Nine years ago, a Malaysian airliner carrying 239 passengers and crew vanished from air traffic control screens over the South China Sea. Search officials were never able to locate the plane or those aboard. For the family members of the disappeared, it was a tragedy all the more painful for remaining unexplained; for investigators, it was a riddle unlike any they had ever encountered.
But the disappearance of MH370 is just the start of the story. Because in the years that have followed, another dimension of the mystery has opened up. It’s become evident that the scant clues available in the case have somehow led investigators astray. It isn’t just that we don’t know where the plane is. We don’t know why we don’t know.
Why does this matter now, nearly a decade after the event and five years after the Malaysian government closed its investigation? Planes as large and modern as MH370 don’t just disappear. Consider the case of TWA800, which blew up off the coast of Long Island in 1996. At the time, it was a mystery as baffling as that of MH370, and American investigators spent years collecting every scrap of debris from the ocean floor and painstakingly piecing it together in an empty hangar. By the time they were done, they had reassembled the fuselage from hundreds of jagged fragments. And in doing so, they were able to solve the mystery: The plane had suffered an accidental fuel-tank explosion. Planes built since then has incorporated safety measures to make sure the same accident doesn’t happen again.
If we can’t figure out what happened to MH370, we can’t say that something like it won’t happen again. The entire commercial aviation industry has an asterisk next to it.
To the casual observer, it’s not surprising that investigators didn’t find the plane. The ocean is a big place, after all. But the failure of the search actually is surprising. The reason why requires some mathematical heavy lifting to fully understand, as I explain in my 2019 book, The Taking of MH370. But the upshot is simple: the fact that the plane hasn’t been found means that investigators must have made a major error. In my estimation, MH370: The Plane That Disappeared is the first documentary to clearly and compellingly explain what we know about the Boeing 777 and what might have happened to it. My hope is that, with the renewed attention around the tragedy, the officials responsible for the search will finally reassess their conduct of the investigation and make a serious effort to understand where they went wrong.
The basics of the case are simple enough. MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia shortly after midnight on March 8, 2014 for a scheduled red-eye to Beijing. It flew out over the South China Sea and then, just seconds after it passed the last waypoint in Malaysian airspace, the plane’s communication systems were switched off. Still being observed by Malaysian military radar, the plane pulled a U-turn, flew back over the Malay Peninsula, then back up the Strait of Malacca towards India. It then flew out of radar range and disappeared again.
At this point the plane was more or less invisible to the rest of the world. Whoever took the plane could have flown it wherever they wanted to in secrecy. But that’s not what happened. Instead, something bizarre and inexplicable took place. A component of the plane’s satellite communication system called the SDU (Satellite Data Unit) came back to life three minutes after the plane vanished from radar. Why is this strange? Because 777 pilots are not trained how to turn the SDU on, and there’s no plausible way it could have come on accidentally. But come on it did, leaving the plane in an electrical configuration that no 777 has ever been in before or since.
It’s important to understand that the satellite communication data didn’t transmit coordinates, like a GPS. Rather, it allowed investigators to simulate flight paths the plane might have taken and compare the signals those paths would have generated with the signals actually recorded. The investigators generated millions of possible routes, then threw out all the ones that didn’t match the data. What they were left with was a patch in the southern Indian Ocean where the plane might have come to rest.
At this point, the authorities conducting the search were confident they would find the plane. Officials from Australia, China and Malaysia vowed that they would keep searching until the plane was found. Over the next few years, these governments funded a search of unprecedented difficulty, scanning a region of seabed the size of Great Britain at depths of up to three miles deep, until all the plane’s plausible end points were exhausted.
To their bafflement, the plane was nowhere to be found. And they couldn’t explain why. So the search officials broke their pledge to the public, and gave up. The last search ship left the area in 2018.
It very much looks like the plane didn’t actually go into the southern Indian Ocean. How could this be?
One possible explanation is that the SDU was tampered with, which would have changed where officials would have looked. Even now, no one has been able to come up with a reasonable explanation how it could have been turned on, either accidentally or through benign intention.
No one should think that attitude is acceptable. The case is too important to just let go. It requires a total commitment.
Nine years is a long time, but it’s still important that we solve this mystery. We don’t just owe it to future airline travelers. We owe it to the victims and their family members who expressed their despair and frustration about the unresolved mystery. They feel that they are not being told the full truth and that the authorities haven’t made a wholehearted effort to explain what happened. I happen to agree with them. I hope that MH370: The Plane That Disappeared will encourage the public to demand a full and complete reassessment of investigators’ past efforts.
The families deserve better. We all do.
This story originally ran on Tudum on March 8, 2023.
