The man flying Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 deliberately killed everyone on board by depressurising the cabin, according to experts.
“Lonely and sad” Captain Zaharie Ahmed Shah, 53, was in control of the Boeing 777-200ER when it plunged into the Indian Ocean five years ago, killing all 238 people on board.
An independent group comprising aviation experts has claimed that Shah intentionally flew the plane off course and either waited for it to run out of fuel or manually put it into nosedive.
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And in a new report in The Atlantic, expert William Langewiesche has revealed that he believes it most likely Shah killed or possibly incapacitated his co-pilot, 27-year-old First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid, before deliberately causing the cabin to depressurise.
One member of the investigative group, electrical engineer Mike Exner, thinks Shah made the plane rapidly climb to 40,000 ft before the crash, as doing so would have accelerated the depressurisation.
Mr Langewiesche said it would have been “an obvious way” to “subdue a potentially unruly cabin”.
Describing what the horrific moments would have been like, he said: “In the cabin, the effect would have gone unnoticed, but for the sudden appearance of the drop-down oxygen masks and perhaps the cabin crew’s use of the few portable units of similar design.”
He explained that such masks are not meant to be used for more than 15 minutes and would have been “of no value at all” in a plane cruising at 40,000 feet, as MH370 is believed to have done.
Mr Langewiesche continued: “The cabin occupants would have become incapacitated within a couple of minutes, lost consciousness, and gently died without any choking or gasping for air.”
The Malaysia Airlines flight was en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur with 227 passengers and a crew of 12 when it disappeared on March 8, 2014.
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Since its disappearance, considered among the biggest mysteries in the history of aviation, a number of theories have suggested Shah intentionally brought the plane down and was suffering from depression.
According to Mr Langewiesche, he was one of Malaysia Airlines’ most senior captains.
He explained: “[Shah] was married and had three adult children. He lived in a gated development. He owned two houses. In his first house he had installed an elaborate Microsoft flight simulator. He flew it frequently, and often posted to online forums about his hobby.”
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