Within a matter of days, primary-radar records salvaged from air-traffic-control computers, and partially corroborated by secret Malaysian air-force data, revealed that as soon as MH370 disappeared from secondary radar, it turned sharply to the southwest, flew back across the Malay Peninsula, and banked around the island of Penang. It was an international effort by 34 ships and 28 aircraft from seven different countries. The search for it was initially concentrated in the South China Sea, between Malaysia and Vietnam. The mystery surrounding MH370 has been a focus of continued investigation and a source of sometimes feverish public speculation.Īt that moment, the airplane should have been landing in Beijing. Four more hours elapsed before an emergency response was finally begun, at 6:32 a.m. Kuala Lumpur’s Aeronautical Rescue Coordination Centre should have been notified within an hour of the disappearance. What ensued was an exercise in confusion and incompetence. By the time they picked up the phone to inform Kuala Lumpur, 18 minutes had passed since MH370’s disappearance from their radar screens. They tried repeatedly to contact the aircraft, to no avail. They apparently misunderstood a formal agreement by which Ho Chi Minh was supposed to inform Kuala Lumpur immediately if an airplane that had been handed off was more than five minutes late checking in. The Vietnamese controllers, meanwhile, saw MH370 cross into their airspace and then disappear from radar. When he finally did, he assumed that the airplane was in the hands of Ho Chi Minh, somewhere out beyond his range. The controller in Kuala Lumpur was dealing with other traffic elsewhere on his screen and simply didn’t notice. The time was 1:21 a.m., 39 minutes after takeoff. Five seconds after MH370 crossed into Vietnamese airspace, the symbol representing its transponder dropped from the screens of Malaysian air traffic control, and 37 seconds later the entire airplane disappeared from secondary radar. It depends on a transponder signal that is transmitted by each airplane and contains richer information-for instance, the airplane’s identity and altitude-than primary radar does. Air-traffic-control systems use what is known as secondary radar. Primary radar relies on simple, raw pings off objects in the sky. The pilots never checked in with Ho Chi Minh or answered any of the subsequent attempts to raise them. It was the last the world heard from MH370. Malaysian three-seven-zero.” He did not read back the frequency, as he should have, but otherwise the transmission sounded normal. Good night.” Zaharie answered, “Good night. Zaharie again reported the plane’s level at 35,000 feet.Įleven minutes later, as the airplane closed in on a waypoint near the start of Vietnamese air-traffic jurisdiction, the controller at Kuala Lumpur Center radioed, “Malaysian three-seven-zero, contact Ho Chi Minh one-two-zero-decimal-nine. At 1:08 the flight crossed the Malaysian coastline and set out across the South China Sea in the direction of Vietnam. he radioed that they had leveled off at 35,000 feet-a superfluous report in radar-surveilled airspace where the norm is to report leaving an altitude, not arriving at one. Zaharie’s transmissions were a bit unusual. Up in the cockpit that night, while First Officer Fariq flew the airplane, Captain Zaharie handled the radios. Most of the passengers were Chinese of the rest, 38 were Malaysian, and in descending order the others came from Indonesia, Australia, India, France, the United States, Iran, Ukraine, Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Russia, and Taiwan. They had 227 passengers to care for, including five children. In the cabin were 10 flight attendants, all of them Malaysian. To hear more feature stories, get the Audm iPhone app. In the cockpit, Fariq would have been deferential to him, but Zaharie was not known for being overbearing. He flew it frequently, and often posted to online forums about his hobby. In his first house he had installed an elaborate Microsoft flight simulator. He was married and had three adult children. In Malaysian style, he was known by his first name, Zaharie. His trainer was the pilot in command, a man named Zaharie Ahmad Shah, who at 53 was one of the most senior captains at Malaysia Airlines.

This was a training flight for him, the last one he would soon be fully certified. Fariq Hamid, the first officer, was flying the airplane.

The designator for Malaysia Airlines is MH. on the quiet, moonlit night of March 8, 2014, a Boeing 777-200ER operated by Malaysia Airlines took off from Kuala Lumpur and turned toward Beijing, climbing to its assigned cruising altitude of 35,000 feet.

Boeing 777 300 cockpit