PLANE RIDDLE
MH370 co-pilot ‘tried to use mobile in the air moments before aircraft mysteriously vanished’ as mystery deepens
THE co-pilot of flight MH370 may have tried to use his mobile during the flight before the airplane mysteriously vanished, a review of a secret report suggests.
The doomed jet disappeared on March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing with 239 people on board.
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A police investigation has now emerged claiming a Malaysian telecom tower detected a mobile number registered to Fariq Abdul Hamid a few minutes before the plane dropped off the radar.
There have been a whole host of theories speculating what happened to the flight.
The latest alleged evidence about the mobile would appear to support the idea the plane was crashed into the sea in a mass murder-suicide, former Easyjet chief pilot Mike Keane has suggested.
According to the theory, the captain may have told Fariq to go to the cabin before locking himself in the cockpit.
Fariq though would have had his mobile after takeoff, so the theory goes, and tried to make an emergency call when he realised what was happening and the plane was being depressurised.
Keane said: “The first officer would have been skilled in responding to depressurisation due to regular training.
“If Fariq had his mobile phone with him, he would have grabbed an oxygen bottle before taking his phone off flight mode or switching it on.”
Authorities in Malaysia had previously dismissed reports of the phone detection, which were first made in April 2014, according to .
The confidential police report which detailed the phone has been leaked online and backed up the view the authorities knew the phone had been detected.
Mystery has surrounded the disappearance of the plane, which has never been found.
Canadian aviation expert Larry Vance has said previously he was “certain” either captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah or co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid took over the plane in what he said was “criminal event” and “made it disappear forever”.
MH370 - WHAT HAPPENED?
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur and was heading to Beijing with 239 people on board.
Passengers included Chinese calligraphers, a couple on their way home to their young sons after a long-delayed honeymoon and a construction worker who hadn't been home in a year.
But at 12.14am on March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines lost contact with MH370 close to Phuket island in the Strait of Malacca.
Before that, Malaysian authorities believe the last words heard from the plane, from either the pilot or co-pilot, was "Good night Malaysian three seven zero".
Satellite "pings" from the aircraft suggest it continued flying for around seven hours when the fuel would have run out.
Experts have calculated the most likely crash site around 1,000 miles west of Perth, Australia.
But a huge search of the seabed failed to find any wreckage - and there are a number of alternative theories as to its fate.
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Vance, who previously worked for the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, told CBC News: “It’s not an accident. This was planned and conducted, carried out by one individual who had control of the aeroplane via his job to have control of the plane.”
He claimed that the pilot or co-pilot made the decision “to take it to a remote part of the ocean and make it disappear forever”.
Vance spent 18 months doing research for his book MH370 Mystery Solved, but he was not part of the official investigation by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE ODDBALL THEORIES?
Vladimir Putin
Some feared Russian president Vladimir Putin was involved in the hijacking of MH370. US Science writer Jeff Wise claimed Putin "spoofed" the plane's navigation data so it could fly unnoticed into Baikonur Cosmodrome so he could "hurt the West".
US shootout
French ex-airline director Marc Dugain accused the US military of shooting down the plane because they feared it had been hijacked. A book called Flight MH370 – The Mystery also suggested that it had been shot down accidentally by US-Thai joint jet fighters during a military exercise and covered it up.
Suicide
Malaysia police chief Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar suggested the disappearance could have been the result of a suicide. He claimed someone on board could have taken out a large life insurance package before getting on the plane, so they could treat their family or pay back the money they owed.
In hiding?
Historian and writer Norman Davies suggested MH370 could have been remotely hacked and flown to a secret location as a result of sensitive material being carried aboard the jet.
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Reconstructed clip of MH370 crash shows jet plunging into Indian Ocean
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