The mystery began as a standard red-eye flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Forty-two minutes after midnight on 8 March 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight 370, a Boeing 777 jet designated MH370, climbed into the moonlit night and turned north-east, toward the South China Sea. The first officer, Fariq Hamid, was 27 years old and one training flight away from full certification. The pilot in command, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, was, at 53, one of the most senior and respected pilots for Malaysia Airlines. They led a crew of 10 flight attendants, all Malaysian, and ferried 227 passengers. The majority of those on board were Chinese, along with 38 Malaysians and citizens of Indonesia, Australia, India, France, the US, Iran, Ukraine, Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Russia and Taiwan.
The first 40 minutes of the flight were unremarkable. At 1.19am, MH370 approached the end of Malaysian airspace. Malaysian air traffic control radioed to pass the flight off to Ho Chi Minh. Zaharie answered, “Good night. Malaysian three-seven-zero” – he didn’t repeat the frequency, but not unusual. It was the last anyone heard from the flight. Zaharie never checked in with Vietnamese controllers. Seconds after it crossed into Vietnamese airspace, MH370 disappeared from radar. All subsequent attempts to contact it were unsuccessful. Commercial airplanes are supposed to be reachable at all times, known and tracked, but MH370 was gone.
