Imagine waiting at the airport for your family or friends and suddenly you get the news that the plane is delayed. After a while, you find out that the plane along with the passengers never arrived at the airport. This is the news that the families of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370’s passengers got. On March 8th, 2014, the aircraft along with the passengers and the crew members, disappeared. Barely anything to work with, no evidence to support any theory. This is the greatest aviation mystery in history. This essay will provide information on the most important bits or news on the case. Since there is no exact answer to what happened, it also provides some theories too. You can make your conclusion behind the mystery behind Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

Let’s start with some important details. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was scheduled to depart from Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 00:35 local time and arrive at Beijing Capital International Airport at 06:30 local time. The plane had 227 passengers and 12 crew members aboard. The passengers and crew members came from 14 different nations: 153 Chinese, 50 Malaysians, 7 Indonesians, 6 Australians, 5 Indians, 4 French, 3 Americans, 2 Canadians, 2 Iranians, 2 New Zealanders, 2 Ukrainians, 1 was Dutch, 1 was Russian and 1 was Taiwanese. The aircraft itself was in fairly good condition. Flight 370 was operated with Boeing 777-2H6ER. It first flew on 14 May 2002, and it has roughly accumulated 53,471 hours and 7,526 cycles in service. It has not experienced any major or damaging accidents (Hou, Chen, & Schapiro) (“Malaysia Airlines Flight 370”).

Now, what happened? The flight took off on 8 March 2014, at 00:42 local time from Kuala Lumpur International Airport en route to Beijing Capital International Airport at 6:30 local time. At 01:19, Flight 370 was over the South China Sea between Malaysia and Vietnam. The satellite data link was also lost around this time (between 01:07 and 02:03). The local Malaysian air traffic control (ATC) instructed Flight 370 to contact the next ATC in Vietnam. The final voice contact from the flight was “Goodnight. Malaysian Three Seven Zero.” A few minutes later, the flight’s transponder (a device that receives radio signals and automatically sends a different one back) stopped working, causing it to disappear from secondary ATC. Malaysian military radar kept tracking the plane as it turned left, crossed the Malay Peninsula, over the Malaysia-Thailand border, and reached the Andaman Sea. At 02:22, the Flight disappeared from Malaysian military radar. It was 370 km (230mi) north-west of Penang. The satellite data link was re-established at this time. The aircraft's satellite data unit (SDU) replied to five hourly, automated status requests between 03:41 and 08:10, and two unanswered ground-to-aircraft telephone calls. Finally, at 08:19 sent a “login request” to establish satellite data link (connection), followed by the final message/transmission from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. AT 07:24, Malaysia Airlines released a press, stating that contact with Flight 370 had been lost. The plane is believed to have flown for about 5 more hours until it ran out of fuel. Pieces of debris that are confirmed to be part of Flight 370, have been found in Reunion Island and Mozambique (“Malaysia Airlines Flight 370”) (Sohrabi-Shiraz) (Palin).

What could’ve happened? Their many theories around the internet, some have more evidence than others. One popular theory is that the plane was hijacked. There were two men with stolen passports who boarded the plane. It seemed suspicious at first. They were both from Iran and managed to breach security, but officials say they have no terrorist link at all and were just migrating to Germany. There’s isn’t any evidence that any of the crew members were trying to hijack it either. The pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah had joined Malaysia Airlines in 1981 and had over 18,000 hours of flying experience. The co-pilot, Farid Abdul Hamid had joined Malaysia Airlines in 2007 and has over 2,000 hours of flying experience. (BBC) (“Malaysia Airlines Flight 370”).

Right now, The investigation is still going and new debris is being found but there barely is any evidence leading it forward. Everyone’s hopes of finding the aircraft are slowly going down. We will probably never find out what exactly happened. But, the more people on the case the better. Anyone could help take the case forward. There’s still information to be found and a mystery to be solved.