RE-RELEASE: Missing MH370 Part 1

**Discussion beings at 8:35**

We are counting down our favorite episodes of the year.  On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 took off in the early hours of the morning as the red eye flight from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, with an intended destination of Beijing, China.  There were 227 passengers on board, with 12 crew members.  The pilot in command, 53 year old Captain Zaharie Shah, was performing a final instructional flight for 27 year old co-pilot, first officer Fariq Hamid.  It was a clear, calm night, and the flight was initially uneventful.  At cruising altitude of 35,000 feet, the flight was leaving Malaysian Air Space and was instructed to transfer to the air traffic control tower in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam.  At 0119, Captain Shah radioed the Air Traffic Controllers in Malaysia “Good night, Malaysian 370”.  That was the last verbal contact with anyone on the plane.   Approximately 103 seconds later, the aircraft went dark and vanished from all radar screens in Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, and Ho Chi Minh City.  There were two transponders onboard the plane, so to disappear, both transponders would need to cease functioning – either by catastrophic failure or by manual override by someone on the plane.  It was over 20 minutes before anyone noted the plane was missing.  It did not arrive for it’s 6:30 ETA, and only had enough fuel to fly until ~ 8:15 AM.  The most expensive search and rescue operation in aviation history was initiated. To this day, we do not know where the airplane is, or what happened to the 239 souls on board.  An extensive safety report was released which did not answer many questions and had inconclusive findings.  They denied suspecting any crew was involved, and reported that air traffic control was delayed in noting the missing plane.  Theories vary, from a hijacking or suicide mission, to a military operation, and a plethora of questions still exist.   One thing is for sure, evidence of shoddy investigative work and potential cover-ups abound.  What really happened to MH370 in the early morning hours of March 8 , 2014?

Transcript

Hey, guys.

Hey, folks.

What's up?

What is popping?

Crack of...

We hope you enjoyed our season finale.

Season.

Also, our season finale.

Yeah, season.

Our very first season, guys, this is in Calpstone.

How many episodes have we done?

37.

Wow.

That's pretty good.

I can't even count that high.

How many times did we say, let's not do this anymore?

Five?

Yeah.

It was like, do we want to do this?

And then I think at one point, every one of us said, do we still want to do this?

And the other two rallied.

So it wasn't like...

Yeah.

Yeah.

It wasn't like we all were...

It was just, you know.

Yeah.

We're just tiring.

It was a lot of work doing this.

Like, just figuring out the audio part for Megan, the editing part for Megan.

Most of the work, Megan.

The 20 minutes a week, I would spend Googling my topics.

I think mostly it's just the schedule.

The scheduling of it, yeah.

We have some big news.

Big news.

Big news.

kait.

Yes.

Has graduated.

Oh my gosh.

Which means that when we come back for season 2.

She'll be refreshed and not have dark circles under her eyes.

She's going to present every episode.

You're going to hear a lot more from kait.

Yes.

And she's going to be all over social media.

And don't you worry, guys.

I really know how to research some topics.

Start putting in your requests for kait now.

Because she's going to have so much free time.

So much free time.

To look them up.

You should see her to-do list.

It's so overwhelming already.

She's such an idea girl.

And I'm like, how about some execution?

And I cannot wait to see the execution.

The follow through?

The follow through.

Yeah.

We'll see if it happens.

So to commemorate kait's graduation.

We're going on a big one.

We're going on a trip.

A big trip.

Yeah.

Where are we going, Colleen?

We are going to Egypt.

Egypt.

This was a request episode, Throwback When.

This was requested by my brother, Timothy.

On Instagram, he left a comment saying he'd like to hear about the aliens and the pyramids.

So in order to do this, the three of us are traveling to Egypt together.

We're going on an excursion.

An excursion.

We're going to hop on the Philadelphia ship, jump through time to get to the pyramids.

Yeah.

We get to meet Brendan Fraser in The Mummy.

Yeah.

Oh my God.

I love that movie.

We're going to learn about the aliens.

I'm going to learn about cats.

Megan's going to have some drinks and relax.

I just want to say that Egypt is a bucket list place.

I'm mostly scared about crossing the road.

Have you seen the videos?

Cars don't stop for pedestrians.

I will die.

I thought we were just going to be like on camels.

Yeah, we're going to take camels.

Camels.

Where did camels get their humps from?

Water.

I don't know.

Yeah.

Water's in it.

Yeah.

When?

Is that a joke?

No, that was just a gross question.

So everyone, enjoy the rest of your summer.

We'll be in Egypt.

And join us back here on September 3rd after Labor Day weekend.

Yeah, after the kids go back to school.

Yeah.

And we'll talk about the pyramids.

But in the meantime, we're going to do some re-releases for you.

So, since you are the graduate, why don't you launch us off?

Yes.

Oh my gosh.

Launch off.

So yeah, we are all, I guess we're all like going to pick our favorite episodes and re-release.

And my favorite episode is the MH370 episodes.

They're part one and part two.

I guess they're my favorite episodes, I think, because nobody, I don't think anyone will ever know what actually happened to the plane.

And I think it's so interesting how there are so many theories that will just never come to fruition.

And so it was really interesting to listen to the episode.

And I think Megan did such a good job with her research.

I remember vividly, it was, I think it was just January.

It was a cold, it was cold outside.

We were sitting here at Megan's apartment or Megan's house, and it was getting dark outside.

And Megan and I had to get on the road to go somewhere.

Yeah, I just remember, I think we were like, okay, we'll record two more episodes or whatever.

And it was really dark, and Megan started talking about this podcast, and I just was hooked immediately.

And just, I think, usually Colleen and I, if we ever do a day where we record most of the episodes, Colleen and I lose interest.

Yeah, we get very ADHD, as you probably know.

And anyway, but these were like the last two episodes that we record during the day, and we were hooked.

We were really hooked.

I think that it is probably like prime content.

We do a lot of heavy stuff, and we do a lot of lighthearted stuff.

This is more of a heavy episode, a heavy two episodes.

But yeah, my favorite episodes, definitely go check them out.

Megan did such a good job on them.

So, okay.

So yeah, everybody, take a listen to MH370.

It's coming up now.

Part one and part two.

Yeah.

Let's go both.

See, and then join us next week for my favorite episode.

See you next Tuesday.

Just a reminder, guys, don't forget to check out our Facebook and Instagram pages at 3SchemeQueens, that's the number three, SchemeQueens, all one word.

We're also on Reddit, same username.

