13 conspiracy theories surrounding the disappearance of MH370
Apr 14, 2014 11:59
Rebecca Pocklington, Ben Burrows
The search for the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 has now entered its 38th day.
Search teams are now focusing their attention on an area in the southern Indian Ocean after several pings were detected, suspected to be from the stricken jet's black box data recorders.
Later today a sophisticated underwater search vehicle called Bluefin 21 will plunge into the depths to try and locate any debris.
Despite mounting evidence the missing plane crashed into the ocean, there are still many a conspiracy theorist out there who has other ideas.
From a US military cover up or an insurance scam, to an Afghan hijacking or even alien abduction there are hundreds of theories flying around.
Follow all the latest news and reaction from Malaysia as it happens in our live blog
Here's our guide to some of the best - and craziest - conspiracy theories.
US military conspiracy
The United States have been forced to flatly deny claims that the plane landed at its military base on the remote island of Diego Garcia.
There were strong rumours that the jetliner could have headed for the small coral atoll in the Indian Ocean, which sits around 3,500km from Malaysia.
However, a spokesman for the US embassy in the Malaysian capital said there was no truth in this speculation.
He told Malaysia's Star newspaper by email: "There was no indication that MH370 flew anywhere near the Maldives or Diego Garcia.
"MH370 did not land in Diego Garcia."
Afghan hijacking
A Russian intelligence source has claimed the aircraft landed near Kandahar
A Russian newspaper claimed MH370 has been hijacked and flown to Afghanistan, where the crew and passengers are now being held captive.
A military source reportedly told the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper: "Flight MH370 Malaysia Airlines missing on March 8 with 239 passengers was hijacked.
"Pilots are not guilty; the plane was hijacked by unknown terrorists. We know that the name of the terrorist who gave instructions to pilots is "Hitch.
"The plane is in Afghanistan not far from Kandahar near the border with Pakistan."
Others have since gone on to indicate that the passengers have been divided into seven groups and are living in mud huts with almost no food.
Alien abduction
Social media users have jumped on the possibility of extraterrestrial life having something to do with the missing plane.
One user wrote: "After an extensive conversation with my father & his partner, we have come to the conclusion that the only explanation is #aliens mh370."
Another added: "I secretly believe that plane is abducted by aliens.. I know I’m not the only one.."
And one user even said there were only two possibilities for its disappearance, aliens or a DB Cooper-style heist.
He wrote: "This Malaysian airlines flight has the potential to be either the greatest heist since DB Cooper, or alien abduction. I vote aliens."
A life insurance scam
The Malaysian police chief refused to rule out the possibility of the missing plane being an elaborate insurance scam.
Khalid Abu Bakar addressed the world last month to provide an update on the investigation and revealed authorities were exploring every single avenue - no matter how remote.
"Maybe somebody on the flight has bought a huge sum of insurance, who wants family to gain from it or somebody who has owed somebody so much money, you know, we are looking at all possibilities," he said.
The authorities' investigations extend to examining every detail of the passengers for any clues as to what may have happened.
"We are looking very closely at the video footage taken at the KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport), we are studying the behavioural pattern of all the passengers," he added.
The Illuminati
Reddit users have seemingly taken a keen interest in the disappearance.
One, known only as i-am-SHER-locked apparently uncovered that the Boeing 777 in question was the 404th such aircraft to be produced.
"An HTTP 404 error means not found," they wrote. "Which in this case is oddly appropriate for the status of the aircraft, or just a coincidence.
"Coincidence, I think not."
Edward Snowden
In on it? Whistleblower Edward Snowden could be central to the disappearance. Or not
There were early suggestions 20 employees from the Texas-based Freescale Semiconductor were on board the flight.
So Reddit user Dark_Spectre has put two and two together and come up with, well, you decide.
"So we have the American IBM Technical Storage Executive for Malaysia, a man working in mass storage aggregation for the company implicated by the Snowden papers for providing their services to assist the National Security Agency in surveilling the Chinese," he wrote.
