Netflix documentary ‘MH370: The Plane That Disappeared’ explained

Malaysian flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing on March 8, 2014, but never landed. The MH370, instead, vanished into thin air and was never found. No one knows what happened to it even nine years after it mysteriously disappeared. Now a Netflix documentary tries to explore what might have happened to the plane and all the theories about the mysterious disappearance of MH370. The Netflix documentary, ‘MH370: The Plane That Disappeared’, looks at theories and discoveries that were reportedly brushed aside.

The Boeing 777 with 239 people on board took off from Kuala Lumpur at 12:41 am local time and around three minutes later lost all contact with air traffic control radar. Officials said the plane’s transponder was turned off over the South China Sea by either the pilot or the co-pilot. A military radar still tracked it and according to data, it took a sudden diversion from the route and leaving its northeastern course, it started heading to the west towards the Malay peninsula.

The last voice contact was at 1:19 am Malaysian Standard Time, and at 2:22 am, about 230 miles from Penang, it disappeared. The biggest aviation mystery led to the biggest search operation ranging years but never reaching any conclusive end. Despite extensive search operations, the MH370 was never found. Some claims about the MH370 debris washing ashore did pop up now and then, but there was never any conclusive evidence or claims that the debris actually was of MH370. No dead bodies were found either and neither was the plane’s black box. The final commission report said that experts were “unable to determine the real cause for the disappearance”. The crash location was also never confirmed.

Cyndi Hendry, who worked for Tomnod, a satellite imagery company, says in the Netflix series that she was randomly assigned satellite imagery by Tomnod. She says that she saw what supposedly was the MH370 debris in the South China Sea, miles from the search area. She quickly matched the shapes to the design of a Boeing 777.

Hendry reached out to Malaysia Airlines and others with her discovery, but they did not take it seriously.

‘The satellite images were empty. It was just the blackness of the sea. Then you press next, more black scans. So much black. And then finally, there’s something white,” she said.

The Netflix documentary covers three theories in three episodes.

The Russian hijackers: Journalist Jeff Wise, supposedly known for controversial theories, suggests that three Russian passengers, who were seated close to an electrical hatch, managed to create a distraction and entered the deck and took control of the plane. They then took the plane to the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan. However, Malaysia Airlines’ former crisis director, Fuad Sharuji, doesn’t see any credibility in the theory.

Did the Americans intercept the flight?

This theory suggests that the Americans intercepted MH370 as it was carrying a huge amount of electronics. US military was at that time training in the South China Sea and some say MH370 was shot down there.

French journalist Florence de Changy says MH370 had 2.5 tonnes of electronic devices on board. “It’s public knowledge that China was very eager to acquire highly sensitive US technology in the field of surveillance, stealth, drone technology,” she said.

Did MH370 pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah crash the plane?

The theory suggests that Shah deliberately crashed the plane into the Indian Ocean to commit mass murder-suicide. What lent the theory credibility was the evidence found at Shah’s home. Researchers discovered data on a flight simulator at Shah’s home that was used to fly a similar diverted course a month before the incident. The simulator showed the flight path into the Southern Ocean with a simulated landing on an island with a small runway.

Others say that Shah had been displaying “strange behaviour” before the flight. He was reportedly upset and some owed it to reports that his wife and three children had moved out of his house just a day before the disappearance.

Journalist Wise’s proposed timeline of events suggests that Shah ended contact with air traffic control and later established contact with Vietnam. He then gets his co-pilot to leave the cockpit on some pretext, locks the door and disables electronics to make the plane disappear on the radar. He then begins de-pressurising the cabin. “He turns the plane to the south and he flies straight into the darkness, waiting for his fuel to run out,” says Wise. “After six hours of flight, the engines stop running, he pushes the nose down, and he starts to slide into a dive.”

However, the final report found no evidence to blame Shah. Harry Hewland, the producer of the Netflix documentary on MH370, says, “More than anything, we want to pull the hidden truths about MH370 out from the carpet under which they’ve been swept, and remind people that this is still a story with no ending, a mystery that hasn’t been solved, that somebody out there knows more than the world has been told.” (Agencies)

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