Pod Insights Stuff You Should Know Selects: The Disappearance of Flight MH370, Part I About this episode In 2014, a Boeing 777 airliner disappeared. Despite two full years of searching an area of ocean covering more than 120,000 square kilometers, it has never been found. It is the only unexplained missing vessel in modern aviation history. Listen to this classic episode and find out more about what exactly happened.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
0:04 Josh Clark? Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota Ford ability, and it starts with a great deal on an off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places. Introducing Voices of Vivgard. Vivgard is also known as its generic name, Efgart Tigamod Alpha F Cab, and this new show features firsthand stories from people living with a rare disease.
0:45 Josh Clark? Hosted by Andrew Stratton, these perspectives highlight that life is more than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Living with a rare disease can be challenging, but it does not define the Voices of Vivgard. In these episodes, they share their stories, from diagnosis to working with their care team on their treatment plan. Listen to Voices of Vivgard on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody. It's me, Josh, and for this week's select, I've chosen our two-part episode on the disappearance of MH370 from back in January 2020. It is the greatest unsolved mystery in aviation history since the disappearance of Amelia Earhart and Puerfred Noonan, which is really saying something. It's astounding that with a decade
1:30 Josh Clark? of exhaustive time and attention, the plane still hasn't been found. Maybe someday when we're mapping the entire seafloor of the Indian Ocean, we'll stumble across it. Who knows? But until then, enjoy this harrowing mystery episode of Stuff You Should Know.
1:50 Speaker 00 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.
2:00 Josh Clark? Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W., Chuck Bryant and there's Jerry over there and this is Stuff You Should Know About One of the Most Interesting Mysteries in Modern Times.
2:15 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:15 Josh Clark? Like, it's really tough to get across what a mystery the missing airliner MH370 is.
2:23 Speaker 02 Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. Yeah, and this is gonna be a two-parter because it's pretty robust.
2:29 Josh Clark? Yeah.
2:29 Speaker 02 And, boy, hats off to the grabster. He really put together a lot of great research for this one.
2:33 Josh Clark? He did. I also want to give a huge shout-out to one of my journalistic heroes, William Langwaisch.
2:38 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
2:39 Josh Clark? He wrote something, he writes in The Atlantic, but he's not just an Atlantic writer. He wrote "What Really Happened to Malaysia's Missing Airplane?" Big, old, long article on it.
2:49 Speaker 02 Yeah, those are great.
2:50 Josh Clark? And this guy is an aviation expert to begin with, but he's also, have you ever read a Tom Wolfe book or article or whatever? He has a really great knack for making you feel like you're there in the action.
3:02 Speaker 02 Yeah.
3:02 Josh Clark? But then, he also has a knack for making you step back and think, "How does Tom Wolfe know all this? Was he there?" William Langwaisch is the same way.
3:11 Speaker 02 Yeah.
3:12 Josh Clark? And I will, I will go ahead and recommend that you not, unless you are a very courageous person, read any of his work, especially the stuff about airline disasters, anytime around when you're flying.
3:24 Speaker 02 Yeah.
3:24 Josh Clark? Because he puts you in that plane when it's going down or whatever.
3:27 Speaker 02 Yeah.
3:28 Josh Clark? He's really, really good at it. So, I recommend, basically, anything Langwaisch has written, go read. It's worth it, for sure.
3:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, and I think this, coupled with the brief times that we've touched on this kind of thing in the past, whether it was DB Cooper or Bermuda Triangle, like, there's something about aviation disasters and mysteries that are really intriguing to me.
3:48 Josh Clark? Right, yeah.
3:49 Speaker 02 And airline forensics.
3:51 Josh Clark? Yeah.
3:51 Speaker 02 It's all, Rick, just super, super interesting.
3:53 Josh Clark? It is. So, you talked about airline forensics and that kind of stuff. This is lousy with it.
3:58 Speaker 02 Yeah.
3:58 Josh Clark? But the reason I was saying why it's tough to overstate, like, what a mystery MH370 is, it's the only airliner that is considered disappeared.
4:08 Speaker 02 Yeah.
4:08 Josh Clark? Vanished. They know where all the other ones are. They know what happened to all the other ones. It's the only major one that is just, where the official investigation said, "We don't know."
4:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, and, you know, in part two, we'll get to- A pretty good, well, actually, I think the leading theory comes in this episode, but we kind of think we know, but it's that thing where you like, you can't definitively say.
4:32 Josh Clark? Yeah, can't say where, and you can't say why.
4:35 Speaker 02 Right. Yeah, and then the why is, and the where are both really confounding.
4:40 Josh Clark? Yeah, and the reason why air travel in the 21st century is way safer than auto travel is because anytime an airliner goes down, everyone in the international community comes together, investigates it, they do so openly, the airline, the airplane manufacturer, everyone involved is expected to like, tell the truth.
5:02 Speaker 02 Right.
5:03 Josh Clark? And you get it out there and you figure out what went wrong, and then you make things safer. And then that makes air travel safer for everybody. They couldn't do this for all sorts of reasons with MH370, and so it's a huge failing among the international community. Not for lack of trying, but because it's just an asterisk out there. It's the only one.
5:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, and that's why airplanes don't crash as much anymore. I mean, growing up, it's not like it was every other week or anything, but you used to hear about airline crashes enough to where it gave you pause.
