Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: What Is Known Twelve Years Later

This 17-minute documentary from Air Crash Investigation gives a compact account of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, from the departure to the most recent search. It is careful to mark which parts are evidence and which are theory.

The flight

The Boeing 777 left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing at 12:42 a.m. on 8 March 2014 with 227 passengers from 14 countries and 12 crew. The video notes that two passengers were Iranian nationals travelling on stolen passports, a detail that raised questions early on. At 1:19 a.m., approaching waypoint IGARI, the crew made their last radio call: "Good night, Malaysian three seven zero." Seconds later the transponder stopped.

The turn and the confusion

Malaysian military radar picked up the aircraft at 1:21 a.m. making a turn back across the peninsula, then tracking north-west along the Strait of Malacca until contact was lost over the Andaman Sea at 2:22 a.m. At about 1:38 a.m. Ho Chi Minh control asked Kuala Lumpur where the flight was. The video describes how the alarm was raised slowly, through confused handovers between control centres, before the rescue coordination centre was activated.

The arcs and the searches

The Inmarsat data produced arcs across the Earth's surface, and the final one, from the signal at 8:19 a.m., ran across the southern Indian Ocean. The official search was suspended on 17 January 2017 after three years. Ocean Infinity searched a further 112,000 square kilometres in 2018 without a find. On 29 July 2015 a flaperon washed up on Réunion, and the video says that of the pieces examined since, three were positively confirmed as coming from MH370.

The theories

The documentary then looks at the theories: a deliberate act by the captain, which the video explains came to the fore after reports about his flight simulator; crew incapacitation, with the autopilot flying on until the fuel ran out; and claims that the aircraft was landed or shot down near Diego Garcia, for which there is no evidence. It notes that none of these has been proven.

The report and what changed

The July 2018 safety investigation report, 495 pages long and the work of a 19-member international team, concluded that the team was unable to determine the real cause of the disappearance. The video explains what more ACARS data or a working transponder would have shown, and the changes to aircraft tracking that followed. It ends with the newest efforts, including a search by Ocean Infinity on a no find, no fee basis, and analyses of hydrophone and WSPR radio data that no aviation authority has accepted.