Original subtitles

- Malaysia 370, contact Ho Chi Minh 120.9. Good night.

[suspenseful music]

Fishburne: Tonight, one of the most

chilling aviation mysteries in modern day.

239 people vanish over the Indian Ocean...

♪ ♪

Without a trace.

- With not enough oxygen feeding the brain,

people can't do the simplest things,

let alone something as complicated

as piloting a commercial aircraft.

Fishburne: Now we'll uncover the top theories

surrounding the world's most infamous missing aircraft.

- The officials and most of the media

convinced themselves that the satellite data

could only mean one thing, that the plane went south.

But they were wrong.

- Was it potentially a murder-suicide?

There's 227 passengers up there.

Any of them could be responsible.

Fishburne: Can new clues bring us closer to answers?

- If the plane isn't flying itself,

was it something more sinister?

Because planes don't just disappear.

Fishburne: What really happened to Malaysia Flight 370?

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

[suspenseful music]

March 8, 2014, Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

Malaysia Flight 370 sits on the runway

awaiting clearance for takeoff.

- The cabin has been secured,

tray tables and seat backs

are in their upright and locked position.

And the flight attendants are ready

for what they hope will be a routine flight.

On board, we have 239 people,

227 passengers.

We have 12 crew members.

The 12 crew members are all Malaysian citizens.

And up front, we have Captain Shah.

They're headed to Beijing International Airport.

It's a routine flight. They make it twice a day.

March 8th is no exception.

[dramatic music]

- This flight was a flight

that Zaharie Shah, the captain of the flight,

was quite familiar with.

- Normally, the flight takes about six hours,

flying over a handful of countries

and international waters.

Fishburne: At 12:40 a.m.,

MH370 is cleared for takeoff.

♪ ♪

[indistinct radio chatter]

♪ ♪

- Recordings of the radio chatter back and forth

between the aircraft and the tower shows

that everything is routine,

mundane even.

Fishburne: At 1:06,

the plane's computer sends an automated position report.

- The transponders are continuously communicating

with air traffic control,

relaying information about the flight status.

These messages show up on what's called secondary radar.

- At this point, Malaysia 370 is flying

on course and has 96,000 pounds of fuel remaining.

That's enough fuel for another six to seven hours of flight.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: A few minutes later, at 1:19,

Captain Shah radios air traffic control

as he transitions from Malaysian

to Vietnamese airspace.

- Air traffic control in Kuala Lumpur radios MH370

and says, "Contact Ho Chi Minh on 120.9. Good night."

That means it's time for MH370

to call the Vietnamese controllers

on the frequency given.

- Captain Zaharie then says, "Good night, Malaysia 370."

So everything seems fine.

The next thing that should happen

is that air traffic controllers in Ho Chi Minh City

should hear from Malaysia 370.

Fishburne: But that's not what happens.

- The Vietnamese air traffic controller at Ho Chi Minh

never hear from that flight at the scheduled time.

And all of a sudden, the flight transponders

aren't responding at all, and they disappear

from the air traffic controller screen.

Fishburne: Just 38 minutes into the flight,

Malaysia 370 simply disappears from radar.

- It's really inexplicable that this aircraft,

which had been flying and transmitting

the secondary data all along,

would at this point of transition just disappear.

The transponder was turned off,

and the power was in some way stopped to the transponder.

We don't know why it happened.

- In modern aviation, air traffic controllers know

exactly where their airplanes are through secondary radars

and precisely scheduled communications.

- So this is something that doesn't happen.

Planes don't just vanish.

Fishburne: Alarm bells immediately ring,

and Vietnamese air controllers desperately attempt

to contact the aircraft.

- It's just not the case that an airliner

would be flying through some nation's airspace

without the controllers knowing who it is,

where it is, and why it's there.

That's the way it works.

Doesn't happen otherwise.

- They tried to contact the cockpit

through the satellite phone several times,

but there was no answer.

Then it was clear to them that the aircraft

crashed into the sea.

[intense music]

♪ ♪

- How could this happen so suddenly?

Why was there no warning from the pilot?

No Mayday, nothing.

This kicks off what will eventually become

the most expensive search in aviation history.

