Malaysia’s former prime minister confirmed that the investigators of Malaysia Airlines Flight H370 disappearance have looked into the possibility that the flight captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah might have deliberately steered the airliner off course.
Najib Razak, the former prime minister of Malaysia, said that a possible scenario of MH370 pilot deliberately crashing down the airliner was never ruled out during the investigation. However, the country’s officials decided against voicing the version in public.
“It would have been deemed unfair and legally irresponsible since the black boxes and cockpit voice recorders had not been found and hence, there was no conclusive proof whether the pilot was solely or jointly responsible,” Najib was quoted as saying by Reuters.
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, disappeared from radar screens on March 8, 2014, less than an hour after takeoff. Since then, the question on how a Boeing 777 airliner with 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board disappeared without a trace, has become one the world’s greatest aviation mysteries.
Some debris of the missing Boeing 777 has been found spread on several coasts of different countries. But most of it, including the flight recorders known as black boxes, were never found.
Initial search in the Indian Ocean, by Malaysian, Australian and Chinese governments, came to no avail and was suspended in 2017. The following year, a private company Ocean Infinity carried out another search mission under the agreement with the Malaysian government on a “no find, no pay” basis. The company used eight autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) for the task, but the mission ended in June 2018 without finding the missing aircraft.
The Malaysian government’s 449-page report on the findings of the investigation was released on June 30, 2018. While the report left more questions than answers, it included a Boeing 777 simulator reconstruction flight, which showed that Flight MH370 might have been steered off course deliberately. “The change in flight path probably resulted from manual inputs,” findings of the report read.
“The team is unable to determine the real cause for disappearance of MH370…,” Kok Soo Chon, head of the MH370 safety investigation team, told reporters following the release of the report. While investigators were unable to clearly establish what happened to the MH370, multiple theories emerged from aviation experts, authors and conspiracy theorists.
