Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Joshum. For this week's select I've
Speaker 1: chosen our two part episode on the disappearance of MH
Speaker 1: three P seventy from back in January twenty twenty. It
Speaker 1: is the greatest unsolved mystery in aviation history since the
Speaker 1: disappearance of Amelia Earhart and poor Fred Noonan, which is
Speaker 1: really saying something. It's astounding that with a decade of
Speaker 1: exhaustive time and attention, the plane still hasn't been found.
Speaker 1: Maybe someday, when we're mapping the entire seafloor of the
Speaker 1: Indian Ocean will stumble across it, who knows. But until then,
Speaker 1: enjoy this harrowing mystery episode of Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and
Speaker 1: as Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there.
Speaker 1: And this is Stuff you should Know about one of
Speaker 1: the most interesting mysteries in modern times. Yeah, like it's
Speaker 1: really tough to get across. What a mystery. The missing
Speaker 1: airliner MH three seventy.
Speaker 2: Is Malaysian Airlines Flight three seventy. Yeah, and this is
Speaker 2: it's gonna be a two parter because it's pretty robust. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and boy, hats off to the Grabster. He really put
Speaker 2: together a lot of great research for this one.
Speaker 1: He did. I also want to give a huge shout
Speaker 1: out to one of my journalistic heroes, William Langwash. He
Speaker 1: wrote something he writes in the Atlantic, but he's not
Speaker 1: just an Atlantic writer. He wrote what Really Happened to
Speaker 1: Malaysia's Missing Airplane? Big old long article on it. And
Speaker 1: this guy is an aviation expert to begin with, but
Speaker 1: he's also if you ever read a Tom wolfbook or
Speaker 1: article or whatever, he has a really great knack for
Speaker 1: making you feel like you're there in the action. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But then he also has a knack for making you
Speaker 1: step back and think, how does Tom Wolf know all this? Was?
Speaker 1: He there? William Languish is the same way. And I
Speaker 1: will go ahead and recommend that you not, unless you
Speaker 1: are a very courageous person, read any of his work,
Speaker 1: especially the stuff about airline disasters anytime around when you're flying,
Speaker 1: because he puts you in that plane when it's going
Speaker 1: down or whatever. He's really really good at it. So
Speaker 1: I recommend basically anything Langwich has written go read It's
Speaker 1: worth it for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I think this coupled with the brief times that
Speaker 2: we've touched on this kind of thing in the past,
Speaker 2: whether it was dB Cooper or Bermuda triangle, Like, there's
Speaker 2: something about aviation disasters and mysteries that are really intriguing
Speaker 2: to me. And for airline forensics, it's all Rick just
Speaker 2: super super interesting.
Speaker 1: It is. So you talked about airline forensics and that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. This is lousy with it. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: the reason I was saying why it's tough to overstate
Speaker 1: like what a mystery image three seventy is it's the
Speaker 1: only airliner that has considered disappeared. Yehanished they know where
Speaker 1: all the other ones are, they know what happened to
Speaker 1: all the other ones. It's the only major one that
Speaker 1: is just where the official investigation said we don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and you know, in part two we'll
Speaker 2: get to a pretty good well, actually, I think the
Speaker 2: leading theory comes in this episode, but we kind of
Speaker 2: think we know. But it's that thing where you like,
Speaker 2: you can't definitively say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't say where, and you can't say why.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, and then the why is yeah, and the
Speaker 2: where are both really confounding.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the reason why air travel in the twenty
Speaker 1: first century is way safer than auto travel is because
Speaker 1: anytime an airliner goes down, everyone in the international community
Speaker 1: comes together, yeah, investigates it. They do so openly. The airline,
Speaker 1: the airplane manufacturer, the everyone involved is expected to like
Speaker 1: tell the truth and you get it out there and
Speaker 1: you figure out what went wrong, and then you make
Speaker 1: things safer, and then that makes air travel safer for everybody.
Speaker 1: They couldn't do this for all sorts of reasons with
Speaker 1: m Age three seventy and so it's a huge failing
Speaker 1: among the international community, not for lack of trying, but
Speaker 1: because it's just an asterisk out there. It's the only one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's why airplanes don't crash as much anymore.
Speaker 2: I mean, growing up, it's not like it was every
Speaker 2: other week or anything. But used to hear about airline
Speaker 2: crashes enough to where it gave you pause, right, and
Speaker 2: you just don't hear about it much anymore.
Speaker 1: It's true. I mean, it's still out there for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they seem much more rare than they used
Speaker 2: to be, kind of like skyjackings.
Speaker 1: So We'll do our best to put you in the
Speaker 1: in the plane in the passenger seat. Yeah, can we
Speaker 1: at least be in business class? Buckle sure?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 1: Sure?
Speaker 3: Were you about to say a buckle up?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Okay, buckle up, because we're gonna take off on
Speaker 1: March eighth, twenty fourteen, in Kuala Lumpur. It's the very
Speaker 1: beginning of March eighth. The takeoff schedule for Malaysian Airlines
Speaker 1: Flight three seventy from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing was scheduled
Speaker 1: for twelve thirty five am.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: We're in a Boeing seven seven seven DASH two hundred
Speaker 2: er yep, and there are two hundred and twenty seven
Speaker 2: fellow passengers aboard twelve flight crew YEP.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Almost about two thirds of the passengers or Chinese nationals.