Everyone, dozens of governments,

hundreds of families,

all want to know what happened to MH370.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: By 5:30 a.m.,

a massive search and rescue mission is underway.

- They gathered 26 countries to help with the search

by sending 50 ships

and about 60 aircraft.

They're looking for anything on the water,

wreckage, oil slick.

The search starts naturally

where the last transmission from the aircraft occurred,

and last radar trace was found.

It was right on the border between the Gulf of Thailand

and South China Sea.

- So they do find some oil slick.

They test it to see if it's aviation fuel,

but it's not.

- They look at satellite imagery,

they see what they think is debris,

but they physically go out there,

and there's nothing there.

- If the aircraft had crashed in that area initially,

there'd be debris and oil slick and plastic

and stuff all over the China Sea.

Makes no sense that there's no sign of this airplane anywhere.

Fishburne: After two days of searching,

investigators turn to military radar records.

♪ ♪

- Radar on military bases are constantly tracking

to see if there's anything in range.

Malaysia Flight 370 would have been in radar range

for bases in Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam,

so their radar records track the plane as well.

And they do it slightly differently.

Fishburne: Civilians rely on secondary radar,

which requires a signal from the airplane's transponder.

- And that's what they've been using

to search for MH370 so far.

But the military uses what's called primary radar.

Primary radar doesn't require a special signal

from an airplane.

It sends out radio waves

where it bounces off any objects

that might be in the sky,

and it reflects that radio signal back.

- It's kind of like echolocation,

like a bat would use, but on a large scale.

A Boeing 777 has two transponders,

specifically in case one fails,

the other one is still gonna be fine.

So when MH370 vanishes from all the radar,

that means both transponders are dead at the same time.

- After the transponder is turned off,

the secondary radar can't see the airplane anymore.

But guess what, the primary radar can still

see the airplane and continues to track it.

It shows the airplane keeps flying.

- Not only does it keep flying,

it makes drastic course changes

just as it's supposed to cross into Vietnamese airspace.

♪ ♪

So MH370 turns a little bit to the east,

then kind of loops back around.

It's almost like it's turning back--

back towards Malaysia.

Then MH370 approaches the Isle of Penang

and flies near the Strait of Malacca.

Fishburne: Military radar tracks MH370

for another 230 miles into the Andaman Sea

until the aircraft finally goes out of range.

- So in other words,

they're looking in the wrong place.

The searchers move their search to the Andaman Sea.

But once again, there's nothing there.

So the investigators are closer,

but they're clearly not close enough.

♪ ♪

Keep in mind, military radar doesn't pinpoint

where this airplane stops flying.

As far as we know, it's still in the air

all the way until it goes out of range.

- After that, it could have gone

in a lot of different directions.

Fishburne: The radar records raise an important question,

why does the plane fly off course?

[indistinct radio chatter]

Fishburne: Before Malaysia Flight 370 vanishes

on March 8, 2014, investigators are shocked

to learn that the plane deviated from its route.

- The MH370 planned flight path would have had it flying

over the South China Sea towards Beijing.

But the radar tracking shows it made a series of turns

going towards the west.

And it just keeps flying until it goes out of radar range.

[dramatic music]

- Once investigators realized the airplane kept flying,

every possible theory was out there.

Was it a bomb? Was it terrorism?

Was it a crime?

Was it something more sinister?

Because planes don't just disappear.

♪ ♪

The Internet went crazy,

and so did every global government agency.

Fishburne: To some, there's an obvious explanation.

- But right away, we know that the aircraft continues flying

after the transponders go offline.

The aircraft continues on its path

and drops off of military radar.

We know that because it's recorded

on the military radar until 2:22 a.m.

Take this radar information and combine it with the fact

that the transponder was cut off just prior

to the aircraft veering off course.

Combine that with the fact

that there is no emergency distress call made,

and it creates a truly terrifying possibility.

- Was it potentially a murder-suicide?

♪ ♪

Early in the investigation,

they thought they should look very deep

into the two men in the cockpit,

which is natural with this type of investigation.

The question is, would anything motivate

these two men to bring that aircraft down?

- In the cockpit, we have Captain Zaharie Shah

and First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid.

Fariq is not fully qualified yet on the 777.

However, this is his last flight to qualify on the 777.

