Aesha Desai - The In Flight Nightmare

The In-Flight Nightmare

            As if flying wasn’t already scary before. To make matters worse, a seemingly normal airline craft suddenly vanishes in thin air, leaving the public with a puzzling mystery behind. The suspicious pilot, Zarahi Shah, along with other hair-raising aspects of the case give light to some of these conspiracies:

1.      The pilot Zarahi Shah was suicidal

2.      Hijacking gone wrong

3.      Failed emergency landing  

Let’s dig a little deeper into the mystery that is widely known as the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 and find out what really happened to the aircraft and hundreds of passengers on board.

Mr. Shah was born in Penang, Malaysia, a city that served as the “export production hub” and engulfed in a very urban lifestyle imitating that of Miami, Los Angeles, and other well-known cities (Athukorala). He was brought up with a good family and good morals which he used to his advantage when he applied for a job in Malaysian Airlines. He went on to get his pilot's license and joined the Malaysian Airlines company which supported his hobbies for aviation throughout his early childhood. Once he got his license, Shah was apparently logging in flight hours like no other. By the time he was “53 years old, he had been working with the airlines for about 33 years” (Langewiesche). So, to understand more about what exactly it took to obtain a job at Malaysian Airlines, you have to start at the beginning; the job. According to “Malaysian Airlines,” they are “among the few airlines to have won both a Skytrax five-star rating and World's Best Cabin Crew award “(Careers)”. The Sky-Trax award is an award given to airlines and various airports that mark the airlines as giving the highest form of quality and service to their customers. To even be nominated to be awarded a Skytrax award is phenomenal. Wouldn’t Malaysian Airlines have to be a high functioning airport to even be awarded it? How good does their service have to prove themselves to be? What about the cabin crew? Or even better, the pilots themselves?  The job application itself seems to be thorough to even get a chance at a preliminary interview. The application asks the number and fluency level of each language the applicant known as well as previous organization work or training in the past. It continues to ask about the applicant’s “criminal background” and questions about family run-ins with the law (Careers).  Not only does Malaysian Airlines choose their employees meticulously but it would take a hell of a qualification along with recommendation letters that would place an applicant as an employee. Mr. Shah did not only reach those requirements but also was deemed fit to become a “Type Rate Instructor” who helped in the training of other incoming pilots (Birchall).  He had “logged over 18,00 hours” of flight time and kept his track record clean as a whistle (BBC). Not only was Mr. Shah qualified in his career, but in his home life as well. He enjoyed several hobbies that show that he liked to keep his mind busy while not working. He enjoyed cooking and trying new recipes for his wife and three kids. He enjoyed “fishing” and had even “built his own in-home flight simulator” that he had showed to his wife and kids for his love for aviation as well as keeping himself occupied (Mohney). This itself showed that Shah was a skilled and educated individual not only in his professional life but in his home life as well.

            Zaharie Shah also did not exactly live the life of a model citizen outside of his hobbies as well as his career. He frequently spent time on social media (specifically Facebook) and would send out his hatred comments for the Government as well as disturbing comments on individuals, photos. After a further look into his Facebook page, experts uncovered two twin sisters by the names of “Lan Qi Hui and Qi Min Lan” who Shah used to stalk and send “disturbing messages” on his page (Chapman). His page examination results were the following:

His 97 Facebook messages have been revealed as psychologists claim he was “self-destructive.” He sent the Malaysian twin sisters sexually suggestive messages. On One occasion he commented under a picture of Qi Min Lan in a bathrobe with the comment: “Just Showered?” He repeatedly asked the girls when they were coming to his hometown, despite being ignored. Zaharie also used his Facebook to call Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak a “moron”.  He also slammed the Government which owned the airline he flew for. Zaharie urged his followers; “There is a rebel in each and every one of us. Let it out!” Aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas said he should have been fired for his political rants. He told Australia’s Daily Telegraph: “It should have raised serious alarm bells with the airline that you have someone flying with such strong anti-government views. “If a Qantas pilot did something like that, he would be spoken to and grounded “(Birchall)”.

According to the police report that was released by police officers as well as investigators from scanning every bit of Shah’s life they had found pretty damning evidence into is dark life on social media that not even his wife would have known about. The books that were recovered from Shah’s online reading showed that he was mostly attracted to books concerning “science fiction” which experts believe he made into his own reality. Most were books that turned towards the Government and imposed a country’s downfall. It was also found in Shah’s deleted information; a “Twin Towers” file which showed a simulation of a plane crashing into the tower of “Kuala Lumpur and KLCC” (RMP).

            Due to all the signs pointing towards Shah being a good family man as well as an enraged and shady civilian, experts can’t even conclude what his real identity was. Was he a good family man who was just passionate and curious about flying or was he a dark and twisted man who used his career as a front for his anger towards himself as well as the Malaysian Government? As investigators dig deeper into the life of Zaharie Ahmed Shah, they keep unfolding papers neatly tucked away into the pockets of social media, his friends, and personal belongings. The world may never know who exactly Shah made himself out to be.

