Air Emergency (2003–…): Season 14, Episode 11 - Malaysia Flight 370 - full transcript
It is the greatest aviation mystery of all time
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
vanished without a trace
Ladies and gentlemen,
we are deeply sadden this morning...
It is unprecedented for an airplane to disappear
With few clues to go on,
aviation experts consider
a handful of compelling theories
A fire could affect the electrical system
The possibility of hijack jumps into your face
If it is some mechanical problem
it needs to be corrected
The experts scrutinize
the available evidence more closely
One thing you learn is:
You rule nothing out
and are faced with a shocking explanation
about what happened.
It is going to be very difficult to say:
Yeah, we lock this down,
now it can never happen again
This program is based on official
documents and expert analysis
of available evidence
Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Malaysia
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
is completing final preparations
for a night flight to Beijing.
Would you fasten your seat-belts now, please?
227 Passengers are on board
152 of them are Chinese citizens.
Malaysian 370 is their red-eye flight home
Fuel pumps
In the cockpit,
Captain Zaharie Ahmad
Shah is in command.
an experienced pilot
who has been with the airline for 33 years.
First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid
is far less experienced
This is his first time flying a Boeing 777
without an instructor.
For take off checklist complete
The process of take off in any commercial airliner
is a busy period
Former Airforce and
airline pilot John Nance
is an internationally recognized
expert in aviation safety
This is the reason that world wide,
starting in the US many years ago,
We said, Sterile cockpit under 10,000 ft
No one is talking
because you got a lot to concentrate on
Malaysian 370, Runway 32R
you are cleared for take off
Runway 32R cleared for take off,
Malaysian 370, thank you
Why don't you tell them
we are ready to go?
Flight attendants,
please take your seats for take off
0:40 AM,
Flight 370 is cleared for take off
OKAY, here we go.
The crew monitors the speed
as they accelerate down the runway
V1
Rotate
The take off seems completely routine
As the plane climbs,
the controller directs the crew
towards a navigational way-point, called IGARI.
Malaysia 370
turn right direct to IGARI
The 777 is one of
the most automated airplanes in the world.
The crew can simply enter the location
of the way-point into their flight-computer.
IGARI is entered
Cruise control?
Execute
Flying the big airplane like the 777
is really managing the airplane,
because there is not a lot of flying
stick and rudder involved
It is a lot of management
with a very sophisticated amount of electronics.
Malaysian 370's flightpath will now
take them along the air-corridor
that runs North East
over the Gulf of Thailand
before continuing on to Beijing.
The trip takes about 6 hours.
Malaysia 370,
maintaining level 350
20 minutes after take off,
they reach cruising altitude:
35,000 ft.
When you get a big jet up to altitude
and you got it on AUTOPILOT, you've levelled off,
You've run your cruise-checklist,
it really is time now to throw the straps off
and relax a little bit
The crew will now monitor the AUTOPILOT
until they are ready to land
Controllers in Kuala Lumpur will only track
the plane while it is in Malaysian airspace,
about 20 minutes more.
As the plane crosses the Gulf of Thailand,
controllers in Vietnam will take over.
The controller in Kuala Lumpur
makes one last transmission, at 1:19 AM
370, contact Ho Chi Minh
120,9, Goodnight
Goodnight, Malaysia 370
When we found out what was said from the cockpit
from the MH370,
it was perfectly routine
absolutely boilerplate, that is what
airline pilots and controllers say to each other
The crew is expected to contact
Vietnamese controllers in less than 1 minute.
But 19 minutes later...
...there is no word from Flight 370.
Malaysian 370, this is Ho Chi Minh,
please contact
Controllers in Vietnam and Malaysia
try desperately to reach the missing plane.
Malaysia 370, do you copy?
Malaysia 370, this is Kuala Lumpur, do you copy?
There is no response from the cockpit,
and no sign of the plane on radar.
Flight 370 has vanished without a trace.
It is unprecedented for an airplane
to disappear from the radar environment like this
and go unaccounted for.
Malcolm Brenner is
widely recognized
as one of the world's leading experts
in the causes of aviation disasters.
He studied human performance
for NASA and the US Airforce
and has investigated
dozens of major accidents for the NTSB
This accident has caught
the attention of the world
in way I have not seen
in a 40 year career in aviation.
This was probably going to be
the #1 mystery in aviation history
Everybody looked at Amelia Earhart as the #1
I think this clearly displaces it.
Ladies and gentlemen of the media,
We are deeply sadden this morning with the news
on the MH370
Stunned family members
demand answers from the airline.
While aviation experts world wide scramble to try
to explain what might have happened to the plane.
In that situation, everything is on the table
including disorientation, smoke, fire,
midair collision, you name it
Finding out what caused this disappearance
is crucial for the entire aviation industry.
If it is a mechanical problem,
it needs to be corrected
If it is a security breach of some type,
that needs to be corrected
If there was something with the cargo,
Whatever the issue was,
it has to be rectified.
Malaysian authorities immediately launch
a massive search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
Australia, the US and China soon join the hunt.
In the first couple of days,
we really had no idea what to think
(Except that we couldn't find the airplane)
It is difficult to know where to look
Flight 370 has disappeared
over the Gulf of Thailand
where there is limited radar-coverage.
Radar systems are on
about 10% of the surface of the earth
As you can imagine,
there are no radar systems over the oceans
So, you have a physical inability to cover
much of the earth's surface where it is ocean.
No ships in the region reported
spotting a plane on radar.
And there is no sign
of any floating aircraft-debris.
Desperate to save any potential crash-survivors
searchers turn to another technology:
It is called ACARS: Aircraft Communications
Addressing and Reporting System
The ACARS uses satellite to transmit information
between the ground and the aircraft in flight.
Chris McLaughlin is the vice president at INMARSAT
the company that runs the satellite network
It is a primary form of communication
between the controllers and the airline itself
and the pilots in the air
ACARS is intended to be a link with no concept,
you are never able to track an aircraft with it
Because why would you need to?
Because you are in communications with it
Unlike GPS,
ACARS does not provide constant location data
but what it does provide is vital information
on how the plane is performing
including crucially its fuel load.
This allows investigators
to estimate how far it could have flown
but without knowing the direction of flight,
it is not much to go on
The search area grows to more than 100,000 mile²
The element what was the most startling was:
"What do you mean,
we didn't know where this airplane was
What do you mean we lost track something
as big as a Boeing 777?
This isn't the first time
that an airliner has vanished.
Air France flight 447
disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean in 2009.
Though floating debris was found within days,
it took nearly 2 years
to find the sunken wreckage.