If you want to check out our website, go to 3schemequeens.com, and you can find links to our social media accounts, our Buzzsprout page, all of our episodes, additional content, our contact page, and our discussion board, where you can engage with us and share any updates about the topics that we have discussed.

Let us know how we're doing and what you want to hear next.

There are also opportunities to financially support us.

There are links to Buy a Scuba Coffee, links to our recently updated merch store, and affiliate links.

And as always, if you choose not to financially support us, we appreciate the follows, the downloads, listens, the likes.

Yeah.

And if you guys don't mind, after this podcast is done, just go ahead and scroll down to the bottom.

Leave us a five-star review, please.

It just like helps us get our name out there and sort of boost our listenership.

So yeah.

Or if you feel so led, give us a comment.

Yeah.

A little love letter.

We love a love letter.

I do.

So is it time for our drink check?

Drink check.

What you got over there, Colleen?

I'm drinking a couple of different things.

I got a little coffee, got a little water, I'm bouncing in between, you know what I mean?

She's drinking around.

I've got some good old-fashioned dihydrogen monoxide.

I can't, I cannot.

Boring.

I've got a Waterloo summer berry mix.

Waterloo.

To be clear, I purchased the Waterloo summer berry mix in the month of January.

Very interesting to me.

Because it's kind of a patriotic can.

Yeah, it is.

But delicious.

Merca.

Would you guys agree?

Delicious?

Yeah.

Oh, it's so good.

All right, guys, we've got quite a mystery today.

Oh, yeah.

Travel pens, Megan?

Oh, yeah.

I don't have a lot of fears of flying or the water, but something about this case really does terrify me.

Just like the vastness of the ocean, the vastness of the sky, and the fact that a plane can just disappear.

Yeah, terrifying.

I don't like that.

So let's get into it and see what you guys think.

On March 8th, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 took off in the early hours of the morning as the red-eye flight from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia with an intended destination of Beijing, China.

There were 227 passengers on board with 12 crew members.

The pilot command, 53-year-old captain Zaharie Shah, was performing a final instructional flight for 27-year-old co-pilot, First Officer Fariq Hamid.

And the flight was initially uneventful at a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet.

The flight was leaving Malaysian airspace and was instructed to transfer to the air traffic control tower in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam.

At 1.19, captain Shah radioed the air traffic controllers in Malaysia, Good night, Malaysian 370.

That was the last verbal contact with anyone on the plane.

Approximately 103 seconds later, the aircraft went dark and vanished from all radar screens in Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, and Ho Chi Minh City.

Oh my gosh.

There were two transponders on board the plane.

So to disappear, both transponders would need to cease functioning either by catastrophic failure or by manual override by someone on the plane.

It was over 20 minutes before anyone noted the plane was missing.

It did not arrive for its 6:30 a.m.

ETA and only had enough fuel to fly until about 8:15 a.m.

The most expensive search and rescue operation in aviation history was initiated.

To this day, we do not know where the airplane is or what happened to the 239 souls on board.

An extensive safety report was released which did not answer many questions and did have inconclusive findings.

They denied suspecting any crew was involved and reported that air traffic controllers were delayed in noting the missing plane.

Theories vary from a hijacking or suicide mission to a military operation and a plethora of questions still exist.

One thing is for sure, evidence of shoddy investigative work and potential coverups abound.

What really happened to MH370 in the early mornings of March 8th, 2014?

Well, there's a lot going on that I did not realize.

Yeah.

I mean, I remember this being like big, I guess maybe when I was like 24 and my parents were talking about this Malaysian airplane and I was like, what is the big deal?

But like doing more research, I'm like, oh, my goodness.

Yeah.

I remember hearing about it on the news, but I just thought it was another plane crash, but it is not.

It is not.

Okay.

I know you guys watch some documentaries.

You don't have a ton of knowledge on this, but you have a background.

So what is your initial assessment of what you guys think happened to this plane?

Okay.

Well, I think that it was probably a hijacking, like from someone from another country was trying to hijack the plane or something.

I don't know the reason, but I also feel like the plane was hijacked because it doesn't make sense that a pilot with just like so much knowledge and experience would just like veer off course.

Like that seems pretty strange.

Yeah.

Yeah.

How about you, Colleen?

Between a couple of thoughts, my first thought was that one of the documentaries brings up like a fire or some kind of crisis, but then like on the plane.

Then my other thought was maybe like a health crisis with the pilots, but the communication on the radio is making me lean maybe towards that, that it was like maybe deliberate.

But I don't think it was a hijack situation.

I think it was like maybe a possible suicidal situation.

I know we all have these reports saying how healthy the captain was and everything like that, but it's just like that's just what people saw.

So my thought is maybe he purposefully crashed it.

Okay.

Well, you guys do have kind of like the two predominant theories, which are like murder, suicide or hijacking.

I actually have a different theory than both of you, but I'm gonna save that for the end.

Oh, suspenseful.

So there's a lot of information.

I'm gonna try to sum it all up as succinctly as possible, but you ladies keep me on track in case any of this gets confusing.

Because again, I've watched like 18 different documentaries on this.

I do want to say that the first one I watched was the Netflix documentary, which I thought was really interesting.

Then I went down the Reddit rabbit hole and I learned pretty quickly that a lot of the people in that documentary are like not great sources.

Also, a lot of the family members and friends that are in that documentary are in a lot of other documentaries.

So it's pretty interesting.

Let's just start by getting into the characters and the people on the flight.

All right, Megan, who was there?

The pilot in charge was captain Zaharie Shah.

He was 53, married with three children and one of the most senior pilots working for the airline, beginning his career with them in 1983.

He had been flying the Boeing 777 since 1998 and worked as an instructor and examiner since 2007.

So he's pretty high up there.

I read that maybe he had like a thousand fewer flying hours than Sully who landed on the Hudson.

So yeah, pretty senior guy.

He had 18,355 hours of flying under his belt, and in multiple documentaries, they had his friends and family and fellow employees who all said he was very professional.

He was like one of the best across the board.

They said there's no way that there could have been any kind of malicious intent on his part or any involvement on his part.

And the official report that the Malaysian government released again, about four and a half years after the fact, said that there was really no evidence of any kind of financial issues, no mental health issues, no personal issues.

And so they didn't really blame him.

They said there was no evidence of any kind of wrongdoing on his part.

But there have been some rumors in some of the documentaries that perhaps that's not all accurate.

Perhaps he did have some marital issues.

There was this Atlantic article that interviewed an anonymous fellow pilot, an alleged lifelong friend.

I say like alleged because I think you all would take my secrets to the grave.