Thanks for your work. There is another plane mistery story crash – Tu-154M in Smolensk where 96 important politicans died (including the President of Republic of Poland).
Thanks, Ratay. Yes, I’m well aware of the Smolensk crash. It’s very big deal on Poland.
All your data/theory/journalism relies/based on what’s available on internet. I strongly believe you know nothing on ground level.
Tell me how many times you came to Malayesia for this story?
Who cares what possible reasons are, people are gone, we deserve truth to prevent such incidents but Malaysian govt. will never revel that if they are at fault somehow.
Hypothetically there could be endless possible reasons:
1. Pilot was pressured to do that.
2. May he pilot was psycho
3. May be one of passenger hijacked the plane
4. Technical fault and it blew up in middle of remote ocean.
5. A extremely unusual storm took the plane (May be not if weather was clear)
But you know what: Malaysian govt. knows what exactly happened and the world will never know, hope some day it can reveal.
@Keddy, There’s a new Malaysian government in power, I’d rather hoped that they would reveal some of the evidence that the previous regime wouldn’t, in particular the full military radar data.
I don’t know what my coming to Malaysia would have accomplished. I’d be delighted if someone would pay my way! I have fond memories of Kota Kinabula, Penang and Langkawi from my Hong Kong days.
Jeff, you laid out the most persuasive argument for why it REALLY matters that we find out what happened to this plane. This isn’t one of those obscure mysteries that affects no one personally, it’s a massively big deal. I think fundamentally most people agree with this. There’s a lot of unexplained and crazy shit that happens in our world, but this plane disappearing (and how it disappeared) is not your every day mystery.
Great job!
Thanks, Liz, really appreciate it.
My last comment hit so hard to you that you didn’t approve it. Haha
If you have guts come on my YouTube podcast and I’ll prove that all your theories are conspiracy theories and all you wanted was/is fame.
Greetings.
I have just watched the 3-episode documentary on netflix.
1. I still do not seem to understand the reason that no search took place on the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, although the Tomnod team discovered debris.
2. What is the algorithm Inmarsat used to track the aircraft?
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed your dissection of the disappearance of MH370 over the years. I’m only on the 2nd episode of the Netflix special, but was wondering why, after the pilot was suspected, Boeing didn’t come forward to say that the electronics could be accessed by anyone onboard who knew what they were doing.
Nobody talks about the passengers on that plane and their identity. If it was someone on that plane it need to be checked. All i hear is russian russian russian spy what about american spy?
This article touches on something that never made sense to me. IMO there is a massive imbalance between value and effort.
Boeing’s 2022 revenue: $66.6 billion
Boeing 777 price: $400M +
Total 777 orders: 2,000+
Cost of Dreamliner crashes: $20 billion
FAA budget in 2014: $15 billion
That’s a lot of dollars. Yet essentially nothing has been spent on finding MH 370. A few million spent on looking and something like $70 million in offered reward money. That’s just a fraction of the price of a single 777. Makes no sense to me.
Does anyone know what Prima Elite Tech does? A passenger just began an admin asst. job with them six months prior but I can’t seem to find anything on what this company does. Just curious.
Maybe there was a more detailed study on this subject, but it was not mentioned in the documentary.
Therefore, I would like to ask, have you or any one contacted those GSM operators? because if the missing ones phone actually rang, it means that it received Ping from the nearest base station and these records are stored in the archive for 5 years, It can be kept even longer. (PS: Laws may differ according to the countries)
If there are iPhone users, maybe someone had turn on Find My option, at least the last place will appear on iCloud.
Because these signals can be trusted.
There is a high probability that the data has been deleted due to the elapsed time.
You won’t get anywhere with the governments and FBI information or details they provide.
This Mystery cannot be solved unless you get out of the box.
There are people and groups that can decipher this hidden truth and can have access to the information and documents necessary to prove it, and if you really are ready to go out side the box.
Contact, Aubrey Cottle (Anonymous) and ask for help.
@Jeff: Just watched a movie that I think is right up your alley:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10341034/
I know I’m just some random person on the internet without any form of qualifications in the fields of Mechanical, Electrical, or Energy Engineering or even any form aviation expertise/knowledge, but isn’t odd that for the past 5 years or so the Boeing 777 jet airliner is being retired and switched out for newer models like the Boeing 737? And many major airliners are making such a switch in claims of previous malfunctions/lawsuits/and multiple airplane accidents that have occured with this specific jet airliner in the past couple of years? And honestly don’t even get me started with Inmarsat and the potential theories out there that their tech on the Boeing 777 airliner had been for years causing issues and malfunctions due to a specific error that was not fixed years ago according to some aviation experts that had laid out their theories on some forum that I read a couple years ago. Maybe when I come across it again and this time actually bookmark the forums site, i’ll post it in another comment on this thread hopefully soon.
