The final message Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 was sent, as air traffic controllers frantically attempted to make contact with the plane, has been revealed.
The flight vanished after going south across the Indian Ocean, heading to it’s destination of Beijing on March 8, 2014.
The plane, it’s 12 crew members and all 227 passengers disappeared from the radar, and despite two large-scale searches, to date (September 15) the aircraft still hasn’t been found.
Today, (September 15) the Daily Star revealed the last message air traffic control sent to the doomed jet before it disappeared from the sky.
Last week, Malaysia’s Ministry of Transport released the complete log of communication which occurred between the plane and the ground.
This was a major step in the investigation since the authorities have previously been accused of editing logs and releasing incomplete records and information.
Within the complete log a message sent from the MAS Operations Dispatch Centre (ODC) bound for MH370 has been included.
It had previously been left out of the official documents and it’s still unclear as to why this happened.
Initially, being sent around the time of the first unanswered phone call to the pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, air traffic control put it out a further three times.
However, despite being re-sent at 18:39:52, 18:40:42, and 18:41:52, the message failed to be received each time.
The message which read: ‘DEAR MH370. PLS ACK TEST MSG. RGDS/OC’ was intended to appear in the cockpit on what is called a Control Display Unit (CDU), which pilots use to perform tasks including programming the flight computers.
But it never reached the plane.
A team of investigators who looked into the plane’s disappearance stated there was no reason to suspect the first officer or pilot while adding there’s no reason to believe it was a mechanical fault.
Their final report, which was released in July earlier this year, concluded the plane turned around manually in mid-air.
It added how ‘an unlawful interference by a third party’ was certainly a possibility.
But with the real cause still being undetermined, various conspiracy theorists, as well as aviation experts, have been having their say on what may have happened to flight MH370.
Philip Baum, the editor of the Aviation Security International magazine, is one of the people who’ve out forward the idea there may have been a stowaway onboard, who planned to sabotage the flight.
He told the Independent:
I think a stowaway is a strong possibility, especially as no officials seem to want to even contemplate the possibility of a stowaway being on board.
Baum speculates one or more stowaways could have boarded the jet while it was on the ground at Kuala Lumpur. He believes they could’ve easily hidden in the underfloor avionics bay, which is located just behind the flight deck.
Let’s hope the truth behind flight MH370’s disappearance will be revealed in the near future. Especially for those who had loved ones on board.
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