Monday, December 2, 2019

Disappearing Malaysia Flight 370 by Jackson Collins


What really happened to the vanishing Malaysia Flight 370 in 2014?  March 8, 2014, and the many days that followed it were full of confusion, questions, sorrow, and more questions.  Despite the continuous search efforts to locate the missing flight, Malaysia Flight 370 is still a mystery. There are numerous conspiracy theories surrounding this missing plane’s case:
  1. Did the pilot, Zaharie Shah, purposely destroy the plane and its passengers?
  2. The plane was hijacked.
  3. There were a number of mechanical errors that doomed the plane.
Let’s take a look into this case and see if we can find a conclusion.
Image result for malaysia flight 370
            Zaharie Shah, the expert captain of Malaysia Flight 370, disappeared on a routine flight in the middle of the night. Before this tragic coincidence, Zaharie had his whole life together.  He was married to a wife that he loved and three children.  Shah had been a B777 captain for more than sixteen years with over 8,500 hours of flight time (Birchall 1).  Shah was an experienced flight captain, who was looked to as a veteran to his fellow flight captains.  During his final years as a pilot, he would purposely take in younger pilots to teach them what he knew about flying and answer any questions they had (Birchall 1).  He knew what he was doing, he knew how to fly safely, but was this purely an accident or a plan he had devised himself.  Let’s dig deeper and see what we can find out about Captain Zaharie Shah.
Image result for zaharie shah
            There are numerous conspiracy theories about how plane MH370 got off track and ultimately crashed killing 239 people.  Many people blame the plane for malfunctioning, they blame the government for not completely coming out and speaking about this phenomenon, terrorists for hijacking the plane, or they blame the pilot (Birchall 1).  Weeks before the crash, Zaharie was not his normal self.  His mental health and family life were all a big mess during this.  After the crash, it was reported that Zaharie Shah’s wife had moved out of their house just days before (1).  Shah was most likely in a deep hole of depression and solitude.  Along with his solitude, he also was not in the best shape mentally (1).  Married captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, sent 26-year-old sisters, Lan Qi Hui and Qi Min Lan messages, begging them to come to Kuala Lumpur.” (1). He ended up sending close to 100 “self-destructive” messages just to those twin sisters, as he sent sexual and creepy messages to both of them (1).  Even though he was ignored every time, he continued with his efforts of grabbing the girls’ attention (1).  It was also said by an unnamed friend that Shah spent most of his alone time pacing empty rooms in his house (Premack 1).  All this to provide evidence for believing that Captain Zaharie Shah’s mental health was not stable during the months prior to the vanishment of Malaysian Flight 370.  Due to his loneliness and mental health depression, Shah was not in a good state of mind and most likely had thoughts about suicide. 
The very experienced Zaharie Shah was not alone in the cockpit for this flight, he was accompanied by Fariq Abdul Hamid (Birchall 1).  This was Fariq’s first approved flight as an officer in the cockpit of a 777 airliner (1).  It is for sure that Hamid was very nervous during this flight.  He had no experience and looked up to his captain for some good advice on how to fly a massive airplane (1).  Malaysia Flight 370 took off very early in the morning, close to 12:40 a.m. local time, and went along on its path for the first 40 minutes or so (Premack 1).  At 1:20 a.m, Captain Shah gave his goodnight to the airport operators and cut off communications with the surrounding channels (Premack 1).  Most conspiracy theories surrounding Zaharie Shah’s name and Malaysia Flight 370 point to a deliberate suicide action by Captain Shah.  Many people have numerous different guesses as to what really happened to the vanishing flight, but ultimately they never know.  Around 1:25 a.m. local time, Malaysia flight 370 deviated from its flight path and headed due west (1).  Many sources believe that Shah was in the cockpit alone when the flight took a hard left turn because it would have been noticed by the co-pilot. “As a senior officer and examiner it would have been easy to divert co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, out of the cockpit and then lock the door, the pilot said.” (Birchall 1) While he was gone, Captain Shah most likely locked Hamid outside of the cockpit and had total control of the plane (Birchall 1).  Multiple reports say that Zaharie slowly cut off the oxygen supply to the 239 passengers which would have made the passengers dizzy and slowly killed them without causing a riot as the plane veered off its path (Birchall 1).  " ‘An intentional depressurization would have been an obvious way — and probably the only way — to subdue a potentially unruly cabin in an airplane that was going to remain in flight for hours to come,’ Langewiesche, who is also a pilot, wrote.” (Premack 1)  The oxygen masks that are equipped in every 777 plane only supply oxygen for about 15 minutes each.  Captain Shah could have easily put on four or five masks and had enough oxygen and brainpower to fly the airplane for a few more hours (1).  As the plane veers way off of its path, the plane it picked up by several military satellites and steadily fly across Malaysia and into the Indian Ocean.  No one quite knows how far the plane flew after the communications were cut off, so in reality, that plane could have flown for hours on end until the fuel ran out (Premack).  One conspiracy even states that Shah secretly kept a parachute in the cockpit so he could escape his current life and start a new adventure with a secret lover (Hoare).  That theory does not have that much information and background knowledge on why he would want to do that so it does not make a whole lot of sense.  Ultimately, the plane would not veer off in that direction without a human hand that knows how to operate a plane behind the controls.  It makes total sense that the plane veered off by Captain Zaharie Shah himself because he was mentally unstable.  A sample from the survey shows that roughly 62% of people believe that the plan was veered off its path and eventually doomed due to Captain Shah deliberately crashing the massive plane.  Zaharie Shah was unstable, mentally unhealthy, and overall depressed before the plane crash on March 8, 2014 (Birchall 1).  Captain Shah knew how to fly a plane, he had been doing it the same way for over 16 years.  This is hard to accept as a “mess up” on the captain’s behalf, this is a deliberate plan to kill himself and all of the passengers on that plane. 
The second theory surrounding the mysterious crash of Malaysia Flight 370 is the plane was hijacked, either by terrorists, someone on board, or a person behind a computer.  Because of the loss in communication and bizarre turn the plane took, it is believed to have been specifically done by human force rather than the plane breaking down and falling apart.  Hijacking this plane could have been done from a passenger on board, terrorists, or even electronic hijacking.  Just like all theories, we cannot completely come to a conclusion on which one makes the most sense and cannot even tell if what we think happened even did or not.  We can have an opinion and believe what we think happened, but we are never completely sure.  Let’s dig in and see what we can figure out.
            When the news broke about the Malaysia Flight 370 disappearance, a company came out, Freescale Semiconductor and said that they had lost twenty intelligent engineers on that flight (Anderson 1).  These engineers were a big part of this company and the company felt the effects of these men and women who were lost on the plane (1).  They were a part of a company that was using powerful defense technology along with certain frequency communications (1).  The reason that this matter is that it is believed that terrorists knew the engineers were on that flight and wanted to either kill or take captive those twenty engineers and derive anything they could for their own knowledge (1).  Those twenty engineers still could be alive being held captive somewhere very secretive, but that is a big stretch.  Another hijacking theory surfaced, claiming that the plane was taken by a team member.  “It is feasible that one of the pilots intended to land or ditch the aircraft in a survivable state but bungled it and was incapacitated by hypoxia along with the others on board,” (Calder 1).  This theory is tough to believe because the chances of someone surviving this plummet are infinitely small and would obviously fail.  They could have attempted it, but would not have succeeded (1).  Another hijacking theory is assumed to be done from the ground.  This theory implies that the plane would be taken above 40,000 feet to where the plane would be depressurized and kill off all of the civilians on the flight (1).  Meanwhile, the plane is still being operated on the ground by criminals manipulating the flight pattern (1).  The results of my small survey were that 30% of people believed that Malaysia Flight 370 was hijacked either by terrorists, someone on the plane or someone using high technology.  Ultimately, we cannot conclude which theory actually happened because after all, it is just a theory.  We do not know the whole story and probably never will.
            The third theory is that the plane went down because of mechanical errors.  There are many phenomena that could have happened to the plane, but here we will narrow it down to just a few.  One rumor states that a bathroom break could have doomed the plane (Michael 1).  “She theorizes that an explosive decompression sucked the air out of the cabin, setting the flight on course for disaster,” (1).  This conspiracy claims that the toilet, when flushed, sucked all of the air out of the plane and eventually killed all 237 passengers on board (1).  The cockpit fire is another believable theory.  This breaks down the possibility of there being a fire where the captain and co-pilot sit, leaving them dead in just seconds with little chance to escape (1).  Even if they did escape the fire in the cockpit, that plane is still going to be doomed one way or the other.  It is either going to plunge into the ocean or continue on its path and eventually run out of fuel and crash (1).  My survey shows that these mechanical errors were very less likely to happen with 8% of people believing that some sort of mechanical error occurred on this doomed flight. These mechanical errors are hard to think about because they can be so easily avoided. 
            There are numerous conspiracy theories that debate how the vanishment of Malaysia Flight 370 became such a big story.  At the end of the day, we do not really know what happened considering we have no survivors or communication with the plane just before the crash.  Hopefully, these theories were broken down enough to see the full detail of what really happened from your own personal perspective.
To this day, Malaysia Flight 370 is still a mystery. The families of those affected still hurt and seek answers.  Even with continued search efforts and investigations, a conclusion has not been named.  The ultimate disappearance resulted in three main theories:
  1. Did the pilot, Zaharie Shah, purposely destroy the plane and its passengers?
  2. The plane was hijacked.
  3. There were a number of mechanical errors that doomed the plane.
Although critical evidence points to Captain Shah purposely crashing the plane, the mystery that took place over five years ago remains as a mystery to be unsolved.




