Missing Boeing 777 Malaysia. Why the Boeing that disappeared over the Indian Ocean will never be found

Pilot and flight instructor Simon Hardy told Australia's 9 Now that the commander of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which disappeared on March 8, 2014, Zachariah Ahmad Shah, was trying to confuse air traffic controllers. He turned off the detection systems and flew the plane on the border of the Malaysian and Thai areas of responsibility. This area is a blind spot.

Hardy is confident that the pilot's actions were deliberate, and points out that Ahmad Shah made an unnecessary detour near the Malaysian state of Penang, where he was born. According to Hardy, this is how the pilot said goodbye to his home.

Former head of Canada's Transportation Safety Bureau, Larry Vance, who was also present at the program, expressed the opinion that the pilot was planning suicide, and killed all the passengers along with him.

He believes that the ship's commander could have depressurized the cabin so that passengers and crew members would lose consciousness, while he himself had first put on an oxygen mask.

“He was going to kill himself. Unfortunately, he killed all the passengers along with himself. This was intentional,” Vance said.

Experts disagreed on whether the plane was directed into the sea by the pilot, or whether Shah piloted it until it ran out of fuel, at which point it crashed. According to research, the Boeing did not prepare for landing and landing on water because its flaps were not extended. Thus, this confirms the hypothesis that the plane was not controlled by the pilots before the actual crash.

An airliner of the Malaysian national airline with 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board, flying jointly with the Chinese China Southern Airlines flight from the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, disappeared from radar screens without giving any signals about problems on board, other problems or a change in course.

According to established data, the weather in the area of ​​​​the disappearance was good, the plane was controlled by experienced pilots. The captain, 53-year-old Malaysian citizen Zachary Ahmad Shah, has worked at MAS since 1981, his flight time reached almost 18.5 thousand hours, 27-year-old co-pilot Farik Ab Namid has flown almost three thousand hours. The aircraft had undergone a full inspection just ten days before this flight.

It was initially reported that on board the missing plane were 154 passengers from China and Taiwan, 38 citizens of Malaysia, seven Indonesians, six Australians, five Indians, four French, three US citizens, two New Zealanders, Ukrainians and Canadians each, one resident of Russia and Italy , the Netherlands and Austria. However, it quickly became known that two who were originally on the list of passengers on the flight - Austrian Christian Kozil and Italian Luigi Maraldi - reported the theft of their passports while in Thailand and did not fly anywhere.

Malaysian authorities have opened a criminal investigation into the terrorist attack, which was allegedly carried out by terrorists who boarded the plane using someone else's passports.

However, Kuala Lumpur is major center transportation of illegal migrants using stolen passports to Europe, and therefore it is possible that the presence of two people on board with fake passports is not directly related to the disappearance of the plane.

An explosion on board has long remained one of the most common versions, since it is difficult to imagine anything else capable of destroying a modern airliner at once. According to experts, it was either an explosion, a lightning strike, or rapid decompression. However, the Boeing 777 is capable of continuing to fly even after a lightning strike, and even after a sharp decompression, but after an explosion there is no longer a chance, experts say.

Over the course of three years, the wreckage of the plane was found in South Africa, Tanzania, and Thailand, but the exact location of the crash could not be determined. The last officially confirmed remains of a Boeing 777 were found on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. According to an investigation by the Australian Transport Safety Authority, the debris found was part of the trailing edge of the plane's wing.

In 2017, Australia officially stopped any efforts to find the plane or investigate the incident.

However, the Search Agency Coordination Center (JACC) continues to work closely with the Malaysian government to share information on the case and support the families of the deceased passengers and crew.

Currently, the wreckage of the missing liner is being recovered by a private American company, Ocean Infinity. In January of this year, the Malaysian government promised search engines to pay $70 million if the plane or its black boxes were discovered.

The Boeing 777-200 airliner of Malaysia Airlines (MAS) with 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board, making a joint flight MH370 with the Chinese China Southern Airlines from the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur to Beijing (China), (March 7, 22.40 Moscow time), did not giving no signals of problems on board, other problems or changes in course. The last message from the plane was: “Everything is fine, good night.”

