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I’m an MH370 expert – I believe doomed plane was deliberately downed by pilot in spot that’s never been searched
DOOMED passenger plane MH370 that vanished with 239 onboard was downed intentionally in the South Indian Ocean in a spot that has never been searched, an expert believes.
The former French Air Force air traffic controller, Gilles Diharce, spoke exclusively to The Sun Online about evidence that he says proves the disappearance of the Malaysian Airlines Flight was no accident.
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Since the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing disappeared from radar screens on March 8, 2014, conflicting theories have surfaced and the aircraft's final resting place has never been established.
The flight, with pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah at the helm, vanished from flight radar - sparking the world’s biggest aviation mystery.
The official script for the Boeing-777's disappearance suggests the plane executed a dramatic U-turn less than an hour into its planned flight before plummeting into the Indian Ocean.
Several other theories have suggested the plane was hijacked while others have claimed the aircraft was down by the US Air Force or that the plane was in 'cruising mode' when it crashed.
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However, a study Gilles worked on suggests that the pilot could have been attempting a ‘soft ditching’, a controlled emergency landing, during the flight's final descent into the ocean.
This goes against official reports that point to a high-speed 'death spiral' crash in a spot known as the Seventh Arc.
Gilles worked on a that claims that in his final moments, the pilot could have turned on the plane's backup power system to regain control of the aircraft when both engines failed due to fuel exhaustion.
It would explain why the plane's communication system suddenly turned on and tried to connect to the satellite system, Inmarsat.
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The report suggests the pilot then landed the plane in a controlled glide - but that this did not go as planned and the choppy waters caused the aircraft to split into two or three parts.
Gilles believes the glide could have been a deliberate attempt to sink the wreckage with as little debris as possible.
He said: “Why would a person want to fly the aircraft into the middle of the Indian Ocean?
“It’s possible the person who controlled the aircraft didn’t want anyone to find the plane in the future. To disappear without a trace."
He also believes that this gliding theory means the plane could have crashed in an unsearched area of the South Indian Ocean.
Gilles explains that the study explores a different hypothesis for what happened during the crash but that it is impossible to know exactly what took place without key evidence from the wreckage.
FINAL MOMENTS
Some seven hours after the MH370 went missing and close to fuel exhaustion, the pilot carried out the deliberate act of downing the plane with everyone onboard, Gilles claims.
During its sudden dive, MH370’s SATCOM communications system is restarted and requests to join the Inmarsat network.
Gilles revealed: “It sent a message to the satellite to reconnect to the network so the power is interrupted in these eight minutes."
In a trajectory created by Blelly and Marchand as part of the study, it shows that the pilot could have switched the plane onto a backup system called the APU to be able to land it in gliding mode.
Gilles added: “In order to ditch the plane, you have to have better control of the aircraft. If you don't have an engine, it's very difficult to fly the aircraft and it is very heavy to fly.
“If you had the APU on, you regain normal electrical power of all the flight controls and you regain full control with the fly-by-wire controls.
“It would explain the power interruptions of the SATCOM system and why it tried to reconnect.”
The report suggests that the plane glided into the ocean instead of the ‘death spiral’ suggested in official reports after the left engine ‘flamed out’.
With only one engine still functioning the plane's rudder would have been used to keep the aircraft straight to stop it from spinning in a high-speed crash.
Gilles believes that the lack of debris from the crash also points to a ditching attempt and that MH370 could have broken into two or three parts mentioned in the report.
Talking about the plane's final descent, he said: “It’s not easy to understand how the plane was flown at this point, it’s a hypothesis. What we can consider is that the search was unsuccessful.
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“The officials made some assumptions in order to define the search area. On the seventh Arc, we know the aircraft sent messages to the satellite to regain contact.”
“They considered that it was a high-speed crash at the end. I’m not totally sure of that.
“The first debris found was the flaperon…the back of the flaperon is called the trailing edge. This part was not present on the flaperon.
“It could suggest the flaperon was still moving upward when it hit the water.
"We don't have this debris if you have a high-speed crash.
The flaperon helps to control the plane's speed and position and is used during landings.
The damage to the Flaperon which was the first piece of debris to be found on Reunion Island in 2015 suggests the plane glided rather than spiralling out of the sky.
But Gilles has never been able to analyse the debris up close only through images shared with the public before a report by the French DGA came to the same conclusion in 2019.
When asked about a possible motive for the ditching, Gilles says that is still unclear but says expert Patrick Blelly wrote that the pilot did not have a medical check for four years before the disappearance - something pilots are required to do annually before flying.
The daughter of MH370’s pilot also suggested her father was in emotional turmoil over the impending breakup of his marriage and was distracted and withdrawn in the months leading to the crash.
PILOT SHUTDOWN
Gilles goes on to explain that passenger planes are equipped with several backup systems should anything onboard fail - meaning it would be impossible not to make contact in an emergency.
A serving member of the French Air Force for 17 years, Gilles told The Sun Online: “It’s impossible to consider that this plane had a technical failure.
“When you study the first part of the disappearance, it’s very difficult to explain that it was a technical fault with the aircraft but someone on the plane who didn’t want to call on the radio."
MH370’s SATCOM communication system was turned off for approximately an hour after the disappearance then it reconnected for the duration of the flight over the Indian Ocean until a period between the Sixth and Seventh arc.
Talking about the first time the system is turned off, Gilles said: “It’s certainly surprising. At this time the SATCOM was powered up again so the question is why was the SATCOM not powered before?
“Is there someone in the cockpit who disconnected this electric power input?
“When the SATCOM has a new connection the plane should be able to send messages again that show the position of the plane every 30 minutes. That was not the case."
The attempted ditching of the plane has led French investigators to map out a different search area for the doomed aircraft.
Blelly and Marchand refined a new search area that is consistent with Gilles's initial site.
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The area mapped out by is just next to the original search zone that was covered by underwater sea company Ocean Infinity and the Australian government between 2104 and 2018.
The findings were submitted to the French BEA, the Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety, before it was passed on to the Malaysian authorities.
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