Search teams have been looking in the wrong areas for the missing MH370, according to experts (Image: Getty)
A former pilot has a chilling theory about the fate of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. Even a decade after the plane’s disappearance, its fate remains a mystery.
The official search for the plane ended in 2017, but aviation experts are still seeking answers. Now, a former air traffic controller and ex-pilot believes that the pilot intentionally veered the plane off course before it flew for several hours and crashed into the Indian Ocean.
The plane was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it vanished. The last signal was lost as they entered Vietnamese airspace. The Malaysian Air Force used radar to see that the plane made a sharp left turn and headed back.
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Near the island of Penang, the plane flew north-west and over the Andaman Sea, where it disappeared from radar. But for the next six hours, the plane was connected with another satellite over the Indian Ocean, reports the Irish Star.
Using this information and studying the debris found, experts think the plane flew southward until it ran out of fuel. Then, it crashed into the southern ocean, somewhere between south-western Australia and Antarctica – an area known as the 7th arc.
“We’re confident only an experienced pilot could do it,” Jean Luc Marchand, a former air traffic manager at Eurocontrol, said in a new BBC documentary about the vanished MH370 plane. “They took care to be invisible, not traceable, to not be followed.”
The programme, airing on the BBC for the 10-year anniversary of the plane’s disappearance this Friday, explores various clues and hears from experts and relatives of those on board. Jean and retired airline captain Patrick Belly believe a ‘skilled pilot’ was in control until the aircraft crashed around seven hours later.
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Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah (left) and Co-Pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid (Image: Facebook)
To conceal the aircraft, they suggest the pilot switched off the satellite phones to prevent communication with ground personnel. Pilots have the ability to disable certain systems in the cockpit and can also alter cabin air pressure if needed.
Ex-pilot Belly gives his opinion in the documentary: “The problem was that the passengers, crew, were going to find the plane was no longer going to Beijing. My theory is that MH370 was depressurised. It’s quite easy for a pilot to depressurise an aircraft – all you have to do is switch the valves to manual.”
The show explains that loss of cabin pressure would cause air to rush out, but emergency oxygen masks could provide passengers with about 20 minutes of air, while the pilot has access to over 20 hours of oxygen supply in the cockpit.
“This made it possible to neutralise all the people behind in the cabin,” Belly said. “The person who took control of this plane did something extraordinary, which led to the death of 239 passengers and put it at the bottom of the Indian Ocean and we have no idea why he did that. This case, I am convinced was executed by someone who was a pilot because no one else was capable on this plane”.
Experts like retired aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey, who has worked with big names such as NASA, Boeing, and Airbus, believe the missing plane was flown deliberately before it crashed. He’s dedicated his time to uncovering the fate of MH370, as seen in the BBC documentary.
He’s been working eight hours a day for the past ten years to solve the puzzle. “In my mind, there is no aviation mystery that cannot be solved,” he declares in the documentary.
“Aircraft do not vanish. They always leave a trail of breadcrumbs – might be a trail of physical or electronic evidence. Thorough searches led us to somewhat the end of the road. Have we missed something? “.
Captain Belly believes his theory is sure his theory is correct (Image: BBC)
Mr Godfrey has been using new technology to examine radio signals across the Indian Ocean. With a system called Weak Signal Propagation Reporter, or WSPR, he believes he’s found hints to the whereabouts of the lost plane MH370.
Every two minutes, transmitters send out a pulse, and if a plane flies through it, the signal gets wobbly. All of these signals are kept on a big list.
On March 8, 2014, there might have been small wobbles that could be signs of MH370, says the expert.
“I found a disturbance on the night it disappeared,” he said. “I picked it up again, and had a eureka moment.”
Mr Godfrey has found 130 wobbles over the Indian Ocean. These end just beyond where people looked underwater from the 7th arc, in a circle about 30km across.
He also said: “We haven’t found it because we didn’t look wide enough. It goes beyond where it ran out of fuel because it made changes to speed, and altitude. It implies an active pilot right until the end of the flight.”
The pilot flying the plane was Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, who’d been with the airline for 30 years, and his co-pilot Fariq Hamid, 27, who was learning on the job. People have said lots about Zaharie’s life – some say his wife left him just before the plane went missing due to rumours about him.
The programme mentions that Zaharie, the pilot, flew a simulated flight deep into the remote southern Indian Ocean less than a month before the plane disappeared under similar conditions. Many people believe that Malaysia kept these controversial details out of a public report.
These details appear to be the strongest evidence that the captain deliberately took the plane off course as part of a complex plan.
New York magazine got hold of a document showing that the FBI found six erased data points on a detailed Microsoft Flight Simulator X program. The data points show a ‘flight’ starting from Kuala Lumpur, heading northwest over the Malacca Strait, then turning left and going south over the Indian Ocean, until it runs out of fuel over an empty stretch of sea.
Search officials believe MH370 followed a similar route, based on signals the plane sent to a satellite after it stopped communicating and went off course. While the actual and simulated flights were not exactly the same, the assumed final location of the jet is the same as that of the simulated flight – about 900 miles from a remote part of the southern ocean where officials think the plane crashed.
Malaysian officials have always denied claims that Zahaire intentionally crashed the plane into the sea. They did not include any information about the flight simulator in the Factual Report released on the first anniversary of the plane’s disappearance.
In 2018, Australian investigators also dismissed claims that the pilot deliberately caused the flight to disappear. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau insists that the pilot was unconscious and the plane was out of control during the final moments.