Dec. 7, 2025

239 Missing, Presumed Dead; Greatest Aviation Mystery in History Could Finally Be Solved

239 Missing, Presumed Dead; Greatest Aviation Mystery in History Could Finally Be Solved

Was it a hijacking, was it loss of cabin pressure? A Texas based robotics company is about to resume its search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 later this month. Ocean Infinity has signed a “no-find, no-fee” contract with the Malaysian government, and they have 55 days starting to find the missing jet that vanished without a trace more than a decade ago.

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00:00:11
Speaker 1: Hey, that folks.

00:00:11
Speaker 2: It is Sunday, December seventh, and a renewed effort is about to get underway this month to solve what is quite possibly the greatest aviation mystery in history. What happened to Malaysian air Flight MH Yes, three seventy. You know that name, and you know it well. Welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ.

00:00:36
Speaker 1: Roves. Is that fair to say?

00:00:38
Speaker 2: I mean, we think aviation mysteries, and I think Amelia Earhart comes to people's minds immediately. Is this not I know that one's one hundred years on that one almost, but this Malaysian Airlines three seventy?

00:00:50
Speaker 1: My god?

00:00:52
Speaker 3: Yes.

00:00:52
Speaker 4: When you if you actually google the greatest aviation mystery of all time, Malaysian Flight three seventy comes up every single time. So yes, I think pretty much everyone agrees because look, yes, obviously Amelia Earhart comes to mind. That's one person she had a copilot with her right, two people missing. We are talking, yeah, we are talking about two hundred and thirty nine souls, passengers and crew. Every one of those folks had family and friends waiting for them, wondering what happened to them, and tortured by the fact that they don't know where or how their loved ones died. And look, I'm sure some of them hold on to hope that somehow they're on some deserted island somewhere that miniseries have been made of.

00:01:41
Speaker 3: But they just want to be able to have some closure.

00:01:46
Speaker 1: You said, they don't know what happened. They don't know how it happened.

00:01:50
Speaker 3: They don't have a clue, not a clue.

00:01:53
Speaker 2: They don't have a freakin We're ten years plus into this. They can't tell us anything about what happened. They can tell us what didn't happen. They can tell or we didn't get a distress call, we didn't get this sweetheart, that wasn't bad weather. There was no distress, there was no hijacking, there was no They do not have a clue. Still, what happened to this flight? That adds to a bit of mystery here, No, I will say, adds to we got two hundred.

00:02:21
Speaker 1: And thirty nine people who disappear without a.

00:02:22
Speaker 3: Trace, correct without it.

00:02:24
Speaker 1: It just doesn't happen.

00:02:25
Speaker 4: And you know, most aviation accidents or issues occur on takeoff and landing. It very rarely something happens thirty plus minutes into a flight, after you've already reached altitude, everyone settled, you are literally cruising on autopilot, and then to have that seemingly be everything's fine, We're all on course, and to have a complete stop of all communications and you can see on the radar that the plane turns around and goes where nobody.

00:03:01
Speaker 1: Knows, and that we we assume it goes down.

00:03:06
Speaker 2: There has been and we'll get into it in a moment of just very very small amounts of this plane that washed up in some places we'll talk about. But what we're talking about here now, and the reason it's back in the headlines is folks, they'll give them credit. In Malaysia, they did not let it go. There are folks, there are families who are still wanting answers and don't have them after eleven years. So Malaysia, the government there has not essentially stopped this effort. The official search was suspended, so they officially stopped, but there have been renewed efforts over the years, and this is a new one they have now. The Malaysian government has contracted an American robotics company, Oceanic or ocean Infinity, is the name of it, but a marine robotics company and say, hey, here's the contract. You find it and we'll pay you. And that's the contract they have, and this effort is about to get under way ropes on December thirtieth. They have a deadline. You find it and you get paid.

00:04:01
Speaker 3: That's right.

00:04:02
Speaker 4: They have fifty five days, so Ocean Infinity of Texas based company is going to start or resume. They actually began this back in March, but the weather was too bad, so they called it off and said we'll resume it later in the year when the Indian Ocean is in.

00:04:16
Speaker 3: A better position to be searched.

00:04:19
Speaker 4: I guess is the best way to put it. But they're going to start on December thirtieth. They have fifty five days to find what they can find from this plane. They say they've got some areas that they know are the most likely that the wreckage could be. But they will get seventy million dollars if they find it and zero dollars if they don't. It's called a no fine, no fee.

