Malaysian airline and ATSB reject MH370 pilot hijack theory

MAS group joined the Australian air safety watchdog to discredit evidence Zaharie Ahmad Shah hijacked his own aircraft.

Zaharie Ahmad Shah, a 53-year-old Malaysian, was the pilot of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

The Malaysia Airlines group yesterday joined the Australian air safety watchdog in a concerted campaign to discredit increasing evidence that Flight MH370 captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah ­hijacked his own aircraft and may have glided it to a landing outside the underwater search zone.

Malaysia Airline System Berhad issued a rare press release on MH370, saying it “notes recent media speculation around Flight MH370 and deliberate pilot ­action” and describing such reports as “speculative”.

“Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah had served Malaysia Airlines for 33 years without any disciplinary or medical issues,” MAS said, adding he had “an ­impeccable safety record”.

The move comes as the Australian Transport Safety Bureau is also mounting an aggressive public relations initiative to dispel suggestions, including from the man leading the underwater search commissioned by the ATSB, that Zaharie flew the aircraft to the end.

A review of earlier reports by the ATSB shows it has changed its publicly expressed level of confidence in its preferred “death dive” theory that MH370 crashed quickly after running out of fuel with dead or unresponsive pilots.

Previously, the ATSB said a controlled glide under pilot command was “possible”.

The ATSB is now publicly placing more weight on the presumed accuracy of satellite tracking data to determine the circumstances in which MH370 went down, having previously warned of limitations with such information.

Transport Minister Darren Chester, the ATSB, the Malaysian government, and Malaysia Airlines have been trying to downplay revelations the FBI found a simulated flight route on Zaharie’s home computer largely matching the zigzag flight MH370 took from Malaysia over the Andaman Sea to the southern Indian Ocean.

They were also stung by a statement from the leader of the underwater search, the Dutch Fugro marine survey group’s project director Paul Kennedy, that he now thought Zaharie might have been at the controls and glided the aircraft down, and that the search area should next move to one based on that ­assumption.

As revealed yesterday, ATSB head Greg Hood told The Australian automatic satellite data that tracked the path of MH370 after transponder and radio contact were lost with the aircraft on March 8, 2014, had been re-­analysed by defence scientists.

He told this newspaper analysis of the signals most closely matched a scenario in which there was no pilot at the controls at the end of the flight.

However, in its earlier public reports, including those based on the Australian Defence Science and Technology Group review last year, the ATSB did not dismiss the controlled glide theory.

The ATSB came up with a “low priority width” of an alternative search area a further 60 nautical miles wide on either side, which, it said, “encompasses the possible but less probable controlled glide scenario”.