Finding MH370

In the second episode of a two-parter about this June's amazing discovery of a Pan Am DC-4 that lay in 2,000 feet of water off the coast of San Juan, Puerto Rico for 74 years, I talk with Tony Romeo, CEO of the underwater survey company Deep Sea Vision, whose HUGIN 6000 Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) detected the plane's wreckage on its first pass over the search area. Tony talks about how he used the same equipment to search some 5,000 square miles in the middle of the Pacific for the wreckage of Amelia Earhart's plane, and explains how he would look for the wreckage of MH370. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Finding a missing airliner on the seabed is something that's naturally going to be of great interest to anyone fascinated by the mystery of MH370, and today I’m going to be talking to someone who has done just that: Russ Matthews, President and Co-founder of the Air/Sea Heritage Foundation, who organized an expedition that this past June found a Pan Am passenger plane that had lain undiscovered on the seabed near Puerto Rico for more than 70 years. To learn more about the Air/Sea Heritage Foundation, visit their website at https://airseaheritage.org/. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sid Gandotra, the host of the “Sit Down With Sid” podcast, interviews a lot of people from different corners of MH370 world, including a lot of people who frankly I don’t see eye to eye with. I consider him a neutral arbiter: he’s willing to listen to what others have to say, and he’s not afraid to pass on the criticisms of me that he’s heard from other people. In today’s episode I respond to those critiques. For more information about today's episode visit the showpage at FindingMH370.com, where you can also sign up for a free newsletter that goes out with each episode. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In 2015, French hydroacoustic researcher Dr Jean-Yves Rocher and his team collected data from a network of buoys that had been recording underwater sounds in the southern Indian Ocean for the past year--including the moment that MH370 presumably ran out of fuel and crashed there. He submitted his findings to French and Australian search authorites, but they never published it or released it to the public. In today's episode we learn for the first time what his data revealed. To provide context, we also talk with retired US Navy intelligence specialist Robert Parker and University of Washington hydroacoustic scientist David Dall-Osto. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Malaysia government has extended by one year the no-find no fee deal that it made with Ocean Infinity last March to search for the missing Malaysian airliner. Under the terms of that deal, Ocean Infinity would search a 15,000 square kilometer area of the southern Indian Ocean near the 7th arc and receive $70 million if it was successful. The company would have 18 months to complete the search. This past March, however, the company threw in the towel before the deadline expired. Why the change of heart? We don't yet know, but what's clear is that another chapter in the saga of the missing plane appears to be in the offing. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

There's never been an air accident like MH370, but that doesn't been that we can't learn from cases that share common characteristics. Today we discuss the case of a Peruvian 727 that vanished in the midst of a repositioning flight from Malta to Peru. My co-host is Ed Dentsel, host of the Unfound podcast. Shockingly, I had never even heard of the case until Ed brought it to my attention. Though similar to MH370 in many ways, it offers some striking contrasts as well, and in particular highlights the tremendous advances in satellite communications and navigation technology that took place during the 24 years that separate the two events. In other news, I’ve got a new poll question up to test of your core MH370 knowledge — have you been paying attention? To give it a go, click here . #MH370 #unsolvedmystery #mystery #unexplained #unexplainedphenomena To learn more about this episode, to sign up for a free weekly newsletter, or to view other episodes from Season 1 and 2, please visit our show page at FindingMH370.com. Another way you can support the show is by signing up for a membership to the YouTube channel, which provides a small subscription fee and is hugely appreciated, more here: https://www.youtube.com/@Jeff_Wise/join For a concise account of the MH370 mystery check, and an explanation of what might have happened to it, check out my book "The Taking of MH370,” availalble on Amazon: https://a.co/d/3DePduu Don’t forget to Like, Comment, and Subscribe! Contact me: jeff@jeffwise.net Jeff’s Blog: https://www.JeffWise.net Jeff on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/jeffwise.bsky.social Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I’ve been unflinchingly critical of other people’s videos about MH370, and now the shoe’s on the other foot. An account called Aviation Files has put up a video entitled “MH370: Why It Never Crashed” that gives a detailed account of my investigative efforts into MH370. It’s gotten quite a response — as I write these words, about a month after its release, it has been viewed nearly 180,000 times. As far as I know it’s the first time anyone has done a detailed third-party critique of my work, and of course I’m interested to see how the ideas I’ve been developing have been making their way out into the information ecosystem. In today’s episode I watch and give my response in real time. You can see the Aviation Files video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29yWY63Tvs8&lc=UgzL0DDkNvJPKiC0LK94AaABAg.AVvoHJ3TzogAWkTwKJMj7O Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Someone took MH370. But who, and why? In today’s episode of Finding MH370, we delve into the motivation and methodology of one potential culprit with someone who has a rare and compelling perspective — recently retired