Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (MH370 / MAS370) was an international passenger flight from Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia to Beijing Capital International Airport in China. On 8 March 2014, the Boeing 777 operating on the route disappeared from radar with 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board. The cause of its disappearance has not been determined. It is widely regarded as the greatest mystery in aviation history.
The crew of the aircraft last communicated with air traffic control (ATC) around 38 minutes after takeoff while flying over the South China Sea. The aircraft was lost from ATC's secondary surveillance radar screens minutes later, but was tracked by the Malaysian military's primary radar system for another hour as it deviated westward from its planned flight path. It left radar range 200 nautical miles (370 km; 230 mi) west-northwest of Penang Island in northwestern Peninsular Malaysia.
Relying mostly on the analysis of data from the Inmarsat satellite with which the aircraft last communicated, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) initially proposed that a hypoxia event was the most likely cause given the available evidence, although no consensus has been reached among investigators concerning this theory. At various stages of the investigation, possible hijacking scenarios were considered, including crew involvement, and suspicion of the aircraft's cargo manifest. Many disappearance theories regarding the flight have also been reported by the media.
With all 227 passengers and 12 crew aboard presumed dead, the disappearance of Flight 370 was the deadliest incident involving a Boeing 777, the deadliest of 2014, and the deadliest in Malaysia Airlines' history until it was surpassed in all three regards by Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on 17 July 2014.
The search for the missing aircraft became the most expensive search in aviation history. It focused initially on the South China Sea and Andaman Sea, before a novel analysis of the aircraft's automated communications with an Inmarsat satellite indicated that the aircraft had travelled far southward over the southern Indian Ocean. Several pieces of debris washed ashore in the western Indian Ocean during 2015 and 2016; many of these were confirmed to have originated from Flight 370. After a three-year search across 120,000 km2 (46,000 sq mi) of ocean failed to locate the aircraft, the Joint Agency Coordination Centre heading the operation suspended its activities in January 2017. A second search launched in January 2018 by private contractor Ocean Infinity also ended without success after six months. The Malaysian Ministry of Transport's final report from July 2018 was inconclusive.
In the absence of a definitive cause of disappearance, air transport industry safety recommendations and regulations citing Flight 370 have been implemented to prevent a repetition of the circumstances associated with the loss. These include increased battery life on underwater locator beacons, lengthening of recording times on flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders, and new standards for aircraft position reporting over open ocean.
Timeline
Flight 370 last made voice contact with ATC at 01:19 MYT, 8 March (17:19 UTC, 7 March) when it was over the South China Sea, less than an hour after takeoff. It disappeared from ATC radar screens at 01:22 MYT, but was still tracked on military radar as it turned sharply away from its original northeastern course to head west and cross the Malay Peninsula, continuing that course until leaving the range of the military radar at 02:22 while over the Andaman Sea, 200 nautical miles (370 km; 230 mi) northwest of Penang Island, in northwestern Malaysia.
The multinational search effort for the aircraft, which was to become the most expensive aviation search in history, began in the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, where the aircraft's signal was last detected on secondary surveillance radar, and was soon extended to the Strait of Malacca and Andaman Sea. Analysis of satellite communications between the aircraft and Inmarsat's satellite communications network concluded that the flight continued until at least 08:19 (nearly an hour after Malaysia Airlines publicly announced the aircraft's loss) and flew south into the southern Indian Ocean, although the precise location cannot be determined. Australia assumed charge of the search on 17 March, when the search effort began to emphasise the southern Indian Ocean. On 24 March, the Malaysian government noted that the final location determined by the satellite communication was far from any possible landing sites, and concluded, "Flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean."
From October 2016 to January 2017, a comprehensive survey of 120,000 km2 (46,000 mi2) of sea floor about 1,800 km (1,100 mi; 970 nmi) southwest of Perth, Western Australia, yielded no evidence of the aircraft. Several pieces of marine debris found on the coast of Africa and on Indian Ocean islands off the coast of Africa—the first of which was discovered on 29 July 2015 on Réunion—have been confirmed as pieces of Flight 370. The bulk of the aircraft has not been located, prompting many theories about its disappearance.