But he's just out here like sharing them anonymously with the world.

But he claims that captain Shah had a bad marriage and had slept with multiple flight attendants.

Wow.

His friend said, and I quote, We all do.

You're flying all over the world with these beautiful girls in the back.

But his wife knew, no accountability for the men, right?

They can't help it.

There's just beautiful girls in the back.

What are they supposed to do?

Yeah.

No, that's crazy.

That's disgusting actually.

You can't control yourself.

Yeah.

Get it together.

But again, that's all just rumors because everywhere else people were like, what are you talking about?

He had a great marriage.

I think we do know that at the time this all happened, he was apparently living separately from his wife.

They owned two homes and they were each living in a separate home.

They also talk about, I think in a couple of articles, that he was just an awkward dude.

He had engaged in some one-sided flirting with other women on Facebook and social media, and he would just DM these girls and they wouldn't respond.

He was just kind of awkward about it, so that's not good.

Gross.

Yeah.

No, thank you.

Like cringe, right Colleen?

Yeah, major cringe.

Is that an X?

That's a major X.

Yeah.

Some people said that he was just in this empty house alone.

His kids were full grown, his wife's living in another house, and so he would just kind of pace around the empty rooms waiting for his next flight.

They also said he spent a lot of time at social media, like I said, and we know that can be associated with like feelings of isolation, depression.

So perhaps he did have some problems.

It's really hard for us to say.

Maybe a little menti bee.

Ooh, menti bee.

Maybe not unlike Princess Diana.

Yeah.

They also looked at the CCTV at the airport on the day of the flight and then the three flights he'd been on prior.

So they see him and his co-pilot going through security, going to board the plane, and they found no significant behavioral changes.

He was well-groomed, he looked appropriate, normal characteristics, like a normal gait, posture, mannerisms, that kind of thing.

So nothing popping up right away other than these rumors, I guess, about his mental state and the state of his marriage.

But really, we have no other indication that he knew anything was going to happen or that he was involved in any way.

So that's him.

This is the crew member.

So they thought that if a crew member was involved, he's probably the most likely just because he was such a smart guy.

He had so much aviation knowledge, so he's probably the one person on board from the crew, at least, who could potentially have the ability to make this plane disappear if anyone could do it.

But like, he's so cute.

Did you see his YouTube videos?

I mean, he's like this cute little nerdy guy.

And what is he doing?

He's like, he opens up his YouTube video and he's doing his community service.

Yeah, he called it my community service.

He's very cute.

So it's kind of like hard to believe that somebody like that would be malicious.

Yeah.

And then we have his first officer.

So his first officer was Fariq Hamid.

He was 27.

He'd been flying with Malaysia Airlines since 2007, and he had previously been the first officer on the 737 and the Airbus A330.

In November 2013, he began training his first officer of the Boeing 777, and this was his last training flight.

He had 2,753 hours of flying experience, and he was engaged to be married to another pilot.

They also reported that he had no financial, personal, mental issues, anything like that, that would put him at risk of being involved.

He was also cleared in the report that comes out about four and a half years later.

But overall, people thought again, this guy only had 39 hours on this plane.

He's pretty novice when you compare him to the pilot in command, so really unlikely that he would have intentionally been involved in this.

again, we have these two pilots, and then we have the 10 additional crew members who are all in the back end.

So these 10 flight attendants are all Malaysian, and then there's 227 passengers on board.

And these passengers come from a variety of different backgrounds.

The majority of them were Chinese citizens, and then the remainder, again, from a variety of different locations.

So I think the family members of all the pastors and crew really wanted answers for what happened.

But again, I think there's a lot of protests, a lot of issues with these 104 Chinese passengers, family members being upset with the way the whole situation was handled by the Malaysian government.

I'm not really sure about the relationship between the countries before this.

Well, hold on a second.

Google says that Malaysia and China are actually really big trading partners.

Like apparently, China is Malaysia's number one trade partner, and Malaysia is China's second largest trading partner, which is interesting to me.

I didn't know that.

That's very interesting.

So I guess we assume prior to this that maybe they had a pretty good relationship, it sounds like, at least they're trading.

I don't know.

Right.

I would say later, there were definitely a lot of Chinese protests, I guess, regarding the investigation and what happened.

But anyway, those are our players.

So now let's talk about the timeline and what we do know.

So I went through some of it in the introduction, but as a reminder, at 1241 AM, the flight departed Kuala Lumpur and is bound for Beijing.

We can hear the transmission of the air traffic control tower in flight MH370.

I was going to play a clip here, but it's difficult to understand because there's air traffic control language, there's some accents, so we'll have Colleen post that for you.

again, it's just difficult to understand without the closed captioning.

So I'm going to summarize it.

So because this was a training flight, the pilot in command was actually handling the communications once the plane took off.

So the co-pilot handles radio transmission on the ground.

Now he's going to fly this plane and all the radio transmission in flight is going to be between captain Shah and the air traffic controllers.

So 1241, we depart at about 108 a.m.

MH370 reports to air traffic control that they have reached their cruising altitude of 35,000 feet.

And that's flight level 350.

It kind of blows my mind how much air there is before space.

Like it makes me feel like I'm in some kind of simulation.

Yeah.

wait, you've never thought about that before at all?

I like all the things too that kait's always like, wait, that never occurred to you?

That never occurred to you?

No.

Until we did this podcast.

Until we did this podcast, I had never even thought about the ocean as anything more than like a trip to the beach.

And now it just creeps me out every time I think about it.

Like watching the clip of the Titanic just go under.

And I can't.

Terrifying.

That's why I don't want to go on a cruise.

I don't want to be surrounded on all sides by water.

And all you can see is the horizon.

No, I can't.

No.

But anyway, back on track.

So at 101 and then 107, he reports that he's at cruising altitude 350.

And I guess that's abnormal because it was like unnecessary information for him to provide the air traffic controller, let alone provide that same information multiple times.

Oh, wait a second.

Like, they're not supposed to do that?

I guess they don't need to report their actual cruising altitude.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

So that is really weird.

Yeah.

So at 119 a.m., air traffic control says to MH370, Malaysian 370, contact Ho Chi Minh 1209.

Good night.

So what they're saying here is that they were leaving Malaysian airspace, and they were being passed off to the air traffic controllers in Vietnam.

So now Vietnam should pick them up in theory, and that's who they're going to be communicating with.

That's who's responsible for them, which is part of this whole mystery because this specific spot where this all happened was like a convergence point, like an intersecting point of about seven different airspaces.

