Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 with 239 people on board took off from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing about ten years ago. After 40 minutes, we heard nothing more about it.
“I think it's certainly the biggest mystery of modern aviation,” aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey told Fox News.
The plane veered radically off course. His telemetry stopped. Satellites picked up a few pings that followed it to the southern Indian Ocean. And then it disappeared.
“No one can understand how a modern airplane like a Boeing 777, with all its electronics and communications, can disappear without a trace,” Godfrey noted.
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MH370 victim Philip Wood and his partner Sarah Bajc. (Sarah Bajc)
Those at the airport in China could only wonder, including Michigan native Sarah Bajc, who was waiting for her Texas boyfriend Philip Wood, who was on the plane. They planned to start a new life together abroad.
“He didn’t come, and he didn’t come,” she told Fox. “You know, it was like, 'How could this happen, how is this possible?' There was no evidence of an accident.”
Greg Palkot in Reunion, where a piece of the MH370 plane was found, July 2015. (Fox News)
The disappearance sparked a multinational, multi-year air, sea and underwater hunt, one of the largest of all time. And it produced very little results.
With the exception of a few pieces of the plane washed up on distant coasts, including a piece of wing found in Reunion in 2015.
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Sarah Bajc and Philip Wood were going to start a new life together abroad. (Sarah Bajc)
As families of the victims gather this week for memorial events, theories about what caused the crash are still alive.
Theories range from a mechanical malfunction to foul play by the pilot and even a broader political conspiracy.
“How can ten years go by,” Sarah noted, “and we still don't know what really happened. It's the biggest trauma.”
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Six years after the last search, there is new hope for answers to the aeronautical enigma.
Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim was quoted as saying this week: “I am inclined to support the reopening of all investigations into MH370.”
A Texas-based marine robotics company, Ocean Infinity, which previously tried to find the plane, now says it has new, cutting-edge underwater equipment and wants to try the hunt again.
Map indicating the possible location of MH370 using new WSPR technology. (Richard Godfrey)
In a statement provided to Fox News, the company said it hoped to “narrow the area of research to that in which success becomes potentially achievable.”
Specialists, led by aerospace scientist Godfrey, developed a clever way to track the plane's trajectory. He can locate it minute by minute simply by studying tiny disturbances in radio waves.
“I think it will just take some additional research,” Godfrey said confidently. “As long as we look in the right places, we will find it.”
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This is reassuring news for the traveling public, as answers to what happened could secure new safety systems to prevent this type of tragedy from happening again.
“Ten million of us fly every day,” Godfrey said, “and they want to know they will get to their destination safely.”
It's also reassuring news for those who are still grieving, including Bajc, who is trying to find peace at the Camaroncito EcoResort &.Beach, an establishment she created in Panama with her new husband.
A French officer takes a photo of debris on August 11, 2015, in the eastern part of Sainte-Suzanne, on the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean, during search operations for missing flight MH370. (Richard Bouhet/AFP via Getty Images)
“Of course I have wishes,” she said. “We all want a resolution. Leaving the issue open is like a wound that can never fully heal.”
After all these years of mystery surrounding MH370, everyone hopes that healing from this disaster can truly begin.