Into the Void

Story 1.

The mysterious disappearance of flight 19

In December 1945, five torpedo bombers on a routine patrol over the Bahamas vanished without trace.

It was an incident that would kickstart the notoriety surrounding the infamous Bermuda Triangle, and even now, more than 70 years later, we are still questioning what caused the mysterious disappearance of Flight 19.

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At the western extremity of the Atlantic Ocean, flanked on three sides by the islands of Puerto Rico, Bermuda and mainland Florida, there is a vast expanse of open water, which has allegedly provided the setting for many strange occurrences.

The area, known as the Bermuda Triangle, spans half a million square miles and is home to some of the world's busiest ports and shipping lanes.

But during the latter half of the 20th century, the triangle gained notoriety as it was increasingly reported that many ships and planes entering the region were mysteriously disappearing without a trace, never to be seen again.

Despite numerous investigations and an apparent rise in the number of reported cases within the last 50 years, it seems very few people have been able to provide a clear and definitive answer regarding these vanishings.

Perhaps the most well-known disappearance, a case which single-handedly kick-started more than half a century of foreboding surrounding the area, is that of Flight 19,

a group of five torpedo bombers on a routine patrol flying out of Fort Lauderdale in Florida.

It is a tale that has been told countless times before, in many different incarnations, and unfortunately, like so many mysteries, it has not escaped the hand of embellishment.

The sequence of events has become somewhat distorted over time, muddied by inaccuracies and omissions, to the point where it is no longer obvious which version is the truth.

Our aim here is to retell it as it was officially reported, dispel any myths, and hopefully, give a plausible explanation as to what happened.

Although, we we know in our heart of hearts that this is a mystery which will probably never be solved.

Wednesday the 5th of December 1945 started out sunny and bright, a typical Florida morning for the ground staff of Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale, and one which promised excellent flying conditions.

A series of bombing exercises were scheduled for that day to train new crews of student aviators, and command of one of these crews was given to 28-year-old Lieutenant Charles Carroll Taylor.

Taylor was an experienced pilot who had served two tours of duty in the Pacific Theatre during World War II.

He had accumulated more than 2,000 hours of flying time and had become a training instructor towards the end of the war.

Aside from four other veteran pilots, Most of the airmen were inexperienced flyers, with an average of just 20 to 30 hours flying time apiece, so Taylor certainly had his work cut out.

Nevertheless, he was confident they would get the hang of things quickly, and by that afternoon, they were ready to embark on their training exercise.

Flight 19 took off at 2.10pm, comprised of five TBM Groom and Avengers, and made east for Hens and Chicken Shoals in the Bahamas.

Their mission was to carry out a mock bombing run at a pre-designated area, then continue 90 degrees for 73 miles, before turning 346 degrees north to head in that direction for another 73 miles.

Finally, they would turn 241 degrees southwest for 120 miles, which would take them back to Fort Lauderdale, a total flight time of around 2-3 hours.

As the exercise progressed, things appeared to be going smoothly.

The squadron arrived at the bombing area and dropped their torpedoes in short order without any issues.

But by 3.40pm, the first signs that something was amiss began to manifest.

Several of the crewmen expressed feelings of discomfort and disorientation, and as they made their final turn back towards base, they noticed that hardly anything looked familiar.

At the same time back at Fort Lauderdale, another torpedo squadron was airborne and getting ready to head for the bombing range when their commander, Lieutenant Robert Cox, picked up an unnerving distress call from Flight 19.

As Cox later recounted, he overheard an airman desperately asking for a position check, but no one could give an accurate answer.

Cox intercepted the transmission and asked what the problem was.

And to his surprise, a pilot identifying himself as Lieutenant Taylor responded with an ominous communication that would forever be cemented in Bermuda Triangle law.

He stated,

Both my compasses are out, and I'm trying to find Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

I'm over land, but it is broken.

I am sure I'm in the keys, but I don't know how far down and I don't know how to get back to Fort Lauderdale.

Confused by this statement, Cox radioed back to base, which had also been tracking the radio transmissions, and requested assistance for the beleaguered flight.

Then he advised Taylor to put the Sun on his port wing and fly north up the coast of Florida.

