Was MH370 plane crash actually suicide by pilot?

London: The pilot of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 killed himself and passengers by switching off oxygen supply in what is the sixth example of such a suicide, an aviation expert has suggested.

Ewan Wilson, head of Kiwi Airlines, believes Zaharie Ahmad Shah planned mass murder — locking his co-pilot out of the cockpit, depressurising the cabin and shutting down all communication links before turning the plane around, Daily Mail reported Monday.

Having examined all other possibilities, Wilson insists that Shah, 53, is responsible for the deaths of the 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board the doomed Malaysian Airlines flight, which disappeared on March 8.

MH370: Why do top Indonesian police say they know what happened but M'sian cops 'play dumb'

One of the strangest things about MH370 was the insistence of the government of Malaysia in the wasting of search resources over a South China Sea search when it knew on the morning of its disappearance that the flight had recrossed the Malaysia Peninsula to the north of the entrance of the Straits of Malacca.
There are several reasonable observations to be made about reports in Indonesia that the ‘truth’ about the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is known at a senior level in its police force.
But first, the report.
It says in effect, “we know what happened but are reluctant to say what that was.” Which in the courteous secrecy of much commentary in SE Asia, means “we’re not going to embarrass the neighbours, but they are on notice that we know.”
If we take note of the context in which the police official spoke, it was to urge Indonesia’s fastest growing (and scariest) airline Lion to invest in experienced, trusted, knowledgeable and presumably incorruptible police and security officials to prevent criminal acts against its operations.
However we also need to be extremely cautious and non-commital as to whether the official really does know what happened to MH370, a Boeing 777-200ER with 239 people on board, that took off from Kuala Lumpur on 8 March for Beijing and disappeared as a transponder identified flight some 40 minutes after departure on a five hours 50 minute gate-to-gate trip.

MH370 mystery: 58 ‘hard objects’ found in Indian Ocean

Kuala Lumpur: The Australia-led search team for the missing Malaysian flight MH370 has discovered 58 hard objects inconsistent with the Indian Ocean seabed, raising hopes of solving the over six months-long aviation mystery.

Transport minister Liow Tiong Lai said the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) which is leading the search for the plane is currently in the midst of retrieving the objects to be analyzed.

"We have only discovered 58 solid objects, but yet to learn if they are from (Malaysia Airlines) flight MH370. We have to verify whether the objects are the plane's wreckage or hard rocks before coming to a conclusion," he said in a press conference on Sunday.

Six months later: Where is Malaysia Airlines Flight 370?

Six months ago, the story began as a puzzling news bulletin. A Malaysia Airlines passenger jet with 239 people on board had vanished from radar screens as it was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

The disappearance was quite the mystery. Was it a terrorist attack? Was there a mechanical failure that led to a crash? Did the plane go down over land or water? Were there any survivors?

We all figured the answers would come after searchers found the aircraft or its wreckage.

Half a year later, it remains a deep mystery. No part of the plane has been discovered. Not one speck of debris.

A Boeing 777-200ER just disappeared. With 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board, it just vanished.

Authorities are convinced the plane crashed March 8 in the southern Indian Ocean. Satellite data and radar information indicate the plane turned off course and most likely went down about the time it would have run out of fuel.

Officials don’t know why it flew off course.

Airplanes and ships searched the surface of the ocean for nearly two months, with each report of debris turning out to be a false lead or flotsam from another source. To date, more than 4.5 million square kilometers of sea have been scoured.

An underwater drone with sonar took the search beneath the waves in mid-April and looked for the source of four underwater pings picked up by devices towed by ships.

`Hard spots` found in MH370 search, most likely geological: Australia

Sydney: The Australian authority leading the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 said on Friday that "hard spots" had been found on the Indian Ocean seabed, but that most would likely be geological features.

Experts are conducting a sonar survey of a remote patch of the southern Indian Ocean, an area never previously explored in such detail, in preparation for an underwater search for the plane which disappeared on March 8 with 239 people onboard.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau said the sonar search had provided information on the depth of the water and the composition of the sea floor in the search zone.

