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Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370
MH370 was a routine passenger flight between Malaysia and the People's Republic of China.
The Boeing 777 departed Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) at 12:41 AM (MYT) on Saturday, 8 March 2014 and was expected to land at Beijing at 6:30 AM.
The same flight was also sold customers of China Southern Airlines as flight CZ748.
Malaysia Airlines and China Southern Airlines were 'code share partners'.
History of the flight
See extracts from:-
- The Operational Search for MH370 (Australia).
- The Safety Investigation Report (Malaysia), and
- See Also: Recommended Reading Lost: Untold stories of Malaysia Airlines MH370 published by The Straits Times
Source: WMC-IMG-021
Boeing 777 registered 9M-MRO
The aircraft was a Boeing 777 operated by Malaysia Airlines.
Boeing built the 777-200-ER aircraft in 2002 and, after it was received by Malaysia Airlines in May 2002, it was registered 9M-MRO.
Malaysia Airlines had a fleet of Boeing 777 aircraft.
Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 9M-MRO had been flown for over 53,000 hours with 7526 cycles - take-off and landings.
.jpg "aeroprints.com, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons")
Source: WMC-IMG-017
Flight Crew
Pilot-in-Command
Captain Zaharie Bin Ahmad Shah was the Pilot-in-Command of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
Captain Shah, age 53, had been with Malaysia Airlines (MAS) since 1981 and had flown 18000 hours on many different aircraft in the MAS Fleet. He had over 8600 hours on the Boeing 777.
Captain Shah was also a Type Rating Instructor (TRI) and Type Rating Examiner (TRE) for the Boeing 777.
On flight MH370 Captain Shah was supervising the First Officer, Fariq Hamid, who was not fully qualified.
Source: ATWMY-019-2
First Officer
The First Officer (co-pilot) was Fariq Hamid.
Fariq Hamid, age 27, joined Malaysia Airlines in 2007. He had over 2800 hours flying experience, mostly on Boeing 737 and Airbus A330 aircraft.
Fariq had only 39 hours experience on the Boeing 777. Flight MH370 was meant to be his last training flight before he was checked out on his next scheduled flight.
Source: MRPSG-018
'Lost Contact'
At 7:30 AM on Saturday, 8 March 2014 Malaysia Airlines announced that Air Traffic Controllers had lost contact with the aircraft.
The Timeline shows that the flight, between departure from Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) to a waypoint called IGARI above the South China Sea, was normal.
- At 0107:56 MYT Captain Shah confirmed that the aircraft was maintaining an altitude of 35,000 feet.
- At 0119:26 MYT KLIA Air Traffic Control instructed MH370 to contact Ho Chi Minh ATC by VHF radio on the frequency 120.9 MHz.
- At 0119:30 MYT Captain Shah replied, saying 'Good night Malaysian Three Seven Zero' without repeating the instruction to confirm it was understood.
From then nothing was 'normal'...
- Neither Captain Shah nor First Officer Hamid contacted Vietnamese Air Traffic Control as instructed by the Malaysian air traffic controllers.
- There was no distress signal.
- A Transponder which would have provided data to civilian Secondary Radar did not respond, so the aircraft 'blip' dropped off the air traffic controller's radar screens.
- A Position Report should have been sent automatically at 1:37 AM but it was never received. The previous Position Report was sent at 0107:29 MYT by a system called ACARS, via a satellite communications link between the aircraft and a satellite above the Indian Ocean, operated by Inmarsat.
In summary, the Transponder, ACARS and SATCOM were either disabled by an on-board incident or deliberately switched off. And the VHF radios had also failed or were deliberately not used.
Chaos
When flight MH370 did not contact Ho Chi Minh Air Traffic Control and did not appear on their radar, Vietnamese air traffic controllers struggled to communicate effectively with the air traffic controllers in Malaysia.
- The aircraft was missing but KLIA ATC initially acted as though that was not their problem as the aircraft would have been in Vietnamese airspace, and
- A shift change at KLIA ATC meant a loss of continuity with air traffic controllers.
- Malaysia Airlines also provided misleading information from their aircraft tracking system.
These issues were eventually resolved. Malaysia Airlines declared a Code Red at about 3 am. The Kuala Lumpur Aeronautical Rescue Coordination Centre (ARCC) was activated at 5:30 AM.
