British virtual tracker Ian Wilson is a video engineer by profession. He discovered an object similar to an airplane using the Google Maps resource. I saw him lying in the hard-to-reach jungles of Cambodia.
Jan has no doubt: the object is the plane - most likely the same one - the Malaysian Boeing 777-200, which on March 8, 2014, following from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, disappeared in the most mysterious way along with 239 passengers.
According to the outlines, the discovered liner is what you need. Only almost 6 meters longer - not 63.7 meters, but 70.
The tail fell off, - explains the tracker, - lies a little further from the fuselage. Hence the "elongation".
The main objection of skeptics is that the photo from space used by Google Maps could have been accidentally taken by a plane flying over the jungle. In addition, four years have passed since the loss, it is quite enough for the lush tropical vegetation to completely hide the liner. And it's strange that the car in the photo is almost intact. Even if the plane did not crash from a great height, but tried to land in the jungle, it would most likely fall apart into several large fragments.
No, Wilson dismisses doubts. Like, I checked it using one of the resource options - “escape ground view”. The plane is down.
Could the virtual pathfinder "stumble" not on the MH370, but on some other Boeing 777-200?. Excluded - no other such in this area of Cambodia fell. At least, aviation experts do not know anything about such disasters.
Wilson said that he would like to get to the crash site he discovered. After all, Malaysian and Australian specialists, who, albeit to no avail, are officially busy searching for the remains of the liner, as a rule, do not respond to the "signals" of virtual trackers. Or brush them aside.
BY THE WAY
And then there's Boeing
Competing with Wilson is Australian Peter McMahon, who has long been passionate about air crash investigations. Using Google Maps, he also saw the silhouette of a crashed Malaysian Boeing. But in another place - under water. If he gets to him, then he will have to dive.
In March 2018 McMahon: Boeing lies in shallow water about 16 kilometers south of Round Island (Round Island) - one of the Seychelles. The satellite photo shows both the wings and the fuselage.
The Australian Transport and Safety Bureau told McMahon that the plane he discovered could very well be the one he was looking for. But no action was taken. The Malaysian authorities also responded. But more harshly: they asked not to mislead people.
McMahon somehow saw that the fuselage of the liner was full of holes. As if stitched with machine-gun bursts.
And one more
In 2016, a Malaysian Boeing found Scott Waring, a well-known ufologist and virtual archaeologist among those who look for anomalies in images transmitted from other planets, such as Mars.
Scott assures that he did not specifically search for the missing liner. I was looking for traces of UFOs that were seen in the Cape of Good Hope area in 2013. And for this purpose, I looked at the pictures of the area posted on Google Earth. I saw the outline of the plane. He lies under water. Almost whole.
05/16/2014 at 14:11, views: 64720
“An Asian passenger on the dramatic flight MH370, who escaped from captivity near Kandahar, reached a village called Shahraz (to be confirmed). In about a week, data on this will be transferred to China (it is not known whether this will become world publicity). As it turned out, the purpose of the sudden hijacking of the Malaysian airliner Boeing-777-200-ER was the suppression by the American side of an attempt by a group of special specialists to get from Malaysia to China. An anonymous source in the special services told the MK correspondent about this with special confidence. This information is published in the world media for the first time.
Collage: wordpress.com.
The day before, a source from the special services told MK, on condition of anonymity, that, according to reports, the hijacked passengers of the airliner that suddenly disappeared on March 8, 2014, flying on flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, began to die due to unbearable conditions of detention.
In the first ten days of April, MK, citing special services, reported that the nickname of the attacker who forced the Boeing pilots to hijack a Malaysia Airlines plane with a total of 239 people on board was Hitch. Nothing was known about his accomplices. The pilots of flight MH370 were not guilty of the hijacking, a fairly authoritative source from the special services assured the MK correspondent on condition of anonymity.
The Boeing 777-200ER, which was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing (route length - 4417 km), suddenly disappeared on March 8, 2014. Boeing 777-200ER of Malaysia Airlines made a joint
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The missing Boeing-777 flew for several more hours after the "loss" of communication between the crew and the controllers.
