MH370 jet 'flown into black hole by pilot who knew how to make it invisible'

06 March 2024 , 10:49

518 0

Jean-Luc Marchand and Patrick Blelly (Image: BBC/Windfall Films/Alessandra Bonomolo)

Experts believe that the missing MH370 plane was flown into a 'black hole' by a skilled pilot who knew how to make it "invisible".

Jean Luc Marchand, a former Air Traffic Control manager, and retired pilot Patrick Blelly have spent four years trying to solve the mystery of the Malaysian Airlines flight. The plane vanished while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board 10 years ago today.

Using a Boeing 777 simulator, the pair have analysed and tried to recreate the aircraft's last known flight pattern and the behaviour of whoever was at the controls. They think the area where it disappeared from the radar over the Malacca Strait gives a clue about what really happened.

In a new BBC One documentary called 'Why Planes Vanish: The Hunt for MH370,' which airs tonight, Jean Luc said after the plane disappears from the radar: "Now the aircraft is invisible and not traceable any more. It's clever because the choice of the area where the aircraft disappeared is really a black hole between Kuala Lumpa and Vietnam."

"If you want to disappear, this is where you do it.", reports the Daily Star. The Boeing 777 sent no emergency distress calls and was never heard from again. However, shocking evidence soon emerged that it had turned off its scheduled flight path and continued flying for another seven hours.

Happy Valley's Clare's death 'confirmed' after tragic final exchange with sister

MH370 jet 'flown into black hole by pilot who knew how to make it invisible'

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 pilots Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah (left) and Co-Pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid (Facebook)

The plane's connection with Air Traffic Control was manually shut off from the cockpit, leaving the crew with no means to communicate with the ground, reports the Daily Star. Suddenly, MH370 vanished from the view of air traffic controllers in both nations and took a sharp change in direction. Experts say that this u-turn demonstrates it was "carefully planned."

According to Jean Luc, who was part of a special investigation programme: "It definitely made several turns but also made changes to altitude and speed, that implies to me that there was an active pilot right until the end of the flight. This u-turn is a very challenging manoeuvre because they had to make sure that it disappeared quickly from the Vietnamese sector.

"It is demanding in the sense that the controls are shaking because you are at the limit of the aircraft and the aircraft is telling you 'you are asking me a lot.' It demands attention and skill so that's why we believe it was not an accident... we're convinced that only an experienced pilot could do it - they took care to be invisible, not traceable, to not be followed."

The team believes that only a seasoned pilot could've managed to keep control of the plane from the moment it went missing until it came crashing down in the Indian Ocean about seven hours later. They found out that the captain can shut off all the systems on board - even the pressure within the cabin itself.

When an aircraft depressurises, air is sucked out of the cabin and emergency oxygen masks would've only enabled passengers to survive for around 20 minutes. But equipment in the cockpit would give a pilot access to more than 20 hours of oxygen. Retired pilot Patrick Blelly said: "The problem was, the passengers and the crew were going to find that the plane was no longer on its way to Beijing. My theory is that MH370 was depressurised - it is quite easy for a pilot to depressurise an aircraft... this made it possible to neutralise all the people behind in the cabin.

CCTV of the pilots passing through security before the flight (BBC)

"The person who took control of this plane did something extraordinary which led to the deaths of 239 people on board this plane and put it on the bottom of the Indian Ocean and we don't know why he did that, we have no idea why. This case, I am convinced was executed by someone who was a pilot because no one else was capable on this plane."

The flight was commanded by senior pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53 who had worked for the airline for 30 years, and first officer Fariq Hamid, 27, who was on his final training flight. Speculation has been rife over the years around Zaharie's mental state, with reports stating his wife had left him the day before the fateful day over his alleged affairs. The BBC documentary reveals that Zaharie, the pilot, practised a similar flight deep into the remote southern Indian Ocean on a simulator less than a month before the plane disappeared in similar circumstances.

These controversial details, which some people say Malaysia kept hidden from a public report, seem to be the strongest proof that the captain purposely flew the plane off-course as part of a planned murder-suicide plot. However, Malaysian authorities have always denied claims that Zahaire intentionally crashed the plane into the sea. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau also believes that the pilot was unconscious during the final moments, with the plane out of control.

Map showing the point where MH370 vanished from radar, over the South China Sea (BBC/Windfall Films)

There's no proof that either pilot was struggling with mental health issues, or any evidence that they had anything to do with the plane's disappearance. Despite a four-year international search effort costing $200million and covering more than 120,000sqm, the wreckage of the Malaysia Airlines plane has never been found, making it the world's biggest aviation mystery.

Bits of debris were found in the sea near Mauritius, Madagascar, Tanzania and South Africa.