On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared midway, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members, and the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing suddenly lost contact during the flight.
The incident sparked massive search operations in the Gulf of Thailand, the South China Sea, the Bay of Bengal and the southern Indian Ocean, but the aircraft was never found. To this day, there are still many people who have invested a lot of time and energy in searching for the missing plane (see Red Star News's previous report for details: Red Star Interview|People who have been searching for Malaysia Airlines MH370 for 7 and a half years: 8 hours a day to analyze data or start a new search in the second half of next year).
A recent study proposes a new theory: the plane did not crash into the sea in "free fall", but a manned controlled forced landing on the water, and also pointed to a new, previously unsearched area. The experts have called on Australian and Malaysian authorities and the U.S.-based seabed exploration company Ocean Infinity to conduct a new round of searches in the area, arguing that the mystery of the disappearance of flight MH370 could be solved in "10 days" if the search is carried out in the area.
The study was carried out by two experts, Jean-Luc Marchand, a former aviation program officer at the European Commission and a researcher at the European Space Agency, and Patrick Bléley, a former French Air Force pilot and Air France captain, with 44 years of aviation experience.
In a recent interview with two experts, Brairy explained in detail their findings and new understanding of flight MH370. Their study proposes a new, previously unsearched area into which they believe the aircraft entered under human control, in contrast to the previously generally accepted hypothesis of a "free fall" crashing into the sea.
Brairy told Red Star News that they hope to "use our skills and knowledge to help find the aircraft without asking for anything in return" and hope that the new research will lead to a relaunch of the search for MH370, ultimately providing answers for the families of the victims and the global aviation safety community.
Brairy believes that the plane entered the sea under human control. Many believe that the plane disappeared because of pilot Zahari, and Braley agrees. But his explanation, unlike others, believes that the plane did not crash into the sea in a high-speed "death spiral", but attempted a "soft landing", that is, a controlled entry into the sea during the final landing. Thus, the landing point of the aircraft will move several hundred kilometers to the south.
Using the sixth and seventh arcs, they calculated the flight profile of the final stage of MH370. By assuming the best and worst case scenarios, it is possible to find the farthest and closest flight distance of the aircraft after passing the seventh arc. According to their calculations, the nearest drop point is 93.025° east longitude and 35.518° south latitude, and the farthest drop point is 93.039° east longitude and 35.875° south latitude. Their research concluded that the previous search area and the wreckage of the plane had passed by, and that it actually only took a few hundred kilometers to the south to find the wreckage of the plane.
"Based on underwater measurements, we determined that the impact zone was about 4,000 meters deep and located south of Broken Ridge," Brairy explained. We believe that the wreckage of MH370 is located on an undersea plateau somewhere in this area. He also mentioned the advanced technology of the American company Ocean Inlimited, which could significantly reduce the time of the new search operation if the company's high-performance unmanned submersibles were used, which is expected to take as little as 10 days and no more than 15 days at the longest.
According to official theories, the plane made a sharp turn shortly after the last communication with air traffic control, flew for several hours before crashing into the Indian Ocean. The main current theory is that the wreckage of the aircraft may be at the bottom of the ocean in an area known as the "Seventh Arc", which has already been searched twice.
"We identified this new search area based on a key fact: MH370's sharp turning flight path and final signals showed that the aircraft had to be under manned control throughout the flight, until the last minute," Brairy explained. This becomes even more evident when considering that the person in control of the aircraft, after the operation, tried to conceal the aircraft. ”
Brairy believes that when the engine failed due to fuel depletion, the pilot turned on the plane's backup power system to regain control of the plane instead of letting the plane fall out of control, "He was prepared for the plane's forced landing." This operation restored the power supply to the aircraft, which allowed the satellite communication system to be restarted. This explains why MH370's satellite communications system suddenly restarts just as the aircraft finally descends, and automatically requests to connect to Inmarsat's satellite system.