Chinese China Southern Airlines flight with 227 passengers on board from 14 countries, including 5 children under the age of 5 and 12 crew members (including two pilots). Most of the passengers - 153 - had Chinese citizenship (one is a permanent resident of Hong Kong). Among the passengers was the only Russian - 43-year-old businessman Nikolai Brodsky from Irkutsk. He was returning from a vacation in Bali, where he went diving. Four people who had tickets for this flight were late for check-in and did not get on the plane. At least two passengers (Italian Luigi Maraldi and Austrian Christian Kozel), who were on the lists, were not on board: the Iranians Puria Nur Mohammad Merdad and Delaware Seyyed-Mohammadreza bought tickets using their passports and got on the flight .
Flight MH370 departed Kuala Lumpur for Beijing on March 8 at 00:41:13 local time. At 01:19:24, the Kuala Lumpur Control controller handed over flight MH370 to controllers in Ho Chi Minh City, which was confirmed by the flight crew. Flight MH370 was last seen on radar at 01:21:13, but the pilots did not contact controllers in Ho Chi Minh City. After that, communication with the aircraft was completely lost. At 01:38 a.m., Vietnamese air traffic controllers asked their colleagues in Kuala Lumpur where flight MH370 had gone?
After unsuccessful attempts to locate the missing plane, Kuala Lumpur air traffic controllers contacted Malaysia Airlines' flight control center at 02:15 a.m., where they assumed the plane was in Cambodian airspace. However, the controllers of the ATC center of Cambodia noted that the crew did not contact them. Vietnamese air traffic controllers, in turn, stressed that according to the flight plan, the Boeing 777 was not supposed to fly through Cambodian airspace. Over the next few hours, controllers and representatives of the airline tried in vain to establish at least some kind of contact with the aircraft and determine its location. As a result, after four hours of unsuccessful attempts, a request was sent at 05:30 to start an official search and rescue operation.
Seven messages are known to have been received from Flight MH370 via the Aviation Communications Address Reporting System (ACARS) after losing contact with the aircraft, including the last one at 08:19.
So, to this day, no one knows anything about flight MH-370. Malaysia, Australia and China agreed to continue the intrigues of the missing aircraft, which will now be more focused on studying the seabed (April searches in the Indian Ocean did not bring results).
At the end of April, they were tired of the uncertainty and unconvincing methods of searching for the missing airliner with a letter about checking the version of the location of the missing aircraft, put forward for the first time (March 31) by the Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets (site site) with reference to anonymous sources in the special services. The extra-exclusive information of "MK" was urgently made public in both languages and instantly replicated by the world media (an example and another example), blogs and social networks (in various languages of the world).
An expert in the field of accident investigation from the Center for Scientific and Technical Research and Expertise (Moscow), an experienced Soviet-Russian aviator Evgeny Kuzminov, explained to the MK correspondent that “such an aircraft could well land on an ordinary dirt road on a more or less dense surface about 2000 meters long . Although, of course, for this there must be free approaches to the landing strip - that is, there should not be trees and mountains. With a hard landing on a “bad” surface, of course, the landing gear could break or even the wing could break ”(the estimated weight of the stolen Boeing 777-200ER with passengers, crew and cargo is about 200 tons). Evgeny Kuzminov recalled a similar landing of an airliner that took place in the USSR in 1968, as a result of which.
For foreign media
This information was not published in the world media : " A Russian newspaper has claimed that Flight MH370 was hijacked by "unknown terrorists" and flown to Afghanistan, where the crew and passengers are now being held hostage. The extraordinary comments, attributed to a Intelligence source, appeared in the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper. The source told the paper: "Flight MH370 Malaysia Airlines missing on March 8 with 239 passengers was hijacked. Pilots are not guilty; the plane was hijacked by unknown terrorists. We know that the name of the terrorist who gave instructions to pilots is "Hitch ." The plane is in Afghanistan not far from Kandahar near the border with Pakistan". Moskovsky Komsomolets also claims the passengers have been divided into seven groups and are living in mud huts with almost no food. Twenty Asian passengers were said to have been smuggled into a bunker in Pakistan .
