MH370 (Pt. 1)

the story

The date was March 8th, 2014. The time was 12:40 AM in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

At Kuala Lumpur’s international airport, Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 (MH370) is about to take off. This trip was a scheduled international passenger flight operating a Boeing 777-200ER¹, registered as 9M-MRO. The aircraft, delivered in 2002, had a clean maintenance record and was considered airworthy. The flight was commanded by Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah (53), a veteran pilot with 18,423 flight hours, including 8,659 on the Boeing 777. The first officer, Fariq Abdul Hamid (27) had 2,763 flight hours and had recently completed training to co-pilot the 777. The passenger manifest included 153 Chinese nationals, 38 Malaysians, 7 Indonesians, 6 Australians, and others from countries including France, the United States, and Canada. All together, the aircraft carried 12 crew and 227 passengers. The cargo included 10,806 kg of freight, primarily electronics and lithium-ion batteries, all of which were compliant with safety regulations.

MH370 departed Kuala Lumpur Intl.’s 32R runway at 12:41 a.m. local time on March 8, 2014, under clear weather conditions and good night visibility. The flight was cleared to climb to 35,000 feet and follow a standard northeast route toward Beijing, crossing the South China Sea and entering Vietnamese airspace. The departure was unremarkable, with routine communications between the cockpit and Kuala Lumpur air traffic control (ATC). At 12:46 a.m., the aircraft was instructed to contact Ho Chi Minh City ATC as it approached the boundary between Malaysian and Vietnamese airspace. This is a standard procedure; often referred to as “handing off” the aircraft from one control tower to another, typically across international borders.

At 1:19 a.m., as MH370 approached the IGARI² waypoint near the boundary of Malaysian and Vietnamese airspace, Captain Zaharie transmitted the final recorded message to Kuala Lumpur ATC: “Good night Malaysian three seven zero.”
This standard sign-off indicated the crew was preparing to switch to Ho Chi Minh City ATC, as the aircraft was about to enter Vietnamese airspace. The tone was calm, with no signs of distress or irregularity.

Within two minutes, at approximately 1:21 a.m., the aircraft’s transponder, which broadcasts its position, altitude, and identification code via Secondary Surveillance Radar (SSR)³, ceased transmitting. This caused MH370 to disappear from civilian ATC radar screens, which rely on transponder signals to track aircraft. MH370 also left the radio channel early. This was not immediately flagged by Kuala Lumpur ATC, as the handoff to Vietnamese controllers was expected, and minor delays in communication will often take place.

At the same time, the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS)⁴, which transmits maintenance and performance data from the aircraft, had stopped sending updates earlier, around 1:07 a.m. This was again not noticed in real-time, as ACARS transmissions are not continuously monitored by ATC. The disabling of ACARS, followed by the transponder, marked the beginning of MH370’s mysterious deviation from its planned course.

Civilian radar lost track of MH370 as soon as the airplane’s SSR ceased to transmit. Like I mentioned, no one caught this for around ten minutes, which seems like an abnormally large amount of time to miss an aircraft that should be on your radar screen. Even the slightest disappearance should have been legitimate reason for concern; yet the flight vanished for around 10 minutes before anyone noticed it was gone.

However, Malaysian military radar continued to track the aircraft because their system doesn’t rely on transponders to detect flying objects such as planes or missiles. Because of this, we know that at approximately 1:30 a.m., an unidentified aircraft—later confirmed as MH370—deviated from its assigned flight path and executed a sharp left turn at the IGARI waypoint, heading west instead of continuing straight northeast toward Beijing. This shift took the aircraft back across the Malay Peninsula, passing near Penang at an altitude of approximately 35,000 feet. Records show that military radar tracked the aircraft until 2:15 a.m., when it was last detected over the Strait of Malacca, near the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, where they finally lost all radar contact due to range.

This turn at the IGARI waypoint was extremely important for a number of reasons:

First, it looks like it wasn’t a random drift but far more of a precise maneuver, following later navigational waypoints such as VAMPI, GIVAL, and IGREX, suggesting either manual piloting or a reprogrammed autopilot.⁵
Second, the turn required active control inputs, ruling out simple autopilot errors. Third, the aircraft maintained a steady altitude and speed, indicating no immediate mechanical distress. The Malaysian military did not alert civilian authorities immediately, later citing protocol and the assumption that the unidentified aircraft was not a threat, a fact that is not only very hard to grant credence to; but was also criticized in later investigation reports of the incident.

