Flight documents show MH370 was ‘buried in an ocean trench by pilot’, says Boeing expert
Simon Hardy believes technical logs provide enough evidence to locate the missing Malaysian Airlines flight
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.A decade on from the MH370 aviation mystery, a British Boeing 777 pilot has claimed that the flight’s take-off documents are clues that the pilot pre-meditated a mass murder-suicide.
Simon Hardy believes that the Malaysian Airlines flight plan and technical log reveal last-minute changes to the cargo including an additional 3,000kg of fuel and extra oxygen that indicate Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah directed the plane “to oblivion”.
Hardy, who worked with the Australian Transport Safety Bureau during the search in 2015, told The Sun: “It’s a strange coincidence that the last engineering task that was done before it headed off to oblivion was topping up crew oxygen which is only for the cockpit, not for the cabin crew.”
The aviation expert called the additions to the flight “bizarre” and said that they didn’t meet the official requirements to justify the changes.
Hardy also said that the flaperon found on Reunion Island indicates there was an active pilot until the end of the flight: “If the flaps were down, there is a liquid fuel, then someone is moving a lever and it’s someone who knows what they are doing. It all points to the same scenario.”
He determined that the pilot had to have “planned meticulously” to time the crash and avoid leaving a trace of fuel residue on the surface of the ocean that would indicate the plane’s final destination.
Like many other theorists, he points to a depressurisation of the cabin by the pilot to knock the 239 passengers unconscious as the pilot made a U-turn to ditch the plane in the ocean.
Combined with a trail of “satellite clues” Hardy believes he has calculated the position of the missing aircraft – just outside the official 7th arc search area – in the Geelvinck Fracture Zone of the Southern Indian Ocean, a trench hundreds of miles long.
The Malaysian Government announced on 3 March that the search could resume for the aircraft that disappeared on 8 March 2014 with Texan company Ocean Infinity on a “no find, no fee” basis.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments