The Backstory: What Really Happened When a Jumbo Jet Vanished . . Forever

How does a commercial jet carrying 239 people simply disappear . . forever. This is the story of Malaysia Flight 370, which vanished into thin air almost 12 years ago. It is still the greatest mystery in aviation history, but what really happened has become a whole lot clearer.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, admit it. Whenever you fly, there's kind of
a nagging little thought in the back of your head
that starts with the words what if. But you got
to get to your destination, right, so you put those
thoughts on do not disturb, and you get where you're going. Now,
imagine getting on a huge jet, taking off and just
completely disappearing. Planes crash really infrequently, but we pretty much

(00:25):
always know where and why eventually. But that was not
the case with Malaysia Airlines Flight three seventy. It took
off from Kuala Lumpur on March eighth, twenty fourteen, and
was never seen again. I'm Patty Steele. The people missing,
the search, what may have happened, and the way that
disappearance changed the way we fly forever. That's next on

(00:48):
the backstory. The backstory is back, all right. It's twelve
forty one am when Malaysia Airlines Flight three seventy takes
off from Kuala Lumpur headed for Beijing, China. Two hundred
and thirty nine people are on board on a six
hour overnight flight. It's a beautiful, clear night and the

(01:12):
wide body bowing seven seventy seven, one of the safest
planes ever built. Has two experienced pilots of the controls
in the cabin families, business travelers, students. Nothing unusual. The
lights are dimmed as people settle in for the flight. Then,
just forty minutes later, at one nineteen a m. The

(01:32):
captain radio's air traffic control. He says good night Malaysia
three seven zero. Two minutes after that, the plane's transponder
its digital identity goes dark on radar screens. The aircraft
vanishes into thin air. At first, controllers assume it's a glitch.
Planes don't just disappear, except this one did. At one

(01:56):
twenty one a m. The jet and those lives simply
stop existing. There's no distress call, no explosion, and no explanation.
Military radar later reveals something shocking. After losing contact, the
plane turns around, not a gradual drift, but an intentional
change in direction. Flight three seventy flew back across Malaysia,

(02:20):
over the Andaman Sea, and then out into the South
China Sea again. No emergency call, no warning to passengers,
no signal asking for help. For hours, the jet just
continued flying until fuel exhaustion probably ended the journey somewhere
in the vast dark, southern Indian Ocean. But here's the

(02:41):
chilling part. For much of that time, nobody was watching.
What a huge jet with that many people on board,
had no one checking in on its position or progress.
The loss of this aircraft and all those lives uncovered
a fatal flaw in the international air traffic control system.
Of course, when the disappearance becomes public, the response is

(03:04):
immediate and chaotic. Dozens of countries join the search. Satellites
are rechecked, ships and aircraft comb the ocean. The search
zone expands again and again, eventually covering an area larger
than many countries combined, forty six thousand square miles. It
becomes the most expensive search in aviation history. Debris is

(03:28):
eventually found, pieces of a wing washed up thousands of
miles away, but never the main wreckage. No black boxes,
no real answers. The mystery becomes global and deeply personal.
What had happened? News cycles speculate theories spiral from mechanical
failure to hijacking to deliberate action, and all that time,

(03:51):
families wait. They described the last twelve years as a
roller coaster of emotions with a lack of closure, making
it impossible to move on. Grace Nathan is a lawyer
who lost her mom Anne on the flight. She's become
a powerful voice for the families searching for answers while
raising her own children who never got to meet their grandmother,

(04:12):
and families of the pilots have faced terrific pressure and
pain from speculation by the media, which has attacked the
reputations of their loved ones whom they lost. Malaysian police
investigated the homes and financial records of the pilots and crew.
Their reports said they found nothing of concern, but US
officials think somebody in the cockpit reprogrammed the aircraft's autopilot

(04:36):
to head south over the Indian Ocean. Media reports say
Malaysian police identified that jet's captain as the prime suspect
should human intervention be proven as the cause of the disappearance,
and former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said in a
news documentary, the very top levels of the Malaysian government
think it was mass murdered suicide by the pilot, it seems.

(05:00):
An FBI analysis of the captain's home flight simulator's hard
drive showed a month before the disappearance, heat access to
route that closely matched the possible flight over the Indian Ocean.
The investigation claims the Malaysian government withheld that evidence, not
wanting to publicize the fact that one of their pilots
could have planned a mass murder suicide by purposely crashing

(05:22):
one of their jets. The Malaysian Prime Minister did admit
it was clear the radar transponders and the flight data
transmission system were turned off deliberately by somebody trying to
hide the plane's position. So what has changed in the
airline industry since this? In twenty fourteen, commercial planes weren't
required to transmit their location continuously and the systems were

(05:47):
really outdated. This flight exposed the flaw. A two hundred
million dollar aircraft filled with people had vanished in the
age of smartphones and satellites and the world couldn't track it.
So rules changed. Airlines adopted more frequent position reporting, battery
life on underwater beacons has been extended, New satellite tracking

(06:09):
systems have been developed, and standards were updated so planes
could be followed even in remote air space. In other words,
Malaysia Flight three seventy forced aviation to admit something it
had avoided for years. Safety hadn't failed, visibility had, and
the cost of that blindness was permanent uncertainty. Just over

(06:30):
a month ago, almost twelve years after the disappearance, Malaysia
Airlines was finally ordered to pay damages to victims families.
But still, the disappearance of Malaysia Flight three seventy remains
one of aviation's greatest mysteries, not because we don't have theories,
but because we don't have closure. Somewhere in one of

(06:51):
the most remote parts of the planet, the answers still exist,
and every time a plane disappears from radar for even
just a moment, the industry remembers the flight that never
came back. Because the scariest part of the story isn't
how the plane went down, it's how quietly it simply vanished.

(07:12):
I hope you're enjoying the Backstory with Patty Steele. Please
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(07:32):
I'm Patty Steele. The Backstory is a production of iHeartMedia,
Premiere Networks, the Elvis Durand Group, and Steel Trap Productions.
Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We
have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to
reach out to me with comments and even story suggestions
on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and on Facebook at

(07:54):
Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele,
the pieces of history you didn't no you needed to know.