Phone call offers new clue in hunt for missing MH370

Canberra, Australia:  Shortly after the missing Malaysian airliner disappeared from radar, airline officials on the ground tried repeatedly to call the crew of the Boeing 777 using a satellite phone that might have left clues to the jet’s flight path.

Now an analysis of those failed attempts to reach Flight 370 could alter the search for the plane.

Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said Thursday that the sprawling search area in the southern Indian Ocean may be extended farther south based on the new analysis, which suggests that the aircraft turned that direction earlier than previously believed.

Families wage citizen campaign to solve MH370 mystery

Kuala Lumpur: Chinese physics student Jimmy Wang had no interest in aviation until March 8, when Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 went missing with his 58-year-old father Wang Lijun aboard.

But Wang, 31, now spends evenings in central China combing through aviation blogs for Boeing 777 technical specs, exchanging what he finds with fellow MH370 next-of-kin.

He is one of hundreds of relatives who -- desperate to learn the fate of their loved ones -- are channelling their grief in a cross-border, social-media-enabled, but so far frustrating citizen campaign to solve aviation`s greatest mystery.

Chinese hackers targeted MH370 investigation a day after jet went missing: report

Chinese hackers have targeted Malaysian government departments involved in the search for Malaysia Airlines flight 370, a Malaysian newspaper said on Wednesday.
Malware disguised as a news report that the missing jet had been found was emailed to Malaysian officials on March 9, a day after the airliner disappeared in mid-air, The Star said, citing CyberSecurity Malaysia chief executive Amirudin Abdul Wahab.
CyberSecurity Malaysia is a government agency under the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry.
In a statement to the South China Morning Post, a spokesman said the agency's digital forensics team provided technical assistance to targeted departments. However, the agency declined to say which departments had been targeted and how.
The Star report said affected agencies included Malaysia’s Civil Aviation Department, the National Security Council and Malaysia Airlines, which is majority owned by the Malaysian government.
Malaysian police were investigating the attack, the newspaper said. The information office of Malaysia's Ministry of Home Affairs, which overseas the Royal Malaysia Police could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.
Once the hackers gained access to the networks, the government departments registered a flood of outgoing e-mails, the report said. The outgoing e-mails included classified documents, the report said.
By the time the transmissions were blocked and the affected computers shut down, an unspecified amount of information had already been sent from Malaysian government computers to China, it said.
Such a hacking attack is not technically difficult, but requires preparation, said Dhillon Andrew Kannabhiran, founder and CEO of Kuala Lumpur-based Hack In The Box, which organises IT security conferences.
The timing of the attack, one day after the plane went missing, meant that the attackers had the PDF malware ready to use to infect the Malaysian government computers, he said.
Kannabhiran said investigators could only trace the stolen documents to where they had been sent to, but that might not provide definitive clues to who hacked into the computers.

Search for MH370 to resume within next month

Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Wednesday said the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 will resume off the Western Australia coast within the next month.
“My understanding is they’re going to start in the next month or so but the search could take up to a year,” Abbott told broadcaster ABC.
The Boeing with 239 people onboard disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8. Australia is part of a multinational search operation that searched part of the southern Indian Ocean, where the jet is believed to have crashed.

The mysterious disappearance of MH370

Bangalore: A scheduled passenger flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing that disappeared on March 8, 2014, after losing contact with air traffic control less than an hour after takeoff, made international headlines for months together. The disappearance of MH370 flight carrying 12 Malaysian crew members and 227 passengers from 15 nations remains a mystery till date. Captain Samir Kohli's  Into Oblivion: Understanding MH370 presents the science and the math behind this tragedy which claimed more than 235 lives.

This book is published under Creative Commons attribution — Share Alike license as the Captain believes that nobody can have a copyright on safety. The author presents a comprehensive scientific evaluation of each and every theory regarding the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

MH370 power outage linked to possible hijacking attempt

Hijackers may have tampered with vital cockpit equipment on the missing Malaysia Airlines jet mid-journey in a bid to avoid radar detection, aviation experts analysing a new government agency report say.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has released a report detailing evidence of a “not common” power outage occurring on the plane less than 90 minutes after take off from Kuala Lumpur.
Investigators revealed that after the power outage, the Boeing 777’s satellite data unit (SDU) attempted to log-on to a satellite – a process called a “handshake” in aviation industry lingo.
“A log-on request in the middle of a flight is not common and can occur for only a few reasons,” the investigators said. “An analysis was performed which determined that the characteristics and timing of the log-on requests were best matched as resulting from power interruption to the SDU.”

