4 hours ago - May 14, 2018 - Experts think they've finally solved mystery of disappeared Malaysian Airlines flight MH370
Experts think they've finally solved mystery of disappeared Malaysian Airlines flight MH370
Experts are now convinced they have finally uncovered what happened to the disappeared Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.
Mystery has surrounded the doomed MH370, which disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers on board, since March 2014.
A panel of aviation experts have been
working towards an explanation for the vanished Boeing 777, most of which was never found, as part of an investigation by Nine News in Australia.
Ex-Senior investigator with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, Larry Vance, said: “I think the general public can take comfort in the fact there is a growing consensus on the plane’s final moments.”
Vance, and the other experts on the panel, all agree on the suspicion that MH370 captain – Zaharie Ahmad Shah – was attempting suicide.
They believe he selected a remote and isolated part of the route so the plane would disappear.
MH370 captain ‘deliberately evaded radar’ during final moments of doomed flight, according to experts
Captain Zaharie managed to evade detection by military radar belonging to either Thai or Malaysian forces, according to Boeing 777 pilot Simon Hardy.
“As the aircraft went across Thailand and Malaysia, it runs down the border, which is wiggling underneath, meaning it’s going in and out of those two countries, which is where their jurisdictions are,” Hardy told the programme.
He added that if he were hired to make Boeing 777 disappear, he would “do the exact same thing”.
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s very accurate flying because think it did the job and we know, as a fact, that the military did not come and intercept the aircraft,” he added.
John Dawson, a lawyer who represented the nine families whose relatives vanished from MH370 and MH17, agreed that evidence suggested one of the aircrew was responsible.
MH370 captain ‘deliberately evaded radar’ during final moments of doomed flight
He said: “The evidence is so heavily weighted to involvement by one of the aircrew taking this aircraft down.
“That aircraft has probably de-pressurised, the people died of asphyxiation, it was premeditated murder.
“It was highly planned. The bodies have never been found.”
This archive footage was released in October 2017. (Video)
Search for MH370 to be scrapped
The end of the fruitless hunt after almost three years means the world's greatest aviation mystery may never be solved.
Most of the MH370 wreckage has never been recovered.
14 May 2018 - MH370 Captain "deliberately evaded radar" during final moments of doomed flight
MH370 captain 'deliberately evaded radar' during final moments of doomed flight
Aviation experts believe they may have solved the mystery of the disappearance of flight MH370, saying the 239 passengers and crew were the victims of a deliberate, criminal act carried out by the plane’s captain.
The fate of the Boeing 777 has mystified investigators ever since it went missing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in 2014.
However, a panel of experts assembled for the Australian TV programme 60 Minutes says the evidence suggests
Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah executed a careful series of manoeuvres to evade detection and ensure the plane disappeared in a remote location.
Martin Dolan, former head of the Australia Transport Safety Bureau, who led the two-year search for the missing plane, said: “This was planned, this was deliberate, and it was done over an extended period of time.”
The plane was presumed to have flown on autopilot before running out of fuel and plunging into the southern Indian Ocean. However, the wreckage has never been found and the search was suspended in January last year.
The panel suggested a more gradual descent could mean the search was concentrated in the wrong area and that the plane could still be found largely intact.
Simon Hardy, a Boeing 777 instructor, said Captain Zaharie avoided detection by flying a careful course along the winding border between Malaysian and Thai air space, crossing in and out of radar cover on either side.
“So both of the controllers aren’t bothered about this mysterious aircraft. Cause it’s, ‘Oh, it's gone. It’s not in our space any more,’” he told the programme, which was broadcast on Sunday.
The search for MH370
“If you were commissioning me to do this operation and try and make a 777 disappear, I would do exactly the same thing.”
He also pointed out the Malaysian captain had made an unexplained turn to fly over his home town of Penang.
“Somebody was looking out the window, It might be a long, emotional goodbye or a short, emotional goodbye to his home town,” he said.
Survey ship HMS Echo and a Lockheed P-3 Orion during the early days of the search in the southern Indian Ocean Credit: Press Association
Larry Vance, a veteran air crash investigator, told the programme the public could be confident in a growing consensus about the plane’s final moments and that the pilot was intent on killing himself.
“Unfortunately, he was killing everybody else on board, and he did it deliberately,” he added.
The pilot
Theories about the plane's disappearance being due to a “rogue pilot” emerged soon after the tragedy.
Malaysian officials said they believed the plane went missing after a “deliberate act” and confirmed the last words heard from the cockpit were "good night Malaysian three seven zero".
It’s unknown whether the sentence was spoken by Captain Zaharie or the co-pilot, 27-year-old Fariq Abdul Hamid.
However no conclusive evidence has ever been found that one or both of the pilots deliberately steered the aircraft into the ocean.
An initial interim report into the mystery in 2015 looked closely at Captain Zaharie’s background and behaviour in the lead-up to the flight, but found his “ability to handle stress at work and home was good”.
The report also stated: “There was no known history of apathy, anxiety, or irritability. There were no significant changes in his lifestyle, interpersonal conflict or family stresses.”
Captain Zaharie's wife, Faizah Hanun, was questioned a number of times by the FBI and Malaysian police about her husband’s state of mind leading up to the flight.