This is a big deal,

the realization of a lot of hard work.

He's been with the airline for seven years.

He's 27 years old.

He's getting married soon.

He has a long career in front of him.

And as a result of that,

the investigative bodies rule him out pretty quickly.

They don't think he did it.

Fishburne: Leaving only one other suspect in the cockpit.

♪ ♪

- People who subscribe to the murder-suicide theory

believe that the captain, Zaharie Shah,

deviated from the flight plan and intentionally crashed

that airplane into the Indian Ocean,

sadly taking everyone with him.

Fishburne: Investigators dig deeper into Captain Shah.

And a search of his home turns up a disturbing clue.

- Zaharie Shah had a very sophisticated simulator,

a actual 777 simulator in his house.

- When the investigative bodies pull the data from it,

it shows a variety of flight paths.

We see that they run out over the Indian Ocean,

they just stop.

And ultimately,

this is the path that MH370 takes.

It seems as though Captain Shah had rehearsed this.

So the flight path is somewhat telling in itself.

Captain Shah is from the Island of Penang.

- The final maneuver recorded by the military radar

was northwest of Penang, very close to it.

It was a clear night, perfect visibility.

And this turn gives him a perfect view,

a final view of his home in Penang.

♪ ♪

Some people believe that when you finally decide

to commit suicide,

that person has a level of serenity.

So some people believe that this final turn

towards Penang was him

waving goodbye to his home.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: While all of this evidence paints

a damning picture for the pilot,

it is not enough to close the case.

♪ ♪

- So officially, MH370 is not ruled suicide by pilot,

because there's no suicide note,

and they determined it's impossible

to know what's in his mind.

Fishburne: If the plane wasn't brought down

by the pilot or copilot,

could it be someone else on the inside?

Investigators turn their attention to the crew.

♪ ♪

- There's always another possibility

that one of the cabin crew

was trained and familiar with the aircraft

and how to get into the cockpit.

So the investigators looked into

every one of these crew members.

170 interviews, looked into their bank accounts,

social media accounts, their love life,

everything that they could possibly look into,

and they didn't find anything.

Fishburne: Ultimately, there is no substantial evidence

to tie the pilot or crew members to any wrongdoing.

- There's absolutely no proof

that this was a murder-suicide.

But authorities have this nagging problem.

Why is there no distress call?

What could have happened?

Fishburne: Months after disappearing,

the public is desperate for investigators

to find Flight 370.

But with so little evidence,

they had their work cut out for them.

[dramatic music]

- One of the most common things

that investigators can use

to determine the cause of the crash is radio chatter.

♪ ♪

- 402's radar contact at 18 miles.

[inaudible] speed 250. Final bearing is 230.

- When there's something unusual happening

on the airplane, the flight crew usually

gets on the radio about it.

Whether there's an emergency,

they see something out the window,

or there's a passenger acting up,

they usually radio about it.

And in this case, there's no radio distress calls.

We don't have that clue to help us.

Fishburne: Unless the lack of a distress call

is the clue.

- Based on what we know,

I think the most logical explanation

is that the airplane depressurized,

causing everyone on board the aircraft

to become unconscious and die from a lack of oxygen.

♪ ♪

The reason this airplane is flying off course

and on an unusual path

is because the pilot is not thinking clearly.

- This theory says that a terrible accident

happened on board, disabling the crew,

and probably the passengers as well.

So the problem with MH370

could have actually started

before it left the ground.

Fishburne: Just before takeoff,

maintenance logs show that work was performed

on MH370's oxygen system.

- The pressurization system in a 777 handles

all the air that everyone breathes on board.

- And it also handles the cabin pressure.

- At a high altitude,

the pressure outside the aircraft is very low,

too low to sustain life.

Inside the aircraft, it's pressurized,

and it's comfortable.

So it's possible that a maintenance fault

could have resulted from the work they did

on the pressurization system,

essentially causing the aircraft

not to pressurize properly.

It's not terribly uncommon,

but if it does happen,

someone has to pressurize the aircraft,

typically using an emergency procedure.

Fishburne: But what if they didn't?

♪ ♪

- The last communication with air traffic control

was made by Captain Zaharie,

"Good night, Malaysia 370."

And that means that he was not flying the aircraft.

