Ex-Boeing pilot claims missing flight MH370 flown towards ‘secret runway’ after mid-air hijack
A RETIRED pilot has amazingly claimed missing flight MH370 was flown towards a secret runway following a terrifying mid-air hijack – by one of the crew.
Former United Airlines employee Randy Ryan’s new and unproven theory comes after he analysed the doomed jet’s bizarre final journey.
He told the Daily Star Online he believes the packed passenger plane was flown to a “pre-planned” location on land or was dumped into the ocean.
And he has fingered pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah as the prime suspect.
He said: “This plane took off and it did the the initial route up to a point. But something took place in that cockpit, somebody had to programme that initial left turn.
“It’s a complex airplane so whoever did it, I assume of the two male pilots, he had to know what he was doing.
“In order to get away with that, the other pilot would either have to have been complicit or incapacitated.”
The former US Air Force pilot also claimed there’s “zero possibility” the plane’s disappearance could be the result of an accident.
The ex-captain, who retired after 33 years as a Boeing 747 pilot, said: “If it turned north and landed I’d expect it would have landed in some desolate place where its approach would not have been noticed, especially at night.
“It’s harder (to find) if it is on land, I’ll bet it was covered with camo cloth by the people I suspect met it on landing.”
MH370 - WHAT WE ACTUALLY KNOW
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.
Ryan’s allegations come after MH370 pilot Shah was accused of trying to deceive international radar so he could make the plane “disappear.”.
The jet vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on 8 March 2014 – sparking one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries.
Some experts have claimed he deliberately crashed the jet in a “suicide mission”, killing all 239 people on board.
And now Victor Iannello, who works for the Independent Group (IG) – which is assisting Australian officials search for the missing plane – is supporting this theory.
In a report that has used civilian radar data, he says that Shah may have used a particular flight path to deceive radar operators into believing the plane was planning to land at Penang Airport.
Mr Iannello created a flight simulation in order to better understand the route taken.
The MH370 flight path was plotted together with two recent Air Hong Kong flights for the route from Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam to Penang in Malaysia.
Mr Iannello believes the findings prove “clearly there was no intention on the part of the pilot to actually perform the procedure and to land.”
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He added: “However, it is possible that by flying an element of the course reversal procedure, there was a deliberate attempt to deceive radar operators into believing that MH370 had an intention to land.”
More than 30 bits of aircraft debris have been collected from various places around the world but only three wing fragments that washed up along the Indian Ocean coast have been confirmed to be from MH370.
In July, investigators released a 495-page report, saying the plane’s controls were likely deliberately manipulated to take it off course but they were not able to determine who was responsible.
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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Grace Subathirai Nathan, daughter of passenger Anne Daisy, shows a piece of debris believed to be from flight MH370
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Mystery still surrounds why the passenger jet veered off course