MH370: Unusual search could per chance gain evidence on missing flight – The Global Memoir podcast, BBC World Service

Hello, I'm James Reynolds from the BBCWorld Service. This is The Global Story. Ten years ago, Malaysia AirlinesFlight 370 disappeared shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur.An international search and rescue operation was launched. Officials spent more than four years andhundreds of millions of dollars looking for MH370. Amateur sleuths have now taken up thesearch for the missing flight and their investigation may potentially reveal someof the truth behind its disappearance. Today we're asking, how do you investigatea flight that disappeared more than 10 years ago and are we any closer to resolvingthe mystery of why the plane went down? With me today, Jonathan Head, the BBC SouthEast Asia Correspondent, he reported on the.

Disappearance of flight MH370 when it happenedand Jonathan's continued to follow developments ever since, hi Jonathan.Hello James. Also with me in the studio is Alessandra Bonomolo,the producer and director of a new documentary on the disappearance of MH370 titled “Why PlanesVanish the Hunt for MH370”. Hi Alessandra. Hi James, thank you for having me.Alessandra, then a really simple question, when and where did the plane disappear from radar?The plane took off from Kuala Lumpur airport at around 12.45 and after 40 minutes it disappearedfrom civilian radar. That happened at a time when there had been communication a few minutes priorprobably as we can reconstruct now between the pilots and air traffic controllers in KualaLumpur who exchanged a brief conversation,.

Which is entirely customary, when they say thatthey're going to move on to a different airspace, in that case it would have been the Vietnameseairspace. And therefore, there's a sort of greeting that goes between the two sayingthat they're now handed over, in that case, to Ho Chi Minh, to the Vietnamese air trafficcontrollers, so there was a good night exchanged. And after that good night, the air trafficcontrollers in Malaysia know that they're no longer supposed or responsible forthat plane and to follow it through because it entered another nation's airspace.So, we can now reconstruct that there was a point, an exact point, at the border betweenthe Malaysian airspace and the Vietnamese airspace when the plane disappeared.Where did it go? Where did the flight.

Go? Can it just vanish off the face ofthe earth or into the ocean like that? Well please don't vanish. So, what is reallybaffling about this story and the real mystery about MH370 is because, to our knowledge, it'sthe only plane that's technically vanished and it's remained so for 10 years. So, we stillhaven't been able to find the wreckage, rescuers and investigators haven't been ableto find the wreckage and with it hopefully the answers that anyone would want. Withthe wreckage will come a black box that would reveal information.Even a decade later? Possibly yes. We spoke to experts also onand off the record who believe that yes, given some particular conditions in thosedepths of the Southern Indian Ocean, yes,.

The black box after 10 years may still work.And black boxes not only record what would have happened in the cockpit, and at that timewould have been only for the last two hours, but they do record a set of data that could giveus a clue, could give experts and investigators a clue as to what would have really happened. Whatwe know is the plane is very likely to be in the southern Indian Ocean, an extremely deep area,which makes the search for MH370 so difficult. Jonathan, you went on some ofthose searches. What was that like? I went out with the very early stagesof the search once they'd realised the plane had gone south, because they assumedthere would still be debris on the surface, they sent naval surveillance aircraft out fromAustralia, which was the nearest landmass, from.

The airbase north of Perth and we stayed there forquite a long time, probably about a week and half, and I went out on a New Zealand plane called aP3 Orion, it's a naval surveillance plane. It was a very interesting trip because they were givenstrips of water to search and although they've got fantastically sophisticated surveillance equipmenton board these planes, when you're looking for debris the only way to see it is literally to havepeople looking out of the window with binoculars. We've been flying for just over three hours nowand the plane will shortly descend to just a few hundred feet above the sea. The crew behindme will then move to the windows and start looking out as the aircraft zigzags backwards andforwards across some of the most remote patches of ocean you can find anywhere on this planet.So, a mystery abhors a vacuum, just because the.

Search is over doesn't mean that interest isover, and Alessandra it's fascinating in your documentary to see, what would you describeit as? This world of freelance or amateur investigators rising up and proposingtheir theories, tell us more about them. Well, I will call them volunteer investigators,because there's a number of people from different walks of life, different backgrounds, who all cometogether but most of them share some engineering experience, scientific background, aeronauticalor aerospace credentials, some of them worked for very high-profile companies and they felt atsome point seeing that there wasn't that much evidence out there that they could put somethingforward, they could offer their own skills, expertise to this cause. Again, it's amystery, it sparks a lot of interest from.

Experts and the public opinion alike. But forthem, they do feel that given their knowledge, given what they know, given their experience,they could bring something to the table. Jonathan, I know that in your own reporting,you've come across some of the same people who've volunteered their time and theirexpertise. What's it been like delving into that world of sleuths and investigatorsworking outside official investigations? Well, it's mixed James. I mean, what's interestingabout MH370 to me is that, on the one hand, it has attracted really smart, you know, switchedon people to go down rabbit holes of the most bizarre conspiracies to which they are absolutelycommitted. There are people who have written books claiming that the plane was shot down by theAmericans because it had electronic equipment on.

