The Malaysian government has agreed to resume the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which disappeared ten years ago, Reuters reported. The agency noted that the disappearance of a Boeing with 239 passengers on board was “one of the greatest mysteries in aviation history.”
For more than ten years, civilian and military investigators from several countries, experts, journalists, professional explorers and amateurs have been trying to solve this mystery. A Boeing 777 flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing disappeared from radar on March 8, 2014. Experts believe the plane ran out of fuel and crashed into the Indian Ocean, possibly west of Australia. The plane was never found.
Searching for MH370Ziemienowicz Adam, PAP/REUTERS
They will resume the search
On Friday, Reuters reported that the Malaysian government had agreed to resume the search for the plane. – Our responsibility and obligation is the closest relatives (passengers – ed.), – said the Minister of Transport of Malaysia, Anthony Loke, at the press conference. – We hope that a positive result will be obtained and that the ruins will be found and comfort the families, – he admitted.
Jiang Hui, whose mother was a passenger on MH370 and was quoted by Reuters, welcomed the decision to resume the search, but said the process was too long and it would be better if more factors were involved.
They heard: “Okay, good night.” Then the plane disappeared
There were 239 people from 15 countries, including 227 passengers, on board Boeing 777, number MH370 of Malaysia Airlines.
42 minutes after midnight, on the night of March 7-8, 2014, the plane flew to Beijing. After 19 minutes, Captain Zahari Ahmad Shah announced that he had reached the height of the cruiser. As CNN reports, at 1:19 a.m. the plane left the Malaysian airspace and entered the Vietnamese airspace. Then the last words recorded from the cabin were said: “Okay, good night.” Most likely, this was said by Fariq Abdulhamid, the second pilot.
After two minutes, the plane's transponder – a device that automatically sends data to the ground to identify the plane and track its flight – stopped sending. Between 1:21 and 1:28 the Boeing changes course and disappears from civilian radar at 1:30 – then it is over the Gulf of Thailand, between Malaysia and Vietnam. The next radar contact will be at 2:15. Military radar then detects the plane over the island of Perak in the Straits of Malacca – hundreds of miles off course. According to Malaysia Airlines, at 2:40 a.m. they received information that flight MH370 was not on the radar.
For ten years, the subsequent events – as described by the Reuters agency – were “one of the greatest mysteries in the history of aviation”.
pap_20171205_02RPAP/EPA
As The New York Times noted, initially the search was conducted mainly by air – 334 flights were made, covering a huge area of 4.4 million square kilometers. An underwater search was then launched by teams from Australia, Malaysia and China, where most of the passengers were from. About 120 thousand square kilometers of the ocean floor were searched. They were only completed in 2017, though not completely, as the Malaysian government continued to act under pressure from the families.
While the plane itself has not been found, possible debris from the missing plane has been found off the coast of continental Africa, as well as in Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion and Rodrigues Islands. There are about 20 of them in total, the largest of which washed ashore on the French island of Réunion is a large piece of a Boeing 777 wing, possibly from MH370. As The New York Times reported, in 2016 Australian authorities confirmed that another piece of wing washed ashore in Tanzania came from the missing plane – and this can be confirmed thanks to specific numbers.
The disappearance of the Boeing 777 Malaysian Airlines PAP
Reuters, New York Times, CNN
Main photo source: PAP/EPA
