British senior Captain Simon Hardy, who works with a major commercial airline, has claimed that Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was taken on an emotional “last farewell†near the pilot’s home island of Penang, before being deliberately landed in the ocean.
While Australian investigators believe the plane crashed, they have spoken to Captain Hardy and described his theory as “credible.â€
Flight International magazine’s Mr Learmount said: “Since Capt Simon Hardy revealed in Flightglobal/Flight International his calculations about where Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 is likely to have come to rest, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau — leading the MH370 search team — has spoken at length to him,†he said.
“Despite worldwide interest in his work, nobody — yet — has suggested his calculations are anything but logical and mathematically sound.â€
He told Huffington Post UK: “Captain Hardy had tried to communicate his calculations to the ATSB before talking to us, but they were so bombarded with theories, most of them crackpot, that they didn’t take any notice of him until we published his calculations online back in mid-December 2014, and in the magazine (Flight International) in mid-January.â€
After studying the missing plane’s flight data for six months, Captain Hardy believes that
after it took off from Kuala Lumpur, flight MH370 lost contact with air traffic control over the China Sea where four flight information regions intersect.
He said that once the transponder was turned off, the aircraft did something “quite remarkable.â€
Captain Hardy said the plane flew in and out of Malaysia and Thailand airspace eight times.
“I’ve never seen anything like that but it is a good way to cause confusion between the controllers,†he said.
The jet also performed a sharp U-turn towards Penang, one of three turns made in the air.
“It took me months to work out what this was,†he said.
Captain Hardy said he looked at his own flying experience across Australia to understand why MH370 pilots Zaharie Ahmad Shah and First officer Fariq Abdul Hamid did a U-turn in the air.
“The clue was Ayers Rock,†he said.
“I have done the same manoeuvre there, to look down and get a great view. Somebody was taking a last emotional look at Penang.â€
He said Captain Shah came from Penang, while his copilot was from Selangor.
“I thought of this at 5am, went downstairs and researched where the aircrew were from,†he said.
“Someone did a nice long turn and looked down on Penang. It’s perhaps the only clue to the perpetrator.â€
Captain Hardy also believes the search in the Indian Ocean is about 100 nautical miles away from the jet’s final resting place.
Hardy’s theory comes as Australia’s Transport Minister Warren Truss announced a new trial to track planes over remote oceans.
Airservices Australia will work with Malaysian and Indonesian counterparts to test the new method, which would enable planes to be tracked every 15 minutes, rather than the previous rate of 30 to 40 minutes.
The tracking would increase to 5 minutes or less if there is a deviation in the plane’s movements.
The flight disappeared on March 8 last year with 239 people on board.
The Australian Transport Safety Board’s (ATSB) investigation into the aircraft’s whereabouts continues.