Really, really good documentary on Netflix. It is mind blowing that a plane disappears, and no one has answers. It sounds crazy to even say that a whole plane is just gone. Someone out there knows what happened, yet all these years later and still no answers. The work you’re doing is important. Any work done on this case is important. Those families deserve answers.
Jeff, the series was superb. I’ve been with you since day one, every step of the way on this wild investigative journey, from gooseneck barnacles to the Baikonur Cosmodrome to Deineka’s daughter’s birthday greeting to Brodskii’s scuba diving to Blaine’s shadowy Soviet exploits. I wasn’t surprised that this series didn’t go down the thousands of paths you took us on this past decade. But I am grateful that you highlighted the two most important elements of this baffling riddle:
1. The re-logon of the SDU was the result of human intervention.
2. Two Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 aircraft were lost within 131 days of each other. Is this a coincidence?
Will we ever really know what happened? I personally doubt it. I didn’t expect to learn anything from the series, but these two points have been replaying in my brain all day long. For anyone hopimg to solve this riddle, use these 2 elements as your point of departure.
Jeff thanks again for framing the questions so well in this investigation. I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to say that one day within our lifetimes World War III and 9MMRO and 9MMRD will be intertwined.
Just watched the Netflix documentary What I don’t understand is why the area that the lady found debris wasn’t searched or the people who saw the plane on fire ever followed up. Is it possible for that debris from the China sea to float towards the 7th arc ?
Watching this Netflix series on MH370 and it’s a bit off putting that in the first 2 episodes you’ve got 2 completely different theories (each presented to the audience as likely), without concrete evidence whatsoever. And the French journalist doing the same, collecting small bits of information, then completely hypothesizing a scenario to present to the public. I understand that doing all the work to collect information is unlikely to get eyeballs, if it ends with “and we still don’t know nor have the information needed to present a scenerio we can stand by”, but the morality of how these theories are published is exactly why there’s such a divide in the public and what conspiracy lovers latch onto and run with. Despite having 0 tangible evidence.
Sunken Deal, I deeply appreciate your support over the years. I hope that if this show gets positive attention it might prompt a serious official rethink.
Thank you Alex!
Peter, Tu as raison, ça semble parfait pour moi. Je vais certainement le regarder.
The plane was remotely hijacked by British and/or American intelligence agencies and flown north to be used in the MH17 shootdown over Ukraine in order to start a war with Russia. Alas, the plan failed, and they had to wait 8 more years to start a war….
Think it’s possible there was a very slight leak in the cockpit?
The sensors either failed to recognize the pressure loss or they were faulty. It was slow enough the pilot or crew didn’t recognize it either.
Which lead to the pilots being very confused and not really being able to make coherent decisions. Ultimately resulting in them accidentally turning off tracking, trying to turn back to Malaysia but miss it, and as a last ditch effort before they go out for good they switch to auto pilot????
Lots of flaws in that simplistic theory but has anyone really explored a cabin leak? May be the oxygen tanks were faulty may be the system was, maybe the mask were. You understand aviation enough to know if that’s feasible off the cuff or not, so????
What about a link to Flight 800. If you watch the EPIX documentary you’ll see a middle theory. What if it was the Russians who shot down 800 and the USgov covered it up so the Olympics that year would go okay. Part of the reason why we’re backing and essentially at a de facto war among many other things could include because they hit us first when. 800 was shot down.
It takes tremendous strength and courage to share your ideals to the world, knowing the humility that will follow; and all for the simple sake of raising awareness, nonetheless. More people will find much fruit in swallowing their pride and following your lead. It’s because people lurk in silence that accountability for both citizens and leaders becomes remissed. Simple as it may be to just raise awareness, it is among the most crucial steps to discovering resolution. May you find success in the journey life has tasked you with, and show no fear nor quarter to that which would strive to discourage you along the way.
Jeff ( if I may ) I just finished watching the Netflix documentary about flight 370. I live in Ukraine, from the USA ( NYC area) and teach English. I love how you present things. The corporate people I teach can learn a lot from you and how to handle yourself speaking, presentation, vocabulary etc. I can learn a lot too..) So very glad I know about you now and you have a new fan..
Hi Jeff. I drop in and out of here for MH370. Tell me – has anyone ever done timelines on the One Malaysia Fund and these two MH incidents? To me this is a path worth travelling down. In life, the key is to always follow the money right! Interesting to hear your thoughts on this.
Hey Jeff, greetings from Brazil, I just watched the Netflix series and I appreciate your theory, nice work! Could you explain why Netflix didn’t show Richard Godfrey’s thoughts and Australian Transport Safety Bureau searches? Thanks!
