Wild rumours continue to circulate about the fate of the Malaysia Airlines jet
A new theory claims that Vladimir Putin knows exactly what happened to missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
In this latest intervention on the three-year-old mystery, an amateur investigator says the jet ended up in the Bay of Bengal – and that the Russian President has been aware of its fate all along.
What happened to flight MH370, which disappeared in mid-flight in March 2014, has become one of the world's greatest aviation mysteries. The plane's final resting place has never been discovered, despite an exhaustive multimillion-pound investigation and the discovery of debris spread out on the coasts of different countries.
The huge gap in reliable information about the aircraft's fate has been filled with suggestions from armchair sleuths, aviation experts, authors and conspiracy theorists.
Here are some of the wildest theories on how and why MH370 disappeared.
Putin knows
Vladimir Putin has known all along where the missing Malaysia Airlines jet is, according to a volunteer investigator.
Speaking to the Daily Star, Andre Milne said flight MH370 made a "soft ditch" landing in the Bay of Bengal, in the Indian Ocean, and that the Russian president was aware of this from the start.
"Satellites that were placed by the Russians saw the wreckage, he said. "Putin would have been given that information".
Putin kept quiet because he only discovered the fate of the jet thanks to a secret spy satellite, adds Milne, who previously appealed for £1.3m funding to scour the area for the missing jet.
He said: "The reason President Putin did not raise his hand and march in and say we found it is because technically he would have been admitting committing espionage."
Insisting that witness statements corroborated his theory, Milne added that if a search party ventured to the Bay of Bengal, they would find "wreckage with no flaperon" on the seafloor.
Mystery passenger
Was there a mysterious extra passenger on board who took control of the doomed Boeing 777, plunging it into the sea?
That's the theory that emerged on the same day a lawsuit was filed in the US on behalf of the families of the victims of the MH370 crash.
According to volunteer investigator Andre Milne, the plane's official manifest says that 239 people went missing. He says there were officially 226 passengers on the flight (four failed to board) and another 12 crew, which makes a total of 238.
Milne told express.co.uk: "So now we have an 'extra' person on board MH370."
He added: "The extra passenger likely acted in conjunction with larger external operational support to take full command and control of the cockpit of MH370."
A spokesperson for the official MH370 investigation team said: "We are aware of this discrepancy. The actual number of passengers on board was 227."
He added that the apparent discrepancy appeared on a computerised "load sheet" which was sent out two hours before the plane took off.
"The actual figures can differ from that transmitted on the load sheet due to last minute changes," he said.
The pilot wanted to 'create the world's greatest mystery'
Former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott says he believes flight MH370 was brought down intentionally by a pilot who wanted to "create the world's greatest mystery".
Speaking ahead of the third anniversary of the plane's disappearance, he said: "I have always said the most plausible scenario was murder-suicide and if this guy wanted to create the world's greatest mystery why wouldn't he have piloted the thing to the very end and gone further south?
"Then there was the analysis that suggested there might be a prospective place to the north."
Search teams considered murder-suicide early on in their investigations, "but there was little to no evidence uncovered to support it", the Adelaide Advertiser says.
However, investigative journalist Mark Williams-Thomas does support the idea and says the fragments of evidence so far discovered point to an intentional act by the pilot.
According to Williams-Thomas, a piece of wing found on Reunion Island, 3,000 miles from the search area, was "in an extended position that only a pilot could've done" and the only explanation for it being like that at the time of impact was that the person flying the plane was trying to bring it down on purpose.
North Korea took MH370
It didn't take long for the most secretive nation in the world to be dragged into the MH370 rumour mill. Shortly after the plane disappeared, several conspiracy theorists questioned whether North Korea might be the "missing link" in the mystery.
They pointed to South Korea's claim that North Korea nearly took out a Chinese plane carrying 220 passengers on 5 March 2014, with Chinese Southern Airlines reportedly passing through the trajectory of a North Korean missile just seven minutes after it was fired. Three days later, MH370 disappeared.
While some think Pyongyang shot down the plane, others think it might have hijacked it and diverted it to North Korea. One anonymous aviation worker told eTurboNews Group that somebody out there wanted "a really, really huge plane" and that they were most likely after the Boeing 777's technology. Would supreme leader Kim Jong-un go that far? "Kidnapping and human trafficking has always been part of North Korea's scary agenda," said Nelson Alcantara, eTN editor-in-chief. One Reddit user claimed the "perfect place" to perform a hijack would be over the sea soon after take-off. "The North Korean government is bat shit crazy," he added. "There's no telling what crazy logic they might have for taking a plane."