Leopold Sartorius was a key investigator
during that search
In the case of the Malaysian,
apparently the search area is
at least 3 to 4 times bigger
than the original Air France 447 search area,
which already was quite huge.
French investigators
ultimately conclude
that the pilots on Air France Flight 447 made
a series of stunning errors, leading to the crash.
That conclusion would have been impossible
without the undersea recovery of the black boxes.
We had much more than the investigators
seem to have today in the case of the Malaysian
but already, with all we had
it was very difficult to reach conclusions
without the flight recorders
In the search for Flight 370,
there is no time to loose
Ocean currents
could already be moving the flight-recorders
or worse:
Burying them under silt.
A careful review of the passenger manifest
by Malaysian police turns up an alarming lead
Two passengers boarded the plane illegally.
Very early in the case it was determined
that there were passengers using stolen passports
that were in the Interpol database
as stolen passports.
It suddenly seems possible
that Flight 370 hasn't crashed after all
Perhaps hijackers somehow
seized control of the plane.
I began to develop hope,
because it didn't appear there
was any wreckage in the water
This wasn't only a hijacking,
but it was a hostage taking
and we would hear a demand for 2xx hostages
to be repatriated if certain things were done
That was the best hope.
370, contact Ho Chi Minh 120,9,
Goodnight
Since 9/11,
mid-air hijackings are extremely unlikely...
...but not impossible.
One thing you learn in any form
of accident investigation is:
You rule nothing out
If the captain or the copilot use the rest-room
they come out of their cockpit
Tom Fuentes is uniquely qualified
to consider how a hijacking might unfold
He spent 29 years with the FBI.
So, all the security in the world means nothing
when they leave the controlled
environment of the cockpit.
Take me to the cockpit, or I kill her
OKAY, just don't hurt anyone
What do you want?
Open the cockpit door
The lack of any demands would be unusual
but hijackings don't always go according to plan
Could the disappearance of Flight 370
be a case of a hijacking gone wrong?
There are always possibilities
that whatever the plan was in MH370, it failed
That for one reason or another,
it did not work out as expected
That is one of the reasons
why it is difficult to understand.
One such failed hijacking took place in 1996
aboard Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961
The Boeing 767 was on a routine trip
from Addis Ababa to the Ivory Coast
when 3 young Ethiopians made their move.
Get out
Fly to Australia
Fly us to Australia
We don't have enough fuel to get to Australia
We have a bomb
If you don't do what we tell you to
we will blow this plane out of the sky.
We only have 2 hours of fuel
The hijackers didn't believe the captain
when he told them the 767
was going to run out of fuel.
3 hours later, near the Comoros islands
the jet hit the water
at more than 230 mph
125 of the 175 people on board were killed
including all of the hijackers.
Did a hijacker force his way
into the cockpit of Flight 370?
Stay calm, I am entering the heading now
I thought that there was a very strong possibility
if that plane turned around
it could have crashed into the jungles of Malaysia
or into the jungles of Indonesia
that went through all the vegetation into a swamp
which would keep it from being found.
That would be very easy for a plane
to crash in the jungle
and not be found.
Agencies around the world
scour radar records for clues
Then, on March 11th,
three days after the plane's disappearance
the Malaysian Military releases radar data
that seems to support the hijacking theory.
Three minutes after its last radio call
Flight 370 made a sharp turn off course
At the moment that it appeared, that there was a
shadowy trace of this airplane making a left turn
immediately after the
last radio call of ATC
the possibility of hijack jumps into your face
That possibility seems even more likely
when photos from a previous flight
co-piloted by Fariq Hamid
sparks speculation
that he didn't always keep the cockpit secure
If you got flight crews who are, shall we say,
prone to break the rules and let somebody up there
because they just want to do that
in a comradely way
They can open the door to anybody
It might be a pretty girl
but that pretty girl might have a confederate
and a gun in her purse
They may only have a small weapon
or intended to have a weapon
Now they get in there and
they have what they need.
In the media frenzy
surrounding the disappearance of Flight 370
there is talk of a possible hijacking
but for aviation experts,
something about the theory doesn't fit.
I just need to check my charge, is that alright?
Hurry up
Pilots have several ways
to send emergency signals to the ground.
You've got radios to talk on,
you got emergency frequencies,
you can put something in the ACAR system
and type it in
and you've got a code
that you can put in to the transponder
that instantly lets the world of aviation know
you have been hijacked.
They refer it as squawking:
It is sending out a special frequency
that would go back to the control tower
and to the airline
and say:
'this is the hijacking code'
But Air Traffic Controllers never received
a squawked code or any other alert from Flight 370
and an intensive police investigation
has lifted suspicion
from the passengers,
travelling on stolen passports.
They certainly had no links to terrorism.
In fact,
no one on board seems to have any connection
with any terrorist group.
We are talking of thousands of people looked at
interviews being done
At least the public should realize that
this was a very, very extensive investigation
With armed hijacking looking less likely
authorities focus
on the few existing leads in the case
including some troubling timing.
2 minutes after
the last voice communication from the cockpit,
Flight 370's transponder cuts out.
Transponders transmit information
like flight number and position
to controllers on the ground.
Loosing that signal makes it harder
to track the plane.
Even more troubling:
a few minutes after the transponder cuts out
the signal from the ACARS
also switches off.
Turning off the transponder
is extremely straight forward, extremely simple,
even on a sophisticated jet like the 777
Turning off the ACARS is not so simple,
it takes a lot of knowledge
It is difficult to imagine a routine glitch
that would cause the sudden loss of both systems
The answer probably lies elsewhere
There are only two things after a while
that begin to parse out
1. This is a purposeful act
the other is a massive emergency
An on board fire is one of the most
catastrophic emergencies a crew can face.
It can damage multiple systems
including electronics.
There goes the ACARS
Sometimes...
...in unpredictable ways.
A fire such as that
could affect the electrical system.
And so conceivably,
you could loose some capabilities.
In November of 1987,
a South African Airways 747
was bound for Johannesburg.
Fire broke out in its cargo area on the main deck
directly behind the passengers.
By the time the crew got to it,
the fire was raging.
The Captain initiated an emergency descend.
Mauritius, Mauritius Springbok 295
Springbok 295, Mauritius,
Good morning, Go ahead
Good morning, we have a smoke problem
and we are doing an emergency descend
to level 1,500 ft
Thick noxious smoke filled the cabin
And the captain lost power to key-instruments
Now, we lost a lot of electrics
We haven't got anything on the aircraft
The South African 747 never made it home.
159 people died,
when the plane hit the Indian Ocean.
The cargo manifest
from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
reveals it was carrying
some potentially dangerous cargo
487 lbs of highly flammable Li-ion batteries
Is it possible
that they spark the catastrophic fire?
The amount/weight of Li-Ion batteries exceed
normal standards
considered to be safe
or did they violate that and put too much on
and then maybe put it in the wrong cargo area,
where the fire suppression wasn't as robust
as where it supposed to be
There is a fire on board
Mayday, mayday, this is Malaysia 370,
We have a fire on board
There goes the ACARS
A sudden fire might explain
both the failure of the cockpit instruments
and the abrupt left turn
turning left, heading 240
Perhaps the crew was changing course
to prepare for an emergency landing
The crews do have oxygen
and one of the first things they do
in the event of fire or smoke is to use the oxygen
And that will give them at least
an hour of oxygen to work with
So, there is that possibility.
But the fire theory has a major flaw
The main problem with the fire scenario,
not seeming likely to me is
The #1 thing is that there was no radio call
The cargo base fire alarm should have sounded
before the fire had spread
The first thing that you do
is oxygen mask on, 100%
Make sure my body over here
has his/her oxygen mask on
We are going to declare an emergency immediately
we are going to turn the airplane around
We are going to look
for the nearest suitable airport
There is another compelling reason to doubt
that a fire brought down Flight 370
In London, a small team of engineers at INMARSAT
has made a startling discovery.
The team was looking on Sunday
They initially found something
they couldn't quite believe.
What they've uncovered
immediately casts a troubling new light
on the mysterious events
aboard Flight 370.
INMARSAT technicians have made
a stunning discovery.
Deep in the ACARS data,
they have uncovered a series of
automated signals or handshakes
received from Flight 370
long after it was assumed to have crashed.
It is done through an invisible handshake or ping
between the network and the unit itself
The plane's ACARS computer continues
to answer the automated pings
from the INMARSAT ground-station, every hour,
from 2:25 AM until 8:19 AM
The aircraft was continuing to signal,
a request for service
not for minutes up to the loss
but for over 7 hours after it had disappeared
from the radar system.
The discovery means
Flight 370 did not crash into the Gulf of Thailand
but was in the air for another 7 hours
What changed everything to me and everybody else
was that INMARSAT satellite data.
That says:
'Wait a minute, that plane flew for hours'
A 7 hour flight makes it nearly impossible
to believe a fire brought down the plane
With a fuel energized fire, the airplane is not
going to be capable of flying that many hours
The timing matches earlier ACARS data
about flight 370's fuel consumption
The plane had enough fuel
to keep flying on AUTOPILOT for 7 hours
but no one knows what was happening on board
during all that time.
We now know
that it went in a certain direction
We know that it went thousands of miles out there,
it flew for hours
whether anybody was alive or not,
we don't know.
Once the fuel tanks ran dry
the 2 engines would have cut out one after another
putting the 777 into a downward spiral
until it crashed into the sea.
The new scenario bears a striking resemblance
to another mysterious accident:
In August, 2005, Helios Flight 522
was on route from Cyprus to Athens.
Operations, this is Flight 522, over
Flight 522, what can I do for you?
We have a take off configuration warning.
In the cabin, oxygen masks suddenly dropped.
To the pilots, the alarms made no sense
and then, the plane went silent.
1.5 hour later, the Greek Airforce
scrambled two fighter jets to investigate.
They spotted someone slumped over the controls
in the First Officer's seat,
but there was no sign of the Captain.
There is one figure in the cockpit
of Helios Flight 522
It appears not responsive.
They saw someone moving in the cockpit,
just before the 747 suddenly turned
and made a quick descend.
As the plane sped downward,
the person in the cockpit
finally acknowledged the fighter jet
but no words were exchanged
Moments later,
Helios Flight 522 slammed into the ground
An investigation into the Helios crash revealed,
that the previous cabin crew had reported
seeing ice on the rear service door.
A ground engineer,
investigating the problem,
ran tests that required him to switch the cabin
pressurization control from AUTO to MAN...
...but he didn't switch it back.
When the plane took off again,
the cabin didn't pressurize automatically
and oxygen levels began to drop.
Hypoxia can result in head-aches, confusion,
difficulty understanding what was happening
memory loss, shortness of breath
What is especially sinister about hypoxia
(all pilots are warned about this)
you don't recognize that you are impaired.
Overhead masks deploy
when cabin pressure gets too low
but they only supply oxygen for about 12 minutes.
Slowly starved of oxygen...
...the passengers and crew drifted off to sleep.
Everyone on the plane was unconscious
with the exception of one flight attendant
who somehow had received the oxygen.
By the time that
the flight attendant reached the cockpit
the plane was out of fuel.
There was no way for him to save the plane.
Put on your mask
Did Malaysia Air Flight 370
suffer a pressurization failure,
and fly for hours on AUTOPILOT,
just like Helios 522?
the airplane is on AUTOPILOT
for most of the flight
In case both pilots
could not control the plane anymore
the AUTOPILOT would do what it supposed to do.
The Malaysian Flight was flying at 35,000 ft
This is higher than the Mount Everest
and without oxygen,
you can expect 30 to 60 seconds
of useful consciousness.
An Australian Transport Safety Bureau report
helps narrowing down the search area
with the finding that Flight 370's
straight and level path in the final hours
is consistent with an on board hypoxia event.
But there are some troubling details
that suggests something was very wrong
Well before hypoxia could ever have set in.
Hypoxia and disorientation
is not consistent
with turns that are made that would never
have been programmed into the computer,
even in the wildest imagination
Careful analysis of the evidence
has revealed that Flight 370
made 3 turns over the next 1.5 hr
after the last radio call.
First, a turn to the left
then two more, taking the plane West
then South towards Antarctica
For Malcolm Brenner,
those turns strongly suggest
someone in the cockpit
deliberately flew the plane off course
It is conceivable
that a pilot could deliberately
depressurize the airplane
It is part of an effort to hijack the airplane
or take it for some purpose
It would be possible from the cockpit
to turn off the pressurization
and produce a Helios type event
The big question is now:
Who made those mysterious turns...
...and why?
370, contact Ho Chi Minh 120.9
Goodnight
Investigators are struggling
to explain a series of mysterious turns
made by Flight 370, after its last radio call
That's weird, the transponder is just gone off
Anything else affected?
Hold on, the ACARS is out, too
You always want to have an open mind,
catastrophic failures can happen,
you want to consider that
If multiple flight systems failed
at the same time,
it is possible
the problem might have confused the pilots.
The damn thing is still not working
we'll try rebooting it
Hang on, let me take a look.
Is that our altitude
Dammit
But when considering all the facts of Flight 370,
that scenario just doesn't stand up.
The 777 is designed to have multiple back ups
making it extremely unlikely that enough systems
could fail to put the flight in jeopardy.
The whole watch-work
is to let these airplanes do much of the work
of making sure everything is backed up
including the back ups.
Multiple failures are also hard to reconcile
with the fact that the plane
kept flying for 7 hours
It just doesn't seem to fit
the evidence we know of the flight.
For investigators like Brenner
the evidence makes it hard
to ignore a rare and horrifying possibility...
...that Flight 370 was brought down
by a deliberate human act
Two different systems went out at the same time:
the transponder and the ACARS
The only purpose of these systems is
to communicate with the ground
and there is no obvious electrical connection
by both would be going out...
...other than a human involvement
Everything comes down to
deliberate action by somebody for some reason
If MH 370 was brought down on purpose
it wouldn't be the first time
for a commercial airliner
There are 6 accidents over the last 40 years
around the world
that have aspects of a deliberate action.
In several cases,
they appeared to be impulsive
but in 2 cases, it appears that the pilots
(although they have psychiatric problems)
they appeared to have careful planning
and deliberately wanted to hide the fact
that what they were doing would be a crime.
That was the controversial finding,
made by a team of US investigators
after the tragic crash of Silk Air Flight 185.
On December 19th, 1997
the Boeing 737 was flying
from Jakarta to Singapore.
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen,
this is your Captain
My name is Tsu Way Ming
On the flight deck this afternoon with me
is First Officer Duncan Ward.
Moments after the crew's last scheduled
radio call to Indonesian controllers
the plane banked sharply
and went into a steep dive.
There were no survivors.
Searchers manage to recover
the Silk Air's FDR and CVR,
but both machines were switched off
before the plane went into its fatal dive.
Investigators discover that the pilot,
Tsu Way Ming,
had recently lost more than a million dollars
in the stock market,
and was scheduled to repay the debt
when he got back to Singapore.
Though Indonesian investigators disagree,
US investigators believe the Silk Air captain
most likely disabled the flight recorders
and put the plane into a dive...
...killing 97 passengers...
...and 7 crew.
Malaysian 370, maintaining level 35,000 ft
Some experts now believe Flight 370 ...
...was also deliberately brought down.
So, in my mind, somebody did this
and it was a pilot
whether it was one of the two individuals up front
who were charged for keeping that plane safe
or whether it was somebody else,
we do not know.
Cruising at 35,000 ft...
...the Captain could have found an excuse
to get the First officer out of the cockpit.
The Captain of the flight has an authority,
he is the pilot in command of the flight.
He can direct the First Officer
to go back to the cabin for various reasons
where as the First Officer can not
So, of the two of them,
the Captain would be of greater attention.
Alone in the cockpit,
it would have been simple to switch off
the transponder and change course
towards an area with little radar coverage.
Hey, open up in there
A few minutes later,
he might have tried to switch off the ACARS
not realizing that
a part of the signal would stay on.
You cannot turn off the handshakes
without getting into the electronics
of the aircraft itself.
People wouldn't know how to do
Captain!
A pilot can stop the door being opened
from the outside
and it is designed to be extremely secure
when locked.
The hardened door, no one else is getting in
good, bad, or otherwise
So, if a good guy is in there
he is locked in
If a bad guy is in there
he is in there safe, too
If the Captain of Flight 370
took control of the cockpit
and hijacked his own plane...
...it is unlikely that anyone else on board
could have raised an alarm.
As far as communication from an emergency
basis from the cabin crew to the ground
you are almost always going to be
unsuccessful with a cellphone.
There is no method of just picking up the phone
bypassing the cockpit and calling the ground
You are pretty much alone for the ride.
Cabin pressure can be adjusted manually...
...a safety feature in case it malfunctions.
But that also makes it possible
to incapacitate everyone else on board.
This one consideration in terms of
neutralizing the other crew-member/members
Anyone who is not on oxygen
would be vulnerable.
Passengers who managed to put on their masks
would have run out of oxygen in about 12 minutes.
With passengers and crew dead,
all that is left is
to make the plane disappear.
The flight over the next hour makes several
more turns which appear to be human directed
and finally ends up
flying in a heading to Antarctica.
So, the appearance is that this is
a carefully thought out effort to evade detection.
I feel very very strongly,
given all the evidence that we think we have
we always have to put that carefully on it
that whoever did this intended for
the airplane and the passengers
to simply vanish from the planet.
If MH370 was in fact brought down on purpose,
one of the most difficult questions to answer...
...is WHY?
Between the 2 pilots,
the Captain and the FO,
the First Officer was a exuberant brand-new
young pilot
who was getting ready to get married;
there were absolutely no error-marks
But you turn to the Captain
and there are no marks there either
Malcolm Brenner thinks
an event from 1994 may provide some insight.
For me, the clearest model is the FedEx example,
and the only reason we know about that clearly is
because it failed.
A FedEx flight engineer
at risk for being fired for lying
boarded a DC10 with concealed weapons
He had a history of being quite brilliant
He was an engineer,
he had a good Airforce record
but he also had a history of psychiatric problems.
Shortly after take off,
he burst into the cockpit
planning to kill the crew and crash the plane.
He almost succeeded.
After a bloody struggle,
the crew managed to restrain their attacker
and land the plane.
Malaysia Airlines may be the latest
of a small handful of airlines
that have suffered the tragedy
of a disturbed pilot,
deliberately setting out
to crash a commercial plane.
You can have someone who can have
psychiatric motivation
but still be able to cold bloodedly plan
in detail a way to commit this kind of effort.
So, I am sorry to say it can happen.
The difficult reality
for investigators and airlines alike
is that human failures
can be nearly impossible to foresee.
If we are dealing with human beings,
we are dealing with imperfect creatures,
that is us.
And we should learn more about the error marks
of somebody who might do this
but it is going to be very difficult
if not impossible to say:
Yeah, we locked this down,
now it can never happen again.
It is possible no one will ever know for certain
exactly what happened aboard Flight 370.
But perhaps
the most important lesson from this tragedy
has already been learned.
The one lesson that I think immediately
comes out of this
is that we got to know where all
these airplanes are all the time
and that is very simple to do
and very inexpensive
You simply hook a GPS up
to one of those transmitters
and in most cases they are already there
and cause it to send its position
every 5 or 10 minutes
and make sure
that nobody in the airplane can turn it off.
Maybe one of the first things that will happen
is that individual airlines will decide:
'We are going to track',
and make that a point of difference
in the way they sell the tickets
Maybe another thing that will happen is,
that the FAA will simply mandate it.
The whole world has an interest
in what happened here
in finding out what happened
so that we can start to prevent it
and see that it never happens again.
Narrator:
Jonathan Aris
Subtitles
Rein Croonen
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
vanished without a trace
Ladies and gentlemen,
we are deeply sadden this morning...
It is unprecedented for an airplane to disappear
With few clues to go on,
aviation experts consider
a handful of compelling theories
A fire could affect the electrical system
The possibility of hijack jumps into your face
If it is some mechanical problem
it needs to be corrected
The experts scrutinize
the available evidence more closely
One thing you learn is:
You rule nothing out
and are faced with a shocking explanation
about what happened.
It is going to be very difficult to say:
Yeah, we lock this down,
now it can never happen again
This program is based on official
documents and expert analysis
of available evidence
Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Malaysia
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
is completing final preparations
for a night flight to Beijing.
Would you fasten your seat-belts now, please?
227 Passengers are on board
152 of them are Chinese citizens.
Malaysian 370 is their red-eye flight home
Fuel pumps
In the cockpit,
Captain Zaharie Ahmad
Shah is in command.
an experienced pilot
who has been with the airline for 33 years.
First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid
is far less experienced
This is his first time flying a Boeing 777
without an instructor.
For take off checklist complete
The process of take off in any commercial airliner
is a busy period
Former Airforce and
airline pilot John Nance
is an internationally recognized
expert in aviation safety
This is the reason that world wide,
starting in the US many years ago,
We said, Sterile cockpit under 10,000 ft
No one is talking
because you got a lot to concentrate on
Malaysian 370, Runway 32R
you are cleared for take off
Runway 32R cleared for take off,
Malaysian 370, thank you
Why don't you tell them
we are ready to go?
Flight attendants,
please take your seats for take off
0:40 AM,
Flight 370 is cleared for take off
OKAY, here we go.
The crew monitors the speed
as they accelerate down the runway
V1
Rotate
The take off seems completely routine
As the plane climbs,
the controller directs the crew
towards a navigational way-point, called IGARI.
Malaysia 370
turn right direct to IGARI
The 777 is one of
the most automated airplanes in the world.
The crew can simply enter the location
of the way-point into their flight-computer.
IGARI is entered
Cruise control?
Execute
Flying the big airplane like the 777
is really managing the airplane,
because there is not a lot of flying
stick and rudder involved
It is a lot of management
with a very sophisticated amount of electronics.
Malaysian 370's flightpath will now
take them along the air-corridor
that runs North East
over the Gulf of Thailand
before continuing on to Beijing.
The trip takes about 6 hours.
Malaysia 370,
maintaining level 350
20 minutes after take off,
they reach cruising altitude:
35,000 ft.
When you get a big jet up to altitude
and you got it on AUTOPILOT, you've levelled off,
You've run your cruise-checklist,
it really is time now to throw the straps off
and relax a little bit
The crew will now monitor the AUTOPILOT
until they are ready to land
Controllers in Kuala Lumpur will only track
the plane while it is in Malaysian airspace,
about 20 minutes more.
As the plane crosses the Gulf of Thailand,
controllers in Vietnam will take over.
The controller in Kuala Lumpur
makes one last transmission, at 1:19 AM
370, contact Ho Chi Minh
120,9, Goodnight
Goodnight, Malaysia 370
When we found out what was said from the cockpit
from the MH370,
it was perfectly routine
absolutely boilerplate, that is what
airline pilots and controllers say to each other
The crew is expected to contact
Vietnamese controllers in less than 1 minute.
But 19 minutes later...
...there is no word from Flight 370.
Malaysian 370, this is Ho Chi Minh,
please contact
Controllers in Vietnam and Malaysia
try desperately to reach the missing plane.
Malaysia 370, do you copy?
Malaysia 370, this is Kuala Lumpur, do you copy?
There is no response from the cockpit,
and no sign of the plane on radar.
Flight 370 has vanished without a trace.
It is unprecedented for an airplane
to disappear from the radar environment like this
and go unaccounted for.
Malcolm Brenner is
widely recognized
as one of the world's leading experts
in the causes of aviation disasters.
He studied human performance
for NASA and the US Airforce
and has investigated
dozens of major accidents for the NTSB
This accident has caught
the attention of the world
in way I have not seen
in a 40 year career in aviation.
This was probably going to be
the #1 mystery in aviation history
Everybody looked at Amelia Earhart as the #1
I think this clearly displaces it.
Ladies and gentlemen of the media,
We are deeply sadden this morning with the news
on the MH370
Stunned family members
demand answers from the airline.
While aviation experts world wide scramble to try
to explain what might have happened to the plane.
In that situation, everything is on the table
including disorientation, smoke, fire,
midair collision, you name it
Finding out what caused this disappearance
is crucial for the entire aviation industry.
If it is a mechanical problem,
it needs to be corrected
If it is a security breach of some type,
that needs to be corrected
If there was something with the cargo,
Whatever the issue was,
it has to be rectified.
Malaysian authorities immediately launch
a massive search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
Australia, the US and China soon join the hunt.
In the first couple of days,
we really had no idea what to think
(Except that we couldn't find the airplane)
It is difficult to know where to look
Flight 370 has disappeared
over the Gulf of Thailand
where there is limited radar-coverage.
Radar systems are on
about 10% of the surface of the earth
As you can imagine,
there are no radar systems over the oceans
So, you have a physical inability to cover
much of the earth's surface where it is ocean.
No ships in the region reported
spotting a plane on radar.
And there is no sign
of any floating aircraft-debris.
Desperate to save any potential crash-survivors
searchers turn to another technology:
It is called ACARS: Aircraft Communications
Addressing and Reporting System
The ACARS uses satellite to transmit information
between the ground and the aircraft in flight.
Chris McLaughlin is the vice president at INMARSAT
the company that runs the satellite network
It is a primary form of communication
between the controllers and the airline itself
and the pilots in the air
ACARS is intended to be a link with no concept,
you are never able to track an aircraft with it
Because why would you need to?
Because you are in communications with it
Unlike GPS,
ACARS does not provide constant location data
but what it does provide is vital information
on how the plane is performing
including crucially its fuel load.
This allows investigators
to estimate how far it could have flown
but without knowing the direction of flight,
it is not much to go on
The search area grows to more than 100,000 mile²
The element what was the most startling was:
"What do you mean,
we didn't know where this airplane was
What do you mean we lost track something
as big as a Boeing 777?
This isn't the first time
that an airliner has vanished.
Air France flight 447
disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean in 2009.
Though floating debris was found within days,
it took nearly 2 years
to find the sunken wreckage.
Leopold Sartorius was a key investigator
during that search
In the case of the Malaysian,
apparently the search area is
at least 3 to 4 times bigger
than the original Air France 447 search area,
which already was quite huge.
