The Wayback Machine and MH370
MH370 and the Wayback Machine
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 went missing on Saturday, 8 March 2014. Since then, companies such as Malaysia Airlines have changed; government departments have been restructured; news media sites have withdrawn old content; and websites have been removed from the Internet completely. These examples reflect change over a passage of time.
However, a consequence is that information related to flight MH370 has diminished and is now less accessible.
This article describes how to locate older versions of websites by using The Wayback Machine.
If you use the Wayback Machine to lookup archived versions of the following websites, you may find some 'lost' material from these domains:-
www.dca.gov.my
www.mot.gov.my
www.malaysiaairlines.com.my
www.themalaysianinsider.com/
Copy and paste these URLs into a search box on the Wayback Machine website.
What is the Wayback Machine?
The Internet Archive is a not-for-profit digital library which has been archiving sections of the Internet so that our past digital footprint is not lost.
The archive, known as the Wayback Machine stores snapshots of significant websites at various dates. Some archives are also deliberately uploaded by the relevant webmasters.
A limitation of the archive is that sections of an original website which are password protected are unlikely to be functional.
Hundreds of pages! A simple search using the term MH370 returns a lot of sites, each of which has been captured many times.
One of the most significant sites is, of course, the MH370 Official Site. This site is used in the examples below, and the procedure can be followed for any site where the original address or URL is known. Some suggested URLs are listed in the panel on the right.
How can the MH370 Official Site archive be accessed?
To browse snapshots of the MH370 Official Site, follow the three steps below:-
- Use a web browser to navigate to the Internet Archive website https://archive.org/
- Enter the URL for the MH370 Official Site as shown below:-
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Make a selection from the Calendar.
Snapshots also exist for other dates in the Calendar if required.
According to the Internet Archive, the website for the MH370 Official Site was saved 41 times between July 17, 2014 and July 30, 2019. The date 30 July is highlighted. Mouse-over or cursor-over reveals a time which can be selected.
Is there a Mandarin version of the MH370 Official Site in the archive?
Yes, the steps are similar but you need to type a different URL, as shown below:-
- Use a web browser to navigate to the Internet Archive website https://archive.org/
- Enter the URL for the MH370 Official Site as shown below:-
- Make a selection from the Calendar.
According to the Internet Archive, the Mandarin version of the MH370 Official Site was saved 87 times between February 28, 2018 and July 30, 2019.
However, some of the content was never provided in Mandarin; and the Internet Archive may not have captured all of the content in these snapshots.
