IN A WORLD WHERE WE CAN BE TRACKED BY OUR MOBILE PHONES, CCTV AND SPY SATELLITES, THINGS DO NOT JUST DISAPPEAR. ESPECIALLY NOT A BIG THING LIKE A JUMBO JET. BUT MALAYSIAN AIRLINES FIGHT MH370 DID.
A wide-bodied Boeing 777 is so large that you could barely park it on a football field. But soon after a routine takeoff from Kuala Lumpur International Airport on the night of 7 March 2014, Flight MH370 disappeared from the radar with 227 passengers and 12 crew on board. No one could even be sure where it was last seen. Debris was spotted hundreds, then thousands of miles apart, only to be discounted.
For weeks this real-life version of the hit TV show Lost gripped the world. Even Russia's invasion of the Crimea couldn't keep it off the front pages. Were those on board to be found alive on a mysterious tropical island? Had they crashed into the sea? Had the plane been hijacked or brought down by a terrorist bomb?
As the story unfolded more mysteries came to light. Who had turned off the plane's tracking systems? And why? Why had there been no 'Mayday' call? And which way was it headed?
Why were governments and institutions that had information about Flight MH370 so reluctant to share it? And why did the mobile phones of those on board continue to ring out. Wild theories abounded. Had Flight MH370 been abducted by aliens? Or shot down by the North Koreans?
Its route took it nowhere near the Devil's Sea – the Pacific's answer to the Bermuda Triangle. But somehow, in the world of the web, where every email was intercepted, the disappearance of MH370 began to rival the legend of the Marie Celeste.
Prolific author Nigel Cawthorne sifts the evidence, weighs the theories and unravels the mystery of Flight MH370.
