What really happened to flight MH370? In The Disappearing Act, French journalist Florence de Changy presents her theory
- Hong Kong-based correspondent Florence de Changy believes that the plane was shot down and the truth covered up
- In her book, she attempts to demolish the accepted narrative, as well as countless conspiracy theories
The Disappearing Act: The Impossible Case of MH370 by Florence de Changy, pub. Mudlark
Were it not so excruciating, the whole sordid affair would be spellbinding. “And for our next trick,” announces the Malaysian-Australian-American conjuring act, “we’ll make this ultra-safe airliner, with 239 people aboard, vanish!”
But seven years later, the victims’ families still don’t know how, or why, they did it.
The first hint of obfuscation in the saga that began on March 8, 2014 is in the book’s title. And as de Changy writes, “It was not possible […] for a Boeing 777 to have simply disappeared.” What she ironically calls “the greatest mystery in the history of aviation” is, she believes, its biggest con.
In a video call from her junk boat in Aberdeen, Hong Kong, French investigative journalist de Changy, correspondent for Le Monde, remains indignant at what she calls an “outrageous” sleight of hand that “just doesn’t add up. A story as nonsensical as that, it drives me crazy,” she says. “From the beginning, it was an insult to human intelligence.”
A week later, Najib Razak, then Malaysian premier, claimed MH370 had abruptly changed course following “deliberate action” by someone on board. The Boeing had skirted Sumatra, it was said, before heading thousands of kilometres southwest over the Indian Ocean and crashing, out of fuel, west of Australia.
The most extensive, expensive and, alleges de Changy, pointless search in the annals of aviation followed – all to conceal reality.
That might sound preposterous, but a closer examination of the facts implies otherwise. Central to de Changy’s thesis is a 2.5-tonne item of cargo loosely described as “electronics equipment”, apparently from Pakistan, reportedly delivered to Kuala Lumpur in a “sealed truck […] under security escort” and loaded aboard MH370 without being scanned. The intention, de Changy believes, was to compel the Boeing to land, extract the cargo and put MH370 back into the air to Beijing. Such a theory will no doubt be decried as fantasy as media outlets continue to propagate official reports.
But what if, as she suspects, the mystery cargo was stolen surveillance equipment the United States could not permit Beijing to obtain – under any circumstances? Might that explanation make sense of the cryptic message delivered to a relative of Captain Zaharie in 2018?
At a chance meeting, Zaharie’s nephew asked a Malaysian Ministry of Defence officer outright if she knew anything about the disappearance. Quoting the reply, de Changy writes: “‘All I can tell you is that they are collateral damage. I am very sorry for your uncle.’”
03:43
Five years on, families of missing MH370 passengers still seek answers
In the first few days after the disappearance, de Changy reports, aircrews from Cathay Pacific and Malaysia Airlines – who subsequently proved untraceable – reported debris floating in the sea southeast of Ho Chi Minh City. Soon after came the infamous Inmarsat satellite “pings”, which, if they existed at all, constituted a trail of breadcrumbs pointing in the wrong direction, believes the author. At about the same time, staff in the satellite communications industry, in Singapore and elsewhere, were being made to sign gagging affidavits – at the behest of the FBI.
And then there is the intriguing role of the guided-missile destroyer USS Pinckney. Having joined the media-documented part of the search off Vietnam, the ship was suddenly subjected to an “operational security” directive that prohibited contact between the crew and their families and friends, essentially clamping down on “all talk about the activities and whereabouts” of the vessel. De Changy postulates that it was sent to clean up the crash site.
And yet, diversion and misdirection or not, could such a monumental secret really be kept for so long by so many people? Could de Changy herself, previously left shaken after being “unpleasantly” warned off, then predictably attacked on social media as a conspiracy theorist, have been “played”?
I’m serving no one with my final theory anyway – I’m blaming everyone
“I wondered,” she admits, “but my sources are so different; and I built my case with all these tiny jigsaw pieces. Up to half come from official documents, public or confidential. So you can’t be ‘used’ if you’re digging into official documents yourself. I have first-hand witnesses from around the world, I have images, [data], other [uncorroborated] sources I haven’t used. I kept it in mind, but I’m serving no one with my final theory anyway – I’m blaming everyone.”
Gruesome though it may be, there is also the question of the 239 bodies: where are they? If MH370 crashed into the South China Sea, were they, as de Changy suspects but doesn’t explore in the book, recovered by the US Navy?
“Maybe it’s not very brave of me, but I thought I just wouldn’t go there, because of the families, some of whom I know. The best case would be if the plane was shot [at] and everyone died in a split second,” she says. “You don’t want to compare it to MH17 [destroyed over Ukraine in July 2014]. Such detail will only come out with the final truth – if the sailors involved in the clean-up say something; if the satellite images are confirmed to be what some people think they are.”
The truth is out there – but not at the bottom of the Indian Ocean.
