Resources

Malaysian 370: What Happened?

National Geographic UK · 3 March 2015

Early network special, filmed before most African debris and before the 2018 report. Useful as a snapshot of what was sayable at year one; superseded on debris and end-of-flight.

Factual Information — MH370

Malaysian investigation team · interim releases 2014–2015

Early factual compilations: aircraft history, crew, cargo, ATC transcripts, radar, SATCOM. Released before debris and before the 2018 analysis chapters. The 8 March 2015 issue (updated 15 April 2015) is held here as a downloadable original.

USAF PB2020 — MAGIC/Orion continued after 2014

PE 0305205F · Congressional adds FY2015–FY2018

MAGIC/Orion did not fade from the budget after 2014. Adds: $20m FY2015, $5m FY2016, $50m FY2017, $40m FY2018, on top of $19m FY2012 and $50m FY2013. Post-2016 money was for airworthiness, cybersecurity, interoperability and mission capability toward a deployable Block 1 Orion.

Flap-track fairing found in Mozambique

27 December 2015 / identified 2016

A right-wing no. 7 flap support fairing is recovered at Daghatane Beach, Mozambique. Stencilling matches Malaysia Airlines practice; ATSB judges it almost certainly MH370.

Flaperon confirmed as 9M-MRO

3 September 2015

French authorities confirm the Réunion flaperon belongs to MH370. The disappearance is no longer a missing-aircraft case without wreckage.

Right flaperon — Réunion

Found 29 July 2015 · confirmed 3 September 2015 as 9M-MRO

First physical evidence. Internal part numbers traced through EADS CASA to 9M-MRO. A 777 flaperon does not drift from Kazakhstan or the South China Sea to Réunion.

Right flaperon found on Réunion

29 July 2015

A Boeing 777 right flaperon washes ashore at Saint-Denis, Réunion. French authorities later confirm it is from 9M-MRO — the first physical evidence.

Saint-Denis, Réunion

Flaperon find · 29 July 2015

First physical evidence of 9M-MRO, 16 months after disappearance.

Cubic US6641087B1 — anti-hijack remote pilot

Commercial retrofit · satellite relay · cockpit exclusion

Confirmed patent. Activation onboard or by remote override; deactivate normal pilot control; uplink airspeed/altitude/fuel; optional disable of ordinary communications; CVR/FDR upload. USPTO: 4-year fee 4 May 2007, 8-year fee 4 May 2011, expired 4 Nov 2015 for later non-payment. In force on 8 March 2014. No installation evidence in this archive.

Jeff Wise

Aviation journalist · Finding MH370

CNN-era MH370 analyst. Author of the 2015 northern-hijack / spoofed-BFO thesis. Host of Finding MH370. Treats the default pilot-suicide search as a failed prediction because the wreck is still unfound.

Landing MH370

Jeff Wise · Finding MH370 S1E27 · 28 November 2024 · 45:12

The northern-landing telling: discard or spoof BFO, keep BTO, fly borders, land at a long Central Asian runway (Wise’s 2015 candidate was Yubileyniy / Baikonur). Requires the African debris field to be explained away.

Orion’s first flight carried no mission system

Confirmed by contemporary September 2013 reporting and consistent with PB2015’s FY2014 “best of breed” sensor-selection language. December 2014 endurance attempt was flight 18 with 1,000 lb ballast — also not an ISR-payload demonstration. Those two flights do not decide what Orion was, and they do not decide March 2014.

Cubic remote-pilot patent was maintained through March 2014

US6641087B1: 4-year fee 4 May 2007, 8-year fee 4 May 2011, expired 4 Nov 2015 for later non-payment. Continuation US10/684,316 abandoned 18 Jan 2007. IP interest retained; prototype/certification still OPEN.

Is the public ACARS log missing a block of messages?

Jericho 2019 attributes a ~26-minute exclusion in the released ACARS traffic log and an ACARS-unavailable window of roughly 22–78 minutes. Needs a line-by-line check against the MOT 2015 Factual Information ACARS appendix.

Jeff Wise: northern hijack to Kazakhstan, BFO spoofed

2015 New York Magazine thesis, restated in Netflix episode 2 and in Finding MH370 “Landing MH370.” Keep BTO, discard or spoof BFO, fly borders, land on a long Central Asian runway. Requires the African debris field to be explained away.

What platform received the FY2013 dual-band RF Persistent Sensing integration?

PB2015: completed and integrated onto an ‘identified platform,’ then the effort ended. Public exhibits do not name it. FIRST RF / Shadow 200 and ISIS test-facility work are documented UHF/X-band alternatives. Orion is chronology-only.

What was on Orion flights 2–17 between August 2013 and March 2014?

First flight: no mission system. Flight 18 (Dec 2014): ballast. The MH370-relevant interval is the unlisted sorties in between, plus whether the ‘second flight series’ PB2015 said was being scheduled had begun by 8 March.