CIA officer Sean Wiswesser, who spent decades studying and applying the lessons of espionage and spy tradecraft. I want to be clear up front, I’m not talking to Sean about what the CIA thinks happened to MH370. Rather, we're discussing the strategic environment in which the disappearance took place. That will help us understand the number one question that people always ask me: Why was this plane taken? What was the motive? The most widely held assumption, of course, has long been that the captain must have taken the plane. In the previous three episodes, we saw how the three pillars underlying that main theory turn out to be fragile. The implication — that the captain wasn’t the culprit — leaves us with only one plausible alternative explanation, that the hijacking was carried out by extremely ruthless and sophisticated outside actors. Namely, Russia. But why would Russia want to do such a thing? This is where Sean Wiswesser’s expertise comes in. He has studied their motives, he has studied their mindset and their methodologies, he has gone toe to toe with Putin’s Russia for decades. You can find his book here: https://www.usni.org/press/books/tradecraft-tactics-and-dirty-tricks Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the previous two episodes I talked about how search officials became convinced that the plane must have gone into the southern Indian Ocean because they didn’t think that debris could be planted, and they didn’t think that Inmarsat data could be tampered with. Today I’m going to talk about a third belief: that the plane had to have been hijacked by the captain because that’s who was in the cockpit, and the plane can only be flown from there. It was a reasonable-sounding assumption, but it turns out to be wrong. There is a relatively simple way to fly the plane from the electronics bay, and I was able to figure it out in detail by looking at publicly available documents and talking to professors at aeronautical universities and retired control system engineers. To help me explain it, I’m honored to be joined today by John Waters, a former US Air Force fighter pilot who now flies 777s for a living, and is also the host of the excellent Afterburn Podcast. As for this podcast, if you want to get a free newsletter that goes out with every new episode, you can sign up at the showpage, FindingMH370.com . Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Soon after MH370 vanished in 2014, investigators became convinced that there was only one possible explanation: that the plane's captain, Zaharie Ahmed Shah, had hijacked the plane and carried out an elaborate and technically sophisticated plan to commit mass murder-suicide by flying to a remote stretch of ocean and crashing there. Underlying their sense of certainy were three core beliefs. In today's episode we explore the second of those: their belief that the data that they had received from the plane’s satellite communication system, and which scientists had analyzed to designate a search area, was 100 percent reliable and couldn’t have been tampered with. We'll look at new research which finds that the 777 data bus is actually wide open to data tampering, and that by feeding falsified information into a program called the Doppler Precompensation Algorithm, sophisticated hiijackers could have made the plane seem to investigators like it had traveled south into the remote ocean when it had actually flown north to an airfield in Central Asia. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In July of 2015, fifteen months after Malaysica Airlines Flight 370 disappeared into the night, a piece of its right wing washed ashore on La Réunion island in the western Indian Ocean. Investigators hoped that barnacles growing on the wing could offer a clue as to where the plane had crashed. But unfortunately, so little was known about these creatures at the time that no inferences could be drawn. Over the last year and a half, I've been carrying out a project to collect scientific drifter buoys that have come ashore, in order to collect the barnacles growing on the and create a database to finally show in detail how these animals grow, so that we can at last understand what they're trying to tell us. Now that we've collected more than a dozen buoys from all over the Pacific and Indian Oceans, a picture is starting to emerge that is quite at odds with what investigators expected -- and indeed, even thought possible -- at the time. Also in this episode I respond to a critique from the man who once headed up the seabed search conducted by the Australian government, and I explain why the seabed search for MH370 might be permanently over. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

With the latest round of seabed search suspended after a fairly miniscule of progress, there’s a lot of frustration right now about the search for MH370. A lot of people just can’t believe that, in this day and age, countries like the United States and Australia, which have some of the most advanced technology in the world available to them, can’t find a 200 foot long airplane with 239 people aboard. One of the most frequent comments I get is, “I can’t believe that the government doesn’t know where the plane is,” or, put another way, “the government isn’t telling us the whole truth.” Well, over the years I’ve talked to a fair number of people inside the official investigation, and I think I have a fairly well grounded understanding of their mindset, and I will say that, while there isn’t a grand coverup going on, there are definitely things that the government — whether that be Malaysia, Australia, or the United States — isn’t telling us. In today’s episode I’m going to talk about what those are and why they matter. Get full access to Finding MH370 at www.deepdivemh370.com/subscribe Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It’s Sunday, February 8, and Armada 86 05 has set sail from Gage Roads near Perth Australia, and is not heading back out to the search area, as many had hoped, but is instead sailing for the