Speaker 1: I believe there's a bunch of other people from other countries,
Speaker 1: but for the bulk of the people on the plane
Speaker 1: were from China. And it's a late night flight. It's
Speaker 1: expected to arrive in Beijing at about six o'clock six
Speaker 1: thirty in Beijing time, and it's going to fly over
Speaker 1: the South China Sea, over the Gulf of Thailand, through Laos, Vietnam,
Speaker 1: and then into China to arrive at Beijing. It didn't
Speaker 1: actually take off at twelve thirty five. They took off
Speaker 1: at twelve forty two. Not too shabby. Seven minutes. I'm
Speaker 1: not like sitting there rocking in my seat like let's
Speaker 1: go yet, you know, I might not even even noticed.
Speaker 1: And they take off and it flies up to eighteen
Speaker 1: thousand feet and the air traffic control center at Kuala
Speaker 1: Lumpur says, hey, you guys are cleared for to go
Speaker 1: up to thirty five thousand feet, which is cruising altitude
Speaker 1: for this flight.
Speaker 3: I think that's right.
Speaker 2: And at this point, at eighteen thousand, they switched from
Speaker 2: the airport's air traffic to Kuala Lampor Area Control Center.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And you know the way, the reason we're mentioning all
Speaker 2: these details is because it turns out they're very important.
Speaker 1: Very important, yees.
Speaker 3: So these are all key.
Speaker 1: Keep rewinding fifteen thirty seconds to get every single detail, okay,
Speaker 1: because you're gonna need them for the big finish.
Speaker 2: So four minutes later, like you said, they were cleared
Speaker 2: to go to thirty five thousand. Talking about fifteen minutes
Speaker 2: and it's here where Captain Zahari and there were two
Speaker 2: people on board flying this plane. Captain Sahari and what
Speaker 2: was the other gentleman.
Speaker 1: Name, First Officer Farik Abdul Hamid, right, and Captain saw
Speaker 1: Zahari Ahmad Shah is piloting the plane. First Officer Hamid.
Speaker 1: This is his last training flight. After this, he'll be
Speaker 1: fully certified to fly Boeing seven to seventy seven's, which
Speaker 1: if you're a commercial airline pilot, that's pretty much the
Speaker 1: peak right there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's important too because one of them is
Speaker 2: a very experienced pilot in his fifties. The other one
Speaker 2: is a brand new kind of greenhorn, and that's going
Speaker 2: to factor in for sure.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 3: So, like I said, it took.
Speaker 2: About fifteen minutes to get to thirty five thousand feet,
Speaker 2: and this is when the lead pilot radios that Kuala
Speaker 2: Lampoor Control Center says we're at thirty five thousand feet.
Speaker 2: Then seven minutes later he radios again says, by the way,
Speaker 2: we're still.
Speaker 3: And this is not me doing him. I don't know
Speaker 3: what he sounded like.
Speaker 1: There you go, this is Captain Zahari. Yeah, everybody sounds
Speaker 1: like Chuck Yeager.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 2: So he confirmed to give that they were at thirty
Speaker 2: five thousand feet. And this is where Ed points out
Speaker 2: that this wasn't some sort of big alarming thing. But
Speaker 2: what usually happens is you radio in when you leave
Speaker 2: an altitude, not when you arrive. And you also don't
Speaker 2: radio in seven minutes later and say, by the way,
Speaker 2: we're still at thirty five thousand feet, still here, like
Speaker 2: once you hit it, you're just sort of there that
Speaker 2: you're cruising altitude.
Speaker 1: Right, So it's it wasn't alarming or anything, but it
Speaker 1: was weird that he made those two radio transmissions, but
Speaker 1: there was nothing compared to the weirdness that was about
Speaker 1: to take place. That's right shortly after that, I think
Speaker 1: at one twenty nineteen am. Yeah, qual Umpoor Area Control Center.
Speaker 3: It's like eleven minutes later.
Speaker 1: Yeap said, hey, mhe three seventy you're about to leave
Speaker 1: our jurisdiction and enter Ho Chi Minh's jurisdiction. Go ahead
Speaker 1: and contact Ho Chi Minh air Traffic Control and let
Speaker 1: them know you are on with them on this frequency.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you remember our air traffic control podcast,
Speaker 2: you're handed off like, you don't just stick with one
Speaker 2: air traffic control when you fly around the world. No,
Speaker 2: you're handed off all along the way whenever you enter
Speaker 2: the airspace of that whatever district.
Speaker 1: Precisely, and the way that it's set up is there's
Speaker 1: not supposed to be any time where you're just flying
Speaker 1: alone and then you move into the other one. You're
Speaker 1: going right from one to the other.
Speaker 3: You want to hand off.
Speaker 1: So Captain Zahari responded with good night Malaysian three seven zero.
Speaker 1: Those are the last words anyone heard from Captain Zahari
Speaker 1: as far as we know, And that in and of
Speaker 1: itself was kind of an odd transmission because typically any
Speaker 1: airline captain would have replied with the frequency, said the
Speaker 1: frequency back to confirm that that was the right one.
Speaker 1: But instead all I said was good night Malaysian three
Speaker 1: seven zero. And very shortly after that, two minutes later,
Speaker 1: MHE three seventy disappeared from the radar the moment it
Speaker 1: showed up on ho Chi Minh air Traffic Controls radar screens.
Speaker 2: It just vanished right without ever having made contact with
Speaker 2: them right via radio frequency.
Speaker 1: This should have like set off alarms with ho Chi
Speaker 1: Minh City and apparently they did notice. Kuala Lumpur didn't notice.
Speaker 1: The guy was they had all this other air traffic to.
Speaker 3: Deal Yeah, and they were out of their zone at
Speaker 3: this point, yep.
Speaker 1: And he'd said good night, and you know everybody knows
Speaker 1: good night. You can't go back on that. You have
Speaker 1: to wait until tomorrow to make contact again. So the
Speaker 1: kual Umpur's I don't know about blameless in this, but
Speaker 1: certainly less blameful than Tochim Ho Chi Minh and Ho
Speaker 1: Chi Minh noticed that they just disappeared from the screen,
Speaker 1: but it took them a full eighteen minutes before they
Speaker 1: called Kuala Lumpur and said, hey, do you know anything
Speaker 1: about where MH three seventy is because they kind of
Speaker 1: vanished from our radar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, I don't know the exact process, and they're defense.
Speaker 2: They were trying to get in touch. It's not like
Speaker 2: they just said, well, we'll see what happens. They got
Speaker 2: in touch with another pilot who was nearby in that
Speaker 2: airspace to contact them, and this pilot reported there was
Speaker 2: interference and static. I heard mumbling on the other end,
Speaker 2: but that's the last we heard and we lost connection.
Speaker 1: Right, We're not even sure that he was talking to
Speaker 1: the right people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, I mean they were trying to get in touch,
Speaker 2: but you're right, I think like sooner than eighteen minutes,
Speaker 2: they should have said, by the way, this plane that
Speaker 2: just left your airspace has disappeared, Like, do you know
Speaker 2: what's going on?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Protocol, international protocol is five minutes, okay, So they waited
Speaker 1: thirteen minutes longer than protocol dictated, and it was so
Speaker 1: much beyond when they should have called that. The controller
Speaker 1: in Kuala Impour actually said on the record, like, why
Speaker 1: didn't you call me sooner? How are you just calling
Speaker 1: me about this?
Speaker 3: Like that may still have been yesterday, right.
Speaker 1: It's missing for eighteen minutes, which, as we'll get to
Speaker 1: later on stuff that came up in the investigation, that
Speaker 1: was just the first step in a series of missteps, right,
Speaker 1: that led to the reason why MH three seventy may
Speaker 1: never be found.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so should we take a little break and talk
Speaker 2: about radar radar O'Reilly.
Speaker 3: We'll be back right after this.
Speaker 1: Radar O'Reilly not.
Speaker 2: Radar O'Reilly, radar used by air traffic control, so different.
Speaker 2: It is different than radar o'reiley. This is called secondary
Speaker 2: radar and it sends out a little beam that it's
Speaker 2: very narrow and it sweeps the area, and on board
Speaker 2: the aircraft they have a transponder that the Texas beam
Speaker 2: and their own signal back that says this how fast
Speaker 2: we're going?
Speaker 3: Is where we're headed? And a code that says and
Speaker 3: this is who I am?
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe even MH three seventy, as simple as that,
Speaker 1: something like that. That's right, that's what's supposed to show
Speaker 1: up on air traffic controls radar screen. That's so they
Speaker 1: can see, oh, here's MH three seventy coming toward DL
Speaker 1: seventeen twenty two or whatever.
Speaker 3: At this speed.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, they have all this information, and that's called
Speaker 1: secondary radar. Primary radar is what you think where it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a blip on a screen that this big,
Speaker 1: this big radar ray is bouncing off of and receiving
Speaker 1: information back from. But it's just you see, it's physically there.
Speaker 1: This has far more information, and that's what air traffic
Speaker 1: control around the world uses.
Speaker 2: Right, And this is very key because just a few
Speaker 2: seconds after it made that switch or into ho Chi
Speaker 2: Men's airspace, the transponder stops sending information that transponder that's
Speaker 2: supposed to say who you are, where you are, and
Speaker 2: how going just stopped. It vanished, and this is when
Speaker 2: the ball was dropped by a little bit by Kuala
Speaker 2: Lamport not noticing, and definitely by ho Chi men not
Speaker 2: doing anything immediately in response to Kuala lamp or.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So, primary radar, the radar that you typically think of
Speaker 1: when you think of radar, there are very few places
Speaker 1: in the world where you can't be tracked by someone
Speaker 1: on radar. It's fairly old technology. It's been around for
Speaker 1: a while. But the places where you can't be tracked
Speaker 1: can be vast over the ocean, in the desert, over
Speaker 1: extremely mountainous or wooded areas. There are places where you
Speaker 1: can't really put a radar tower and you can disappear
Speaker 1: from radar. Right there's I think what I'm trying to
Speaker 1: say here is if you take your plane out of
Speaker 1: radar range and you turn off your transponder, you can
Speaker 1: make a modern airliner as big as a seven seventy
Speaker 1: seven Vanish where people don't know where it is. And
Speaker 1: that's a really I think hallmark point or trait to
Speaker 1: this mystery that kind of like gets people a little
Speaker 1: unnerved is wait a minute, like this is the twenty
Speaker 1: first century, This happened in twenty fourteen. What do you mean?
