Social media ‘solves’ aviation’s unsolved mysteries

The Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 was taking off on one of its usual flights until it disappeared

Standing Left is Amelia Earhart alongside her navigator, Fred Noonan, posing with the map of the Pacific route for their round-the-world flight, deeply unaware of the tragic fate they will meet - Source: The Associated Press

• Malaysian Flight 370, which took off on its routine flight to Beijing with 227 passengers and 12 crew, was last spotted veering sharply from its flight path towards the Indian Ocean by a military radar
• Many AI-generated misinformation videos on social media have proliferated, falsely claiming to have solved the mystery behind their disappearances
• Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared in 1937 over the Pacific during their attempted round-the-world flight
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• Creators of make-believe misinformation videos for profit on social media are having a field day
• As preposterous as these claims are, they seem to be readily believed by hundreds of thousands of gullible viewers

The history of aviation is riddled with mysteries, but there are two which stand out—the disappearance of American aviator Amelia Earhart and her navigator in 1937, and the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 in 2014.

Despite claims that the wreckage of both these aircraft has been discovered in recent years, nothing has been conclusively established. 
Amelia Earhart’s tragic disappearance
Amelia Earhart, a brave, trail-blazing pilot who followed the steps of Charles Lindbergh by making a solo transatlantic flight in 1932, set herself the formidable goal of flying around the world. She and her trusted navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared over the Pacific in 1937 while on that epic journey.
Tantalising clues have emerged over the years regarding the Earhart mystery. In Nikumaroro Island, searchers found a woman’s shoe, a bottle of skin cream, bits of plexiglass which could have come from the Electra’s cockpit windows, and a number of human bones. This gave rise to the theory that both pilot and navigator survived a crash into the sea and managed to swim to the island, only to die from hunger and dehydration. 
The bones did not amount to two complete skeletons, or even one. They were sent to Hawaii for lab analysis, but were lost, adding to the air of mystery.
In the late 1930s, there was intense rivalry between Japan and the United States for the Pacific Islands, and one theory suggested that, running low on fuel, Earhart landed on the Marshall Island, and was detained by the Japanese as a spy. The discovery of a magazine photograph showing a woman sitting on a pier in a Japanese harbour strengthened this theory.
But it was later established that the photo was taken before 1938, the year of Earhart’s disappearance. Earhart’s Lockheed had advanced radio and navigation equipment for the time, leading to the theory that she was carrying out an intelligence gathering mission for the American government. The discovery of a woman strongly resembling the missing aviator led to the theory that, after being freed from captivity, Earhart was asked to lead a quiet life back in the US anonymously. But the woman in question strongly denied this story and even took legal action against those promoting it.
Most likely, the Lockheed crashed when it ran out of fuel near Howland Island. Dorothy Cochrane, the aeronautics department curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, holds this view. She told the BBC that, “given the strength of her last radio message to the US Coast Guard vessel Itasca, “We must be on you…low on fuel, and we can’t see you”, she couldn’t have been far from the island. It seems that tragically they could not find the tiny island before they had to ditch the Electra into the Pacific Ocean”.
Most recently, in January 2024, searchers from Deep Sea Vision, an exploration company, detected with sonar (sound waves) what appears to be the remains of an aircraft 4,877 meters deep in the Pacific Ocean. Despite initial excitement that this could be the wreckage of Earhart’s twin-engined Lockheed 10-E Electra, hopes were dashed when it was established that what the sonar saw was a deep-sea rock formation.
But there are YouTube videos showing an AI-created Electra sitting snugly on the ocean bed, looking as if it’s ready to take off, garnering hundreds of thousands of views. They claim the Earhart mystery to be solved. This falsifying of reality is much worse when it comes to Malaysian Flight 370.
The Unfortunate 
Malaysian Flight 370
It took off from Kuala Lumpur on March 08, 2014, on a routine flight to Beijing with 227 passengers and 12 crew. It was last spotted by military radar veering sharply from its flight path towards the Indian Ocean. All contact was thereafter lost. Despite a multi-million dollar search, no clues other than a few pieces of debris washed ashore on several Indian Ocean islands were ever found.
After Australia took over the search, a survey of 120,000 sq. miles of the sea floor southwest of Perth, Western Australia, was undertaken. The wreck wasn’t found. Families of the lost passengers—mostly Malaysian, but also including Chinese, Australian and other nationalities—have kept up a heartbreaking struggle over the years, claiming that authorities are concealing what they know. 
The mental sanity of pilot Captain Zaharie Ahmed Shah has been questioned, with speculation that he committed suicide by plunging the airliner into the ocean somewhere. He signed off by saying ‘Good night, Malaysian Three Seven Zero’ as the plane entered Vietnamese airspace. Soon after, its transponder was turned off, making it hard to track the plane.
Investigators found in Capt. Shah’s home flight simulator had a flight trajectory eerily similar to what Malaysian Flight 370 took after veering off sharply from its designated flight path, which led to the suicide theory. But nothing has been proved. 
The search, by the US company Ocean Infinity, will cover a 15,000 sq. km area in the southern Indian Ocean, under a ‘no find, no fee’ agreement. The company will receive $70 million if the wreckage is found. A 2018 search by the same company proved to be unsuccessful.
AI made fakery
But creators of make-believe misinformation videos for profit on social media are having a field day, using Artificial Intelligence to create incredible views of supposedly discovered wreckage and what happened to passengers and crew. According to one, the wreckage has been found with more than half the passengers missing (AI recreates the airliner’s interior convincingly). It claims that the plane was transporting top-secret hi-tech data from a private firm to Beijing. It claims, too, another, smaller plane was behind Malaysian Flight 370 over the Indian Ocean, and was seen by a British woman on a round-the-world cruise by boat. According to this claim, the plane was on fire. 
As preposterous as these claims are, they seem to be readily believed by hundreds of thousands of gullible viewers. Why is YouTube allowing this level of disinformation?