A widow has opened up about the heartbreaking moment she found out her husband was on the missing flight MH370.
On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 vanished from radar during its journey from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
All 227 passengers and 12 crew members were presumed dead. Among them was Paul Weeks, Danica’s husband and the father of their two young sons.
Paul, who was a 39-year-old mechanical engineer, had just left their home in Perth, Australia, to begin a new job in Mongolia.
It was a fly-in-fly-out role that kept him away for weeks at a time, something he was hesitant about, but his wife encouraged him not to pass up the opportunity.
That final morning, the couple's sons, Lincoln and Jack, blew kisses to their dad and said they loved him.
Danica remembered the scene vividly in the Netflix documentary MH370: The Plane That Disappeared. “The boys blew kisses and said they loved them, and they walked out the door… and that was like it was yesterday.”
Before boarding the plane, Paul sent his wife one last email: “You and the boys are my world.” He also left Danica his watch and wedding ring, asking that the ring go to their first son to marry, and the watch to the second.
His heartbroken wife now wears the ring around her neck, keeping it close.
When the plane disappeared, Danica didn’t find out from the airline - she got a call from a reporter. “I thought, what does she want with Paul, and she said, ‘You haven’t heard?’ and I said, ‘Heard what?’ and she said there had been an incident with the plane. I dropped the phone and ran outside screaming.”
For days, then weeks, and eventually months, Danica waited for news about her husband, but none came.
“Every morning I wake up and think, ‘How do you lose a plane?’ I can’t even begin to grieve yet,” she said, adding that her life came to a standstill the moment she learned Paul was gone.
“Every night now I go home and it's lonely, it’s very lonely. When you've had someone there for 14 years, how do you keep going when they're gone?” she shared.
The couple first met at Oktoberfest in Munich. After years together in London and Christchurch, they moved to Perth in 2011 to settle down and raise their family. Their life together was never supposed to end like this.
Danica has become one of the most outspoken relatives of MH370 victims. “I promised him from day dot I would find him and bring him home, and I haven’t done that. Until I do, there will be no peace.”
She remains determined not just for her own closure, but for all the grieving families. “That’s why I won’t let [Malaysia Airlines] treat him like a seat number. I have to keep him alive. And I won’t rest until we find out what happened to him and to everyone else on that plane.”
Danica also had to explain the tragedy to their children. Lincoln, then four, believes his dad “went to work forever,” but that has left him with separation anxiety about his mom. The emotional toll on the family is unrelenting.
When a second Malaysia Airlines flight, MH17, was shot down over Ukraine just months later, the trauma resurfaced. “Just feel so heartbroken, all over again, for all the families of MH17,” Danica wrote on Facebook.
Despite several failed searches, efforts to locate MH370’s wreckage have continued in the years since.
Martin Dolan of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau has led investigations using radar data, satellite tracking, and flight simulators. He recently revealed that seabed surveys have located hard objects that differ from their surroundings, although there’s no confirmation that they belong to the missing aircraft.
Danica and others continue to push for answers. In the Netflix series, her pain was felt by viewers around the world.
“Just watched the #MH370 documentary (new on Netflix). Harrowing at times and incredulous at others. So sad for those affected and their families,” one wrote.
Another shared: "In here watching this MH370 documentary on Netflix... I feel terrible for these family members. They making me wanna cry."