Flight MH370: The Mystery

195 Pages·2014·1.11 MB·English

by  Nigel Cawthorne

To the families of the missing.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction
Chapter One – VANISHED
Chapter Two – AIR SAFETY
Chapter Three – A WATERY GRAVE
Chapter Four – SORROW AND SUSPICION
Chapter Five – PREPARE FOR THE WORST
Chapter Six – TERROR IN THE SKIES
Chapter Seven – OFF THE MAP
Chapter Eight – A CHANGE IN DIRECTION
Chapter Nine – UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT
Chapter Ten – SIGHTINGS
Chapter Eleven – ACT OF PIRACY
Chapter Twelve – IN LIMBO
Chapter Thirteen – MORE THEORIES
Chapter Fourteen – THE TRUTH
Chapter Fifteen – THE SOUTHERN ARC
Chapter Sixteen – LAST WORDS
Chapter Seventeen – HOPE AGAINST HOPE
Chapter Eighteen – MORE MYSTERIES
Copyright
INTRODUCTION
O
n 22 September 2004, the first episode of the TV series Lost aired in the US.
In it, a commercial airliner crashed, leaving the surviving passengers stranded on
what seemed to be a deserted tropical island. The hit series ran for six seasons
and was enormously popular around the world. On 23 May 2010 the last episode
aired in America, but its following worldwide continued.
Then, when Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared over the South
China Sea on 8 March 2014, it was only too easy to believe that this was a case
of life imitating art. For over a month, the search for the vanished plane topped
the news, even eclipsing the Russian invasion of the Crimea. The world wanted
the plane to have landed safely at some mysterious destination and the
passengers and crew to be found in one piece on the ground.
As time passed, the mystery deepened. The airwaves were filled with experts
outlining their latest theories. Meanwhile, the Internet buzzed with ever more
outlandish tales. Some even tried to link the disappearance of Flight MH370 to
the Bermuda Triangle, a mysterious area of the North Atlantic where aircraft and
ships are thought to vanish into thin air. However, Bermuda was a little too far
from where the missing plane had last been seen to be credible.
Charles Berlitz, author of The Bermuda Triangle, also identified the Dragon’s
Sea, also known as the Dragon’s Triangle or Formosa Triangle, where similar
things happened. Off the coast of Japan, it was a little closer. However,
researcher Ivan Sanderson identified 12 of these “Devil’s graveyards” around the
world. They became known as “Vile Vortices”. One of them is off the coast of
Western Australia, where those searching for Flight MH370 ended up looking.
The mystery of Flight MH370 has other resonances too. In 1937, Amelia
Earhart, the first woman to make a solo flight across the Atlantic, disappeared
somewhere in the middle of the Pacific while attempting a round-the-world
flight. In May 2013, TIGHAR – The International Group for Historic Aircraft
Recovery – claimed to have found traces of wreckage using sonar equipment off
the northwest reef of Nikumaroro Island. TIGHAR’s executive director Ric
Gillespie believes that Earhart crash-landed on the uninhabited atoll and
survived for some time as a castaway.
Then there was the Marie Celeste – the fictional name given by Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle to the Mary Celeste, a ship found under full sail in the mid-
Atlantic in 1872 with no one on board. None of those who had been on board
were ever seen or heard of again. Numerous theories sprang up around this ghost
ship. So was Flight MH370 a ghost plane with no one – or, at least, no one
conscious – on board as it flew out over the Indian Ocean?
These days we live in a rational world, where things like this simply do not
happen. Everywhere we go, we are watched by CCTV. Flight data recorders and
cockpit voice recorders – “black boxes” – were introduced in the 1960s after a
series of crashes, so investigators can discover what happened in the cockpit in
the run-up to an accident. Most people carry a mobile/cellphone. If it is switched
on, it is possible to track exactly where you are. Many cellphones are equipped
with GPS, so too are cars, but somehow it was possible for a 200ft (60m) long,
wide-bodied jet plane, nearly six storeys high and carrying 239 people to vanish
without a trace.
Callously, it has been pointed out that the loss of 239 people is barely more
than the carnage on the roads of China every day. But somehow the tragedy of a
plane crash touches us in a different way, although it shouldn’t. Each day more
than 80,000 flights take off and land around the world without incident. And, it
is said, each day close to a million passengers step aboard Boeing 777s at
airports worldwide. However, when we fly, we all have that fleeting moment of
fear. We put ourselves in the hands of the pilots, air traffic controllers, ground
crew and aircraft manufacturers and designers. They are human; they are
fallible. And when things go wrong, as they sometimes do, they go wrong
catastrophically.
Any one of us could be on board a plane where the pilot is seized by a suicidal
urge to crash it into the sea. Or where cabin pressure is lost at 35,000ft
(10,668m). Or where there is a fire in the cargo hold or washroom, or the plane
suffers a total mechanical breakdown. Or one that is taken over by hijackers who
want to smash it into the side of a building, killing everyone, or to ransom the
passengers and crew for some political cause.
But perhaps worse than being on board is waiting at the airport for a loved one
who does not arrive. The plane is lost – who knows where? Then there is the
endless waiting, hoping against hope that they have somehow survived; knowing
in your heart of hearts that they haven’t.
Almost certainly, the relatives of those on Flight MH370 will never be sure
what happened to their loved ones. Did they die painlessly, unaware of their
fate? Or did they die in terror in a flaming wreck, crashing from the sky in the
hands of a madman? Perhaps in some secret corner of their hearts, they will go
on believing that their parent, child or lover survived as a castaway on some
tropical paradise.
Some time has passed since Flight MH370 vanished. It is time to look back
through the evidence and assess the competing theories. Perhaps we will never
find out what happened to Flight MH370. But, while the mystery may endure,
surely we ought to try?