The KL ARCC issued a DETRESFA message at 6:32 AM.
- At 10:30 AM Singapore despatched a Hercules C-130 aircraft to a search area in the south China Sea.
- At 11:30 AM Malaysia sent a Bombardier CL415 to the search area.
There was no sign of the aircraft. Meanwhile in Beijing, relatives and friends of passengers were waiting for news.
DETRESFA Message
Passengers
The Boeing 777 was carrying 227 passengers, including two infants..
The passengers were from China (153), Malaysia (38), Indonesia (7), Australia (6), India (5), the USA (3), Canada (2), Iran (2), New Zealand (2), Holland (1), Russia (1), and Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) (1).
Before releasing an official Passenger Manifest, Malaysia Airlines tried to contact next-of-kin. However, an unofficial passenger manifest was circulated in Beijing.
The official Passenger Manifests list one passenger from Austria and another from Italy but those two people were not on the aircraft. Their passports had been stolen and had been obtained by the two Iranians, Pouria Nour Mohammad Mehrdad age 19 and Delavar Seyed Mohammadreza age 30.
Air Turnback
At 10:30 PM on Saturday, 8 March 2014 the Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) informed the KL ARCC of a possible Air Turn Back by MH370.
Military radar had tracked an aircraft crossing peninsular Malaysia from MH370's last known position to the Straits of Malacca then heading north west until radar contact was lost.
The search for MH370 extended to the area west of Malaysia and the Andaman Sea.
Source: WMC-IMG-023
Cabin Crew
The ten Cabin Crew members on flight MH370, six males and four females, were all Malaysian, aged from 34 through to 55.
All cabin crew were experienced, all had multiple aircraft aircraft ratings, and all of their training was current.
Whatever happened on-board flight MH370, and despite all their maturity and training, the Cabin Crew were unable to change the outcome.
The image on the right was posted on Twitter with the title Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 Crew.
The sad message Please come back has not been fulfilled.
Source: TSTSG-003
The Search for MH370
A summary of the Search Timeline.
Satellite Communications and End of Flight
Malaysia Airlines contracted the British company INMARSAT to provide satellite communication services to their aircraft fleet.
After MH370 went missing, INMARSAT reviewed the data communication logs and realised that the SATCOM system on MH370 tried to log on at 0225:27 MYT. This was followed by other communications between the aircraft and the satellite ground station in Perth, Western Australia. The last 'handshake' occurred at 0819:29 MYT - nearly two hours after the aircraft had been expected to arrrive in Beijing!
There was no meaningful data in these communications, and no position information. But metadata analysis by Inmarsat indicated that the aircraft could have been within one of two 'corridors' a northern corridor stretching approximately from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand, or a southern corridor stretching approximately from Indonesia to the southern Indian ocean. This news was announced by Prime Minister Najib Razak on Saturday, 15 March 2014 and the search was extended to the Southern Indian Ocean.
In an update on Monday, 24 March 2014 Prime Minister Najib Razak confirmed that, according to the satellite data, "flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean."
Example Flight Path (Inmarsat)
Theme
This website is built using a platform called MediaWiki - the same platform is used by Wikipedia - but this website looks radically different.
The colour scheme has been inspired by the flight deck (cockpit) of the Boeing 777 which was lost on flight MH370.
The viewing area of the page, where you are reading this, has been styled to resemble one of the LCD screens facing the pilots on the flight deck. Instead of the LCD black background, a paper-white background is used for easy reading. A bright white is used behind quoted content.
The exception is that pages for each passenger retains the black LCD-style with white text and orange used for links. Malaysia Airlines purchased their first Boeing 777 aircraft in 1996. In that decade the 'glass cockpit' with LCD screen was a revolutionary upgrade over instruments and dials. The goal here is to retain a sense of the past. Passenger photographs are tinted sepia. Overall, these pages appear subdued or solemn.
Colours used by navigation buttons in the Main Menu, and the sub-menus at the top of some sections, are based on the actual switches on the flight deck which are typically dark grey, and rotary knobs are cream.
The overall effect of this design may seem dark, less than modern; functional but not attractive. After reading this explanation you now know why...