MH370 pilot was in control of doomed flight until the end and made ‘abnormal’ turns before it crashed into the ocean, investigators claim
THE pilot of flight MH370 which disappeared in 2014 was "in control until the very end" and made "abnormal" turns before crashing, it has been alleged by officials running the investigation.
French investigators have reportedly been given access to a "considerable amount" of "crucial" Boeing flight data sent during the Malaysian Airlines flight prior to the crash.
Official documents "lend weight" to suspicions that the pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, crashed into the sea in a murder-suicide, they were cited as saying, reported .
The data contains a sizeable amount of documents and satellite information from British-based telecommunications company Immarsat.
'CRUCIAL' DATA
It is expected to take around "a year" to go through all of the information received from Boeing, but preliminary investigations suggest "someone was behind the control stick when the plane broke up in the Indian Ocean".
Investigators based this view on data which showed that "some abnormal turns made by the 777 can only be done manually."
The revelations based on Boeing data came days after a new account suggesting the pilot may have been clinically depressed, leading him to starve the passengers of oxygen and then crash the Boeing 777 into the sea.
Flight 370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing with 239 people on board.
Just 38 minutes into the flight, MH370 lost contact with Malaysia Airlines.
They informed him that Boeing had finally granted them access late May to vital flight data at the plane maker’s headquarters in Seattle, reported Le Parisien.
They were obliged to sign a confidentiality contract, meaning the documents cannot be cited in court. The investigators also visited Immarsat headquarters in the UK.
MH370 - WHAT HAPPENED?
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur and was heading to Beijing with 239 people on board.
Passengers included Chinese calligraphers, a couple on their way home to their young sons after a long-delayed honeymoon and a construction worker who hadn't been home in a year.
But at 12.14am on March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines lost contact with MH370 close to Phuket island in the Strait of Malacca.
Before that, Malaysian authorities believe the last words heard from the plane, from either the pilot or co-pilot, was "Good night Malaysian three seven zero".
Satellite "pings" from the aircraft suggest it continued flying for around seven hours when the fuel would have run out.
Experts have calculated the most likely crash site around 1,000 miles west of Perth, Australia.
But a huge search of the seabed failed to find any wreckage - and there are a number of alternative theories as to its fate.
POSSIBLE 'MURDER-SUICIDE'
France is the only country still conducting a judicial inquiry into the crash and is looking into the deaths of three French passengers on board the plane - a woman and her two children.
Le Parisian cited a source 'close to the investigation', who believes a murder-suicide is the most plausible explanation for the crash.
The source said: "Some abnormal turns made by the 777 can only be done manually. So someone was at the helm.
"It is too early to state categorically. But nothing is credited that anyone else could have entered the cockpit."
Some abnormal turns made by the 777 can only be done manually
Source close to the investigation
Ghyslain Wattrelos lost his wife Laurence and two teen kids Hadrien and Ambre when the jet vanished on March 8, 2014.
He told Le Parisian: "I hope that by analysing all the data collected at Boeing , they will discover a problem that will be obvious to them.
"For now, they provide incredible work that allows to evacuate some tracks, but is not conclusive."
Last month, a claim made by a fellow pilot of Shah's alleged he locked the co-pilot out of cockpit then crashed the plane in a murder-suicide.
What are some of the theories about the Malaysia Airlines flight?
Vladimir Putin
Some feared Russian president Vladimir Putin was involved in the hijacking of MH370.
US Science writer Jeff Wise claimed Putin "spoofed" the plane's navigation data so it could fly unnoticed into Baikonur Cosmodrome so he could "hurt the West".
US shootout
French ex-airline director Marc Dugain accused the US military of shooting down the plane because they feared it had been hijacked.
A book called Flight MH370 – The Mystery also suggested that it had been shot down accidentally by US-Thai joint jet fighters during a military exercise and covered it up.
Suicide
Malaysia police chief Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar suggested the disappearance could have been the result of a suicide.
He claimed someone on board could have taken out a large life insurance package before getting on the plane, so they could treat their family or pay back the money they owed.
In hiding?
Historian and writer Norman Davies suggested MH370 could have been remotely hacked and flown to a secret location as a result of sensitive material being carried aboard the jet.
Cracks in the plane
Malaysia Airlines found a 15-inch crack in the fuselage of one of its planes, days before MH370 disappeared.
The Federal Aviation Administration insists it issued a final warning two days before the disappearance.
But the claimed the missing jet "did not have the same antenna as the rest of the Boeing 777s" so it did not receive the warning.
Pilot planned the incident
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull unexpectedly said it was “very likely that the captain planned this shocking event”.
He claimed the pilot wanted to "create the world's greatest mystery".
Another theory claimed that he hijacked his own plane in protest of the jailing of then-Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, and as a way to destabilise the corrupt government of Najib Razak.
Another seemingly far-fetched idea said the pilot had deliberately crashed the plane to cover his track as he had parachuted out of the plane so he could spend the rest of his life with his girlfriend who was waiting in a boat in the sea.
North Korea took the plane
In the wake of the incident, South Korea noted that North Korea nearly took out a Chinese plane which had 220 passengers on board, on March 5, 2014.
Some fear Pyongyang shot the plane down, but others believe it was hijacked and diverted into the communist nation.
Victims mobile phones ringing
One theory claims that because many relatives were able to hear a ringing tone for up to four days after the crash so the doomed jet could not have smashed into the Indian Ocean.
Nineteen families have all claimed the devices of their loved ones rang for up to four days after the jet went missing.
However, wireless analysts claim that phone firms sometimes use a phantom ringing sound when the device is not active, the reports.
Crashed in the Cambodian jungle
In September 2018, British video producer Ian Wilson claimed to have found the missing aircraft using Google Maps.
Despite millions being spent on the search to located the wreckage, the Brit sleuth believes he has found the jet in a mountainous area of the Cambodian jungle.
In response, the Chinese government used observation company Space View to focus in on the high-altitude area on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.
However, the firm claim there was no sign of any plane, least of all the Malaysian Airlines aircraft which has been missing since March 2014.
An MH370 sleuth has claimed that locals in Cambodia told him they saw a plane believed to be the doomed Malaysia Airlines flight crashing in the jungle.
The plane was heading for Kazakhstan
If the jet was flying north then possible locations could stretch as fast as the border between Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to Thailand.
The Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak originally asked the Kazakhstan leader Nursultan Nazarbayev to set up a search operation in the country but this quickly got sidelined as the rescue efforts focused on the Indian Ocean.
“It doesn’t make sense. It’s hard to reconcile with the man I knew. But it’s the necessary conclusion,” the unnamed pilot
The fellow pilot speculated that the mental state of Shah’s could have been a contributing factor to his decision.
“Zaharie’s marriage was bad. In the past he slept with some of the flight attendants,” he said.
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