Malaysia will resume the search for the Boeing plane that disappeared 11 years ago. What you need to know

The Malaysian Ministry of Transport has announced that an American company engaged in underwater research will begin searching for the Malaysia Airlines plane, which disappeared without a trace on March 8, 2014. The mystery of flight MH370 has not yet been solved, but there are several versions about the causes of the death of the aircraft. Details can be found in the Izvestia article.

Disappearance and rescue operation

• Boeing 777 flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing took off from the Malaysian airport with 227 passengers on board and 12 crew members shortly after midnight on March 8, 2014. Most of the passengers were Chinese citizens, and there were also Malaysian residents on the plane, including the crew. On board were citizens of Indonesia, Australia, India, France, the United States, New Zealand, Ukraine and Canada, as well as a Russian, a Dutchman and two Iranians who owned stolen passports of Austria and Italy.

• 38 minutes after takeoff, the on-board data transmission systems stopped transmitting information about the aircraft's location. At the same time, subsequent analysis of radar and satellite communications data showed that the aircraft continued its flight for another seven hours. The last exact location of flight MH370 was recorded by surveillance systems in the north of Sumatra Island. But these coordinates were received six hours before the end of the aircraft's flight, which presumably took place in the southern Indian Ocean.

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• The search for the MH370 flight plane was the most expensive in the history of aviation. They started on the day of the disappearance and lasted 1,047 days. The ground search and rescue operation lasted more than seven weeks, until April 29, 2014. The joint investigation team included Chinese, French, Malaysian, British and American experts. Due to the fact that the Malaysian side did not immediately disclose important information, at first the search went in the wrong direction. The waters of the South China and Andaman Seas, the Bay of Bengal and parts of the Indian Ocean were surveyed, but no wreckage of the aircraft could be found.

• The work of the search team was complicated by limited data. The underwater area, initially defined at 60,000 square kilometers, was increased to 120,000 square kilometers in 2015. The search was unsuccessful, but thanks to the work done and the fragments of the aircraft found later in the area of Reunion Island and Mozambique, the search area was reduced to 15 thousand square kilometers.

New searches

The American company Ocean Infinity, which specializes in underwater surveys and the search for wrecks using robotic systems, will search for the wreckage. The oldest find in Ocean Infinity's track record is the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance, which sank in 1915.

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• According to the agreement concluded by the company with the Malaysian government, the reward will amount to $70 million, but only if significant wreckage of the vessel is found. The Ocean Infinity search operation began back in March, but due to the bad weather, the work had to be interrupted. The researchers now have 55 days to find traces of the Malaysian flight.

Versions

• Military radar recorded that two hours after takeoff, the MH370 abruptly veered off course and turned back towards Malaysia. According to the official version adopted by the government of the country and the Australian Bureau of Transport Safety, passengers and crew of the aircraft could suffer from hypoxia — lack of oxygen. Hypoxia could be caused by an accident, a sudden ascent, or a struggle to control the aircraft during an attempted hijacking.

• The hijacking version was also considered, since control of the aircraft was intercepted from the cockpit. The investigation revealed that the aircraft's turn could not have been made by autopilot — it was done manually. This version was also suggested by the presence on board of Iranian passengers with foreign passports who expected to receive political asylum in Germany. This version has not been officially supported.

• Deliberate actions of the pilot were also considered among the possible causes of the flight's death. This version was also indicated by the fact that only two minutes had passed between the ship's captain's on-duty message to the Malaysian dispatcher and the loss of the transmitting device signal from the aircraft. In 1997, the captain of the Singapore—based airline SilkAir chose this method of crashing his own plane. It is assumed that he turned off the "black boxes" and sent the plane into the river.

The consequences of the disaster

• The tragedy of the Malaysian flight led to a review of the rules of air travel safety. In particular, it was decided to increase the battery life of underwater drive beacons, which can detect a vessel by radio frequency signals. The recording time on the flight recorders has been increased and new data transmission standards have been introduced when aircraft pass over the ocean. Since 2025, the International Civil Aviation Organization has required aircraft to be equipped with devices that transmit data on the ship's location every minute — these devices cannot be turned off manually.