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In Sheremetyevo, the gangway damaged the door of the plane that arrived from Beijing Plane to Sheremetyevo Boeing 777 , following the route Beijing - Moscow, received damage to the door of the air bridge. About... Boeing flying from US to China returned to airport due to missing part Airplane Boeing 777 , flying from New York to Shanghai, returned to the airport... , said it had arranged an additional flight to China. Early July Boeing 777 -200 of Air Canada, flying from Vancouver to Sydney, on... Passengers reported a stampede due to the smoke of the Moscow-Yerevan plane On board Boeing 737 of Nordwind Airlines (“North Wind”), a stampede began during the evacuation ... the airport, they “fed, watered”, and after a while they were provided with another aircraft. Boeing 737 of the airline "North Wind" interrupted the flight due to a triggered signal ... Vancouver-Sydney flight canceled after injury due to turbulence ... channel CBS. We are talking about flight AC33, operated by an aircraft Boeing 777 -200. In total, there were 269 passengers and 15 members on board... The Netherlands explained the use of data from social networks in the MH17 case ... called the information received from social networks an important part of the investigation into the collapse of the Malaysian Boeing 777 . He stated this at a press conference, which was broadcast by .... Representatives of the International Investigation Team (JIT) presented the results of the investigation of the plane crash Boeing 777 Malaysian Airlines in Donbass in 2014. The suspects are the former... DNR denied involvement in MH17 downing in Donbass ... that the forces of the region could not have been involved in the collapse of the Malaysian Boeing 777 . This is reported by the Donetsk News Agency (DAN). “In service with the army ... this day. Therefore, the militia could not be involved in the crash Boeing in Donbass," the department said. The department added that in ... a similar class. The international investigation team summed up the results of the investigation into the crash of the Malaysian Boeing 777 that happened in 2014 in the Donbass. Attorney General Fred Westerbeke... The investigation announced the date for the consideration of the MH17 case in a court in The Hague Trial of suspects involved in the collapse of the Malaysian Boeing 777 in the skies over the Donbass in 2014 at the Hague International ... International Investigation Team (JIT) submitted a second report on the causes of the crash Boeing. The main conclusion of the investigation is that the Buk, from which... The Kremlin commented on the plot of the Dutch TV channel about the crash of MH17 ... , in which the names of the alleged defendants in the case of the collapse of the Malaysian Boeing 777 in the sky over Donbass in 2014. This is reported by ... report. It was also claimed that they have a "pronounced anti-Russian orientation." Passenger Boeing-777 Malaysian prime minister questions MH17 crash investigation ... side of Russia. Russia and the Netherlands will continue dialogue on the investigation of the crash Boeing-777 The prime minister added that Malaysia should also join the review ... he said about the politicization of the investigation: "This is not a neutral review." Passenger Boeing-777 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Amsterdam - Kuala Lumpur suffered a... Boeing 777 makes emergency return to Singapore after cabin pressure drop ... salon. This is reported by The Straits Times. When the plane Boeing 777 reached a height of 7.3 thousand meters and was already above ... suffered. In September, due to a pressure drop in the cabin Boeing Jet Airways' 737 on a Mumbai-Jaipur flight have been hit over 30...Society, 25 Sep 2018, 10:46
National Geographic simulated the last minutes of the flight of the missing MH370 ... how could the last minutes of the flight of the Malaysian Boeing 777 searched since 2014 Polet Boeing 777 Malaysia Airlines ended up with the plane coming in... it disappeared from the radar, but continued to communicate with the satellite. Boeing confirmed the establishment of communication seven times, and this indicates that ... Chon. National Geographic relies on engineering calculations for its film Boeing who established what happened to the plane in the last minutes of the flight ...Politics, 17 Sep 2018, 15:47
Russia to send new data on Boeing downed missile to Netherlands ... New information on the case of the crash Boeing-777 over the Donbass, provided by the Russian Ministry of Defense, was sent to the Prosecutor General's Office for transfer ... of the Ministry of Defense about the shooter Boeing missile Earlier, the Russian Ministry of Defense stated that the missile that shot down in the sky over the Donbass in 2014 Boeing-777 , was produced ... in operations in eastern Ukraine. The Ministry of Defense spoke about the origin of the shooter Boeing missiles over the Donbass Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine ... The Dutch Foreign Ministry commented on the findings of the MH17 investigation ... of the joint investigation team that the Buk that shot down in the Donbass Boeing 777 Malaysia Airlines, arrived from Russia, indicates its involvement in ... a meeting of the Dutch government regarding the conclusions of the investigation into the crash of the Malaysian Boeing. The investigation in the Netherlands told about the downed MH17 "Buk" from Russia ... the side of the missile of the "Buk" complex is untenable. crash Boeing 777 Malaysia Airlines near Donetsk Plane Boeing 777 -200ER of Malaysia Airlines was shot down over Donetsk... The experts suspected the commander of the deliberate crash of the Malaysian Boeing ... the group would take responsibility for what happened,” Dolan said. Boeing 777 Malaysia Airlines, which flew from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, disappeared ... Australia announces search for missing Malaysian Boeing ... Lost in March 2014 over the Indian Ocean Malaysian Boeing 777 -200 (MH370) has not yet been found, the reasons for