A map of where MH370 might have disappeared to, with added satellite data

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared from civilian radar at 1:21 a.m. on March 8 over the Gulf of Thailand. Just two minutes before that, the co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid, had said a routine goodnight over the radio to the control tower in Kuala Lumpur, where the plane had taken off 40 minutes earlier. If there was anything amiss, Fariq’s voice didn’t betray it. Was he hiding malicious intentions well? If he was innocent, was someone else in the cockpit at that very moment, forcing him at the point of a weapon of some kind to feign calm? Or did someone take control of the plane immediately after that last goodnight and shut off the plane’s transponder in a carefully planned hijacking, just as the plane was exiting Malaysian airspace?

The problem is that none of these theories are especially plausible. So far, Malaysian authorities have searched Fariq’s home and that of the captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah. Their personal histories don’t suggest they were dangerous people, though that investigation is not yet concluded. On the other hand, if there were sophisticated hijackers aboard the plane who knew exactly when the plane would be flying out of range of Malaysian civilian radar, then what were their goals? Why hasn’t anyone heard from the plane in more than a week?

Reviewing radar data, the Malaysian military later identified the plane on the west side of the Malay Peninsula, in the opposite direction of its scheduled trajectory northeast toward Beijing. About seven hours after that last contact via radio, a satellite received a signal from the plane, but the signal gave very little information about where the plane was at the time. It might have been anywhere along an arc between Kazakhstan and the southern Indian Ocean (as shown in the map above by Bonnie Berkowitz, Alberto Cuadra, Richard Johnson, Laris Karklis, Todd Lindeman and Gene Thorp for The Washington Post).

Malaysian authorities have contradicted themselves several times on the plane’s disappearance, frustrating relatives and friends of the 239 people who were aboard. Click below to keep reading about MH370.

Read more: http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/2014/03/17/a-map-of-where-mh370-might-have-disappeared-to-with-added-satellite-data/

A map of where MH370 might have disappeared to, with added satellite data

Fariq Abdul Hamid, malaysia airlines, Malaysian authorities, Zaharie Ahmad Shah