MH370 truth is still out there after one theory proved false

Five years on, a new figure in the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 saga has emerged from the woodwork.

The informal international MH370 “club” of amateurs and experts addicted to the puzzle and looking for new pieces to solve it have been wanting to know more about Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah and his actions in the lead-up to the flight.

It will be impossible to work out decisively what happened on the Boeing 777 that disappeared on March 8, 2014, until the wreckage and the black boxes are found.

The dominant, though far from unanimous, theory is that Zaharie hijacked his own aircraft and killed all on board.

The MH370 club has been urging the Malaysian government to release more information about a long conversation between Zaharie and a Malaysia Airlines aircraft engineer about a month before the flight, and three failed calls to Zaharie’s mobile made later on the morning of the flight.

Now we know the answers, not from the Malaysian government but through journalist Kristin Shorten, who tracked down the engineer, Zulhaimi Bin Wahidin.

We now know his story, and it punctures one theory: that Zaharie was talking to the engineer for details of how to hijack the aircraft.

Zulhaimi, it turns out, was Zaharie’s cousin and close mate, going right back to childhood. The long conversation was just one of many familial ones over the years; the calls after the flight disappeared were just a desperate bid to find out what had happened to his cousin.

It’s just as important in solving the enigma of MH370 to exclude theories and leads by proving them false as it is to work on new ones that might work.

This discovery of the aircraft engineer takes us one step further, and is the sort of work the Malaysian government and the MH370 club should continue to get closer to the truth.