What you have read about the events on board Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is probably wrong.

Seemingly endless theories and speculation have swirled around the disappearance for almost three weeks.

Unnamed sources quoted in the world’s media have trashed the reputations of the pilots.

Experts have prognosticated about possible scenarios ranging from a fire, explosion, mechanical failure, pilot suicide, sabotage and hijacking.

The truth is, investigating authorities do not know why the Boeing 777 turned around from its scheduled flight path over the South China Sea.

Even more baffling is why and how it flew on for more than seven more hours before crashing into the far reaches of the Indian Ocean, one of the most desolate places on earth.

Could those on board have still been alive on a terror flight to nowhere?

The reason you haven’t seen authorities in Kuala Lumpur deny any of the dozens of theories that have dominated a media starved of verified information is because they cannot rule out any possibility.

Journalists can put any scenario they like at a nightly press briefing in Kuala Lumpur and get the same reply: it can’t be ruled in or out.

The disappearance of the plane with 239 people on board has become the most baffling mystery of modern aviation.

An FBI examination of the home flight simulator of senior pilot Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah may uncover data that could provide some clues.

He has been the focus of attention because it would have taken someone with a pilot’s knowledge to punch a code into a computer to turn the plane around.

But the fact is that nothing suspicious has been found in his background so far, and the evidence known publicly points to him being a good person with 18,000 flying hours' experience.

Forensic experts will examine debris pulled from the icy waters of the Indian Ocean for any clues, if any is found.

Hopes have been raised by satellite imagery of 122 objects seen by floating in a 400 square kilometre arc, corroborating other sightings of possible debris.

But even if ships heading to the area pull wreckage of the plane from the water it could have drifted hundreds of kilometres from where the plane ditched into ocean 19 days earlier.

A sense of desperate urgency permeates the operational command centre in Kuala Lumpur, because officials fear that unless the plane’s black box recorder is found there is a strong possibility it will never be known what happened on board MH370. 

There is now less then two weeks before the box's batteries stop emitting a signal from a kilometres-deep ocean floor. 

As Mark Binskin, deputy chief of Australia’s defence force said this week "we're not searching for a needle in a haystack, we're still trying to find the haystack.”

Lindsay Murdoch has been covering MH370  from Kuala Lumpur since the airliner disappeared on March 8.

smh.com.au