So it's a lot of different areas of responsibility in a small geographical location.

So if you were ever going to try to go missing, this is probably like the perfect place to do it.

Like the Bermuda Triangle of air traffic?

Oh, yeah, it sounds like it.

So again, we'll have Colleen post a picture online of the airspace.

But you should be able to see how difficult it would be for people to really be able to tell who's controlling who, who's responsible for this flight.

You could easily just assume that someone else is managing them, supervising them.

So at 1:18 AM, air traffic control says, Malaysia 370, contact Ho Chi Minh, 120, Despoil 9, good night.

And then captain Shah responds immediately, good night, Malaysian 370.

Which first of all, when you hear him say that, it gives me chills every time because that is the last contact anyone outside the plane ever had with anyone on the plane.

Whoa.

Yeah, that's freaky.

Yeah.

But also what's wrong about this is that he's supposed to read back that radio channel.

So what he should have said was, Malaysian 370 will contact Ho Chi Minh 1209, good night.

Oh, and he didn't do that.

No, he just says like, good night Malaysian 370.

So that was an inappropriate response and leaves out that closed loop communication about the radio frequency of the Ho Chi Minh air traffic controllers.

So that's our radio contact.

So that's at 1 18 a.m.

And then the last transponder communication is at 1 21 a.m.

Okay, so like, as a captain who has like crazy experience, like it's training some other captain, he should like know better.

So that's interesting that he repeated it back wrong, like almost kind of deliberate.

That's your feeling, eh?

Yeah, I do want to say that there were multiple different sources that did voice analysis of this radio chatter to determine what captain Shah was thinking, like was he distressed, was he anxious, whatever.

I do know the Netflix documentary said that on that final transmission, he had a faster and higher pitch and then he made that error.

So like he obviously misspoke and kind of messed up.

So they were implying like he was potentially nervous, could have been distracted or stressed.

But then a lot of other sources that looked at the radio transmission didn't find any abnormality with the voice analysis.

So they didn't find any kind of conclusive evidence that anything was abnormal at that point aside from again that he repeated the inappropriate transmission early on, and then made an inappropriate transmission at the end.

But the actual tone of his voice, the inflection, the rate he was speaking at, all of that.

Other sources have said there were no abnormalities.

So again, we'll post that audio clip and you guys can decide for yourselves.

So now I'm going to tell you about what we know about the flight course after we lost communication.

And I just want to kind of explain up front that a lot of this data was developed with new research tools that hadn't previously been used.

So when the flight first went missing, a lot of this information was not available on day one.

So they would have like a little bit of information, they'd have that area, their search area, and then more information would come out, so they'd have to kind of re-evaluate and shift that area.

So obviously, that would make the search very challenging.

But I just want to be clear that when I go through the like what we think happened to this plane and the path it took, that information kind of slowly came out over quite a long period of time, so it was not all readily available early on.

So again, this last known contact when they were transferring over, they were supposed to transfer over to Vietnam's airspace.

So they were between the South China Sea and the Gulf of thailand, and that's where these transponders went out by either, again, a catastrophic event or by manual override.

And initially, that was all the information anyone had to go on.

There was also a pilot who was a Malaysian airline pilot who I guess was like 30 minutes ahead of the MH370 flight, and he did say that he got a call on his emergency frequency that could have been MH370, but it was just a lot of interference and static.

He thought he heard some mumbling on the other end, and this was just like right around the time of that blackout.

But again, nothing ever really came of that.

I guess I don't know how much that was investigated.

Oh, that's weird.

And then the Malaysian military comes forward and they go, you know what, we do have some technology.

We have these long range radars, which you guys said reminded you of Montauk.

Oh, those banana, like the antenna things.

Yeah, this thing is so disturbing.

And so these radars, they don't rely on transponders.

So they were able to get a little bit more information about the actual flight path.

Hold on, hold on, hold on.

I have a theory that I just suddenly started thinking of.

So maybe a suicidal mission.

And I think it's still along that line.

But I'm thinking that the captain was transporting something and felt like he had to purposely crash the plane.

Like he knew that and wanted to protect everybody.

So he purposely put the plane down.

You know what I mean?

That's what I just had to get that thought out there.

Oh, yeah.

Get it in there.

I also have another theory that involves black holes.

Okay.

The plane just went through like a black hole.

And that's why it disappeared.

And that's why he tried to make an emergency call.

Oh, but we couldn't hear anything.

They couldn't hear anything because the radio waves were like too distorted from the black hole.

Did that happen in Loki?

It always goes back to Marvel.

No.

Okay.

I've been listening to-

She'd rather either confirm nor deny.

Yeah.

Just thinking about sci-fi.

I mean, that is a theory that's been out there is like some kind of black hole or something.

This emergency phone call, I kind of forgot about that part.

Cause nobody brings it up again.

Yeah.

I mean, like they don't-

So again, the Malaysian military aircraft was able to see that this flight, when it lost contact, it then took a very abrupt turn to the right and made a very sharp U-turn.

A wicked sharp U-E.

Nice new accent, New England accent.

Yeah.

When I was in Boston, our driver kept saying, I'm gonna bang a U-E.

I'm banging a U-E.

Everybody says that.

I love it.

But anyway, yeah.

Like why this U-E?

It was so aggressive that it could not have been done on autopilot.

It had to have been like manual.

Oh yeah.

That had to have been manual.

Yeah.

So they saw the plane veering and then making this U-turn to the left, heading back toward Kuala Lumpur.

But it passed over just north of Kuala Lumpur, turn right at Penang Island, and then continue northwest up the strait of Malaysia.

again, we'll post a map.

We're going to need a map for the people here.

Yeah.

I think if you look at that picture, again, it makes the mystery even wilder.

It's like a really crazy flight path.

Yeah, it's crazy.

It's like not a normal way at all.

Yeah.

So again, the Malaysian military kind of lost the path of the plane after it turned right at Penang Island.

But what is interesting to note is that the island, Penang Island is where captain Shah was born.

So if you think he was involved, whether that was intentionally or unintentionally, if this was planned or unplanned, whatever you think happened, if you think he was somehow involved and he knew he was going to die, there's a lot of theories that perhaps he wanted to make one more pass past his home, look down into the island where he was born and where he grew up.

Oh yeah, that played a part for sure.

Yeah.

I mean, I think about all the times we're on a commercial airplane and you're just in the back of this plane minding your own business and you have no idea what's going on.

You don't even know where you are geographically.

I guess unless you're looking at the screen in front of you that has the flight path, but it's just like a lot of trust.