CSIRO debris-drift studies

Griffin, Oke, et al. · 2016–2017

Oceanographic reverse-drift of the Réunion flaperon and other debris, used to weight 7th-arc latitudes. Field trials on a replica flaperon informed windage.

Daghatane / Mozambique coast

Flap-track fairing and other almost-certain pieces

Gibson recovery wave. Almost-certain MAS 777 parts.

FIRST RF Phase II — dual-band UHF/X-band airborne SAR

FA8650-11-C-1016 · $749,593 · start 26 Jan 2011 · topic AF093-138

Official SBIR: lightweight dual-band UHF/X-band SAR on a modified Artemis COTS radar plus FIRST RF single-aperture antenna. SWaP ~20 lb / 150 W. Design target included Shadow 200. A concrete alternative to treating Orion as the unnamed FY2013 RF Persistent Sensing platform.

ISIS

Integrated Sensor Is Structure · DARPA/USAF airship radar

Same PE as MAGIC. Lockheed integrator, Raytheon radar, ~$400–462m. Stratospheric airship with very large low-power radar. Confirmed programme; no evidence of MH370 collection.

Lockheed awarded ISIS Phase 3

27 April 2009 · just under $400m

Lockheed integrator, Raytheon radar, one-third-scale autonomous airship. Same later PE as MAGIC.

MAGIC

Medium Altitude Global ISR and Communications

USAF endurance-ISR programme. Air vehicle: Aurora Orion. Office: 645 AESG / BIG SAFARI — the same rapid-acquisition group that ran Gorgon Stare and took Blue Devil residuals. Confirmed as a multi-day ISR platform in that family. A specific MH370 operation is not established and is not ruled out.

MAGIC was designed for multi-INT payload modularity, not only endurance

OSD PB2012 lists EO/IR, SIGINT, GMTI, wide-area surveillance, communications relay and strike as modular payload classes, plus reduced-manning / open-architecture avionics. That is the documented architecture. It is not an installed-GFE list for March 2014.

Malaysia announces the southern Indian Ocean track

15 March 2014

Prime Minister Najib Razak states that new satellite data show MH370 flew for hours into the southern Indian Ocean. The search pivots.

MH370 Daily Research — working papers

18 September 2026

Working ISR report, source ledger and master chronology gathered the same day, with a cited-URL set pointing at contemporary MAGIC, Orion and Gorgon Stare reporting.

Orion 80-hour remotely controlled flight

December 2014 · 1,000 lb ballast · fuel for ~37 more hours

Contractor-confirmed endurance after MH370. This was flight 18 and carried 1,000 lb of ballast. Shows the air vehicle matured; does not rewind payload status to March.

Orion first flight, China Lake

24 August 2013 · ~3.5 hours · 8,000 ft · no mission payload

Remote launch from GCS. Air vehicle and command link demonstrated. ISR stack not yet fitted.

Orion flight 18 — 80-hour record with 1,000 lb ballast

December 2014 · not an ISR-payload demonstration

Aurora’s endurance attempt was flight 18 and carried 1,000 lb of ballast. Maiden flight (no mission system) and this record flight both fail as evidence of an operational ISR stack. Payload on flights 2–17 remains open.

OSD PB2012 — MAGIC JCTD primary record

PE 0603648D8Z · pp. 32–33 · USCENTCOM sponsor

Primary OSD budget exhibit: MAGIC is a USCENTCOM-sponsored JCTD. 120-hour sortie, nominal 1,000 lb / maximum 2,600 lb at 15,000 ft. Modular payload classes: EO/IR, SIGINT, GMTI, wide-area surveillance, communications relay, strike. Transition named to USAF 303rd AESW.

The Debris Swarm

Jeff Wise · Finding MH370 S1E19 · 15 November 2024 · 39:26

After six months with only the Réunion flaperon, a cluster of western-Indian-Ocean pieces appears in 2016. CSIRO reverse-drift and barnacle work are the scientific spine; the swarm’s timing is the puzzle Wise keeps open.

What sensors were actually on Orion by March 2014?

Orion was selected as MAGIC’s multi-day, multi-sensor ISR aircraft. First flight had no mission system; flight 18 (Dec 2014) carried ballast. Those two points do not empty the aircraft. Sorties 2–17, including March 2014, are the hole. Gorgon Stare / MTS-B / VADER remain live leads, not closed fits.

What were the two MAGIC JUON numbers and the FY2012/13 add sponsors?

USAF says two Joint Urgent Operational Needs for long dwell / persistent ISR. Exact numbers, submitting commands, and the $19m / $50m Congressional language are unresolved.

Wikipedia — Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

en.wikipedia.org · living page · read 18 September 2026

Crowd-maintained digest of the public case: 239 dead, 9M-MRO, 8 March 2014, KUL–PEK, cause undetermined. Useful as a citation map into ATSB, MOT, Inmarsat and Ocean Infinity. Not a primary source.