There are many explanations for the various ways Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 could have gone. Of those various ways, three conspiracies catch the eye of many. Two point to an intentional plane hijacking and suicide mission of either the pilot or a third party and the other points to faulty equipment by the airlines.

            The first conspiracy revolves around the possibility that the pilot Zaharie Ahmed Shah was suicidal and that he intended for the plane to crash as well as the passengers on board to die as a result of it. According to flight records, the flight departed at “12:41 AM local time” (Gregersen). At around 1:00 AM, the ACARS (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System) system was switched off along with the transponder system just a few moments later. According to aircraft experts, a good reason for switching off the ACARS system would be to not “overwhelm air traffic controllers with so many signals in one location” (Why do Airplane Transponders have an’ Off Switch). But, turning off the ACARS system, as well as the transponder in an area with minimal traffic in the air, as well as taking into account the time of the flight, points towards the direction that the turning off of both systems was intentional and may have been done by Shah himself. Since he was the primary pilot of that flight and had a co-pilot with him, there may have been a point in time where Shah could have had the opportunity to get co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid to exit the cockpit so that he could have full access to the aircraft. Many speculate that while Fariq Abdul Hamid was supposedly “locked out” of the cockpit, the attempted to get the attention of any tower by switching on his mobile phone and trying to get in contact with the ground. Police revealed in their investigation that “they knew the phone had been detected” but the ground could not exactly understand why it was detected (Rogers). Aircraft experts who studies this strange phenomenon also revealed the direction of the aircraft while it was still in the air and revealed that the “plane suddenly changed course and flew back across Malaysia before turning south of Penang and then towards the southern Indian Ocean” (Hoare). Many speculate that the reason Shah turned the aircraft towards Malaysia and then away from it was to get “one last glimpse” of his hometown before he decided he would take his own life and the lives of others (Hoare). However, Shah could not have turned the whole aircraft around without capturing the attention of the passengers, flight attendants, co-pilot, etc. Not only would the co-pilot have attempted to go in there and save the aircraft, but there were no distress calls made to indicate that there had been some sort of emergency. All this would have been a lot for Shah to have to do in the cockpit himself while steering and attempting to crash the plane himself. 

            The second conspiracy comes from the speculation that it was a hijacking gone wrong. On flight 370, there were at least “227 passengers and 12 crew members” who might have had something to do with the crashing of the plane (Gregersen). Another speculation comes from the idea that one of those 227 passengers or 12 crew members would have tried to gain access of the cockpit. Once they did, the co-pilot attempted to contact ground by switching his mobile phone on and attempting to make out any signal he could to then nearest tower that would pick it up. This specific conspiracy that revolves around the idea that a passenger or crew member attempted to hijack the plane would explain the loss of control that was experienced during the flight when it essentially made a U-turn towards and away from Malaysia, which would be an indication of control taken over by an individual who had little to no knowledge about how to fly an aircraft. But, since it would have been an attempted hijacking, the individual responsible for taking over the flight and rerouting it would have to had knowledge about how shut off the ACARS system and the transponder. This individual also had to have knowledge about the aircraft and how to shut off a system so versatile and complicated like the ACARS system, as well as the transponder. To simply turn off the ACARS system, an individual would also had to have known how to turn off corresponding communication equipment and “possibly pull all circuit breakers to cully cease all communication” (Neuman) A good way an individual would have had the basic knowledge of when to get into the cockpit as well as when to get in undetected and proceed to remove both pilots of the aircraft from the plane would have been if they were exposed to aircrafts a good amount of time prior to this flight. This makes the 12 members of the cabin crew good suspects if the conspiracy of the hijacking is true.

If you look closely at the job of the flight attendants, they are not always handing out drinks and sitting in the back of the aircraft. Some “can and do and enter the cockpit periodically during flights, they can't barge in whenever they feel like it” (Crow). This would mean that the flight attendants could have had access to the cockpit and possibly been around an aircraft control system long enough to learn how to disconnect from all communication to the ground. This might leave room for error in the sense that it is mostly all speculation in terms of how an individual would have been able to gain access and fly the plane while also blocking all communication and cease to crash to plane all in a matter of a short span of time. 

            The last conspiracy speculates that the aircraft going missing was simply a side effect of a failed emergency landing which included the use of faulty equipment distributed from the airlines and attempted to be used by both the passengers and the cabin crew members. When the plane had turned back towards the Southern Indian Ocean, the pilots might have realized that it was too late to go back with whatever emergency was erupting from the cockpit so the pilots might have made a quick executive decision to force a water landing in an attempt to keep all passengers alive. The equipment being used to help with a forced landing might have not worked in the way that it was supposed to since most flights have no use for them until the rarest of occurrences. Landing gear and other emergency landing equipment are checked “as often as the Federal Aviation Regulations” and usually during most flights in the polit’s “Pre-flight inspection” (Advisory Circular). It is possible that during the pre-flight inspection, Shah or Hamid might have missed over a crucial piece of equipment that might have saved them if they were forced to pursue an emergency landing procedure which then caused it to fail due to the faulty equipment. This may have been one of the more reasonable inferences about what happened to the missing flight but there would have had to have been many unfortunate coincidences for the equipment to either fail or not work they way it should have if the aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing.  

