Pilot flew MH370 to its doom: investigators

A pilot was in control right to the end of the doomed Malaysian flight, investigators say.

MH370 Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah. Source: Facebook.

A pilot was in control right to the end of the flight of the Malaysian airliner that vanished over the Indian Ocean in 2014, French investigators say.

The autopilot could not have made the tight turns of MH370, according to a team that was given data on a visit to Boeing’s base in Seattle.

The Boeing 777, with 239 people on board, disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, creating one of aviation’s biggest mysteries.

Several pieces of debris have been recovered from the shores of Reunion Island, Madagascar and Mozambique but searches have found no trace of the aircraft or those on board. Satellite data showed the airliner flying across the ocean for hours before disappearing.

MH 370 Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah.

Ghyslain Wattrelos, a French engineer who lost his wife and two children on the flight in March 2014, said that investigators told him at a meeting in Paris this week that they had concluded that “in all likelihood . . . the pilot flew the aircraft right to the end”.

Investigators, led by a judge, told Le Parisien that tight turns performed by the 777 “could only have been flown by hand”. Autopilots are programmed to bank gently. “Nothing suggests that someone other than the pilots had entered the cockpit,” an investigator said.

However, Mr Wattrelos, who has one surviving son, said the investigators told him that there was no proof a pilot had committed murder-suicide.

Early speculation focusing on technical failure, sabotage or hijacking has given way to the theory that a pilot changed course, switched off electronic equipment to conceal the Boeing’s position and flew until its fuel ran out.

Suspicion has fallen on Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, the captain. An investigation last month by William Langewiesche, an aviation writer and pilot, said that expert analysis showed only a human pilot could have flown the course followed by the Boeing.

The French account is the first from officials to confirm that investigators have reached the same conclusion. Although the captain was cleared by the Malaysian authorities of any suspicion, Langewiesche quoted friends who said that he was depressed because his wife had left him.

He had also practised flights over the Indian Ocean similar to the MH370 course on a home simulator, Langewiesche wrote in his report in Atlantic magazine. After six hours “the plane dived into the ocean”, Langewiesche wrote. “Judging from the electronic evidence, this was not a controlled attempt at a water landing.”

A French judicial inquiry is under way because of the presence of three French citizens on board the aircraft. The judge and his team are also due to meet FBI investigators about the case this summer.

- The Times