Jeff, having watched the Netflix doco I have of course more than one question. But one question not really addressed in the doco- the photographer woman claims to have spotted debris in South China Sea satellite images, an oil
Rig worker reports seeing a plane (or at least a fire ball) come down in the South China Sea, and Cathay Pacific pilot reports seeing debris in same area. Doco suggests all this was just completely ignored. But must have been at least some official investigation/ response /explanation which discounts these observations. The idea it was just completely ignored seems unlikely. Surely media including yourself would have pressed for an explanation/response.
Just tried to ask the question Sam asks about why observations from woman of images, oil rig worker and pilot not investigated or explained. Got message I had already asked this question, which I hadn’t. Feel a conspiracy theory of my own coming on. But would sincerely like to know answer to that question.
Dear Mr Jeff,
This documentary is very interesting.
I refer to two previous comments to ask you too why the investigation carried out by the lady in Florida has not been verified by anyone.
It is known that this lady may have seen something concrete but no one has ever verified. Why?
Thanks in advance for your answer
Best regards
Daniela
Theory 2 – Hijack
> If at all the plane moved North, where is the evidence (a physical evidence)?
> Where is 1 physical evidence, a person, anything in the North?
It’s great that you have now devoted yourself and you are still trying to find something. I feel the pain, but then there has to be something linking to North also, right?
Your theories are shit, what a waste of viewer time. More screen time was spent on useless crap and drama and watching you drink endless cups of coffee.
Anant, Yes, it would be great to find some physical evidence supporting a route to the north. I’ve been working on it! No luck yet. So it’s still just a hypothesis.
Daniela, I think it’s a matter of the weight of evidence. On the one hand we have the Inmarsat data, radar data, and later pieces of debris; on the other, a woman who’s convinced that she sees shapes in the whitish blob on a satellite photo.
Jeff I have followed your work closely and would like to ask two questions.
Are you aware of any more details regarding another ocean infinity search?
What is your opinion on the Richard Godfrey paper regarding the locations regarding the radio technology he has written about?
Ross, It’s a very well known phenomenon in air incident investigations that eyewitness accounts are very unreliable. So when a witness’ claims go against the weight of all the other evidence, they tend to get disregarded rather quickly.
Marcelo, Thanks for your kind words. Richard Godfrey’s claims were left out primarily because he has a reputation as something of a rogue; for years he’s been spreading disinformation about the incident. Experts who have have examined his latest claims about ham-radio waves have found them to be spurious.
Hi Kate, Thanks for checking in! A connection has definitely been proposed, I guess it would require someone to roll up their sleeves and do some investigative work.
Hey Jeff,
We’re you able to confer about Mh70 over Ukraine? One of the doctors on board was heading to Austrailia to announce he had a cure for ALL cancers at the medical expo in Sydney
Thank you so much, Paul!
Rayven, Thank you so much. I can’t tell you how much words of support like this matter.
R, There’s nothing wrong imagining scenarios like this but in order to be considered as a working hypothesis there needs to be some supporting evidence, or at least an ability to fit with the evidence at hand.
Lance, The problem with any accident theory is that the plane conducted a series of maneuvers after the turn-back over the South China Sea, so some conscious human must have been at the controls.
I saw the docu on netflix.
My question is now if the famillies could get a cellphone Signal, then the Phone or either the simcard was booked in a specifiec cell tower and was having a so called handshake with a mobile Provider. That could be established by making available the cellphone numbers of the passengers. There own Provider can then track handshakes with other Providers. Was that done?
Re southern ocean theory – presumably all sorts of debris has continued to appear on that coastline and found by people other than the guy with the hat?
As others have mentioned no mention of the phone companies who presumably could have said categorically whether phones on board were still in signal (or not) and if so where they were in the days afterwards.
Unless I missed it no mention again of why the plane’s electronics were briefly switched on again and how that fed into the different theories..
I agree with daniella! I’ve just watched the docu, and what really strikes me and also kind of annoys me is that literally almost everyone ignores the Florida lady. I think the first step should have been to look in that spot. If you want to investigate a case thorougly, then you have to take everything into consideration.
Hey Joshua, Apparently the official investigation only uncovered one cell-phone connection after the turnback: a cell phone belonging to the first officer briefly connected to a tower in Penang, Malaysia.
Hi “Should be working”! From time to time other pieces of debris turned up, but for the last few years the only person who’d been finding debris is Blaine Alan Gibson.
The plane’s electronics weren’t briefly switched on; they were all left off (as far as we know) except for the satellite communications system, which was left on for the rest of the flight. This strange eventuality is a major part of my ‘spoof’ theory which I lay out in greater detail in my book.