MH370: The Plane That Disappeared

[DanaK]

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A Netflix three-part documentary series about the 2014 disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370.

MH370: The Plane That Disappeared will address three of the theories that surround the event. It will stream on the platform worldwide from March 8

Trailer

 

[Bastet]

I hope this is better than the trailer suggests.  I love a good plane crash documentary, and have seen probably every episode of Mayday/Air Disaster and Why Planes Crash, but this trailer comes across as potentially hyperbolic and conspiracy theory-ish (partly because that author whose name I can't recall is included, and he always bugs me when he pontificates).

[Bastet]

How do you not include the information about the similar flight path found on the pilot's home simulator in "The Pilot" episode?  I guess, though, as they seem thus far to be going strictly chronologically even though the episode titles indicate being organized by theory, it's still to come later as it took awhile to find that deleted file.  I fell asleep shortly into "The Highjacker" (the second episode), so will have to continue tonight.

All too often when he's interviewed about plane crashes, I just can't with Jeff Wise. Like in the beginning of that second episode, where he says when they couldn't find the plane in a week, "we" (meaning other people who cover such stories for a living) were appalled.  So a month was just obscene, and OMG, now it's a year and we still don't know?!  Fool, I know you did not forget Air France 447.  That took nearly two years to find.  When you don't know where a plane went down (because, contrary to what many think, even with all transponders and such functioning [true with 447, not true with this one], there are many pockets out over open ocean where no one on the ground is receiving data as to exact location), and oceans are vast, deep, and have floors with chasms the size of the Grand Canyon, it's one hell of a search.

(Look, there's incompetence and secrecy to explore, of course, but the simple fact of not being able to find the plane in a year, month, and certainly week is in no way indicative of something shady.)

I have never read much about the alternative theories, as I never understood there to be anything approaching equal evidence - not to mention logic and precedence - as the pilot suicide-mass murder theory, so I will gladly see what the second and third episodes have to offer on those fronts.  But I am wary of this feeding the false notion that if something isn't 100% known, then all theories are equally plausible. 

It bugs me that the flight was overwhelmingly (almost 70%) occupied by Chinese citizens, yet we are mostly hearing from family members of non-Chinese passengers.  I hope the disproportional focus is because of the limitations on Chinese citizens speaking freely rather than - consciously or subconsciously - wanting to include more white faces.  (And, hey, maybe this gets better as it goes on, but so far, 50% of the passengers I'm seeing represented by their loved ones were white, when they constituted less than one percent of the passenger manifest.)

[Jude77]

Horrible docuseries. Thank God Mike Exner agreed to participate and save it from devolving into a complete conspiracy theory fest. Mark Dickinson of Inmarsat and Pete Foley also lent sanity to the series, albeit only for the few seconds of interview time Netflix deemed sufficient. Even Blaine Gibson (who I admittedly assumed would be one of the nuttier personalities) was one of the few more rational voices.

I feel for these families. Really, I do. But it’s clear that some of them are struggling so much with their grief and with not having answers that they’re buying into far-fetched theories they would likely never have entertained 15 years ago. I hope they’re given closure one day but the idea that this was some global conspiracy involving no less than 3 major countries to take down your average commercial flight is not going to give it to them. And shame on The Intercept’s de Changy who’s profiting like a MFer off both  this tragedy and the heartbreak of the victims’ families.

I agree we need answers but none of the ridiculous conspiracies posited in this docuseries is a plausible explanation.

I would have much preferred a FACTUAL docuseries focusing on the accident itself, the investigation that followed, and the 239 souls lost.

Edited March 9, 2023 by Jude77

[sskrill]

I'm so annoyed that my coworker talked me into watching this.

Should I have guessed that it would end with somehow blaming the US? Probably.

I feel sorry for that French man. I understand what he lost, but he's losing the rest of his life being wrapped up in these conspiracies.  Its been almost 10 yrs and he has not moved on at all.

