Disappearance of the Boeing 777-200ER

On March 8th, it has been 10 years since one of the most mysterious events in aviation history – the disappearance of the Boeing 777-200ER airliner operated by Malaysia Airlines. On that day in 2014, the aircraft was flying Flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China. The aircraft had been in service for almost 12 years, accumulating 53,465 hours of flight time. According to Malaysia Airlines, it was in good condition, having undergone routine maintenance less than two weeks before its last flight. The highly experienced crew was led by Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, who had been with the airline for 33 years and had accumulated over 18,400 flying hours, nearly 8,700 of which were on the Boeing 777.

Flight MH370 took off at 00:42 local time. There were 239 people on board (227 passengers and 12 crew members). At 01:19, the crew made their last contact with ground services, and two minutes later, the aircraft disappeared from radar screens, with its transponders likely deliberately turned off. At that time, the Boeing was transitioning from Malaysian to Vietnamese airspace. Vietnamese air traffic controllers attempted to establish contact with the aircraft for another 17 minutes, but received no response. Further attempts to establish communication using various means, including satellite phones, were also unsuccessful. Malaysia Airlines officially announced the disappearance of the aircraft at 07:24. A large-scale search operation involving rescuers and military personnel from 26 countries began four hours later. It lasted for over a month but ended without success.

Subsequent attempts to locate the crash site proved futile. It wasn't until July 2015 that a flaperon from the missing Boeing was accidentally found washed ashore on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean, 4,000 kilometers from where communication with Flight MH370 was lost. Later, several more debris pieces were found on other islands in the Indian Ocean and the African coastline.

The investigative commission worked for over four years. They believed that after losing communication, the aircraft remained airborne for nearly 7 more hours until it ran out of fuel. It was speculated that the aircraft turned and flew towards Africa rather than China. The exact location of its crash in the Indian Ocean was attempted to be determined through computer modeling, but the vast number of possible flight paths led to a huge search area. The commission did not determine what actually happened to the Boeing. However, they stated that the available evidence "irrefutably indicates unlawful interference, resulting in the systems being manually turned off, and the aircraft being manually diverted." The commission rejected the suicide theory involving any of the pilots.