            To this day, the mystery of what happened to Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 remains at large. The answer to this cold case, authorities continue to search for clues relating to what happened that night but continue to turn up with nothing concrete. The story of what truly happened on that aircraft that night, remains hidden alongside the individuals of that aircraft.

“People are not problems to be solved. They are mysteries to be explored.”- Eugene H. Peterson. After all this time, even with the evidence experts, officers, and others have gathered, there is no real consensus as to what happened that night. The only ones who know, what happened that breezy spring night are the 239 people on board. To this day, many do not know. Was is a suicide mission by the pilot? Was it a failed hijacking? Or was is a failed emergency landing? The reality is that world may never know what happened to Malaysian Airlines flight 370. 

Citations

Athukorala, Prema-chandra. “Abstract.” Growing with Global Production Sharing: The Tale of Penang Export Hub, Malaysia, Australian National University, 2010, pp. 1–2.

“Who Are the Pilots of Flight MH370?” BBC News, BBC, 27 Mar. 2014, www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26628684.

Birchall, Guy. “Who Was Zaharie Ahmad Shah? MH370 Pilot Who Was in Command of the     Malaysian Airlines Jet When It Vanished.” The Sun, The Sun, 18 June 2019, https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7483593/zaharie-ahmad-shah-mh370-pilot-malaysian-airlines/.  

“Careers.” Careers, https://www.malaysiaairlines.com/us/en/about-us/careers.html.

Chapman, Alex. “How 53-Year-Old Married Pilot of Doomed Malaysia Airlines Flight Bombarded Young Instagram Stars with Facebook Posts.” The MH370 Captain, the Twin Sister Models and Some VERY Creepy Messages: How 53-Year-Old Married Pilot of Doomed Malaysia Airlines Flight Bombarded Young Instagram Stars with Facebook Posts, 23 Sept. 2018, www.msn.com/en-my/news/world/the-mh370-captain-the-twin-sister-models-and-some-very-creepy-messages-how-53-year-old-married-pilot-of-doomed-malaysia-airlines-flight-bombarded-young-instagram-stars-with-facebook-posts/ar-AAAuFx6. 

Crow, Sarah. “20 Things Flight Attendants Are Never Allowed to Do.” Best Life, 9 July 2019, bestlifeonline.com/flight-attendant-rules/.

Department of Transportation. “Advisory Circular.” Federal Aviation Administration, Washington, D.C. , www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/AC20-34D.pdf.

Gregersen, Erik. “Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Disappearance.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 19 Sept. 2019, www.britannica.com/event/Malaysia-Airlines-flight-370-disappearance.

Hoare, Callum. “MH370 BOMBSHELL: Expert Claims Captain 'Cut Lights and OXYGEN' on Flight.” Express.co.uk, Express.co.uk, 21 Mar. 2019, www.express.co.uk/news/world/1102840/mh370-latest-zaharie-shah-pressed-button-lights-oxygen-spt.

Langewiesche, William. “What Really Happened to Malaysia's Missing Airplane.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 1 July 2019, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/mh370-malaysia-airlines/590653/.

Mohney, Gillian. “Clues Sought in Malaysian Airlines Pilot's Homemade Flight Simulator.” ABC News, ABC News Network, 17 Mar. 2014, abcnews.go.com/International/clues-sought-malaysian-airlines-pilots-homemade-flight-simulator/story?id=22940217.

“RMP_Folder1 Pilot_Nihonmama.Pdf.” Google Drive, Google, https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxovjdGbD3OHRkVfZU5zXzJpOVU/view.   

Neuman, Scott. “Boeing 777 Pilots: It's Not Easy To Disable Onboard Communications.” NPR, NPR, 14 Mar. 2014, www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/03/14/290255899/boeing-777-pilots-its-not-easy-to-disable-onboard-communications.

Rogers, Jon. “MH370 Co-Pilot 'Tried to Use Mobile in the Air Moments before Aircraft Mysteriously Vanished' as Mystery Deepens.” The Sun, The Sun, 23 Mar. 2019, www.thesun.co.uk/news/8702191/mh370-malaysian-airlines-co-pilot-use-mobile-aircraft-vanished/. 

“Why Do Airplane Transponders Have an 'off' Switch?” New York Post, New York Post, 18 Mar. 2014, nypost.com/2014/03/18/why-do-airplane-transponders-have-an-off-switch/.