Embraer Issues Aircraft Safety Alert Over Loose Engine Bolts

Montreal: With carriers still jittery as the fate of missing MH370 aircraft is still a mystery after almost four months, a new safety alert has gone out.

American Airlines Group Inc and other carriers inspected engine pylon bolts on Embraer SA E190 aircraft after the Brazilian planemaker recommended the checks. The E190 can carry 98 to 114 passengers.

American found that the engine bolts “were loosened to some degree” on 12 of its 20 E190 aircraft, Paul Flaningan, a spokesman, said yesterday. The planes all were inspected and repaired yesterday and put back into service, he said.

Malaysia Airlines MH370: Pilot wife disputes final words theory

New Delhi: A new development in the missing Malaysian Airlines MH370 case has contradicted the initial claim by Malaysian Airlines chief Ahmad Jauhari Yahya about the "final words". Yahya had said the words "good night Malaysian 370" spoken by co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid were the last ones.  The airline revealed later they were unsure as to who had delivered the words.

Flight MH370 had disappeared with 239 passengers and crew on board after taking off from Kuala Lumpur, bound for Beijing, on March 8.

The wife of one of the pilots told two journalists her husband spoke the final words from the cockpit, not his co-pilot.

‘Government yet to identify actual location of MH370’

Kuala Lumpur: The Malaysian government is still discussing with the Australian and Chinese authorities to identify a new location in the Indian Ocean to locate the Malaysia Airlines (MAS) Flight MH370 aircraft which vanished on March 8.
Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein said the discussion also involved a new phase and the use of suitable assets for the operation to locate the aircraft.
“That is very important in this new phase because without knowing or deciding where this area is going to be, it’s very difficult for us to understand what sort of equipment is needed, which have specific capabilities, for the search mission,” he said.
He said this to reporters after opening the 2014 annual convention of the Armed Forces Religious Corp and launching a book here yesterday.

Focus back on MH370 pilot because of deleted flight path

The renewed interest in Malaysia Airlines flight MH370's pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, stems from the fact that he had plotted a flight path to a remote island far into the southern Indian Ocean on his flight simulator at home.
The Telegraph reported today that suspicion of Capt Zaharie's involvement has grown as investigators have gradually eliminated other suspects and causes of the plane's disappearance.
Sources confirmed to the Telegraph that a deleted flight path had been recovered from Zaharie's simulator, which had been used to practise landing an aircraft on a small runway on an unnamed island in the southern Indian Ocean.
It has been more than three months since the Boeing 777-200ER from KLIA to Beijing disappeared off the radar in the early hours of March 8 with 239 people on board.
With few clues and no sign of the aircraft despite a massive international search effort concentrated on the Indian Ocean, foreign reports said investigators were once again turning their sights on Zaharie.
The Telegraph's report said the flight path in Zaharie's home simulator had been deleted before MH370 disappeared.

MH370 captain plotted route to southern Indian Ocean on home simulator

New Delhi: The pilot of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane which disappeared in March with 239 people on board had plotted a flight path to a remote island far into the southern Indian Ocean where the search is now focused, investigators have discovered.
The route, which was deleted before MH370 disappeared on March 8, was made on a home flight simulator machine used for practice by its captain, Zaharie Shah. Its discovery has intensified suspicion that he deliberately hijacked his own plane and diverted it from its approved flight path to Beijing.
More than three months have now passed since the flight disappeared in what has become one of the great mysteries of modern aviation. And despite a lack of any hard evidence, suspicion of Capt Zaharie's involvement has grown as investigators have gradually eliminated other potential suspects and causes of its disappearance.

100 days on, families of MH370 passengers and crew remain hopeful

Hani Daleeya Junaidi is only seven but knows that her father Junaidi Mohd Kassim, a flight attendant on Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370, is missing along with the plane and 238 others on board. “But he will return," she said cheerfully.