On a commercial airliner, there are two pilots,

one who is doing the flying, and the other

who's doing the monitoring.

The pilot who is making the radio calls

is not the pilot flying.

That's just the way it works.

Every radio call from the time

that Malaysia Flight 370 took off

was made by the first officer, Fariq Abdul Hamid.

Captain Shah was handling the takeoff,

getting out of Kuala Lumpur Airspace,

sort of the more difficult parts of the flight.

Captain Shah was a highly experienced airline captain.

He had 18,000 flight hours, and he was only 53 years old.

That's just 1,500 hours less than Captain Sully Sullenberger

had when he famously landed his airliner in the Hudson River.

After takeoff, we can assume

that 38 minutes into the flight,

when Captain Shah's voice is on the radio,

he has handed control of the aircraft to the first officer.

Remember, this was his last flight

before becoming qualified on the aircraft.

- Now we have the first officer,

who's operating the aircraft

for which he's not yet fully qualified.

We have 227 passengers on board,

12 crew members, and the aircraft is climbing.

And we may have a maintenance problem,

the pressurization issue.

This is a dangerous situation.

It can lead to hypoxia.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Hypoxia is a lack of oxygen

in the body tissue and brain,

which can occur in any aircraft

flying over 16,000 feet.

- With not enough oxygen feeding the brain,

people can't do the simplest things,

let alone command an airliner.

To be blunt, hypoxia makes you stupid,

makes you unable to have rational thoughts.

At a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet,

incapacitation due to hypoxia can occur

in less than a minute.

The statistics indicate that, for pilots,

the time of useful consciousness could be

as low as 15 seconds.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Gradual onset hypoxia has caused

numerous airline crashes over the years.

It's a deadly scenario

with very little time to react.

- There are a number of cases in which an airplane takes off,

and the pilots have failed to pressurize the aircraft,

or the aircraft simply doesn't pressurize.

[alarm beeping]

And because of the nature of hypoxia, there are cases

in which pilots got a cabin altitude warning horn,

a warning that the aircraft was not properly pressurized,

and they may not respond to it correctly

if their brains are already lacking oxygen.

Fishburne: Could this have happened aboard MH370?

- So at first it makes sense.

There is a lack of a Mayday call.

There's no call for help.

But under hypoxic conditions,

they might not even think they're in danger.

- The erratic flight also speaks to a hypoxic event.

The pilot turned the aircraft around,

heading back to Kuala Lumpur

as part of a response to the emergency.

Fishburne: According to radar,

the plane makes one last turn.

♪ ♪

- So the final move made by the first officer

could have been to turn the aircraft

toward the runway that he knows.

Fishburne: That airport is Langkawi International,

set on an island just west of the Malaysian peninsula.

- This is where he did his flight training.

He's familiar with the terrain.

He knows that the runway is long enough

to land a fully loaded 777.

Fishburne: Instead of landing,

the plane continues to fly for 230 miles.

- So at this point, we think that both crew

are incapacitated by hypoxia.

They've passed out, and the autopilot takes over.

- The aircraft is carrying 239 people,

who are most likely dead,

and they are flying until that airplane runs out of fuel.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Not everyone is convinced

the cabin depressurized.

Could it be something more sinister?

♪ ♪

Fishburne: When Malaysia Flight 370 goes missing,

investigators from nine countries join the search,

including the United States.

Their biggest challenge is the lack of evidence,

almost all of which lies on that missing airplane.

But several months into their search,

authorities get a treasure trove of new data,

and it changes the course of the investigation.

- They hear from a company called Inmarsat.

They handle satellite data for commercial airlines.

Things like satellite phones

in the back of your seat to make calls,

TV and entertainment systems,

these systems are in constant communication back and forth

with a satellite system.

It's pretty much just checking in.

[dramatic music]

Well, Inmarsat has records of this communication.

First thing that happens is the airplane logs into

the Inmarsat system at midnight Malaysia time,

which is expected right before takeoff.

Then the satellite system checks in with the airplane

on an hourly basis using automatic pings.

It checks in to see, hey, are you there?

And we call that a handshake.

While the aircraft transponder is offline,

the Inmarsat communication system keeps going.

It takes months to analyze the data.

