The shocking truth about MH370

After more than a year since the disappearance of flight MH370, criticism still persists about Malaysian Airlines safety issues which were found wanting. Malaysian Airlines has performed very poorly financially, since the disappearance of MH370, the shooting down of MH17, and boycotts by Chinese that brought a reported 50% drop in tourists compared to the previous year.

The Malaysian Government's poor response to the MH370 disappearance showed up both the lack of transparency and the dismal state of the Malaysian media that has been shackled for years. Ministers and public officials were not used to the scrutiny the international media put them under.

The second issue was the poor coordination between civil and military authorities. This was not unique to Malaysia, the same problem purportedly occurred during the 911 terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001. Although Flight MH370 was detected by Malaysian military radar crossing the Malay Peninsula soon after the final voice communication to Kuala Lumpur Air Traffic Control, it took civil authorities a number of days before they moved the search from the South China Sea to the Andaman Sea and Indian Ocean. Vietnam also expressed concerns that Malaysia was not forthcoming with new information and cooperative.

This leads onto the third issue of international defence capabilities and cooperation, which appear very poor out of this disaster. MH370 must have come up as a radar signature across Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia. According to reports, it was only after MH370 had disappeared 9 days that the Thais informed the Malaysians that they had picked up an unidentified flight crossing the Malay Peninsula. According to Indonesian authorities no unidentified flight was ever picked up on radar, which hints that either the system wasn't being used or MH370 very skilfully flew along the boundaries of the radar detection area of Indonesia.

This raises questions about actual ASEAN military surveillance capabilities.

Given that military authorities may be hesitant to disclose the extent of their respective early warning radar systems, The Mail suggests that air defences may not be what they are supposed to be.

The delay in sharing vital information with Malaysia shows the poor state of defence cooperation within the region.

The fact that a large modern airliner could just disappear has been met with much disbelief, leading to a number of conspiracy theories.

Some claim that the aircraft was hijacked by North Korea over the sea for the new technologies that Boeing 777 has incorporated within the plane. A US science writer Jeff Wise, who regularly appears on CNN postulated that the aircraft flew north rather than south into the Indian Ocean and landed in Kazakhstan. Other theories put forward include the United States shot down the plane to prevent a drone shot down by the Taliban over Afghanistan with secret technology in the cargo bay, didn't get into the hands of the Chinese. A variation on this theory is that the aircraft was forcibly taken to a US base on the Indian Ocean Island of Diego Garcia, where the crew and passengers are captives.

Still more theories speculate the plane's disappearance was about a life insurance scam, the plane was captured and exchanged for MH17 which was shot down over the Ukraine, later in August 2014, the plane was cyber-jacked electronically, and the plane was abducted by aliens.

Even though fragments of MH370 found on Reunion Island and have been confirmed as parts of MH370, there are some who claim that the pieces are fake, and one of the above conspiracy theories hold.

Debris found washed up on a beach along the East Coast of Thailand earlier this week were suspected of being parts of MH370, until this was discounted by aviation authorities in Bangkok.