This plane with almost 300 people can just disappear.

You could end up anywhere.

You could have no idea.

You're just in the back of the plane, listening to a podcast, hopefully this podcast, maybe taking a nap, watching a movie, reading a book.

You could just be anywhere.

Yeah.

You got to have a lot of trust in your pilots there.

I didn't really think about it when I'm on a plane.

Kate's losing her mind right now.

again, I cannot believe this is just occurring to you.

This is what I think about every time I get on a plane.

No way.

I'm like, my life is literally in someone else's hands.

I'm in this flying tube above the earth, and there's no way to get out and it's pressurized.

And yeah, and how does it fly?

Now, when I get on a plane, I'm immediately scoping the people out who are with me, looking for my allies, you know what I mean?

Like if this plane went down, who am I grouping with and who am I eating?

Who are you, like who can make a fire?

And who's going to taste the best?

Maybe a little bit.

But also side note, I'm the person on the plane constantly watching the flight path on the screen.

I'm like, oh, Canada.

I'm the person on the plane.

If the media, like when you hit turbulence, I'm the one that's like, we're all going to die.

You don't just like look at the flight attendant because if they're good, we're good.

Well, someone did tell me that recently.

So I have started looking at the flight attendants, but I also grip the seats of my, the like handles on my seat, like with white knuckles.

It's fine.

Okay.

So this plane veers right, crosses over, goes kind of around the island, and then that's where the technology stops working.

The SATCOM terminal that they were connected to was a ground station in Perth, Australia, and it kind of confirmed at the same path we got from that last piece of technology.

So when it veered north, it made a U-turn, veered northwest, and then it lost contact with the SATCOM.

And they were saying this could have been disabled within the cockpit by turning off the generator.

And by doing that, it would also disable.

Do you guys remember planes?

They used to have the, like before cell phones, they'd have the phones in the back of the seats in front of you for passengers to use.

Oh, yeah.

I think that like a lot of 9-11 people maybe use those to make their phone calls to their family.

So you like put a credit card in and you could make the satellite phone call.

So if you disable the SATCOM, which you would do in the cockpit by turning off the generator, it would also disable all of the phone and text abilities for the passengers at their seats.

So three minutes after it lost contact with the Malaysian military radar, the SATCOM logs back on and then it kept connection or kept contact until six hours later when we think the fuel should have run out.

So during this time, two calls were made from the ground via the Perth ground station, but nobody ever answered on the plane.

And then we have the INMAR set.

And so that's the International Maritime Satellite.

If there's no contact, it does what it calls a handshake.

So every hour, it'll ping to the plane, just kind of like, hey, are you there?

Are you on?

And so it pinged every hour.

And that last ping was at 8, 11 a.m.

local time, which was four minutes before we think the fuel should have run out on this airplane.

So we do know that as of 8, 11 a.m., the plane was still in the air.

But again, this information had never been used to actually track location, because it doesn't give you that information.

Just kind of confirms like, hey, yeah, it was on.

So when you're over the water, but you have to talk to the ground, you have to bounce that radio signal somehow, right?

So you send this radio signal, it goes to a satellite, and then it gets relayed back to land and vice versa.

So they analyze this data and they just calculate how long it would take to transmit that signal.

And based on that, they were able to actually determine a distance.

So they make this big semi-circle, kind of like a circumference.

And they're like, okay, somewhere in here is probably where that plane was at that time.

Oh, that's kind of cool.

That's like, in Marsat is like a last-ditch effort type of thing.

It just kind of sounds like a lot of geometry and math to me.

Yeah.

And there are a lot of theories too.

When we talk about the theories next week that exist of people being like, oh, well, maybe someone hacked in and changed the data.

But again, this data had never been used this way before.

So I think that's incredibly unlikely.

It was just this one guy who works for Inmarsat, and he's just sitting at his coffee table, and he was like, I'm watching the news, and like, man, what can I do to help these guys?

And he's the one who came up with this idea and did the calculation.

So again, calculating how long it would take for that radio to transmit and use that information to determine a location was just this one guy doing a whole bunch of math at his table.

And that's how we used it for the first time.

I think it would require a lot of forethought for someone, even a really smart pilot or a hijacker to be like, oh, we need to rig this data just in case someone figures it out.

What a guy.

What a good Samaritan that guy was.

That's why you got to marry nerds.

Yeah.

Shout out, Bourbon Boy.

So then what else can I tell you about this data?

Just kind of a side note, at 1:52 a.m., the co-pilot cell phone did connect to a cell tower.

Initially, rumors were he made a phone call or he received a phone call, but that's all now been kind of invalidated.

We do know his phone did connect.

So I don't know if he just turned it on or what happened.

But there's a theory that maybe he was trying to make a phone call.

Just kind of adds to this whole mystery.

But yeah, 1:52 a.m., this co-pilot's phone did come into contact with a cell tower.

Oh, I thought I was like under the impression that maybe he wasn't trying to make a phone call, but he was like trying to figure out where they were.

Google Maps.

Yeah, like Google Maps.

I didn't think about that.

Google Maps in the air.

That's an interesting theory.

Yeah, I didn't even think about it.

But yeah, like if all the instrumentation is down and they don't know where they are, because how would you know where you are?

You know what I mean?

Yeah, I mean, look up.

Yeah, I don't know if they have like night navigation where they're looking at the stars or I don't know what kind of training they have.

We'd have to ask captain Fred.

I did reach out to captain Fred about his theory on this, though.

And to be clear, I do have a lot of respect for pilots.

I think there's a lot of responsibility.

You've got the cost of the plane alone.

It's a huge financial responsibility.

And then you have all the lives on board, not to mention like the people that you could cause harm to not on the airplane.

So I'm not trying to minimize that.

I think again, it's a lot of responsibility.

But I was like, honestly, other than takeoff and landing, you guys can just like kind of set cruise control and kickback, right?

Like there's not a lot of work happening at that point.

And he kind of confirmed that, yeah, like you could mostly just cruise control.

So I guess I just wanted to confirm that.

And it's possible, other than that initial U-turn, that every other turn this airplane made could have all been done on cruise control.

So it could have been on cruise control for six hours.

again, the plane did make a couple more subtle turns after that initial sharp U-turn, which could have all been done on cruise control, but they would have had to have been programmed in advance.

But yeah, it's possible maybe they just made this really sharp U-turn, something happened.

They wanted to go back to Kuala Lumpur after they made this sharp U-turn, something happens and prevents them from landing or whatever.

So I think it does make sense.

And captain Fred was with you guys, that this was probably like a murder-suicide situation.