Meanwhile, ground crew at Port Everglades also monitored transmissions and offered their assistance.

Although it was a clear day, Taylor appeared unable to find the sun, but insisted the flight would turn northeast in order to avoid flying over the Gulf of Mexico.

To complicate things further, none of the in-flight navigators could accurately place their position either.

Taylor was asked to switch radio frequencies because his signal was fading out, but for inexplicable reasons, he insisted on maintaining his current channel, then changed course once more in the hopes of finding a recognisable landmark.

By this time, Numerous ground bases had been alerted to the squadron's apparent distress, but they could do little more than monitor radio transmissions and offer course corrections, most of which went unacknowledged as Taylor's frequency faltered.

To make matters worse, by 4.30pm, the weather began to deteriorate, which meant the crew risked having to navigate in poor conditions.

No mean feat for experienced navigators, let alone raw recruits.

especially during that era.

At 5.15pm,

Taylor reported that the flight was going to turn west in order to reach what he assumed would be Florida, but by then, Port Everglades had advised their fuel reserves would not hold out for much longer.

This situation was confirmed when five minutes later, Taylor made what would be his last communication to Fort Lauderdale.

We'll continue to fly 270 degrees west until we hit landfall.

or run out of gas.

Ground-based communications could no longer contact the flight, but could still monitor the crewmen conversing amongst themselves for over an hour.

By 6.20pm,

they heard what would be Taylor's last order to his men.

We'll have to ditch unless landfall.

When the last plane drops below 10 gallons, we will all go down together.

And with that, All communication with Flight 19 ended forever.

As the chilling reality struck ground staff a short time later, the full scale of the tragedy was yet to be realised.

Even before the flight was registered lost, aircraft and crews from naval bases all over Florida took to the air to search for the missing planes.

As the light began to fade, two PBM Martin Mariner aircraft were diverted from their own training flights to assist in the search.

At 7pm,

they split off to cover wider ground, but about half an hour later, one of the mariners reported a radio check and then almost immediately, it too went silent.

Naval authorities now had to search for a sixth plane.

And for the next five days, hundreds of aircraft scoured the entire area for any sign of what had happened.

By the time the search was called off on the 10th of December, more than 930 sorties had been flown in search of the lost squadron and the missing mariner plane, but nothing was ever found, and for more than 70 years, that has remained the case.

Meanwhile, various news outlets had gotten wind of the tragedy, and authorities were flooded with questions which they had no hope of answering at that time.

The Navy placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of Lieutenant Taylor, saying that pilot error had led to a miscalculation in navigation and ultimately doomed the flight to a watery grave.

Many refused to accept this, however, pointing out that Taylor and at least four of his crew were highly experienced pilots.

They questioned how they could have lost their way so easily, especially on a bright clear day.

Why had Taylor largely ignored the advice given to him by ground crew?

Why had his navigational instruments failed so readily?

And why had he not subsequently relied on the readings of his wingmen?

Inevitably, in the years following the incident, many embellishments were added to the story.

There were reports of Taylor and his crew expressing that the sea didn't look as it should and that everything appeared strange.

There was also a famous line about them entering white water and even being chased by UFOs.

The Navy denied that any of these transmissions ever took place, but strange events during that same era do seem to correspond with the notion of something untoward befalling the flight.

There are various reports to suggest that planes were coming into contact with UFOs throughout the 1940s.

During the Allied bombing campaign of 1943, Allied and German air crews allegedly reported seeing strange, glowing craft hovering beside their planes and flying in erratic patterns.

Two years after the Flight 19 case in 1947, American pilot Kenneth Arnold dramatically declared he had encountered a flying saucer in Nevada during a training exercise.

Later that year, an unidentified craft supposedly crash-landed near Oswell Air Base in New Mexico.

Although there is a broad range of theories regarding why disappearances occur in and around the triangle, UFOs have always been high on the list of suspects, and it didn't take long for people to associate them with the disappearance of Flight 19.

Could UFOs or some other strange phenomenon have been responsible for the squadron's vanishing?

It is unlikely.

None of the reported transmissions mentioned anything about unidentified flying objects or of strange phenomena occurring.