Vladimir Putin hijacked the plane
It was surely only a matter of time before Vladimir Putin was accused of being involved in the disappearance of the MH370. However, what is surprising is that the accusation has come from a comparatively reputable source. Jeff Wise, a US science writer who was central to CNN's coverage of the MH370 last year has come up with the surprising theory based on the so-called "pings" that the plane emitted for seven hours after it went missing. According to Wise, the plane's hijackers "spoofed" the plane's navigation data to give off the impression that it flew south, but in fact took the Boeing 777 north and landed it in the Baikonur Cosmodrome, which is leased from Kazakhstan by Russia. Wise posited the theory on his website, but admitted that he has "no idea" why Vladimir Putin would want to hijack a plane filled with passengers and land it at a Russian space port.
"Maybe he wanted to demonstrate to the United States, which had imposed the first punitive sanctions on Russia the day before, that he could hurt the West and its allies anywhere in the world," Wise wrote in his article for New York Magazine. "Maybe what he was really after were the secrets of one of the plane's passengers. Maybe there was something strategically crucial in the hold. Or maybe he wanted the plane to show up unexpectedly somewhere someday, packed with explosives. There's no way to know."
On the moon
Three weeks after MH370 went missing, the Sunday Sport announced that the aircraft had been found... on the moon. The front page splash, complete with a doctored photograph of a plane on the surface of the moon, claimed to be a "world exclusive". Drawing attention to an unexplained blip on the radar seen close to flight MH370 before it disappeared, the newspaper said: "The simplest explanation is that this is an intergalactic spacecraft that has swallowed the Boeing 777 whole and transported it to the moon for some extra- terrestrial reason."
The "scoop" came 26 years after the tabloid published a very similar story about a B-52 bomber, also coincidentally discovered "on the moon". The incredible find turned out to be just as true as other celebrated Sunday Sport stories, such as "Aliens turned our son into a fish finger" and "Statue of Elvis found on Mars". When it emerged that no such bomber could be found on the lunar surface, the paper ran a follow-up headline on its front page: "World War 2 bomber found on moon vanishes".
Grid of energy
One unusual theory bases its claims on the presumed location of where the MH370 went down.
Adherents to the "grid of energy" theory believe the Boeing 777 crashed on "a vortex energy point on the Earth's secret' free energy' grid", Illuminati Watcher says.
The idea goes that a web of "vortex points" around the world projects energy that the Illuminati – a mysterious group seeking to establish a "New World Order" (read our full Illuminati explainer here) – knows how to harness.
That or it has something to do with "ancient aliens".
"The Ancient Astronaut Theory claims that aliens of the past used energy vortex points to travel around the globe, or potentially make mapping points (e.g. the Pyramids of Giza)," Illuminati Watcher explains. "This hidden energy grid is one way of getting off of traditional energy sources like oil and coal, so obviously the people in control of these Big Energy industries would want to keep it quiet."
For more on these grids of energy, check out this episode of the History Channel documentary Ancient Aliens:
Ancient.Aliens_"Aliens and the Secret Code" s03...
404: Plane not found
Soon after MH370 went missing somebody noticed that the aircraft in question was the 404th Boeing 777 to have come off the production line. The significance? On the internet, a "404 error" message is returned when a web page can't be found. It was therefore interpreted as a hidden message about the fate of the plane, although what it might signify about its fate was unclear. There was a further twist when a group called the Lizard Squad, describing itself as a "cyber caliphate", hacked the Malaysian Airlines website and replaced its content with a message reading "404 – plane not found". But the group made no other claims or demands, and its actions seem to be no more than online mischief.
The plane was shot down by the US military
A French former airline director who has been investigating the disappearance of flight MH370 has claimed that the missing plane was shot down by American fighter jets who feared that it had been hijacked and was about to be used to attack the US military base on the Indian Ocean atoll of Diego Garcia.
Marc Dugain, who once ran French airline Proteus, said that he had been warned not to look too closely into the case of MH370 by a British intelligence officer who told him that he was taking "risks", according to France Inter. Dugain had travelled to the Maldives and interviewed witnesses "who reportedly told him they had seen a 'huge plane flying at a really low altitude' towards the island bearing the Malaysia Airlines colours", The Independent reports.