5:35 Josh Clark? Right.
5:36 Speaker 02 And you just don't hear about it much anymore.
5:38 Josh Clark? It's true. I mean, it's still out there for sure.
5:42 Speaker 02 Yeah, but they seem much more rare than they used to be, kind of like skyjackings.
5:47 Josh Clark? So we'll do our best to put you in the plane.
5:51 Speaker 02 In the passenger seat?
5:52 Josh Clark? Yeah.
5:53 Speaker 02 Can we at least be in business class?
5:55 Josh Clark? Buckle, sure.
5:56 Speaker 02 Okay.
5:56 Josh Clark? Sure.
5:57 Speaker 02 Were you about to say buckle up?
5:58 Josh Clark? Yeah.
5:59 Speaker 02 Okay.
6:00 Josh Clark? Buckle up, because we're going to take off on March 8th, 2014, in Kuala Lumpur. It's the very beginning of March 8th. The takeoff scheduled for Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing was scheduled for 12:35 a.m.
6:17 Speaker 02 That's right, we're in a Boeing 777-200ER.
6:21 Josh Clark? Yep.
6:22 Speaker 02 And there are 227 fellow passengers aboard, 12 flight crew.
6:27 Josh Clark? Yep.
6:28 Speaker 02 It's a lot of people.
6:29 Josh Clark? Almost about two-thirds of the passengers are Chinese nationals, I believe. There's a bunch of other people from other countries, but for the bulk of the people on the plane were from China.
6:39 Speaker 02 That's right.
6:40 Josh Clark? And it's a late night flight. It's expected to arrive in Beijing at about six o'clock.
6:47 Speaker 02 Six thirty.
6:48 Josh Clark? Six thirty in Beijing time. And it's gonna fly over the South China Sea, over the Gulf of Thailand, through Laos, Vietnam, and then into China to arrive at Beijing. It didn't actually take off at twelve thirty-five. They took off at twelve forty-two. Not too shabby. Seven minutes, I'm not like sitting there rocking in my seat like, let's go yet, you know? I might not have even noticed. And they take off and it flies up to eighteen thousand feet. And the air traffic control center at Kuala Lumpur says, hey, you guys are cleared for, to go up to thirty-five thousand feet, which is cruising altitude for this flight, I think.
7:30 Speaker 02 That's right. And at this point, at eighteen thousand, they switch from the airport's air traffic to Kuala Lumpur area control center.
7:37 Josh Clark? Yeah.
7:38 Speaker 02 And, you know, the way, the reason we're mentioning all these details is because it turns out they're very important.
7:43 Josh Clark? Very important.
7:44 Speaker 02 Yeah, so these are all key.
7:46 Josh Clark? Keep rewinding fifteen, thirty seconds to get every single detail, okay? Because you're gonna need them for the big finish.
7:53 Speaker 02 So four minutes later, like you said, they were cleared to go to thirty-five thousand. Took them about fifteen minutes. And it's here where Captain Zahari, and there were two people on board flying this plane, Captain Zahari and, what was the other gentleman's name?
8:09 Josh Clark? First Officer Farid Abdul Hamid.
8:11 Speaker 02 Right.
8:12 Josh Clark? And Captain Zahari Ahmad Shah is piloting the plane. First Officer Hamid, this is his last training flight. After this, he'll be fully certified to fly Boeing seven seventy-sevens, which if you're a commercial airline pilot, that's pretty much the peak right there.
8:27 Speaker 02 Yeah, and that's important, too, because one of them is a very experienced pilot in his fifties. The other one is a brand-new kind of greenhorn, and that's gonna factor in, for sure.
8:36 Josh Clark? Yep.
8:37 Speaker 02 So, like I said, it took about fifteen minutes to get to thirty-five thousand feet, and this is when the lead pilot radios that Kuala Lumpur control center, says, we're at thirty-five thousand feet. Then, seven minutes later, he radios again, says, by the way, we're still, and this is not me doing him, I don't know what he sounded like.
8:57 Josh Clark? Uh, Kuala Lumpur.
8:59 Speaker 02 There you go.
9:00 Josh Clark? This is Captain Zahari.
9:04 Josh Clark? Yeah, everybody sounds like Chuck Yeager.
9:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, I guess so.
9:07 Josh Clark? Yeah.
9:07 Speaker 02 So, he confirmed again that they were at 35,000 feet. And this is where Ed points out that this wasn't some sort of big alarming thing. But what usually happens is you radio in when you leave an altitude, not when you arrive. And you also don't radio in seven minutes later and say, "By the way, we're still at 35,000 feet."
9:26 Josh Clark? Still here.
9:26 Speaker 02 Like, once you hit it, you're just sort of there. That's your cruising altitude.
9:29 Josh Clark? Right. So, it wasn't alarming or anything, but it was weird that he made those two radio transmissions. But it was nothing compared to the weirdness that was about to take place.
9:39 Speaker 02 That's right.
9:42 Josh Clark? Shortly after that, I think at 1:19 a.m.
9:46 Speaker 02 Yeah.
9:47 Josh Clark? Kuala Lumpur Area Control Center.
9:49 Speaker 02 It's like 11 minutes later.
