WITHOUT A TRACE
Five wildest theories behind disappearance of MH370 – from hijacking fears, to ‘ghost plane’ and UFO sightings
SINCE flight MH370 vanished without a trace, a frenzied guessing game over what happened to the doomed jet has spiralled for almost a decade.
More and more conspiracy theories have been aired over the years - some believable, and others no more than outrageous.
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On March 7, 2014, Flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur and was heading to Beijing with 239 people on board.
But at 12.14am on March 8, Malaysia Airlines lost contact with MH370 close to Phuket island in the Strait of Malacca.
It never reached its destination and none of the passengers were ever heard from again.
Almost ten years later, there are still no answers to what happened.
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Several theories have, however, been tabled as authorities and experts alike battle to find out the truth.
US shot down plane
Rather than the jet's fate being an unsolved riddle, investigative journalist Florence de Changy believes the official version of events is shrouded in deceit.
In her book The Disappearing Act: The Impossible Case of MH370, she details her theory from seven years of intense research into one of the greatest aviation mysteries in history.
The expert believes the plane was shot down by the US Air Force in a bid to stop secret tech reaching China.
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De Changy claims the US tried to intercept the plane by using technology to jam the signal
The official script for the Boeing-777's disappearance suggests the plane made a dramatic U-turn less than an hour into its planned flight before plummeting into the Indian Ocean.
But de Changy has branded the finding a "diversion operation" which is "the biggest cover-up in recent times".
In the 400-page publication, the French reporter suggests the US Air Force attempted to ambush the plane by intercepting tracking technology to cause the aircraft to disappear from radar screens.
She believes the MH370 was carrying a shipment of "electronic equipment" over to China - which the US did not approve of.
Her book claims it was shot down after a failed attempt at re-routing its course, and the matter has been feverishly covered up ever since.
Pilot suicide with ‘death dive’
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It has also been alleged that the plane's pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, may steered the jet to its doom.
According to a life-long friend of Shah, who is also a pilot, his mental state could have impacted any decision to down the jet.
The unnamed pilot previously said as a senior officer and examiner it would have been easy to divert co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, out of the cockpit and then lock the door.
Previously talking to , the airline worker added: "Zaharie’s marriage was bad. In the past he slept with some of the flight attendants."
Described as "troubled and lonely", Shah is claimed to have slowly suffocated his passengers by depressurising the plane before crashing into the sea.
The Independent Group, whose aviation sleuths have worked on the case, claim Shah steered the plane off course before either waiting for the jet to run out of fuel or deliberately nose-diving it into the water so it disintegrated on impact.
Electrical engineer Mike Exner - a member of the IG - believes Shah also made a steep climb to 40,000ft before the murder-suicide.
Climbing rapidly would have accelerated the depressurising process, he revealed.
Abducted by UFO
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One of the more wild theories suggests the plane could have been abducted by a UFO.
A video went viral online showing an unidentified object following a plane.
Amateur sleuths became adamant the jet in the bizarre clip was MH370 and that it had been kidnapped by aliens.
But the clip has been debunked, as, according to Newsweek, the footage was captured by a satellite that hadn't even been launched when MH370 went missing.
Ghost plane after cabin depressurised
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Only around 33 pieces of debris — either confirmed or deemed highly likely to be from MH370 — have been found in La Reunion, Mauritius, Madagascar, Tanzania and South Africa.
Another suspected piece, also part of a wing spoiler, was found in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, in 2021.
Experts say currents would have washed them there from the presumed crash site on the other side of the Indian Ocean near Western Australia.
But the debris could hold the key to solving the riddle.
Analysis of one piece of the wreckage suggested the missing plane spiralled into the sea in an uncontrolled "ghost dive".
Experts say part of a wing spoiler was ripped off - dismissing a past theory that the plane glided to the surface in a controlled ditching.
The piece washed up in South Africa in 2020 and experts said damage on the part indicated it had been torn off the aircraft in "an uncontrolled high-speed dive".
It appeared to confirm the view of other experts that the jet flew until it ran out of fuel, then plunged into the ocean with no one at the controls.
This also links back to the theory that the pilot, Shah, may have been behind the disappearane.
It was flying in the wrong direction when it was last seen on radar, and is believed to have flown for another seven hours over the open ocean.
Remote hijacking or hijacking onboard
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Several theories about a possible hijacking, either onboard or remotely, have also swirled for years.
One conspiracy theory suggests MH370 could have been hijacked by a stowaway.
Investigators discovered a “mysterious 14st load” added to the flight list after take-off, according to an engineer.
Ghyslain Wattrelos, whose wife and two children were on the flight, said the cargo was identified in a report on the passengers and baggage by French investigators.
He says a container on the flight was also found to be overloaded but no explanation was ever established.
Mr Wattrelos, who believes the flight was deliberately downed, previously told French newspaper Le Parisien: "Some abnormal turns made by the 777 can only be done manually. So someone was at the helm.
“It is too early to state categorically. But nothing is credited that anyone else could have entered the cockpit."
Meanwhile, a bizarre theory has suggested that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un was behind the jet's fate.
A wild suggestion on the social media platform Reddit, which is notorious for outlandish ideas, claimed the despot ordered the hijacking as he wanted the jet to do research into tech advancement.
Reddit users claimed the plane had enough fuel to take it to the hermit kingdom.
They also point out that the finger was pointed at North Korea over the hijacking of the Korean Air Lines YS-11 flight in 1969.
And according to one user, the plane turned slightly towards the nuclear-armed nation before it vanished from the radar.
Another conspiracy theory tables that the disappearance was at the hands of Russia.
Aviation expert Jeff Wise believes the Kremlin had means and motive.
In his 2015 book The Plane Wasn't There, Wise argued that Russia is one of few countries with the tech to carry out such an attack.
He wrote: “Russia is arguably the only country that stands apart from the West and yet is as technologically advanced in the aerospace industry as the US.
“Not only does the US at present rely on Russia for its entire manned space launch capability, but even a good portion of its own unmanned launch capability, namely that provided by orbital scientists on US rockets powered by Russian-made engines.”
He also argued that Russia's motive could have been to distract from its illegal annexing of Crimea that same year.
Speaking on Channel 5’s 2019 documentary Flight MH370 in 2019, Mr Wise said: "You have to understand this in the context of Russia having just annexed Crimea.
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"It’s getting a lot of heat for it and would really love for people to talk about something else, anything else.
"And so the world’s attention shifts completely away from this nasty business in Ukraine and all the way over here."
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