Speaker 1: There's times and situations where an airliner can disappear and
Speaker 1: people don't know where it is. And that was the situation,
Speaker 1: and as Ho Chi Minh City and Kualaumpur are starting
Speaker 1: to scramble to try to figure out, you know, where
Speaker 1: this is. Apparently they called Malaysian Airlines and said, hey,
Speaker 1: do you know anything about MH three seventy. Malaysian Airlines said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're flying over Cambodia right now, and they're like where,
Speaker 1: what do you how are you seeing this? After an hour,
Speaker 1: finally Malaysian Airlines is like, no, we're just referring to
Speaker 1: the flight plan. They should be over Cambodia right now.
Speaker 1: What do you mean you can't find them? What's going on?
Speaker 3: Yeah? But because of that primary radar.
Speaker 2: The secondary radar wasn't functioning like we said, because the
Speaker 2: transponder was off, but the primary radar did track them
Speaker 2: for about an hour after those communications dropped. Because of
Speaker 2: the Malaysian military was able to track it with the
Speaker 2: primary radar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, apparently it flew through the primary radar of five
Speaker 1: different countries and the only one that bothered to track
Speaker 1: it was Malaysia's Air Force. Yeah, but they didn't do
Speaker 1: anything about it. They didn't follow up to see who
Speaker 1: it was, They didn't scramble any jets to go see
Speaker 1: if everybody was okay, or they just knew that there
Speaker 1: was an unidentified plane flying through Malaysian airspace and the
Speaker 1: Air Force didn't do anything about it. This is embarrassing
Speaker 1: enough that the Air Force didn't reveal this to anybody
Speaker 1: for a while, which was a really important point because
Speaker 1: during this time, about an hour, about an hour and
Speaker 1: a half after the takeoff and an hour after the
Speaker 1: thing disappeared from transponders, the Malaysian Air Force was tracking
Speaker 1: MH three seventy and it saw that it seemed to
Speaker 1: have taken a turn.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they know what happened at this point.
Speaker 2: For a little while, it made a sharp turn.
Speaker 1: That was not part of the planned flight plan.
Speaker 3: No, not at all.
Speaker 2: This is where things definitely took a metaphorical and literal turn.
Speaker 2: It headed southwest at that point, crossed over the Malay Peninsula,
Speaker 2: over Malaysia again, and then parts of Thailand. Then it
Speaker 2: made a right turn. This is very key near the
Speaker 2: island of Penang, just put a pin in that then
Speaker 2: headed west by northwest towards the Andaman c and then
Speaker 2: at two twenty two am vanished from radar, from that
Speaker 2: primary radar as well.
Speaker 1: Right, So the Malaysian Air Force saw this happen on
Speaker 1: this radar, it didn't tell anybody for a while. The
Speaker 1: flight plan had it leaving Malaysia, crossing over the Strait
Speaker 1: of Malacca into the peninsula where Thailand is located, into
Speaker 1: China right just away from Malaysia. And from what the
Speaker 1: Malaysian Air Force saw, this thing doubled back on itself
Speaker 1: and then went in some totally different directions, almost the
Speaker 1: opposite direction it was supposed to be going in. And
Speaker 1: like you said, it dropped off of the radar, and
Speaker 1: that was the last time anyone saw it on radar.
Speaker 1: But that's not the last time we were able to
Speaker 1: track MGE three seventy And that's thanks to a satellite
Speaker 1: network that's run by an outfit called in Marsat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so in Marsat.
Speaker 2: If you've ever been on a plane and you've enjoyed
Speaker 2: the benefits of watching movies, streaming or connected to your
Speaker 2: computer via Wi Fi. That is because of satellite communication.
Speaker 2: These airplanes are equipped with a system and it transfers
Speaker 2: data and all their voice communications via satellite. And some
Speaker 2: of this data from the plane is automatically shared with
Speaker 2: these ground tracking stations, which is a really big deal.
Speaker 2: So not only are they letting you watch movies and
Speaker 2: doing all that, but it's sending this automatic data on
Speaker 2: a regular on the rag basically from that satellite to
Speaker 2: these ground stations.
Speaker 1: Right, so they think by this time, actually I believe
Speaker 1: they know by this time m H three seventies, navigational systems,
Speaker 1: entertainment systems, a bunch of its systems have been turned off.
Speaker 1: The only thing that was still operating was this satellite
Speaker 1: link I guess beacon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's called a satellite data unit.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the satellite data unit which was capable of
Speaker 1: contacting and receiving contact from the m MAR satellites. Now,
Speaker 1: at the time, no one knows that this is happening, right, Like,
Speaker 1: there's no sound being made, there's nobody tracking this. This
Speaker 1: all came out much later when in Marsat realized they
Speaker 1: were sitting on a bunch of data. But during different
Speaker 1: points over the next six seven hours, the satellite and
Speaker 1: the satellite data unit talk to each other under a
Speaker 1: few different circumstances. And because of this, this company in Marsat,
Speaker 1: which is located a headquartered in Great Britain, but literally
Speaker 1: covers the globe not just with airline stuff but maritime
Speaker 1: thing which I think where they were originally they were
Speaker 1: originally founded to do, is to enable maritime communications. Like
Speaker 1: you know, satellite phone you're calling through in Marsat. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: So they've got this whole constellation of satellites and when
Speaker 1: in Marsett heard about MH three seventy, they were like,
Speaker 1: we're all bet our satellites were tracking this thing in
Speaker 1: some way, shape or form. And it turns out that
Speaker 1: they were right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And there's four and this is important here. There's
Speaker 2: four different ways or circumstances where that satellite data unit
Speaker 2: on the plane is communicating with the satellite in space.
