An aviation expert claiming to have pinpointed the final resting place of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 believes the ill-fated plane was intentionally crashed by a "suicidal" pilot, RadarOnline.com has learned.
After taking off from Kuala Lumpur, the flight vanished from radar on March 8, 2014, and never reached its planned destination at the Beijing airport in China. More than 10 years later, the location of the Boeing 777 and all 239 passengers on board remains a mystery.
Simon Hardy, a Boeing 777 pilot from Britain who took part in the official search for MH370 in 2015, discussed his beliefs about the doomed flight on the anniversary of the tragedy, echoing statements he made previously to BBC and 60 Minutes Australia.
Hardy told The Sun that he suspected the pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, "executed a perfect ditching into the ocean," deliberately downing the plane over the southern Indian Ocean, the outlet reported on Monday.
After testing a multitude of theories with top flight simulators, Hardy had a "eureka moment" about the crash site based on "technique, not a theory." He became certain that the plane dove into the Geelvnick Fracture Zone, a trench hundreds of miles deep.
He missed out on the chance to test this particular theory before search efforts were called off in 2017, but remained confident about the likelihood of the grim scenario. Frequent earthquakes in the Geelvnick Fracture Zone — which lies just outside the area combed during the official search – may have buried the wreckage along with the passengers, Hardy said.
"If you did manage to get [the plane] in there you might find you get it buried after a few years by rocks, so it might even be at the bottom of the sea covered," he explained.
The aircraft expert described the MH370 pilot as "a meticulous planner," wondering, "would that add another level of satisfaction? It makes a nice destination rather than randomly ditching it in the sea miles from anywhere."
He also claimed that the pilot used a homemade flight simulator to explore which areas of the Southern Indian Ocean the plane could reach before running out of fuel.
"Imagine Miracle on the Hudson but everyone is already dead…nobody gets out and it sinks to the bottom of the Southern Indian Ocean," Hardy said. "Nobody opens a door."
"Nobody gets out and it sinks to the bottom of the Southern Indian Ocean," he continued, "Where does all the wreckage go? Well, there isn’t any, that’s why we’ve been deprived of wreckage."
The Sun, paraphrasing Hardy, reported that "key clues such as extra fuel and oxygen added to the flight, bizarre satellite handshakes that tracked the doomed flight's course, and the lack of debris all point to the same conclusion."
Hardy's idea about the fate of MH370 is one of countless theories to emerge in the decade since the disappearance. RadarOnline.com reported last week that a team of scientists at Cardiff University claimed the mystery could be solved by analyzing underwater signals captured by a hydroacoustic station off the Australian coast.
In March, we told you that two aviation experts announced their belief that the plane was flown into a “black hole” by the “skilled pilot.” Last year, we also reported that a study provided the most detailed projected flight path yet for the missing flight.
More than 30 pieces of aircraft debris suspected to be from the flight have been found on the African coast and on islands in the Indian Ocean, but only three wing fragments were confirmed as parts from MH370, according to Reuters.