And at the time, they didn't have the technology

to make full sense of it.

But then when they finally figure out the Inmarsat data,

guess what, it shows something incredible.

Previously, the last known contact

of the airplane was 2:22 a.m.,

when it disappears from military radar.

And investigators assume that the plane crashed

not too long after.

The Inmarsat data shows seven automated pings

after 2:22 a.m.,

and those pings go all the way until 8:19 a.m.

Fishburne: If the plane continues flying

for six more hours,

where did it go?

- So the technology at the time didn't allow them

to get a specific location using the Inmarsat ping.

All they know is that the plane

is within range of a certain satellite.

So they calculate that to cover a large area

off the western coast of Australia,

which is way farther south

than anywhere they previously looked.

♪ ♪

This means that MH370 turned south

and flew for six hours

into the middle of nowhere.

Some theorists say that it's not on autopilot.

And why fly around for so long

if you intend to kill yourself?

So if the plane isn't flying itself,

and the pilots are not committing suicide,

that leaves one other option:

a passenger took control of the aircraft.

♪ ♪

- There are 227 passengers on board.

Any of them could be responsible.

- In the world post September 11th,

we look very carefully at who's on a plane.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: As they dig deeper,

investigators realize not all of the passengers

are who they claim to be.

♪ ♪

- So they checked everybody's info.

And then there was this red flag.

Two people had boarded using stolen passports,

one Italian and one Australian.

When these two guys checked in, for some reason,

the passports were not discovered by Interpol.

So we have two men on board this airplane

that are trying to hide something, clearly,

and we didn't know about it.

We don't know who they are,

fake names, fake passports.

These guys could be anybody.

So fortunately, it's not 1950.

It's 2014, and there's large number

of surveillance everywhere.

We can trace these guys' steps.

Police found out these are two friends

using stolen passports.

Turns out these two passports were stolen in Thailand

about two years before.

They bought a one-way ticket

through a payphone in Thailand.

From Thailand, they entered Malaysia

using their real passport.

So now we know who they are.

Fishburne: The men have a valid reason

to hide their identities.

- These are two Iranian refugees,

19 and 29, seeking asylum in Beijing.

They don't have any knowledge about airplanes.

So with those maneuvers that MH370 went through,

whoever was doing it

knew what they were doing in that cockpit.

So it turns out these guys were not really suspects.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Investigators also believe the culprit knows

how to work the plane's internal systems,

like the transponders.

- There's a passenger on board who might fit the bill.

He's a flight engineer from Switzerland.

♪ ♪

The Boeing 777-200 has access to the avionics bay,

which is under the cockpit.

That's in the forward first class cabin.

And it's a small lock to get there.

This is where the flight computers are.

This is where the pressurization

and everything is.

So if you could get access to this room,

you could cause serious harm to an aircraft in flight.

Would a flight engineer know about this?

Possibly.

Fishburne: But does the flight engineer have a motive?

- When we look into this person,

we find that he has a clean background.

He works on a completely different type of aircraft.

He works on corporate jets.

He's probably not a suspect.

Fishburne: With no evidence to implicate any passengers,

the search goes cold for three years.

- Remember that proving what happened

is all about the evidence.

And there is none until suddenly something washes up.

- It's 2017,

there's been almost no lead from the MH370.

- But one day, somebody's walking on the beach

and makes an incredible discovery.

Fishburne: Over 6,500 miles from the Malaysian airport,

wreckage appears on several remote islands.

♪ ♪

- So now, we finally have some hard evidence

that we could look at that were the pieces of that airplane.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: For three years

after Malaysia Flight 370 disappears,

there's no sign of the actual aircraft,

until 2017,

when debris begin to surface.

- So now we're getting some of these chunks

that are washed ashore

over the east coast of Africa,

the Mozambique, and Réunion Island.

Fishburne: In all, 33 pieces are found

in six different countries.

- They even found this big piece.

It's a flaperon unique to the 777

that had a serial number on it that matches MH370.

So it's got to be from that airplane.

Fishburne: The parts also hold an important clue.

- There was some scorch marks on the debris.

And that tells me that there may have been a fire.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

What we know for sure is that the transponder went off

38 minutes into the flight.

Maybe it is caused by the fire on board.

