The disappearance of flight MH370 of the Malaysian airline Malaysia Airlines marks its tenth anniversary this Friday
without having solved
one of the
greatest mysteries in the history of aviation
, although the few existing clues point to it crashing in the Indian Ocean.
There were no official events to mark ten years since the Boeing 777 tragedy in which 239 people were traveling, although thirty relatives of the victims demonstrated in Beijing in front of the Malaysian Embassy to demand answers.
For 10 years, two words have haunted them: "We lost contact."
That's what the airline told Li Eryou.
His son Yanlin was on board.
"For years I've been asking, what do you mean by 'we lost contact'? It seems to me that if you lose contact with someone, you should be able to reconnect with them," Li told the BBC.
Relatives of the passengers in Beijing, this Friday.
Photo: GREG BAKER / AFP
He and his wife, Liu Shuangfeng, farmers in a village south of Beijing, have struggled to make sense of what has become this major mystery in aviation history.
Some of the relatives gathered this Friday in Beijing shouted slogans such as
"Malaysia, give me back my relative"
and "We will not accept reconciliation until we see our relatives."
Some of the relatives gathered this Friday in Beijing shouted slogans such as "Malaysia, give me back my relative."
Photo: GREG BAKER / AFP
The Australian Government took advantage of the anniversary to announce that it is willing to provide help to Malaysia if this country
decides to resume the search for the plane,
which disappeared about
40 minutes after taking off
from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing on March 8, 2014.
Canberra's offer comes after Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said on Monday during an official visit to the Australian city of Melbourne that his country is willing to
reopen the investigation into MH370 if there is "a compelling case." .
Some relatives of the victims, who held a commemoration event in Malaysia last Sunday, have welcomed the possibility of the search resuming with optimism, as
they want the plane to be found and what happened explained.
How flight MH370 disappeared
The disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 has been explained through various unproven hypotheses ranging from a probable accident in the Indian Ocean due to a technical failure to a possible shootdown caused by the pilot.
On board were
153 Chinese, 50 Malaysians
(12 were part of the crew), seven Indonesians, six Australians, five Indians, four French, three Americans, two New Zealanders, two Ukrainians, two Canadians, one Russian, one Dutch, one Taiwanese and two Iranians.
On March 8, 2014, less than an hour into
a routine night flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing
, the pilot said goodnight to Malaysian air traffic control.
Flight MH370 disappeared when, upon leaving Malaysian airspace and entering Vietnam, someone in the cockpit
manually turned off the communications system
and the transponder signal was lost.
The evidence available so far is 27 recovered pieces.
Photo: Reuters
Shortly thereafter,
the plane changed course manually
- not mechanically or on autopilot - by making
a sharp left turn
and heading back southwest over the Malaysian peninsula, then turning again and
finally leave the radar zone.
According to the official investigation, the plane
flew for about 6 more hours towards the Indian Ocean
until supposedly running out of fuel and falling into the water, somewhere in the ocean.
The evidence available so far is
27 pieces recovered
from the beaches of Reunion, Mozambique, Mauritius, South Africa and the island of Pemba (Zanzibar),
only three of them belonging "with certainty" to the device.
French gendarmes mark areas on a map to investigate in the search for remains of flight MH370 in La Réunion.
Photo: AFP
The search led by Malaysia, China and Australia between 2014 and 2017, which covered
some 4 million square kilometers of sea surface
and 120,000 square kilometers of sea floor in the Indian Ocean, and a second attempt in 2018 by the company Ocean Infinity
failed to locate the plane.
However, Ocean Infinity, based in the United States, and the also American Deep Sea Vision, have shown their interest in carrying out a new search
based on new analyzes
of the possible whereabouts of the plane, according to the Australian network ABC.
With information from EFE and BBC News