its disappearance ... to the Malaysian authorities, so that they establish the reason for the disappearance of the aircraft. Airplane Boeing 777 -200, on flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, has disappeared ... from the USA, where the aircraft was manufactured, they recognized it as part of the aileron Boeing 777 . A door believed to belong to the aircraft was then discovered. However, other traces... The liner flying from Kamchatka to Moscow urgently landed in Novosibirsk ... Airplane Boeing-777 of the Aeroflot airline, which flew from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to Moscow, committed ... "Russia" commented on the "landing on the tail" of its aircraft in Vnukovo ... mode Rossiya Airlines denied the information that the plane Boeing, flying on a flight Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky - Moscow, landing at the airport ... the tail section of the runway (runway). "During the landing Boeing-777 , flying flight FV6486 Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky - Moscow, in wind shear conditions ... no. The representative of the Rossiya airline also stressed that we are talking about Boeing-777 and not about Boeing-737. Maria Bondarenko Ekaterina Kostina The media reported on the emergency landing of Boeing 777 from China to Domodedovo ... Airliner made an emergency landing at Domodedovo airport Boeing 777 VIM-Avia, flying from China. It is reported by "Interfax" ... source, the aircraft had a problem with the engine. "The crew managed to land Boeing-777 in Domodedovo, despite the failed engine, ”said the emergency services .... Earlier, on June 28, a plane made an emergency landing at Domodedovo airport Boeing AzurAir 767 bound for Cuba. The reason for the landing was the operation ... Bellingcat proves the Russian origin of the “Buk” that shot down MH17 ... denied. The Dutch Safety Board in the final report on the circumstances of the crash Boeing 777 called the cause of the disaster a ground-to-air missile hitting the liner ... specialists from the Almaz-Antey military concern published the results of their own investigation of the disaster Boeing 777 . It follows from it that the liner was shot down by a rocket that was no longer used ...Politics, 06 Mar 2017, 21:59
What Ukraine demanded from Russia at the International Court of Justice ... or indirectly responsible for a number of terrorist attacks on the territory of Ukraine (crash Boeing-777 flight MH17 in July 2014, shelling civilians in...Politics, 06 Mar 2017, 15:24
Hearings on Ukraine's lawsuit against Russia over Donbass and Crimea began in The Hague ... claims, Kiev demands full compensation from the Russian government for the death Boeing-777 flight MH17, for "shelling civilians" in Volnovakha, Mariupol, Kramatorsk... Japanese Boeing lands in Krasnoyarsk due to engine failure ... . At the time of writing this material, there was no official confirmation. "Airplane Boeing-777 Japan Airlines requested an emergency landing in Krasnoyarsk due to a refusal ... not received. TASS reports that the plane made an emergency landing Boeing 777 . "Boeing aircraft 777 Flight NH204 landed safely at Yemelyanovo Airport," the... Boeing made an emergency landing after a passenger tried to hack into the cockpit ... Passenger Boeing 777 flying from Chicago to Hong Kong made an emergency landing at... Boeing that took off from Vnukovo returned to the airport due to landing gear problems ... Passenger aircraft Boeing-777 , who had problems with the landing gear during the flight, safely ... the technical services of the capital's airport will begin to find out the causes of the incident. long haul liner Boeing-777 made a flight Moscow - Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. After takeoff, the crew commander reported... Dutch prosecutors received in Moscow in connection with the downing of Boeing MH17 ... with the Netherlands in order to clarify the circumstances of this terrible tragedy. Airplane Boeing 777 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crashed in eastern Ukraine on 17... Boeing. During the investigation, the experts came to the conclusion that the plane crash occurred ... square. km. The head of the Dutch Security Council, Thibbe Jaustra, later stated that Boeing in Donbass was shot down from the territory controlled by the militia. "The borders of the territory ... An unknown aircraft approached European airliners flying from Japan ... the controllers decided to change the flight level of a passenger in that area Boeing-777 KLM airlines, which operated a flight from Japan to the Netherlands. IN... The Foreign Ministry called the authors of the BBC film about MH17 opposed to Russia ...Authors of a BBC film about the crash Boeing 777 in Donbass are obviously opposed to Russia. This was stated by the official... and the militias. This is a very dangerous trend,” the Foreign Ministry concluded. crash Boeing 777 Malaysia Airlines near Donetsk BBC at the end of April ... took place on May 3, Open Russia translated it into Russian. Boeing 777 , flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, crashed in eastern Ukraine ... Hungarian Air Force fighter jets put on alert after losing contact with Boeing ... Fighters of the Hungarian Air Force escorted the flight of a passenger Boeing 777 British Airways after the aircraft did not establish ... two Gripens fighters were airlifted. They accompanied for some time Boeing until the aircraft was identified and the Hungarian side received... they had already returned to base. A spokesman for British Airways said that Boeing promptly re-established contact with air traffic controllers and landed safely in London...Boeing ... challenged the restriction of the Ministry of Justice on the publication of materials related to the investigation into the disaster of the Malaysian Boeing 777 , crashed in 2014 in the Donbass, writes Volkskrant. In February... liquidation of its consequences,” said Volkskrant editor Philippe Remarque. Passenger liner Boeing 777 Malaysia Airlines en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed...