But many staunch fringe theorists maintain that the original transmissions had been tampered with to remove any mention of alien craft.

They claim that the supposed embellishments are in fact the real communications and that those reported officially are pure fabrication in order to cover up the truth.

Whatever the case, we may never know for sure, but it has to be said, the official explanation seems far more grounded in reality.

Sceptics have rationalised the actions of Taylor and his men, and presented a theory of what they believe happened, proposing that there really isn't a mystery at all.

Many claim that the navigators were too young and inexperienced to properly guide the planes back home, and that others often overlooked the fact that the exercise employed a strategic navigational technique called dead reckoning.

Dead reckoning is a method whereby a navigator uses the sun's position and the local time to establish their current position and then calculates the position they will be in half an hour's time.

In 1945, 1945, this technique was far from perfect, and for a rookie navigator, one can only guess how difficult it would have been.

The squadron was also hampered by the fact that none of the planes had timekeeping devices installed, and whilst most of the men had their own watches, none of them could find the sun during the latter half of the exercise.

Even though the day had started out bright and clear, the weather deteriorated later on, and with darkness darkness closing in, attempts to locate a recognisable landmark would have been next to impossible.

Another issue that troubles some researchers is that Taylor reported both of his compasses failing without warning, as well as those of his crew.

It has been suggested that the Bermuda Triangle possesses certain magnetic qualities which are known to interfere with compass readings, and that ships and planes have fallen victim to the triangle due to this interference.

However, there is no evidence to support this, and what many people fail to realize is that compasses are not infallible.

They will invariably give different readings over larger areas, especially one as large as the Bermuda Triangle.

Personnel at Fort Lauderdale and Port Everglades triangulated Flight 19's last known position to approximately 80 miles off the coast of Florida, due east of Palm Bay.

It is believed that after the squadron had finished the first leg of its mission, instead of turning 346 degrees north-northwest, they had in fact turned 45 degrees to the northeast, which took them over Great Abaco Island instead of Grand Bahama.

From the air, Great Abaco Island would have looked very much like Grand Bahama, and none of the crew would have been wise to their mistake, especially if they believed their compasses were malfunctioning.

After they had turned 241 degrees to the southwest, thinking they were now heading back to Fort Lauderdale, they would have instead flown over the outlying Abaco Islands in the north, known as the Fish and Pensacola Cays.

And this is where the confusion began.

The Kays are a long outstretched chain of islands, much like the Florida Keys.

and from the air, they look very similar.

Taylor mentioned specifically in his communication that he thought he was over the keys and at that point must have believed his compass was so far out of sync that the flight had actually turned southwest after the bombing exercise towards the Gulf of Mexico.

How he accounted for the fact that they had arrived over the keys in half the time it should have taken them is anyone's guess.

but perhaps he assumed they had picked up a tailwind.

If Taylor did believe he was over the keys, then this would explain why he briefly turned due west before heading northeast.

He was hoping to hit mainland Florida, but in reality, was flying further out into the Atlantic Ocean.

This is supported by the fact that Cox had begun to fly south in the hopes of locating the lost squadron, but found his communication with Taylor was deteriorating.

This suggests that Flight 19 was flying in the opposite direction to him.

and was nowhere near the Keys.

With Flight 19 now over open water, they made a number of course changes in the hopes of finding the mainland, but ultimately ran out of fuel and had to ditch in the ocean.

Several transmissions were heard in which frustrated junior aviators tried to get Taylor to head west, believing they were heading in the wrong direction to begin with, but he insisted they continue on their course.

Many have questioned why they didn't simply change course themselves, but the crew had started to panic, and in their desperation, had probably turned to Taylor, the most seasoned and experienced pilot, to lead them back to land.

This, coupled with their training and discipline, probably prevented them from going against his orders.

One of the biggest questions of all is why no trace of the doomed flight was ever found.

A five-day search in all directions should have turned up at least something.

Rubber life rafts or the crew floating floating helplessly in the water.

But there are those who suggest that once the planes had ditched in the ocean, the men had likely perished on impact.

The Avenger did not have the best record for landing on water.

Perhaps the crews had escaped their planes, but fell victim to sharks, injury or even fatigue, and sank beneath the waves.