Speaker 2: Whenever you're making a data transmission or a voice transmission,
Speaker 2: whenever or someone on the ground tries to contact the plane.
Speaker 2: There's something that happens every hour. If no one has
Speaker 2: made either one of these contacts for an hour, you
Speaker 2: get a check in called a handshake. It's just like
Speaker 2: you're still here, shake hands, buddy, Yeah, just.
Speaker 1: Want to make sure you're logged on. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like when you watch too much Netflix, and Netflix enter
Speaker 1: the message, yeah, have you finished all the tub of
Speaker 1: cookie dough yet?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And then it as the thing that says go outside, right,
Speaker 2: or actually it doesn't. It says, watch another one.
Speaker 1: Watch some more, why not have some more cookie dough?
Speaker 1: It's the same thing. It's it's sending a message to
Speaker 1: the plane's satellite data unit saying like, just are you
Speaker 1: still logged on?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: And then the final thing, and this is super key,
Speaker 2: is whenever the whenever you first log onto the satellite system,
Speaker 2: that thing on the plane, whenever it kind of checks
Speaker 2: in and links up. That is very key because what
Speaker 2: can also happen if that thing goes down and then reboots.
Speaker 2: It treats that as a new log in, so it'll
Speaker 2: make another ping basically that it's logged done to the system.
Speaker 1: Right. So in Marsett goes back and looks at their
Speaker 1: data and says, okay, so here's a couple of things
Speaker 1: right now. This is I think within the first few
Speaker 1: days everybody is looking in the south China Sea for
Speaker 1: MH three seventy because that was what was along its
Speaker 1: flight plan. The Malaysian Air Force hasn't revealed yet that
Speaker 1: it tracked MH three seventy turn around and go the
Speaker 1: opposite direction of what its flight plan was where it
Speaker 1: was scheduled to carry it. Yeah, and in Marsette is
Speaker 1: now saying, wait a minute, this thing didn't crash like
Speaker 1: an hour and a half after takeoff. This thing turned
Speaker 1: around and flew into the Indian Ocean for six or
Speaker 1: seven more hours because our satellite was talking to the
Speaker 1: to the plane at various points during this time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we should point out too, after Air France
Speaker 2: flight four four seven, which crashed in two thousand and nine,
Speaker 2: this is when in Marsette really kind of beefed up
Speaker 2: their system. They added more ground station and they added
Speaker 2: a lot more capability to add storage for this data
Speaker 2: because they know that this can really help out in
Speaker 2: situations like this.
Speaker 1: That was a big one too. Do you remember that one?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that one was the first one that really
Speaker 1: opened people's eyes where it was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: when we're flying over the ocean, like no one knows
Speaker 1: where we are, and they were like, no, actually not really,
Speaker 1: and they I think that's why m MARSAT was like,
Speaker 1: we've got to build more ground stations, we got to
Speaker 1: bulk up our data storage all that stuff. We've got
Speaker 1: to add more satellite capabilities, and in doing so, they
Speaker 1: made it so that you could be tracked when you're
Speaker 1: over the ocean, even if you didn't want to be,
Speaker 1: as seems to have been the case with MH three seventy.
Speaker 1: So it was a huge difference between two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: was it two thousand and four and nine, two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine and twenty fourteen, just five years the thing
Speaker 1: proved itself. These upgrades they made were substantial. But Air
Speaker 1: France flight four four seven in and of itself another
Speaker 1: langwash gem that just puts you in the seed of
Speaker 1: this terrifying plane crash. That one, in particular, they knew
Speaker 1: where the plane was and it still took two years
Speaker 1: to recover the black boxes and figure out what went wrong,
Speaker 1: which is terrifying in it if you know what happened
Speaker 1: to that one. Basically the controlsers got ripped away but
Speaker 1: from the pilot and it just went right into the
Speaker 1: ocean and they're still down there apparently there was a
Speaker 1: big debate over what to do with these people. When
Speaker 1: they started raising them, they were perfectly preserved because they're
Speaker 1: so deep in the pressure and the anaerobic situation, and yeah,
Speaker 1: the temperature just kept them perfectly preserved. But as they
Speaker 1: were raised up into warmer waters, the decomposition over two
Speaker 1: years just happened immediately. Man, so they I think the
Speaker 1: French government said they have to stay there. It's now
Speaker 1: a memorial, do not try to raise anybody. And they're
Speaker 1: still down there, strapped to their seats, which when you
Speaker 1: just do not think about that the next time you
Speaker 1: get on a plane. It's a terrible thing to think about.
Speaker 1: I can tell you first hand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you've gotten so much better over the years.
Speaker 3: But I'm sure this is going to be a setback.
Speaker 1: No, I'm hanging in there, all right. Yeah, if it happens,
Speaker 1: it happens like that's the way I kind.
