Zahid, of French Malagasy nationality, was killed as a revenge for his alleged involvement in the 2009 abduction of several residents of Indo-Pakistani descent.
Alien abduction is another out-of-the-world theory behind the disappearance of MH370. The plane was flying at more than 35,000 ft when it disappeared in good weather condition, fuelling the paranormal theory of an alien attack and abduction. The theory was considered seriously amongst speculators as the Chinese media claimed that some passengers’ mobile phone continued to ring while the American spy satellite showed no sign of a mid-air explosion in its image.
According to CNN research, 10 per cent of Americans agree with the theory that “space aliens, time travellers or beings from another dimension pulled the plane out of the sky”. Of course, none of the satellites were able to detect any trace of the missing plane, much less an unidentified flying object (UFO).
Then, there were fears of an unnamed terror group that was responsible after it emerged that two passengers had boarded the flight with stolen passports. The two passports were Austrian and Italian passports used by two Iranians to board MH370. As no terror group has yet come forward to claim it was a deliberate attack, wild theorists suggested the secretive state had redirected the plane.
Another theory said that MH370 had enough fuel to be hijacked to North Korea and that it was a repeat of the incident in which Korean Air Lines YS-11 was hijacked in 1969. An anonymous aviation worker claimed that North Korea leader Kim Jong-un wanted a “really, really huge plane” for technology advancements and that “he had his eyes set on a Boeing 777”.
Theorists also believed Russian President Vladimir Putin may have ordered the passenger jet to be hijacked. Unusual “pings” given off by the plane seven hours after it disappeared led Jeff Wise, a US science writer who was central to CNN’s coverage of the MH370, to conclude it was hijacked and grounded in Kazakhstan on the orders of the Russian leader.
Wise admitted he had “no idea” why Putin would want to hijack a plane filled with passengers and land it at a Russian space port. After all, Putin and Russia had been blamed for MH17, which was alleged to be “shot down”.
The four-year search had been the longest attempt in aviation history, and tested the limit of technology and the capacity of aviation experts at sea. To the victims’ families, the unresolved mystery meant no closure yet for the families.
After the US$153 million (RM608 million) search across a 120,000 sq km area in the Indian Ocean, James Cameron has said “it is no surprise and a human arrogance to think otherwise”. He also claimed that this plane at the bottom of the ocean is like finding a needle in a haystack. In fact, “we know more about the surface of Mars or the moon than we do our deepest oceans”.
The writer, a former lecturer of UiTM Shah Alam and International Islamic University Malaysia, Gombak, is a Fulbright scholar and Japan Institute of International Affairs fellow.