♪ ♪

- Fires happen for a variety of reasons,

electrical, mechanical,

maybe something in the cargo hold,

or something in the cabin.

- MH370 was carrying about 500 pounds

of lithium-ion batteries in the forward cargo hold.

♪ ♪

And we know this is more than enough

to possibly bring down an aircraft,

as has happened before.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: On September 3, 2010,

UPS Flight 6 takes off

from Dubai International Airport.

- This was a massive 747-400 freighter UPS,

piloted by Captain Lampe

and First Officer Matthew Bell.

- 138 miles into that flight,

the cockpit fills with smoke.

♪ ♪

At this point, it's chaos.

It's not smoke like from a campfire.

This is thick smoke, so thick you can't see through it.

They had no chance.

♪ ♪

- First Officer Lampe disconnected the autopilot,

perhaps trying to make a quick turn towards Dubai.

And when he did that, he realized

the primary flight control system

had failed because of the fire,

and now he couldn't quite fly it properly.

The captain got out of his seat to get a fire extinguisher,

unfortunately succumbed by the fumes

and smoke and fire immediately.

♪ ♪

Bell couldn't see his instruments,

but he was given a heading

towards Dubai Airport, Runway 12 Left.

♪ ♪

Sadly, he crashes few miles

on the other side of the runway.

Both pilots were killed.

♪ ♪

The subsequent investigation discovered that there was

a pallet with 81,000 lithium-ion batteries

on board that freighter.

Lithium-ion batteries are extremely volatile,

even the ones that you have in your phone,

they have high amount of charge in them,

but very thin walls.

Because of the thin walls on these batteries,

if one of them catches fire, it's very easy to propagate

into the other batteries adjacent to it.

In rare cases, lithium-ion batteries

actually combust, almost like a mini explosion.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: The FAA has recorded

340 airplane incidents involving lithium batteries.

In 2019, regulations were put in place

to safeguard passenger planes.

- It is now prohibited to carry lithium-ion batteries

in passenger airliners

and in the cargo compartment of an airliner,

and very limited amount on freighters.

Fishburne: But that was years after pieces of MH370

began to wash up on remote shores.

- So in the case of MH370, you have some charred wreckage,

you also have a large amount of fuel

in the form of lithium batteries on board.

Fishburne: What about the unusual flight path

and erratic maneuvers?

- A lot of people are questioning

that sharp left turn.

That can also be explained by the fire.

We're trained that, in case of a fire,

what you do is you immediately get off the airway.

- And at first, that's what it appears that MH370 does.

- Your next step is to find an airport to land.

Some of these sporadic turns could be possibly

trying to figure out where are they going

to land this airplane as soon as possible?

You have to either put out this fire

or get that airplane on the ground as fast as you can.

♪ ♪

Usually, they say it's between 12 to 14 minutes

to get that airplane from altitude down to the ground.

And airplane that is designed to basically glide,

it is very hard to get it on the ground that quickly,

unless if you literally nosedive.

♪ ♪

People always ask why there was no Mayday call,

why they didn't call on a radio.

- Well, first of all, the aircraft may not have been

capable at that point of calling for help.

The radios or the communication systems

could have been knocked out.

Additionally, you need to understand

what it's like to fly in a cockpit or a cabin

that is full of dense smoke.

- If your car is on fire or your truck or your boat,

you can step out and jump out.

Unfortunately, you can't do that on an aircraft.

There's no help. Fire department is not coming.

♪ ♪

- The crew is on their own.

So what they would be doing

is working to put out the fire.

♪ ♪

- 777 has a very sophisticated onboard fire detection

and fire suppression system.

But unfortunately, it was not designed

to fight a lithium-ion battery.

♪ ♪

So when there's nothing else to do,

the other choice is to climb the aircraft

and starve the fire of the oxygen.

But the problem with that is the fire needs

oxygen to breathe, and so do the folks in the back.

It's a gamble.

♪ ♪

Would the fire run out of oxygen first

or the people?

If you don't climb,

everyone is gonna burn alive.

It's very possible that everybody was dead

long before it crashed into the water.

And perhaps that was the autopilot flying the airplane,

and no one was in control till eventually it runs out of fuel.

