[imagesource: Sky News]
The longer the infamous MH370 plane remains missing with its secrets, the more theories pop up as to why it disappeared in the middle of nowhere.
In 2015, one year after the crash, it was posited that the plane likely burned its way down into the sea as it was holding 220 kilograms of lithium-ion batteries, an amount sufficient to fuel a catastrophic fire.
But there is one other theory, which really seems to have stuck, that is a little more sinister.
That there was an active pilot on board the MH370 who purposefully lost and crashed the plane killing 239 people, has long been debated.
A new documentary by Sky News Australia adds fuel to this speculation.
In MH370: The Final Search, top aviation experts reveal their theories on what most likely happened on the flight bound for Beijing.
Aviation writer and former Qantas captain Mike Glynn (below) believes it has something to do with the odd little quirk that was found when analysing the flight pattern via an invisible ‘Weak Signal Propagation Report (WSPR) trail’, or software that tracks long-distance radio signal propagation.
A strange 22-minute holding pattern was discovered in the doomed Boeing’s flight path, which might legitimately hold the key to what exactly happened, according to NewsAU:
“My theory has always been that it was the captain who is responsible … probably as a political protest,” Glynn said of senior Malaysia Airlines Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah [pictured right up top].
“I think the evidence is pretty overwhelming that the aeroplane could not have flown the route it did with all the respective turns without that being a commandeered manoeuvre,” Aviation safety investigator and retired pilot, John Cox added.
A holding pattern is defined as a predetermined pattern that keeps an aircraft within a specified airspace while awaiting further clearance from the Air Traffic Controller:
It is believed that Zaharie Ahmad Shah was involved in a murder-suicide plot as an act of political activism, with the 22 minutes suggested as being a time of “possible negotiation” between the pilot and someone else.
Shah’s motive might have been anger over the arrest of his distant relative and Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim:
Mr Ibrahim was convicted of sodomy just one day prior to MH370’s disappearance – with experts believing Mr Shah was “upset” by the verdict.
“He was active in the party … again no claim or responsibility in any of this … but that’s one lead,” author and journalist Ean Higgins told the investigation.
Mr Glynn added that the 53-year-old’s Facebook was a treasure trove of political activity and anti-government sentiment.
While there seems to be a case there, other experts in the doccie question the motive, per New York Post:
“Would it be enough for him to take such drastic action without saying he did it?” journalist Ean Higgins said. “That’s difficult to say.”
But there’s a lot stacked up against Shah, including French investigators who reported in 2019 that he was likely in control of the plane “until the end”. There were also reports about him being clinically depressed and in a bad marriage.
There’s also former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who said that Malaysian authorities had suspected the crash was an intentional murder-suicide via another Sky News documentary in 2020:
“My very clear understanding, from the very top levels of the Malaysian government, is that from very, very early on, they thought it was murder-suicide by the pilot,” Abbott told interviewers.
“I’m not going to say who said what to whom, but let me reiterate, I want to be absolutely crystal clear, it was understood at the highest levels that this was almost certainly murder-suicide by the pilot,” he said.
Meanwhile, Malaysia Airlines Crisis Director Fuad Sharuji believes Shah, who had 18 000 flying hours under his belt and was a father of three, would never be able to hijack a plane and kill all the passengers on board.
This isn’t the Sky News doccie, but it features some of the same experts speaking about the aforementioned theory:
There is also a strong lead as to where the plane crash site is, using WSPR, with British aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey releasing a report with information about a precise location.
Since then, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau has renewed focus on “the largest unsolved mystery of our time”.
Is that the truth bubbling to the surface?
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