“Goodnight Malaysia Three Seven Zero.”
Little did everyone know that this was to be the final transmission ever received from the doomed flight MH370 on 8 Mar 2014.
The 250-foot Boeing 777 was piloted by Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, and scheduled to fly from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Together with 239 other people, the plane vanished entirely the moment it switched from Malaysian to Vietnamese airspace.
Four years later, the disappearance of MH370 still remains aviation’s greatest mystery since the missing case of Amelia Earhart.
But a new probe suggests that MH370 might have been veered off course to meet its unfortunate end.
According to a largely technical 495-page report released on Monday (30 Jul), that is.
After spending 4 years scouring every available detail about the final moments of the Beijing-bound flight, the long-awaited “final report” asserts that someone had deliberately steered MH370 off course and flew it into the southern Indian Ocean.
A system failure alone could not account for sudden shifts in the direction of the plane, said the report.
Investigators focused on theorising how the system could have been manually turned off or interrupted by a power trip.
MH370 had lost all means of communication before veering off track.
Hence, the abrupt change in flight path was likely due to manual inputs, rather than a mechanical or computer malfunction.
Though no fingers were pointed at any specific individual, someone was responsible for the direction change that doomed all 239 people aboard.
Captain Zaharie had flown a route on his home flight simulator that was “initially similar” to the one taken by MH370 6 weeks prior to the incident.
Source
A forensic report by the Malaysian police also concluded that there were no unusual activities other than game-related flight simulations.
The history of Mr Zaharie and his first officer were examined thoroughly and it appears that their background, training and mental health were satisfactory.
Background checks of all the passengers from 15 countries came back with a clean bill of health as well.
Investigators are “not of the opinion” that the pilots were responsible for hijacking the plane.
Futhermore, there was no evidence to suggest that the aircraft was flown by anyone else.
However, investigators did not rule out the possibility that there might have been unlawful interference by a third party.
Most importantly, there’s no conclusive way of determining who’s responsible as the plane and most of its wreckage have not been found.
The official search for MH370 concluded last year, while a private hunt was called off in May with no significant findings.
In other words, the report is effectively the final piece in a baffling puzzle that claimed 239 lives.
No one knows why the jet abandoned its route shortly into the flight and plunged into the Indian Ocean — the report fell short of explicitly supporting the theory of pilot or third party interference.
Thus, a myriad of questions remain as to why MH370 simply vanished into thin air.
Only one thing’s for sure, the case of MH370 will continue to remain an unsolved mystery.
Featured image from Airliners.
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