But I have issues with that theory, which again, we'll get to.

So this is kind of the end of the technology aspect of it.

again, I just want to kind of clarify that this was all the information they had to go on on those initial searches.

A lot of this information took many, many years to come out.

And I want to tell you about the searches which got stopped.

But more recent data in the last couple of years, they looked at what we call the whisper data.

And so this looks at interruptions caused by aircraft passing through radio connections.

So we talked about the radio waves at our Luthor landing episode and how the reason that radio waves are able to travel so far in space is because there's nothing to block them.

So now, though, if there's radio signals being transmitted and planes are flying through these paths where the radio signals are going, you're going to have these brief disruptions.

And so they went back and they look at this and they said, OK, there were 160 disruptions in radio waves by something interfering.

And so using that information, they were able to plot them out and make an estimate of the flight path.

Oh, that's kind of neat.

I mean, it's interesting how many directions they used to approach trying to figure out where this plane was.

Yeah, like all these random people who just thought like, I have an idea.

Let's track this thing or that thing.

Yeah.

So this just gave them some more specific information.

And this is where we think again, we now have the most specific information, best estimate of where this plane went down, if it did in fact go down in the ocean.

Boom, boom, boom.

And again, I think it went down in the ocean.

There are some other theories that like maybe it went north, but we'll get into that later.

So they combine this whisper data with the information from the Western Australian Oceanography Group, which we also talk about later.

They're interesting because they offered a lot of help to the Malaysians and the Malaysians turned them down, but they were helpful in eventually finding some alleged debris from the aircraft, which we'll get into.

But this Oceanography Institute, it looks at the tides and looks at the whisper data and they say like, okay, we think the plane went down here and if that's where it went, and based on these tides, you should be able to find debris in this other location.

Okay, so they would say if debris washes up in this location, we kind of backtrack and use that information to confirm where we think the plane is.

So kind of incorporating all this information, it matched up.

So again, we have our last ping, 8:11 AM.

We think 8.15 ish is when the fuel should have run out on this plane.

And whisper data comes out a couple of years ago.

Based on that, they think there might have been a 22-minute holding pattern from 8.12 to 8.34, where it looks like the plane just kind of circled for 22 minutes.

Oh, no, no.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Is that something that cruise control could do?

Just circling like that?

I have to ask captain Frank.

I mean, it does seem kind of purposeful, but then also if this was a hijacking or terrorist attack, and that's why they had this purposeful hold.

I guess my issue with the hijack is that we never got a message, right?

And so it's not a very effective attack if you don't get your message out there.

No one's taking responsibility for this or anything like that.

But I guess some of the newer theories is maybe during this 22-minute holding pattern, someone was talking to someone else.

Perhaps whoever had control of this plane was talking to the Malaysian government for 22 minutes.

And now they've all just covered it up.

I don't know.

So we don't know what was happening there.

I guess maybe if something like that did happen, it makes it a little more believable that this could have potentially been like a hijack or politically motivated for whatever reason.

And like we, the public just never heard that message because it's been covered up.

But again, we'll get deeper into our theories next week.

There were some less popular theories that the plane went north.

When we talk about the handshake transmissions and kind of that radius, the seven rings, it could have gone north.

But everyone seems to agree, particularly with this newer whisper data, that the plane probably did go south and did go down in the ocean.

I mean, if it went south, it had to go to the ocean because there's literally nothing else out there.

And if it did go into the ocean, we don't really know if it was like a controlled descent or an uncontrolled descent.

So if it was an uncontrolled descent, which is the primary theory, it could have been a suicide mission, but crash into the ocean at supersonic speeds would cause the plane to shatter into a ton of pieces and it'd be a pretty painful way to go.

So I think we hope, I hope it was a suicide mission and that the pilot just killed him.

If it was a suicide mission, I hope that like the pilot killed himself and his pastors in a more peaceful, peaceful way.

Then a terrifying descent.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So again, if they determine this was an uncontrolled descent, it does not necessarily rule out suicide.

If something had happened and everyone on board was dead, an uncontrolled descent is how the plane would have had to have gone down.

Alternatively, you could have been, it could have been a more controlled descent.

So if the motivation was like, captain Shah just wants to make this plane disappear and be a part of the craziest aviation mystery in history, then a nice gradual glide into the ocean would really minimize debris, make the plane tougher to find.

Or if they were trying to land this plane somehow on the water like a Hudson situation, again, a more gradual descent would be the way to do that.

That's just so interesting.

Yeah, that's like landing a plane like sort of slowly on the water so that it just goes missing.

Yeah, I mean, that would be kind of like crazy motivation.

Right.

And also like knowing that that's how you're going to adapt.

Just waking up and being like, my goal is just to make this plane disappear so people will be talking about me on a podcast in 15 years.

Yeah, but also like wanting that to be how you die.

Yeah.

Drowning?

Yeah.

They say that's the worst way, isn't it?

Yeah, it feels to me like it'd be the worst way.

Either that or burning alive.

Yeah.

I've thought about this.

I always think about the ways I'd like to die because I've talked about this in my personal life.

I'd like to exit the world in a crazy way, like getting stepped on by a moose.

What was one that I talked about?

I just want to fall asleep.

Oh, getting eaten by my cat.

Yeah.

I mean, that's how you want to die is your cat.

I just would like to have a story of some way, like, oh, Aunt Colleen fell off a roller coaster.

Okay.

You know what I mean?

Uncle Shah just disappeared.

Yeah.

No one could find him.

Yeah.

I'd like a little bit more spice in that.

But yeah.

Okay.

Interesting.

So initially when they found some airplane debris, it was intact.

So people thought this must have been a controlled descent.

But I think now with all the other evidence we have, with this whisper data, people are leaning more towards this was probably an uncontrolled descent, and the plane was just descending so rapidly that the pieces of the aircraft flew off before the plane hit the water.

And that's the reason that a lot of the debris we have found is not more damaged.

So yeah, they just, the pieces flew off before we could have this aggressive descent into the water.

again, just terrifying.

But I mean, based on all the amount of small pieces they found, that feels more correct.

Yeah, now even with the controlled versus uncontrolled descent and all this data we have, I think in the last couple years, they've really narrowed this down to a potential area where this plane could be, but that still allows for a 200 kilometer possible variation of where this plane could have entered the ocean based on whether it was controlled or not controlled descent.

So still a pretty large area.

Definitely narrows down the search area though.

But that doesn't explain the 22 minute holding.

I can't explain the 22 minutes.

Yeah, that's weird to me.