9:50 Josh Clark? Yep. Said, "Hey, MH370, you're about to leave our jurisdiction and enter Ho Chi Minh's jurisdiction. Go ahead and contact Ho Chi Minh Air Traffic Control and let them know you are on with them on this frequency."
10:07 Speaker 02 Yeah. I mean, if you remember our air traffic control podcast, you're handed off. Like, you don't just stick with one air traffic control when you fly around the world.
10:15 Josh Clark? No.
10:16 Speaker 02 You're handed off all along the way whenever you enter the airspace of that whatever district.
10:20 Josh Clark? Precisely. And the way that it's set up is there's not supposed to be any time where you're just flying alone and then you move into the other one. You're going right from one to the other.
10:29 Speaker 02 You want a handoff.
10:30 Josh Clark? So, Captain Zahari responded with, "Goodnight, Malaysian 370." Those are the last words anyone heard from Captain Zahari, as far as we know. And that in and of itself was kind of an odd transmission because typically, any airline captain would have replied with the frequency, said the frequency back to confirm that that was the right one. But instead, all he said was, "Goodnight, Malaysian 370." And very shortly after that, two minutes later, MH370 disappeared from the radar. The moment it showed up on Ho Chi Minh Air Traffic Control's radar screens, it just vanished.
11:14 Speaker 02 Right, without ever having made contact with them.
11:16 Josh Clark? Right.
11:17 Speaker 02 Via radio frequency.
11:19 Josh Clark? This should have like set off alarms with Ho Chi Minh City. And apparently, they did notice. Kuala Lumpur didn't notice. The guy was, they had all this other air traffic to deal with.
11:29 Speaker 02 Yeah, and they were out of their zone at this point.
11:31 Josh Clark? Yep, and he'd said, "Good night." And you know, everybody knows, "Good night." You can't go back on that. You have to wait until tomorrow.
11:36 Speaker 02 That's right.
11:37 Josh Clark? To make contact again. So, the, the, Kuala Lumpur is, I don't know about blameless in this, but certainly less blameful than, um...
11:48 Speaker 02 Ho Chi Minh?
11:49 Josh Clark? Ho Chi Minh. And Ho Chi Minh noticed that they just disappeared from the screen, but it took them a full 18 minutes before they called Kuala Lumpur and said, "Hey, do you know anything about where MH370 is?" Because they kind of vanished from our radar.
12:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, like, I don't know the exact process. In their defense, they were trying to get in touch. It's not like they just said, "Well, we'll see what happens." They got in touch with another pilot who was nearby in that airspace to contact them. And this pilot, uh, this pilot reported there was interference and static. I heard mumbling on the other end, but that's the last we heard and we lost connection.
12:25 Josh Clark? Right, we're not even sure that who, if he was talking to the right people.
12:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, so, I mean, they were trying to get in touch, but you're right. I think like, sooner than 18 minutes, they should have said, "By the way, this plane that just left your airspace has disappeared. Like, do you know what's going on?"
12:38 Josh Clark? Right, protocol, international protocol is five minutes.
12:41 Speaker 02 Okay.
12:42 Josh Clark? So they waited 13 minutes longer than protocol dictated. And it was so, so much beyond when they should have called, that the controller in Kuala Lumpur actually said on the record like, "Why didn't you call me sooner? How are you just calling me about this?"
12:55 Speaker 02 It's like that may as well have been yesterday.
12:57 Josh Clark? Right, it's missing for 18 minutes, which, as we'll get to later on, stuff that came up in the investigation, that was just the first step in a series of missteps.
13:07 Speaker 02 Right.
13:07 Josh Clark? That led to the reason why MH370 may never be found.
13:12 Speaker 02 Yeah. So, uh, should we take a little break and talk about radar?
13:17 Josh Clark? Radar O'Reilly?
13:19 Speaker 02 We'll be back right after this.
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14:35 Speaker 04 First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?
14:38 Josh Clark? Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.
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14:57 Speaker 04 It was going to rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.
15:04 Josh Clark? That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.
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15:28 Josh Clark? AT&T, connecting fans to what they love.
15:31 Speaker 06 Connecting changes everything. AT&T.
15:37 Speaker 03 Hey everybody. The holidays are coming up, so let us throw this out there. Are you prepared to host friends or family, like really prepared? Because there's a difference between having people stay at your house and properly hosting them.
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16:52 Josh Clark? Radar O'Reilly?
16:53 Speaker 03 Not Radar O'Reilly. Radar used by air traffic control.
16:58 Josh Clark? That's different.
16:59 Speaker 03 It is different than Radar O'Reilly. This is called Secondary Radar, and it sends out a little beam that, it's very narrow and it sweeps the area. And onboard the aircraft, they have a transponder that detects this beam and sends their own signal back that says, this is how fast we're going, this is where we're headed, and a code that says, and this is who I am.
17:21 Josh Clark? Yeah, maybe even MH370, as simple as that, something like that.
17:25 Speaker 03 That's right.
17:25 Josh Clark? That's what's supposed to show up on air traffic control's radar screen. That's so they can see, oh, here's MH370 coming toward DL1722 or whatever.
17:35 Speaker 03 At this speed.
17:36 Josh Clark? Right. They have all this information. And it's called Secondary Radar. Primary Radar is what you think, where it's like, you know, it's a blip on a screen that this big, this big radar ray is bouncing off of and receiving information back from, but it's just... You see it's physically there. This has far more information and that's why air traffic control around the world uses.
