The Air Transport Safety Bureau of the Australian government has debunked rumors that the pilot of the ill-fated Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370, which disappeared on March 8, 2014 on its flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing laden with 227 passengers and 12 crew onboard, has hijacked his own aircraft before it crashed.
Dan O’Malley, the spokesman for the ATSB, said that the rouge pilot theory as claimed by some rumors is rubbish.
They dismissed the suggestion that Malaysian pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah, who steered the ill-fated plane on March 8, 2014, hijacked the plane, citing it as a baseless assumption.
The Australian authorities say they go more with the pilot hypoxia theory rather than the rogue pilot claims, wherein the pilots lost consciousness due to lack of oxygen that resulted to the eventual crashing of the plane, details The Malaysian Insider.
O’Malley explained that the limited evidence available for Flight MH370 was compared with three accident classes including an in-flight upset, an unresponsive crew/hypoxia event, and a glide event.
He added that the final stages of the unresponsive crew/hypoxia event appeared to best fit the available evidence for the final period of Flight MH370 when it was noted to be heading in a generally southerly direction, surprisingly veering off course from its normal northern route.
A ridiculous theory after a previous ridiculous theory
The rogue pilot theory was not surprising to pop up in the news because back in 2014, there was also a ridiculous theory that claimed that it was a rocket fired from somewhere like the Ukraine that hit the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 and caused the accident.
It was also the reason why the well-trained crew of the Malaysian Airlines plane was not able to react according to their training. It was also the reason why there was hardly a trace of any wreckage of the plane because after exploding in mid-air, all its particles were scattered to bits and pieces.
However, that theory was eventually quashed as the method of tracking the plane via hourly satellite handshakes revealed that Flight MH370 had flown more than seven hours and was most likely out in the southern Indian Ocean, notes The Australian.
It was clear from the initial investigation that the flight management system computer must have been reprogrammed. Because otherwise the aircraft would have flown itself to Beijing if the pilots were incapacitated and the damage of any event was not so severe as to cause autopilot disconnect, with the end result of an uncontrolled crash.
The pilot under scrutiny
Zaharie Ahmad Shah came under suspicion of turning rogue during the flight after the discovery of a flight simulator at his home.
Data obtained by authorities on the home simulator showed that Zaharie had been practicing flights out to the southern Indian Ocean, which is consistent with the working theory that Flight MH 370 ended its flight on the ocean off the coast of western Australia, based on Inmarsat satellite data.
Veteran fighter pilot and airline captain Byron Bailey disclosed that many in the aviation community believed the ATSB was under pressure from Malaysia to stick with the unresponsive crew/hypoxia explanation because the rogue pilot assumption could be awkward for Putrajaya.
Meanwhile, the family members of Zaharie Ahmad Shah vehemently denied that the pilot had a different intention when he flew the Flight MH370 on March 8, 2014, saying that their relative has an unblemished flying record of more than 18,000 hours, mostly with Boeing 777 planes.
Zaharie’s sister, Sakinab Shah, said that no one has the right to blame his brother for any wrongdoing because it seems clear that the cause of the disappearance of Flight MH370 was a result of an accident.
She also hit the media for rumor-mongering, adding that the family had already endured twisted and conniving misinterpretations about her brother.