Speaker 3: Of Well, there's certainly nothing you can do about it.
Speaker 1: This isn't something that they are that you guys are
Speaker 1: going to play my memorial at my funeral, my last words.
Speaker 1: But if you're if if I go down in a
Speaker 1: plane crash, my number was up.
Speaker 2: Right, and everyone else will be like, that's so weird.
Speaker 2: He always talked about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, this was worse here, such a freak there was.
Speaker 1: Actually I had a tweet once it said, if I
Speaker 1: ever go down on a plane crash, I'm going to
Speaker 1: shout I wish I would have spend more time at work.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure I get that.
Speaker 1: Well, you know it's like no one ever says in
Speaker 1: their deathbed they wish they'd spend more time at work.
Speaker 3: Well, I got it. An ironic funny on the way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll make people laugh. Good for you give them
Speaker 1: their last laugh.
Speaker 2: So, uh, this uh, where they're getting all this information
Speaker 2: was from a ground station in Perth, Australia, a place
Speaker 2: we have been to.
Speaker 1: M it was quite lovely, lovely town.
Speaker 3: That's right, it was great.
Speaker 2: Anyone ever tells you don't go to Western Australia. You
Speaker 2: tell them that's BS. Josh and Chuck said, it's great.
Speaker 1: Yep, right, very stupid. So BS stands for So.
Speaker 2: They had a lot of data, like we said, because
Speaker 2: they had beefed up their storage capabilities over the past
Speaker 2: five or six years, and they have a couple of
Speaker 2: types of data, something called burst timing offset and burst
Speaker 2: frequency offset bto is it measures how long that a
Speaker 2: signal takes to reach a satellite. You know the speed
Speaker 2: of the signal, so you know exactly how far that
Speaker 2: plane is from the satellite at that exact moment. It's
Speaker 2: very easy to kind of understand.
Speaker 1: Right, and first taken into account, Mr sat has Oh,
Speaker 1: here here was a ping. Here's a ping. Here's a ping.
Speaker 1: Here's a ping. Right now, they're digging in to analyze
Speaker 1: these pings and just the quality of them, the timing
Speaker 1: of them, all this stuff, because they are like, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure we can figure out where this plane was
Speaker 1: and maybe where it went if we really drill in
Speaker 1: and do some incredible math and figure out just kind
Speaker 1: of the nature of these pings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and what they're trying to do here is to
Speaker 2: narrow it down into an arc instead of a circle.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that's just naturally what happened. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, you're right.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry because Ed explained it in a very easy way.
Speaker 2: If you tell someone, hey, I'm one hundred miles from Atlanta,
Speaker 2: then you draw a circle around Atlanta. That's one hundred
Speaker 2: miles and you could be at any point along that circle.
Speaker 2: But if that phone call was from Athens, which is
Speaker 2: not one hundred miles from Atlanta, but it's not too
Speaker 2: far sixty five or so. But if you said you're
Speaker 2: from some other city in Georgia, then you would know
Speaker 2: where you were, and if you knew how fast they
Speaker 2: were going, then you could. Really it doesn't become a circle,
Speaker 2: then it becomes an arc.
Speaker 1: Right, the number of points on that circle where that
Speaker 1: person could possibly be smaller, yeah, much more, maybe by half,
Speaker 1: maybe by two thirds. And yet so the circle becomes
Speaker 1: an arc. And because of that burst timing offset, they
Speaker 1: could establish those those arcs, and there were seven of them,
Speaker 1: I believe, Yes, No, they could establish the circles and
Speaker 1: then the circle because of the other one, the the BFO,
Speaker 1: the burst frequency offset. Those are more complicated. They involved
Speaker 1: the Doppler effect and basically tell the the satellite or
Speaker 1: the satellite data tells MMR set we're going in this
Speaker 1: direction because the you know, the Doppler effectiveness. An ambulance
Speaker 1: sirens coming two years and then it passes right, changes
Speaker 1: in pitch because of the relative distance and the direction
Speaker 1: that it's traveling. They could tell from this ping, the
Speaker 1: satellite ping, not even a data transmission, just a ping
Speaker 1: which direction the thing was headed and roughly how fast
Speaker 1: it was going, and so they were able to create
Speaker 1: seven arcs. And after the seven arcs, the seventh arc
Speaker 1: was created by a ping that took place at eight
Speaker 1: nineteen am, and after that there was another There was
Speaker 1: a log on request, a handshake request that the SDU
Speaker 1: failed to respond to. And they think that in between
Speaker 1: eight nineteen am and that last log on request at
Speaker 1: nine to fifteen am, the plane finally crashed, probably from
Speaker 1: running out of fuel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they think that eight nineteen was from one
Speaker 2: of those reboots that I was talking about when that
Speaker 2: system comes back on, which.
Speaker 1: Will come under power failure, right, which we'll come into
Speaker 1: play pretty soon.
Speaker 2: All right, So let's take another break here, Okay, all right,
Speaker 2: we'll be back with the leading theory right after this.
Speaker 3: All right, So the leading theory and this is.
