On March 8, 2014, a Boeing 777-200 ER aircraft flying as Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur international airport for Beijing with 227 passengers and 12 crew on board. After about an hour’s flight on track to Beijing, the aircraft suddenly altered track westwards without a word. Malaysian Air Force radar tracked it flying westwards over the Andaman Sea. Soon, the plane and all on it were lost.
An international search operation was launched immediately. The search area was defined after detailed analysis of decoded signals from automatic transmissions from the aircraft to IMMARSAT satellites in geo-stationary orbit and the quantity of fuel on board. Signals indicated the aircraft had flown on a southerly track and may have crashed into the southern Indian Ocean after consuming all its fuel. It was also presumed MH370 had continued flying on autopilot till the fuel was exhausted. But over 28 months of unremitting effort has not yielded any result.
A fresh controversy has now erupted with officials of a Dutch company carrying out the deep-water search claiming that no wreckage has been located because they have been scouring “the wrong part of the ocean”. According to them, the aircraft may have been under the manual control of one of the pilots till impact with water. This means the aircraft continued to glide after the engines shut down and therefore flew on for a further 150-175 kilometres before crashing into the ocean.
A retired airline pilot who has considerable experience in long-distance flights in the 777 family of aircraft clarified a few points which are germane to the debate.
As a rule of thumb, this class of aircraft will cover approximately five kilometres horizontally for every 1,000 feet loss of height in zero wind conditions. With tailwinds it will be more, and with headwinds it will be less. To achieve this, the pilot would have to maintain the correct gliding speed of approximately 500 km per hour and a steady rate of descent. Depending upon aircraft weight, weather and traffic, the cruising altitude selected would vary between 32,000 and 37,000 feet. If a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet is assumed in this case, the aircraft would have glided 175 km from the time the engine shut down.
Once the engines die out, hydraulic power will not be generated. Control of the aircraft requires the hydraulically-operated controls to be usable. The emergency hydraulic pump — powered by a battery — is designed to run for 30 minutes if the battery is fully charged. Theoretically, therefore, the aircraft had the capability to glide for 160-175 km, which would have taken about 22-25 minutes.
But the big question now is whether the countries directly involved in the search — China, Malaysia and Australia — will summon the necessary will and resources to continue looking. It has already cost the countries $137 million. All parties must agree the scenario painted by the Dutch company representatives is indeed plausible based on available evidence. A very thorough relook at the evidence collected so far will be required before a decision to spend many more millions of dollars is taken.
It is in the larger interest of international civil aviation to bring closure to this mystery. The truth is in the flight data recorders lying somewhere at the bottom of the southern Indian Ocean. And we have to find it.