18:00 Speaker 02 Right, and this is very key because just a few seconds after it made that switch over into Ho Chi Minh's airspace, the transponder stopped sending information. That transponder that's supposed to say who you are, where you are, and how fast you're going, just stopped.
18:15 Josh Clark? Right.
18:15 Speaker 02 It vanished, and this is when the ball was dropped by, a little bit by Kuala Lumpur not noticing, and definitely by Ho Chi Minh not doing anything immediately in response to Kuala Lumpur.
18:28 Josh Clark? Right. So, primary radar, the radar that you typically think of when you think of radar, that's, there are very few places in the world where you can't be tracked by someone on radar. It's fairly old technology, it's been around for a while, but the places where you can't be tracked can be vast. Over the ocean, in the desert, over extremely mountainous or wooded areas, there are places where you can't really put a radar tower, and there, you can disappear from radar, right? There's, I think what I'm trying to say here is, if you take your plane out of radar range and you turn off your transponder,
19:10 Josh Clark? you can make a modern airliner, as big as a 777, vanish.
19:16 Speaker 02 Yeah.
19:17 Josh Clark? Where people don't know where it is. And that's a really, I think, hallmark point or trait to this, this mystery, that kind of like gets people a little unnerved is, wait a minute, like, this is the 21st century, this happened in 2014.
19:30 Speaker 02 Right.
19:31 Josh Clark? What do you mean there's times and situations where an airliner can disappear and people don't know where it is?
19:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
19:37 Josh Clark? And that was the situation. And as Ho Chi Minh City and Kuala Lumpur are starting to scramble to try to figure out, you know, where this is, apparently they called Malaysian Airlines and said, "Hey, do you know anything about MH370?" Malaysian Airlines said, "Oh yeah, they're flying over Cambodia right now." And they're like, "Where? What are you, how are you seeing this?" After an hour, finally Malaysian Airlines is like, "No, we're just referring to the flight plan."
20:01 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:02 Josh Clark? "They should be over Cambodia right now. What do you mean you can't find them? What's going on?"
20:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, but because of that primary radar, the secondary radar wasn't functioning, like we said, because the transponder was off. But the primary radar did track them for about an hour after those communications dropped. Because of the Malaysian military was able to track it with the primary radar.
20:22 Josh Clark? Yeah, apparently it flew through the primary radar of five different countries. And the only one that bothered to track it was Malaysia's air force.
20:32 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:33 Josh Clark? But they, they didn't do anything about it. They didn't follow up to see who it was. They didn't scramble any jets to go see if everybody was okay. Or they just knew that there was an unidentified plane flying through Malaysian airspace. And the air force didn't do anything about it. This is embarrassing enough that the air force didn't reveal this
20:50 Speaker 02 Right.
20:51 Josh Clark? to anybody for a while, which was a really important point. Because during this time, about an hour, about an hour and a half after the takeoff and an hour after the thing disappeared from transponders. The Malaysian air force was tracking MH370. And it saw that it seemed to have taken a turn.
21:13 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, they know what happened at this point for a little while. It made a sharp turn.
21:18 Josh Clark? That was not part of the planned flight plan.
21:20 Speaker 02 No, not at all. This is where things definitely took a metaphorical and literal turn.
21:25 Josh Clark? Yeah.
21:25 Speaker 02 It headed southwest at that point, crossed over the Malay Peninsula, over Malaysia again, and then parts of Thailand. Then it made a right turn, this is very key, near the island of Penang, just put a pin in that. Then headed west by northwest toward the Andaman Sea. And then at 2:22 AM vanished from radar, from that primary radar as well.
21:50 Josh Clark? Right, so the Malaysian Air Force saw this happen on its radar, didn't tell anybody for a while. The flight plan had it leaving Malaysia, crossing over the Strait of Malacca, into the peninsula where Thailand is located, into China, right? Just away from Malaysia. From what the Malaysian Air Force saw, this thing doubled back on itself and then went in some totally different directions. Almost the opposite direction it was supposed to be going in. And like you said, it dropped off of the radar, and that was the last time anyone saw it on radar. But, that's not the last time we were able to track MH370.
22:34 Josh Clark? And that's thanks to a satellite network that's run by an outfit called Inmarsat.
22:39 Speaker 02 Yeah, so Inmarsat, if you've ever been on a plane, and you've enjoyed the benefits of watching movies streaming, or connected to your computer via wifi, that is because of satellite communication. These airplanes are equipped with a system, and it transfers data and all their voice communications via satellite. And some of this data from the plane is automatically shared with these ground tracking stations, which is a really big deal. So, not only are they letting you watch movies and doing all that, but it's sending this automatic data on the reg, basically, from that satellite to these ground stations.
23:18 Josh Clark? Right, so, they think by this time, actually, I believe they know by this time, MH370's navigational systems, entertainment systems, a bunch of its systems have been turned off. The only thing that was still operating was this satellite link, I guess beacon?
23:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's called a satellite data unit.