The only thing I can think of is if like, he feels like an hypoxia theory or something, if he passed out, could he like have pushed the throttle, like slumped over and pushed the throttle and it caused it to spin?

But I don't even know if that makes sense.

We'd have to run that theory by someone who flies planes.

Listeners, reach out to us, let us know.

You fly a plane?

Let me know.

We want to hear from you.

Have you ever flown a plane before?

Have you ever flown something before?

So also I just wanted to comment on this.

We'll talk about how I think this whole investigation was botched, but most of these families that were interviewed found out their loved ones were missing and then eventually presumed dead from the press.

Communication was just like terrible.

In fact, I think two weeks after the plane disappeared, when they determined that everyone on the plane was probably dead, they just sent out an SMS text message to all the family members saying like, yeah, we're going to assume all your family members are dead.

So I mean, that's kind of harsh.

That's so messed up.

It's like your table's ready.

Your family's dead.

We don't mean to laugh.

That is terrible.

Yeah, we have trauma.

There was one guy who was a source in the Netflix documentary, who I'm not going to talk too much about because I don't really believe his theory is pretty out there.

But even he was like, never in the history of the world has someone just been told their loved one must be dead because of math.

And I thought that was like pretty legitimate.

Like we've never just been like, well, you know, your dad's dead because math tells us he's probably in the ocean and that's enough for us to just like wash our hands of this whole investigation and be done with it.

These families want to know what happened.

I think there was also some theories that maybe the plane, the plane had gone north and could have landed.

So some of them might've been holding out a little bit of hope for that.

I think there's just definitely better ways they could have handled than an SMS message.

There were some people who, like family members of passengers or friends of passengers, who said that they did try to call people on the plane once they found out it was missing.

wait, really?

Like, were they able to get through?

Did someone just like call their parents?

No, no one ever answered.

But they did say the phones were ringing, like they didn't just go straight to voicemail.

What?

Yeah, so.

Like, if your phone is in water, does it act like it's off, or does it act like it's...

You know, interesting side stories.

You know what I mean?

So, I was thinking it was on the bottom of the ocean that it would have had to die, probably the pressure from doing that that far down in the ocean.

Side story, I did go kayaking in Mexico.

Right.

And as I was stepping off the dock, my cell phone slipped out of my pocket.

And the young kid who was working was like, there's alligators in that water.

I'm not going in there.

And so, I was trying to get my phone.

I was unable to get it.

These two girls in their honeymoon from Minnesota showed up and the one was like, I'll get your phone for you.

Like, we're gonna go for a ride.

And when I come back, I'll look for it.

So then I kind of gave up.

Also, my cell phone was like, it was like a wallet container.

So like by all of my drivers, like the phone cards.

So we go back to the hotel and we're at the pool and we're walking back to a room.

And again, this kayak place was not even like at our hotel.

It was like, there were probably like five hotels that kind of shared this kayak space.

So we're walking back to the room and these two girls walk up and they're like, Megan?

I'm like, yeah.

And they had my phone.

They said they were on their honeymoon.

The one girl was like, you know, my wife can't like sit still.

Like she has to have a project.

And after she had been diving around for quite some time in the alligator infested water getting my phone, she goes back to her hotel.

She sees one of those nets at the pool, goes back to the kayaking place.

She said first, this way she tells a story was first pass.

She's got my phone.

So at this point, it had probably been in the water for like five hours.

And it still worked?

It was on.

What?

Phone was on when she scooped it out.

And...

What kind of phone?

What year iPhone are we talking about here?

This was an iPhone.

And let's say it was five years ago.

Oh, cause they did at some point.

Now they're waterproofed, I think.

This was before that.

Before that.

And I used that phone for two more years.

Oh wow.

So first of all, that story, I love that story because it just gives me, my friend who was with me started crying because she was like, I have faith in humanity now, right?

I was like, that is pretty cool.

But this person was like, I'm just going to help that girl.

So go back to the question, do you think the phone, if the phone was in the bottom of the ocean, would it ring?

It would still ring, I don't know.

I don't think that there's cell service at the bottom of the ocean, right?

No, and I think that's, again, this ocean is very scary and very deep.

And I think it would, I think there's also like a pressure issue, right?

Right.

Yeah, I'm a no for the-

Well, so then why do you think the cell phone was ringing if it shouldn't work in the bottom of the ocean?

Because they went through a black hole, Megan.

Well, but there's cell service in the black hole.

Maybe.

We don't know.

Okay.

So anyway, the airline has since come forward to apologize for like their poor communication.

They were like, you know, we're really just focused on fighting this plane.

So they do acknowledge that they did drop the ball.

But again, I just think very few positive things that the Malaysian airlines and the Malaysian government did as far as like addressing this entire catastrophe.

wait, I have a theory.

What if a whale ate the cell phone?

No.

Did you guys just see that video where the shark ate?

Yeah, eaten by a whale.

Where the shark ate the camera?

No.

And it like filmed the inside of the shark.

We'll look it up later.

wait, did it poop it out?

No, he spit it out, camera back up.

So also they flew over so many airspaces on this flight path.

again, it was like the intersection of multiple airspaces, but no one has really produced any good radar evidence.

They flew over an Australian airbase, Butterworth.

And so again, you would think if there's like an Australian airbase and this rogue 777 just flies over your base, like someone would be alerted.

Right.

Who's in our airspace?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then there were a couple of large US military exercises that were happening in the area at the time.

So there was a lot of military personnel in a pretty concentrated area.

And again, like, how could nobody have seen anything?

It's all just very weird.

So again, the initial search was really difficult because all this information came out over a very long period of time.

They initially just had that radio transmission to go on, and that was it.

And so that's where they had to search.

And then they would just kind of keep moving their search, like I said.

But by the time they kind of figure out all this information about where they think the plane went down, now we have to deal with the currents and the movement.

So I think very challenging.

But there was a search and rescue group, a lot of Americans and Australians involved in the search and rescue, the whole operation, and it was done on a volunteer basis.

So it was a fee for find basis, meaning they weren't going to get paid unless they found the aircraft.

So just to reiterate, like them searching is not costing the Malaysian government anything.

It only is going to cost them something if they find the plane.

So this group searched 4.5 million kilometers.

Oh, my goodness.

What is that in like miles?

Well, a 5K is 3.14 miles, right?

A shit ton of space.

Yeah.

I mean, their search area was larger than the size of the United States.

Oh, my God.

And then they did like 120,000 kilometers of surface search, just like setting their cameras down to the surface of the ocean floor.

