Grace Subathirai Nathan (left with parents and sister and right) and her close-knit family had a bright future in store (Picture: Supplied/Getty)
In the years since her mum boarded MH370, Grace Subathirai Nathan has continually replayed every word of their last conversation.
Anne Daisy Nathan had been looking forward to a promising future for her family and made sure her eldest daughter knew she was looking out for her.
As she left home to catch the ‘red eye’ Malaysia Airlines flight at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Anne told Grace ‘I love you’ and said she would speak to her once the plane arrived in Beijing.
Ten years to the day of the Boeing 777’s disappearance, the lack of answers about one of the aviation world’s greatest mysteries has left Grace reliving those final precious moments with her ‘best friend’.
Anne is one of the 239 passengers and crew who have vanished without trace, despite the most extensive air-sea search in history.
Grace, 36, has promised her mum that ‘I will never give up on you’ but also wants answers to prevent the tragedy from happening again.
‘Life has been going on for me for the past 10 years but it’s also been quite difficult to move on because of the lack of closure,’ she says.
‘This week is harder than the other weeks in the year because in the 10th anniversary of the plane’s disappearance you tend to relive all those last few days. You think about the last conversations you had, the last time you spoke and what it was about.’
Grace Subathirai Nathan and her mum Anne spoke every day on the phone (Picture: Grace Subathirai Nathan)
On March 8, 2014, Anne departed Kuala Lumpur on the scheduled five-and-a-half-hour flight to meet her husband, Nathan Velayudhan, in Beijing.
Nathan was working in air traffic control in the Chinese capital and realised something was seriously amiss after arriving at the airport to find the plane had failed to arrive at 6.30am, local time.
He called Grace to tell her the worrying situation.
‘It was and still is the most harrowing phone call I ever received in my life,’ she says. ‘Little did we know the plane was still in flight.’
Grace, who was studying law at the University of West England in Bristol at the time of the disappearance, has struggled to come to terms with losing the close bond she had with her mum.
Anne had been shopping with her youngest daughter, Azelia, four days before the flight, with the pair going to Kuala Lumpur’s Brickfields district, known as Little India. As they shopped for bangles, the 52-year-old told Azelia how she was looking forward to her daughters getting married.
Anne’s last known words were the expression of love, which Grace returned in an exchange that was out of the ordinary for a reserved Asian family not given to displays of emotion.
Grace Subathirai Nathan has become a voice for the families of those onboard MH370 (Picture: Marv Seven)
‘I spoke to her right before she boarded the flight,’ Grace says.
‘She called me to tell me she was getting on the plane, she was at the airport and everything was ok.
‘She told me she loved me and I’m so glad I told her I loved her back.
‘We also spoke earlier in the evening when she was still at home before she left for the airport and we had a longer conversation.
‘I was in the UK at the time the plane disappeared, we spoke for about an hour every single day.’
A map shows the flight path of MH370 including its diversion after when it is thought to have headed south into the Indian Ocean
On the second anniversary of the disappearance, Grace sent her mum an open message, asking: ‘Maa, where are you?
‘What happened to you? Are you ok?
‘All those hours on the plane did you know what was happening?
‘Were you scared? Were you asleep?
‘I’m so sorry we haven’t found you, but I promise I’m trying as hard as I possibly can because I love and miss you so, so much and I will never give up on you.’
The last contact between the crew of MH370 and air traffic controllers took place over the Gulf of Thailand, 38 minutes after takeoff.
Instead of continuing north towards Beijing, the aircraft made a sharp turn south-west, with the leading experts scrutinising the evidence believing it eventually crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.
Anne Daisy Nathan was looking forward to the future with her daughters Grace (left) and Azelia (Picture: Grace Subathirai Nathan)
A range of scenarios has been put forward as to why the plane disappeared, including an act of sabotage by someone on board.
The most expensive in aviation history, involving teams from a number of different nations, has failed to yield answers.
Debris — including a wing section called a flaperon — has washed up on Réunion Island near Mauritius, around 3,500 miles from Malaysia.
French investigators confirmed in 2015 that the fragment matches records held by a Boeing subcontractor who made the part fitted to MH370.
But the black box, the device recording flight tracking data and cockpit voice recordings, has not been found.
Grace (left) her parents and her little sister Azelia (right) had kept a close bond despite being split between countries (Picture: Grace Subathirai Nathan)
Grace, who spoke to Metro.co.uk from Kuala Lumpur, where she lives with her husband and their two children, wants the Malaysian government to sign off a new search making use of technological advances.
As spokesperson for Voice370, an organisation representing the families of those onboard, she believes the answers may lie deep on the seabed.
The criminal defence lawyer wants a fresh search by US-based marine robotics company Ocean Infinity, which is proposing a 15,000km sweep of the southern Indian Ocean off the coast of Australia.
The Boeing 777 flies over Poland a month before it went missing on a flight between Malaysia and China (Picture: Reuters)
Officers carry pieces of debris from an aircraft washed ashore on Réunion island in 2015 (Picture: EPA)
‘There hasn’t been a search for a few years but we did get a proposal from a company called Ocean Infinity willing to do it on a no cure, no fee basis,’ Grace says.
‘They are proposing to search the bottom of the ocean where it’s seven kilometres deep.
‘Their proposal was given to the minister of transport during the annual remembrance event that we organised on Sunday.
‘The minister was very open to receiving the proposal and he seemed quite optimistic about renewing the search.
‘The next step after this is for Ocean Infinity to meet the minister of transport in Malaysia and finalise the terms of the contract for a no cure, no fee search.’
Grace has spoken of reliving the last conversations she had with her mum Anne (Picture: Arif Kartono/AFP via Getty Images)
Grace, whose boys are aged 18 months and 16 months, will mark today’s anniversary on a video call where her family will remember Anne.
‘She is my best friend, it’s always hard at this time of year,’ she says.
‘Still waiting for answers is quite difficult to do.’
After her dad’s call, Grace flew from London to Kuala Lumpur, interrupting her final exams for the Barrister Training Course she was taking in Bristol.
But she returned two weeks later to complete her exams and was called to the bar. Grace tried to call Anne on her mum’s birthday in the year following the plane’s disappearance, and says she sent her 100 messages, but found her phone unresponsive.
She nevertheless knows that Anne would be proud of her.
Relatives of passengers on MH370 are keeping the search for answers in the public eye (Picture: Supian Ahmad/NurPhoto/Shutterstock)
‘I didn’t take any breaks, I was called to the bar and came back to Malaysia and started working right away,’ Grace says.
‘My mum worked very hard for me to have a good education so the least I could do was not let any of her effort go to waste.’
The wider imperative to find out what happened to Anne, and the other passengers and crew, is a key driver for the organisation in a world where billions of passengers take flights each year.
‘The tragedy started out as me wanting to have some closure,’ Grace says.
‘But in the years since it has progressed it has extended beyond our closure. For me personally, it’s now important that MH370 is found in order to prevent something like this from happening again.
‘All of us, as we or our loved ones take to the skies, we owe it to ourselves and to our loved ones to find out what happened to MH370.’
Do you have a story you would like to share? Contact josh.layton@metro.co.uk
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