MH370: 10 years later, families hold out hope for answers

It is one of the world's greatest aviation mysteries. On March 8, 2014, a Boeing 777 vanished with 239 passengers and crew on board. The airliner was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, but less than an hour after taking off, the flight disappeared from radar.

The plane's last communication was made by pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah, who said goodbye after leaving Malaysian airspace.  

Despite years of searching, the plane has never been found. A 2018 report concluded the plane's communications transponder was manually turned off shortly after the pilots last communication, with plane reportedly turning west of its intended flight path, over northern Malaysia.

It was last seen on military radar over the Strait of Malacca off the southwestern coast of Thailand. Malaysian authorities later said the plane had been deliberately diverted.  

Since then, the largest piece of physical evidence was a flaperon, a piece of the wing, that washed ashore in 2015, 16 months after the disappearance, on the coast of Reunion Island in the western Indian Ocean off the coast of Madagascar.

A piece of wing flap was also found on Pemba Island off the east coast of Tanzania. Other, smaller pieces of debris have been found washed ashore in Madagascar, Mauritius and South Africa.

Despite three official investigations, and extensive searches of the Indian Ocean using sonar and underwater vehicles, what happened to MH370 remains a mystery. In October 2017, Australian investigators released a final report saying it was a "great tragedy" that victims' families could not be given closure. In 2018, a search by a private US seabed exploration company, "Ocean Infinity" did not yield results.

Families still seek closure

The Malaysian government recently said they could begin a new search if new evidence emerges of what happened to the doomed airliner. Ocean Infinity has indicated it would be willing to lead a new search on a "no find, no fee" basis.

Relatives of family members who were on the missing airliner have welcomed the idea.

K.S. Narendran told DW there were "many difficult times" since his wife, Chandrika, boarded the ill-fated plane ten years ago.

"I would welcome what the Malaysian government has indicated, in terms of the search it is willing to support," he told DW from Chennai, India. He added he hopes the government and Ocean Infinity can reach an agreement on a new search.

Narendran published a book in 2018 about how MH370 families are coping with losing their loved ones: Life After MH370: Journeying Through a Void.

Most of the passengers on MH370 were Chinese nationals, and now dozens of their relatives in China are seeking major compensation.

Court hearings began for over 40 family members in Beijing in November who are seeking up to $11.2 million (€10.3 million) in compensation from Malaysian Airlines, Boeing and engine maker Rolls-Royce, among others.

Over 100 other family members have already reached compensation settlements, ranging between $300,000-$400,000, according to Chinese state media reports.

Nicolette Gomes' father, Patrick, was a cabin crew supervisor on MH370.

"Never in our wildest dreams this would happen to our own family members. It still is difficult, the memories still linger, and we still think of him every day and he's still much present in our lives," she told DW from Malaysia.

"Even though it's been 10 years, it feels very fresh to us. I get very emotional when I think about it. I hope the government will keep to their word and we pray that we all get closure soon," she said.

"Of course, we have to think about the possibility of not having any news so fast, it could be this year, next year or five years down the road, and we pray it will be a successful search. The only thing we can do is pray. It is a very sad day on March 8 for all of us," Gomes added.

Could MH370 still be found?

Jeff Wise, a science and aviation journalist who produces the podcast Deep Dive:MH370, told DW that carrying out a new search in the southern Indian Ocean would be "delusional."

"There's no evidence that the plane went to the south anymore. To restart the search, is just to demonstrate that they [authorities] don't understand what's going on," he said.

Wise was referring to "Inmarsat" data, from a British satellite telecommunications company that recorded automated signals transmitted from its satellites to MH370, which suggested the plane flew for several hours before ending somewhere south in the Indian Ocean.

But Wise, who has closely followed the disappearance since the beginning, claims that authorities did not thoroughly analyze the data, and are basing their assumptions on an incomplete interpretation.

"They didn't question any other aspect of the case. They took a fairly shallow look at it," Wise said.

Wise said that the barnacles found on the piece of MH370 wreckage that washed ashore on Reunion Island in 2015 can provide better clues to the drift pattern of wreckage across the sea.

Sea life could help investigators narrow their search

Barnacles grow differently on objects depending on how long the object has been submerged and according to water temperature.

Knowing the how long a barnacle has been attached to an object and the temperature where it grew could provide clues to narrow down a search area.

A study published in August 2023 in the science journal AGU Advances outlined new methods that could be used to analyze barnacle shell data to determine drift paths in the ocean that could be applied to locating MH370.

"I really want people to look at the marine life growing on this debris. We need to think about this case in a different way," Wise said.

Edited by: Wesley Rahn