image copyrightBBC/Lulu Luo
picture explanation,
Lee Eo-yu sheds tears while writing a message to her missing son.
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- Reporter, Jonathan Head
- Reporter, BBC News, Kuala Lumpur
-
2 hours ago
There is a saying that has been bothering Lee Eo-yu for the past 10 years. This is ‘loss of contact’.
This is what Malaysian Airlines gave to my son Yanlin when Flight MH370 he was on disappeared.
Lee said, “For the past few years, I’ve been wondering what the hell does ‘no contact’ mean? “I asked if, if I lost contact with someone, shouldn’t I be able to get in touch with them again?”
Li and his wife, Liu Xiangfeng, who farm in Hebei Province, northeastern China, are still trying to find out the truth about this incident, which is called the worst mystery in aviation accident history.
On the night of March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 headed from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Beijing, China, as usual. Less than an hour after takeoff, the pilot said good night to the Malaysian air traffic control tower.
This Boeing 777, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members, was about to pass through Vietnamese airspace.
However, it suddenly changed direction and soon all communication was cut off. The plane in question is believed to have suddenly turned around, crossed the Malay Peninsula, and then headed south to the remote Indian Ocean before running out of fuel and crashing.
And although a large-scale search operation was conducted at the highest cost in history for the next four years, no trace of the missing aircraft could be found. Thousands of oceanographers, aeronautical engineers, and amateur sleuths rushed in to calculate the final crash site by carefully analyzing fragments of data from the aircraft.
Meanwhile, the families of the passengers are still immersed in grief that they cannot escape even after 10 years. They are trying to find out exactly what happened on Flight MH370 and why it happened.
Lee traveled across the world to find out the truth. It is said that he spent all his savings traveling to Europe and Asia, and to the beaches of Madagascar, where some of the wreckage of the missing aircraft was found.
Lee said he wanted to feel the sand in the area where his son may have washed up. He shouted to the vast Indian Ocean to please bring his son Yanlin home.
Lee strengthened his resolve, saying, “I will go to the ends of the world to find my son.”
image copyrightBBC/Lulu Luo
picture explanation,
Families of those on board gathered in Kuala Lumpur to mark the 10th anniversary of the disappearance of MH370.
This couple, currently in their late 60s, is from a rural village in Hebei Province. Originally, they spent most of the money they earned on their children’s education, so they had no money to travel.
Their son Yanlin was the first person in the village where they lived to enter college and the first person to successfully find a job abroad. Yanlin worked at a telecommunications company in Malaysia.
On the day of the incident, he was returning to China because he had a visa-related appointment.
Lee said, “Before this incident happened, I had never even been to Handan City near where I lived.”
However, the couple, who had now become accustomed to airplanes, visited Kuala Lumpur again with other family members to mark the 10th anniversary of the accident.
Yanlin was one of the 153 Chinese people on board the plane. And the Lis are one of more than 40 Chinese families who rejected the settlement offered by the Malaysian government and filed legal action against airlines, aircraft manufacturers and other parties in China.
A lot has changed in the past 10 years, but they still feel tied to the missing plane.
image copyrightGetty Images
picture explanation,
A letter written by Grace Nathan’s husband to Nathan’s mother, who was aboard flight MH370
Grace Nathan was taking her final law exams in the UK when Flight MH370 went missing. Nathan’s mother, Ann, was on board the plane involved in the accident.
Currently, Nation is a mother of two children and runs a lawyer’s office in Malaysia.
Nation, whom we met at a memorial event held in Kuala Lumpur, held a photo of her mother at the wedding and confessed that she missed her mother so much while going through two difficult pregnancies.
Meanwhile, at the memorial ceremony, several fragments of the accident aircraft, the only physical evidence found so far, were displayed. We were also able to find parts of the wing that had been corroded due to being underwater for a long time, with the internal honeycomb structure exposed.
Among those who visited the ceremony was Blaine Gibson, who discovered more MH370 fragments than anyone else.
