The search operations to find the missing Malaysian Boeing 777-200 aircraft on March 8, 2014, seemed to have come to an end. However, there is still no reliable confirmation that the plane fell into the ocean.
On March 24, 2014, at a meeting with the relatives of the missing passengers, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak said that the plane could be declared crashed. According to him, the liner crashed in the southern Indian Ocean. Presumably, none of the passengers and crew members survived.
However, the conclusion about the deaths of passengers was made based on the analysis of satellite images, while the debris at the site of the alleged crash was not found. Relatives of Boeing 777 passengers on the same day rioted at the Malaysian Embassy in Beijing and accused the country's authorities of hiding information about the fate of the plane.
Known data
The Malaysian Airlines MAS airliner, which was over the South China Sea, disappeared from the radar screens an hour after departure, at 02:40 on March 8, local time, without giving any signals to the dispatchers. The Boeing 777-200 was making a code-share flight MH370 with China Southern Airlines from the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, to Beijing and was scheduled to land at its destination at 6:30 am the same day.
Onboard the aircraft were 12 crew members and 227 passengers. Among the missing people on the list are two citizens of Ukraine - 45-year-old Oleg Chustrak and Serhiy Deineka, one Russian citizen - Irkutsk businessman Nikolai Brodsky, and 11 American servicemen.
The crew was piloted by experienced pilots - the captain, 53-year-old Zahari Ahmad Shah, who had been with MAS since 1981, and the co-pilot, 27-year-old Farik Ab Namid. The plane passed a full technical check 10 days before the tragedy and was serviceable.
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The airliner's black box signals have not been registered. Initially, it was reported that the plane crashed in the territorial waters of Vietnam, 250 km from the island of Tho-Chu, but searches were unsuccessful.
The conclusion about the plane crash was made by the Malaysian authorities on the basis of scientific assumption. Employees of the British satellite company Inmarsat calculated two possible routes for the missing liner, compared satellite data from previous Boeing 777 flights with flight MH370 and concluded that the missing liner flew south. The calculations were based on the Doppler effect - a physical phenomenon, which consists in the change in frequency and wavelengths recorded by the receiver, caused by the movement of their source and / or the movement of the receiver. However, the plane was still not found.
Terrorist attack or conspiracy?
The main version was initially the assumption of a terrorist attack. According to unconfirmed reports, Beijing's special services previously received information from an anonymous source about the impending terrorist attack. In addition, it turned out that two unknown persons got on board according to other people's documents of citizens of Italy and Austria.
Those on the list of the missing were in good health in their homeland and reported that some time ago their passports were stolen in Thailand. However, after identifying and verifying their identities, the investigation concluded that both passengers were most likely simply trying to immigrate to Europe.
A little later, it became known that shortly before the plane took off, the pilot spoke on the phone with a person from whom, as it turned out, the phone was acquired using false documents. At the same time, the Malaysian police admitted that the photographs of passengers flying on the Boeing 777 on previously lost passports were deliberately changed.
The involvement of the United States in the disappearance of the plane is also not the last option under discussion, especially since the FBI officially took over the investigation of the circumstances of the case.
Theft or breakdown?
No less plausible is the version of theft. Before the disappearance, the radar recorded a change in the course of the board in the opposite direction, this data was automatically transmitted from the aircraft engine systems. In the event of a change in flight direction, it can be assumed that the hijackers forced the pilots to do this, but it is strange that the crew did not send any signals for help.
Less likely is the version about the technical malfunction of the aircraft and the possibility that the pilots had to land the airliner on the water. And again the same question: why was the signal not given?
People or UFOs?
Given that no signal for help was sent, the assumption of the pilots' frivolity cannot be abandoned. Recently, photographs of one of the pilots with the girls in their cockpit appeared in the press shortly before the ill-fated flight. It is believed that a different kind of human factor could have taken place in the alleged accident: “Perhaps someone on board bought insurance for a huge amount for his family to receive, or someone owed someone so much money,” - RIA Novosti quotes the head of the Malaysian police Khalid Abu Bakar. They also do not deny the option that the pilot decided to commit suicide and at the same time take hundreds of lives with him.
Of course, with so many unknowns, alternative versions of what happened are offered. Some report that they saw an unidentified flying object next to the plane, while others say that the airliner was sucked into a black hole over the South China Sea.
One thing is unbelievable: relatives called the mobile phones of the disappeared, and in response there were long beeps. And experts do not undertake to comment on this mysterious circumstance at the moment.
Alina Maximova