Speaker 2: Uh, the more I read this, the more it was
Speaker 2: Occam's razor kind of staring you in the face. Because
Speaker 2: we'll get into some of the kind of Kakammi theories
Speaker 2: and there are many of them, but this one is
Speaker 2: the simplest, and uh, it's probably what happened. It is
Speaker 2: that Uh, someone on board and should we should we
Speaker 2: tease this out? Yeah, okay, someone on board, Uh, took
Speaker 2: control of the plane, disabled that transponder, and then started
Speaker 2: flying in the other direction back across Malaysia. Then put
Speaker 2: it on autopilot until it ran out of gas and
Speaker 2: it crashed into the ocean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, about the Southern Indian Ocean, which is where the
Speaker 1: southern seventh arc was.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons this makes a lot of sense
Speaker 2: is because that transponder going off at the exact moment
Speaker 2: when the plane transitioned from Kuala Lampur's airspace into Ho
Speaker 2: Chi Min's, it would be an incredible coincidence. If that
Speaker 2: was just an incredible coincidence.
Speaker 1: That in and of itself says some that there was
Speaker 1: a human factor.
Speaker 3: Involved, like someone knew what that meant.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, so as somebody who knew how to do that,
Speaker 1: when to do it, and the timing of it was
Speaker 1: just too spectacular for it to have been an accident.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because what they probably counted on is exactly what happened.
Speaker 2: Was there was a period of time. They might have
Speaker 2: figured five minutes, which is what you said the standard was,
Speaker 2: but what they got was eighteen minutes of confusion. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean they it tripled what they were counting on
Speaker 2: exactly best case scenario.
Speaker 1: Yep. The other thing was that the turn that the
Speaker 1: MH three seventy made was so abrupt that an autopilot
Speaker 1: wouldn't have done that. Now if you put it, if
Speaker 1: you put a plane on autopilot and have it and
Speaker 1: it turns, it would make a much wider turn. This
Speaker 1: is a hard kind of backtracking turn that it made
Speaker 1: to its left to the southwest from the north. Traveling
Speaker 1: the northeast, the turn was to the southwest. So just
Speaker 1: the turn alone, which came after the transponder was turned off,
Speaker 1: shows that it was under human control. It was a
Speaker 1: person piloting the plane making it turn.
Speaker 2: Like right, and that rules out things like mechanical failure
Speaker 2: or fire.
Speaker 1: Everything from meteor strike ye know, a squall line to
Speaker 1: any kind of weather it was. All that was is
Speaker 1: ruled out by the fact that this turn took place
Speaker 1: clearly under human control.
Speaker 3: Right. That also rules out hypoxia.
Speaker 2: If you remember the very eerie crash for with golfer
Speaker 2: plane Paine Stewart on that private jet.
Speaker 1: I don't really remember that, can you kind of refresh
Speaker 1: my memory.
Speaker 2: That was in nineteen ninety nine, and I think the
Speaker 2: post mortem on that one was that this private plane
Speaker 2: essentially everyone on board died of hypoxia, including the pilots,
Speaker 2: and it flew for a number of hours.
Speaker 3: Oh really on autopilot. It was a ghost plane essentially.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, So they don't think that hypoxia affected whoever
Speaker 1: was in control of.
Speaker 3: The plane because it made that turn.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a very deliberate turn, and then it
Speaker 1: followed an even more deliberate flight pattern after that. This
Speaker 1: was not random movements of a plane where somebody who
Speaker 1: was suffering from hypoxia but still alive would make. These
Speaker 1: weren't confused decisions. They were difficult to understand decisions, but
Speaker 1: they weren't random and confused behavior. They were deliberate.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: So one of the pilots or both of the pilots
Speaker 1: suffering from hypoxia is ruled out, And the fact that
Speaker 1: they were deliberate turns also rules out the idea that
Speaker 1: both of the pilots were dead. Right that again, it
Speaker 1: was just the plane flying itself.
Speaker 2: Right, These log on requests by that STU unit on
Speaker 2: the plane. There was another big clue there because there
Speaker 2: was a log on request made at one forty three am,
Speaker 2: and that basically says that the power on the plane's
Speaker 2: electrical system was shut off for a period of time
Speaker 2: in between that transponder disappearing and that time of that
Speaker 2: log on request. Right, So someone like purposely disabled, purposefully
Speaker 2: disabled these systems.
Speaker 1: Right, So one forty three am would have been about
Speaker 1: an hour after take off, just over an hour after takeoff,
Speaker 1: after the transponder was turned off with perfect timing between
Speaker 1: Kuala Lumpur and Ho Chi Minh, but also before the
Speaker 1: turn that the Malaysian Air Force track. That's right, or
Speaker 1: at about the same time.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: The other thing that could have happened when these when
Speaker 2: the transponder and the SDU were shut off, it could
Speaker 2: have depressurized the plane. If that happens, then hypoxya is
Speaker 2: the fear those oxygen masks are going to drop down,
Speaker 2: but you only get about ten minutes of oxygen as
Speaker 2: a passenger. The cockpit is going to have a lot
Speaker 2: more oxygen than that. But we do know for a
Speaker 2: fact from that log on request that the systems were
Speaker 2: off for an hour, So even if that were the case,
Speaker 2: then the masks run out ten minutes later, and the
Speaker 2: people die of hypoxy at the passengers shortly after that.
Speaker 1: The thing is is they believe that not only is
Speaker 1: MH three seventy still at cruising altitude, it probably actually
Speaker 1: climbed to forty thousand, maybe a little over forty thousand feet.