As mentioned previously, The triangle is said to encompass almost half a million square miles of open water, and even for a case such as this, the chances of finding survivors, whilst not impossible, must have looked bleak at best.

However, debris was found in the area the Mariner aircraft was last reported, but was never confirmed to be part of that plane.

It sank below the waves before it could be examined.

It is worth mentioning that the PBM Martin Mariners were prone to fuel leaks, and a random spark could ignite the aircraft mid-flight.

As a matter of fact, the crew of the tanker SS Gaines Mills reported an explosion in mid-air at exactly the same time the plane fell off the radar, and in exactly the same area it was last reported.

This seems rather conclusive, and although the cause of the aircraft's disappearance was not related to that of Flight 19's, it was nevertheless a tragic coincidence that they both vanished on the same day and in the same expanse of water.

Whilst we can only surmise the true cause of these disappearances, whether an unfortunate sequence of events or something more sinister and unexplained, it seems that the mystery surrounding this case and that of the triangle itself are inextricably linked.

As one gains in notoriety, so too does the other.

Many believe that finding the missing squadron will somehow yield the key to solving and thus understanding why the triangle has become such an enigma.

And we will undoubtedly return to this part of the world in a later episode.

The TBM Avenger was responsible for sinking both Yamato-class battleships of the Imperial Japanese Navy during the Pacific War.

An amazing achievement in itself, but one which is unfortunately overshadowed by the infamy of this tragic incident.

We must also take a moment to remember each of these men, young, confident American boys, who boldly took off from the tarmac at Fort Lauderdale and flew out into that vast shimmering horizon, seeking only to serve their country and honour their family name.

They could never have known their fate, but perhaps one day,

we will.

Story two:

The disappearance of flight MH MH370 three hundred

In January 2017, authorities solemnly called an end to the global effort which had occupied the minds and the prayers of millions for the past three years.

Over 120,000 square kilometers of Indian Ocean had been combed around the clock with cutting-edge technology, but despite all this effort, we're still no closer to solving the disappearance of Flight MH370.

Flying is one of the most commonly held fears.

The idea of soaring high above the clouds, travelling at more than 500 miles per hour, is understandably a terrifying thought for many of us.

It's easy to believe that aircraft malfunctions occur all too often, especially with TV programmes such as Air Crash Investigation and and Seconds from Disaster reinforcing this assumption.

However, despite the seemingly hardwired reluctance to fly, it is in fact the safest way to travel.

But when the unthinkable does happen, the results are invariably tragic.

The margin of error is so narrow, the balance between success and failure so precarious, that even a minuscule error could spell disaster.

Still, the likelihood of anything untoward occurring on your flight is almost non-existent.

It's something that only happens in movies or to other people you've never met.

It couldn't possibly happen to you.

This is likely what the 227 passengers aboard Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 were telling themselves, as we all do to settle our pre-flight nerves, whilst they taxied along the runway at Kuala Lumpur awaiting takeoff.

After all, they had very little to be concerned about.

The flight path, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Beijing, China is a well-travelled route, with two regular flights every day.

The aircraft, a Boeing 777 commercial airliner, was one of thousands of identical planes which make daily flights all over the globe, and their crew of twelve was led by Captain Zahari Ahmad Sar, an extremely competent and experienced pilot with more than 30 years in the air.

This knowledge likely comforted those on board through takeoff, and for the next half an hour or so, nobody could have suspected that they would become part of one of the most mystifying disappearances of our time.

Very little is known with much certainty exactly what happened.

In their absence, facts and data soon gave way to conspiracy and speculation.

The story quickly became a global headliner.

And those intending to turn a profit, unfortunately, did little more than muddy the already murky waters of the flight's disappearance.

But now, those waters have, if if not cleared, at least settled.

The investigation has drawn to a close, and with the event no longer in the public eye, it is only now that we have a somewhat clearer view.

Now we can better ask, what really happened to this plane and all those aboard?

Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 left Kuala Lumpur International Airport on schedule at 12.42am on March 8th, 2014.

The flight was bound for Beijing Capital International Airport and was by all accounts on course for the next 38 minutes.