French investigators
ultimately conclude
that the pilots on Air France Flight 447 made
a series of stunning errors, leading to the crash.
That conclusion would have been impossible
without the undersea recovery of the black boxes.
We had much more than the investigators
seem to have today in the case of the Malaysian
but already, with all we had
it was very difficult to reach conclusions
without the flight recorders
In the search for Flight 370,
there is no time to loose
Ocean currents
could already be moving the flight-recorders
or worse:
Burying them under silt.
A careful review of the passenger manifest
by Malaysian police turns up an alarming lead
Two passengers boarded the plane illegally.
Very early in the case it was determined
that there were passengers using stolen passports
that were in the Interpol database
as stolen passports.
It suddenly seems possible
that Flight 370 hasn't crashed after all
Perhaps hijackers somehow
seized control of the plane.
I began to develop hope,
because it didn't appear there
was any wreckage in the water
This wasn't only a hijacking,
but it was a hostage taking
and we would hear a demand for 2xx hostages
to be repatriated if certain things were done
That was the best hope.
370, contact Ho Chi Minh 120,9,
Goodnight
Since 9/11,
mid-air hijackings are extremely unlikely...
...but not impossible.
One thing you learn in any form
of accident investigation is:
You rule nothing out
If the captain or the copilot use the rest-room
they come out of their cockpit
Tom Fuentes is uniquely qualified
to consider how a hijacking might unfold
He spent 29 years with the FBI.
So, all the security in the world means nothing
when they leave the controlled
environment of the cockpit.
Take me to the cockpit, or I kill her
OKAY, just don't hurt anyone
What do you want?
Open the cockpit door
The lack of any demands would be unusual
but hijackings don't always go according to plan
Could the disappearance of Flight 370
be a case of a hijacking gone wrong?
There are always possibilities
that whatever the plan was in MH370, it failed
That for one reason or another,
it did not work out as expected
That is one of the reasons
why it is difficult to understand.
One such failed hijacking took place in 1996
aboard Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961
The Boeing 767 was on a routine trip
from Addis Ababa to the Ivory Coast
when 3 young Ethiopians made their move.
Get out
Fly to Australia
Fly us to Australia
We don't have enough fuel to get to Australia
We have a bomb
If you don't do what we tell you to
we will blow this plane out of the sky.
We only have 2 hours of fuel
The hijackers didn't believe the captain
when he told them the 767
was going to run out of fuel.
3 hours later, near the Comoros islands
the jet hit the water
at more than 230 mph
125 of the 175 people on board were killed
including all of the hijackers.
Did a hijacker force his way
into the cockpit of Flight 370?
Stay calm, I am entering the heading now
I thought that there was a very strong possibility
if that plane turned around
it could have crashed into the jungles of Malaysia
or into the jungles of Indonesia
that went through all the vegetation into a swamp
which would keep it from being found.
That would be very easy for a plane
to crash in the jungle
and not be found.
Agencies around the world
scour radar records for clues
Then, on March 11th,
three days after the plane's disappearance
the Malaysian Military releases radar data
that seems to support the hijacking theory.
Three minutes after its last radio call
Flight 370 made a sharp turn off course
At the moment that it appeared, that there was a
shadowy trace of this airplane making a left turn
immediately after the
last radio call of ATC
the possibility of hijack jumps into your face
That possibility seems even more likely
when photos from a previous flight
co-piloted by Fariq Hamid
sparks speculation
that he didn't always keep the cockpit secure
If you got flight crews who are, shall we say,
prone to break the rules and let somebody up there
because they just want to do that
in a comradely way
They can open the door to anybody
It might be a pretty girl
but that pretty girl might have a confederate
and a gun in her purse
They may only have a small weapon
or intended to have a weapon
Now they get in there and
they have what they need.
In the media frenzy
surrounding the disappearance of Flight 370
there is talk of a possible hijacking
but for aviation experts,
something about the theory doesn't fit.
I just need to check my charge, is that alright?
Hurry up
Pilots have several ways
to send emergency signals to the ground.
You've got radios to talk on,
you got emergency frequencies,
you can put something in the ACAR system
and type it in
and you've got a code
that you can put in to the transponder
that instantly lets the world of aviation know
you have been hijacked.
They refer it as squawking:
It is sending out a special frequency
that would go back to the control tower
and to the airline
and say:
'this is the hijacking code'
But Air Traffic Controllers never received
a squawked code or any other alert from Flight 370
and an intensive police investigation
has lifted suspicion
from the passengers,
travelling on stolen passports.
They certainly had no links to terrorism.
In fact,
no one on board seems to have any connection
with any terrorist group.
We are talking of thousands of people looked at
interviews being done
At least the public should realize that
this was a very, very extensive investigation
With armed hijacking looking less likely
authorities focus
on the few existing leads in the case
including some troubling timing.
2 minutes after
the last voice communication from the cockpit,
Flight 370's transponder cuts out.
Transponders transmit information
like flight number and position
to controllers on the ground.
Loosing that signal makes it harder
to track the plane.
Even more troubling:
a few minutes after the transponder cuts out
the signal from the ACARS
also switches off.
Turning off the transponder
is extremely straight forward, extremely simple,
even on a sophisticated jet like the 777
Turning off the ACARS is not so simple,
it takes a lot of knowledge
It is difficult to imagine a routine glitch
that would cause the sudden loss of both systems
The answer probably lies elsewhere
There are only two things after a while
that begin to parse out
1. This is a purposeful act
the other is a massive emergency
An on board fire is one of the most
catastrophic emergencies a crew can face.
It can damage multiple systems
including electronics.
There goes the ACARS
Sometimes...
...in unpredictable ways.
A fire such as that
could affect the electrical system.
And so conceivably,
you could loose some capabilities.
In November of 1987,
a South African Airways 747
was bound for Johannesburg.
Fire broke out in its cargo area on the main deck
directly behind the passengers.
By the time the crew got to it,
the fire was raging.
The Captain initiated an emergency descend.
Mauritius, Mauritius Springbok 295
Springbok 295, Mauritius,
Good morning, Go ahead
Good morning, we have a smoke problem
and we are doing an emergency descend
to level 1,500 ft
Thick noxious smoke filled the cabin
And the captain lost power to key-instruments
Now, we lost a lot of electrics
We haven't got anything on the aircraft
The South African 747 never made it home.
159 people died,
when the plane hit the Indian Ocean.
The cargo manifest
from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
reveals it was carrying
some potentially dangerous cargo
487 lbs of highly flammable Li-ion batteries
Is it possible
that they spark the catastrophic fire?