Among the people involved in the MH370 incident, Gibson, who leads a colorful life, is truly an amateur explorer. Gibson wears a costume from the movie “Indiana Jones” and travels, which he loves, with the money he earned from selling his California home. He has a dream of visiting every country in the world.
“I attended a ceremony commemorating the first anniversary of a past accident, and I learned that there was no systematic search for debris floating on the coast. I really wasn’t doing anything. “We were spending millions of dollars just searching underwater.”
“So I thought the first fragments of the plane might have been found by someone walking on the beach. But since no one was doing it, I thought I could do it myself.”
Accordingly, Gibson searched the coast for a year from Myanmar to the Maldives, and eventually discovered a fragment of the rear stabilizer on a sandbank in Mozambique, East Africa.
Around that time, a large piece of flaperon, part of a wing, was also discovered on Reunion Island, east of Madagascar, and the family became convinced that MH370 had indeed crashed into the Indian Ocean.
More than 16 months after the plane went missing, debris washed up on various beaches in East Africa.
image copyrightBBC/Lulu Luo
picture explanation,
At a memorial ceremony held in Kuala Lumpur, the wreckage of the accident plane discovered so far was displayed.
An analysis of ocean currents in the southern Indian Ocean showed that this debris was likely washed up from where MH370 is believed to have crashed.
Aslam Khan, a senior investigator for Malaysian authorities, explained that some of the fragments found had serial numbers written on them, so they were able to confirm that they were from the plane by comparing them with the manufacturer’s records.
Another part was said to have a unique font used to record the markings, making it almost certain that it was a piece of the accident plane. This is because no other Boeing 777 aircraft has crashed in the Indian Ocean.
Until Flaperon was discovered, the only evidence that the plane had turned around was data recorded on military radar in Malaysia and Thailand, showing that the plane had flown west over the Malay Peninsula.
Meanwhile, the British satellite communications company Inmarsat detected that ‘handshaking’ occurred six times between its satellites and MH370, which was heading south. All other communication devices on the aircraft were turned off.
Based on this data, it was possible to triangulate the distance between the accident aircraft and the satellite every hour to determine the approximate location of the crash. However, it is still a vast area of very deep and rough sea.
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picture explanation,
After years of searching the seas and skies for some clues, I still haven’t found the answer.
A large-scale search involving 60 ships and 50 aircraft from 26 countries lasted from March 2014 to January 2017. Then, in early 2018, the American private company ‘Ocean Infinity’ conducted a search operation using an underwater drone to scan the seabed for about five months.
Meanwhile, because the exact truth has not been revealed, numerous theories are still rampant. Among these, groundless claims were also raised, including a kidnapping theory, a theory that he flew to Russia, a theory that he flew to the US Air Force base on Diego Garcia Island in the Indian Ocean, and a theory that he was shot down.
French journalist Florence de Changi looked at the fragments on display and muttered, “This is absurd.”
There are more than 100 books published related to the MH370 incident. Chang also conducted meticulous research on Flight MH370 and published a book.
Changi claimed that the hypothesis that the accident plane turned around and headed south was false.
Changi believes that the wreckage found is not that of MH370. Changi has raised questions about the cargo on board, claiming that it is highly likely that this particular cargo was the reason it was shot down by a US aircraft over the South China Sea.
However, if we accept the radar and satellite data presented by Malaysian authorities and Inmarsat, as most experts do, and if we believe that the accident plane continued to head south, there is only one plausible explanation. It is said that someone intentionally caused the accident plane to fly in that direction.
image copyrightGetty Images
In the BBC’s new documentary ‘Why Do Planes Disappear’, two French aerospace experts and an experienced pilot used flight simulation to recreate the scene of the plane making a sharp turn over the South China Sea immediately after its final contact with Malaysian air traffic control. And it was concluded that this could only be done manually by a skilled and very experienced pilot.
The fact that MH370 made a sharp turn just as it was moving from Malaysia to Vietnamese airspace suggests that the pilot was trying to conceal this maneuver. And the pilot knew that it would be some time before the Vietnamese air traffic control tower reported that there had been no contact from the aircraft.