At this point, Captain Sa signed off as they switched over from Malaysian to Vietnamese air traffic control with the now infamous farewell, Goodnight Malaysia MH370.

The plane would never be seen or heard from again, as the transponder was curiously turned off shortly thereafter and was not picked up by Vietnamese radar.

Multiple attempts were made to contact the crew of MH370 via satellite phone, which should have worked in the event that onboard communications had malfunctioned, but these all went unanswered.

This behaviour was considered a sign that there had been a terror attack, either a hijacking or sabotage of the aircraft, but this was quickly ruled out as not one single terror group claimed responsibility, which would usually have been the case.

It increasingly became apparent that MH370 was lost, likely having crashed into the ocean based based on its last confirmed position and flight path.

Search attempts were launched almost immediately, but with little idea of where to begin, and given the vast area in which the aircraft could feasibly be, teams from Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore fruitlessly searched the immense stretch of water between Vietnam and China.

In the days and weeks that followed, 40 ships worked around the clock as well as 34 aircraft which flew during daylight hours, scouring an ever-widening expanse of ocean, hoping to catch something, a shadow under the waves, a piece of debris floating on the surface, but it was all to no avail.

26 countries joined the search for MH370, but despite this concerted global effort, no real progress was made.

Understandably, there was a huge outcry from the devastated families of those on board.

criticising officials for their inability to turn up any evidence, prolonging their mourning with no answers as to the fates of their loved ones.

This is not a job that anyone would envy, the odds were completely stacked against the search operation from the very beginning.

However, that is not to say that all criticism of the effort was undue.

Crucially, the initial search had taken place in completely the wrong location.

On the fourth day of the operation, The Malaysian Prime Minister admitted in a press conference that the flight had turned back on itself and flown back over the Malaysian mainland.

As with any case, the first 48 hours are the most important.

Clues diminished quickly during this time, so those first 4 days could well have been critical, and their loss may have played a significant role in the aircraft remaining undiscovered.

Since then, evidence has been near impossible to come by.

But what do we know?

Firstly, It can be determined based on satellite data and information from engineers at Inmasat that MH370 did indeed go missing during the exchange between Malaysian and Vietnamese airspace.

It then took a sharp turn shortly after clearing the Malaysian mainland, doubling back on itself and flying back over the peninsula before turning once again and flying straight towards the Indian Ocean.

There are several things to note about this portion of MH370's flight.

For example, The plane's wing dipped for an unusually prolonged period whilst flying over Captain Saar's hometown of Penang, leading many to speculate that it was a poetic farewell to the pilot's childhood home.

Secondly, and just as bizarrely, the aircraft flew back almost exactly along the Malaysian-Thai border.

Some experts have determined this to have been a calculated move, taken to avoid detection by either country's radar.

These actions are the foundation of one of the more prevalent theories regarding the flight's disappearance.

By this point, it is suspected that the crew on board would have known that something was wrong, which raises one of the key questions surrounding the disappearance.

Why does it seem that nobody on board tried to stop whoever was diverting them?

It has been assumed by aviation experts that the plane was depressurised, depriving the cabin of oxygen and in turn disabling the passengers and crew.

Perhaps there is some comfort in this idea that all those on board died painlessly in their sleep.

long before the aircraft likely plummeted into the ocean.

With the help of Inmasat, we can determine that the aircraft continued out into the Indian Ocean, but with all communications equipment disabled, it is impossible to determine exactly where.

However, a new search area could be drawn up based on fuel reserves and airspeed.

Using these calculations, the net was narrowed to a vast area of the southern Indian Ocean, a region mapped in even less detail than the surface of the moon.

with tropical storms and some of the most tumultuous seas on the planet.

The first piece of wreckage from MH370 took more than a year to surface.

It was a fragment of the plane's wing, which washed ashore thousands of miles from Kuala Lumpur, on Reunion Island, a tiny landmass off the coast of Madagascar.

The specific wing part that was found, the flaperon, casts potentially huge implications on the flight's final moments, according to experts who have tried to fill in the blanks.

However, this is the best anyone can unfortunately manage.

Educated guesses and theories that may sound convincing, but ultimately, will likely go unconfirmed.

