MALAYSIA AIRLINES FLIGHT 370
Brennan White
INTRODUCTION
“Good night. Malaysia Three-Seven-Zero”. The simple, but last words were received by flight control the morning of the crash. But who said those words? Flight captain Zaharie Shah took off from Kuala Lumpar, the capital of Malaysia the night of March 8th, 2014. And at 1:19am, transmissioned for the final time (Langewiesche). Since then, several conspiracies have been sparked:
The conspiracy regarding whether MH370 was shot down by terrorists or even rival governments.
The conspiracy regarding if the cockpit could have been hijacked even though Zaharie Shah was trained to prevent hijackings.
The conspiracy regarding how Zaharie Shahs' depression, if he had it, and how it affected what happened to MH370.
Let’s take a look into the conspiracies or cover-ups involving Zaharie Shah and the mysteries surrounding Malaysia Airlines flight 370.
ZAHARIE SHAH
Zaharie Shah, native to Maylasia, was 53 years old and was the pilot for MH370. Shah was a perfectly capable pilot, having been a captain for a B777 for 16 years. After joining Malaysia Airlines, in 33 years, had collected a total of 18,423 hours behind the yoke. He was married and had three children, and at work, maintained a good track record, and was an all-around well-respected pilot. However, seeming to be a perfect pilot, took a sharp turn for the worse.
Zaharie Shah, a mysterious pilot, slowly cared less and less for his family. In the months leading up to the flight, his wife, Faizah Khanum asserted that” I found him distant and difficult to understand"(Lockett). For the last couple of weeks, he was engulfed in his flight simulator. His wife in an interview illustrated that “He just retreated into a shell” (Lockett). This could be a result of their emotional turmoil as they were in a relationship deemed to end. Aishah, his daughter, said that he had talked to her about their marriage, though throughout the conversation, he had hinted at divorce multiple times without reconsidering, even when multiple solutions to help were given (Lockett).
Secretively, Zaharie was cheating on his wife. A fellow pilot and friend of his said,” In the past, he slept with some of the flight attendants.” (Tiplady-Bishop). Zaharie even admits to it saying, “And so what? We all do [sleep with the flight attendants]”. However, his wife knew, and at the time of the disappearance, was already moved into a second home to get away from him. Shah, instead of trying to talk to his wife, even began to find a liking for women in a relationship. Being deemed as wistful, these relationships would often be with mothers of children.
Zaharie was also on social media, however, this revealed an even more reckless side of the pilot (Tiplady-Bishop). In the 12 months leading up to the disappearance of MH370, Zaharie was found stalking the pages of multiple models, oftentimes twins, leaving sexually suggestive comments under their posts (Chapman). In 2013 alone, Zaharie, the 53-year-old left 97 separate Facebook comments directed to Qi Min Lan, a twin that was only 26 at the time. While most of the messages were ignored, Zaharie even tried to get them to come to his house in Kuala Lumpur, where he and his WIFE lived. Because of this unhealthy scrolling of pages, he began to develop unhealthy, one-sided relationships with the models, ultimately leading to him becoming disconnected from reality.
Like how it's used now, Zaharie also complained about the government on Facebook (Chapman). However, coming from aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas,” It was alarming for a senior pilot to make political comments at all.” . Alarm bells should have gone off when someone flying people around and had such strong anti-government views, but most likely due to his decent track record, it was brushed off . Thomas later goes on to say that” if a Qantas (Australian airlines) pilot did something like that, he would be spoken to and grounded". Zaharie also has posted him in anti-government shirts saying lines like "Democracy is dead" causing many to fear that the disappearance of MH370 could have been an anti-government protest (Layton & Glaze).
CONSPIRACIES
There are three interesting conspiracies when it comes to Zaharie Shah and the disappearance of MH370. First, the conspiracy regarding whether MH370 was shot down by terrorists or even rival governments. The second conspiracy regarding if the cockpit could have been hijacked even though Zaharie Shah was trained to prevent hijackings. And finally, the conspiracy regarding how Zaharie Shahs' depression, if he had it, and how it affected what happened to MH370.
