According to Malaysia's MH370 Safety Investigation Team, MH370 began to deviate from the planned flight path after passing through IGARI - a positioning point on the route from Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) to Beijing (China). Primary radar data recorded the plane making a left turn right after this point.
This was a turning point that caused MH370 to no longer follow the original flight path. Instead of continuing to head towards Vietnam and China, the plane turned back and flew over the Malaysian peninsula. The military radar then continued to record MH370 heading towards the southern area of Penang Island.
To recreate how the plane performed the diversions, the investigation team conducted 7 simulation sessions on the Boeing 777 simulator. 6 sessions were aimed at recreating the left turn after IGARI, while the 7th session recreated the right turn when the plane was south of Penang Island. The simulations were built based on primary radar data that recorded the flight path of MH370.
Simulation results show that the headset is likely to be performed when the aircraft is controlled manually, instead of autopilot mode. However, the investigation team did not determine whether the next two changes of direction, in southern Penang and near MEKAR - a positioning point on the flight path, were performed manually or in autopilot mode.
After passing through the southern Penang area, MH370 continued to fly west, towards MEKAR. The Malaysian military radar recorded the disappearance of MH370's target at 6:22 pm 12 seconds UTC on March 7, 2014, equivalent to 2:22 pm 12 seconds on March 8 Malaysian time, at a location about 10 nautical miles north of MEKAR.
But this is not the end point in the picture that the investigation report reconstructed. In the conclusion, the investigation team said that after turning around through the Malaysian peninsula and turning south of Penang, MH370 had another turn towards the South Indian Ocean but was not recorded by radar. The investigation team assessed that this chain of flight path changes could hardly be explained solely by abnormal incidents in the aircraft system.
The report does not identify who controlled MH370 during this process and also does not identify the cause of the disappearance of the aircraft's landing gear. The identification of the cause of the disappearance is significantly limited because the wreckage of the aircraft and flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders have not been found.
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) to Beijing (China), lost contact on March 8, 2014 when carrying 239 passengers.