Around 1:38 a.m., Ho Chi Minh ATC contacted Kuala Lumpur to ask where exactly MH370 was, due to not having received any communication from the flight. The two control towers talked for about 20 minutes, trying to figure out where the plane had gone. At some point, the Ho Chi Minh ATC discovered via military sources that MH370 had entered into Cambodian airspace, completely deviating from its flight path. Ho Chi Minh related these details to Kuala Lumpur, who in turn confirmed them with the Malaysian Airlines Operations Center, now keyed in and also trying to make contact with the aircraft. Despite this, no one was able to establish contact with MH370 or find a reason that it would have strayed so far from its assigned flight path. Ho Chi Minh ATC then proceeded to contact Cambodian controllers and alert them of the issue. The Cambodian controllers also began trying to communicate with the rogue aircraft; without success.

This kind of back-and-forth continued for around four hours between the Malaysian Airlines Ops Center, Kuala Lumpur ATC, Ho Chi Minh ATC, and Phnom Penh ATC in Cambodia. Finally, someone on the Kuala Lumpur end contacted Malaysian search & rescue authorities. Around 5:35 a.m. local time the search for the missing aircraft began. This continued for a little over an hour before Malaysian Airlines officially announced they had lost all communication with the aircraft. Everyone was just beginning to recognize how serious this disappearance was.

A while after the final ACARS transmission, the aircraft’s onboard satellite comms systems attempted to reboot after their initial disable. This reboot was relayed by satellite to a ground station operated by Inmarsat.⁶ The comms system inside of the plane logged onto Inmarsat’s network and remained in it for seven hours. Because of this, we can know that the plane was still in the air and operating as of about 8:10 a.m. This is extremely close to the time at which the flight would have run out of fuel, so we can assume that it lasted at least that long. And according to Inmarsat data, the last ping sent from the aircraft showed it somewhere over the Southern Indian Ocean.

And that’s all we know. Since then, no one has ever heard anything from the missing aircraft. It quite literally vanished into thin air. Despite over ten years of searching and hundreds of millions of dollars spent, no wreckage has ever been found, nor has anyone ever gained a clearer idea of what happened to the ill-fated flight. Two weeks after MH370 disappeared, the Malaysian prime minister (Najib Razak) stated that the flight had most likely been lost at sea for unknown reasons. A full year later, the missing aircraft was finally declared an accident and all passengers and crew assumed deceased. As of June 1st, 2025, the search still continues. And remains the most mysterious aviation accident of all time. Airliners don’t just vanish. They’re always eventually found, even in the middle of the ocean.

But nothing has ever been found from MH370.

Why? No one knows. But hopefully this investigative series can shed a little light in the coming weeks on what made 239 people and a 300,000 ton aircraft completely disappear in Southeast Asia…….without a trace.

1. The B777 is a standard, wide-body passenger jet used by many airlines.

2. In order to keep commercial flights following specific routes, there are waypoints for heavily-traveled flight paths. Each of them has a location and a required altitude for the aircraft. Airliners will travel in a line along these waypoints, hitting each one and maintaining the correct altitude. This not only serves the purpose of keeping them on track; but also demonstrates to ATC that the aircraft has not gone rogue.

3. SSR is a radar method that requires the aircraft to transmit a radio signal to the receiving control tower in order to see a location; as opposed to radar emitted by ground stations that bounces off the aircraft to provide a location.

4. This is an automatic digital link from the aircraft to ground stations owned by the airline that is primarily used to maintain status updates on engine performance, oil temperatures, fuel levels, etc.

5. Properly functioning autopilots don’t have the ability to make judgements on anything important to navigation, such as changing heading or direction like MH370 did. That would require explicit input from the pilots. And while it’s possible the autopilot could malfunction and cause a change like that; there are many failsafes in place to prevent it. Add to that the complete lack of precedent for autopilot malfunctions that resulted in navigational changes, and it makes the theory very unlikely.

6. Inmarsat is a British satellite telecommunications provider used by many airlines, including Malaysian.