Malaysia Airlines operates two flights daily from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. On March 8, 2014, Flight MH370 departed at 00:35 and was to land at destination at 06:30. The aircraft was a Boeing 777, a modern, fly-by-wire commercial jet whose operating cost is lower than that of the Boeing 747 and can fly a 16-hour leg without a refuelling stop. It has an excellent safety record since its introduction in 1995.In its 19 years of service, it has had only ten accidents/incidents with only four hull losses. Malaysia Airlines has been operating the 777 for 15 years and has 15 of the type including the MH370.

Bearing registration number 9M-MRO, the ill-fated aircraft was the 404th model off the Boeing assembly line. Around 1,200 of the type are in use worldwide. Incidentally, in 1997, Malaysia Airlines flew a 777-200ER (extended range) on the world’s longest non-commercial non-stop flight from the Boeing facility in Seattle to Kuala Lumpur breaking the ‘Great Circle Distance Without Landing’ record for an airliner. Later this record was broken by a 777-200LR.

The aircraft operating as MH370 had completed more than 7,500 flights logging 53,400 hours of flying. It had undergone ‘A’ Check on February 23, 2014 during which no problems were detected. Malaysia Airlines 777s have a two-class cabin configuration, 35 Golden Club Class seats and 247 Economy. Of the total 282 seats on the MH370, 227 were occupied. On board was also the 12-member, all-Malaysian crew. An examiner on type, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah had 18,365 hours of flying experience. First officer was Fariq Abdul Hamid, who had flown 2,763 hours and was converting on to the 777-200. The passengers were from 15 nationalities including five Indians, the majority being Chinese.

The flight actually got airborne at 00:41. A routine communication from the on-board Aircraft Communications Addressing & Reporting System (ACARS), a digital data link between the aircraft and ground station to provide updates on the aircraft condition, was sent out at 01:07 when the flight was approaching the East coast of Malaysia. This was the last routine message from ACARS and the next due at 01:37 never came. Sebang ATC identified the flight by tracking its transponder which squawked its unique code 2157 while reporting its altitude, speed and heading. Sebang told the flight that it was being transferred to Ho Chi Minh radar control as it neared Vietnamese airspace. First officer, Fariq acknowledged at 01:19 with the words “Good night Malaysian three seven zero.” It is reasonable to presume that till then, the flight was normal. At 01:20:43, the flight’s transponder stopped responding. ATC tried to raise the flight on radio again but failed. A military radar at Butterworth on Malaysia’s west coast picked up an unidentified track at 02:22 but did not take it seriously. A Thai radar detected an unidentified aircraft flying in the opposite direction to that expected of MH370 and also ignored it, declaring the contact only 10 days later. A Malaysian military radar last detected what is believed to be the flight, over the small island of Pulau Perak in the Strait of Malacca, miles off course. At 07:24, almost an hour after the scheduled arrival at Beijing, Malaysia Airlines announced that the aircraft had lost contact with Sebang ATC. At 08:11, seven-and-a-half hours after takeoff, a satellite made the last connection with the flight.

Inmarsat identified a series of fleeting “pings” between MH370, a satellite over the Indian Ocean and a ground station in Perth, Australia. Seven signals, transmitted at onehour intervals, the last one at 08:11, provided valuable inputs identifying the source as MH370, but not giving any clue on the position of the aircraft at the time of transmitting the information. Forced to deducing the position from simple trigonometry, technicians identified two possible paths, one over land towards the North and the other over the sea to the South. At the time of going to print, the siting of debris in the Indian Ocean west of Perth appears to be a possible way forward to solving the mystery of MH370. If indeed the debris is confirmed to be remnants of MH370, the team that recovered the black box of AF-447 from the bottom of the Atlantic two years after the accident, is standing by to begin a search.

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