I assume it was a catostrophic failure, but seems unlikely that it was in the South China Sea as nothing was ever spotted there. 

Sometimes an accident is just an accident.

[themarsist]

I kinda feel like a sucker for having watched this. The middle 1/3 of this program goes into great detail explaining how 3 Russians could have hijacked MH370. Then at the end, they tell you that this theory is actually impossible. That left me wondering, "then what's the point of including this segment in your program?"

 

Here's my theory. Like the Dyotlov Pass Incident, something logical yet obscure happened and we'll probably never know the truth. That's sad and we hate that. 

[Bastet]

Part of me wants to give this a full watch before writing it off, but I made it only about ten more minutes into part two before deciding to watch something else.  "We're a group of amateur self-styled experts."  Then why the hell am I listening to you?!

Now Wise, who had said the satellite data is the key evidence any theory has to be supported by, yet all these people are out there brushing that off, thinks the data was tampered with.  By whom?  For what purpose?  Do I really want to put myself through finding out?

And then the woman who wants me to know the pilot could not have done it, because she doesn't see any reason he would.  Okay, I'm convinced.

I find myself angry this thing was even made.  Desperate family members clinging to wild theories shouldn't be exploited -- or encouraged by treating these theories as anything more than they are.

 

[MaggieG]

On 3/9/2023 at 6:32 AM, themarsist said:

I kinda feel like a sucker for having watched this. The middle 1/3 of this program goes into great detail explaining how 3 Russians could have hijacked MH370. Then at the end, they tell you that this theory is actually impossible. That left me wondering, "then what's the point of including this segment in your program?"

The Russian conspiracy theory that he explained actually mad my jaw drop. I thought the same thing when everyone was like "no, that is impossible". Why waste time adding it? I haven't seen Jeff Wise before and I didn't mind him in the first episode but he grated on me by episode two. I actually think the Pilot theory is somewhat plausible. Even if his family and coworkers say he would never do something like this, you never know what people are thinking.

Ok so the satellite images that the lady in FL found. Where they real? Was that area of ocean ever investigated?

The one guy they interviewed mentioned that a daughter of one of the passengers was getting a call from her father who was on the plane but she didn't answer in time. Actually he said she ran over to them and asked if she should answer which girl, yes answer! He also said that they were all calling the passengers and the calls weren't going to voicemail. Would that have been possible if the plane had already crashed? I can't remember if he said how long after the plane going missing was. If the girl did really get a call from her dad, why couldn't they try to ping where the call came from? Or any of the passengers phones if they weren't going to voicemail. Did she bring that to authorities?  That out of everything in this doc was the most compelling to me and they never followed up on it.

[vibeology]

This was pure trash. I feel for the families but this isn't some huge conspiracy and its wrong to act like those options are all equally viable. I do think Jeff Wise and de Chegney are awful people using a tragedy to promote themselves and make money. 

It's sad but the most likely cause was a pilot murder suicide. No one wants that to be true because its scary to think that every time people get on a plane that could happen but it could and does happen sometimes. We all want to believe that we can see when someone is in trouble but we can't. We all want to believe that killing over 200 people is the act of someone pure evil and they can't hide in plain sight but mental illness isn't that easy. 

I do think the Malaysian government was slow to act when the plane went missing. I do think they aren't being fully honest about the likelihood of Zaharie being the culprit and have suppressed some of his personal information because of liability. But that's not a conspiracy. It's incompetence and greed. 

Blaine Gibson was a bit doofy but he's right that the US, China, Malaysia, Australia etc. have not all gotten together to cover something up. A conspiracy on this scale is impossible. We may never get all the answers but I know this isn't it. 

[Snazzy Daisy]

This documentary has decided to explore MH370’s conspiracy theories but why only picked THREE theories - The Pilot, The Russian Hijackers and The Intercept?