Works Cited
S Anderson, Claire. "MH370 Shock: Missing Plane Could Have Been Hijacked by Terrorists Targeting US Engineers." Express.co.uk, 19 July 2019, www.express.co.uk/news/weird/1155225/mh370-news-malaysia-airlines-370-missing-plane-hijacking-proof-us-freescale.
S 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/.
S Calder, Simon. "What Happened to MH370? Five Theories Evaluated." The Independent, 8 Mar. 2019,www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/mh370-missing-theory-evaluated-malaysia-airlines-boeing-777-a8812426.html.
S Hoare, Callum. "MH370 Shock Claim: Captain Zaharie Shah Was 'hiding Secret Mistress'." Express.co.uk, 25 June 2019, www.express.co.uk/news/weird/1143777/mh370-shock-claim-captain-zaharie-shah-secret-mistress-spt.
S Michael, Tom. "MH370 Conspiracy Theories Resurface As Search Teams Abandon Hunt for Missing Jet." The Sun, 19 June 2019, www.thesun.co.uk/news/2553010/mh370-conspiracy-theories-resurface-search-teams-abandon-hunt/.
S Premack, Rachel. "A Chilling Report Suggests the Pilot on MH370 May Have Depressurized the Cabin, 'gently' Killing the More Than 200 Passengers on Board Before Crashing." Business Insider, 17 June 2019, www.businessinsider.com/mh370-malaysia-airlines-captain-may-have-cut-off-oxygen-2019-6.

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