Speaker 1: It's basically the maximum that seventy seven could stay aloft at.
Speaker 1: So the drop down masks would have been totally useless
Speaker 1: to begin with. There's not enough oxygen coming through them
Speaker 1: to offset that kind of height in the pressurized cabin
Speaker 1: that's meant for a much lower altitude, and the reason
Speaker 1: why I found it very disconcerting to learn that there's
Speaker 1: only like ten or fifteen minutes worth of oxygen coming
Speaker 1: out of those masks.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's the idea there that a plane crash
Speaker 2: doesn't take longer than that.
Speaker 1: The idea is that it's used for an emergency transitioned
Speaker 1: down to a much lower altitude where you could breathe
Speaker 1: without a pressurized cabin, and that that takes less than
Speaker 1: ten or fifteen minutes. You can do that much more
Speaker 1: quickly a few minutes.
Speaker 3: So basically you're gonna start flying with your own oxygen tank.
Speaker 1: Basically, I'll be like, try to take it away from
Speaker 1: the tip. You can't do it.
Speaker 2: Here's another thing is that that sdu log on re
Speaker 2: quest at the end. It suggests that it was turned
Speaker 2: back on. And the thinking here is that whoever did this,
Speaker 2: it probably didn't care at that point because it was
Speaker 2: too late because everyone on board was dead, right.
Speaker 1: So the idea behind all this is that the power
Speaker 1: was shut off, and they know that the power was
Speaker 1: turned off because the log on request came at a
Speaker 1: certain point, right, So that means that the power had
Speaker 1: been shut off and it was coming back on. And
Speaker 1: they think that it was to depressurize the cabin. And
Speaker 1: be a very easy way to depressurize the cabin just
Speaker 1: turn off all of the power.
Speaker 2: And then maybe whoever did this, and we'll get to that,
Speaker 2: it was like, I want to get back down to
Speaker 2: normal cruising altitude here, so I can fly this plane
Speaker 2: without wearing a mask maybe, or just in a less
Speaker 2: stressful environment, right.
Speaker 1: Exactly, Maybe go get a bite to eat or something
Speaker 1: like that. There's a lot that can be done in
Speaker 1: a pressurized cabin.
Speaker 2: And then there was that final arc, the seventh one
Speaker 2: that log on request was probably the plane running out
Speaker 2: of fuel. And this I thought was super interesting. So
Speaker 2: the plane runs out of fuel, those engines shut down,
Speaker 2: but there's still air pumping through those turbines, and that's
Speaker 2: going to spin the turbine and that's certainly not going
Speaker 2: to be enough to fly your plane, but it could
Speaker 2: be enough to act as a generator and power up
Speaker 2: the auxiliary power system.
Speaker 3: That's right, super super interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So in the running out of fuel, electrical goes down,
Speaker 1: those air ramjets come on, and the auxiliary power system
Speaker 1: comes on. The thing logs back on.
Speaker 3: Just enough to get that going again.
Speaker 1: Right exactly. So let's just before we stop for this episode, Chuck,
Speaker 1: let's just kind of recamp what m mar said has
Speaker 1: been able to figure out from seven pings between its
Speaker 1: satellite and the satellite data unit seven pings. They dove
Speaker 1: into these things so deeply that they were able to
Speaker 1: figure out that the flight did not crash, that there
Speaker 1: was probably a hypoxia event among the cabin, that it
Speaker 1: was deliberate, and that the plane kept flying, not that
Speaker 1: it did not crush, but that it kept flying for
Speaker 1: at least six more hours and finally did probably crash.
Speaker 1: In the southern Indian Ocean, all from seven little pings
Speaker 1: between the plane and the satellite.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: And then the final little clue here from the satellite
Speaker 2: is the ELT emergency transmitter failed, its emergency location transmitter,
Speaker 2: and that's linked to a different satellite system. And one person,
Speaker 2: if your conspiracy minded, might say, well, you know what
Speaker 2: this means. It didn't actually crash into the ocean. But
Speaker 2: these ELTs apparently have a pretty low success rate, and
Speaker 2: when you dive into the ocean with no power, it's
Speaker 2: at tremendous speed and that would have been enough probably
Speaker 2: to destroy the plane instantly.
Speaker 1: And this ELT, there's another. So there's four I think
Speaker 1: on the plane. Did you say that.
Speaker 3: I didn't say four, So I believe.
Speaker 1: There's four on the plane. One of them like they
Speaker 1: can be disabled.
Speaker 3: It's not a black box, by the way.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, this is just a beacon that's pings
Speaker 1: a satellite, but isn't even a different satellite from MMR SAT.
Speaker 1: So it's like an extra fail safe. And this means
Speaker 1: that they all four of them failed, which again some
Speaker 1: people think that's evidence right there that this thing didn't
Speaker 1: actually crash. We'll talk about that in the next episode
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 2: All right, I think we don't do listener mails on
Speaker 2: a part one no, so just strap in and I
Speaker 2: hope you can hold off from researching for a couple
Speaker 2: of days on this.
Speaker 1: Way, maybe you have a bloody Mary while you're waiting. Agreed, Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: in the meantime, if you want to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us, you can go on to stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know dot com and check out our social links, and
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