MH370 mystery inspires elaborate theories
Whispers MH370’s pilot may have orchestrated its disappearance to be united with secret lover have a real-life precedent.
Until MH370 is found and its black boxes recovered, what happened on board the aircraft will remain a mystery. Ean Higgins’s book The Hunt for MH370 canvasses five dramatised theories that have precedents: a rogue pilot flying the aircraft to the end, a hijack gone wrong, a fire on board, rapid decompression, and the following, presented here as an edited extract.
-
Forbidden couple in secret escape?
Zaharie Ahmad Shah had enjoyed several mistresses over the years, but none, he found, came close to Rina.
Rina came from a family of fishermen on the coast and she had come into a handsome inheritance.
With Zaharie married, the couple decided to elope.
On the evening of March 7, 2014, Zaharie packed his flight crew bag with some warm clothing, a bright waterproof torch, a referee’s whistle, and his paraglider parachute.
Forty minutes into the flight, having sent his co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid back to get him a cup of coffee and locked the cockpit door, Zaharie put on the warm clothing, turned off the secondary radar transponder, put his oxygen mask on which would support him for hours, depressurised the aircraft, and turned the aircraft around.
Zaharie flew the Boeing 777 back over the Malay Peninsula, and turned up the Straits of Malacca. With their 12 minutes of oxygen having run out, the passengers and crew had fallen comatose from hypoxia, or dead.
Zaharie took the plane down to 3000 feet and reduced speed. Seeing the lights of the fishing boat he was expecting, Zaharie made a pass over it, and lined up for a second pass heading south, setting the autopilot towards the southern Indian Ocean.
Zaharie put a deflated life jacket on along with his parachute. He entered the passenger cabin, and opened one of the exit doors just behind the wings. He waited until he again saw the lights of the fishing boat approaching, and bailed out.
At the helm of one of her family’s fishing boats, Rina had watched the Boeing 777 pass overhead, kept an eye on the beam from Zaharie’s torch as he descended, and heard the whistle.
Within 15 minutes the love of her life was safely aboard and in her arms, ready to secretly elope to Australia for a new life with stolen passports and the cash from her inheritance safely stowed in the boat.
This scenario has a real-life precedent. In Portland, Oregon, on November 24, 1971, a man calling himself Dan Cooper bought a one-way ticket on Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, bound for Seattle, Washington.
Once airborne he showed a flight attendant what was in his briefcase: a collection of wires, switches, and red-coloured sticks. He threatened to blow up the aircraft if he did not get four parachutes and a $US200,000 ransom.
When the plane landed in Seattle, the man let the passengers and two flight attendants off the plane, and officials handed over the money in $US20 bills plus the parachutes.
Once the aircraft took off again, Cooper told the pilots to “fly to Mexico” — real slow and real low.
At some point thereafter, at night, Cooper lowered the rear stairway of the Boeing 727, and bailed out. He remains missing to this day, despite an extensive manhunt which the FBI only gave up in 2016.
MH370: The Untold Story. Our latest documentary on @SkyNewsAust . We assemble all the major players and revisit the mystery with new startling details. The 2 part investigation this Wednesday & Thursday night. I hope you can join us! pic.twitter.com/3deYKn1iWn
— Peter Stefanovic (@peterstefanovic) February 17, 2020
Ean Higgins, a senior journalist on The Australian, is the author of The Hunt for MH370. He spent years investigating the mystery and worked with the Sky News team on the documentary MH370: The Untold Story.
More Coverage
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout