‘Murder-suicide plot’ brought down MH370: Aviation expert

Two aviation experts have given their bombshell views on what really happened to Flight MH370 - and why the clues have been there from the start.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was brought down in a murder-suicide plot with its last recorded flight path only possible by the actions of an experienced pilot, two of the world’s top air crash investigators conclude.

Speaking on the eve of the eighth anniversary of the aircraft’s disappearance, retired airline pilot and aviation safety investigator Captain John M. Cox said there was no doubt in his mind it was no accident.

The March 2014 flight and its 239 passengers and crew disappeared over the Indian Ocean amid theories pilot Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah attempted to turn the aircraft around because of a fault, fire or a loss of oxygen caused mass hypoxia and the aircraft flew remote control until it ran out of fuel.

But Capt Cox, former executive air safety chairman of the powerful US Air Line Pilots Association, said the evidence simply did not stack that up.

“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,” he told News Corp yesterday.

Zaharie Ahmad Shah, the pilot of MH370. Picture: Supplied

MH370 First Officer, Fariq Ab.Hamid,

“In other words, it would not be a random manoeuvre and if it was a commandeered manoeuvre it had to be done by someone with the knowledge of how to do it and the opportunity and when you put it all together you quickly come down to the flight crew and then you come to two gentlemen.”

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Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200, the same model as MH370.

Captain John M. Cox. Supplied

He discounted co-pilot First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid for various reasons including lack of experience to know how to disable the aircraft’s ACARS digital datalink system which pointed only to Capt Shah.

But he said it was unlikely to ever be proved.

He said in air crash probes there were essentially three levels, ‘engineering certainty’ where a cause could be proved 100 per cent, ‘reasonable doubt’ and ‘probable cause’.

Air crash investigator Larry Vance author of MH370: Mystery Solved

“Accident investigators pretty well use probable cause, in the US it is the legislative requirement for evidentiary standard but the Malaysian investigators are trying to hold it to a higher standard and saying ‘well we don’t know it to an absolute certainty one way or another so we are not going to make a determination’. I don’t think they are doing themselves, Malaysian Airlines or the Malaysian government justice really, that is not helping matters a lot.”

Leading Canadian civil aviation crash investigator Larry Vance agreed said there was no complex sequence of events as there would be leading up to an accident.

He said MH370 had just one cause – an international criminal act by one individual, most likely Capt Shah.

“MH370 was a criminal act, the aircraft was intentionally ditched, exactly as I described in my book of this I have no doubt,” the former investigator said yesterday, citing his 2018 book on the subject.

“As you might imagine, I am regularly presented with ‘new’ evidence and conclusions, from all manner of sources. I have yet to see anything that I could support.”

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Originally published as ‘Murder-suicide plot’ brought down MH370: Aviation expert