Other hypotheses include that all on board fainted from hypoxia due to decompression of an unknown cause, and that communication was cut off due to a sudden fire or explosion on board and the pilots were forced to turn back. However, this hypothesis is not very convincing as it flew steadily south for about 7 hours and performed difficult maneuvers.
It is also difficult to accept the hypothesis that one of the pilots intentionally crashed the plane, killing all on board. Neither the captain nor the first officer had any history of such behavior.
As such, all kinds of theories and speculations are rampant and the family is suffering.
Hakita González, the wife of Patrick Gomes, who was the director of the incident, said, “I hope this doesn’t happen to the person I hate the most.”
“It was truly a roller coaster of a time. When I first started searching, I was filled with hope when I heard that something had been found. And soon I heard that it was not the wreckage of Flight MH370. Then our hopes plummeted again. “Every time we felt like someone was standing on top of us and taking our breath away.”
image copyrightLulu Luo/BBC
picture explanation,
Patrick Gomes, husband of Hakita González, was the director of MH370
Meanwhile, the family has been criticizing the Malaysian government since the accident.
First, criticism poured in for failing to respond properly in the early stages, such as failing to properly track the accident plane on military radar. Even after that, after the last search operation of ‘Ocean Infinity’ company was completed in 2018, additional searches were not approved and received a lot of criticism.
‘Ocean Infinity’ wanted to resume the search under the condition that it would not cover the costs if nothing was found, but this could only be done with government approval.
Some Malaysian officials also acknowledged privately that the government could have done more. Perhaps one of the reasons is that Malaysia has experienced great political turmoil in recent years. In addition, there were several disruptive factors, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, which prevented the family from holding the annual memorial service.
Anthony Locke, Malaysia’s current Minister of Transport, attended the 10th anniversary ceremony held in Kuala Lumpur and promised the family that he would do his best to find the accident plane and that he would try to resolve this problem.
He also revealed that he is currently discussing the possibility of resuming the search later this year with Ocean Infinity.
The area searched by ‘Ocean Infinity’ in 2018 amounted to 112,000 km. However, since there are places with very difficult terrain, such as deep underwater canyons, the possibility that the accident plane may not have been discovered cannot be ruled out.
Meanwhile, Richard Godfrey, a former aerospace IT expert who is also interested in the search for MH370, claims he has narrowed down the area to be searched even further by analyzing data from shortwave radio test transmissions often used by amateur radio enthusiasts.
If we can narrow down the final crash site like this, we will be able to intensively search a small area several times with a drone.
“The database of amateur wireless radio enthusiasts accumulates 1.7 billion records a year. It’s like having a huge net full of radio signals spread across the world. Every time an aircraft passes through this mesh, it creates a hole in the mesh. That way we can know where the aircraft was at a certain time.”
“During MH370’s six-hour flight into the southern Indian Ocean, I detected 313 radio signal anomalies at 95 different viewpoints. This allows us to know a more accurate route and infer a more accurate crash point.”
Godfrey’s method is currently being tested at the University of Liverpool, England, and its feasibility is expected to be confirmed by the end of this year.
image copyrightBBC/Jonathan Head
picture explanation,
Ten years later, Li Eryu and his wife Liu Xiangfeng still await answers about what happened to their son.
Meanwhile, the remaining families said they were very encouraged by the recent promises made by the Transport Minister and that this was the change in tone they desperately wanted from the Malaysian government.
But I’m still not completely reassured. They have already experienced rising and falling hopes several times.
“I just hope we can find a flight,” Gonzalez said. “So at least my husband can rest in peace.” Now she has done nothing for her husband. “There was nothing left behind by her husband, so he couldn’t even have a funeral,” he said.
At the ceremony, there was a large board where people could write messages of hope, compassion, and sadness.
Lee knelt in front of this board and wrote a message to his son. Tears streamed down Lee’s face as he wrote down Chinese characters in large letters.
“Son, it’s already been 10 years. “Your mom and dad are here to bring you home – March 3, 2024.”
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2024-03-08 08:57:25
