Explosive documents have revealed last-minute changes made to doomed flight MH370 which disappeared ten years ago today, with an expert claiming evidence shows the captain deliberately crashed in a shocking mass murder-suicide.
The plane’s flight plan shows that an additional 3,000 kg of fuel was added to the plane before takeoff, along with additional (unneeded) oxygen supplied only to the cabin.
speaking to SunBoeing 777 pilot Simon Hardy said the new details could be proof that 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 plane disappears forever, one of the last things that was done when the engineer says nothing was observed (no oxygen was added), then someone else boards board and says it’s a little low. .
“Well, it’s actually not low at all,” he added. “It’s a strange coincidence that the last engineering task performed before it headed into oblivion was filling the crew with oxygen, which is just for the cabin, not the cabin crew.”
The Boeing 777 plane disappeared from radar while en route from Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, to Beijing on March 8, 2014. Satellite data showed that 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 all 239 people on board took off into the night sky from Kuala Lumpur, never to be seen or heard from again. Pictured: A CGI rendering of MH370 from a National Geographic documentary showing an apparent accident.
The most persistent theory has centered on the pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah (pictured), and suggestions that it was a deliberate act because he was facing personal problems.
Hardy said the lack of oxygen in the rear of the plane would have rendered the cabin crew and passengers unconscious, allowing him to carry out a premeditated plan unhindered.
The extra fuel, he said, would have allowed the pilot an additional 30 minutes of flight time, allowing him to crash the plane in daylight.
“If you want to do a good abandonment, do it in daylight or at least half-light,” he said.
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 carried out the largest search for the plane in aviation history, but failed to find any clues and the operation was suspended in January 2017.
A private search conducted in 2018 by the American marine robotics company Ocean Infinity also found nothing.
Since then, debris confirmed or believed to have come from plane MH370 has turned up along the African coast and on islands in the Indian Ocean.
Hardy told The Sun that the discovery of downward-facing flaps, used to reduce stall speed, suggests manual override.
“If you want to lower the fins, there has to be someone there lowering them,” he said.
‘If the flaps are down, there is liquid fuel, then someone is moving a lever and it is someone who knows what they are doing. “Everything points to the same scenario.”
But officials have not been able to clarify what happened to the plane.
One of the most persistent theories has centered on the pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, and suggestions that the disappearance was a deliberate act because he was facing personal problems.
Shah had reportedly separated from his wife Fizah Khan and was said to be furious that a relative, opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, had been sentenced to five years in prison for sodomy shortly before boarding the plane to fly 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 study of the disaster by New Zealand-based air crash investigator Ewan Wilson.
Other theories blamed co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, who some suspected may have overpowered the pilot and disabled the plane, again due to alleged personal problems.
Theorists claimed that Hamid had relationship problems and that this was his dramatic way of taking his own life.
But he was engaged to marry Captain Nadira Ramli, 26, a fellow pilot for another airline, and he loved his job. There are no known reasons why he took any fatal action.
The missing plane, a Boeing 777-200ER, taking off in France in 2011.
The flight took off from Kuala Lumpur at 00:41 local time on March 8, 2014, and was scheduled to travel for approximately five hours and 34 minutes before arriving in Beijing at around 06:30 local time.
The crew last contacted air traffic control just 38 minutes after takeoff, about halfway between Malaysia’s Malay Peninsula and Cape CÃ Mau, the southernmost point of Vietnam.
Co-pilot Fariq Hamid, 27, was understood to be piloting the plane. It would be his last training flight before being tested to become a fully certified pilot.
Hamid was being trained by the pilot in command, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53.
With 18,365 flight hours, he was one of Malaysia Airlines’ highest-ranking captains, having joined the company in 1983.
There were 10 crew members and 227 registered passengers on board, with a total of 239 on board, including the pilots.
At 1:01 a.m., Zaharie radioed to say that they had reached 35,000 feet and leveled off, a slightly unusual communication, when the norm is to report that an altitude has been abandoned.
Seven minutes later, the flight crossed the coast of Malaysia and flew over the South China Sea.
Within 11 minutes it began approaching a waypoint, called IGARI, near the beginning of Vietnamese air traffic jurisdiction.
At 1:19 a.m., the Kuala Lumpur Center controller radioed: “Malaysian three seven zero, please contact Ho Chi Minh one two zero decimal nine.” Good night,’
The controller told the pilots to alert Vietnam of their approach.
‘Good night. “Malaysia three-seven-zero,” Zaharie replied.
This was the last communication from MH370. The pilots never contacted Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam nor responded to any attempts to contact them again.
Seconds after crossing Vietnamese airspace, the plane disappeared from Malaysian air traffic control screens.
37 seconds later, at 01:21, 39 minutes after takeoff, the entire plane disappeared from secondary radar.
It was later learned that the plane’s transponder, a communications system that transmits the plane’s location to air traffic control, had been manually turned off.
This appeared to have been done at a vulnerable moment in the plane’s route: as it passed between the airspace of two countries.
Indian sand artist Sudarsan Pattnaik creates a sand sculpture of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 on Puri beach in the eastern state of Odisha on March 7, 2015.
Officers carrying debris from an unidentified plane apparently washed ashore in Saint-Andre de la Reunion, east of Reunion Island, France, on July 29, 2015.
Data from the Inmarsat satellite and military radar later showed that the plane probably did not suffer any catastrophic event, but had continued flying.
MH370 crossed an arc stretching from Central Asia in the north to Antarctica somewhere at 8:19 a.m. Kuala Lumpur time.
Analysis indicated with almost certainty that the plane inexplicably turned south, not north, and continued for another six hours after disappearing from military radar at 2.22 a.m.
The flight presumably continued at high altitude during those six hours, until making its final signal around 8:19 a.m. on March 8, seven hours after final contact was made with the pilots over the South China Sea.
Minutes later, experts believe it sank into the ocean.
Searches continued for years, but only a few remains were found on the east coast of Africa.