China sends sonar reconnaissance vessel to search for Boeing ... China sent a sonar reconnaissance vessel to help search for the Malaysian Boeing 777 , missing in 2014, reports the BBC. Vessel under way... wreckage of unidentified aircraft found, later identified as part of missing aircraft Boeing. It turned out to be part of the aileron-flap - the control surface of the wing. Later, in... . At the same time, there were suggestions that the fragment could be a detail of the missing Boeing. However, experts pointed out that the currents in the Indian Ocean are unlikely ... Experts doubt that the wing fragment belonged to the missing Boeing ... last Saturday off the coast of Thailand, hardly belong to Malaysian Boeing 777 who went missing in March 2014. Aircraft are inclined to this conclusion ... 3 m in length. Thai media suggested that the chip belongs to Boeing 777 Malaysia Airlines flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing (flight...DUSHANBE, March 9 - Sputnik. Five years ago, a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing disappeared from radar. There were 239 people on board.
All were declared dead, but neither the remains nor the liner itself were found. About how the search operation went and why it did not produce results - in the material RIA Novosti.
Shrouded in mystery
Malaysia Airlines Boeing-777 took off from Kuala Lumpur Airport on March 8, 2014 at 00:41 local time (20:41 Moscow time on March 7).
He was due to land in Beijing in six hours. There were 239 people on board, including 12 crew members. Mostly Chinese, Malaysian and Taiwanese.
Nothing foreshadowed trouble. Ten days before the flight, the plane was fully checked. The weather was good. Everything was calm on board: the crew did not send alarm messages. 40 minutes after takeoff, the liner disappeared from the radar.
Subsequently, it turned out that everything was done with a delay.
For some reason, Ho Chi Minh air traffic controllers reported that the plane did not enter their airspace until 20 minutes after it disappeared from radar, and not within two minutes, as required by the regulations. Malaysia Airlines itself reacted belatedly, declaring an emergency five hours after the last contact with the crew.
As a result, the rescue operation was launched only ten hours after the loss of the airliner. Representatives of 26 states, whose passengers were on board, hastily sent military and fishing vessels and helicopters to the search operation.
Tried everything. They tried to determine the location of the aircraft even from the signals of smartphones belonging to passengers, but to no avail.
Soon, oil slicks were discovered off the coast of Vietnam, and after a while, debris. Oddly enough, all this had nothing to do with the missing plane.
The scope of the search operation expanded, but did not bring results. Rescuers combed the sea and land for days on end. There were no clues, more and more unexpected versions of what happened were put forward.
One of the main ones is an explosion on board. This explained the absence of noticeable debris.
But other questions arose: why did not a single satellite detect the explosion? The possibility of hijacking the liner was not discounted either.
So, it turned out that two passengers got on board with stolen passports. Italian Luigi Maraldi and Austrian Christian Kotzel had their documents stolen in Thailand in 2012-2013.
But this, too, was not connected with the catastrophe - according to the documents of the Europeans, two Iranians flew, hoping to settle in the European Union.
What has been achieved during this time
The operation to search for flight MH370 has already been called the largest in the history of aviation.
