Inside MH370’s cargo theory that links the United States Air Force to the missing plane

If you’ve watched even the trailer for Netflix’s new documentary MH370: The Plane That Disappeared, you’ll have heard the French journalist Florence de Changy talking about “suspicious cargo” on board the Malaysia Airlines Flight when it disappeared in 2014 with 239 people on board. And now everybody is Googling “MH370 cargo theory” to find out what she means. 

In Florence’s book, The Disappearing Act, she claims documents about MH370’s cargo “could have been made public within minutes of the plane going missing” but weren’t. Malaysia’s political opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim told her: “I wonder what kind of cargo could be so secret that the cargo manifest of a commercial flight is treated as a classified document.”

It took Florence two months to access the documents that revealed what cargo was on board the plane when it went missing. And what she discovered led to her cargo theory that links the MH370’s disappearance to the United States Air Force.

Ok, so what actually is the theory about MH370’s cargo?

According to the official flight documents, there were 2.5 tonnes of “poorly documented Motorola electronics equipment” on board flight MH370 when it disappeared, which Florence says hadn’t undergone proper security screening.

Essentially, Florence thinks flight MH370 was brought down by the United States Air Force after they failed to intercept the plane to seize the shipment of “electronic equipment” that was heading for Beijing because the US didn’t want China to have it.

Although the exact contents of the cargo are unknown (some theorise it’s part of a US drone used in Pakistan or military equipment captured by the Taliban), Florence says China wanted to get their hands on it via a night-time jet flight.

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But when the US forces found out what was taking place, Florence theorises they tried to intercept the cargo by forcing MH370 to land before it continued on to Beijing after a two-hour delay.

At the time flight MH370 disappeared, Florence writes that the US were in the middle of an air defence operation in the area and that the mission could have been masked as a training operation.

When flight MH370 was transferred to Vietnamese air traffic control (which is controlled by Singapore, a US ally), Florence thinks two US planes, which were spotted nearby, could have sandwiched MH370 from above and below and blocked its communications.

Florence theorises the MH370 pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah was ordered by the US to land the plane at the nearest airbase. But when he refused, and stuck on his course to Beijing, the flight was shot out of the sky over the South China Sea, where some debris has been found. This is just one of many theories circling round about the disappearance.

‘The shooting down could have been a blunder,” she writes. “But it could have also been a last resort to stop the plane and its special cargo from falling into Chinese hands.”

MH370: The Plane That Disappeared is available on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news, drops, quizzes and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook. 

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• Phantom cell phone theory: Why MH370 passengers’ mobiles still rang after plane was lost 

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