MALAYSIA FLIGHT 370: CHILLING DETAILS ABOUT THE MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE

We'd almost expect ships at sea to vanish considering how often it's happened in our collective human past, but a commercial airplane mysteriously vanishing while full of passengers seems like a bit of a stretch. When one just up and disappears one day, seemingly into the blue, it's even more far-fetched. A small private plane owned by the Russian mafia? Sure. A fighter jet in WWII? Most definitely. But a Boeing 777 fitted with all the high-end tracking and navigation technology the 21st century has to offer, with a cabin full of passengers? Seems a little sketchy. And, as far as we know, the disappearance of Flight 370 actually was pretty sketchy, to say the least.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was carrying 239 people when it seemingly disappeared in March of 2014, taking the passengers with it.

The flight left Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, and was supposed to land in Beijing.

 Within an hour, the plane lost contact without so much as a quick message about what was happening on board — not even a distress signal.

The disappearance is considered one of the biggest aviation mysteries to happen this millennium.

How could one missing plane be so mysterious? That's the question that's been boggling investigators and one for which we might never have an answer.

Here are some of the chilling details we do know about its mysterious disappearance.

In 2020, Malaysian leadership thought the incident to be a murder-suicide, but it was unclear who perpetrated it. If it was a terrorist hijacking, you'd think an organization would come forward and claim it; otherwise, there's really no point. 

An attack by malicious hackers has been another theory proposed that also falls short of credibility. According to Jeff Wise's book, "The Plane That Wasn't There," the only option for hackers would be to take control of the plane through its satellite link, set the autopilot on to take it off course, and somehow keep the pilots from resuming control. Without that, there wasn't much of a possibility to exploit the flight system. Plus, that satellite link went down before the plane disappeared. So basically, that lead investigators to conclude that the person or people responsible for Flight 370's disappearance had to be on the plane at the time it went down.

THE BLACK BOX WOULD DEFINITELY HELP

It might not be completely clear what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 until the plane's black box is recovered. Black boxes, also known as flight recorders, are governmentally-mandated devices installed on all planes to track and analyze flight data in case of tragedies like MH370. The evidence held within that particular recording device could be invaluable to understanding what occurred. If it's ever located, the wreckage of the flight itself might conceivably point investigators in the right direction. But that's part of the problem: Investigators can't even seem to find the plane. 

And regardless, it was discovered a year after the flight's disappearance that the black box on Flight 370 had expired more than a year prior. The battery wasn't charged, meaning the black box onboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 may have struggled to relay or preserve the flight data to the central control center on land even if it was found.

HORRIFYING POSSIBILITIES FOR THE LACK OF DEBRIS

One major reason that the disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370 has generated so much mystery is that very little debris has been found. A year after the incident in 2015, mathematician Goong Chen ran data through computer simulations to figure out why. His results concluded that a vertical crash would have caused the plane to sink rapidly to the bottom of the ocean floor, leaving the plane largely intact and making it difficult to recover from the depths of the oceans to which it plunged (per CNN).

Over the years, almost two dozen fragments believed to be part of the plane have made it to the coasts of Madagascar. By far, the most significant piece recovered has been the trunnion door of the landing gear found in 2022. Damage to both the interior and exterior of the find indicates the grim reality that the equipment was extended before impact, which would only increase devastation.

The find indicates a grim reality that whoever was flying the aircraft crashed it on purpose. In their report, "Debris Analysis — Main Landing Gear Trunnion Door Panel," Blaine Gibson and Richard Godfrey came to the horrific conclusion that whoever was flying the plane crashed it on purpose. They explained, "The combination of the high speed impact designed to break up the aircraft and the extended landing gear designed to sink the aircraft as fast as possible both show a clear intent to hide the evidence of the crash.

MH370 may have been a Malaysian Airlines flight leaving the country's capital city, Kuala Lumpur, and heading to Beijing, but most of the people on board were not Malaysian. Instead, the 227 passengers who mysteriously perished were from 14 different countries, leaving grieving family members across the globe with lots of unanswered questions about their missing loved ones, according to The Atlantic. Most depressing of all is the fact that five of the individuals on the flight were children.

Outside of the crew, there were only 38 Malaysians on board. Even fewer of the passengers were from the countries of Indonesia, Australia, India, France, the U.S., Iran, Ukraine, Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Russia, and Taiwan. On the other hand, the rest, and the vast majority, were from China and presumably on their way home. Following the disaster, teams of law enforcement officials from both Malaysia and China carried out investigations of every single passenger with assistance from the FBI. All were cleared of suspicion, which means that if something nefarious occurred, none outside of the crew were involved and each one was an innocent victim.