Like Hani, families of those on board the ill-fated aircraft have kept their hopes up that their loved ones will be found and expressed the sentiment at the Voice370 event held in Damansara Damai today to mark the 100 days of flight MH370’s disappearance.

Some 30 families who turned up at the event wrote messages of love and hope on balloons before releasing them.


"I felt relieved watching the balloon carrying the message to my husband blown away by the wind," said Hani’s mother and Junaidi’s wife Nurazlinda Ayub.

Jacquita Gonzales, whose husband, inflight supervisor Patrick Francis Gomes was  on board the plane, said watching the balloon blown by the wind gave her a mixed feeling.

"I wish God will hear our prayer and grant it," she said.

During the two-hour function, the families wrote their wishes on papers and folded them into origami shapes, which were then pinned on a board on a stage.

MH370: The top five theories

Petaling Jaya: Since MH370 first disappeared, experts and conspiracy theorists alike have been wracking their brains, trying to piece together what actually happened on March 8.
Everything — from a mistaken target to terrorism to former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s belief the CIA was behind the plane’s disappearance — was thrown in the ring for public debate.
The most popular theory had been based on the most credible evidence to date — that one of the crew members was suicidal.
Most of the focus had been on Capt Zaharie Ahmad Shah but co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid also came under scrutiny.
The police then said hijacking was an angle they were investigating after checks on the passengers’ manifest revealed two passengers on the plane had boarded with stolen passports.
The duo were cleared after police found that neither had a criminal record and that both had bought tickets to get to Europe, where it was believed they hoped to obtain asylum.

A more mechanical theory was introduced by aviation expert Ron Bishop, who said a fire or some other accident could have led to a gradual decompression of the plane.

He also said the pilots may have attempted to fly back to Malaysia but passed out after turning the plane which continued flying until it ran out of fuel.

New Zealand oil rig worker Mike McKay claimed he saw a burning plane going down the Gulf of Thailand at the time the plane disappeared.

Nigel Cawthorne, an author, said that at the same the plane went missing, a series of war games involving Thailand, the US, China, Japan, Indonesia and others were taking place in the South China Sea.

Missing plane mystery: A hole in the clouds, an empty space on earth

 He should have been in Rome this week, with his wife and daughter, marveling at the architectural glory of the Colosseum. He was about to book airline tickets for their summer vacation when his wife left for a work trip.
But she never returned home.
She was one of 239 people aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 -- missing now more than three months.
After all this time, K.S. Narendran feels the kind of weariness that comes from hope that is not squashed but not fulfilled either. He is left to imagine the worst of possible truths without knowing.
Invariably, he wakes up with thoughts of Chandrika, the woman he married 25 years ago, as though she is still here, except he now goes for a long morning walk on a workday without having to rush back to the house to give her a ride to the train station.
The lows in his life come pressing down when he must furrow along alone in ventures they did together, when he has to figure out how she might have proceeded.
He joined a fund-raising effort on the crowdsourcing site Indiegogo.com. The goal is to raise $5 million for an independent investigation into what happened to the plane that disappeared shortly after takeoff from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on March 8.
Narendran feels the effort is an honorable one. He remains open to anything that might offer clues. So far everything has led only to more questions.

Malaysia backs MH370 crowdfund campaign, asks to share information with families

Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian authorities said today they welcome the crowdfund campaign launched by the families of MH370 passengers to help in the hunt for the missing jetliner, but asked that they share the outcome of their probe with investigators.
Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said the families had likely launched the campaign to feel more “inclusive” in the ongoing hunt for the ill-fated jetliner and said any effort to help the search mission is appreciated.
“I’m touched by their efforts to start a fund and maybe it is a way for them to contribute and feel inclusive in our efforts,” he told reporters at Parliament here.
Hishammuddin, who is also defence minister, pointed out that the search mission is a costly one as it involves highly sophisticated assets and expertise.
“I dont want to belittle their efforts... but the assets we are going to use now is very sophisticated and incurs a high cost.
“To deploy just one ship to conduct the bathymetric survey would cost US$11.6 million and US$500,000 per day to do the survey,” he said.