23:42 Josh Clark? Okay, so the satellite data unit, which was capable of contacting and receiving contact from the Inmarsat satellites. Now, at the time, no one knows that this is happening, right? Like, there's no sound being made, there's nobody tracking this. This all came out much later, when Inmarsat realized they were sitting on a bunch of data. But- During different points over the next six, seven hours, the satellite and the satellite data unit talk to each other under a few different circumstances. And because of this, this company, MRSAT, which is located in or headquartered in Great Britain, but literally covers the globe,
24:26 Josh Clark? not just with airline stuff, but maritime thing, which I think where they were originally, they were originally founded to do is to enable maritime communications.
24:38 Speaker 02 Okay.
24:38 Josh Clark? Like, you know, satellite phone?
24:40 Speaker 02 Sure.
24:40 Josh Clark? You're calling through MRSAT.
24:42 Speaker 02 Yeah.
24:42 Josh Clark? Right? So they've got this whole constellation of satellites. And when MRSAT heard about MH370, they were like, I'll bet our satellites were tracking this thing in some way, shape, or form. And it turns out that they were right.
24:58 Speaker 02 Yeah, and there's four, and this is important here. There's four different ways or circumstances where that satellite data unit on the plane is communicating with the satellite in space. Whenever you're making a data transmission or a voice transmission, whenever someone on the ground tries to contact the plane, there's something that happens every hour. If no one has made either one of these contacts for an hour, you get a check-in called a handshake. It's just like, you're still here. Shake hands, buddy.
25:27 Josh Clark? Yeah, just want to make sure you're logged on. It's kind of like when you watch too much Netflix and Netflix sends a message saying, are you still there?
25:34 Speaker 02 Are you still here, loser?
25:35 Josh Clark? Yeah. Have you finished all the tub of cookie dough yet?
25:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, and then it has a thing that says, go outside.
25:41 Josh Clark? Right.
25:41 Speaker 02 Or actually, it doesn't. It says, watch another one.
25:43 Josh Clark? Right, watch some more. Why not have some more cookie dough? It's the same thing. It's sending a message to the plane's satellite data unit, saying like, are you still logged on?
25:51 Speaker 02 Right. And then the final thing, and this is super key, is whenever the, whenever you first log on to the satellite system, that thing on the plane, whenever it kind of checks in and links up, that is very key because what can also happen, if that thing goes down and then reboots, it treats that as a new login. So it'll make another ping, basically, that it's logged on to the system.
26:14 Josh Clark? Right. So MRSAT goes back and looks at their data and says, okay, so here's a couple of things. Right now, this is, I think, within the first, like, few days. Everybody is looking in the South China Sea for MH370 because that was what was along its flight plan. The Malaysian Air Force hasn't revealed yet that it tracked MH370 turn around and go the opposite direction of what its flight plan was, where it was scheduled to carry it.
26:44 Speaker 02 Yeah.
26:44 Josh Clark? And Inmarsat is now saying, wait a minute, this thing didn't crash like an hour and a half after takeoff. This thing turned around and flew into the Indian Ocean for six or seven more hours because our satellite was talking to the, to the plane.
26:59 Speaker 02 At various points.
27:00 Josh Clark? During this, during this time.
27:02 Speaker 02 Yeah, and we should point out too, after Air France Flight 447, which crashed in 2009, this is when Inmarsat really kind of beefed up their system. They added more ground stations and they added a lot more capability to add storage for this data because they know that this can really help out in situations like this.
27:22 Josh Clark? That was a big one too. Do you remember that one?
27:24 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
27:25 Josh Clark? So that one was the first one that really opened people's eyes where it was like, wait a minute, when we're flying over the ocean, like no one knows where we are?
27:32 Speaker 02 Yeah.
27:33 Josh Clark? And they were like, no, actually not really. And they, I think that's why Inmarsat was like, we gotta build more ground stations. We gotta bulk up our data, data storage, all that stuff. We gotta add more satellite capabilities. And in doing so, they made it so that you could be tracked when you're over the ocean, even if you didn't want to be, as seems to have been the case with MH370. So it was a huge difference between 2004, was it 2004 or 2009?
28:01 Speaker 02 2009.
28:02 Josh Clark? 2009 and 2014, just five years.
28:04 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:05 Josh Clark? The thing proved itself. These upgrades they made were substantial. But Air France Flight 447, in and of itself, another Langwais gem that just puts you in the seat of this terrifying plane crash. That one in particular, they knew where the plane was and it still took two years to recover the black boxes and figure out what went wrong.
28:25 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:25 Josh Clark? Which is terrifying and if you know what happened to that one, it basically the controls got ripped away from the pilot and it just went right into the ocean.
28:34 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:34 Josh Clark? And they're still down there, apparently. There was a big debate over what to do with these people. When they started raising them, they were perfectly preserved because they're so deep in the pressure and the anaerobic situation.
28:47 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:47 Josh Clark? Yeah, the temperature just kept them perfectly preserved, but as they were raised up into warmer waters, the decomposition over two years just happened immediately.
28:56 Speaker 02 Oh, man.
28:56 Josh Clark? So they, I think the French government said, they have to stay there. It's now a memorial. Do not try to raise anybody. And they're still down there strapped to their seats.
29:05 Speaker 02 Jeez.
29:06 Josh Clark? Which, when you, just do not think about that the next time you get on a plane.
29:10 Speaker 02 I know.
29:11 Josh Clark? It's a terrible thing to think about. I can tell you firsthand.
29:13 Speaker 02 Yeah. You've gotten so much better over the years, but I'm sure this is gonna be a setback.