In total, over $150 million was spent on it. In five years, six fragments of the liner's hull were discovered.
The first was found by a scavenger in July 2015 on the island of Reunion, four thousand kilometers from the alleged crash site. According to him, he also came across suitcases and a chair similar to an aviation one, but he burned it all, "like all the garbage." And the scavenger didn't hear anything about the missing plane because he doesn't watch TV.
A couple more fragments were found on the coast of Mozambique, Mauritius and on the beach in South Africa. The authorities admitted that these were indeed fragments of the missing aircraft.
Relatives of the dead passengers repeatedly complained about the international investigation team and tried to organize their own search. We launched a campaign on a crowdfunding platform to raise five million dollars.
However, they collected a little more than 100 thousand dollars, and this was only enough for several months of the investigation, which, however, also led to nothing.
What's with the pilot
But there is evidence that "an unlawful interference was committed, as a result of which the communication systems stopped working and the aircraft was manually deployed."
The liner was operated by the aircraft commander, 53-year-old Malaysian Zachary Ahmad Shah, who flew 18.5 thousand hours, and 27-year-old co-pilot Farik Ab Namid, for whom this flight was a test.
Various accusations were made against Zachary. Former Canadian head of the Transportation Safety Bureau, Larry Vance, suggested that the first pilot committed suicide and killed the rest of the passengers and crew along with him.
Australian experts hypothesized that the ship's commander was trying to confuse air traffic controllers. Say, for this, he turned off the detection systems and flew the plane on the border of the zones of responsibility of Thailand and Malaysia, which is considered a blind zone. And near the Malaysian state, he completely made an unnecessary detour, as if saying goodbye to the house in which he was born. No one has officially confirmed this information.
According to the Director General of the ICAA "Safety of Flights", a member of the World Flight Safety Fund (FSF) Sergey Melnichenko, the pilots were not found guilty - there are no sufficient grounds.
But the crew commander is a really curious person. With his own hands, he assembled a special simulator, on which he trained to fly an aircraft in the basement of the house. The route set in the simulator coincided with flight MH370.
Zachary's call sign was "Twin Towers 777".
“Many knew him as a person who can be relied upon, who will give good advice in a difficult life situation. It is interesting that he supported the opposition in Malaysia. There were elections there a year before the disappearance of the plane, the opposition lost. There is a photograph of him on the Internet, in which it says "June 13 is the end of democracy." He had a distant relative - one of the leaders of the opposition," the expert says.
“But the most interesting thing we found is that the Muslim Zachary became an atheist. For Muslims, this is a more serious step than for Christians. There is too much mystery in the personality of the commander of this ship,” Melnichenko admits.
And he adds that shortly before the flight, Zachary handed over a large sum of money to his daughter, who lives in Australia. In the coming years, he was going to retire and may have planned to build a house somewhere nearby.
Indian schoolgirls pray for missing Malaysia Airlines flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing
According to the expert, there are too many inconsistencies in the investigation.
“Back in 2017, the Malaysian government was supposed to be given two new fragments found, which are at the disposal of the government of Madagascar. They were going to be presented by the honorary consul of Malaysia in Madagascar. As soon as this became known, the consul was killed. It is not clear whether this is connected with the disappearance of the aircraft. And the wreckage is still in Madagascar. Isn't Malaysia very interested in them?" Melnichenko is surprised.
The Director General of the ICAA "Safety of Flights" also drew attention to the fact that the flight plan and the final report indicate different alternate aerodromes for this flight in China.
The disappearance of the airliner with 239 passengers and crew members on board remains unsolved, sums up Melnichenko. Although the investigation lasted five years, the experts could not answer two main questions: what and where happened to the plane.
On the night of March 8, 2014, an event occurred that is difficult to imagine even now, five years later. Boeing 777-200ER Malaysia Airlines with 239 people on board flew from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Thirty minutes later, the plane becomes an unidentified object for radar. The liner changes direction and flies somewhere to the south of the Indian Ocean for about another seven hours. Then, presumably, the plane runs out of fuel and falls into the water. All passengers and crew are presumed dead. Neither the body nor the liner itself has been found yet. Why the plane veered off course and what actually happened is still unknown. $200 million was spent searching for the liner. The result is just a few bags and debris that were discovered by accident.
Plane №404
Boeing model 777 turned out to be successful in all respects. The aircraft is still in stable demand (a new generation of co is being prepared for release), the liner is extremely reliable - the first serious incident with casualties occurred in 2013, 18 years after the start of operation. An Asiana Airlines plane crashed into an embankment in front of the runway at San Francisco Airport due to a crew error. The liner caught fire, but almost everyone survived - out of 307 people on board, three died.
Flight MH370 Kuala Lumpur - Beijing was a night flight: departure at about 0:30, and after almost six hours the travelers were already in the capital of China. In total, there were 227 passengers, the crew included 12 more people. The plane was flown by 53-year-old commander Zachary Ahmad Shah and co-pilot Farik Abdul Hamid (the guy is only 27 years old, but he managed to fly a Boeing 737 and Airbus A330, and now mastered the "three sevens").
Chronology of strange events
The liner broke away from the runway on March 8 at 0:41. Half an hour later, at 1:19 a.m., the controller at Kuala Lumpur Airport will receive the last voice message from the Boeing 777. Two minutes later, something strange happens. The transponder is turned off on the plane. The device constantly transmits up-to-date information to the radars - flight number, altitude, and so on. When the transponder is deactivated, the liner turns into an unidentified flying object for dispatchers: radars still display it, but it is not clear what kind of aircraft it is - just a dot on the screen without any information.
The transponder was turned off exactly at the right moment: the Boeing 777 left the airspace of Malaysia, it was supposed to be picked up by Vietnamese air traffic controllers, but they did not immediately come to their senses that they had missed the plane. In the meantime, the ship is changing direction and heading southwest, while the voyage is heading northeast. During the investigation, it will be established that the maneuver could not be performed by the autopilot - at least during the turn, the plane was under human control.
The liner came across the military radar of Thailand, but local dispatchers did not attach any importance to the unknown object. Later, they explained that the ship did not pose a threat to the country's airspace, so no one asked what kind of aircraft it was. Vietnamese civilian air traffic controllers realized only 12 minutes after the silence of MH370.
An hour after departure, another unusual thing happens: the ACARS system turns off. Once every 30 minutes, it sends through satellites a lot of technical data that airlines, aircraft manufacturers and Boeing 777 components need - the status of systems, on-board information, and so on. Controllers' attempts to contact MH370 failed.
By 2:40, Malaysia Airlines management receives bad news - the plane has disappeared, it is impossible to get in touch. Only in the morning, an hour after the Boeing 777 was supposed to land at Beijing airport, the airline announced the loss of flight MH370.
But even then the plane was still in the air. The satellites attempted to contact the aircraft for data exchange at 8:11 a.m. - apparently, the session failed due to the disconnected communication systems on the Boeing 777. Alas, there are not even approximate coordinates of the aircraft at the time of the attempt to contact the satellites. This would help narrow the search area: after seven hours in the air, the fuel was already running out, which means that the crash area should have been close to the satellite request site. In the following months, one of the largest search operations was launched, but it did not give anything at all. Rescuers studied tens of thousands of square kilometers of the surface of the Indian Ocean, but they could only say one thing: the plane was nowhere to be found.
The submarine was found, the plane was not
The first fragments of flight MH370 were found only by mid-summer 2015. Residents of the island of Reunion, which is located seven hundred kilometers from Madagascar, found several bags and a fragment of a wing called a flaperon. If travelers from a cruise ship theoretically could lose personal belongings, then the metal piece was clearly from an airplane, and a large one at that. Later, it was possible to confirm that the flaperon belongs to the missing Boeing 777. It would seem that a little more and the mystery will be solved: it is enough to study the currents to understand where the debris came from. But everything turned out to be more difficult.
At the end of the year before last, the young American company Ocean Infinity signed an agreement with the Malaysian Ministry of Transport: if the company's search vessel does not find MH370 in ninety days, then the specialists will not receive a reward; if the liner is discovered, Malaysia will pay the team $20-70 million, depending on a number of conditions. Ocean Infinity's motivation turned out to be serious, and so was the equipment - the company rented the Norwegian research vessel Seabed Constructor with top-end equipment, which is designed to study the seabed.
At first, the team planned to explore 25,000 square kilometers of the ocean, but at the end of the expedition, experts collected data from an area of 112,000 square kilometers. And not a trace of the Boeing 777. There are practically no clues left. However, there was one more chance to find the plane. A few weeks after the disappearance of MH370, the Chinese warship Haixun 01 picked up two signals on 37.5kHz, a frequency normally used by black boxes. Moreover, about 90 kilometers from the ship, there were some white objects on the surface of the water. Last summer, Ocean Infinity set out to explore the area, but there was no more news - it looks like another dead end.
