On March 8 2014, the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (MH370) shocked people across the world. The passenger flight disappeared whilst flying from Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia and had 227 passengers on board. Eight years later - the whereabouts of the plane remains unknown and passengers are presumed dead. The famous disappearance is the subject of a new Channel 5 documentary that airs on Monday, May 30. But what exactly happened on that fateful day?
On the day of its disappearance, the Boeing 777 plane in question, last made contact at 01:19 am MYT. However, after less than an hour, it disappeared from the radar.
What followed was a multinational search effort, that was one of the most expensive in history. The search began in the Gulf of Thailand and notably, the South China Sea, where the aircraft was last detected. Following analysis of satellite communications, it was revealed that the Boeing 777 plane flew south into the Indian Ocean
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On March 17, Australia assumed control of the search for the aircraft and closely followed the Indian Ocean line of enquiry. This came after the Malaysian government concluded, "Flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean." The next couple of years proved to be unsuccessful in locating the aircraft. From October 2014 to January 2017, a comprehensive survey of 120,000 km of seafloor about 1,800 km southwest of Perth, Western Australia, yielded no evidence of the aircraft.
In October 2017, Malaysia released their final report on what they assumed had happened. The report suggested that neither the crew nor the aircraft's communication systems relayed a distress signal, indications of bad weather, or technical problems before the aircraft vanished. Two passengers travelling on stolen passports were investigated but eventually eliminated as suspects. Malaysian police identified the captain as the prime suspect if human intervention were the cause of the disappearance, after clearing all others on the flight of suspicion over possible motives. The pilot in command was 53-year-old Zaharie Ahmad Shah. An enquiry into him has yet to be launched.
On January 22 2018, private US marine exploration company Ocean Infinity began a search of likely crash sites for the aircraft. The search was to no avail and ended after six months.
The latest update on the plane's disappearance was on 8 March 2020, just prior to the pandemic and six years after the disappearance, when two memorial events were held to mark the anniversary. The families of MH370 passengers have since called for a new search for the flight in a bid to seek closure.
With the loss of all 239 aboard, Flight 370 is the second-deadliest incident involving a Boeing 777 and the second-deadliest incident in Malaysia Airlines' history, second to Flight 17 in both categories.
Flight MH370: The Vanishing airs at 9pm on Channel 5 on Monday, May 30
