Students from Hailiang International School hold a memorial event for the passengers of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in Jiuji City, Zhejiang Province, China, on March 10, 2014./AFP Yonhap News
At 0:41 am on March 8, 2014 (1:41 am Korea time), Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, a B727-200ER, took off from Kuala Lumpur Airport. There were a total of 239 passengers on board, including 153 Chinese, 227 nationalities from 15 countries, and crew. The flight was expected to arrive at Beijing Capital Airport at 6:30 in the morning, six hours later.
Less than an hour after take-off, flight MH370 left Malaysian airspace at an altitude of 10.6km along its expected path and entered Vietnamese airspace. Malaysian air traffic control authorities have now instructed to change the communication frequency to Vietnam, and the captain of flight MH370 responded in a polite voice, “Good evening, Malaysia 3-7-0.”
The red line is the originally planned flight path of MH370. However, approximately 40 minutes after take off from Kuala Lumpur, Flight MH370 veered sharply left following the blue line./Malaysian government report
That was the last message sent by flight MH370. The plane somehow ‘deliberately’ swerved sharply to the left between 1:19 and 1:21 am, shortly before Vietnamese air traffic control authorities reported that the plane’s location was unknown. From the perspective of aviation experts, this was a path change that could only be achieved with a very skilled ‘manual adjustment’. At the same time, all means of electronic communication with the ground was turned off.
According to military radar screen tracking in the area, the plane flew steadily across Malaysia again for seven hours before disappearing after being last seen in the Andaman Sea, north of the Indian Ocean, 370 km away from Penang Island. It was estimated that the fuel had run out.
This was the beginning of the still unsolved mystery of the world’s worst plane crash. The disappearance of Flight MH370 is still full of questions, including why it veered off course and made a sharp turn, why all means of communication were cut, and why there was no rescue request. Even now, 10 years later, only very small pieces of the fuselage have washed up on the shores of the Western Indian Ocean, and no bodies or cargo have been found.
How could this modern aircraft, with its global satellite tracking and continuous communication, disappear? Over the next four years, thousands of aviation experts, oceanographers, and amateur detectives tried to determine the cause and end of this tragic flight, but no conclusions were reached.
On the 4th, Malaysia’s Minister of Transport announced that a new search would be conducted on the fuselage of Flight MH370. The plan is to use advanced ocean exploration techniques that have been developed over the last 10 years. To this end, they announced that they would request another search from Ocean Infinity, an American underwater exploration company that had already searched the area where the crash was estimated twice in 2018.
Ocean Infinity searched in 2018, promising to receive $70 million if it found the fuselage of Flight MH370, but failed. This company again offered to search for nothing until the plane was found.
Over the past 10 years, several intensive searches have been conducted targeting an area ranging from tens of thousands to 100,000 ㎢ in the 4.5 million ㎢ area where a collapse can occur, which is 20 times the area of the Korean Peninsula.
The initial search took place between March 2014 and April 28, 10 days after the disappearance. Under the leadership of Australia, a search was carried out with 60 ships and 50 aircraft sent by China, Malaysia, and India, but there was no result.
On July 29, 2015, police removed pieces of the flaperon from Flight MH370, which were found off the east coast of French Reunion Island in the Western Indian Ocean. /AFP Yonhap News
Afterwards, this area was also explored, considering that the South Equatorial Current, the strongest ocean current in the Indian Ocean, flows from northern Australia to the island of Madagascar in Africa.
In fact, on July 30, 2015, part of the flaperon (which controls the aileron behind the main wing), confirmed to have fallen from Flight MH370, was found on the coast of the French island of Réunion in the Western Ocean India. It was 4,480 km away from the sea area that was intensively searched in 2014.
On July 30, 2015, a year after MH370 went missing, a piece of the plane’s control aileron, the flaperon, was discovered for the first time on Reunion Island. He was 4480km away from the crash search area.
Subsequently, small pieces confirmed or believed to be from this plane were found one after the other on the coasts of Mauritius, Tanzania, Rodrigues Island, Madagascar, Mozambique, and South Africa in the Western Indian Ocean.
However, the Australian-led search operation was officially suspended in January 2017 after failing to find any remains or large bodies. The second inspection was carried out by the private company Ocean Infinity and searched for five months starting in early 2018, but again failed to find any debris.
Because of this, regarding the disappearance of this passenger plane, which had no fuselage or bodies of passengers in an accident, “It was shot down over the South China Sea by a US fighter jet trying to prevent certain cargo from going to China” and “The sky the path that was tracked by military radar is also fake.” ” “The pilot committed suicide due to financial pressure,” “He was kidnapped by terrorists,” “All passengers lost consciousness due to hypoxia due to sudden decompression,” “Communication cut off due to fire on board,” etc. All sorts of speculation and conspiracy theories were made. It was rampant.
The Malaysian government published a comprehensive 495-page investigation report in July 2018, 1,065 days after the accident. The Malaysian government investigated everything, including the plane’s maintenance status, flight simulator data found in the captain’s home, the health of the captain and first officer, financial situation, voice communications, and even their daily walk. All passengers were also investigated. As a result, he denied all such speculation, saying, “There was no abnormality.” At the same time, no answer was given to the cause of the accident.
Relatives of the passengers and crew of the missing flight MH370 take photos together during an event to commemorate the missing in Subang Jaya, Selangor State, Malaysia, on the 3rd to mark the 10th anniversary of the crash. /EPA Yonhap News
The area where Ocean Infinity recently proposed a search to the Malaysian government is the estimated crash area between 33 and 36 degrees south latitude. They announced that they would use significantly developed autonomous underwater exploration equipment, high-resolution cameras, and remotely controlled surface vessels.
The expected depth of the exploration area is 4000 m, and the water temperature is 1 to 2 degrees Celsius. Ocean Infinity said, “The movement of ocean currents is very slow, so if the fuselage had fallen here, it would not have moved much over the past 10 years.”
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