Oh, my God.

This is becoming more and more a black hole theory.

I don't know about that one.

But what I don't like about this is that these searchers, they didn't want to stop the search.

Like, I know they hadn't found anything, but they wanted to keep going.

And it was the Malaysian government who halted the search.

No, that's a red flag.

Like, yeah, weird.

That's a red flag.

Like, what is the harm in letting these people look?

They were definitely afraid of this group finding something.

Yeah, what were they trying to hide, you know?

Red flag.

I guess what the Malaysian government said when they called off the search was like, we will allow the search to resume once we obtain credible evidence.

But for now, the case is closed.

So first of all, you're not searching.

You're not, like, how are you gonna find evidence to resume the search if you're not looking?

And like number two, how are you calling this a closed case when they literally four and a half years after the accident released this massive report saying, yeah, we don't know what happened, inconclusive.

No.

How do you say case closed, we aren't gonna find out what happened to your friends and family, see you later.

Like none of it makes any sense to me.

Too suspicious.

Yeah.

Don't be suspicious.

Don't be suspicious.

And then actually really, let's make, and number three, this whisper data has since come out, which again was kind of verified with the oceanography data.

So we do have some critical information.

We've narrowed down this to this 200 kilometer area, which seems so vast when we talk about how big 200 kilometers are.

But compared to what they searched, like this is probably nothing to them.

So why won't they just allow them to resume the search?

Also, there was really no information for about 16 months.

And then 16 months after the disappearance, this debris washes ashore on the French territory of Reunion Island, which you see all these documentaries, or you see these pictures online, I guess.

When I first saw it, I was like, oh, that's not very far.

But then when you really look at the map, that's like a massive distance for this debris to travel.

The first alleged piece of airplane debris was the flapperon.

Flapperon?

Flapper off.

Yeah, if you like sit over the wing of the airplane, you can see it moving.

It like makes that way.

Oh, that's that little-

Yeah, it's like for the landing gear.

So the fact that the debris washed up, it really tracks with the oceanography data, the MRSAT data, the whisper data, all really kind of confirms this suspected 200-kilometer location that we can't search.

But here's where it gets interesting.

And you guys tell me what you got, what you think about this, because I could go one of two ways.

So there's this American who allegedly maybe possibly had Russian ties.

It's always Russia.

Yeah.

And he claims, he's like, I'm just an adventurer, I want to do something.

And so he sees this flapperon, which had washed ashore, it was on the news.

And he's like, you know what, I'm going to go help him.

I'm going to find some more pieces of the airplane.

And so he spent two years working with that Australian oceanographer, who the Malaysian government didn't want assistance from.

He spent two years working with them, and then they keep giving them all these places where they'll be like, we think there could be more debris on this island or this island.

He goes to these different islands and he just searches.

So again, the Australians would be like, this island is probably where something's going to wash up.

And he would go and he'd find some local and be like, where do the fishermen check their fishing nets?

And where are things washing ashore?

And he would just walk around and find these airplane pieces.

So in total, there have been 33 pieces of debris that have washed ashore on a variety of different islands, which could be parts of the plane.

But they've really only been able to validate a couple of them.

Also like side note, where did they get the money to do this?

Like, you know, I'm just hanging out for two years.

Yeah, he's just exploring.

It's rich people.

Goals.

He's a trust fund baby or something.

You know what I mean?

Is Russia giving him?

Oh, Russia.

The Nazi gold?

The Nazi gold.

Oh, God.

Okay.

So 33 items have washed ashore.

Not really been able to validate them.

It's all coming from this plane.

I think a couple of them they have.

But of these 33 items, 20 of them are found by this one man.

What?

Yes.

He planted that.

One of the theories is like, is this guy a Russian who's just planning shit or alternatively is this just incompetence?

It's like the largest search effort ever.

No one could find anything.

And it just takes some guy getting off his couch and like walk in the beaches to find 20 pieces of airplane debris.

wait, I have a question.

Isn't like of those 33 pieces that were found, like weren't like three of them only confirmed to be MH370?

Correct.

Oh.

And then there's like some likely, highly likely whatever.

Yeah.

So again, this guy is either up to no good, or he's the only competent person involved in this whole search.

And to no good.

I think the Russians have in the past done this.

They have placed evidence.

Of course.

To cover up a, yeah.

I guess the other thing to note though about all this debris that was found, there was like maybe one that had like one or two tiny little burn marks, but for the most part, none of this debris had burn hole, like had evidence of fire on it.

And so if you're going with this like catastrophic event as your theory and you think like the plane blew up, you would expect there to be a lot of charred debris.

And there really wasn't any.

There's a lot of pictures of this guy posing with these pieces.

No way.

You know who else there's a lot of pictures of?

The Malaysian government looking real proud of themselves.

No.

About what?

They like would have all these press conferences where all the bigwigs would get together and they'd just be like, we don't know anything, no updates.

And then they would just get together and grin and smile and look like just a bunch of pompous assholes.

You literally did nothing.

You didn't alert anybody.

You didn't tell anyone this was going on initially.

You didn't communicate well with any of the families.

You halted a search that was of no expense to you.

And I mean, there was a lot of searching, but it wasn't like the Malaysian government searching.

It was like the Australians and the Americans and all these other countries involved.

And I just can't get over that.

Like that you would call off a search of no cost to you.

And then four and a half years later, they released this massive report of what they think happened.

And again, didn't really provide any information.

It said there was no evidence that the pilot committed suicide.

Everything was pretty inconclusive.

And the only thing it said was that, yeah, the air traffic controllers were kind of delayed in figuring out this plane was missing.

What is really interesting is the Australian prime minister said that about four days after the crash, the Malaysian prime minister told him that this was likely murder suicide by the pilot.

Or I guess he was like, it's probably a murder suicide.

But the prime minister of Australia was like, honestly, I didn't even know we were still talking about this.

Like there was still an investigation going.

He was like, is this still a thing?

Come on, guys.

Jokes on you, it's 2024.

We know it happened.

Still a thing.

So that's what we've got.

We're going to leave it there, let you guys mull over all of that, a lot of information.

Next week.

And then, yeah, what do you guys think?

Come back next week?

Yep.

Next week.

Yeah.

And we'll talk about our theories.

kait, anything for the people?

Yeah.

After you're finished with this episode, go ahead and swipe down, leave us a five-star review, give us a little comment if you'd like, or share the pod wherever you see fit.

Thanks for joining us.

Yeah.

Thanks.

We'll see you next Tuesday.

See you next Tuesday.

Bye.