MH370: The Pacific Pivot

March 8, 2014. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Beijing-bound from Kuala Lumpur. Vanished at 17:21 UTC. Transponder off. ACARS off. Final position confirmed by satellite ping: somewhere over the southern Indian Ocean.\n\nOr nowhere over the southern Indian Ocean.\n\nThe ping data was supplied by Inmarsat. The Inmarsat data was released selectively. The full dataset, leaked in 2018, showed THREE possible terminal locations: the southern Indian Ocean (the public answer), the central Pacific (the answer no one talked about), and REDACTED (the answer the families were never told).\n\nThe central Pacific terminus is interesting. It coincides with the position of Diego Garcia, a US/UK military installation, at the time MH370 was last pinged. Diego Garcia's runway is 12,000 feet — long enough for a 777. Diego Garcia's civilian air traffic logs for March 8, 2014, are sealed. The Pentagon was asked for them in 2014, 2016, 2018, 2022. The Pentagon's response, verbatim each time: "No responsive records exist."\n\nThe 20 passengers. Cabin manifest had 239 names. 20 of those names worked for Freescale Semiconductor, a company developing micro-laminate freescale wafer chips with both defense applications and REDACTED applications. 4 of the 20 held patents jointly with 4 American defense contractors. The patents were due to be filed individually in May 2014. The patents were filed in May 2014, but with the American contractors as sole inventors. The 4 Freescale engineers had been removed from the patent applications. They had been removed because they were REDACTED.