Missing plane mystery no closer to resolution
WHEN flight MH370 changed course and flew in the opposite direction with 239 people on board, it was “likely” under manual control, not autopilot, according to a longawaited report into one of aviation’s greatest mysteries.
The report said the com- munication systems on the plane were also “likely” to have been manually turned off or had power interrupted to them, but there was no suggestion the flight was trying to evade radar.
It does not suggest pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah, co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid or the rest of the crew had anything to do with the plane’s disappearance, saying the pilot had nothing in his background, family and medical history to suggest any problems.
An examination of Mr Zaharie’s home flight simulator found “no unusual activities other than game-related flight simulations”, saying manually programmed points could not be shown to have plotted a course to the southern Indian Ocean, where it is believed MH370 now rests.
The 500-plus-page report from the Malaysian Safety Investigation Team was released in Kuala Lumpur yesterday, 4½ years after MH370 disappeared on a routine flight from Malaysia to Beijing on March 8, 2014. Sunshine Coast woman Danica Weeks, whose husband, Paul, was on board the plane, said she felt “deflated” by the failure of the report to reveal anything new.
“Where does that leave us? We are in the wheel again going around and around. It just keeps on going and it just sucks,” Ms Weeks said.