In January 2018, a search by private US marine exploration company Ocean Infinity began in the search zone around 35°36′S 92°48′E / 35.6°S 92.8°E, the most likely crash site according to the drift study published in 2017. In a previous search attempt, Malaysia had established a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to investigate the incident, working with foreign aviation authorities and experts. Malaysia released a final report concerning Flight 370 on 17 October 2017. 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 Iranian passengers travelling on stolen passports were investigated but eliminated as suspects. Malaysian police identified the captain as the prime suspect if human intervention was the cause of the disappearance, after clearing all others on the flight of suspicion over possible motives. Power was lost to the aircraft's satellite data unit (SDU) at some point between 01:07 and 02:03; the SDU logged onto Inmarsat's satellite communication network at 02:25, which was three minutes after the aircraft had left the range of radar. Few circumstances can trigger a loss of power to the satellite, but this anomaly is a significant clue that there may have been an intermittent electrical problem on the airplane. Based on analysis of the satellite communications, the aircraft was postulated to have turned south after passing north of Sumatra and then to have flown for six hours with little deviation in its track, ending when its fuel was exhausted.
With the loss of all 239 lives on board, Flight 370 is the second-deadliest incident involving a Boeing 777 and the second-deadliest incident of Malaysia Airlines' history, second to Flight 17 in both categories. Malaysia Airlines was struggling financially, a problem that was exacerbated by a decrease of ticket sales after the disappearance of Flight 370 and the downing of Flight 17; the airline was renationalised by the end of 2014. The Malaysian government received significant criticism, especially from China, for failing to disclose information promptly during the early weeks of the search. According to documents cited in the book, The Crash Detectives, Malaysia Airlines knew more than a year before the loss of flight 370, that it was not meeting its own government's requirements or international standards for flight tracking. In April 2013, and again in June, several of the airline's auditors looking at the flight operations discovered a number of problems with the airline’s compliance. On Malaysia’s wide body long haul Boeing 747 and 777s, which would include the plane flying as MH-370, flights could only be tracked every half hour, even though they were required to know on a more frequent basis the whereabouts of each plane.
Flight 370's disappearance brought to public attention the limits of aircraft tracking and flight recorders, including the limited battery life of underwater locator beacons (an issue that had been raised about four years earlier following the loss of Air France Flight 447 but had never been resolved). In response to Flight 370's disappearance, the International Civil Aviation Organization adopted new standards for aircraft position reporting over open ocean, extended recording time for cockpit voice recorders, and, starting from 2020, new aircraft designs have been required to have a means of recovering the flight recorders, or the information they contain, before they sink into the water.
Background
Aircraft
Flight 370 was operated by a Boeing 777-2H6ER, serial number 28420, registered as 9M-MRO. The aircraft was delivered new to Malaysia Airlines on 31 May 2002. It was powered by two Rolls-Royce Trent 892 engines and configured to carry 282 passengers in total capacity. It had accumulated 53,471.6 hours and 7,526 cycles (takeoffs and landings) in service and had not previously been involved in any major incidents, though a minor incident while taxiing at Shanghai Pudong International Airport in August 2012 resulted in a broken wing tip. Its last maintenance "A check" was carried out on 23 February 2014. The aircraft was in compliance with all applicable airworthiness directives for the airframe and engines. A replenishment of the crew member oxygen system was performed on 7 March 2014, a routine maintenance task; an examination of this procedure found nothing unusual. In a 2024 story published without attribution or information about the source, The Standard reported that ten years after MH370's disappearance, "leaked documents" show that MH370 was given supplemental fuel and crew member oxygen supplies just before takeoff. Passenger oxygen systems can generate about 12 to 15 minutes of supplemental oxygen. Crew oxygen is a separate system and allow for several hours of use.
The Boeing 777 was introduced in 1994 and has an excellent safety record. Since its first commercial flight in June 1995, the type has suffered only six other hull losses.