At the moment of last contact - literally a minute before entering the air control zone of Vietnam - the airliner was 220 kilometers from east coast Malaysia. The weather in the area of ​​the disappearance was good. The plane was flown by experienced pilots (the captain, 53-year-old Malaysian Zachary Ahmad Shah, had worked at MAS since 1981, with almost 18,500 hours of flight time; 27-year-old co-pilot Farik Ab Namid had 2,763 hours of flight time). The airliner underwent a full inspection just ten days before this flight.

On board the missing plane were 154 passengers from China and Taiwan, 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians, six Australians, five Indians, four French, three US citizens, two each New Zealanders, Ukrainians and Canadians, one resident each from Russia, Italy, the Netherlands and Austria. However, the real nationality of at least two of those on board was then called into question due to evidence that they used stolen passports. According to Interpol, the two Iranians were traveling on the passports of an Austrian and an Italian. According to the international law enforcement organization, they were not related to terrorists, but were heading to Europe as illegal migrants.

Among the 227 passengers on the plane, 20 were employees of one company - Freescale Semiconductor, a former subsidiary of Motorolla, headquartered in Texas (USA), which produces semiconductor equipment, including components for defense equipment and on-board navigation systems.

The missing Boeing was carrying not only passengers, but also more than seven tons of cargo, some of which was not named. transportation documents. The plane was carrying 4,566 tons of mangosteens (the fruit of a tropical tree), as well as a shipment of lithium batteries (200 kilograms), which was part of a separate cargo that weighed 2.4 tons. A Malaysian Airlines spokesman said the cargo consisted of "radio accessories and chargers."

The transportation of the unknown cargo was carried out by the Beijing branch of the logistics company HHR Global Logistics, but another company, JHJ International Transportation Co.Ltd, had to pick up the delivered goods on its behalf.

In April 2015, the governments of Malaysia, Australia and China participating in search operation, search doubled, as a result of which it was expanded to 120 thousand square kilometers. At that time, more than half of the priority zone at the bottom of the Indian Ocean (more than 50 thousand square kilometers) had been surveyed. However, despite the use of sophisticated sonar equipment and assistance from a number of governments, by that time there was no sign of the aircraft.

The first in 16 months as part of the investigation into the circumstances of the disappearance of the Boeing 777-200 airliner of Malaysia Airlines was a fragment of a wing (flaperon designed to control the roll angle), found on July 29, 2015 at French island Reunion in the Indian Ocean is thousands of kilometers from the area of ​​the main exploration work being carried out near Australia. The wreckage of an unidentified plane was found by beach cleaners near the city of San Andre. It was filled with shells, indicating a long stay in the water.

After the found fragment of the plane, specialists from the Australian-led Search Coordination Center (JACC), Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, as well as the French prosecutor's office, believed that it belonged to the missing airliner.

By the end of 2015 there were search areas. Other debris was also found in the Indian Ocean.

Summer 2016. In July, the media, citing Malaysian police documents, reported that the pilot of the Malaysian airliner MH370, Zachary Ahmad Shah, flew on a simulator in southern part Indian Ocean less than a month before the plane disappeared, presumably in the same area. According to the documents, Malaysian police provided the FBI with hard drives on which the pilot recorded routes practiced in a homemade home flight simulator. Investigators believe the path taken by MH370's commander is largely consistent with the one the plane may have followed before it disappeared. Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai later said there was no evidence that the pilot of the missing airliner intentionally sent it into the ocean.

In August, Australian media, citing an analysis by the Australian Department of Defense, said that a Boeing 777-200 fell into the Indian Ocean at high speed, which may indicate an uncontrolled crash. According to the automatic signals that the airliner gave in the last minutes of the flight, the plane fell "very quickly - at speeds of up to 20 thousand feet per minute (6096 meters per minute)." Experts concluded that the crash occurred after the plane ran out of fuel and two engines caught fire - “first the left one, and 15 minutes later the right one.”

On January 17, 2017, representatives of Australia, Malaysia and China lost the Malaysian Boeing MH370, which lasted more than two years. According to the joint statement of the three states, despite all efforts made, the use of the latest technologies, modeling techniques and consultations of highly qualified and best-in-class specialists, the aircraft could not be found during the search.

Conducting searches for the missing MH370 Malaysia for individuals and organizations.

At the end of February 2017, 25 pieces of MH370 debris had been confirmed. Malaysia has reached a memorandum of understanding with African countries whose shores are washed by the Indian Ocean. According to the agreement, the African side pledged to help recover any likely debris that might wash up on its shores.

Team investigating the disappearance of the aircraft, which will be published within a year.

The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti

British virtual tracker Ian Wilson is a video engineer by profession. He discovered an object similar to an airplane using the Google Maps resource. I saw him lying in the inaccessible jungles of Cambodia.

A photo in which the virtual tracker spotted the plane.

Ian has no doubt: this object is the plane - most likely the same one - Malaysian Boeing 777-200, which mysteriously disappeared along with 239 passengers on March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Based on the contours of the discovered airliner, it was the right one. Only almost 6 meters longer - not 63.7 meters, but 70.

The tail fell off, the tracker explains, and lies a little further from the fuselage. Hence the "extension".

The main objection of skeptics: the photo from space used by Google Maps could have been accidentally captured by a plane flying over the jungle. In addition, four years have passed since the loss, quite enough for lush tropical vegetation to completely hide the liner. And it’s strange that the car in the photo is almost intact. Even if the plane had not crashed from a great height, but had tried to land in the jungle, it would most likely have broken into several large fragments.

No,” Wilson dismisses doubts. Like, I checked it using one of the resource options - “escape ground view”. The plane is down.

Could the virtual tracker have “stumbled upon” not MH370, but some other Boeing 777-200? Excluded - no other similar ones fell in this area of ​​Cambodia. At least aviation experts know nothing about such disasters.

Wilson said he would like to get to the crash site he discovered himself. After all, Malaysian and Australian specialists, who, albeit to no avail, are officially busy searching for the remains of the liner, as a rule, do not respond to the “signals” of virtual trackers. Or they brush them off.

BY THE WAY

And here's another Boeing

Competing with Wilson is Australian Peter McMahon, who has long been passionate about investigating aircraft accidents. Using Google Maps, he also saw the silhouette of a crashed Malaysian Boeing. But in another place - under water. If he gets to it, he will have to dive.

In March 2018, McMahon pointed out: The Boeing lies in shallow water about 16 kilometers south of Round Island, one of the Seychelles. The satellite photo shows both the wings and the fuselage.

The Australian Transport and Safety Bureau told McMahon that the plane he discovered could well be the one he was looking for. But no action was taken. The Malaysian authorities also responded. But more harshly: they asked not to mislead people.

McMahon somehow saw that the fuselage of the airliner was full of holes. It’s as if it’s been pierced by machine-gun fire.

And one more

In 2016, the Malaysian Boeing was found by Scott Waring, a famous ufologist and virtual archaeologist among those who look for anomalies in images transmitted from other planets, for example, from Mars.

Scott assures that he did not specifically search for the missing airliner. I was looking for traces UFO, which were spotted in the Cape area Good Hope(Cape of Good Hope) in 2013. And for this purpose, I looked at photographs of the area posted on Google Earth. I saw the outline of the plane. He lies under water. Almost whole.

Ilya Oganjanov

Authorities in Australia, China and Malaysia announced the end of the search for the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200. The plane was flying flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and disappeared from radar screens on the night of March 8, 2014. There were 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board. 26 states tried to unravel the mystery of the crash. The total cost of the investigation into the crash was close to $200 million. The fragments found did not help shed light on the reasons for the disappearance of the aircraft. Read about the main versions of the tragedy, including mystical ones, and why none of them have received confirmation.

• Reuters

Chronicle of the tragedy

On March 8, 2014 at 00:42 Malaysia time, Boeing MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The flight took place as usual. Last time the crew got in touch at 01:19 - while moving from the area of ​​responsibility of the Malaysian controllers to the Vietnamese ones. The pilots wished their Malaysian colleagues “Good night”. At 01:21, the transponders transmitting information about the location of the aircraft and its identification data were switched off. At 01:22, the Boeing disappeared from the radar screens of air traffic control services. After that, he was in the air for about seven more hours, but radically deviated from the planned route. At 08:11, the last signal was sent from the plane to the Inmarsat satellite, through which the Boeing 777 transmitted technical information about the operation of its Rolls-Royce engines to ground services. At 09:15, the airliner no longer responded to a communication request from Inmarsat.

