Aviation360 MEA

A new Netflix documentary is seeking to solve the seemingly unsolvable enigma of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 and provide some answers nine years after it disappeared 40 minutes into its journey.

MH370: The Plane That Disappeared, a three-part documentary series directed by Louise Malkinson, was published on Wednesday on the ninth anniversary of the tragedy. It traces the timeline of events leading up to the plane’s disappearance, the worldwide obsession and conspiracy theories that followed, and the destruction the families of those on board continue to experience today.

The Pilot, The Hijack, and The Intercept, its three episodes, also pose new issues and contain in-depth interviews with aviation professionals and reporters who have been tracking MH370 since its disappearance.

“It’s the greatest aviation mystery of all time,” Malkinson told The Guardian. “This is a world where we have mobile phones and radar and satellites and tracking, and so to be nearly nine years down the line… and still have so little is extraordinary.”

The hunt for Flight MH370 is currently the most expensive in aviation history. A futile two-year, $135 million undersea search was called off in 2017 by teams from Malaysia, China, and Australia who discovered no sign of the jet. In 2018, Malaysia hired US seabed exploration company Ocean Infinity to look for the aircraft in the southern Indian Ocean, promising to pay up to $70 million if it was discovered. But it failed in its operation.

Families of those on board demanded a new search for the missing jet from the Malaysian government on Wednesday, the ninth anniversary of the flight’s disappearance.

Voice370, a coalition of surviving passengers’ family members, reported that Ocean Infinity hoped to start a new search as early as this summer. The group urged the Malaysian government to accept any proposals from the company on a conditional fee basis, meaning that the firm would only be paid if successful.

“Ocean Infinity, over the last 12 months, have made real progress working with many people to further understand … the events in 2014,” Voice370 said. “Ultimately, this has greatly improved their chances of conducting a successful search.”

Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke vowed not to “shut the book” on MH370 in a statement to families read out at a memorial service. If there was “new and trustworthy evidence” on the aircraft’s likely whereabouts, he continued, future searches would be given proper consideration.

Around the African coast and on islands in the Indian Ocean, debris from the MH370 aircraft has been confirmed or is thought to have washed ashore.

The Malaysian investigation previously came to no conclusions regarding what transpired during the flight, but did not completely rule out the idea that the plane had been purposefully diverted.