What about the conspiracy theory on Freescale Semiconductor‘s patent holders who were onboard? What about a theory on suspicious cargo & decoy aircraft? What about all the witness sightings that are being ignored? Why not interviewing the authorities who withheld crucial info for years?

This blogger has listed in details the witness data and comparing it to the military radar data from the Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) and Inmarsat signal data. He also has his own overall theory.

➡️  MH370: The Unspeakable Truth.

 

[Enero]

I agree with others. This docu-series was a waste of time. I thought that might be the case when reading the synopsis but watched anyway. The guy insistent that the Russian’s were somehow involved was a disgrace as was the adventurer and world traveler who went in search of debris from the crash as if it was his duty. 

I think whatever happened was deliberate by the pilot being that the plane turned off its flight path. Perhaps it was a murder suicide with the pilot turning from the flight path then releasing the pressure inside the cabin causing everyone, including himself to develop hypoxia. From there the plane flew on autopilot until it ran out of gas and crashed over the ocean. This is such a tragedy for the families I cannot imagine their grief and how difficult it is to move on not really knowing what happened. I’m sure all these crazy conspiracy theories have not helped.  Then not having their family members bodies to be able to say a real goodbye I’m sure made their grief more difficult as well.  After so much time I hope they’ve found some peace. 

Edited March 10, 2023 by Enero

[Bastet]

I'm just going to re-watch Kathleen Madigan's extended bit on this flight from her Bothering Jesus special, because it has more factual information than this "documentary" (and every time someone argued about where it crashed, I had her in my head saying "wrong ocean"). 

[sskrill]

2 hours ago, Bastet said:

I'm just going to re-watch Kathleen Madigan's extended bit on this flight from her Bothering Jesus special

She was the first person I thought of when I saw this was released.  "Now Pat, how do we know ..."

[SunnyBeBe]

The only thing that I really took away from this is that the pilot did not have the ability to turn off their tracking system.  Well, I guess he could have if he left the cockpit and went into that electrical control cabin.  I wasn’t persuaded that other planes followed them and turned it off because of their cargo.  

Edited March 12, 2023 by SunnyBeBe

[iMonrey]

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Ok so the satellite images that the lady in FL found. Where they real? Was that area of ocean ever investigated?

That's the part I have a hard time getting past. I found the images pretty compelling. I don't necessarily buy into a lot of the conspiracy theories but it seems like the simplest solution is the most logical one, that the plane suffered some catastrophic failure over the south China sea midway between Malaysia and Vietnam and crashed into the ocean. I'm wary of all the "data" that says the pilot turned the plane around and flew back over Malaysia and then south over the Indian ocean. That's just bizarre. I do think there was some sort of coverup, for whatever reason, to divert attention away from searching that area. 

[NetflixandChill]

It feels like Netflix is trying to make a hard pivot into the streaming network for conspiracies. Between this and that new lost ancient civilizations or whatever it's called, are just full of stuff that make no sense. I started laughing when the US got brought into it and blamed. Look, the US loves sticking their nose in a million and one places it doesn't belong, but there's usually some motive behind it (i.e. money). There's no point to the US taking down a Malaysian plane, and it's not really our government's style. And then people talking about how it would've flown through multiple air spaces but no one ever saw it. Um, cause the stuff was turned off that allowed the plane to be seen by radar, right? Like, isn't that the whole point of why it can't be found to begin with? That it just disappeared from radar, so there's basically no information to go off of? Also, this was a red eye flight, I'm sure there was much less attention being paid to the skies during these hours than would be if this was a flight that took off at noon. 

I feel like Malaysia's initial reaction and handling of this whole thing set up a situation where families just weren't going to really ever believe what was put out about this flight. The credibility was gone. And then people also getting on a conspiracy that the US, Britain, and Australia were the ones handling all the search and everyone else got shut out. What other countries could do a search of this magnitude? It's a US company that found France's flight cause it couldn't be found after 2 years, even though they knew where it went down because a lot of debris had been found. Britain and US are who produce basically all commercial jets, so it stands to reason these countries have the best technology and companies to find these things. 

