Flight MH370 Gone Without a Trace

A Mystery That May Never Be Solved
By Alissa Grisler

     Malaysian Flight MH370, filled with 239 passengers, disappeared this past Saturday, March 8th. It simply vanished, somewhere over Southeast Asia while on its way to Beijing, China. A little under an hour after its departure from capital Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, air traffic controllers lost contact with the Boeing 777-200 as it was flying over the ocean between Malaysia and Vietnam. It's now three days later, and still no word from the flight has been detected.
     No distress call, no sign of a problem from the pilot. There was no indication that the flight was going anything but smoothly. It's impossible to believe that this mystery could happen under any circumstances, but there are some ideas in play as to what may have transpired up in the sky.

   
     The most disturbing theory seen so far has come from the identification of two of the male passengers on board. One Australian and one Italian citizen were supposedly traveling with stolen passports. These were taken from their original owners in Thailand. Whether they had anything to do with the aircrafts disappearance is thus far unknown. However, foul-play has not yet been ruled out as a cause for this catastrophe. Regardless if these two stolen passport carriers had anything to do with the strange disappearance, it is alarming that they were able to get through security at all. These men's passports were not checked against the international database of stolen passports, and they were able to get through security with no trouble.
     The other leads have come to a dead end. The orange object located in the ocean, was originally thought to be a sign of a possible plane wreckage, but it turned out to be unrelated. The oil spill off the coast of Vietnam which was a suspected sign of the fallen aircraft, showed that it too was unrelated.
     Currently, nine countries are searching for any sign of the plane. Vietnam, China, Singapore, Indonesia, USA, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines. 34 aircraft and 40 ships are involved in this wide-spread search, stretching 100 miles around the west coast of Malaysia. Expanding the search area comes with the hope that some sign of the aircraft will be found soon.
     Families of loved ones onboard Flight MH370 are understandably overwhelmed by this disaster. Knowing that your family has died in a plane crash is terrible enough, but these families don't know the truth. They cannot even grieve because they don't know if they should be grieving or hoping for a miracle. On op of this pain, they have had to endure countless interviews and nosy reporters, with the wish that they will somehow find their loved ones soon.
     This entire ordeal makes one wonder how this could have happened. In this day and age, with the phenomenal technology made available to us, how could a plane vanish? In one moment it was in the air, gliding soundly, and in the next it was gone. Vanished. Without a word or trace. How could this have happened? What actually did happen on Flight MH370?