Several months ago, a book called Flight MH370 – The Mystery, suggested that MH370 had been shot down accidentally by US-Thai joint strike fighters in a military exercise in the South China Sea. The book also claims that search and rescue efforts were deliberately sent in the wrong direction as part of a cover-up, the Daily Mail reports.
The Reunion debris is fake
Relatives of the passengers who were on MH370 reacted with a mixture of grief and disbelief following the announcement by the Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak, that the wreckage found on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion came from the missing plane, The Guardian reports.
"I want to kill him," said Zhang Meiling, 62, whose daughter and son-in-law were travelling on the plane. "What he said is nonsense. I just want to kill him."
Others said that in their view, the discovery of wing parts had been faked. "I don't believe it," said Bao Lanfang, 63, whose son, daughter-in-law and grandchild were on MH370. "It has been 515 [days] – that is enough time for them to have produced fake debris."
The case of the murdered diplomat
The most recent addition to the ranks of MH370 conspiracy theories surrounds the death of a Malaysian diplomat who had spent years investigating the crash.
In September this year, the Honorary Malaysian Consul in Madagascar Zahid Raza was shot dead in Madagascar's capital Antananarivo in an apparent assassination. Amateur US flight investigator Blaine Gibson, who worked with Raza in tracking down debris from the plane, told Malay Mail that the diplomat "appeared to have been specifically targeted" and claimed that he has also received death threats.
Dr Victor Iannello, an original member of the independent group of specialists that helped Australian investigators try to pinpoint the plane's crash site in the southern Indian Ocean, said the timing of Raza's assassination just days before he was due to deliver several new pieces of debris to the Malaysian Ministry of Transport, "makes a possible link to MH370 even more suspicious".
Yet others have sought to debunk and connection between Raza's death and his search for the missing plane. French-language news website Zinfos 974 has suggested the diplomat was a marked man long before meeting Gibson and speculated he was killed as payback for alleged involvement in the 2009 abduction of several residents of Indo-Pakistani descent known collectively as Karens.
However, Dr Iannello has contested these claims saying no evidence of his involvement with Karens has been found. Writing in his blog, he went on to say that this could be "disinformation" to distract attention away from the real motive behind the shooting. He went on to add that it was "surprising that the assassination of Mr Raza has been met with stony silence from both Malaysia and France, despite his ties to both countries".
Life insurance scam
In March 2014, Malaysian police refused to rule out the possibility that the entire incident may have been a complicated insurance scam.
"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," said Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar Malaysia's Inspector-General of Police.
At the time, authorities said they would consider all possible motives, no matter how unlikely they seemed, and would investigate all passengers and crew for any sign of unusual behaviour.
"We are looking very closely at the video footage taken at the KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport)," he added. "We are studying the behavioural pattern of all the passengers."
MH370 and MH17 were in fact the same plane
One theory that gained traction in the summer of 2014 was the suggestion that the airliner that crashed in a field in Ukraine was in fact the lost flight MH370, not the scheduled flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.
According to the theory, proposed by a number of sites, including humansarefree.com, MH370 was hijacked and forced to land safely in an undisclosed location. Some believers say that the plane was taken to the US military base Diego Garcia – believed to be within range of where the MH370 disappeared – and then deliberately crashed near Donetsk by US agents months later in a "false flag" operation designed to discredit Russia.
Subsequent world events have played into the theorists' hands, as a number of countries accused Russia of providing military support to Ukrainian separatists – including Buk missile launchers capable of shooting down planes at high altitudes. The EU and US subsequently tightened their sanctions on Moscow.
To support their argument, some commentators, such as Opob News, point to the fact that wreckage found in Ukraine seems to have a different configuration of windows to the actual MH17, and that a Malaysian flag on the side of the fuselage is not in the right place. Others have suggested that these pictures are fake.
Alien abduction
Five per cent of Americans surveyed by Reason.com believe that the plane was abducted by aliens. Some bloggers have pointed to a number of recent UFO sightings in Malaysia as evidence for extraterrestrial intervention. Alexandra Bruce, from Forbidden Knowledge TV, "proves" the involvement of aliens with her analysis of radar data. She claims that footage posted on YouTube shows the presence of something that "can only be termed a UFO" in the skies over Malaysia. Of course, that means something that is "unidentified" rather than aliens.
The idea that aliens were somehow involved in Flight MH370's disappearance was dealt a blow when "UFO expert" Nigel Watson poured scorn on the theory with an article on the technology and science fiction site Omni Media.
