Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 – An Unsolved Mystery
On March 8, 2014 a Malaysia Airlines jet carrying 239 people on board vanished from the radar screens. The Boeing 777 was on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it disappeared . Almost three years later the three countries that looked for the missing plane, China, Malaysia and Australia, announced that the search was being called off. The disappearance of Flight 370 is surely one of the greatest aviation mysteries of all times.
About an hour after it had taken off from Kuala Lumpur the pilots communicated with ground control for the last time. Then the jet changed its course and turned south, flying towards the Indian Ocean. Investigators claim that the plane had flown for at least another 5 hours before crashing into the sea.
In July 2015 , part of a wing was found on Reunion Island. Since then over 20 objects from the missing plane have been found. The plane’s flight recorder, which could unravel what happened on board, was never found.
In the last three years search crews scanned over 120 000 square kilometres of the Indian Ocean. However, officials say that it is virtually impossible to pinpoint the exact location of the crash. The most expensive airplane search in history cost about 150 million dollars. Despite the best technology available, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 could not be found.
Support groups who represented the relatives of the passengers said they were disappointed that the search had been called off.
Related Topics
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- MH370 - A Plane That Went Missing 5 Years Ago
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Words
- announce = to say officially
- available = to be had, on hand
- aviation = everything that has to do with flying airplanes
- call off = stop
- claim = to say that something is true
- despite = even though
- disappearance = when something goes lost and cannot be found
- disappointed = unhappy because something was not the way you expected it to be
- flight recorder = a tool that records a plane’s position, as well as how fast and in which direction it is moving
- ground control = people on the earth who are responsible for leading an aircraft
- investigator = person who tries to find out the truth about why something happened
- official = person in a high position
- pinpoint = to find out exactly
- radar = an object that uses radio waves to find out the position of something
- scan = to examine an area very closely
- search crew = people who were looking for the aircraft
- support group = group of people who help others
- unravel = to explain something that is complicated or mysterious
- vanish = disappear
- virtually = almost
- wing = flat part of a plane that sticks out from the sides