29:20 Josh Clark? No, I'm hanging in there.
29:22 Speaker 02 All right, good.
29:22 Josh Clark? Yeah. If it happens, it happens. Like, that's the way I, I kind of view it.
29:26 Speaker 02 Well, there's certainly nothing you can do about it.
29:27 Josh Clark? This isn't something that they, that you guys are gonna play in my memorial, my funeral, my last words, but if you're, if, if I go down in a plane crash, my number was up.
29:37 Speaker 02 Right. And everyone else would be like, that's so weird. He always talked about it.
29:41 Josh Clark? Yeah, right.
29:42 Speaker 02 This was his worst fear.
29:42 Josh Clark? He was such a freak. There was, actually, I had a tweet once that said, if I ever go down in a plane crash, I'm gonna shout, I wish I would've spent more time at work.
29:54 Speaker 02 Well, I'm not sure I get that.
29:55 Josh Clark? Well, you know, it's like no one ever says in their deathbed, they wish they'd spent more time at work. Well.
30:00 Speaker 02 I got it. An ironic funny on the way down.
30:02 Josh Clark? Yeah, I'll make people laugh.
30:03 Speaker 02 Good for you.
30:04 Josh Clark? Give them their last laugh.
30:05 Speaker 02 So, uh, this, uh, where they're getting all this information was from a ground station in Perth, Australia, a place we have been to.
30:13 Josh Clark? Mm-hmm.
30:14 Speaker 02 It was quite lovely.
30:15 Josh Clark? Lovely town.
30:16 Speaker 02 That's right. It was great. Uh, anyone ever tells you, don't go to Western Australia, you tell them, that's BS. Cause Josh and Chuck said it's great.
30:25 Josh Clark? Yep.
30:27 Josh Clark? Very stupid. That's what BS stands for.
30:30 Speaker 02 So, they had a lot of data, like we said, because they had beefed up their storage capabilities over the past five or six years.
30:37 Josh Clark? Right.
30:37 Speaker 02 And they have a couple of types of data. Something called burst timing offset and burst frequency offset. BTO is, it measures how long that a signal takes to reach a satellite. You know the speed of the signal, so you know exactly how far that plane is from the satellite at that exact moment. It's very easy to kind of understand.
31:00 Josh Clark? Right. First taken into account, MRSAT has, oh, here was a ping, here was a ping, here was a ping, here was a ping.
31:08 Speaker 02 Right.
31:09 Josh Clark? Now they're digging in to analyze these pings and just the quality of them, the timing of them, all this stuff, because they're like, I'm pretty sure we can figure out where this plane was and maybe where it went if we really drill in and do some incredible math and figure out just kind of the nature of these pings.
31:29 Speaker 02 Yeah, and what they're trying to do here is to narrow it down into an arc instead of a circle.
31:35 Josh Clark? Well, I think that's just naturally what happened. Oh, yeah, you're right. You're right. I'm sorry.
31:38 Speaker 02 Because Ed explained it in a very easy way. If you tell someone, "Hey, I'm 100 miles from Atlanta", then you draw a circle around Atlanta that's 100 miles, and you could be at any point along that circle.
31:52 Josh Clark? Right.
31:53 Speaker 02 But if that phone call was from Athens, which is not 100 miles from Atlanta, but it's, you know.
31:59 Josh Clark? It's not too far.
32:00 Speaker 02 65 or so.
32:01 Josh Clark? Okay.
32:01 Speaker 02 But if you said you're from some other city in Georgia, then you would know where you were, and if you knew how fast they were going, then you could really, it doesn't become a circle, then it becomes an arc.
32:11 Josh Clark? Right. The number of points on that circle where that person could possibly be.
32:16 Speaker 02 Yes, is smaller.
32:17 Josh Clark? Yeah, much smaller, maybe by half, maybe by two-thirds. And yet, so the circle becomes an arc. And because of that burst timing offset, they could establish those arcs, and there were seven of them, I believe.
32:32 Speaker 02 Yes.
32:32 Josh Clark? No, they could establish the circles.
32:35 Speaker 02 Yeah, the circle.
32:36 Josh Clark? Because of the other one.
32:37 Speaker 02 The BFO.
32:38 Josh Clark? The BFO, the burst frequency offset. Those are more complicated. They involve the Doppler effect.
32:46 Speaker 02 Yeah.
32:46 Josh Clark? And basically, tell the satellite, or the satellite data tells MRSAT, "We're going in this direction." Because the Doppler effect when an ambulance sirens coming to you. Er, ee, er, ee. And then it passes you. Er, ee. Right, it changes in pitch because of the relative distance and the direction that it's traveling. They could tell from this ping, the satellite ping, not even a data transmission, just a ping, which direction the thing was headed and roughly how fast it was going. And so they were able to create seven arcs. And after the seven arcs, the seventh arc was created by a ping that took place at 8:19 a.m.
33:31 Josh Clark? And after that, there was another, there was a log on request, a handshake request that the SDU failed to respond to. And they think that in between 8:19 a.m. and that last log on request at 9:15 a.m. The plane finally crashed, probably from running out of fuel.
33:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, and they think that 8:19 was from one of those reboots that I was talking about when that system comes back on.
33:59 Josh Clark? Which will come into.
34:00 Speaker 02 After power failure.
