The disappearance of Malaysian Airline Systems flight MH370 has quickly become a high profile entry in aviation lore, replete as it is with baffling questions and a lack of answers. Neither the "who" nor the "why" are anything other than opaque at this point and the likelihood is that that may never change.
It's tempting to believe that with our technologies, it's entirely probable that MH370 will be found and the secrets of her disappearance will be revealed. Alas, history has shown that some mysteries are never solved, Amelia Earhart's final flight in 1937 being a notable example. Not that there aren't any number of theories about the fate of the aviatrix and her navigator. On the contrary, there are many books and articles offering answers, some reasoned, many more fanciful.
However, no evidence has ever been discovered that convincingly solves that puzzle.
As I write this 9 days after the 777's vanishing trick, it's still "big news", with seemingly every media outlet on Earth featuring another update to our lack of any clues as to the "who" or the "why". The breakthrough we all seek continues to elude us. Yet we obediently tune in several times a day or several times an hour in the hope that we might know what could simply be the unknowable.
But what do we know? Sadly, not a lot.
A little more than an hour after takeoff, MH370 acknowledged Malaysian air traffic terminating their control of the flight in preparation for Vietnam's expected acceptance of responsibility for the following leg of the route to Beijing. The flight crew never made the expected contact with the Vietnamese controller and instead, the 777's transponder went offline.
It's believed that the acknowledgement to Malaysian ATC* was made by the First Officer, although so far there has been no explanation as to how that identification was arrived at.
With the transponder offline, MH370 effectively was cloaked in invisibility as far as both Malaysian and Vietnamese SSR* operators were concerned. This is important in the sense that having handed off the aircraft to their Vietnamese counterparts, Malaysian ATC had no reason to continue to monitor the flight. Conversely, while MH370 remained under control of Malaysian ATC, Vietnam's controllers had no reason to monitor the flight's progress, and would expect to begin that process once the 777 contacted them. But as we now know, it never did.
While being effectively invisible to the SSR of both nations, MH370 made a turn to the West and flew on for several hours on various headings. This information came to light several days after the event when Malaysia's miltary PSR* records for the period in question were analysed. A radar trace apparently coincided with MH370 prior to the transponder going offline, and for a significant period of time, military radar recorded it. It's this trace that forms the basis of our knowledge of MH370's progress subsequent to its becoming invisible and until the aircraft flew out of range of the radar.
What sheds suspicion on the 777's movements during this period is that the aircraft navigated via prescribed civil aviation waypoints, something that could only have been accomplished if the navigation equipment were working correctly. That's important because it shows that the aircraft's systems had not undergone a catastrophic failure - the logical conclusion then being that MH370 was under the control of an experienced pilot, one who wanted the aircraft to disappear for reasons unknown.
We also know that the Acars reporting facility installed on the 777 was disabled. There's no way at this time to determine exactly when Acars went offline, but it's reasonable to expect that it coincided with the transponder shutdown. Since Acars would have given investigators an accurate track of MH370's flightpath, it must be assumed that it was purposely disabled to prevent that.
Last, and most frustratingly perhaps, the engine management data reporting capability of the 777 had not been subscribed to by the airline, and although the system pinged the aircraft hourly, it was rewarded with just a handshake response that basically just verified that MH370's electrical system was on for 6 hours following its disappearance from radar, and that the aircraft was within the reception footprint of a specific satellite. However, the footprint, in the absence of continuous inputs from the aircraft, is virtually devoid of precision.
From the little information above, it's possible to draw some conclusions.
MH370 did not disappear from radar as a result of a catastophic failure of the aircraft or its systems.
The disappearance coincided with MH370 reaching the point on its journey when the transponder's disabling would be least likely to have been noticed.
Acars was taken offline at around the same time as was the transponder.
The flightpath of MH370 conformed to waypoints that would raise little if any suspicion of its progress.
Navigating those waypoints required not only a working navigation system, but also a skilled pilot.
In summary then, the aircraft was deliberately diverted from its original flight plan by an experienced pilot or pilots, in a manner that cloaked its subsequent flightpath and its destination. We still have no idea which direction MH370 took once out of Malaysian military radar range, we don't know who diverted the flight, nor what their motive(s) were.
Until the unlikely occurs, that of actually recovering the FDR* and CVR* black boxes, we will not know who or why.
There is a possible way that black box recovery might happen - making the assumption that the pilot had in mind to ensure that recovery was as close to impossible as he, (or she), could engineer it, which would be to take MH370 to the deepest stretch of ocean within reach and crash it there. If I were a US investigator, I'd have their nuclear submarine fleet re-purposed to trawl the depths with sonar sweeps and listen out for the black box locator beacons.
Otherwise, I doubt we'll ever know the "who" or the "why", and Amelia Earhart will be in good company over the "where".
[*Acromyms: ATC - Air Traffic Control, CVR - Cockpit Voice Recorder, FDR - Flight Data Recorder, PSR - Primary Surveillance Radar, SSR - Secondary Surveillance Radar]
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