But the company was lucky to solve another puzzle: Ocean Infinity was able to find the San Juan submarine, which disappeared with the entire crew (44 people) a year earlier. The submarine rests at a depth of 920 meters, 600 kilometers east of the coast of Argentina, all people on board are declared dead. Apparently, finding the Boeing 777 has become a matter of principle for Ocean Infinity: the company said it was ready to continue the search. The team plans to explore the new location using underwater drones that will scan the bottom in search of the liner.
"Designated" culprit
Along with the crash site of the Boeing 777, another question haunts investigators: what really happened. The loss of such an aircraft before March 8, 2014 seemed impossible. Yes, there have been cases of disappearances without a trace in history, but not a liner 63 meters long and not in the 21st century. The main version of aviation experts who studied the mystery of the flight revolves around the hijacking. This theory explains the main mystery: why the transponder and ACARS turned off in the plane, it turned around and flew like a ghost for about another seven hours.
But even here, not everything is unambiguous: after all, no one put forward demands and did not take responsibility for what happened. Let's say a plane was hijacked by terrorists, the passengers and crew intervened, and the hijackers had to give up some primary target just to crash the plane—as was the case with United Airlines Flight 93 during the September 11, 2001 attacks. However, there are questions to the chronology: the liner was in the air for about seven hours, and no one tried to get in touch by, for example, a satellite phone. Based on this, some experts came to the most unpleasant theory for everyone - the plane was hijacked by the crew.
Suspicion first fell on the commander and co-pilot. The fact is that only two minutes passed between the last phrase (said in a normal, calm voice without signs of excitement) from the Boeing 777 and the turn of the liner 180 degrees. It is unlikely that the invaders could so accurately guess the moment of farewell to the dispatcher and the hijacking of the ship. The trajectory of the aircraft's maneuvers indicates that the aircraft was flown by a professional pilot. Investigators studied the biographies of the passengers - none of them had a license to fly. At the same time, it turned out that two Iranians were traveling with forged documents. But the detectives did not find any links to the terrorists - probably the people were just illegal migrants.
According to one of them, the plane was hijacked by the commander - Zahari Ahmad Shah. In the foreign press, pilots hypothesized that programming the aircraft navigation system (FMS) for manually placed latitude and longitude points, on which liners do not fly (to the south of the Indian Ocean), was more likely to be within the power of Shah, and not young Farik Abdul Hamid. There were also rumors about the commander's family problems and his passion for girls, if you can call compliments on social networks that way.
However, it was not possible to "appoint" the culprit: the investigation report states that nothing negative was found in relation to the commander and co-pilot. Shah's family and relatives all the time declared the innocence of the PIC, and at the moment the reasons for the crash have not yet been officially established. At the same time, experts are hinting that although they are not blaming anyone, the main fact cannot be ignored: a random person could not turn off the transponder and ACARS, as well as set a new route - this was definitely done by an experienced pilot.
What do the debris point to?
From time to time there are "sensational finds in Google Maps": for example, MH370 was allegedly found in the jungles of Cambodia. But this is difficult to take seriously: the satellite was just lucky to take a photo at the moment when a large liner was flying over the thickets.
Also, experts do not have a common opinion about the cause of the plane crash. Experts agree that the liner has worked out all the fuel. Then the disagreements begin. According to one version, the unmanned liner went into the ocean with its nose down. During the fall from a height of 10-11 thousand meters, the Boeing 777 would gain tremendous speed. Hitting the water in this case would destroy the aircraft to the smallest detail.
But the fragments thrown to the coast of Reunion are quite large. It is unlikely that the same flaperon, about two meters in size, would have survived a vertical impact on the water (unless it came off due to overloads during a dive). Therefore, now they began to talk about a different version of the last minutes of the liner: the plane was smoothly descending at low speed, as if landing on water. Who in this case ran the liner, it is not clear.
Wreckage that may belong to flight MH370 continues to be found: last December, a piece of the floor of a Boeing 777 and several other fragments were noticed off the coast of Madagascar. But Malaysia has not yet resumed active searches: the government requires weighty leads before giving millions again. Before the discovery of new debris, investigators are unlikely to be able to get close to the solution.