Pacific, putting the search for MH370 back on ice. Some have speculated online that Ocean Infinity stopped looking because they found the wreckage; I’ll unpack why that is probably not the case, and will look at what lies ahead in the search for MH370. I’ll also unpack the mystery of a long telephone call that Captain Zaharie Ahmed Shah took part in before taking off on the fateful flight: Who was the call with, and was it tied to the plane’s disappearance? Get full access to Finding MH370 at www.deepdivemh370.com/subscribe Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Phase 2 of the seabed search for MH370 has ended, as Ocean Infinity’s search ship pulls its robot subs from the water and hands for port. In today’s episode we’ll talk about what they accomplished in the fourth week of their seabed scan and what lies ahead for future searches. We’ll also solve a mystery that cropped up in last week’s episode and see what we can make of a new one — namely, what entries in an Australian port schedule can tell us about Ocean Infinity’s plans. Get full access to Finding MH370 at www.deepdivemh370.com/subscribe Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Last week we expected that the scan of the seabed was about to take a short-term break, as Ocean Infinity’s research ship, Armada 86 05, was scheduled to return to port the very next day. Well, right after that episode dropped Ocean Infinity changed its plans, and its arrival data in Fremantle was changed from January 20 to January 29. This was definitely a welcome change, as it’s always a good thing if Ocean Infinity is going to spend more time on station scanning the seabed. But unfortunately, the weather did not play along. A storm hit the area, forcing Armada 86 05 to retrieve the AUVs and wait out the strong winds and massive waves. In today’s episode we break down how the seabed search progressed, and I have deep conversation with NASA’s Dr Nigel Packham, who spent decades at NASA studying safety and risk in manned spaceflight and was involved in the investigation into the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. Unlike MH370, that was a case that officials were determined to pursue relentlessly until they had all the answers the needed to make sure that the same tragedy wouldn’t happen twice. I asked Dr. Packham how that kind of implacable attitude could be applied to MH370. Get full access to Finding MH370 at www.deepdivemh370.com/subscribe Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ocean Infinity has completed its second week of searching the seabed of the southern Indian Ocean for the missing Malaysian airliner, MH370, and it’s making good progress. But Armada 86 05, while a modern ship with state-of-the-art technology, isn’t really equipped to keep a substantial crew of mariners out at sea for very long, and the word on the street is that it will have to return to port very soon. In today’s episode we look at the area that it appears to have scanned, look ahead to the future, and answer questions sent in my viewers. Get full access to Finding MH370 at www.deepdivemh370.com/subscribe Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The marine survey vessel Armada 86 05 has been back out on station, resuming the search for MH370. Things haven’t gone entirely smoothly. The ship did a couple days’ worth of scanning, had to go on standby for a couple of days due to bad weather before deploying its deep-scanning robot subs once more. We happen to know more about the details of the search than we usually do because lately the company doing the search, Ocean Infinity, has been been unusually communicative with the families of the missing passengers and crew. In today’s episode I fill you in on everything that’s been happening and respond to viewer questions. Get full access to Finding MH370 at www.deepdivemh370.com/subscribe Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Earlier this month the Malaysian government announced that the seabed search for MH370 would restart on December 30, and it looks looks like that is exactly what is happening. Right about now, as I’m putting together today’s episode on December 30, 2025, the Ocean Infinity marine survey vessel Armada 86 05 is pulling up to the search area, where it will deploy its three underwater robots to acoustically scan the seabed. The area that they’re planning to search is relatively small — just 10,000 square kilometers, compared to about 250,000 square kilometers during earlier searches between 2014 and 2018. That implies that they think they have a pretty specific idea of where to look. In today’s episode I discuss about how they got to the search area, where exactly they’ll be looking, and what likely comes next. I also talk with 777 pilot and podcaster John Waters about the seabed search and about his perspective on the mystery. Get full access to Finding MH370 at www.deepdivemh370.com/subscribe Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It’s December 7, 2025, and Armada 86 05 has set sail from Benoa Port on the island of Bali, Indonesia. After spending a brief period conducting sea trials, it is now making a beeline for the area where it left off searching the seabed in March. If it maintains its current speed, it should arrive several days before the date previously given by the Malaysian government as the start of the new phase. In today’s episode, we discuss the capabilities as well as the limitation of the technology that Ocean Infinity will deploy once it arrives. Get full access to Finding MH370 at www.deepdivemh370.com/subscribe Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It’s December 3, 2025, and the Malaysia Government has just announced that the private underwater survey company Ocean Infinity will officially recommence the seabed search for MH370 in three weeks’ time. Today, we’re going to talk about why they’re doing it now, where they’ll look, and whether they’re likely to succeed. Get full access to Finding MH370 at www.deepdivemh370.com/subscribe Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.