A ceremony to mark the tenth anniversary of the disappearance of the Malaysian airliner in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, March 3, 2024/Reuters
At 01:19, exactly ten years ago, the last contact with Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was lost in the skies over the South China Sea, just 39 minutes after it took off from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and began to deviate from its original route.
The 239 passengers of the plane, from 15 different countries, disappeared as if they were not there.
The disappearance of the Malaysian plane - a decade of searches
"Good night from Malaysia three seven zero", was the last communication call of the pilot to the mornings in Kuala Lumpur.
When the plane entered Vietnamese airspace, controllers in Ho Chi Minh City were unable to make contact with it.
Minutes later, the plane's transmitter - a communication system that transmits the plane's location to air traffic control - went off.
Military radar picked up the plane and retraced it flying over the Andaman Sea before disappearing completely, and satellite data showed it continued to fly for additional hours.
What happened to that flight has since remained a mystery, one of the biggest in the history of world aviation.
Many hypotheses and conspiracy theories emerged one after the other, but extensive searches made over the years did not contribute to dispelling the mystery
What happened to that flight has since remained a mystery, one of the biggest in the history of world aviation.
Many hypotheses and conspiracy theories emerged one after the other, but extensive searches made over the years did not contribute to dispelling the mystery.
This week, ahead of the tenth anniversary of the disappearance of the Boeing 777, it was said in Malaysia that a new search operation may be launched soon.
The previous ones shed very little new light on the affair.
French police examine the remains of the Malaysian plane found in the Indian Ocean, August 2015/Reuters
The first phase of the search began immediately with the disappearance of the plane, and lasted 52 days, most of it from the air.
During this time, the patrol planes covered 1.7 million square miles in 334 search missions.
Later, the search moved to the bottom of the Indian Ocean, but in January 2017 the governments of Malaysia, China and Australia announced their cessation.
46 thousand square miles were scanned by various vessels, at a cost of 150 million dollars.
A year later, the Malaysian government began another operation, in cooperation with the Ocean Infinity company, following pressure from the families of the passengers and crew members of the plane.
Disappointingly, months of underwater scanning turned up pottery.
The fate of the plane remains a mystery.
About 20 remains, believed to be of the plane, were located on the coast of Africa and the islands of Madagascar, Mauritius, Réunion and Rodrigues.
In the summer of 2015, investigators determined that a large object that washed ashore on Reunion, a French island in the Indian Ocean, was a wing shelf from a Boeing 777, so they estimated with high probability that it belonged to the Malaysian plane.
Australian search teams during the search for the Malaysian plane, April 11, 2014/Reuters
Another relic, a triangular piece of fiberglass with the inscription "No Step" on its side, was found in February 2016 on a strand off the coast of Mozambique.
In September of that year, the Australian government confirmed that a wing flap that washed up on a Tanzanian island was indeed from Flight 370.
The theories that have come up over the years regarding the plane's disappearance have been numerous, and some have sailed into rather bizarre regions.
They ranged from the loss of fuel, to the pilots' attempt to make an emergency landing at sea, to the intentional crash of one of the pilots.
There were those who believed that the plane had even been hijacked.
An official 495-page investigative report published in 2018 did not give clear answers regarding the fate of the plane, much to the chagrin of the families begging for a shred of information about their loved ones.
Kok Soo Choon, head of Malaysia's safety investigation team, said the evidence investigators had - including the plane's manual deviation from its flight path and the transmitter being turned off - clearly pointed to "unlawful interference", which could suggest the plane had been hijacked.
But there was no evidence to explain who intervened, or why.
The control room of the "Inmarest" company that located the Malaysian plane.
London, March 2014/Reuters
The report also closely examined all the passengers and the pilot, Zahari Ahmad Shah, and the co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hameed.
The report examined the economic situation of the men, their health, their tone of voice in radio communication and even their going to work that day.
No anomalies were discovered, and no ransom demand was ever received.
The prime ministers of Australia and Malaysia at the time said in 2020 that the possibility that Shah committed suicide was never ruled out throughout the investigation.
However, the pilot's wife angrily denied any personal problems, while other family and friends said he was a devoted family man who loved his job.
Other conspiracy theories speculated that the plane may have been shot down by the US military because it was approaching an American base in the area or because it was carrying sophisticated electronic equipment destined for China.
Others pointed to Russian President Vladimir Putin as the person who may have ordered the hijacking and landing of the plane.
Any of the theories, put forward by journalists or writers, are unfounded and have not been investigated by official bodies.
Will the search resume?
On the 10th anniversary of the tragedy, Malaysian officials said this week that the government was ready to discuss a new search operation after receiving a request from Ocean Infinity, which was involved in the initial search.
Oliver Plunkett, CEO of Ocean Infinity, said in a statement that the company is now in a position to search again some six years after its previous effort yielded no answers
. Plunkett.
"We have worked with many experts, some outside of Ocean Infinity to continue to analyze the data in hopes of narrowing down the search area to an area where there is a good chance of success."
Relatives of the passengers of the Malaysian plane gather to mark the tenth anniversary of its disappearance, March 3, 2024/Reuters
The relatives of the passengers hope that a new search operation has indeed been launched.
VPR Nathan, whose wife Ann Daisy was on the flight, said the company's offer - that it would not be paid if nothing was found - was welcome.
"We want the operation to continue, but we have to be realistic. We can't expect the government to spend billions on the search," Nathan said.
Jiang Hui, a Chinese citizen whose mother was on flight MH370, called on the Malaysian authorities to provide the relatives with the most up-to-date information they have.
"As long as there is communication, we can avoid misunderstanding," said Jiang, who is among the family members who filed a lawsuit in China demanding compensation for the plane's disappearance.
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