MH370 theories - two ways Malaysia Airlines pilot could have depressurised cabin
The families of passengers on flight MH370 are still looking for answers 10 years after the plane's disappearance that has remained unresolved despite extensive search efforts.
Friday marked the 10th anniversary of the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines plane. The Boeing 777 left Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia bound for Beijing, China, with 239 people on board on March 8, 2014, but took a sharp turn south and fell off the radar. It never made it to Beijing.
The plane's disappearance drew attention from around the world and has generated countless conspiracy theories. Only debris from the aircraft has been found.
Debris from the plane was found in the coastal area of Saint-Andre de la Reunion (AFP/Getty Images)A new BBC documentary, 'Why Planes Vanish: The Hunt for MH370', has now looked at a number of theories aviation experts have on what could have happened to the plane. Retired commercial pilot Captain Patrick Belly and Jean Luc Marchand, former air traffic manager at Eurocontrol, said they believe a "skilled pilot" was in control up until the moment the plane crashed.
Mr Marchand said: "They took care to be invisible, not traceable, to not be followed." To keep the aircraft out of view, the pair argue the person in the controls shut off the power to satellite phones, leaving the crew without contact with the ground. While pilots have the power to switch off controls, they can also override the plane's automatic air pressure - in the event there is a technical malfunction.
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Ex-pilot Belly said in the documentary: "The problem was that the passengers, crew, were going to find the plane was no longer going to Beijing. My theory is that MH370 was depressurised. It's quite easy for a pilot to depressurise an aircraft - all you have to do is switch the valves to manual."
Police officers inspect metallic debris found on a beach in Saint-Denis on the French Reunion Island in August 2015 (AFP/Getty Images)When a plane is depressurised, air is sucked out of the cabin. In this event, emergency oxygen masks would have enabled passengers to survive for around 20 minutes, but equipment in the cockpit would give a pilot access to more than 20 hours of oxygen, the fascinating documentary states.
"This made it possible to neutralise all the people behind in the cabin," Belly continued. "The person who took control of this plane did something extraordinary, which led to the death of 239 passengers and put it at the bottom of the Indian Ocean and we have no idea why he did that. This case, I am convinced was executed by someone who was a pilot because no one else was capable on this plane."
Another theory is that Captain Zaharie Ahmed Shah "deliberately depressurised the cabin" in order to "slowly kill everyone on board". The theory was outlined by the Independent Group, which is made up of experts who worked on the case after the plane's disappearance.
Families of passengers are still searching for answers (Bloomberg via Getty Images)They claimed Shah steered the Boeing 777 off course before either waiting for the jet to run out of fuel or even deliberately nose-diving it into the water so it disintegrated on impact. Electrical engineer Mike Exner, a member of the group, previously said he believes Shah also made a steep climb to 40,000ft before the murder-suicide.
Climbing rapidly would have accelerated the depressurising process, he said, adding: "An intentional depressurisation would have been an obvious way - and probably the only way - to subdue a potentially unruly cabin in an airplane that was going to remain in flight for hours to come. In the cabin, the effect would have gone unnoticed but for the sudden appearance of the drop-down oxygen masks and perhaps the cabin crew's use of the few portable units of similar design.
"None of those cabin masks was intended for more than about 15 minutes of use during emergency descents to altitudes below 13,000 feet; they would have been of no value at all cruising at 40,000 feet. The cabin occupants would have become incapacitated within a couple of minutes, lost consciousness, and gently died without any choking or gasping for air."
Malaysia said it is considering restarting the search for flight MH370 (AFP/Getty Images)Despite multiple theories, experts have so far been unable to establish exactly what happened to flight MH370. But the families of passengers are now hoping for new answers as last week Malaysia's government said it may renew the hunt for the missing plane after a US technology firm proposed a fresh search in the southern Indian Ocean where the plane is believed to have crashed a decade ago.
Transport Minister Anthony Loke said Texas-based Ocean Infinity has proposed another "no find, no fee" basis to scour the seabeds, expanding from the site where it first searched in 2018. He said he has invited the company to meet him to evaluate new scientific evidence it has to find the plane's final resting place.
If the evidence is credible, he said, he will seek Cabinet's approval to sign a new contract with Ocean Infinity to resume the search. "The government is steadfast in our resolve to locate MH370," Loke told a remembrance event to mark the 10th anniversary of the disappearance of the jet. "We really hope the search can find the plane and provide truth to the next-of-kin."
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