This pessimism seems to be shared by the relevant authorities, who in January 2017 called off the search having found nothing but fragments of the aircraft.

The conclusion reached by the Malaysian government and the Australian Transport Safety Bureau was that an oxygen deficiency had incapacitated all on board.

passengers and crew alike.

The plane, then flying on autopilot, continued out into the Indian Ocean before eventually running out of fuel and sinking beneath the surface.

This explanation was unconvincing for many people, as it does not seem to answer some key questions.

Why was the transponder switched off?

How would autopilot fly such a specific route along the border?

Would the emergency air supply not have deployed?

What purpose would the autopilot serve in dipping the aircraft's wing whilst flying straight?

With a sense that this conclusion was incomplete or misleading, the tone of discussion surrounding the mystery soon turned to whispers of conspiracy, which as per usual, run from the plausible to the downright absurd.

Before we share with you some of the more prevalent theories regarding the disappearance, we think it is important to remember that this was a tragedy, with well over 200 families still without knowledge of what happened to their loved ones.

And before condemning anybody, we must recognise that none of these theories have been confirmed as true, and judgment should be reserved.

So with that in mind, what other explanations are there?

Conspiracy theorists have suggested that the flight was detected by radar on approach to the US military base on the atoll of Diego Garcia, and that the aircraft was either instructed to land or shot down by surface-to-air missile defenses after the jetliner failed to respond to warnings.

Much of this claim is based on the geography of the area where MH370 was last recorded, combined with the flight's route, fuel reserves and available landing areas, all of which were consistent with a flight path towards the island.

Notably, these allegations have all been refuted by the FBI, which reported that having analysed the event, the claim was completely unfounded, that there was nothing suspicious whatsoever concerning the flight's relationship with a military base.

Some other theories claim that the plane was taken over remotely in order to foil a hijacking, an idea echoed by the Malaysian Prime Minister in 2018, although he did not give any indication as to who he thought was responsible.

Other more insidious theories circulate, claiming that MH370 was shot down by the usual suspects in the Western world's political blame game, the Russians, Chinese or North Koreans.

This argument would have little credence if it wasn't for the fact that another Malaysian Airlines flight, MH17, was allegedly, though never proven to be, shot down by Russian anti-air missiles, leading many to believe the same could be the case for MH370.

Critically, however, MH17 was shot down in Ukrainian airspace, whereas MH-370 disappeared far from any zones of conflict.

Another interesting conspiracy theory was put forth by aviation expert Jeff Wise and revolves around the fact that 20 employees from Freescale Semiconductor, an avionics company said to specialise in stealth technology, were on board.

Wise noted that the plane was initially believed to have flown north.

This was somewhat confirmed by the fact that the Malaysian Prime Minister Najeeb Razak initially requested for the search to take place in Kazakhstan.

It was only later assumed that the plane had in fact flown south.

When Wise and the Independent Group, an assortment of other aviation experts re-examined the data, they determined that the plane had indeed flown north, whilst false data had been fed to the satellite.

Checking the list of passengers, the group also noted that two Ukrainians and a Russian were on board.

Not much was known about these three individuals, other than the fact that the Ukrainians came from Odessa, a former Soviet naval base, and that the Russian had a penchant for scuba diving.

Wise postulates that the Russian came on board carrying scuba gear and three full-face diving masks.

and that as the plane reached cruising altitude, this man slipped into the electronics and equipment bay once the crew were otherwise preoccupied.

The EE bay, as it is called on a 777, can be accessed through the hatch at the front of First Class.

From here, the Russian would have had control over all of the plane's electronic systems.

First, he severed communications, then plugged in portable equipment, which could upload false data to the satellite.

And finally, he depressurised the cabin.

whilst he and his accomplices breathed oxygen through their diving masks.

The crew would have spotted that something something was amiss by this point, but none of their checklists would have covered a possible hijacking from the EE bay.

The anti-hijacking lock on the cockpit door could also be controlled from here, and it is thought that once the passengers and crew lapsed into unconsciousness, the three men took control of the plane and flew north, landing in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

The cabin was then repressurised before the passengers perished, and the 20 employees from Freescale Semiconductor were put to work for the Russians, spearheading their stealth programme, whilst everyone else on board was for want of a better word, silenced.

But how realistic is this?

A depressurised cabin would have likely killed all on board after only a few minutes, including the Freescale Semiconductor employees, but maybe a few minutes was all they needed to take control of the aircraft without any resistance.

Another theory claims that the plane crashed landed in the remote jungles of Cambodia.

In 2018, a British video producer, Ian Wilson, claimed to have spotted the aircraft's wreckage using Google Maps images dated to that year.

The jungle where the aircraft crashed is not far from the flight's planned route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

This theory is not without doubts, however, as despite photographic evidence of what does appear to be a crashed aircraft in the Cambodian jungle, The plane in the image is roughly 10% larger than a Boeing 777, although true dimensions are difficult to ascertain with pinpoint precision.

Other explanations attempt to explain the craft's disappearance, but like most, fail to answer every question.

A former pilot Christopher Goodfellow speculates that an electrical fire was the most likely cause for disruption.

He claims that the flight experienced a malfunction and turned back towards Malaysia looking for a place to land.

According to Goodfellow, the aircraft would have flown on autopilot as the fire incapacitated all on board.

This seems to be a reasonable explanation.

however, it still doesn't explain why the transponder was switched off or why the route back across Malaysia was so calculated.

The most popular outside theory concerning the flight's disappearance though centres around the pilot Captain Saar.

The story was not echoed by official sources.

However, many invested in the story have reached the conclusion that he had planned the tragedy from the beginning, intending to commit suicide, wanting never to be found.

In the time leading up to the flight, Saar had been practising strange routes on his simulator, which he used in a separate room, isolated from others.

It was discovered on his computer after the disappearance that he had practised the exact route taken on that fateful day, but the final destination could not be determined.

It was also made public that Saar was going through marital problems in the months before the flight, which seemed significant when compounded with the specifics of the flight path.

Firstly, as previously mentioned, Saar dipped his wing for a prolonged period over his hometown of Penang.

Whilst this could easily be a coincidence, many have suggested that it was in fact a dramatic farewell to the captain's childhood home before doing the unthinkable.

The details of the flight's return can also be explained by Saar's involvement.

The transponder was switched off from the cockpit during the handover between airspaces, which many many assumed to have been a calculated action to avoid detection.

The route taken back across the Malaysian mainland was also a seemingly precise path meant to avoid showing up in either Thai or Malaysian airspace, a skilled manoeuvre only achievable for a pilot of Saar's experience.

It is assumed that at this point, the crew would have realised that something was wrong.

Experts have speculated that Saar would have been the one to depressurise the cabin and incapacitate those on board, including the crew, although it is unsure whether he was assisted by the co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid, or if Saar had to incapacitate him as well.

Only at this point would he have been able to take the plane off course, flying out into the Indian Ocean, although it cannot be said exactly for how long.

The best estimates of the flight path suggest that Saar could have flown for over 6 hours on the fuel reserves left after the initial manoeuvres.

Experts have estimated that he could have coasted for another 100 nautical miles after the plane had run out of fuel, essentially using the aircraft as a large glider.

This suggests that the plane did not go into a steep dive and crash into the ocean, which arguably would have resulted in far more fragments of wreckage being discovered.

Instead, it is assumed that the plane descended relatively gently onto the surface of the sea, before taking on water.

and slowly sinking beneath the waves.

This is the most popular of the theories surrounding the disappearance, but again it cannot be confirmed, and we must reiterate that this is not to condemn any one person, as nobody can say with any certainty what exactly occurred that day.

There is still fierce debate over what became of MH370, with theorists pointing fingers at everybody from the Russians to aliens.

Usually when discussing such topics, the correct answer is often the simplest.

Yet with this case, none of the possible explanations seems to satisfy every last inexplicable detail, and so with MH370, the realm of possibility is still very much wide open.

Whilst for investigators, this purgatory of perhaps never knowing is a frustration, it is important to bear in mind the families of those lost, who in this same state of limbo find little hope that their questions and maybe even their prayers will ever be answered.

It is to these families, those of every single person aboard aboard that flight, that our hearts and deepest sympathies go out to, and we sincerely hope that they one day have the answers they so desperately need.

Pentonists.