Mahathir’s remote takeover theory for MH370 disappearance

Malaysia PM Mahathir Mohamad says it is possible MH370 was taken over remotely in a bid to foil a hijacking attempt.

Mahathir Mohamad says he does not believe the Malaysian government was involved in any MH370 cover-up. Picture: AFP.

Mahathir Mohamad says he does not believe the Malaysian government was involved in any cover-up involving the disappearance of Malaysian airlines flight MH370.

But he told The Australian it was possible the plane carrying 239 people on board a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, might have been taken over remotely in a bid to foil an attempted hijack.

“It was reported in 2006 that Boeing was given a licence to operate the takeover of a hijacked plane while it is flying so I wonder whether that’s what happened or not. It’s very strange that a plane leaves no trace at all,” he said.

“The capacity to do that is there. The technology is there. You know how good people are now with operating planes without pilots. Even fighter planes are to be without pilots. Some technology we can read in the press but many of military significance is not published.”

MH370 is believed to have made a radical change of course less than an hour after takeoff and crashed in the southern Indian Ocean off Western Australia six hours later. A two-year, $200 million search led by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau at the request of the Malaysian government failed to find the aircraft in a 120,000sq km search zone.

However, a new search by a Texas-based ocean surveying company, Ocean Infinity, operating on a “no-find, no-fee” basis, is currently under way in an adjacent area to the original search zone.