34:02 Josh Clark? Right, which will come into play pretty soon.
34:05 Speaker 02 All right, so let's take another break here.
34:07 Josh Clark? Okay.
34:08 Speaker 02 All right, we'll be back with the leading theory right after this.
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36:49 Speaker 03 All right. So the leading theory, and this is...
36:55 Speaker 03 The more I read this, the more it was Occam's razor kind of staring you in the face.
36:59 Josh Clark? Yeah.
37:00 Speaker 03 Because we'll get into some of the kind of cockamamie theories, and there are many of them. But this one is the simplest, and it's probably what happened.
37:10 Josh Clark? It's the one I believe.
37:11 Speaker 03 It is that someone on board...
37:15 Speaker 02 And should we, should we tease this out?
37:18 Josh Clark? Yeah.
37:19 Speaker 02 Okay. Someone on board took control of the plane, disabled that transponder, and then started flying in the other direction, back across Malaysia, then put it on autopilot until it ran out of gas and it crashed into the ocean.
37:34 Josh Clark? Yeah, about the Southern Indian Ocean, which is where the Southern Seventh Arc was.
37:38 Speaker 02 Right. One of the reasons this makes a lot of sense is because that transponder going off at the exact moment when the plane transitioned from Kuala Lumpur's airspace into Ho Chi Minh's, it would be an incredible coincidence if that was just an incredible coincidence.
37:54 Josh Clark? That in and of itself says that some, that there was a human factor involved.
38:00 Speaker 02 Like someone knew what that meant.
38:01 Josh Clark? Right, exactly. So somebody who knew how to do that, when to do it, and the timing of it was just too spectacular for it to have been an accident.
38:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, because what they probably counted on is exactly what happened, was there was a period of time, they might have figured five minutes, which is what you said the standard was.
38:21 Josh Clark? Right.
38:21 Speaker 02 But what they got was 18 minutes
38:23 Josh Clark? Right.
38:23 Speaker 02 of confusion.
38:24 Josh Clark? Yeah.
38:25 Speaker 02 I mean, they, it tripled what they were counting on.
38:28 Josh Clark? Exactly.
38:28 Speaker 02 Best-case scenario.
38:29 Josh Clark? Yeah. The other thing was that the, the turn that the MH370 made was so abrupt that an autopilot wouldn't have done that.
38:44 Speaker 02 No.
38:44 Josh Clark? If you put a, if you put a plane on autopilot and have it, and it turns, it would make a much wider turn. This is a hard kind of backtracking turn that it made to its left to the southwest from the north. You're traveling the northeast, the turn was to the southwest. So just the turn alone, which came after the transponder was turned off, shows that it was under human control. It was a person piloting the plane, making it turn.
39:15 Speaker 02 Right. And that rules out things like mechanical failure or fire.
39:20 Josh Clark? Everything from meteor strike to squall line
39:23 Speaker 02 Pretty much.
39:23 Josh Clark? to any kind of weather. It was, all that was, is ruled out by the fact that this turn took place clearly under human control.
39:31 Speaker 02 Right. That also rules out hypoxia. If you remember the, the Very eerie crash with golfer Payne Stewart on that private jet.
39:41 Josh Clark? I don't really remember that. Can you kind of refresh my memory?
39:44 Speaker 02 That was in 1999 and I think the postmortem on that one was that this private plane, essentially everyone on board died of hypoxia, including the pilots. And it flew for a number of hours.
39:59 Josh Clark? Oh, really?
39:59 Speaker 02 On autopilot. It was a ghost plane, essentially.
40:02 Josh Clark? Wow.
40:03 Speaker 02 Yeah.
40:04 Josh Clark? So they don't think that hypoxia affected whoever was in control of the plane?
40:09 Speaker 02 Because it made that turn.
40:10 Josh Clark? Yeah, it was a very deliberate turn and then it followed a more, an even more deliberate flight pattern after that. This was not random movements of a plane where somebody who was suffering from hypoxia but still alive would make. These weren't confused decisions. They were, they were difficult to understand decisions, but they weren't random and confused behavior. They were deliberate.
40:34 Speaker 02 That's right.
40:34 Josh Clark? So hypo, one of the pilots or both of the pilots suffering from hypoxia is ruled out. And the fact that they were deliberate turns also rules out the idea that both of the pilots were dead.
40:47 Speaker 02 Right.
40:47 Josh Clark? That again, it was just the plane flying itself.
40:50 Speaker 02 Right. These log on requests by that STU unit on the plane, it was another big clue there because there was a log on request made at 1:43 a.m. and that basically says that the power on the plane's electrical system was shut off for a period of time in between that transponder disappearing and that time of that log on request.
41:14 Josh Clark? Right.
41:14 Speaker 02 So someone like purposely disabled, purposefully disabled these systems.
41:18 Josh Clark? Right. So 1:43 a.m. would have been about an hour after takeoff, just over an hour after takeoff. After the transponder was turned off with perfect timing between Kuala Lumpur and Ho Chi Minh, but also before the turn.
41:39 Josh Clark? That the Malaysian Air Force tracked.
41:42 Speaker 02 That's right.
41:43 Josh Clark? Or at about the same time.
