Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappearance theories

[7][8] Rob Brotherton, a lecturer in psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, wrote that conspiracy theories emerge immediately after any catastrophe occurs and conclusive information about why it does so remains unavailable.

According to Barbara Demick of the Los Angeles Times, critics of the Malaysian government's statements also found support in the Joint Agency Coordination Centre's announcement on 29 May 2014 that the plane was not in the search area authorities had been combing since April 2014.

If Flight 370 hit the ocean, they say, it would have been broken into tens of thousands of pieces, many of which float on water (such as the seat cushions) and would be seen washing up on regional shores or easily spotted by search teams.

[13] Harvard professor Cass Sunstein noted that the conflicting information initially released by the Malaysian government explains the interest in alternative theories.

[14] Sunstein, who has written on the topic, argued in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on 20 March 2014 that conspiracy theories in general often are born out of horrific and disastrous situations because such events make people angry, fearful and looking for a "target".

[18] Furthermore, Captain Shah was also a supporter of Malaysian opposition politician Anwar Ibrahim, who was sentenced to jail on 7 March after an earlier acquittal on sodomy charges was overturned in a move viewed as politically motivated.

[26][page needed] News reports about the Captain's lack of social plans and flight simulator exercises cite results of the police enquiry into the pilots, which have been shared with some of the investigation team but have not been released publicly.

However, news reports on 23 July 2014 stated that the police considered the possible culpability of all those onboard the plane, and identified the captain as the prime suspect—if it is proven human intervention was involved.

[24] The United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation reconstructed the deleted data from Captain Shah's home flight simulator; a Malaysian government spokesman indicated that "nothing sinister" had been found on it.

In February 2020, six years after the plane disappeared, Abbott disclosed in a Sky News documentary: "My very clear understanding, from the very top levels of the Malaysian government, is that from very, very early on, they thought it was murder-suicide by the pilot.

[37][38][39] A book, Goodnight Malaysian 370, was published in August 2014 by New Zealanders Geoff Taylor and Ewan Wilson; the authors blamed a deliberate act of the pilot for the aircraft's disappearance, but admitted they were not able to "provide any conclusive evidence to support his theory" nor any motive.

[45] A British television documentary, broadcast in March 2024, suggested that Captain Zaharie Ahmad could have selected manual control of the cabin conditioning system to deprive all occupants of air.

[54][55][56] Between 9 and 14 March 2014, media mogul Rupert Murdoch tweeted that Flight 370's disappearance "confirms conspiracy turning to make trouble for China [sic]."

[57] The following month, the Russian newspaper Moskovskij Komsomolets endorsed a similar theory, claiming that "unknown terrorists" had hijacked the plane, flown it to Afghanistan, and then held the crew and passengers hostage.

"[64] Underpinning the Diego Garcia theory were several elements, one of which was the co-pilot's mobile phone contact and the plane's westward turn, both of which were consistent with a flight path toward the island.

[citation needed] In that vein, it was reported by the Daily Mirror, without giving a concrete source, that the captain had trained in landing on an Indian Ocean island with a short runway, using a flight simulator in his home computer.

[29] Several mass media sources reported that the captain had trained using his aviasimulator to land on five runways—each at least 1,000 metres (0.62 mi) long—in the Indian Ocean region, namely Diego Garcia and Male International Airport (MLE) and other airstrips in India and Sri Lanka.

[74] However, this was later challenged by Jeff Kagan, a wireless analyst, who in an email to NBC News explained that the network may still produce "ringbacks" as it searches for a connection, even if the cellphone has been destroyed.

The emergency may have been due to an incident similar to the 11 July 1991 accident involving a Douglas DC-8, Nigeria Airways Flight 2120, where a tire caught fire on takeoff, and the ensuing conflagration led to the destruction of the aircraft with the loss of 261 lives.

The aircraft crashed into the Atlantic Ocean with the loss of 229 lives, 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) from shore, southwest of Halifax International Airport, Nova Scotia, where the plane was attempting an emergency landing.

[79] Supporters of this theory have noted that civilian aircraft have been shot down by military forces in the past, with Iran Air Flight 655 by the United States in 1988 and KAL 007 by the Soviet Union in 1983 being two frequently cited examples.

[50] On 19 March 2014, news agency reporter Scott Mayerowitz of Associated Press described "Accidental Shootdown" as one of seven "leading, plausible theories", but added that there was "no evidence that Flight 370 was brought down by a government entity".

[82] The book received considerable criticism, especially from The Australian, where it was characterised thus: "Cawthorne undoes everybody's good work by retrieving every obsolete and discredited non-fact from the trash, slapping the whole lot between covers.

[84] In a CNN interview on 24 April 2014, the Malaysian Prime Minister, Najib Razak, stated only that the radar "tracked an aircraft which did a turn back, but they were not exactly sure whether it was MH370.

[86] The hypothesis that a cyberattack may have been carried out on Flight 370 has been raised, primarily based on statements made by Sally Leivesley, a former scientific advisor to the UK government.

A spokeswoman for the company, Gayla Keller, said that they were "confident in the robust protection of all flight[-]critical systems and inability for a hacker to gain access by either external or internal means on the 777 and all Boeing airplanes.

[89] Texas A&M University mathematics professor Goong Chen has argued that the plane may have entered the sea vertically; any other angle of entry would have splintered the airplane to many pieces, which would have necessarily been found already.

[92] When Indonesia AirAsia Flight 8501 crashed on 28 December 2014, various similarities with MH370 were noted, including that both airlines were Malaysian-owned,[93] and that both planes lost contact with air traffic control.

[95][96][97][98] A post warned Chinese people to stay away from AirAsia as it would be attacked, as MH370 and MH17 allegedly had been (according to the user), as part of a conspiracy by a "black hand" or "despicable international bully" to harm Malaysian-owned airlines.

[99] Lemon was criticised for this by former U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General Mary Schiavo, who, while appearing on CNN, said that "...a small black hole would suck in our entire universe so we know it's not that.