The liner was searched in the South China and Andaman seas, in the Strait of Malacca and in the Indian Ocean. The area of ​​the study territories is 7.7 million km². Deep-sea searches were also carried out over an area of ​​60,000 km².

• RIA News

Restore by fragments

The first fragment of the airliner was discovered only a year after the disappearance of MH370 - in July 2015, a wing part and a door were found on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean. The rest of the finds occurred in 2016: in March, aircraft wreckage was discovered on the shore of the strait between Madagascar and Mozambique, in May a fragment of a wing was found on the island of Mauritius, and in June another part of the wing was found off the coast of Tanzania. However, all this did not help narrow the search area for the airliner and determine its location.

Uncontrolled fall

One of the versions put forward by experts is that the plane crashed. According to this hypothesis, the airliner was not controlled by the pilot at the fatal moment. This, according to Australian Transport Safety Authority spokesman Greg Hood, is indicated by an analysis of Boeing signals. Presumably the airliner fell on March 9, 2014 at 08:19. At that moment, it ran out of fuel and two engines caught fire. According to experts, the plane crashed into the Indian Ocean at enormous speed - up to 20 thousand feet (6096 m) per minute. The board most likely collided with the ocean surface at almost a right angle. This explains his disappearance without a trace.

Human factor

Many people call the crew commander, Zachary Ahmad Shah, the culprit of the tragedy. The FBI searched his home and found a simulator simulating an airliner cockpit. Decryption of the hard drives showed that about a month before the crash, the pilot was practicing a route that would lead to the ship crashing into the Indian Ocean. This is exactly what investigators believe Ahmad Shah did in reality. The alleged reason for this action is depression due to the upcoming divorce from his wife.

• Boeing crew commander Zachary Ahmad Shah (right) with friend Peter Chong (left).
• Reuters

Information or life

Among the scenarios for the disappearance of Boeing, there are truly detective ones - the plane was hijacked and landed at one of the military airfields. The target of the hijacking was the 20 leading scientists on board (12 Chinese and 8 Malaysians) of Freescale Semiconductor, who were developing cutting-edge technologies for aircraft, making them invisible to radars and camouflage devices.

This version is confirmed by the fact that Zachary Ahmad Shah also practiced landing on his home flight simulator at five airfields in the Indian Ocean region, including on the airfield runway military base USA "Diego Garcia". Shortly before the fateful flight, for some reason he erased this data, as well as all his work and social plans in his diary.

An even more twisted version of hijacking for the sake of obtaining invaluable information on stealth technology belongs to former pilot Delta airlines to Field McConnell. He claims that the plane's crew was eliminated, after which MH370 was intercepted by the US military and remotely landed on the island of Diego Garcia at a secret US Air Force base. The plane was then allegedly lifted into the air again using the same remote control and sank in the Indian Ocean.

• A suspected plane wreck was discovered off the east coast of Africa.

Mysterious cargo

The conspiracy theories don't end there. The reason for the disappearance of Boeing is also called a certain mysterious cargo that was on board. In addition to luggage, the plane allegedly carried about 4 tons of exotic mangosteen fruit, 220 kg of lithium batteries for phones and computers, as well as 2 tons of some electronic equipment, the sender of which was “classified by agreement with the airline.”

Operation anti-terror

Another version says that the Boeing was captured by terrorists and shot down. According to the former head of the French airlines Proteus Airlines, Marc Dugen, the plane was destroyed by the American military, who suspected that the airliner was hijacked by terrorists. This is how the Americans played it safe to prevent a repeat of the events of September 11, 2001. This option is supported by the fact that there were two passengers on board using false passports - Iranians Puriya Nur Mohammad Merdad and Delavar Seyed-Mohammadreza.

Simply fantastic

There are absolutely fantastic versions of the disappearance of the Malaysian Boeing. Over the course of two years, there were a lot of them: the plane became invisible, got into black hole or to the new Bermuda Triangle. However, so far no one has been able to test either these or more realistic hypotheses.