Nigel Cawthorne
Bloomsbury, April 2014
CHAPTER ONE
VANISHED
E
verything started ordinarily enough as Malaysia Airlines MH370 taxied
toward the runway at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA). The 227
passengers had gone through the usual stringent checks as they entered the
departure lounge. They had been made to empty their pockets and remove their
belts before walking through the metal detectors. Their shoes had been removed
and inspected. Bottles of water and other fluids had been confiscated, and
laptops opened and switched on to check that they were what they purported to
be. After that the passengers were let loose in the airport shopping mall to buy
some duty-free luxury, a last-minute gift or perhaps even a book or a newspaper,
or have a bite to eat or something to drink while awaiting the final call.
According to industry polls the facilities in Kuala Lumpur International make it
the traveller’s third favourite airport in the world.
The two pilots were going through the pre-flight checks as the 10 cabin staff
helped passengers board; the plane was a Boeing 777-200ER. Malaysia Airlines
had 15 of the wide-bodied planes in a fleet of 88 aircraft. The list price is
US$261.5 million (£156 million) and over 1,000 of them were in service around
the world. In 20 years of flying, 777s had only ever been involved in nine
accidents leading to the deaths of just three passengers. It was an enviable safety
record. Malaysia Airlines had only had two crashes that resulted in fatalities in
over 40 years of flying – one of which had been a hijacking. In 2013, it was
voted Asia’s leading airline at the World Travel Awards, beating 11 other big
name full service carriers.
MH370 was bound from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, a distance of some 2,700
miles (4,345km or 2,346 nautical miles). This was well within its maximum
range of 8,885 miles (14,300km or 7,720 nautical miles). Its route would take it
almost due north, over the Malay Peninsula, out over the South China Sea, then
across Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos, until it crossed into Chinese
airspace.
Among the passengers was a young man who made a last-minute call, telling
his sister he was on board; he said he would see her at the airport in Beijing.
Also on board was a Malaysian couple taking a longed-for holiday after the
anguish of a miscarriage. A Chinese father had changed his flight at the last
minute and was coming home a day early to take his child to the dentist. Then
there were 24 artists and their families, returning from an exchange calligraphy
exhibition in Kuala Lumpur, and a group of Buddhists who had flown to Kuala
Lumpur to participate in a religious ceremony earlier that week.
The plane took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 00.41 am local
time on Saturday, 8 March 2014 – 16.41 pm GMT – on Friday the seventh. It
was expected to land in Beijing at 6.30 am local time. And it was not full: two of
the passengers were infants so at least 89 of the seats would have been empty.
After takeoff, it took 20 minutes to climb to its assigned cruising altitude of
35,000ft (10,668m) and was travelling at 471 knots (542 mph or 872 km/h). Six
minutes later the crew confirmed that they were at 35,000ft.
Since the 1980s, planes have been fitted with ACARS – the Aircraft
Communications Addressing and Reporting System. This is an automatic
datalink that transmits vital information about the aircraft at regular intervals.
The last ACARS transmission from MH370 was sent at 1.07 am.
At around 1.19 am Malaysian air traffic control told MH370: “Please contact
Ho Chi Minh City, good night.”
The first officer on board MH370 is said to have responded calmly, saying
famously: “All right, good night.” This was not the standard sign-off procedure
and there was speculation that it might have been a signal that all was not well
on the flight deck. True, his communication was somewhat casual but it gave no
indication of what was about to happen.
This was the last anyone would hear from the plane. Around a minute later,
the transponder that identifies the aircraft to air traffic control via ground radar
was switched off. It was last seen on radar at 1.30 am (17.30 GMT) 140 miles
(225km) northeast of Kota Bharu, at the northern tip of Malaysia, around the
point where the South China Sea meets the Gulf of Thailand. Then MH370 lost
contact with Subang air traffic control one minute before it entered airspace
controlled by Vietnam. But MH370 had not contacted air traffic control in Ho
Chi Minh City to announce its presence.
At around the same time, Vietnamese air traffic control asked another plane en
route to Tokyo to attempt to contact MH370. The captain said that he was able to
establish radio contact via an emergency channel, but all he could hear was
mumbling and static.
“We managed to establish contact with MH370 just after 1.30 am and asked
them if they had transferred into Vietnamese airspace,” the captain explained.
“There was a lot of interference, static, but I heard mumbling from the other end.
If the plane was in trouble, we’d have heard the pilot making the Mayday
distress call.”
He added that he believed the voice belonged to the co-pilot, Fariq Abdul
Hamid. Then he lost contact.