"And now this bunch of US chip guys working for a global leader in embedded processing solutions (embedded smart phone tech and defense contracting) all together..on a plane..And disappeared.. Coincidence??"
He goes on to that the plane itself was kidnapped by Chinese authorities to uncover more about Snowden's revelations.
Electronic warfare experiment
A theory suggesting the plane was hidden as part of an experiment has circulated.
Citizens news site Beforeitsnews.com reported: "It is conceivable that the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 plane is 'cloaked', hiding with hi-tech electronic warfare weaponry that exists and is used.
"In fact, this type of technology is precisely the expertise of Freescale, that has 20 employees on board the missing flight."
It also sparked theories the plane could have been taken by North Korea for similarly unknown purposes.
A reddit user wrote: “There’s no telling what crazy logic they [North Korea] might have for taking a plane. They literally have no grasp of reality and have been caught red handed kidnapping foreigners, making s**t up and generally being d****es.”
Fire
One of the most widely held theories is that there was a fire on board that killed all on board but burned out before damaging the exterior of the plane.
This would explain why the aircraft, on auto-pilot, would fly such a long distance off course.
An aviation source said that if this was the case, it would have hit the water at around 600mph after gliding down from 35,000ft.
The source said: “The plane would not have dropped like a stone, it would have glided down from 35,000ft for around 10-12 minutes after it had exhausted its fuel.
“It would have hit the water with a massive impact - as though the plane had landed on concrete. Nobody could have survived that.
“There would have been a huge explosion with the wings ripped off and the fuselage would probably have plummeted straight down.”
A military take out or secret weapon at work
Conspiracy theory and scientific site Natural News, run by Mike Adams, has another theory.
Adams said: “If we never find the debris, it means some entirely new, mysterious and powerful force is at work on our planet, which can pluck airplanes out of the sky without leaving behind even a shred of evidence."
He added: “If there does exist a weapon with such capabilities, whoever controls it already has the ability to dominate all of Earth's nations with a fearsome military weapon of unimaginable power."
He believes the plane fell into an area "outside the search zone" and could lead to a very dark end for Earth.
Pilot suicide
One explanation for the sudden disappearance, according to some, could be pilot suicide.
But so far no evidence has come to light to suggest either captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah or co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid had such intentions.
John Brennan, head of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), told the Daily Mail, when asked if it was a possibility: "I think you cannot discount any theory."
Malaysian police have attempted to investigate whether any passengers or crew on the plane had personal or psychological problems that might shed light on the mystery.
Malaysian police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said at a news conference: "We are looking at all possibilities."
Other theorists have claimed the pilot or crew could have hijacked the plane themselves.
But Hugh Dunleavy, the commercial director of Malaysia Airlines, said the captain in charge of the flight was a very seasoned pilot with an excellent record.
"There have been absolutely no implications that we are aware of that there was anything untoward in either his behaviour or attitude," Dunleavy told Reuters in an interview.
"We have no reason to believe that there was anything, any actions, internally by the crew that caused the disappearance of this aircraft."
Cracks in the aircraft
Six months before the plane went down, the U.S. aviation watchdog warned airlines of a problem with cracks in Boeing 777s that could lead to a mid-air break up or a catastrophic drop in pressure.
The Federal Aviation Administration issued an alert in September last year giving airlines until April 9 to detect and correct cracking in the fuselage skin on Boeing 777s.
The FAA warned that failure to do so would leave the aircraft vulnerable to ‘a rapid decompression and loss of structural integrity’.
The organisation issued a final directive just two days before the Malaysia Airlines plane took off and said one airline had found a 16-in crack in the fuselage skin of a 14-year-old plane.
However, Boeing said that the FAA alert did not apply to the missing jet because it did not have the same antenna as the rest of the Boeing 777s.
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