[peppergal]

3 hours ago, NetflixandChill said:

 And then people talking about how it would've flown through multiple air spaces but no one ever saw it. Um, cause the stuff was turned off that allowed the plane to be seen by radar, right? Like, isn't that the whole point of why it can't be found to begin with? That it just disappeared from radar, so there's basically no information to go off of? Also, this was a red eye flight, I'm sure there was much less attention being paid to the skies during these hours than would be if this was a flight that took off at noon.

Yes and no.  The electronics that identified the flight as well as giving advanced data on things like altitude (transponder) were not transmitting for whatever reason.  This is known as secondary radar.  But plain old radar (primary) just needs to see a thing in the sky.  It knows it is there, and it knows the approximate trajectory after a few pings, it just doesn't know who/what it is.  That's why stealth planes have to have special geometry and coatings to keep the plain old radar pings from returning to the enemy's radar stations.  A passenger jet no matter the state of their advanced electronics is gonna light up primary radar as long as someone is looking and it is not too close to the ground.

But over the open ocean, they aren't using plain old radar.  There's a lot of space over the water that can't be seen by terrestrial radar at all.  They can only be seen by the advanced satellite telemetry that was turned off or by systems like Australia's JORN which sadly was not in use the night of the incident. 

They did mention at some point (1st episode I think) that a military installation (Vietnam?) did see something on radar in the general area that they expected MH370 to have been at the time it should have been there and that it turned west.  What they didn't mention was that multiple primary radars both military and civilian tracked the plane for a while after the transponder stopped functioning.  One of the issues was that for the first part of the search, the military installations did not release everything they knew because they didn't want others to know their tracking capabilities.  It is unfortunate that there was not more real time cooperation between the civilian ATC that knew it had lost a plane and the primary radar stations that saw an unidentified aircraft. 

The emergency response measures for a missing/downed aircraft were not activated until almost 4 hours after the plane was last seen by ATC's secondary radar.   Had the folks tracking the aircraft as it recrossed the Malaysian peninsula known that there was a missing aircraft and been able to tell the folks looking for it closer to the time of the event, there is the possibility that a military chase flight could have been launched while it was still close enough to land be intercepted.  It probably wouldn't have changed the outcome for the people on board since an intercept couldn't do anything for either catastrophic equipment failure or crew malfeasance/incapacitation, but it would have told the families more about what likely happened and possibly allowed recovery ships to search in the correct area before the CVR and FDR pingers died. 

 

[Bastet]

34 minutes ago, peppergal said:

before the CVR and FDR pingers died. 

In the case of the FDR, a review of the aircraft's maintenance log revealed the battery for its locator beacon had expired about a year before - which was noted, but not replaced as was called for - so it was unlikely to emit a signal at all, and certainly not for the usual length of time.  The CVR presumably had a working ping device.

(I completely agree about the problems caused by delayed communication between military and civil aviation, just wanted to clarify that one point.)

[SunnyBeBe]

Maybe, I’m missing it, but what about the airline’s and Malaysia’s response was so terrible?  They didn’t know what happened and said so.  They calculated the amount of fuel it would have taken to keep the plane in the air and after that was gone, deducted it could not still be airborne.  And, no one reported they landed…..so, isn’t that an obvious deduction?  I don’t get the outrage.  Would it have been better to make something up?  Like what?  

[peppergal]

A lot of the anger comes from some missteps when the plane was probably still in the air as well as the laundry list of incorrect information the Malaysian government and airline gave out in the hours, days, and weeks following the loss.