Fishburne: But this evidence doesn't close the case

on Malaysia Flight 370.

- We have only a few pieces

of this airplane that weighs almost a million pounds.

So we can make educated guesses,

we can keep digging, we can make assumptions.

But the truth is we don't have an answer.

Fishburne: In fact, some experts are highly skeptical

about this physical evidence.

- Some people look at patterns

and the incredible amount of time that passed

before the wreckage washed up,

and they wonder, "Could this evidence have been planted?"

Fishburne: On January 17, 2017,

the official search for Malaysia Flight 370

is suspended.

Despite a sweep of 46,000 square miles

of the Indian Ocean seabed,

the rest of the plane isn't found.

- So the official search,

which took hundreds of millions of dollars

and years to conduct,

came up empty.

Fishburne: According to some theorists,

the search might have been in the wrong area.

- The officials and most of the media

convinced themselves that the satellite data

could only mean one thing, that the plane went south.

But they were wrong.

There's another possible interpretation of the data.

The reason that search officials thought

that the plane must have gone to the southern Indian Ocean

was because of satellite metadata.

[dramatic music]

MH370 remained visible to ground base radar systems

until about 2:30 in the morning.

After that, until 8:19 in the morning,

the only clues are these satellite data pings.

- They're able to calculate the distance of the plane

from the satellite using these pings

and how it travels through time and space.

- The time delay between the satellite sending its signal

and the plane replying allows you to calculate

how far away the plane is from the satellite.

Fishburne: But that only tells you one part of the story.

♪ ♪

- The problem with those pings is it's really challenging

to identify where the airplane exactly flew.

In fact, at the time of the crash,

we didn't have the technology to fully analyze

the data that was provided by Inmarsat.

- And then we have an airplane that's on the move.

We don't know how fast it's going,

and we don't know how high it is.

These calculations have to be within milliseconds

or you could be off thousands of miles.

- Once they did their calculations,

they came to the conclusion that this data

meant unequivocally that the plane could

only have gone to the southern Indian Ocean.

Fishburne: But there's another possible route.

♪ ♪

- It's taken years to figure out the math here,

but the data also aligns with a northern arc.

Following the northern arc,

the aircraft would have passed through northern Thailand

and then Central Asia.

- If the plane did fly along the northern route,

the final ping puts it over central Kazakhstan.

Fishburne: If MH370 went to Kazakhstan,

it opens up a frightening possibility.

♪ ♪

- This theory says that terrorists hijack the aircraft,

take it to Kazakhstan, kill the passengers,

and then they could have refueled

and continued to anywhere within Russia.

- If the plane went north,

it could have landed safely.

It takes a lot of runway to land a big plane like the 777.

And there aren't a lot of long runways

in the remote central part of Kazakhstan.

But it turns out that there is a runway not too far away

that is a suitable runway for a 777 to land on.

- The place is called Yubileyniy runway,

and it's part of the former Soviet military base.

Fishburne: The big question is,

did anyone on the plane have ties to Russia?

- In first class, there's a Russian national

named Nikolai Brodskii,

and he's sitting about 15 feet from an unlocked hatch,

which contains the electronic brain

that controls all of the flight surfaces of the plane

and all the communications with the ground.

And in economy class, you have two Soviet Army veterans

sitting directly under the box that makes the satellite ping.

It's entirely possible that somebody took control

of the plane, killed everyone on board,

flew off into perfect safety,

refueled, went and hid the plane somewhere,

and got away scot-free.

Fishburne: But if MH370 didn't crash,

where did the debris come from?

- Some theorists say pieces were taken off the aircraft,

thrown into the Indian Ocean to throw off investigators.

- The idea that these pieces might have been planted

by perpetrators would explain why no debris was spotted

from the aerial searches over the area

where the plane was presumed to be missing for months.

Was MH370 an accident or was it a crime?

A perfect crime.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Despite the end

of the official investigation in 2018,

there remain countless private citizens

dedicated to solving this mystery.

Around the world, scientists, journalists, nonprofits,

even major corporations

continue to hunt for answers

about what really happened

to Malaysia Flight 370,

answers that will hopefully bring closure

to the families of those on board.

I'm Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching

"History's Greatest Mysteries."

♪ ♪