What happened to MH370? Every theory about missing flight on 10th anniversary
On the 10th anniversary of the disappearance of flight MH370, Australia said it would support the Malaysian government in a possible fresh search to finally solve the mystery.
It is 10 years since flight MH370, the Malaysia Airlines flight carrying over 200 passengers, disappeared in one of the most perplexing mysteries of modern times.
The Boeing 777 was carrying 227 passengers, more than 150 of them Chinese, and 12 crew members when it disappeared from radar less than 40 minutes after take-off from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, en route to Beijing, China, on 8 March 2014
Extensive search operations were carried out in the years that followed, with various debris from the aircraft washing up on beaches in the Indian Ocean, but the plane has never been located and the reason behind its disappearance never established.
On Monday Malaysia's transport minister Anthony Lake said US seabed exploration company Ocean Infinity had been asked to discuss its latest search proposal after two previous failed attempts. Malaysian prime minister Anwar Ibrahim said his country would reopen the investigation into the disappearance if compelling new evidence was found.
Australia has now also offered to support the Malaysian government in a possible fresh search. On Friday foreign minister Penny Wong said the country’s "sincere sympathies" remained with those who lost their loved ones a decade ago.
A joint statement from Wong and transport minister Catherine King said: "Australia stands ready to assist the Malaysian government if it considers that Australian agencies are able to offer technical information as a result of their involvement in previous searches."
Yahoo News UK examines the previous theories put forward about what happened to MH370.
Mass murder/suicide by pilot
The most widely proffered theory is that the plane's pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, from Penang, Malaysia, deliberately crashed the aircraft.
A preliminary report by the Malaysian government in March 2015 said there was no evidence of financial irregularities or behaviour changes among its pilots of crew.
However, a report by New York Magazine the following year claimed Shah had conducted an exercise on his home flight simulator less than a month before the ill-fated flight that closely matched the path it would take through the southern Indian Ocean.
However, investigators from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) said this in itself was not unusual.
The Atlantic reported that friends of Shah said he was "lonely and sad" and suffering from depression in the lead-up to the flight. This theory posits that Shah switched off communications with air-traffic controllers, put on his oxygen mask and depressurised the plane, causing those on board to die from a lack of oxygen (hypoxia).
Hijacking
Another theory is that one of the pilots or passengers hijacked the plane with the intention of landing it and then escaping, but that the plan failed and they suffered hypoxia with the rest of those on board.
The plane's co-pilot was First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid, who, at 27, was relatively inexperienced, and MH370 was his final training flight. But investigators said there was no evidence to suggest that the pilot or co-pilot had any conflicts or problems between them.
The 10 members of the plane's cabin crew were all married with children, which investigators believed ruled them out of any potential hijacking plot.
There were two Iranian passengers on the plane travelling on stolen Italian and Austrian passports, but it appears they were asylum seekers trying to get to China rather than take over the plane. Another passenger who worked as a flight engineer for a jet charter company, was briefly considered as a potential hijacker but this was later dismissed.
One theory is that Russian terrorists hijacked the plane after climbing into the Main Equipment Centre (MEC) under the first class cabin and took over the aircraft, faked location data and flew to Kazakhstan, but this has been ruled out.
The cargo
MH370 was carrying more than 10,000kg of cargo in its hold, including 221kg of lithium-ion batteries, which was considered of interest to Malaysian investigators trying to figure out what happened to the flight.
The batteries, which can cause fires if they overheat and ignite, were being shipped by Motorola from a facility in Bayan Lepas, Malaysia, to Tianjin, China.
They were packaged under International Air Transport Association (IATA) guidelines but did not go through any additional security checks at Kuala Lumpur International Airport before being loaded on to the plane.
Another theory is that the batteries somehow mixed with more than 4,500kg of mangosteens, a tropical fruit that was also being shipped, causing combustion, but a report said it was "highly improbable" the two items would have been in contact with another as they were wrapped and in separate containers.
In another theory, the US government is accused of jamming the plane's communications before shooting it down because it did not want China to have the Motorola equipment, but this has also been dismissed.
The stowaway theory
There is a theory that a stowaway sneaked on board MH370 with the intention of bringing the plane down.
There was an underfloor area just outside the flight deck door in which someone could hide, but the stowaway would needed to have accessed the plane before it was prepared for departure.
They would also have had to overcome the cabin crew, the pilots and any intervening passengers in order to take over the plane.
Uncontrolled decompression
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) said an unresponsive crew or hypoxia event was more likely than an in-flight upset (for example, a stall) or a glide event such as engine failure of fuel exhaustion.
It said an uncontrolled drop in the cabin pressure from human error or structural failing leading to an unresponsive crew or hypoxia "best fit the available evidence" for the period of five hours in which the flight travelled south over the Indian Ocean without communication or significant deviation, likely on autopilot.
However, experts have not come to a consensus on this theory, but investigators said they believe the plane was not being successful controlled when it crashed.
