On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 took off in the early hours of the morning as the red eye flight from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, with an intended destination of Beijing, China.  There were 227 passengers on board, with 12 crew members.  The pilot in command, 53 year old Captain Zaharie Shah, was performing a final instructional flight for 27 year old co-pilot, first officer Fariq Hamid.  It was a clear, calm night, and the flight was initially uneventful.  At cruising altitude of 35,000 feet, the flight was leaving Malaysian Air Space and was instructed to transfer to the air traffic control tower in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam.  At 0119, Captain Shah radioed the Air Traffic Controllers in Malaysia “Good night, Malaysian 370”.  That was the last verbal contact with anyone on the plane.   Approximately 103 seconds later, the aircraft went dark and vanished from all radar screens in Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, and Ho Chi Minh City.  There were two transponders onboard the plane, so to disappear, both transponders would need to cease functioning – either by catastrophic failure or by manual override by someone on the plane.  It was over 20 minutes before anyone noted the plane was missing.  It did not arrive for it’s 6:30 ETA, and only had enough fuel to fly until ~ 8:15 AM.  The most expensive search and rescue operation in aviation history was initiated. To this day, we do not know where the airplane is, or what happened to the 239 souls on board.  An extensive safety report was released which did not answer many questions and had inconclusive findings.  They denied suspecting any crew was involved, and reported that air traffic control was delayed in noting the missing plane.  Theories vary, from a hijacking or suicide mission, to a military operation, and a plethora of questions still exist.   One thing is for sure, evidence of shoddy investigative work and potential cover-ups abound.  What really happened to MH370 in the early morning hours of March 8 , 2014?