What happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 seems to be the mystery of the decade. Many question how it is possible that a Boeing 777 has managed to disappear for 13 days. For those of you that have not been able to keep up with what has been going on, here are the highlights:
At 12:41 a.m. on March 8, 2014, Flight 370 flew out of Kuala Lumpur on its way to Beijing with 239 people on board. About 40 minutes into the flight the final words were heard from the cockpit: “All right, good night.”
The plane’s transponder stopped communicating at 1:21 a.m. meaning that a if there was a radar nearby, it would see a blip but it would not know where the plane was headed, just that it was there. A few minutes later a Thai radar station picked up an unknown aircraft flying opposite of where Flight 370 was headed.
The last time any civilian or military radar is known to have tracked the aircraft was at 2:15 a.m. A military radar tracked the plane passing over a small island in the Strait of Malacca, hundreds of miles off course. It is then believed to have turned either northwest or southwest into the Indian Ocean.
Malaysian Prime Minister revealed that Saturday morning that a satellite tracked the plane at 8:11 a.m., more that 7 hours after takeoff.
Since then, a total of 26 countries have been looking for the plane, concentrating on central Asia and the Indian Ocean. Background checks have also been done on the passengers and the crewmembers in order to rule out the possibility of a terrorist attack.
Australian satellite images
The latest development occurred yesterday. An Australian satellite detected 2 objects floating about 1,000 miles off the coast of Australia. One of the objects was almost 80 feet long. This has raised new hope and investigations are underway to determine whether these objects are remnants of the aircraft.
While it is still unsure whether these objects are part of the aircraft or not has yet to be determined. I just hope that this mystery is resolved soon so that the families of the people on board are able to receive closure.
For more colliegette journalism, follow HCND on Twitter and like us on Facebook!