Explosive documents have revealed last-minute changes made to the doomed MH370 flight that vanished ten years ago today, with an expert claiming the evidence shows the captain deliberately crashed in a shocking mass murder-suicide.
The plane’s flight plan shows an extra 3,000kg fuel was added to the plane before takeoff, along with extra – unrequired – oxygen supplied only to the cockpit.
Speaking to The Sun, Boeing 777 pilot Simon Hardy said the new details could be proof MH370 captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah planned the disappearance that continues to baffle experts.
He told the outlet: ‘It’s an incredible coincidence that just before this aircraft disappears forever, one of the last things that was done as the engineer says nil noted [no oxygen added], then someone else gets on onboard and says it’s a bit low.
‘Well it’s not really low at all,’ he added. ‘It’s a strange coincidence that the last engineering task that was done before it headed off to oblivion was topping up crew oxygen which is only for the cockpit, not for the cabin crew.’
The Boeing 777 aircraft vanished from radar while en route from Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014. Satellite data showed the plane deviated from its flight path to head over the southern Indian Ocean, where it is believed to have crashed.
On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and the 239 people on-board took off into the night’s sky from Kuala Lumpur, never to be seen or heard from again. Pictured: A CGI rendering of MH370 from a National Geographic documentary that shows an apparent crash
The most persistent theory has centred on the pilot – Zaharie Ahmad Shah (pictured) – and suggestions that it was a deliberate act because he was facing personal problems
Mr Hardy said the lack of oxygen in the back of the plane would have knocked the cabin crew and passengers unconscious, allowing him to carry out a premeditated plan without obstruction.
The extra fuel, he said, would have allowed the pilot an extra 30 minutes of flying time, allowing him to crash the plane in daylight.
‘If you want to do a good ditching, you do it in daylight or at least half daylight,’ he claimed.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished shortly after taking off on March 8, 2014 and the 239 people on-board were never seen again.
A multinational team carried out the largest search in aviation history for the plane, but it failed to turn up any clues and the operation was suspended in January 2017.
A private search in 2018 by US-based marine robotics company Ocean Infinity also found nothing.
Debris confirmed or believed to be from the MH370 aircraft has since washed up along the African coast and on islands in the Indian Ocean.
Mr Hardy told The Sun the discovery of downward-facing flaps, used to reduce stalling speed, suggest a manual override.
‘If you want the flaps down, there has to be someone there putting the flaps down,’ he said.
‘If the flaps were down, there is a liquid fuel, then someone is moving a lever and it’s someone who knows what they are doing. It all points to the same scenario.’
But officials have come no closer to working out what happened to the plane.
One of the most enduring theories has centred on the pilot – Zaharie Ahmad Shah – and suggestions that the disappearance was a deliberate act because he was facing personal problems.
Shah had allegedly split with his wife Fizah Khan, and was said to be furious that a relative, opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, had been given a five-year jail sentence for sodomy shortly before he boarded the plane for the flight to Beijing.
But the pilot’s wife angrily denied any personal problems, while other family members and friends said he was a devoted family man and loved his job.
The ‘murder-suicide’ theory was also the conclusion of the first independent study into the disaster by the New Zealand-based air accident investigator, Ewan Wilson.
Other theories placed blame on co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, who some suspected could have overpowered the pilot and disabled the aircraft, again due to alleged personal problems.
Theorists claimed Hamid was having relationship problems, and this was his dramatic way of taking his own life.
But he was engaged to be married to Captain Nadira Ramli, 26, a fellow pilot from another airline, and loved his job. There are no known reasons for him to have taken any fatal action.
The missing aircraft – a Boeing 777-200ER plane – is seen taking off in France in 2011
The flight took off from Kuala Lumpur at 12.41am local time on March 8, 2014, and was scheduled to travel for roughly five hours and 34 minutes before arriving in Beijing at around 6.30am local time.
The crew last communicated with air traffic control just 38 minutes after takeoff, around halfway between Malaysia’s Malay Peninsula and Cà Mau Cape, the southern-most point of Vietnam.
Co-pilot Fariq Hamid, 27, was understood to be flying the plane. It was to be his last training flight before he was set to be examined to become a fully-certified pilot.
Hamid was being trained by the pilot in command – 53-year-old Zaharie Ahmad Shah.
With 18,365 flying hours, he was one of the most senior captains at Malaysia Airlines, having joined the company in 1983.
On board were 10 crew and 227 registered passengers- totalling 239 on board, including the pilots.
At 1.01am, Zaharie radioed to say they had reached 35,000 feet and levelled off – a slightly unusual communication, when the norm is to report leaving an altitude.
Seven minutes later, the flight crossed Malaysia’s coastline and flew out over the South China Sea.
Within 11 minutes it began to approach a way-point – called IGARI – near the start of Vietnamese air-traffic jurisdiction.
At 1.19am, the controller at Kuala Lumpur Center radioed: ‘Malaysian three-seven-zero, contact Ho Chi Minh one-two-zero-decimal-nine. Good night,’
The controller told the pilots to alert Vietnam of their approach.
‘Good night. Malaysian three-seven-zero,’ Zaharie replied.
This was the last communication from MH370. The pilots never checked in with Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam nor answered any attempts to contact them again.
Seconds after crossing into Vietnamese airspace, the plane dropped off the screens of Malaysian air traffic control.
37 seconds later – at 1.21am, 39 minutes after take off – the entire plane disappeared from secondary radar.
It would later be revealed that the plane’s transponder – a communication system that transmits the plane’s location to air traffic control – had been switched off manually.
This appeared to have been done at a vulnerable moment in the plane’s route: as it passed between the air space of two countries.
Indian sand artist Sudarsan Pattnaik creates a sand sculpture of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 on Puri beach in eastern Odisha state on March 7, 2015
Officers carrying pieces of debris from an unidentified aircraft apparently washed ashore in Saint-Andre de la Reunion, eastern La Reunion island, France on July 29, 2015
Inmarsat satellite data and the military radar later showed that the plane likely did not suffer some catastrophic event but that it had instead continued to fly.
MH370 crossed an arc stretching from Central Asia in the north down towards Antarctica – somewhere – at 8.19am Kuala Lumpur time.
Analysis indicated with near-certainty that the plane inexplicably turned south, not north, and continued for another six hours after it vanished from military radar at 2.22am.
It is presumed the flight continued at high-altitude during those six hours, until making its final signal at around 8.19am on March 8 – seven hours after final contact was made with pilots over the South China Sea.
Minutes later, experts believe it nose-dived into the ocean.
Searches continued for years, but only a few pieces of debris were ever found around the east coast of Africa.
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