Diego Garcia

Despite numerous conspiracy theories surrounding MH370, aerospace engineers and aviation experts have shared their verdicts on the most convincing hypotheses. After taking off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia on its way to Beijing, the ill-fated aircraft vanished on March 8, 2014. After the plane mysteriously veered westwards over the Andaman Sea in the Indian Ocean, all 239 people on board are thought to have died soon. It sparked a massive multinational search campaign, the most expensive search in aviation history at $200 million, which was controversially suspended in January 2017.

The Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished shortly after taking off on March 8, 2014, killing 239 people on board. Now, ten years later, one of the world's biggest aviation disasters remains one of the biggest mysteries of our time, with no probe leading to a definitive answer to the plane's passengers or crew. The most consistent theory has focused on pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah (left), but others believe the plane was hijacked, suffered a firmware malfunction (bottom right), or was shot down by the US government (top right). A multinational team conducted the biggest research in aviation history, but there were no clues and the operation was suspended in January 2017. Ocean Infinity, a US-based marine robotics firm, found nothing during a private search in 2018. Following Ocean Infinity's announcement of a 'no find, no fee' search of the Southern Indian Ocean off the coast of Australia, the Malaysian government has rallied support behind a new search for the missing plane this week.

The Indian Ocean state, which is closely affiliated with China, claims the Chagos Islands, which include the main Anglo-American airbase in Diego Garcia. However, in 2021, the government passed legislation threatening anyone who identifies the archipelago as part of its claim to the volcanic outcrops, which are 1,300 miles away from the country. According to a recent center-right think tank Policy Exchange study, the UK should keep some £3.3 million in aid earmarked for Mauritius in the 2023/24 financial year. Sir Robert Buckland, the former attorney general, said the law was a "brazen act of coercion disguised as foreign policy" and likened it to tightening Chinese regulations in Hong Kong.