M H 370 through, inadvertently alerting ATC. This is first seen with the approach to waypoint IGARI, just outside Vietnamese airspace, when Malaysian ATC passed MH370 over to Vietnam. It dropped off radar entirely, most probably because the transponder was deliberately turned off. It took 17 minutes for Vietnamese ATC to realise this. With both ATCs expecting the other to have contact with the flight, an added complexity was that the airspace is, technically, Singapores, but was in the process of being transferred back to Malaysia, leaving a bit of a grey area. The flight continued, but had turned off the registered flight plan. Instead of heading north to Beijing, it headed west, tracking along the border. Inmarsat, the UK satellite communication company that provides the network links between aircraft and ground stations, was able to confirm that the handshakes from the aircraft were happening every hour for another seven hours, with no other communication made with the ground. This led to the potential hypoxia theory, which has since been discounted, as additional Malaysian military satellites were able to confirm the first part of the flight path, when MH370 dropped from ATC screens. It flew back over Malaysia with a hard U-turn with a very high bank angle a manoeuvre that is impossible to complete with autopilot; If you wanted to disappear, this would be the location to do it it had to be flown manually, again, by an experienced B777 pilot. If you wanted to disappear, this would be the location to do it because of the five-nation interchange. Though one airspace belonged to another country, it was decided it would be easier to let the other area handle it. This sometimes led to confusion, hence the 17-minute gap before anyone realised that MH370 was not on the primary radar. The flight then continued to fly across the Malaysia/ Thailand border, but from the detailed flight tracking by Malaysian military radar, it was clear the aircraft was hand-flown at this point, because of the continual heading changes. The track aligned with the ATC airspace/ border: again, detailed knowledge and skill would have been required to fly this and not incur a military interception. If that had happened, it would have lead to a very different outcome Other unexplained events are that two SATCOM calls to the flight from the company were able to connect Debris from MH370 found washed up in Mozambique and ring in the cockpit, but were not answered. Crew oxygen was refilled in Kuala Lumpur and there was a mobile handshake from the FOs personal mobile phone as the aircraft made its final pass overland perhaps the FO was in the cabin trying to make a call? Inmarsat was able to substantiate that there were seven automated logon attempts to establish links between the aircraft and a geosynchronous satellite over the Indian Ocean, two initiated by the aircraft and five by a ground station in Australia. These happened every hour for seven hours, producing the well-known arc that the wreckage could be on. Technical improvements Now that Covid-19 travel bans have been lifted, pressure on airspace is increasing. In the current environment, could something like MH370 happen again? What have we changed that would stop such an incident? When MH370 disappeared, ADS-B signals could be picked up only by ground stations once the aircraft was in range and MH370 was well within the normal range when it disappeared. Today, ADS-B transmissions are collected via the Iridium satellite constellation, comprising of 66 low-orbit satellites. So, if an airliner was flying an unplanned route over the Indian Ocean today, it could in theory be tracked via ADS-B, provided its transponder was still transmitting. From 2025, Airbus has designed an ADS-B backup that would be triggered automatically in an in-flight emergency it is essentially an upgrade of the ELT. Additionally, a distress tracking capability will be added, so if a aircraft rolls or pitches at excessive angles it will begin to transmit and the pilot will not be able to override it. Its a bit like the bad driving indicator on some cars. Another trigger that has been added is that the avionics can detect whether a aircraft is in distress or if it should be transmitting when it isnt. 20 THE LOG Spring 25 pp18-21 MH370.indd 20 17/03/2025 14:16