Wednesday, August 3, 2022

The disappearing act - Florence de Changy


I remember the MH370 case very clearly. I was in S.E. Asia at the time, chilling out in the Philippines. I knew Malaysia airlines very well, having flown with them numerous times. Not Kuala Lumpur to Beijing (the actual route of MH370), but from KL to Bangkok, Singapore, Manila and also Kunming in the PRC. I might even have been onboard that same aircraft, or have met some of the unfortunate flight crew members.
I remember the airplanes, the airports, the cabin crews and their uniforms, the food and all the amenities. It was one of my favorite airlines. Then came 2014, the annus horribilis of Malaysian aviation: first the disappearance of MH370, then the destruction by a missile over east Ukraine of MH17 bound to Amsterdam, and finally the crash of an Airasia flight that had just left from Indonesia.
MH370 is known as one of the greatest mysteries in modern aviation, maybe the greatest. And it’s had a huge impact on the public opinion worldwide, mostly because of the disappearance narrative, the enormous contradictions, the various parties involved and the desperation of the families of the victims.
I was surprised that no one had actually written a book or made a movie out of it, but I was wrong. Florence the Changy, an excellent French journalist, has dedicated years to investigating the case, and has come up with a remarkable work. Her conclusion might be labelled as conspiratorial by some, but it actually makes much more sense than the official one, which is full of inconsistencies, contradictions and blunders. I was flabbergasted by the implausibility of the official story since the beginning: a plane which is perfectly fine suddenly disappears, stops emitting any kind of signal, changes route, makes a left turn over the Thai-Malaysian border, totally unnoticed, then heads south, pinged by a satellite system that is supposed to do something else, keeps flying for hours undetected and finally crashes fuel-starved into the Indian Ocean. Where no one can locate any remains, even after spending millions of dollars and using the best technology at hand.
De Changy’s version of the story might not be accurate, but it makes much more sense. Read the book and find out about it.

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