00:04:41
Speaker 2: Contracts preod deal. I mean, that's a pretty smart way to go about it.

00:04:45
Speaker 1: And why not.

00:04:46
Speaker 2: You'll get paid if you find this thing. Everybody is highly motivated, are they not. I didn't see anywhere ropes. You tell me if you did, Like what constitutes wreckage? Like do you have to find the entire thing? Do you have to find a black box? Do you have to find with? Is this wing big enough?

00:05:04
Speaker 1: Like?

00:05:05
Speaker 2: I really wonder, like how much constitutes finding the record the fine print somewhere?

00:05:11
Speaker 4: But yes, a little tiny bits have been found along shorelines, but nothing of any significance. And can you imagine if they found the black box. If they found that black box, so many years of frustrations and wondering and what possibly could they could all be answered with that black box because as of right now, the only thing they have is the pilot's last radio call. And the pilot called in to Kuala Lumpur and said good night Malaysian three seven zero. That was the final communication, and then the plane went over into Vietnamese airspace, never to be heard from again. It never checked in with air traffic controllers there in Vietnam. And the weird thing is that the plane's transponder shut down, So that's why they don't know where it went. They don't they think it kept flying. They think maybe it just ran out of fuel, but they.

00:06:09
Speaker 3: Don't know where it went.

00:06:11
Speaker 2: I remember that being such an intriguing theory at the time, the idea that this was a ghost plane. Essentially that everybody possibly if they lost cabin pressure and everybody was knocked out on the plane and this thing just kept going for hours, possibly crashed after it ran out of fuel. That was one theory. The thing that was also intriguing Robes is because they were able, they say, at least to confirm someone intentionally turned that plane and did they not say what about the transplant, But there was intent in what happened in some movement of this plane.

00:06:42
Speaker 4: Yes, So even though the transponders shut down, military radar was actually able to see the plane and see the jet turn back over the Indian Ocean, and then they could look at satellite data and that showed that they believed the plane kept flying for hours until it literally ran out of fuel and then they think crashed somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean, and they believe that someone deliberately severed communications and diverted the plane. That is what Malaysian authorities came up with. They say, we believe someone deliberately severed communication. So yes, theories hijacking. Could they're a been a hijacker or CAVIN depressurization or power failure. But when you don't have a distress call, you don't have a ransom demand. Like if someone did hijack the plane, why would they not have communicated and said, here's here are our demands, here's what we want. We have these folks in our control, and we are going to do.

00:07:40
Speaker 3: This if you don't give us that.

00:07:41
Speaker 4: So there was no communication, so that almost doesn't make sense.

00:07:46
Speaker 3: And to your point, there was no severe weather.

00:07:49
Speaker 4: They don't believe there was any technical failure, so it is truly a mystery.

00:07:54
Speaker 2: Like they you know, oftentimes they put these things together and they say in it's our belief or we have a like who dah da da.

00:08:01
Speaker 1: They got nothing.

00:08:02
Speaker 2: Eleven years later, this thing flat out vanished off the face of the earth. I give them credit. I did not know that they were still keeping an eye on this over the years. There's no fine, no fee contract. They apparently tried this with the same company years and years I think twenty eighteen, twenty nineth whatever, they've tried this before. These efforts have been going on over the years and to see them, I'd like to see a big push. It sounds like they're going big, like we're just trying, not just I love that this was important to them to give two hundred and thirty nine people's families some kind of answer.

00:08:38
Speaker 3: Can you imagine?

00:08:39
Speaker 4: I was just trying to It's hard enough, obviously to lose a loved one. To lose a loved one suddenly in a tragic accident is another horrific thing to have to try to get your head around. Now you don't know what happened, you don't know where their body is, you don't know how they.

00:08:56
Speaker 3: Died, you don't know why they died.

00:08:59
Speaker 4: That that to haunt you, like until the day you're you are gone. So yes, so many families have refused payment. The Malaysian government has said, hey, we want to compensate some of the family members of the folks who were on these planes. A lot of people have said, no, we refuse. We and some people have decided to try to get a lawsuit going, but mostly just to get answers. They don't it's not even about the money. And I would understand that. It's like I don't want the money. I want answers. I want to know what happened.

00:09:24
Speaker 2: Money feels like closure. It sounds like, oh okay, it's done. Now you paid me off and it's over him.

00:09:29
Speaker 4: Give the money to go find the search, to go search, you know for And so I do think I agree with you. I think that is really admirable and incredible because yes, technically, do you need to find out all of the answers, No, but there's a human element to all of this, and such a tremendous amount of loss and people want answers.

00:09:49
Speaker 3: You know, I actually look this up. This is pretty remarkable. It wasn't as if they didn't try.

00:09:53
Speaker 4: As you pointed out, there were several different iterations of searches for the last I guess from twenty fourteen till twenty eighteen, sixty ships, fifty aircraft from twenty six countries. So it wasn't as if Malaysia was doing this on their own. People from around the world. Countries from around the world sent resources to Malaysia to help, and still with the best technology, with all of those aircraft and ships, they still found they've never found a body. Can you imagine, they've never found any large or like decent piece of wreckage. That is almost unthinkable. I know the ocean is vast, I know it is deep, but it still seems like with the technology we have, that's like it seems almost impossible that something could disappear completely.

00:10:41
Speaker 2: You know, and they would, they argue, it's almost impossible to find. Now, it's one of the scariest things in the world, or at least the feeling that I had to be out in the middle of the ocean and you can't see land, right. We see stuff on a globe, we see it on a map, we see that body of water. There is just the majority of this world is covered in that.

00:11:06
Speaker 3: It is water.

00:11:07
Speaker 2: Unbelievable, how vast these areas are. And I know, folks, they got the technology, they've had the people. But one of the biggest problems here robes. They don't know where the hell to look. They don't know where the damn thing went down. So now you got to it's bad enough if you had even a few square miles. They don't have a clue where to actually start looking everything. As a guest, there's no evidence of this is the spot. All they can do is maybe if this happened, then they would have gone down here if they went down this direction after this many hours, then maybe here it is.

00:11:45
Speaker 1: I cannot imagine the task.

00:11:48
Speaker 4: Well they have obviously, I guess what they could base it off of is marking off where they've already looked. But then I'm thinking tides, ocean movement. You know, even if maybe they got in close to the right spot, it could.

00:12:03
Speaker 3: Have moved, shifted. We're talking almost eleven years.

00:12:06
Speaker 4: That is remarkable, a huge amount of time, and God knows what the ocean does. But it was a large plane. We're talking about it Boeing seven seven seven. Correct, this is a huge plane, and it's just it is still I get it. I get the vastness of the ocean, but it still seems unthinkable to me that you would not be able to account for any significant piece of that plane in any way like that has never happened before.

00:12:34
Speaker 2: Well, folks will stay with us. How big of an area they think they're searching for or searching in? Now they have, yes, target it a very specific area, but the area is as big as one northeastern US state.

00:12:58
Speaker 1: All right, bones, welcome back.

00:12:59
Speaker 2: We continue on Amy and tj answers, maybe possibly coming search will continue from Malaysian air Flight three seventy that went down and twenty fourteen, essentially without a trace, two hundred and thirty nine people on board, all dead. All those families waiting for answers after all these years, and they have not gotten them yet. The area now robes they're trying to search is a new one they've targeted, and they've kind of I guess you can cord an off, if you will, a certain section of the ocean now where they're going to check. But I don't remember the square mileage fifty five hundred plus square was it?

00:13:37
Speaker 4: Oh? Well, initially I know that they've covered forty six thousand square miles.

00:13:41
Speaker 3: Can you get your head around that?

00:13:43
Speaker 4: That's the number I saw that they actually Australia, Malaysia and China over these four years, this period twenty fourteen to twenty eighteen, they covered forty six thousand square miles. So now they've narrowed it down to what about a tenth of that, give or take.

00:13:59
Speaker 2: Well, I remember the exact number with fifty five. Let's just say that fifty five hundred plus maybe fifty eight hundred square miles, And I have no concept of what that looks like but it looks like the state of Connecticut.

00:14:09
Speaker 3: Wow.

00:14:09
Speaker 2: So take I don't even know how long it takes to drive across the state how but imagine something that takes you that long to drive across for hours, just put it out in the middle of the other How do you cover that area. I don't know what technology they use and how they but we're making the point. The area is vast, yes, And so you talk about how big the plane is, that big plane in the water is.