For instance, the plane disappeared from secondary radar at around 0120, but was seen on primary radar in multiple locations until around 0220.  But when the airline was asked to provide information about the location of the aircraft based on the call home info from the onboard electronics, they provided the expected flight plan and claimed it was real time data.  They did not correct the record until about 0330.  So the Kuala Lumpur ACC (what we would call ATC) was calling the wrong control centers.  The actual emergency action plan that designated a central point of contact and sent out alerts so that entities like those primary radar locations that had data they didn't know was important were informed was not activated until 0530.  No one expects a plane to just fly off into the black, so it is understandable that they may have failed to imagine such a scenario and have an emergency procedure for it that didn't include a 4 hour delay.  But I can see why such a failure would anger grieving people. 

At the initial briefing with the acknowledgement that the aircraft was lost the airline representative gave the wrong time (0220) for when the aircraft disappeared from the controller's secondary radar (properly 0120).  No reason to think this was anything other than tired people reading the data a bit wrong, but the optics of getting that initial statement wrong aren't great.

Then the Malaysian government and airline authorities continued giving out incorrect information in briefings later.  How many stolen passports were used on the flight, why they changed the search location further west, when they first searched the pilot's home, were hazardous materials in cargo, the contents of the final radio transmission, and on and on. 

The only part that might have made a difference in outcome was the initial response by the airline and the ACC in the 0130-0300 time frame, and that would only have been a difference in solving the mystery and not saving lives.  But I can certainly see the anger about all the misstatements and backside covering that went on later.  It feels like a coverup even though it was probably just incompetence. 

[snickers]

On 3/10/2023 at 3:53 PM, Bastet said:

Well, I powered through and finished it, and everyone involved in making this should be

I powered through this as well, so wish I hadn’t 🤬

By theory 3 I was like, “I think I’m done with these Netflix documentaries”

though that pornhub one looks interesting 🤔 

For real though, Netflix needs to stop giving a platform to the conspiracy theorists. 
As for the lady that saw the debris on the satellite image, could that have been plastic? They say it just floats out there in big clumps….

I always felt the pilot suicide theory made the most sense, for those people to say, “it wasnt his character, he was happy” obviously these “ experts” don’t know the first thing about depression/ mental illness

I do feel for the families, hard to get closure when you don’t know and will never know what truly happened though theory 1 is probably what happened 😭

[iMonrey]

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I always felt the pilot suicide theory made the most sense, for those people to say, “it wasnt his character, he was happy” obviously these “ experts” don’t know the first thing about depression/ mental illness

Assuming that's true, why turn the plane in the opposite direction and fly another five hours until fuel ran out? Why not just ditch the plane in the middle of the south China sea? Does anyone have a theory why he would do something that odd? Is it because there's some sort of fail safe on the plane that prevents a pilot from just crashing it on purpose? Did he have to wait until it ran out of fuel?

[peppergal]

4 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Assuming that's true, why turn the plane in the opposite direction and fly another five hours until fuel ran out? Why not just ditch the plane in the middle of the south China sea? Does anyone have a theory why he would do something that odd? Is it because there's some sort of fail safe on the plane that prevents a pilot from just crashing it on purpose? Did he have to wait until it ran out of fuel?

I agree that it is unusual for someone to choose a method of death where there is such a long period to be able to back out.  Not completely unheard of, just odd for there to be such a lag between initiating the action and the action being non-reversible.  It's possible though that after doing whatever was done to keep the passengers/other crew from interfering, the pilot also took himself out, either through hypoxia, pharmaceuticals, over consumption of alcohol, or other self harm.  Doesn't even have to have killed him in flight, just render him unconscious so he couldn't/wouldn't change his mind.  For some suicidal people, it is easier to choose to go to sleep and never wake up than it is to deliberately take a violent action like flying into the water.

There aren't really fail safes to keep a pilot from intentionally flying into the ocean, or a mountain, or a building.  There's a lot of warning gear to warn you that you are about to do it, but the Boeing philosophy in airplane design is that the pilot is in a superior position to the automation.  Even in the disaster with the badly designed MCAS, the pilot was supposed to be able to override the automation, but having the issue occur so close to the ground, there was insufficient time for the pilots to diagnose, correct, and recover.  Though thinking about it, whatever caused some of the electronics like the Inmarsat to reboot might have caused the autopilot to go into a "straight and level" mode awaiting pilot input.  If the pilot were already unaware by then it would have just run until out of fuel, even if the original intent had been for it to crash earlier.

If we want to throw out wildly speculative nearly insane theories, maybe this was some sort of Heaven's Gate type thing where he felt he needed to escape his mortal body, but he thought he needed to be out in the middle of nowhere for the aliens to beam him up.

I'm glad that in the years since the incident, both short term and long term policies, software, and hardware requirements have been updated so that if another plane ends up in a similar flight path, there is a much higher chance of being able to figure out what happened.  I hope we never have to use them though.

[blixie]

I'm glad I watched it all because somehow through the years I missed that they did find debris. It's wild that two journalists are working that hard to dismiss the parts (Imarat, the debris) that make sense to say it doesn't make sense.

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Desperate family members clinging to wild theories shouldn't be exploited -- or encouraged by treating these theories as anything more than they are

I think the handling of the disappearance, by the airline and the government was so bad that, coupled with their unresolved grief, they will never really be able to trust the "evidence". Most of them don't seem to be buying into conspiracies so much as just yearning for the search to continue for the black box/fuselage. The one lady who works for the airline just doesn't like the primary theory of the pilot murdering everyone and the French guy literally had a government official fuel his doubts.

I feel l like the documentarians were actually trying to expose how ridiculous the alternative theories were, because each required the dismissal of actual evidence, and instead it was highlighting the limits of what we can really know about anything. This happens all the time in criminal justice. It is impossible for people to accept those limits especially journalists I guess. I think I was still pretty unclear on what exactly the data from Imarat does say, they were clear it's not positional, but neither journalist has any evidence it was altered, it's crazy they both keep arguing it was/is. They both kept harping on the lack of evidence to conclude it was downed in the Indian Ocean but then are like yeah I don't gotta produce evidence that this data was altered, I can just insinuate. 

[vibeology]

22 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Assuming that's true, why turn the plane in the opposite direction and fly another five hours until fuel ran out? Why not just ditch the plane in the middle of the south China sea? Does anyone have a theory why he would do something that odd? Is it because there's some sort of fail safe on the plane that prevents a pilot from just crashing it on purpose? Did he have to wait until it ran out of fuel?

My guess, and obviously it's just a guess, is that he wanted to make sure the plane wasn't found. If it could be proven that he intentionally took down the plane, then if he had life insurance, that won't pay out. His estate might even be liable in wrongful death-type lawsuits. Plus there's the social stigma of being the kid of a mass murderer. Making sure the plane isn't found protects his family.

[Bastet]

4 hours ago, vibeology said:

My guess, and obviously it's just a guess, is that he wanted to make sure the plane wasn't found. If it could be proven that he intentionally took down the plane, then if he had life insurance, that won't pay out. His estate might even be liable in wrongful death-type lawsuits. Plus there's the social stigma of being the kid of a mass murderer. Making sure the plane isn't found protects his family.

That's my guess, too, that he didn't want it to be known he crashed the plane, probably for his family's sake.  I doubt he anticipated the Inmarsat data was ultimately going to reveal the true location, so they'd be - as they were until Inmarsat did the calculations - looking in the wrong ocean, assuming it went down where they lost contact, and never find the black boxes to get that data.

[absnow54]

I thought the first episode was reasonably well done, so when it went off the deep end in episode 2 and 3, I was really disappointed. I wish the producers had done more to fact check the theories. It's like they'd pick up a technology buzzword and pretend it gave them dramatic license to tell whatever story they wanted. I'd prefer to hear more from the Inmarsat and aviation guy. I was ready to hate the debris guy, but then he surprisingly ended up being one of the more sane contributors.