Passengers and crew
The aircraft was carrying 12 Malaysian crew members and 227 passengers from 14 different nations. On the day of the disappearance, Malaysia Airlines released the names and nationalities of the passengers and crew, based on the flight manifest. The passenger list was later modified to include two Iranian passengers travelling on stolen passports.
Crew
All 12 crew members—two pilots and 10 cabin crew—were Malaysian citizens.
- The pilot in command was 52-year-old Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah from Penang. He joined Malaysia Airlines as a cadet pilot in 1981, and after training and receiving his commercial pilot's license, he became a second officer with the airline in 1983. He was promoted to captain of the Boeing 737-400 in 1991, captain of the Airbus A330-300 in 1996, and captain of the Boeing 777-200 in 1998. He had been a type-rating instructor and a type-rating examiner since 2007. Zaharie had a total of 18,365 hours of flying experience.
- The co-pilot was 26-year-old First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid. He joined Malaysia Airlines as a cadet pilot in 2007; after becoming a second officer of the Boeing 737–400, he was promoted to first officer of the Boeing 737–400 in 2010 and then transitioned to the Airbus A330-300 in 2012. In November 2013, he began training as first officer of the Boeing 777–200 aircraft. Flight 370 was his final training flight, and he was scheduled to be examined on his next flight. Fariq had accumulated 2,763 hours of flying experience.
Passengers
Of the 227 passengers, 153 were Chinese citizens, including a group of 19 artists with six family members and four staff returning from a calligraphy exhibition of their work in Kuala Lumpur. 38 passengers were Malaysian. The remaining passengers were from 12 different countries. Twenty passengers, 12 of whom were from Malaysia and eight from China, were employees of Freescale Semiconductor.
Flight and disappearance
Flight 370 was a scheduled flight in the early morning of Saturday, 8 March 2014, from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China. It was one of two daily flights operated by Malaysia Airlines from its hub at Kuala Lumpur International Airport to Beijing Capital International Airport—scheduled to depart at 00:35 local time (MYT; UTC+08:00) and arrive at 06:30 local time (CST; UTC+08:00). On board were two pilots, 10 cabin crew, 227 passengers, and 14,296 kg (31,517 lb) of cargo.
The planned flight duration was 5 hours and 34 minutes, which would consume an estimated 37,200 kg (82,000 lb) of jet fuel. The aircraft carried 49,100 kilograms (108,200 lb) of fuel, including reserves, allowing an endurance of 7 hours and 31 minutes. The extra fuel was enough to divert to alternate airports—Jinan Yaoqiang International Airport and Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport—which would require 4,800 kg (10,600 lb) or 10,700 kg (23,600 lb), respectively, to reach from Beijing.
Departure
At 00:42 MYT, Flight 370 took off from runway 32R, and was cleared by air traffic control (ATC) to climb to flight level 180—approximately 18,000 feet (5,500 m)—on a direct path to navigational waypoint IGARI (located at 6°56′12″N 103°35′6″E / 6.93667°N 103.58500°E). Voice analysis has determined that the first officer communicated with ATC while the flight was on the ground and that the Captain communicated with ATC after departure. Shortly after departure, the flight was transferred from the airport's ATC to Lumpur Radar on frequency 132.6 MHz. ATC over peninsular Malaysia and adjacent waters is provided by the Kuala Lumpur Area Control Centre (ACC); Lumpur Radar is the name of the frequency used for en route air traffic. At 00:46, Lumpur Radar cleared Flight 370 to flight level 350—approximately 35,000 ft (10,700 m). At 01:01, Flight 370's crew reported to Lumpur Radar that they had reached flight level 350, which they confirmed again at 01:08.
Communication lost
The aircraft's final transmission before its disappearance from radar was an automated position report, sent using the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) protocol at 01:06 MYT. Among the data provided in this message was the total fuel remaining: 43,800 kg (96,600 lb). The last verbal signal to air traffic control occurred at 01:19:30, when Captain Zaharie acknowledged a transition from Lumpur Radar to Ho Chi Minh ACC:
Lumpur Radar: "Malaysian three seven zero, contact Ho Chi Minh one two zero decimal nine. Good night."
Flight 370: "Good night. Malaysian three seven zero."