The recreation of MH370 crashing into the sea. Image / National Geographic
The recreation of MH370 crashing into the sea. Image / National Geographic
The last moments of flight MH370 have been reconstructed for a TV documentary which shows the plane spiralling out of control and smashing into the sea.
Investigators have said the plane almost certainly ran out of fuel after flying in the wrong direction over the Indian Ocean for six hours on March 8, 2014.
Now, in a bid to recreate the flight's final moments, National Geographic show Drain The Oceans has simulated what happens when a Boeing 777 runs out of fuel.
Engineers on the show said the right engine would have capitulated first, meaning the autopilot would have lurched the plane to the left to compensate.
Engineers believe the engines shut down after running out of fuel.
Then the left engine would have stopped working two minutes later and, once the autopilot failed, the plane would have plunged into a 'death spiral' before a high-impact smash would have killed all 249 on board.
The disappearance of MH370, which went massively off course while heading to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, is one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history.
Although some debris from the plane has been found off the coast of Africa, no part of the main body has been discovered despite a 46,000-square mile search of the Indian Ocean.
The documentary, which airs on Thursday, highlights how nobody knows why the plane disappeared.
Captain John Cox, CEO of Washington-based aviation body Safety Operating Systems, says on the show: 'Initially, when the plane made a turn without talking to air traffic control in my mind all bets were off.
'It could be a terrorist event, it could be a deliberate act by a crew member, it could be a mass failure in the electrical system.'
In July 2015, a wing part known as a flaperon was found on Reunion Island, east of Madagascar. Since then, 27 pieces of debris have been found.
One of the pieces was a TV monitor, found by amateur wreckage hunter Blaine Gibson. He says on the show: 'This is the one find that brought tears to my eyes.
'This is perhaps the last thing that somebody saw, this is what anyone who flies on a plane would recognise.'
Last month, Malaysia's civil aviation chief quit after a report found failings in air traffic control - as victims' relatives claimed officials were covering up what really happened to the plane.
Voice 370, a group of victims' families, accused Boeing and the Malaysia Government of withholding flight data and criticised the report for ruling out murder suicide by the chief pilot, Captain Zaharie Shah.
Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, director-general of the Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation, resigned after investigators found numerous lapses by air traffic controllers in both Malaysia and Vietnam.
These included failing to initiate 'emergency phases' as required after the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing vanished from radar displays.
Rahman said the long-awaited, 400-page report released on July 30 found that the air traffic control did not comply with standard operating procedures.
'Therefore, it is with regret and after much thought and contemplation that I have decided to resign as the chairman of Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia effective fourteen (14) days from the date of the resignation notice which I have served today,' he said in a statement.
In the report, investigators said they still do not know why the plane vanished.
They did, however, raise the possibility that the jet may have been hijacked even though there was no conclusive evidence of why the plane went off course and flew for over seven hours after severing communications.
How experts believe the wreckage would look on the seabed with the water removed. Image / National Geographic
They said the course of the Malaysia Airlines aircraft had been changed manually, and refused to rule out that someone other than the pilots had diverted the jet.
The investigative report, prepared by a 19-member international team, said the cause of the disappearance cannot be determined until the wreckage and the plane's black boxes are found.
Transport Minister Anthony Loke insisted last month that 'the aspiration to locate MH370 has not been abandoned and vowed to 'take action' against any misconduct committed based on the findings.
The report said there was insufficient information to determine if the aircraft broke up in the air or during impact with the ocean.
Scattered pieces of debris that washed ashore on African beaches and Indian Ocean islands indicated a distant remote stretch of the ocean where the plane likely crashed.
But a government search by Australia, Malaysia and China failed to pinpoint a location.
And a second, private search by US company Ocean Infinity that finished at the end of May also found no sign of a possible crash site.
Malaysia's government has said it will resume search if credible evidence on the plane's location emerges.