The amount/weight of Li-Ion batteries exceed
normal standards
considered to be safe
or did they violate that and put too much on
and then maybe put it in the wrong cargo area,
where the fire suppression wasn't as robust
as where it supposed to be
There is a fire on board
Mayday, mayday, this is Malaysia 370,
We have a fire on board
There goes the ACARS
A sudden fire might explain
both the failure of the cockpit instruments
and the abrupt left turn
turning left, heading 240
Perhaps the crew was changing course
to prepare for an emergency landing
The crews do have oxygen
and one of the first things they do
in the event of fire or smoke is to use the oxygen
And that will give them at least
an hour of oxygen to work with
So, there is that possibility.
But the fire theory has a major flaw
The main problem with the fire scenario,
not seeming likely to me is
The #1 thing is that there was no radio call
The cargo base fire alarm should have sounded
before the fire had spread
The first thing that you do
is oxygen mask on, 100%
Make sure my body over here
has his/her oxygen mask on
We are going to declare an emergency immediately
we are going to turn the airplane around
We are going to look
for the nearest suitable airport
There is another compelling reason to doubt
that a fire brought down Flight 370
In London, a small team of engineers at INMARSAT
has made a startling discovery.
The team was looking on Sunday
They initially found something
they couldn't quite believe.
What they've uncovered
immediately casts a troubling new light
on the mysterious events
aboard Flight 370.
INMARSAT technicians have made
a stunning discovery.
Deep in the ACARS data,
they have uncovered a series of
automated signals or handshakes
received from Flight 370
long after it was assumed to have crashed.
It is done through an invisible handshake or ping
between the network and the unit itself
The plane's ACARS computer continues
to answer the automated pings
from the INMARSAT ground-station, every hour,
from 2:25 AM until 8:19 AM
The aircraft was continuing to signal,
a request for service
not for minutes up to the loss
but for over 7 hours after it had disappeared
from the radar system.
The discovery means
Flight 370 did not crash into the Gulf of Thailand
but was in the air for another 7 hours
What changed everything to me and everybody else
was that INMARSAT satellite data.
That says:
'Wait a minute, that plane flew for hours'
A 7 hour flight makes it nearly impossible
to believe a fire brought down the plane
With a fuel energized fire, the airplane is not
going to be capable of flying that many hours
The timing matches earlier ACARS data
about flight 370's fuel consumption
The plane had enough fuel
to keep flying on AUTOPILOT for 7 hours
but no one knows what was happening on board
during all that time.
We now know
that it went in a certain direction
We know that it went thousands of miles out there,
it flew for hours
whether anybody was alive or not,
we don't know.
Once the fuel tanks ran dry
the 2 engines would have cut out one after another
putting the 777 into a downward spiral
until it crashed into the sea.
The new scenario bears a striking resemblance
to another mysterious accident:
In August, 2005, Helios Flight 522
was on route from Cyprus to Athens.
Operations, this is Flight 522, over
Flight 522, what can I do for you?
We have a take off configuration warning.
In the cabin, oxygen masks suddenly dropped.
To the pilots, the alarms made no sense
and then, the plane went silent.
1.5 hour later, the Greek Airforce
scrambled two fighter jets to investigate.
They spotted someone slumped over the controls
in the First Officer's seat,
but there was no sign of the Captain.
There is one figure in the cockpit
of Helios Flight 522
It appears not responsive.
They saw someone moving in the cockpit,
just before the 747 suddenly turned
and made a quick descend.
As the plane sped downward,
the person in the cockpit
finally acknowledged the fighter jet
but no words were exchanged
Moments later,
Helios Flight 522 slammed into the ground
An investigation into the Helios crash revealed,
that the previous cabin crew had reported
seeing ice on the rear service door.
A ground engineer,
investigating the problem,
ran tests that required him to switch the cabin
pressurization control from AUTO to MAN...
...but he didn't switch it back.
When the plane took off again,
the cabin didn't pressurize automatically
and oxygen levels began to drop.
Hypoxia can result in head-aches, confusion,
difficulty understanding what was happening
memory loss, shortness of breath
What is especially sinister about hypoxia
(all pilots are warned about this)
you don't recognize that you are impaired.
Overhead masks deploy
when cabin pressure gets too low
but they only supply oxygen for about 12 minutes.
Slowly starved of oxygen...
...the passengers and crew drifted off to sleep.
Everyone on the plane was unconscious
with the exception of one flight attendant
who somehow had received the oxygen.
By the time that
the flight attendant reached the cockpit
the plane was out of fuel.
There was no way for him to save the plane.
Put on your mask
Did Malaysia Air Flight 370
suffer a pressurization failure,
and fly for hours on AUTOPILOT,
just like Helios 522?
the airplane is on AUTOPILOT
for most of the flight
In case both pilots
could not control the plane anymore
the AUTOPILOT would do what it supposed to do.
The Malaysian Flight was flying at 35,000 ft
This is higher than the Mount Everest
and without oxygen,
you can expect 30 to 60 seconds
of useful consciousness.
An Australian Transport Safety Bureau report
helps narrowing down the search area
with the finding that Flight 370's
straight and level path in the final hours
is consistent with an on board hypoxia event.
But there are some troubling details
that suggests something was very wrong
Well before hypoxia could ever have set in.
Hypoxia and disorientation
is not consistent
with turns that are made that would never
have been programmed into the computer,
even in the wildest imagination
Careful analysis of the evidence
has revealed that Flight 370
made 3 turns over the next 1.5 hr
after the last radio call.
First, a turn to the left
then two more, taking the plane West
then South towards Antarctica
For Malcolm Brenner,
those turns strongly suggest
someone in the cockpit
deliberately flew the plane off course
It is conceivable
that a pilot could deliberately
depressurize the airplane
It is part of an effort to hijack the airplane
or take it for some purpose
It would be possible from the cockpit
to turn off the pressurization
and produce a Helios type event
The big question is now:
Who made those mysterious turns...
...and why?
370, contact Ho Chi Minh 120.9
Goodnight
Investigators are struggling
to explain a series of mysterious turns
made by Flight 370, after its last radio call
That's weird, the transponder is just gone off
Anything else affected?
Hold on, the ACARS is out, too
You always want to have an open mind,
catastrophic failures can happen,
you want to consider that
If multiple flight systems failed
at the same time,
it is possible
the problem might have confused the pilots.
The damn thing is still not working
we'll try rebooting it
Hang on, let me take a look.
Is that our altitude
Dammit
But when considering all the facts of Flight 370,
that scenario just doesn't stand up.
The 777 is designed to have multiple back ups
making it extremely unlikely that enough systems
could fail to put the flight in jeopardy.
