Ex-pilot describes how Malaysia Airlines flight was turned into ‘killing machine’
An ex-pilot has delivered a sobering analysis of what went on aboard MH370 before it vanished on this day 10 years ago.
Ten years on from what should have been a routine flight, there is still no news about what happened to 239 people, including six Australians, after they boarded MH370 at Kuala Lumpur.
The flight, destined for Beijing, never made it there. Nobody knows where it ended up but the majority of credible theories point to a deliberate downing of the passenger plane by Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah.
As families get set to re-live their anguish all over again, an ex-pilot has delivered a sobering analysis of what went on aboard MH370 before it vanished.
In an interview for the Sky News documentary MH370: Ten Years On, which airs tonight at 7.30pm AEDT, former Qantas captain Mike Glynn tells host Peter Stefanovic that it would have been easy and fast to take everybody out with the flick of a switch.
“How do you lock the door (to the cockpit)?” Stefanovic asks. “Is that tricky?”
Mr Glynn tells him it is easy — and “designed to keep people out”.
“The door will automatically close, and you can lock it by this switch here,” Mr Glynn says, pointing at a knob inside a cockpit.
“And you can also, there’s a manual deadbolt that prohibits any sort of entry into the flight deck.”
Stefanovic asks him how easy it is to “cut off the oxygen supply and incapacitate, or even kill, the passengers on board”.
“When you open these valves, the aircraft depressurises very quickly,” Mr Glynn says while pointing to the outflow valves which controls the release of air to pressurise the cabin.
“If the aircraft’s not going to descend, you’ll start to feel very hypoxic within three or four minutes.”
Stefanovic suggests the cockpit can be turned into “a killing machine”.
“Yep, it’s not meant to do that, but yes, exactly,” Mr Glynn responds.
The Boeing 777 disappeared from radar 38 minutes after departing from KL.
The flight departed about 5pm with 12 crew and 227 passengers from 14 nations, including 153 people from China.
About 5.20pm, Captain Shah responded to Malaysia air traffic control, stating: “ … contact Ho Chi Minh (...) good night.”
The plane soon after went “dark” before diverting back over Malaysia, the opposite direction from the intended flight path.
Large scale searches for the aircraft have failed to deliver any news to the families of those missing.
Last year, a report suggested the plane could be located 1560km west of Perth.
The claim, outlined in a 229-page report, was based on “groundbreaking” radio technology led by researchers from the University of Western Australia.
Stefanovic told news.com.au that he spoke with the company that located the Titan submersible after it imploded on 18 June last year while attempting to reach the wreckage of the Titanic.
They told the Sky News host they would be interested in joining the search as there were similar difficulties associated with finding both wreckages.
“There are takers willing to join the search,” he told news.com.au. “We believe MH370 and Titan could be located at the same depth.”
The third instalment of the Sky News documentary series also involves a former member of the search who — an ocean mapper who worked with the Navy on the initial search.
“He is very critical of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau,” Stefanovic said.
“Especially of the blinkers they had on during the initial search, one which was based on a flawed theory of a death dive. That was the theory the ATSB was working on and very early on in the search he was of the view they were searching in the wrong place.
“We can safely now assume the pilot was in control to the end and that it was a controlled glide (before it crashed).”
The anguish felt by loved ones of those still missing is as raw as ever, Stefanovic says.
Not having an answer means it nags at them — always wondering what happened.
But not everybody who is grieving is willing to lay the blame on Captain Shah. Not yet, anyway.
Stefanovic says there is no consensus among families of the missing about who is responsible and what happened. And that at least one relative he speaks to for the documentary wants more evidence before blaming the pilot.
Ten years on, everything has changed.
“All of these processes have changed,” Stefanovic says. “It was just so easy to send a co-pilot out of the cockpit and lock the door. Put the coordinates in and the plane goes there. It’s extraordinarily simple what he was able to do. But he’s outsmarted everybody. If this was his intention, to hide the plane and kill all these people, he pulled it off.”
Some things stay the same. Like the quest for answers that do not come.
MH370: Ten Years On airs tonight at 7.30pm AEDT. Stream at SkyNews.com.au or download the Sky News Australia app
Grim theory after mum found inside shark
Friends are adamant the US mother-of-two was not killed by a shark.
Horror moment woman plunges at circus
The chilling moment a woman plunged to the floor and broke multiple bones in a gruesome performance gone wrong has been caught on camera.
Friends booted off plane over outfit
Two women were kicked off a flight after they claim the tops they were wearing made flight attendants uncomfortable.