Netflix has released a trailer for its new three-part documentary series titled MH370: The Plane That Disappeared, which is set to be aired on the streaming platform from March 8 this year, exactly nine years after the plane disappeared.
The case of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 is arguably the world’s largest unsolved aviation mystery. On March 8, 2014, the Boeing 777-200ER made what should have been a routine trip from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board.
However, shortly after takeoff the plane vanished from radar screens and, to this day, no one knows why.
Air traffic control last contacted the crew 38 minutes after takeoff while the plane was navigating over the South China Sea.
The aircraft seemed to deviate from its original flight path and was tracked by military radar for an hour before disappearing.
All 227 passengers and 12 crew members are presumed dead, but no bodies have ever been found.
However, in 2015 and 2016, pieces of plane debris which are “strongly believed to have come from flight MH370” were found washed ashore in the western Indian Ocean
The incident was the deadliest of its kind involving a Boeing 777, until four months later when another Malaysian Airlines flight was shot down over Ukraine.
One hundred and fifty-three people onboard flight MH370 were Chinese nationals.
The reason for the plane’s disappearance is still unknown, and the Malaysian Ministry of Transport’s final report was inconclusive.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), meanwhile, said that it was most likely caused by a hypoxia event (an unplanned drop in pressure of a sealed system). Conversely, investigators working on the case did not reach this conclusion.
In the aftermath of the event, many other theories – including conspiracy theories – began to arise. These include a fire in the cockpit or amongst the cargo, and that the plane was shot down by accident during a US-Thai military exercise.
Other conspiracy theories include that the plane was swallowed by a black hole, downed by a cyber-attack or hijacked by crew members.
One of the main reasons these conspiracies are widely believed is that the plane didn’t send out any distress signals before it disappeared.
The documentary features Jeff Wise, author of The Plane That Wasn’t There: Why We Haven’t Found MH370 alongside the victims’ next of kin, including families from China, Malaysia, Australia and France.
Speaking to Netflix, director Louise Malkinson said, “[The families] want people to keep talking about this. The families want a platform to be able to say, ‘Come on, it’s been nine years.’ They were all united on that.”
[Cover image via Wikimedia]
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