FIRST CONSPIRACY
The disappearance of this Boeing 777 has become one of the greatest mysteries in aviation and has sparked many conspiracy theories. Florence de Changy, a French journalist believes she has solved the puzzle. She argues that “the American military used signal jamming technology to wipe the plane from radar screens – before shooting it down after a failed attempt to re-direct it.” (Churchman). She believed that the US did this to seize sensitive electronic gear on its way to Beijing. In her book, she even goes on to disregard other conspiracies like if the plane was hijacked or if there was a fire on board. She writes that “it could have been the last resort to stop the plane and its special cargo from falling into Chinese hands” (Churchman). Would the US government really do this? Another source, however, takes on the theory that the Malaysian Military could have done it. The Malaysia radar picked up that the flight was flying over the island of Penang at 600 mph, however, this would not be a typical route to Beijing (Langewiesche). The Military stated that they “did not pursue to intercept the aircraft since it was ‘friendly’ and did not pose any threat to national airspace security, integrity, and sovereignty” (Langewiesche). However, after the crash, they still allowed for a search to be held that lasted for days in the wrong ocean. Their squadron of F-18 interceptors could have been the culprits if MH370 was shot down. In those days it took for them to come out with information they could have been covering up something they did on purpose or on accident.
SECOND CONSPIRACY
Pilots are now trained, when in a hostage or hijacking situation, to always keep the doors locked to the cockpit. However, if MH370 was hijacked, it would be the third plane in 2014 alone. So why is it so hard to say that MH370 was not hijacked? It is reported that “the Boeing 777-200ER’s Rolls-Royce engines appear to have kept transmitting maintenance data for five hours after the jet’s transponder went dead” (Koerner). Also, more data released says that the military radar that was tracking the plane reports that it was heading for a set of islands known as the Andaman Islands. All this builds to a final piece of data that reveals that transponder and data reporting systems were switched on and off, which implies that a human can be behind it all. So then is it possible for Zaharie Shah to be behind it? While it may not be directly Zaharie behind it, I could very well be another crew member of the flight that had access to the cockpit and without knowing, Zaharie could have let them in without knowing their true intentions. However, once they turned off communication, it made anything they were trying to do a lot harder unless they were trying to die.
THIRD CONSPIRACY
Zaharie Shah was depressed. During a turn that MH370 took, an electrical engineer in Boulder, Colorado, named Mike Exner believes that “the airplane climbed up to 40,000 ft” (Langewiesche). This type of climb would push the plane to around the altitude limit and cause the people on the plane to experience some G-force. This maneuver, Exner believes “was to accelerate the effects of depressurizing the airplane, causing the rapid incapacitation and death of everyone in the cabin” (Langewiesche). As said in the quote, this was an easy way for Zaharie to kill everyone on board without doing anything that a normal person in the aircraft would suspect. And after this, because the Cockpit is well equipped with pressurized oxygen masked linked to hours of supply, Zaharie could have done what he wanted with the plane, which was most likely flying it into the Indian Ocean to take his own life after taking all the others.
CONCLUSION
After researching Zaharie Shah and his mysterious flight, we are left with three conspiracies to conclude what really happened:
The conspiracy regarding whether MH370 was shot down by terrorists or even rival governments.
The conspiracy regarding if the cockpit could have been hijacked even though Zaharie Shah was trained to prevent hijackings.
The conspiracy regarding how Zaharie Shahs' depression, if he had it, and how it affected what happened to MH370.
Slowly becoming one of the biggest aviation mysteries in the world, the disappearance of MH370 has still yet to be solved. Or has it?
HAS MH370 BEEN FOUND?
Richard Godfrey, A British expert in Aerospace engineering claims that the “plane crashed into the Indian Ocean 1993km west of Perth and lies 4000m below the surface” (“A Bunch of Tripwires”: Expert Claims to Have FOUND MH370 in Missing Plane Breakthrough.”). He knows this because of a high-tech system called weak signal propagation to track the final movements of MH370. He describes this as “a bunch of tripwires that work in every direction over the horizon to the other side of the globe” (“A Bunch of Tripwires”: Expert Claims to Have FOUND MH370 in Missing Plane Breakthrough.”). Mr. Godfrey believes that the plane is resting at the base of a broken ridge which while it wasn’t in the original search area, was in the northern part of the search area when it was increased to a 120,000km area. While this breakthrough is amazing, searches of this area will not begin until the summer of 2022. So, While MH370 still remains a mystery, a major clue to discovering what really happened is upon us.
