MH370 theories: Conspiracies about what happened to missing plane

A void resulting from a lack of official answers has been filled by countless theories — some plausable and others highly controversial and conspiratorial.

Today, as the world looks back on the greatest aviation mystery of our time, we examine the theories that have kept the story in the headlines for a decade.

What we know about that fateful day

It was just before 12.45am local time when Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah piloted Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 into the air above Kuala Lumpur.

The flight was headed for Beijing, China, but as it prepared to exit Malaysian airspace over the South China Sea, something went horribly wrong.

“Good night, Malaysian 370,” Shah told air traffic controllers. He was not heard from again.

All radar contact was lost within 30 minutes and the 239 people on board vanished without a trace.

Today, speaking about the mystery, Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong again sent sympathies to families of loves ones of those still missing.

“We recognise their ongoing heartache and grief without the answers they seek,” they said in a joint statement.

“Australia stands ready to assist the Malaysian Government if it considers that Australian agencies are able to offer technical information as a result of their involvement in previous searches.”

A deliberate act by the pilot

One of the most prolific theories in the early years after MH370’s disappearance centred around a deliberate act by Captain Shah.

The Malaysian national was a celebrated pilot with more than 30 years of experience.

But there was an allegation that in the months before the plane vanished he had used a simulator to ditch a plane in the southern Indian Ocean.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which was part of the initial investigation, said in a report that “the simulator information shows only the possibility of planning”.

The ATSB continued: “It does not reveal what happened on the night of its disappearance nor where the aircraft is located,” the statement read.

“While the FBI data provides a piece of information, the best available evidence of the aircraft’s location is based on what we know from the last satellite communications with the aircraft.”

The theory that Shah was behind a murder-suicide had been dismissed by the Malaysian Government which said neither the pilot or his first officer Fariq Abdul Hamid showed psychological signs that could lead them to deliberately ditch the plane in the sea.

“We have examined the pilot and the first officer and we are quite satisfied with their background, with their training, with their mental health,” the lead investigator said.

Cockpit turned into ‘a killing machine’

Former Qantas captain Mike Glynn is not among those convinced of the pilot’s innocence.

In an interview for the Sky News documentary MH370: Ten Years On, which aired last month, Mr Glynn said that it would have been easy and fast to take everybody out with the flick of a switch.

“How do you lock the door (to the cockpit)?” host Peter Stefanovic asked. “Is that tricky?”

Mr Glynn told him it is easy — and “designed to keep people out”.

“The door will automatically close, and you can lock it by this switch here,” Mr Glynn said, pointing at a knob inside a cockpit.

“And you can also, there’s a manual deadbolt that prohibits any sort of entry into the flight deck.”

Stefanovic asked him how easy it is to “cut off the oxygen supply and incapacitate, or even kill, the passengers on board”.

“When you open these valves, the aircraft depressurises very quickly,” Mr Glynn said while pointing to the outflow valves which controls the release of air to pressurise the cabin.

“If the aircraft’s not going to descend, you’ll start to feel very hypoxic within three or four minutes.”

Stefanovic suggested the cockpit can be turned into “a killing machine”.

“Yep, it’s not meant to do that, but yes, exactly,” Mr Glynn responded.

Hypoxia theory emerged early

A 2014 report by the ATSB pointed to the possibility of hypoxia.

“Given these observations, the final stages of the unresponsive crew/hypoxia event type appeared to best fit the available evidence for the final period of MH370’s flight when it was heading in a generally southerly direction,” the report said.

Other theories have been more outlandish, including one from co-host of the Deep Dive MH370 podcast Jeff Wise.

Speaking to GB News this week, he said it would be impossible to rule out the possibility that hackers took control of the plane.

“Looking at the data that was sent by an automatic satellite communication system on board the planes, it tells us that the plane either went north or went south,” he said.

“What has become more and more apparent is that this plane had a cyber security vulnerability. This is something that at the time, nobody was thinking about. Aviation has been historically very concerned with safety. That means making sure that things don’t break, making sure that planes don’t collide.

“There’s been very little attention paid to security, meaning how do you make sure that malevolent attackers don’t get into your system?

“So, when it was built in the 90s, there were no passwords, no security, there’s an unlocked hatch into the electronics bay. So, someone could have hacked this plane.”

The US-based science journalist went a step further, suggesting that it could have been hacked by Russians.

Wise wrote that there were three Russian passengers on board MH370 and that all of them were in seats not far from an electrical hatch.

His theory goes something like this: Two of them could have created a diversion while the other remotely took control of the flight.

A French reporter who spent years investigating the peculiar case claims the Malaysia Airlines plane was brought down by the US government, alleging the entire mystery surrounding the missing aircraft had been manufactured to hide the truth.

In a 400-page book, The Disappearing Act: The Impossible Case of MH370, she makes a number of claims against the US, insisting its military used advanced jamming technology to make the 777 aircraft invisible to nearby radars before shooting it down.

Mrs de Changy, who works as a correspondent for French newspaper Le Monde, claims the US had tried to re-route the flight in order to seize “highly sensitive” technology before it landed in Beijing.

According to the long-time investigative reporter, it was “simply not possible for a Boeing 777 to have disappeared” and that many of the theories currently held by the public are misguided.

She claims disinformation was intentionally distributed by governments tied to the flight’s disappearance – including Australia, France and the UK among others – in a bid to help the US hide their supposed attack.

The search for the MH370 has become the most expensive in aviation history. It is also currently the most deadly incident involving a 777, with the entire 239 passengers and crew assumed dead.

Malaysia ‘happy to reopen’ search

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said Monday he would be “happy to reopen” the search for flight MH370 if “compelling” evidence emerged, opening the door to a renewed hunt a decade after the plane disappeared.

“If there is compelling evidence that it needs to be reopened, we will certainly be happy to reopen it,” he said when asked about the matter during a visit to Melbourne.

— with Alex Blair and AFP