“Streaming” columnist NICK OVERALL looks at the latest documentary on the mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, that vanished without trace when it left Kuala Lumpur on March 8, 2014.

MARCH 8, 2014, 12.41AM, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 takes off with 227 passengers aboard from Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

Six hours later, air traffic controllers at Beijing International Airport are expecting the plane to touch down. No blip would ever emerge on their radar screens.

Instead, the only thing left of Flight 370 was a final automated position report transmitted from the cockpit. Sent out at 1.19AM, it contained an eerie sign off: “Good night Malaysian three seven zero”.

It’s now been nine years since the aircraft vanished seemingly into thin air and to this day the world still doesn’t know what transpired that night.

On what is a macabre but important anniversary, Netflix has released a new documentary which dives deep into the infamous disappearance of the aircraft.

“MH370: The Plane That Disappeared” puts questions to family members, scientists, investigative journos and more to try to answer the questions that still swirl around the vanishing.

Over the course of three 60-minute episodes, the doco breaks down the many theories that have attempted to explain the baffling event. Some of the facts that have emerged from investigations may even puzzle those who don’t normally find themselves allured by a conspiracy.

One of the most uncanny is that the crew never activated an SOS signal. The flight was equipped with multiple emergency locator transmitters (which normally only take half a second to beam out a distress signal) and yet none of them did.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. A report from the Malaysian government in 2018 discovered the plane was steered off course for an unknown reason. It found the aircraft was maneuvered by its system being manipulated – not by any system failures.

There were also two men on the plane who were found to be travelling with stolen passports, a fact that quickly raised suspicions in the aftermath of the disappearance.

It’s no surprise that over the near decade since it was lost, Flight 370 has captivated and haunted the world. There’s been no shortage of attempts to explore the mystery in the documentary medium as a result, especially in the streaming realm.

“Malaysia 370: The Plane That Vanished” came out in 2014 and was the first to try to dive into the mystery. The iterations since are endless. 

Apple TV+ has its version in the form of “MH370: Mystery of the Lost Flight”, there’s “Lost: MH370” on Amazon Prime Video, SBS On Demand features “MH370: The Lost Flight” and, of course, “Air Crash Investigations” did its own episode during its fourteenth season.

While some of these do a valiant effort in exploring the disappearance, Netflix’s new product is easily the most authoritative and fascinating look at the strange event to date. 

The streaming giant is well aware of the power of a mystery. 

In 2020, it rebooted the ‘80s TV hit “Unsolved Mysteries” for a fifteenth season. Twenty-one episodes on and it remains a popular staple of the platform.

Now with their new doco they’re taking that momentum and exploring what is one of the most intriguing mysteries of the modern age.

“Planes go up, planes go down, what planes don’t do is just vanish off the face of the Earth,” declares the show’s prolific marketing.

In the first 10 days of the trailer being uploaded to Youtube, five million viewers flocked in to catch a glimpse of the show. Tens of thousands of comments were plastered on the video – people from all around the world saying they remember when and where they were when the news of the plane’s disappearance broke.

There’s no doubt Netflix has another hit on its hands with this one. While the doco doesn’t feature any new bombshells, it does make for a fascinating examination of one of the most famous mysteries of the last decade and acts as an important way to remember the lives lost that fateful night.

We can only sit and wonder. It is a disquieting thought indeed that the only people who may ever know what happened to Flight 370 are beyond the reach of any of us.