Braley believes that the pilot may have tried to land on the surface in this way, in the smoothest way possible, with less damage on impact. He believes that the pilot finally took control of a gliding flight, attempting a conscious, precisely controlled water crash landing with the aim of producing as little debris as possible and "sinking as little as possible without leaving a trace." ”
"This discovery has greatly expanded our search beyond what was previously assumed to end in freefall. Rather, it opens up a much broader field that requires us to explore and challenge previous assumptions. "If this assumption is correct, it also means that MH370 crashed into an unsearched area of the southern Indian Ocean. The Red Star News reporter checked that there is a supporting clue about the assumption that the captain Zahari has manual control of the whole process: Zahari has a strong interest in flight simulation games and has installed flight simulation equipment at home. In 2016, the FBI restored six data points that had been deleted a month earlier. One of the simulated routes to the southern Indian Ocean is very close to the MH370 flight trajectory. The uniqueness of this route is that it is manually controlled from start to finish. Zahari's custom routes are all opted to toggle auto-fly.
On March 8, 2014, at 00:42 a.m., a Malaysia Airlines-operated Boeing 777-200ER took off from Kuala Lumpur in a northeasterly direction. In the cockpit sat Zahari, a 53-year-old captain, and Farick, a 27-year-old co-pilot. There are 10 Malaysian flight attendants in the cabin, serving 227 passengers from four continents, most of whom are Chinese. According to the investigation by the Malaysian authorities, none of the passengers had received flight training.
At 1:07 a.m., 25 minutes after the flight, the cockpit "Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System" (ACARS) sent out information such as position. The ACARS system sends data every half hour, and the next one should be sent at 1:37. However, 1:07 was the last set of data, during which the ACARS system failed or was artificially shut down.
At 1:19 a.m., 11 minutes after the plane crossed the Malaysian coastline, the Malaysian air traffic control officer radioed: "Malaysia 370, contact Ho Chi Minh 120, good night." Zahari replied: "Good night, Malaysia 370." "This is the last time the world hears about MH370.
"At this time, the pilot was supposed to call the Vietnamese air traffic control, but he did not do what was requested. After that, he no longer contacted anyone. The timing of the "hijacking" was delicate, Braley said—just after leaving Malaysian airspace, but there was a window before establishing contact with Vietnam's air traffic control department.
At 1:20:31 a.m., MH370 entered Vietnamese airspace. A few seconds later, MH370 disappeared from the secondary radar. At 1:21 a.m., another system on the plane that can transmit information such as location, the transponder, was artificially turned off. According to a report released by the Malaysian government in 2018, after the transponder was turned off, the plane suddenly made a sharp turn and turned back under human operation.
The Malaysian Air Force's primary radar showed that after MH370 entered Vietnamese airspace, the aircraft made a sharp left turn and flew back over the Malay Peninsula. It made a sideways turn near Penang (the captain's hometown), flew northwest across the Strait of Malacca and then flew into the Andaman Sea in the Indian Ocean, where it disappeared from radar.
"The autopilot system can't make this level of 'sharp' turns, and neither can the co-pilot pilot. "This means that the person who was flying the plane at the time was an old pilot, and he leaned his body very little when turning, which is extremely dangerous at night when there is no external visual reference." ”
"The manipulator's first 'sharp' turn is to avoid entering the Vietnam Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), and if he enters without turning on the transponder, the military will intercept the aircraft with fighter jets," Braley said. Only experienced pilots know this. ”
At 2:22 a.m., MH370 "disappeared" over the Andaman Sea. Three minutes later, Inmarsat's communications network received a landing request from the aircraft, but the flight identification number "MH370" in the request was missing. Brairy told Red Star News: "To erase the ID, you can only do it manually in the air. Only experienced pilots have the ability to quickly perform such maneuvers in flight, while ensuring the interruption of all automatic message transmissions on the aircraft. For a new co-pilot, this is an almost impossible task. ”
If it weren't for the reactivation of the satellite communication terminal at the last moment, which realized the automatic "handshake" with the satellite, the true whereabouts of MH370 after leaving the Strait of Malacca would have remained a mystery forever. Previous hypotheses generally believed that the aircraft was "in free fall" at the last moment, but it ignored the important suspicion that the satellite communication system was restarted. Some analysts believe that this is just "the hijacker's negligence", so it is considered not worth mentioning. But new research suggests a new possibility: The pilots turned on the plane's backup power system in preparation for a controlled water landing, which led to a reboot of the satellite communications system. This is the first substantive answer to this question.
There are various theories about where the plane finally landed, and the fate of MH370 remains one of the biggest mysteries in the aviation industry. "Our findings are able to answer all questions about disappearances. But until the wreckage of the plane is found, our reconstructed flight trajectory remains only a hypothesis. "But if we don't try to explain these anomalous turns, the mystery will never be solved." ”