"With the passage of time MH370 has joined the ranks of other unsolved aircraft disappearances, which have been associated with UFOs," Watson wrote.
These include, he said: flight pioneer Amelia Earhart, who vanished in 1937; the disappearance of band leader Glenn Miller over the English Channel in 1944; "Flight 19" - five US Navy Avenger torpedo bombers which went missing over the Bermuda Triangle in 1945, and 20-year-old Australian pilot Frederick Valentich, who went missing during a training flight over Bass Strait in 1978, shortly after he reported being followed by bright lights in the sky.
"Speculation about such cases being caused by craft occupied by extra-terrestrial beings or by elusive sky creatures is nothing new," says Watson, so it is not surprising it has also been applied to the case of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane.
Nevertheless, he adds, it is unlikely that aliens were responsible for any of the disappearances and "in the case of MH370 there is likely to be a more Earthly explanation for its disappearance".
The great tragedy of the case "is that with the passage of time the facts are getting increasingly lost and distorted, making the burden for the grieving relatives heavier with each insubstantial clue or unproved theory", Watson says.
A 9/11-style false-flag hijack mission
No conspiracy is complete without Israeli involvement, and MH370 is no exception. According to this theory, Israeli agents planned to crash the Malaysia Airlines plane into a building, as in the September 11 attacks, and then blame the atrocity on Iran. Proponents point to the quick identification of two Iranian nationals travelling on forged passports and claims that CCTV images released of the pair had been doctored. More extravagantly, some have claimed that a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 identical to the one that went missing "had been stored in a hangar in Tel Aviv since November 2013".
The CIA is behind it
In a blog post, Malaysia's former prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, wrote that he believes the US Central Intelligence Agency must know something about the plane's fate. He also claimed that Boeing, the plane’s maker, and “certain” unnamed government agencies, are able to take control of commercial airliners such as the missing Boeing 777 remotely if necessary. "Airplanes don’t just disappear," he wrote on his blog. "Certainly not these days with all the powerful communication systems, radio and satellite tracking and filmless cameras which operate almost indefinitely and possess huge storage capacities. ... For some reason, the media will not print anything that involves Boeing or the CIA."
China and Edward Snowden
Reddit user Dark_Spectre has a theory that links the disappearance of MH370 with Edward Snowden's revelations about the extent of US surveillance.
The theory is based on the fact that the flight was carrying 20 employees of Freescale Semiconductor – a company that may have worked with the NSA to develop surveillance technology, according to Snowden's documents.
Dark_Spectre writes: "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. And now this bunch of US chip guys working for a global leader in embedded processing solutions (embedded smart phone tech and defence contracting) all together… on a plane… and disappeared. Coincidence?"
The Reddit sleuth suggests that the apparent disappearance of flight MH370 may actually have been the result of an audacious attempt by China to capture a group of private contractors who helped the NSA to conduct spy operations against them. "Honestly, what would 200 lives be to the Chinese intelligence community for the opportunity to find out exactly the depth and scope of our intrusion," Dark_Spectre concludes.
Hijacked by Afghans
The missing Boeing 777 was hijacked and flown to a small village in Afghanistan, according to a Russian newspaper.
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 elaborated on the theory, suggesting that passengers have been divided into seven groups and are living in mud huts with almost no food.
The Bermuda Triangle
Ok, so the plane didn't actually fly anywhere near Bermuda, but some people – including one Malaysian minister – pointed out that the area where MH370 vanished is on the exact opposite side of the globe to the Bermuda Triangle. Unfortunately those people are wrong; the exact opposite side of the globe is closer to the Caribbean than Bermuda, The Sunday Times notes.
High-tech hijacking
The disappearance of flight MH370 may be down to the world’s first cyber hijack, according to the Sunday Express. It says that hackers could have accessed the aircraft’s flight computer and reprogrammed the speed, altitude and direction. “It could then be landed or made to crash by remote control,” the paper suggests. It may be worth noting that the woman who came up with the theory “runs her own company training businesses and governments to counter terrorist attacks”.
HAARP caused flight MH370 to crash
Bringing together two favourite subjects of conspiracy theorists, some have suggested that the US government's recently closed HAARP research facility could have caused the Malaysian Airlines flight to crash. "Could HAARP be an explanation for the puzzlement that surrounds the mystery of what has happened to the plane?" asks one contributor to Godlike Productions – a self-described "conspiracy theorists and lunatic fringe" website. The plane may have gone off course because "HAARP was affecting radar systems". Pouring scorn on the theory, another reader counters: "it didn't crash so your theory is BS".
