Anna Zvereva from Tallinn, Estonia on Wikimedia

Eleven years after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 went missing, people are still scrambling to find the missing jet. All across the world, the disappearance of the plane has left everyone stumped. Sure, theories exist—including one that's extremely plausible and widely believed by aviation experts to be the true cause—but how can we ever know what really happened aboard the stricken aircraft? And will we ever even find the wreckage?

In this article, we'll break down the background behind the mystery, as well as highlight any popular theories that explain the vanishing. If you're not already familiar with the story, you're in for a ride, so grab a snack and hold on tight.

What Happened?

In the early morning of March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 took 227 passengers and 12 crew to the skies. The plane, a Boeing 777-200ER, departed from Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia, and was headed toward the capital of China, Beijing. In the cockpit were 52-year-old Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, and 26-year-old First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid. For Fariq, this flight was supposed to be the last in his training, and he was due to be examined on his next scheduled departure.

All communications and clearances appeared normal for the first half hour, but less than an hour after takeoff, Captain Zaharie made his last contact with ATC after being instructed to contact Ho Chi Minh as the plane would be flying into the country's airspace. The plane never contacted the tower in Vietnam, however; instead, the transponder—a device that transmits a response to radio signals—onboard the aircraft stopped working, and the passenger jet vanished from Kuala Lumpur ATC's secondary radar.

But that isn't where the story ends. The plane was still being tracked on Malaysian military's primary radar, and for another hour, it saw the deviated path that MH370 started taking. The aircraft, after losing contact with ATC and dropping off secondary radar, had almost immediately made a sharp left turn. It then crossed the Malay Peninsula and traveled out over the Andaman Sea. When the plane was 200 nautical miles northwest of Penang, Captain Zaharie's hometown, it disappeared from military radar.

The only reason investigators know that MH370 had remained in the air after vanishing from radar is the fact that the plane's satellite data unit (SDU) made "log-on requests" every hour, creating seven "handshakes" in total before all contact was truly lost. The last "log-on request" was a partial one, and investigators believe that the last exchange happened when the jet lost all power due to fuel exhaustion before sinking into the Indian Ocean.

The Growing Mystery and Countless Theories

Antonio Zugaldia  on Wikimedia

Dozens of theories immediately started making headlines when the news broke out that MH370 was missing. Fire, for one, was at first a very probable scenario. But this was instantly ruled out when it was revealed that MH370 made a sharp left turn after dropping off radar and, instead of contacting Kuala Lumpur tower for an emergency landing, continued flying southwest until it went over the Andaman Sea.

Some also believed that the plane may have been hijacked. They theorized that the hijackers instructed the captain to land on a remote island, though researchers have found no such runway capable of taking a jet that size. This hypothesis was also ruled out when the first confirmed pieces of wreckage of MH370 were found.

Others, like American political commentator Rush Limbaugh and French journalist Florence de Changy, believed that the plane may have been shot down by US forces to prevent "secret tech" from getting into China. But if that had happened, the wreckage would have dispersed near the location where the plane lost contact with radar, instead of being found thousands of kilometers away.

The most compelling and widely believed theory is that Captain Zaharie deliberately made the plane disappear from radar, cut off all contact with the rest of the world, and crashed the plane into the Indian Ocean. This theory was later strengthened by the reveal that a similar flight path had been conducted—then deleted—from the captain's home flight simulator. The meticulous methods used to drop MH370 from contact and trackers also make this theory all the more plausible, along with the sharp left turn that experts claim could not have been done by anyone other than a human pilot.

Could Something Like This Happen Again?

It's frightening to imagine, but as long as human pilots are driving the plane, the same human pilots could crash it. It may not always be a deliberate action, but humans are fallible, and errors can still happen in the cockpit.

While aviation safety is constantly improving and making changes so that previous accidents don't happen again, it's impossible to ensure every plane that lifts off will land without trouble. That being said, the chances of another disappearance like MH370 are incredibly slim, considering that modern aircraft are now equipped with more advanced tracking systems and pilots need to follow stricter protocols so that unusual behavior is flagged long before a plane drops off the grid.

Airlines have also tightened psychological screenings and monitor workloads more closely to catch potential issues before they escalate. And while no system is perfect, the industry learns from every incident, even if painfully, so that future flights become even safer. In other words: yes, aviation might still carry risk, but a vanishing act on the scale of MH370 is far less likely to happen now than it was in 2014.