The whole watch-work
is to let these airplanes do much of the work
of making sure everything is backed up
including the back ups.
Multiple failures are also hard to reconcile
with the fact that the plane
kept flying for 7 hours
It just doesn't seem to fit
the evidence we know of the flight.
For investigators like Brenner
the evidence makes it hard
to ignore a rare and horrifying possibility...
...that Flight 370 was brought down
by a deliberate human act
Two different systems went out at the same time:
the transponder and the ACARS
The only purpose of these systems is
to communicate with the ground
and there is no obvious electrical connection
by both would be going out...
...other than a human involvement
Everything comes down to
deliberate action by somebody for some reason
If MH 370 was brought down on purpose
it wouldn't be the first time
for a commercial airliner
There are 6 accidents over the last 40 years
around the world
that have aspects of a deliberate action.
In several cases,
they appeared to be impulsive
but in 2 cases, it appears that the pilots
(although they have psychiatric problems)
they appeared to have careful planning
and deliberately wanted to hide the fact
that what they were doing would be a crime.
That was the controversial finding,
made by a team of US investigators
after the tragic crash of Silk Air Flight 185.
On December 19th, 1997
the Boeing 737 was flying
from Jakarta to Singapore.
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen,
this is your Captain
My name is Tsu Way Ming
On the flight deck this afternoon with me
is First Officer Duncan Ward.
Moments after the crew's last scheduled
radio call to Indonesian controllers
the plane banked sharply
and went into a steep dive.
There were no survivors.
Searchers manage to recover
the Silk Air's FDR and CVR,
but both machines were switched off
before the plane went into its fatal dive.
Investigators discover that the pilot,
Tsu Way Ming,
had recently lost more than a million dollars
in the stock market,
and was scheduled to repay the debt
when he got back to Singapore.
Though Indonesian investigators disagree,
US investigators believe the Silk Air captain
most likely disabled the flight recorders
and put the plane into a dive...
...killing 97 passengers...
...and 7 crew.
Malaysian 370, maintaining level 35,000 ft
Some experts now believe Flight 370 ...
...was also deliberately brought down.
So, in my mind, somebody did this
and it was a pilot
whether it was one of the two individuals up front
who were charged for keeping that plane safe
or whether it was somebody else,
we do not know.
Cruising at 35,000 ft...
...the Captain could have found an excuse
to get the First officer out of the cockpit.
The Captain of the flight has an authority,
he is the pilot in command of the flight.
He can direct the First Officer
to go back to the cabin for various reasons
where as the First Officer can not
So, of the two of them,
the Captain would be of greater attention.
Alone in the cockpit,
it would have been simple to switch off
the transponder and change course
towards an area with little radar coverage.
Hey, open up in there
A few minutes later,
he might have tried to switch off the ACARS
not realizing that
a part of the signal would stay on.
You cannot turn off the handshakes
without getting into the electronics
of the aircraft itself.
People wouldn't know how to do
Captain!
A pilot can stop the door being opened
from the outside
and it is designed to be extremely secure
when locked.
The hardened door, no one else is getting in
good, bad, or otherwise
So, if a good guy is in there
he is locked in
If a bad guy is in there
he is in there safe, too
If the Captain of Flight 370
took control of the cockpit
and hijacked his own plane...
...it is unlikely that anyone else on board
could have raised an alarm.
As far as communication from an emergency
basis from the cabin crew to the ground
you are almost always going to be
unsuccessful with a cellphone.
There is no method of just picking up the phone
bypassing the cockpit and calling the ground
You are pretty much alone for the ride.
Cabin pressure can be adjusted manually...
...a safety feature in case it malfunctions.
But that also makes it possible
to incapacitate everyone else on board.
This one consideration in terms of
neutralizing the other crew-member/members
Anyone who is not on oxygen
would be vulnerable.
Passengers who managed to put on their masks
would have run out of oxygen in about 12 minutes.
With passengers and crew dead,
all that is left is
to make the plane disappear.
The flight over the next hour makes several
more turns which appear to be human directed
and finally ends up
flying in a heading to Antarctica.
So, the appearance is that this is
a carefully thought out effort to evade detection.
I feel very very strongly,
given all the evidence that we think we have
we always have to put that carefully on it
that whoever did this intended for
the airplane and the passengers
to simply vanish from the planet.
If MH370 was in fact brought down on purpose,
one of the most difficult questions to answer...
...is WHY?
Between the 2 pilots,
the Captain and the FO,
the First Officer was a exuberant brand-new
young pilot
who was getting ready to get married;
there were absolutely no error-marks
But you turn to the Captain
and there are no marks there either
Malcolm Brenner thinks
an event from 1994 may provide some insight.
For me, the clearest model is the FedEx example,
and the only reason we know about that clearly is
because it failed.
A FedEx flight engineer
at risk for being fired for lying
boarded a DC10 with concealed weapons
He had a history of being quite brilliant
He was an engineer,
he had a good Airforce record
but he also had a history of psychiatric problems.
Shortly after take off,
he burst into the cockpit
planning to kill the crew and crash the plane.
He almost succeeded.
After a bloody struggle,
the crew managed to restrain their attacker
and land the plane.
Malaysia Airlines may be the latest
of a small handful of airlines
that have suffered the tragedy
of a disturbed pilot,
deliberately setting out
to crash a commercial plane.
You can have someone who can have
psychiatric motivation
but still be able to cold bloodedly plan
in detail a way to commit this kind of effort.
So, I am sorry to say it can happen.
The difficult reality
for investigators and airlines alike
is that human failures
can be nearly impossible to foresee.
If we are dealing with human beings,
we are dealing with imperfect creatures,
that is us.
And we should learn more about the error marks
of somebody who might do this
but it is going to be very difficult
if not impossible to say:
Yeah, we locked this down,
now it can never happen again.
It is possible no one will ever know for certain
exactly what happened aboard Flight 370.
But perhaps
the most important lesson from this tragedy
has already been learned.
The one lesson that I think immediately
comes out of this
is that we got to know where all
these airplanes are all the time
and that is very simple to do
and very inexpensive
You simply hook a GPS up
to one of those transmitters
and in most cases they are already there
and cause it to send its position
every 5 or 10 minutes
and make sure
that nobody in the airplane can turn it off.
Maybe one of the first things that will happen
is that individual airlines will decide:
'We are going to track',
and make that a point of difference
in the way they sell the tickets
Maybe another thing that will happen is,
that the FAA will simply mandate it.
The whole world has an interest
in what happened here
in finding out what happened
so that we can start to prevent it
and see that it never happens again.
Narrator:
Jonathan Aris
Subtitles
Rein Croonen