The pair were reported to have split-up before the crash, although they were still living under the same roof in Kuala Lumpur.
A modern mystery | Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
Speculation that Captain Zaharie may have brought the plane down as part of an elaborate insurance scam as also ruled out by the report, which found “no record of him having secured a life insurance policy."
Footage of the pilots and crew preparing to board the missing Boeing 777 again showed no untoward signs, with them appearing "well groomed and attired".
On Zaharie's behaviour investigators concluded: “The gait, posture, facial expressions and mannerism were his normal characteristics."
Disappearance
MH370 lost contact with Malaysian Airlines less than an hour after it took of from Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 12.41am on 8 March 2014. No distress signal or communication was sent after it disappeared.
MH370 flight path
The plane’s transponder, the instrument that communicates with ground radar, appeared to be shut down as it crossed from Malaysian to Vietnamese airspace over the South China Sea.
Initial investigations suggested the plane came down in the Indian Ocean south west of Australia, well out of its designated flight path.
When it went down the plane was carrying 12 Malaysian crew members and 227 passengers, including seven children.
The majority of those on board were Chinese and Malaysians but it was also carrying passengers from Iran, America, Canada, Indonesia, Australia, India, France, New Zealand, Ukraine, Russia, Taiwan and the Netherlands.
Malaysia Airlines said four passengers who checked in for the flight did not show up at the airport on the day.
‘Most expensive search in history’
The search for MH370 is thought to be the most expensive ever conducted.
The mystery over its last location has lead to a vast search area of nearly three million square miles being designated.
Since then Malaysian, Australian and Chinese teams have carried out underwater searches spanning 46,000 square miles in the southern Indian Ocean and found nothing.
Debris from MH370 has washed up in beaches along the coastline of Mozambique, Tanzania, Madagascar, Reunion Island and Mauritius. This has been attributed to the strength of the ocean’s currents rather than giving any clues as to MH370’s final resting place.
A report released by the Australian search agency in December advised that if the plane was not found in the existing zone it was most likely to be in a 9,653 square-mile to the north.
But after spending an estimated at £90 million, the three countries decided to wind down the investigation earlier this year.
Costs of searching for MH370 - D
The decision was met with dismay from the families' official support group, Voice 370. In a statement it said: “In our view, extending the search to the new area defined by the experts is an inescapable duty owed to the flying public in the interest of aviation safety.”
14 May 2018 - Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 crash was deliberate, aviation experts suggest (Video)
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 crash was deliberate, aviation experts suggest
An investigation by an Australian TV news program suggests the pilot of
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared with 239 people aboard more than four years ago, deliberately crashed into the Indian Ocean.
Investigators are still searching for the aircraft, but these findings raise the possibility that one of the greatest aviation mysteries in modern history may not have been a catastrophic accident, but instead a possible mass murder-suicide.
"60 Minutes Australia" brought together an international group of aviation experts who say that the disappearance of MH370 was a criminal act by veteran pilot Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah.
"He was killing himself; unfortunately, he was killing everybody else on board, and he did it deliberately," said Canadian Air crash investigator Larry Vance.
Boeing 777 pilot and instructor Simon Hardy reconstructed the flight plan based on military radar, and says Captain Shah flew along the border of Malaysia and Thailand, crossing in and out of each country's airspace to avoid detection.
"It did the job," Hardy said, "because we know, as a fact, that the military did not come and intercept the aircraft."
Hardy also made a strange discovery: Captain Shah likely dipped the plane's wing over Penang, his hometown.
"Somebody was looking out the window," he suggested.
"Why did he want to look outside Penang?" asked reporter Tara Brown.
"It might be a long, emotional goodbye -- or a short, emotional goodbye," Hardy replied.
Two experts from the "60 Minutes Australia" investigation also disagreed with the Australian Transport Safety Bureau's scenario of the "death dive" with no one in control.
"I think someone was controlling the aircraft until the end," said Hardy.
They argue instead that Captain Shah flew Flight MH370 another 115 miles than originally thought. "This was a mission by one of the crew to hide the aircraft as far away from civilization as possible," Hardy said. "Which puts us way outside the search area that is currently being done."
The wreckage uncovered so far may be further evidence that the pilot actually had control and that it was not a high speed crash. As Larry Vance noted of one wing component recovered from the shore of Africa, "The front of it would be pressed in and hollow. The water would invade inside and it would just explode from the inside. So this piece would not even exist."
"They are very compelling," aviation analyst Henry Harteveldt, president of Atmosphere Research Group, told CBS News' Kris Van Cleave. "What I find very compelling is the hypothesis that the pilot did this deliberately, and did one of the most heinous acts in modern commercial aviation."
CBS News spoke to multiple family members of the MH370 victims, and some say that this is nothing new and that without forensic evidence, they will not be convinced.
Captain Shah's family tells CBS News that "pointing a finger toward him does not make them expert investigators – they have to find the plane."
Malaysia Airlines has not yet responded to our requests for comment.
To watch the full "60 Minutes Australia" report, "MH370: The Situation Room," click on the video player below.
MH370 - The Situation Room | 60 Minutes Australia by
60 Minutes Australia on
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14 May 2018 - Disappearance of MH370 was 'planned and deliberate' (Video - 0:36 min.)
MH370 captain 'deliberately evaded radar' during final moments of doomed flight
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