00:14:33
Speaker 1: A needle in a big ass pool water.

00:14:36
Speaker 3: Because you know what, it's not just the state of Connecticut.

00:14:38
Speaker 4: I think that helps with visualization in terms of just how large the area is.

00:14:43
Speaker 3: But now consider the depth.

00:14:44
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, right, I mean the depth of the ocean there. I don't I can't imagine, but I know that it's one of the most uncharted parts of our planet. Be for a reason because it's hard to get to, it's hard to reach, it's hard to know what is and this would you would assume if it's stayed put or is in a certain part of it. It's all the way at the bottom of the ocean floor. Now I know that they've used vessels, and they're using vessels that have sonar and robotic submarines, so you're using sonar trying to find this wreckage, and then you go off in little submarines and try to I mean the amount of just technology, but then actual risk to folks looking for the parts of this plane. I imagine that's a significant issue as well. Just to put yourself in this position to go down and to try to find something at this depth, with this type of square mileage, it's overwhelming.

00:15:41
Speaker 2: You know, things like this always think back to the Titanic when they finally found that and the technology they use to discover this is now one of those things. We will have that video potentially at some point we will have that remarkable that moment where they go wow and that what they're looking for is a damn cemetery at the bottom of the ocean. So this isn't a yes, there was something to be celebrated if this is found. That we hope it is, but man, what we have to remember and we kind of don't you feel that way.

00:16:11
Speaker 1: Yes, we have visitors and tourists, we.

00:16:13
Speaker 2: Live down here in Lower Manhattan, but we have to remember and you do you take a moment every time you walk through the non eleven memorial, those two footprints where those towers stood. This is a burial ground for a lot of folks, and this is a cemetery, And I immediately thought about that, what they're actually searching for and the answers they're searching for. There's an underwater cemetery right now, and there's something morbid certainly about that. But at the same time it's I was, so I have no personal connection to the story, and your heart goes out and you're rooting for Malaysia and all those families right now.

00:16:49
Speaker 4: You know, there have been many articles written now recently because of this renewed search that is about to get underway on December thirtieth, and some of the outlets media out go through who was on that plane?

00:17:01
Speaker 3: You know, you hear two.

00:17:03
Speaker 4: Hundred and twenty seven passengers, twelve crew members. But you start to hear some of the stories, and they will even put up some.

00:17:10
Speaker 3: Pictures of family members going to.

00:17:12
Speaker 4: The walls the memorials that have been set up around Malaysia just to pay their respects. But the pain that's still on the faces of the fathers and the mothers and the brothers and the families and the husbands and wives. It's heart wrenching because you, yes, this is a mystery, Yes we want to know what happened, but there are so many individual stories of trauma and tragedy. Yeah, most of the passengers on the plane were Chinese, but there were Americans, Indonesians, French, Russia, like, there were so many people on board this planes, on this plane, sorry, who had futures and hopes and dreams.

00:17:48
Speaker 3: And to start to read their stories.

00:17:51
Speaker 4: I started to do it, and you really can get caught up in just the mystery and the folks and the families.

00:17:56
Speaker 3: Who want to know what happened to their loved ones.

00:18:01
Speaker 2: Well, it's they got fifty five days, it's starting December thirtieth. They're going to start searching. So hopefully something will turn up. I think any little thing at this point will take. But what a mystery. It's one of those fascinating things like Calamilia Earhart is just you want answers.

00:18:21
Speaker 3: We'll haven't figured that one out, but that was a much smaller plane.

00:18:24
Speaker 2: Those were re newed effort for that as well, So researchers think they found something there as well. So can you imagine the same year both those mysteries gets solved within moments of each other, months.

00:18:32
Speaker 1: Or whatever that could happen.

00:18:33
Speaker 4: There is a new search effort headed there, and now we've obviously got this Texas company heading to the Indian Ocean to try and solve that mystery as well. But we certainly hope we get answers, but more importantly for the people who love those those folks who are on that plane, that they get some answers and they finally can have some peace knowing what happened to their loved ones.

00:18:54
Speaker 3: But we will continue to follow this story again.

00:18:56
Speaker 4: The search starts on December thirtieth, But in the meantime, thank you so much everyone for listening to us, I mean me Robot alongside t. J.

00:19:03
Speaker 3: Holmes.