Explosive documents have revealed last-minute changes made to the doomed MH370 flight that disappeared ten years ago today. An expert claims the evidence shows the captain deliberately crashed in a shocking mass murder-suicide.
The plane’s flight plan shows that 3,000 kg of extra fuel was added to the plane before takeoff, along with extra – unnecessary – oxygen supplied only to the cockpit.
Speak with The sunBoeing 777 pilot Simon Hardy said the new details could be evidence that MH370 captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah planned the disappearance, which continues to baffle experts.
He told the outlet, “It’s an incredible coincidence that right before this plane disappears forever, one of the last things done while the engineer says nothing was noticed (no oxygen added), and someone else gets on board and says that it is a bit low. .
“Well, it’s not that low at all,” he added. ‘It is a strange coincidence that the last technical task carried out before it was forgotten was to refill oxygen for the crew, which is only for the cockpit, not for the cabin crew.’
The Boeing 777 plane disappeared from radar while en route from the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014. Satellite data showed the plane deviated from its flight path and flew 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 from Kuala Lumpur into the night sky, never to be seen or heard from again. Pictured: A CGI rendering of MH370 from a National Geographic documentary showing an apparent crash
The most persistent theory focused on the pilot – Zaharie Ahmad Shah (pictured) – and suggested it was a deliberate act as he was struggling with personal problems.
Mr Hardy said the lack of oxygen in the back of the plane would have rendered the cabin crew and passengers unconscious, allowing him to carry out a premeditated plan without hindrance.
The extra fuel, he said, would have given the pilot 30 minutes of extra flight time, allowing him to crash the plane in daylight.
“If you want to do a good ditching, do it in daylight or at least half daylight,” he asserted.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared shortly after takeoff on March 8, 2014, and the 239 people on board were never seen again.
A multinational team conducted the largest search in aviation history for the plane, but turned up no clues and the operation was suspended in January 2017.
A private search in 2018 by US maritime robotics company Ocean Infinity also turned up nothing.
Debris confirmed or suspected 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 that the discovery of downward-facing flaps, used to reduce stall speed, indicated a manual override.
“If you want the flaps down, there has to be someone to lower the flaps,” he said.
‘When the valves are down, there is liquid fuel, someone moves a lever and it is someone who knows what he is doing. It all points to the same scenario.”
But officials are no closer to figuring out what happened to the plane.
One of the most enduring theories focused on the pilot – Zaharie Ahmad Shah – and the suggestion that the disappearance was a deliberate act as he was dealing with personal problems.
Shah is said to have split with his wife Fizah Khan, and is said to be furious that a relative, opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, was given a five-year prison sentence for sodomy shortly before boarding a plane for the flight to Beijing.
But the pilot’s wife angrily denied any personal problems, while other relatives 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 investigation into the disaster by New Zealand-based air accident investigator Ewan Wilson.
Other theories placed the blame on co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, who some suspected could have overpowered the pilot and disabled the plane, again due to alleged personal problems.
Theorists claimed that Hamid was having relationship problems, and that this was his dramatic way of committing suicide.
But he was engaged to Captain Nadira Ramli, 26, a fellow pilot from another airline, and loved his job. There are no known reasons why he took a fatal action.
The missing plane – a Boeing 777-200ER aircraft – takes off in France in 2011
The flight departed Kuala Lumpur at 12:41 pm local time on March 8, 2014 and would travel for approximately five hours and 34 minutes before arriving in Beijing around 6:30 am local time.
The crew last contacted air traffic control just 38 minutes after takeoff, about halfway between the Malay Peninsula and Cà Mau Cape, Vietnam’s southernmost point.
Co-pilot Fariq Hamid, 27, was expected to fly the plane. It would be his last training flight before being examined to become a fully certified pilot.
Hamid was trained by the captain: 53-year-old Zaharie Ahmad Shah.
With 18,365 flying hours, he was one of the highest-ranking captains at Malaysia Airlines after joining the company in 1983.
On board were 10 crew members and 227 registered passengers, a total of 239 on board, including the pilots.
At 1:01 a.m., Zaharie radioed that they had reached 35,000 feet and had leveled off – a somewhat unusual communication, when it is the norm to report leaving an altitude.
Seven minutes later, the flight passed the coastline of Malaysia and flew over the South China Sea.
Within 11 minutes, it began approaching a waypoint – called IGARI – near the beginning of Vietnam’s air traffic jurisdiction.
At 1:19 a.m., the Kuala Lumpur Center controller radioed, “Malaysian three-seven-zero, contact Ho Chi Minh one-two-zero-decimal-nine.” Good night,’
The controller told the pilots to warn Vietnam of their approach.
‘Good night. Malaysian three-seven-zero,” Zaharie replied.
This was the last message from MH370. The pilots never checked in with Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, nor did they return any attempts to contact them again.
Seconds after entering Vietnamese airspace, the plane disappeared from Malaysian air traffic control screens.
37 seconds later – at 1:21 a.m., 39 minutes after takeoff – the entire aircraft disappeared from the secondary radar.
It would later emerge that the aircraft’s transponder – a communications system that transmits the aircraft’s location to air traffic control – had been manually switched off.
This appeared to have happened at a vulnerable moment in the plane’s route: when it flew between the airspace of two countries.
Indian sand artist Sudarsan Pattnaik creates a sand sculpture of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 at Puri beach in the eastern state of Odisha on March 7, 2015
Officers carrying pieces of debris from an unidentified aircraft apparently washed up in Saint-Andre de la Reunion, eastern La Reunion Island, France on July 29, 2015.
Inmarsat satellite data and military radar later showed that the plane was likely not affected by some catastrophic event, but instead continued flying.
MH370 crossed an arc stretching from Central Asia north towards Antarctica – somewhere – at 8:19 a.m. Kuala Lumpur time.
Analysis indicated with near certainty that the plane inexplicably turned south, not north, and continued moving for six hours after disappearing from military radar at 2:22 am.
The flight is believed to have continued at high altitude for those six hours until the last signal was issued around 8:19 a.m. on March 8 – seven hours after the last 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 found around the east coast of Africa.