Resources

The diversion likely resulted from manual inputs

Official 2018 consensus. Who made the inputs is not identified. Mechanical-only stories are a poor fit for a coherent reverse course plus comms dropout.

Turn back across the Malay Peninsula

17:21–17:52 UTC

Primary radar shows a left turn off the Beijing airway, a crossing of Malaysia, and a track toward the Andaman Sea. The official report calls this diversion likely the result of manual inputs.

Communications were more likely switched off or unpowered than randomly failed

ACARS, transponder and VHF drop together near IGARI. The report favours manual off / power interrupt, without proving intent.

Flight-crew diversion

Manual inputs from the cockpit — who, and why, unproven

The 2018 report says the turn-back likely resulted from manual inputs. It does not identify a crew member as perpetrator and did not treat the home simulator as a plan.

Kok Soo Chon

Chief inspector · Malaysian Annex 13 team

Presented the 2018 report: diversion likely from manual inputs; who made them unknown; cause undetermined.

Malaysia releases the safety investigation report

30 July 2018

The ICAO Annex 13 team, led by Kok Soo Chon, publishes hundreds of pages and cannot determine the cause. Diversion is judged likely from manual inputs. Third-party intervention is not excluded.

Safety Investigation Report — MH370

Malaysian ICAO Annex 13 Team · 30 July 2018

The official accident report. Cause undetermined. Diversion likely from manual inputs; third-party intervention not excluded; 00:19 log-on treated as fuel exhaustion. No wreckage, no recorders.

Who was flying after IGARI?

Official report: cannot establish if anyone other than the two pilots was at the controls. Manual inputs likely; actor unknown.

Capt. John Cox

Accident investigator · former US Airways

June 2026: preponderance of the evidence is a deliberate act, high likelihood the captain. Reads FIR-boundary timing and the reverse course as too coordinated for a random failure.

Capt. John Cox: preponderance is a deliberate act, high likelihood the captain

June 2026 interview. FIR-boundary dropout, reverse course, ocean leg — too many coincidences for a random failure, in his reading. Not a court finding and not the 2018 report’s wording.

MH370: The Forensic Evidence

Capt. John Cox · Sit Down With Sid · 13 June 2026 · 37:10

US accident investigator. Reads the transponder drop at the FIR boundary, the southwest run to MEKAR, the northwest turn, and the 300-mile ocean leg as too many coincidences for a random failure. Preponderance, in his view: a deliberate act, high likelihood the captain.

MH370: The Plane That Disappeared

Netflix · three episodes · March 2023

Louise Malkinson’s three-part series gives one episode to each of three tellings: the pilot, a Russian hijack (Jeff Wise), and a US intercept (Florence de Changy). Families and Malaysia Airlines crisis staff are interviewed. It is a survey of hypotheses, not a finding.

Bathymetry and underwater search begin

October 2014

Fugro vessels and partners begin wide-area bathymetric mapping and towed-sonar search of a defined 7th-arc corridor.

The Operational Search for MH370

ATSB AE-2014-054 · final search report 2017

Australia’s account of how the southern Indian Ocean search box was drawn, refined, and exhausted over 120,000 km². Primary technical home of the 7th-arc argument used in the field.