Invisibility
According to reports, 20 employees of Freescale Semiconductor, a company that develops "cloaking" technology were onboard the MH370 when it went missing. Some, such as the writers of WorthyToShare.com, have speculated that the plane may have been turned invisible and landed somewhere, possibly at the US Air Force base in Diego Garcia.
A weapon of unimaginable power
Writing for NaturalNews.com, Mike Adams says that the plane's disappearance shows that "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". If a weapon capable of making a plane disappear without trace does exist, then "whoever controls it already has the ability to dominate all of Earth's nations with a fearsome military weapon of unimaginable power", Adams writes. Quite concerning.
MH370 itself could be used as a weapon
Some people have expressed concern that the aeroplane may have been hijacked by terrorists and landed somewhere, to be used as a weapon at a later date. The proponents of the theory suggest that the plane could have been flown to a safe place, landed and camouflaged and may, at some point, be used to commit a 9/11-style atrocity. Former RAF navigator Sean Maffett told the BBC that in his view this would be very hard to do, but that the possibility cannot be ruled out. "We are now at stage where very, very difficult things have to be considered as all sensible options seem to have dropped off," he said.
MH370 hid in shadow of another flight
Blogger Keith Ledgerwood argues that the MH370 may have hidden itself from radar detection by manoeuvring itself behind Singapore Airlines flight 68. "It is my belief that MH370 likely flew in the shadow of SIA68 through India and Afghanistan airspace. As MH370 was flying 'dark' without a transponder, SIA68 would have had no knowledge that MH370 was anywhere around, and as it entered Indian airspace, it would have shown up as one single blip on the radar with only the transponder information of SIA68 lighting up ATC and military radar screens", Ledgerwood wrote. Professor Hugh Griffiths, a radar expert at University College London, told the BBC that the theory was feasible, but estimates that to escape detection, the planes would have needed to have flown no more than 3,300 feet from one another. And even then military radar, which is more subtle, could possibly have detected one plane from the other.
Rapper predicted disaster
Some YouTube viewers say that the rapper Pitbull predicted the loss of the MH370 in the lyrics to his track Get It Started. The song, which was released two years ago includes the lyrics: "Now it's off to Malaysia" and "Two passports, three cities, two countries, one day."
What drives conspiracy theories?
David Aaronovitch author of Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy in Shaping Modern History, told the Sunday Times: "Given that people can make conspiracy theories out of something that is fully explained, like the moon landings, it's not surprising that they will fill the void in a genuine mystery with conspiracy theories. Essentially these people can't face the thought of chaos. They can't face the role of accident and contingency in life; they have to attribute agency."
"The irony is that, buried in this avalanche of speculation, there are some really interesting stories that have been largely ignored," Martin Robbin writes for Vice News. He points to how two Malaysian men on board had been able to travel on stolen passports after the "supposed" increases in airline security in the wake of the September 11 attacks. "And why is it that in an era of high speed 4G broadband, when 40-year-old technology can transmit data back from beyond the edge of the solar system, we still have to send ships and divers to retrieve data from a plane, rather than simply transmitting it in real time?" he adds. "To me, these questions – and others – are far more interesting than invisible Muslim militant groups or government laser beams."
MH370 disappearance linked to EgyptAir MS804?
EgyptAir flight MS804 vanished over the Mediterranean on 19 May - exactly 804 days after MH370 went off the radar on 7 March 2014, noted conspiracy theorists.
The link was first spotted by Twitter user Kevin Andrews, the Daily Express reports, who made a tongue-in-cheek reference to the strange connection. "Conspiracy theorists are going to love that one," he wrote.
He was correct; it wasn't long before the spooky coincidence was being discussed on message boards across the web. One poster on Reddit's conspiracy forum called it "incredible", while another hinted numeric synchronicity was a favourite tool of "powerful people".
Not everyone was convinced, however. "If you look for these kinds of patterns, sometimes you're going to find them and the vast majority of the time the patterns will be meaningless," wrote one.
The number connection might be tenuous, but MS804 is the latest in a series of high-profile disappearances in the past few years which have encouraged an unusually high number of conspiracy theories to crop up.
No comments:
Post a Comment