41:44 Speaker 02 Right. The other thing that could have happened when these, when the transponder and the SDU were shut off, it could have depressurized the plane. If that happens, then hypoxia is the fear. Those oxygen masks are going to drop down, but you only get about 10 minutes of oxygen as a passenger. The cockpit is going to have a lot more oxygen than that. But we do know for a fact from that log on request that the systems were off for an hour. So even if that were the case, then the masks run out 10 minutes later and the people die of hypoxia, the passengers shortly after that.
42:22 Josh Clark? The thing is, is they believe that not only was MH370 still at cruising altitude, it probably actually climbed to 40,000, maybe a little over 40,000 feet. It's basically the maximum that a 777 could stay aloft at.
42:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
42:39 Josh Clark? So the, the drop down masks would have been totally useless to begin with. There's not enough oxygen coming through them to offset that kind of height in the depressurized cabin. That's meant for a much lower altitude. And the reason why, I found it very disconcerting to learn that there's only like 10 or 15 minutes worth of oxygen coming out of those masks.
42:59 Speaker 02 I mean, is the idea there that a plane crash doesn't take longer than that?
43:02 Josh Clark? The, the, the idea is that it's used for an emergency transition down to a much lower altitude where you could breathe without a pressurized cabin.
43:11 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
43:11 Josh Clark? And that that takes less than 10 or 15 minutes. You can do that much more quickly, a few minutes.
43:15 Speaker 02 So basically you're going to start flying with your own oxygen tank?
43:18 Josh Clark? Basically.
43:18 Speaker 02 Okay.
43:19 Josh Clark? I'll be like, try to take it away from me, TSA. You can't do it.
43:22 Speaker 02 Uh, here's another thing is that, that SDU log on request, um, at the end, it's, it suggests that it was turned back on. And the thinking here is that whoever did this, it probably didn't care at that point because it was too late because everyone on board was dead.
43:41 Josh Clark? Right, so the idea behind all this is that the power was shut off and they know that the power was turned off because the log on request came at a certain point, right? So that means that the power had been shut off and it was coming back on and they think that it was to depressurize the cabin and be a very easy way to depressurize the cabin, just turn off all of the power.
44:04 Speaker 02 And then maybe whoever did this, and we'll get to that, was like, I want to get back down to normal cruising altitude here so I can fly this plane without wearing a mask maybe or just in a less stressful environment.
44:19 Josh Clark? Right, exactly, maybe go get a bite to eat or something like that. There's a lot that can be done in a pressurized cabin.
44:25 Speaker 02 And then there was that final arc, the seventh one, that log on request was probably the plane running out of fuel and this I thought was super interesting. So the plane runs out of fuel, those engines shut down, but there's still air pumping through those turbines and that's going to spin the turbine and that's certainly not going to be enough to fly your plane, but it could be enough to act as a generator and power up the auxiliary power system.
44:51 Josh Clark? That's right.
44:52 Speaker 02 Super, super interesting.
44:53 Josh Clark? Yeah, so in the running out of fuel, electrical goes down, those air ram jets come on and the auxiliary power system comes on, the thing logs back on.
45:04 Speaker 02 Just enough to get that going again.
45:05 Josh Clark? Right, exactly. So let's just, before we stop for this episode, Chuck, let's just kind of recap what MMSA has been able to figure out from seven pings between its satellite and the satellite data unit. Seven pings. They dove into these things so deeply that they were able to figure out that the flight did not crash, that there was probably a hypoxia event among the cabin, that it was deliberate and that the plane kept flying, not that it did not crash, but that it kept flying for at least six more hours and finally did probably crash in the Southern Indian Ocean, all from seven little pings between the plane and the satellite.
45:49 Speaker 02 That's right. And then the final little clue here from the satellite is the ELT, emergency transmitter.
45:56 Speaker 02 Failed. It's emergency location transmitter. And that's linked to a different satellite system. And one person, if you're conspiracy minded, might say, well, you know what? This means it didn't actually crash into the ocean. But these ELTs apparently have a pretty low success rate. And when you dive into the ocean with no power, it's at tremendous speed. And that would have been enough probably to destroy the plane instantly and this ELT.
46:24 Josh Clark? There's, there's another, so there's four, I think, on the plane? Did you say that?
46:28 Speaker 02 I didn't say four.
46:29 Josh Clark? So I believe there is four on the plane. One of them, like, they can be disabled.
46:33 Speaker 02 It's not a black box, by the way.
46:35 Josh Clark? No, no, no. This is just a beacon that's, it pings a satellite, but isn't even, it's a different satellite from Inmarsat. So it's like an extra failsafe. And this means that they, all four of them failed, which, again, some people think that's, that's, that's evidence right there that this thing didn't actually crash. We'll talk about that in the next episode, about that.
46:55 Speaker 02 All right. I think we don't do listener mails on a part one.
46:58 Josh Clark? No.
46:59 Speaker 02 So just strap in and I hope you can hold off from researching for a couple of days on this one.
47:04 Josh Clark? Maybe have a Bloody Mary while you're waiting.
47:06 Speaker 02 Agreed.
47:06 Josh Clark? Well, anyway, in the meantime, if you want to get in touch with us, you can go on to stuffyoushouldknow.com and check out our social links. And you can also send us an email to [email protected] .
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Previous Who's Up For A Circular Economy Next Selects: The Disappearance of Flight MH370, Part II Page updated November 1, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated