You're listening to Unexplained, Season five, Episode eleven, Destination Unknown, Part two. Kate gazed up at the stars as the boat gently glided across the ocean. The dead, calm waters were a marked contrast from the treacherous weather of the last few days, and as Kate's husband Mark slept below deck,
she was grateful for this quiet moment of solitude. For the past few weeks, Kate had been learning the constellations of the night sky and was enjoying testing herself on one of the clearest nights in days when she spotted something unexpected, an orange speck just above the horizon to the north. Perhaps it was Mars, she thought, as she looked about for any other sign of the red planet, then turned back to find, much to her confusion, that
the orange speck was now moving directly toward her. It was only then she realized with some alarm, it was orange because it was on fire. The couple were in the midst of a journey across the Indian Ocean at the time, making their way from Cochin in India to Fouquet in Thailand. It had just gone ten minutes past seven pm Coordinated Universal Time or UTC with their boat heading northeast between the tip of North Sumatra and Great
Nicobar Island when Kate saw the unusual object. As she would later claim on her travel blog a few months after the apparent event, Kate first assumed the object to be a meteor or perhaps some kind of missile, before realizing with horror as it drew nearer that it was in fact a plane tearing through the sky at what must have been barely four thousand feet, with a trail
of thick black smoke billowing out from behind it. It wasn't until the couple arrived in Fouquet two days later that they heard the news of the missing plane, and it was only when Kate looked back at the log
book soon after that she made the startling discovery. Ten minutes past UTC on March seventh, the time Kate claimed to have seen a burning plane in the sky, also happens to be ten minutes past two am on March eighth, Malaysian time, or rather precisely the time that Malaysia Airways flight MH three seventy was picked up on a military radar close to Great Nicobar Island, shortly before it vanished.
If Kate's sighting is to be believed her and Mark's boat would have been almost directly underneath it at the time. Five days after Flight H three seventy disappeared, the Wall Street Journal published an article detailing the revised information about the plane's last known whereabouts and its unknown turn to either the north or south, adding further confusion to the situation. The Malaysian government first denied the claim, only to then
confirm it two days later. As the loved ones of those on board wrestled with this startling new information, search and rescue experts assessed the two possible options. Since it was considered highly unlikely that the plane had flown back over China and into Kazakhstan without being picked up on a number of national military radars, that left only one possibility that, due to a strange and unlikely set of circumstances, Flight MH three seventy had flown inexplicably right into the
vastness of the wide open Indian Ocean. Assuming the plane had eventually come down in the water, the point of impact was judged to have been somewhere in the southern corridor of the Southern Indian Ocean, an area considered to be mostly within Australia's aeronautical and maritime Search and Rescue region. It was therefore agreed that Australia, in coordination with the
Chinese and Malaysian governments, would lead the search. They were joined by ships and aircraft from New Zealand and the US as they focused first on an area roughly six hundred thousand kilometers squared in size, beginning three thousand kilometers southwest of Perth. It was an area described by Australian Prime Minister at the time, Tony Abbot as being as
close to nowhere as it's possible to be. In the meantime, as relatives and loved ones demanded more information, Malaysia Airlines, and since it was the national airline by extension, the Malaysian government, were left to make sense of just how an earth the plane had got to where it did.
Together the fact that had clearly been flown manually for a significant part of the altered route and had not engaged in any May day communications, not to mention the lack of any credible evidence to suggest it was a terrorist attack, presented a very uncomfortable possibility that either the pilot or co pilot had deliberately brought the plane down
as part of a murder suicide event. Pilot fifty three year old Sahari Ahmed Shah from Penang, first joined Malaysia Airlines as a cadet before eventually being promoted to captain of a Boeing seven thirty seven in nineteen ninety one, working his way up to captain of the Triple sevens in nineteen ninety eight. All in all, he had over eighteen thousand hours of flying experience and was one of
the most senior and trusted pilots at Malaysia Airlines. By contrast, his co pilot, twenty seven year old First Officer Farike Abdul Hamid, was a rookie by comparison, having clocked roughly two thousand, seven hundred hours of flight time. In fact, flight MH three seventy was only his sixth in the cockpit of a Triple seven and his first without the
supervision of a training pilot watching over him. The day after the plane's disappearance, Malaysian police began an investigation into the men's private lives and their movements leading up to the flight, in the hunt for any sign that they might have orchestrated the disaster. Both were found to be in stable relationships, with Captain Shah having been married for years and Farik Hamid reportedly engaged and looking forward to
getting married himself. According to their employer, neither had shown any signs of stress in the weeks prior to the flight, nor had any history of drug dependency, anxiety, or apathy. CCTV footage was also analyzed from the day of the flight for any sign of emotional distress in the body language of the pair. This assessment was also extended to the ten cabin crew on board, but nothing untoward was discovered.
Although it reveals nothing of an individual's precise state of might, the fact that both men had prestigious jobs for the nation's flagship airline, especially with Hammid only being at the beginning of his career with much to look forward to, was only further reason not to suspect either of any wrongdoing. However, though Hammid was quickly ruled out as a legitimate possibility, when investigators delved a little deeper into Captain Shah's private life,
they found not all was quite what it seemed. In truth, although Shah was married, he was now living alone after his wife had moved out of their marital home and into a second home owned by the couple in Kuala Lump. All three of their grown up children had also moved out by this point. An analysis of his social media history also revealed a man a little at odds with his professional persona. At some point, Shah appeared to have become fixated with two teenage sisters models based in Penang.
In the twelve months leading up to the plane's disappearance, Shah left over ninety comments on their Facebook pages, all of which went ignored. Shah was also a vocal critic of the Malaysian government, describing Prime Minister of the time Nagie Razak on Facebook as a moron and writing later rather ominously, on May twenty third, twenty thirteen, there is a rebel in each and every one of us. Let
it out. There were question marks two about the nature of a relationship with a thirty five year old woman and mother of three whom Shah had grown close to in the months leading up to his disappearance. The woman claimed later that the pair had met while volunteering during the Malaysian elections, and that they were not having an affair, but rather that Shah had seen potential in her and that he wanted to help build a better future for
her and her children. Some have suggested, however, that perhaps her interpretation of the relationship and his actual hopes for it were some distance apart. It all seemed to paint a picture of a man who had perhaps grown frustrated with his lot, and who was ultimately very lonely and sad.
As the search continued for any sign of debris from the plane, numerous large objects were spotted with satellite imaging, including one piece thought to be seventy nine feet long, but by the time boats and aircraft were dispatched to the area, the objects were gone. On March twenty fourth, Malaysia's Prime Minister Naji Brazac publicly announced what had long been suspected that flight MH three seventy had most likely crashed in the Southern Indian Ocean and there were no survivors.
Then on April twelfth, Startling news Is revealed that a signal coming from copilot for Eke Abdulhamid's phone was picked up sometime around two am Malaysian time, just minutes before the plane vanished from radar screens for the second and final time. Experts theorized that a drop in the plane's altitude as it flew close to Penang Island may have
enabled a mobile signal to reach it. However, since it wasn't clear if Hammid had attempted to call himself or merely that his phone had somehow been switched back on at this time, there was little to garner from the information. As the days turned to weeks, with nothing to show for it, the search of the ocean's surface was ended
in late April. Any chance of recovering the plane's black was also swiftly dwindling, since in the event of a crash, they were only required to continue emitting a signal for up to thirty days. Afterwards, the main focus of the search then turned to the ocean deep. However, with so little known about the area and any data they did have of such low resolution, scientists had to perform a
bathymetric survey before they could even begin. The process involves the use of an echo sounder beacon being towed underwater by boat using sonar technology to pin down and receive back an image of the seabed. It is a painstaking process. With the first basic survey complete in May, the more
precise underwater search for the plane was resumed. Then in July, a second extraordinary Malaysia Airways disaster occurred when another Bowing Triple seven flight M seventeen, carrying two hundred and ninety eight passengers and crew, was hit by a surface to air missile while flying above eastern Ukraine, killing all on board. The missile was found to have been launched from an area of the country being occupied by pro Russian forces.
The Russian government denied all knowledge of the attack. Aside from being an obvious tragedy for those on board and a further pr disaster for Malaysia Airways, The event was however, unlinked to flight MH three seventy, and so the search continued week after week, month after month, but still no sign of the plane was discovered. On January twenty ninth,
twenty fifteen. Having gathered no conclusive evidence, the Malaysian government declared the disappearance simply an accident with no survivors, and the search was paused due to bad weather this year and refocusing on what it means to take care of myself and it couldn't be easier than with Daily Harvest. Daily Harvest delivers delicious food or built on organic fruits and vegetables right to your door. It takes literally minutes to prepare, and I never have to think twice if
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you can too. Get started today. Go to Daily Harvest dot com and enter promo code explained to get twenty five dollars off your first box. That's promo code unexplained for twenty five dollars off your first box at Daily Harvest dot com. That's Daily Harvest dot com. In early twenty fifteen, Blaine Gibson, who'd sold his parents' home back in Carmel, California some time ago, was living in law overseeing the construction of a restaurant on the Mekong River.
Throughout it all, he'd continued to keep a close eye on any MH three seventy news, even joining a number of Facebook groups to discuss the subject with others. In March twenty fifteen, outside a large shopping mall in Kuala Lumpa, a ceremony was held to commemorate the victims of the
tragic event, but also to agitate for further investigations. At the back of the stage, a large poster carried the silhouetted image of a Boeing Triple seven, accompanied by the words where, Who, Why, How, alongside impossible, unprecedented, and vanished. A crowd of hundreds had gathered to watch, and standing
at the back behind them all was Blaine Gibson. He, like most of the attendees, had openly wept when Grace Subethiri Nathan had taken to the stage to describe what she loved most about her mother, who had been lost with all the others on the plane. Blaine had been so moved by Grace's words that when he saw her afterwards, he felt compelled to offer her a hug, to which she gladly accepted. The pair would go on to become
good friends. But what struck him most as he watched her speech, unable to ignore the large poster behind her, was that single word that seemed to stick out more prominently than any other vanished. What the missing passengers loved ones needed more than anything, he thought, was something tangible. Without this, they would remain forever in limbo, imprisoned by an impossible hope that there might yet be survivors, but equally unable to move forward and begin to come to
terms with the more tragic and likely scenario. And so he got to thinking, why hadn't anything of the plain been found yet? If it had indeed crashed into the Indian Ocean and disintegrated on impact, as most suspected, could it be? He thought that the experts were essentially looking in the wrong place, four thousand kilometers to the west
of the underwater search area. On Wednesday, July twenty ninth, twenty fifteen, a beach clean up crew were busily scouring the stony beach along the coastline of Saint Andre, a town in the northeast of the French Overseas region of Runion. The crew, led by forty six year old Johnnie Begg, had been up since seven am, gathering all the usual bits of detritus that gets swept in from the ocean, plastic bottles, broken nylon, fishing nets, and various other pieces
of mostly plastic. With the heat of the day beginning to rise, the group took a short break around nine, giving Johnnie just enough time to head off in search of a stone that he could use as a pestle for grinding spices. After a few moments scanning the pebbles, he noticed something unusual rocking by the waterline as shallow waves lapped softly against it. The object, roughly one and a half meters squared in size, was gray in color and appeared to be made of a combination of aluminium
and some other fibrous material. It looked a lot like part of an airplane wing. Johnny called for his colleagues to join him, and together they hauled the item from the beach. The piece, along with the tattered remains of a fabric suitcase also found by Janni, was eventually sent to to Lose in France the following day to be analyzed, and then on August fifth, twenty fifteen, the news was announced.
The object was identified as a flaperon, a section of airplane wing used to control speed and lift, and it had come from flight H three seventy. The flaperon was the first physical evidence that the search crews had been right to suspect the plane had ended up in the Indian Ocean, as Blaine had begun to suspect. What they seemed not to have paid much attention to was how if the plane had broken up into pieces, much of the debris would have long been carried away from the
search area by ocean currents. By the time Jeannie Begg had found the first piece, Blaine had already traveled to the coasts of Mayan, mar the Maldives, and Mauritius in his own effort to find something, and though he'd come up empty handed so far, Beg's discovery confirmed he was
on the right track for friends and family. However, despite it being ultimately a welcome turn of events, the flapron's discovery was a hammer blow, concrete proof that whatever had happened to the plain, their loved ones had not survived. After flying to Reunion to speak directly with Janni Beg, Blaine then traveled to Australia to consult with two oceanographers to determine where would be the most likely place for
any debris to turn up. They concluded the coasts of Madagascar and Mozambique, and so it was that in February twenty sixteen, Blaine found himself sat in the bow of a small fishing boat just off the coast of Villanculus in Mozambique, shielding his eyes from the spray as he and his guide Suleiman headed out toward a nearby sandbank. Blaine squinted towards the under the brim of his fedora, clasping down firmly on the top of it to stop
it blowing away as they shot over the water. Arriving soon after, Sulliman secured the vessel and invited Blaine to jump out to begin their search. They hadn't been looking long when Sulliman shouted over to Blaine, holding a weathered two feet wide, grayish looking object above his head. It was only when Blaine got closer he could clearly see
the words no Step stenciled onto it. Blaine delivered the now infamous no Step piece of debris, later determined to be a horizontal stabilizer panel to the Australian console in Mozambique after being flown to Australia. Further analysis suggested it was in all likelihood a part of MH three seventy.
When news of Gibson's efforts to aid the search went public, and after he was widely hailed as a hero, Having now unequivocally found himself tied up with the story, Blaine was soon introduced to an entirely different aspect of the planet's interest in what had happened to the plane. It was something he'd noticed seeds of in those first Facebook groups he'd joined soon after the plane disappeared, but was
by now fostering entire mythologies of its own. At first, he was merely chastised by people online for exploiting the misery of the family's link to the disaster. Others derided him for his seemingly egotistical efforts to needlessly involve himself in the search, but most, in what seems to have become a feature of modern life, simply didn't believe him. Some accused him of being a stooge, believing he was a plant for the Russian government, others that he was
in fact working for the American government. Either way, all were convinced he was part of an elaborate a global cover up to hide what had really taken place, and soon all manner of theories were being posited, and not always from the more extreme ends of online culture. The plane had been taken by a Russian special ops team,
suggested one writer in a New York Magazine article. Others believed the US military shot it down after it was spotted heading toward a US military base in the Indian Ocean. Rupert Murdock even offered his theory that it had indeed been hijacked as a part of a jihadist plot to cause trouble for the Chinese government. Others suggested it had been captured by aliens, or that it had simply vanished
into a wormhole and been transported to another time. And yet, despite Blaine finding three more pieces on the northeastern shore of Madagascar in June twenty sixteen, nothing of the pieces revealed anything to comprehensively discredit any one of the theory about what had happened. Then, in July twenty sixteen came an incredible revelation. The news was confirmed by Australian officials who until then had for sensitive diplomatic reasons, agreed to
keep it quiet on behalf of the Malaysian government. It concerned the discovery made by Malaysian police a few days after the plane disappeared of an elaborate computer setup for the Microsoft Flight Simulator program. The system had been installed in Captain Zahari Shah's home, complete with multiple screens and manual controls, all designed to precisely mimic the cockpit of
a Boeing seven seven seven. There was nothing unusual about it as such, since it is something that many pilots do for themselves to keep sharp and busy between flights. But what was intriguing was the single set of deleted miles that appeared to relate to a trip that Sharp programmed himself into the simulator back in February twenty fourteen,
a month before the fateful flight. Unable to get more information themselves, the Malaysian police sent the files to the FBI for further analysis, and what they found astounded them. In total, they uncovered six deleted data points, each containing a record of the plane's speed, altitude, and direction at the time, along with a number of other parameters. Incredibly, the root Shah had plotted followed almost precisely the route taken by MH three seventy, as measured by the INMARSAT
data readings. In short, in what seemed too much of a coincidence for some, only weeks before MH three seventy disappeared over what many have calculated to be the middle of the Indian Ocean, Zahari Shah had flown almost to the exact same course on his flights ulator. The flight paths were not precisely identical, but the similarity was undoubtedly jarring, and though some have taken this as conclusive proof that Captain Shah was responsible all along, others have cautioned against
jumping to conclusions. The following June, as Blaine Gibson continued to find more and more pieces of the plane in Madagascar, he made arrangements to create an official channel to take care of transporting the pieces to Malaysia for further analysis. After liaising with the Malaysian consul, it was agreed that all pieces should be delivered to the Honorary Consul to Madagascar, Zahid Raza, who in turn would personally supervise their delivery
to Kuala Lumpa. But then something unexpected occurred. On August twenty fourth, shortly after overseeing the transfer of six pieces found by Blaine, Sahid Raza was traveling through the island's capital and tannon or Evo in his car when an individual pulled up beside his vehicle on a motorbike and opened fire, killing him instantly in a hail of bullets.
Though many were quick to note that Raza had made numerous enemies during his time in Madagascar, the incident did little to quiet and the growing number of conspiracy theories surrounding the plane's disappearance. Blaine Gibson, for one, was convinced the assassination was connected. In response, he stopped disclosing his travel plans to anyone that didn't need to know, stopped using email, and rarely spoke to people on the phone. He even took to regularly swapping out his SIM card
for extra precaution. He also became convinced he was being followed and photographed. With a renewed sense of purpose, however, Blaine continued on his quest. Meanwhile, the official search of the ocean floor in the hope of finding the fuselage
the plane's black box also continued on. Despite covering an area roughly two hundred and eight thousand kilometers squared in size, nothing was found, and there was further disappointment when it was revealed that the batteries and the plane's black box had died and not been replaced before the plane had even taken off, removing once and for all any hope
of ever finding it. In May twenty eighteen, the official search was called off, though private searches continue with the help of a group of committed independent researches that have become known as the Independent Group. There remains no further evidence to explain the event. By September twenty nineteen, Blaine Gibson had been responsible for finding roughly a third of
all pieces of MH three seventy debris. A twenty nineteen study conducted by the University of Miami Rosenthal's School of Marine and Atmospheric Science suggested the most probable crash site in the Indian Ocean was at twenty five degrees south in latitude, some distance further north of where most of
the official underwater search had been conducted. In March twenty twenty, some friends and relatives of those lost on board the flight gathered together at the Marriott Hotel had Putrajayah in Malaysia to commemorate the sixth anniversary of the plain's disappearance, and though many remained committed to continuing the search for their loved wants, others have done what they can to
find ways of carrying on. In February twenty twenty, after six grief stricken years, Danika Weeks, whose husband Paul was lost on the flight, found love again, remarrying in a private wedding ceremony on Australia's Sunshine Coast as her and Paul's two sons watched on beside her. While every Saturday in han Dan, China, farmer Lee Eriaale finds a quiet moment to step out into the field surrounding his home
to make a call on his mobile phone. Taking it from his pocket, he types out his missing son's long disconnected number, then presses dial and holds it gently up to his ear. If you enjoy Unexplained and would like to help supporters, you can now do so via patroon. To receive access to add free episodes, just go to patron dot com, forward slash Unexplained Pod to sign up, or if you'd like to make a one time donation, you can go to Unexplained podcast dot com forward slash support.
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