Board that the Chinese were going to get, or thatit was hacked by Russian agents, or that it was taken off into some remote jungle. On the otherhand, some of these people are really impressive. Did you ever get people in the makingof the documentary start emailing you, going, “look, Alessandra, I know you'remaking this documentary, I've solved the mystery, you need to read this email”?Well, I must admit that there have been a few emails going around, because the MH370community is a very big community, or as we said, amateur sleuths and anything in between. And asJonathan pointed out, so many people out there with different theories. So clearly, a documentarymade about this topic is interesting in itself. Are there prevailing hypotheses ortheories as to why the plane went down?.

The obvious prevailing theory is that the planewas deliberately flown there and allowed to crash into the sea. Whether it was one of thepilots or somebody else possibly took control, most theories say it must be a pilot because theplane was flown very expertly when a lot of its electronics were switched off. What we need to dois find the plane so we can confirm the theories. Among these experts we interviewed twoFrenchmen, one is called Jean-Luc Marchand. He worked for EUROCONTROL, which is a Europeanbody for the safety of the aviation industry. And he works with a retired commercial pilotcalled Captain Patrick Blelly. And together they analysed the official reports, and theyalso analysed the trajectory that the plane took at the time when it disappeared and what theysaw, as it's been established in the official.

Reports, is that the plane made a U-turn.This U-turn is a very challenging manoeuvre because you have to make sure that it disappearsquickly from the Vietnamese sector. The controls are shaking because you are at the limit of theaircraft and the aircraft is telling you, you are asking me a lot. It demands attention and skill.So that's why we believe it was not an accident. And the plane made other turns, one around thePenang Island, when they started flying towards the Strait of Malacca. So, there have been turnswhich, to some experts, don't seem conceivable with the use of the automated pilot. So, ifthe plane wasn't flying on automated pilot, then someone must have been in the cockpit.They believe. And who could that be? So, considering the expertise that theybelieve is required, and the skills.

That are required to do those manoeuvres, theybelieve it could only be someone experienced. Jonathan, thinking about those 10 years, that'sa long time in people's lives. In terms of the families, older members of those familiesdie. There are younger members being born and I wonder when you speak to people now and theystill don't have bodies to bury, graves to visit and answers, what things are like for them?Well, I think that period of time weighs very heavily on them, and it's been rammed home, Idon't know what the statistic is, but the Chinese group told me that several members of theirgroup of family members had died in this long wait for answers. We've got a whole generationnow of grandchildren who haven't known their grandparents because they were on board MH370,so, it's becoming a generational experience..

Just thinking it took more than 70 years tofind the Titanic on the seabed. So really what if there's not an answer? What if they don't findthe plane in the lifetime of the family members? I think in their heart they accept thatthey may never find an answer but still a number of the families are still goingout and advocating and campaigning for a new search to find those answers, but they'restill hoping and they're still asking for a new search to happen to hopefully bringsome closure to them and to find answers for them and the aviation community as well.They want to know, it's not just exactly what happened but the most important thing I thinkand the hardest thing of all is the why. Why was that plane suddenly taken off course andflown down to one of the most remote spots.

On earth? And I think it is odd to think that inan age where we've managed to answer everything, it does seem extraordinary that we can't finda 200-ton airliner that's sitting on a planet that we tend to think of now is quite small.Jonathan what if there's never a why? What if the plane is found and they know whereit is and that provides some consolation but what if the why is never discovered?Well, that's a possibility. It's a very sobering thought actually. I mean air safety has got somuch better in our lifetimes and when something does happen you know we get answers relativelyquickly. The idea that something so catastrophic as the loss of such a large plane never getsexplained. It's actually probably the hardest thing of all to comprehend. I mean not just forthe families, for people like me and Alessandra,.

We're journalists, we're used to gettinganswers. So, it's funny you asked me that question and I think I'm almost as unableto accept that possibility as the families. I think inevitably MH370 will go on suckingpeople in to try to find answers and my sense is that with technology and just determination,at some point we'll get those answers. We did get it for the Titanic after all, eventually.That's very true. I completely agree with that. And once you become invested in the story,not just as a reader, but someone who starts working on the story, going out, meeting thefamilies, looking into the details of what could have possibly gone wrong, you do want tofind an answer. You do hope that there will be an answer. And I think if the plane is found,but for some reason it won't give us answers,.

There will still be something for the familiesto hang on to, a tangible piece of evidence, a tangible part of the plane. Hopefully evenhuman remains, that they can finally find a rest in peace. So, these are all very, very importantelements for the families, for those who still hope that there could be a new search.Thanks so much to Jonathan Head, the BBC's South East Asia correspondent.Thank you, James. It was great to be able to talk about this extraordinary story.And also, to Alessandra Bonomolo, the producer and director of thedocumentary on the disappearance of MH370. Thank you so much.Thank you so much for being with us. If you want to listen to furtherepisodes of The Global Story, do find us.

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