MH370 Mystery: 'Premeditated Murder' Planned By Flight's Pilot, Experts Claim

Aviation experts believe they have unraveled the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. During Sunday's episode of Australian current affairs program 60 Minutes, a panel of experts claimed the plane's pilot Captain Zaharie Amad Shah deliberately crashed the jet in the Indian Ocean as part of his "murder-suicide" plan.

According to Larry Vance, a former senior investigator with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, Zaharie executed a careful series of maneuvers across Thailand and Malaysia to evade detection.

The pilot “was killing himself” and took the plane to the most remote spot he could in the southern Indian Ocean so it would “disappear,” experts said. The panel also included renowned aviation safety expert Captain John Cox and Martin Dolan, who was Chief Commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau when Flight MH370 vanished on March 8, 2014.

“This was planned, this was deliberate, and it was done over an extended period of time,” Dolan said.

Dolan and the experts' claims came just days after John Dawson, a lawyer who represented nine families from MH370 and MH17, told News Corp Australia: “In MH370, you have the pilot flying between Malaysia and Beijing who turns back the aircraft. The evidence is so heavily weighted to involvement by one of the aircrew taking this aircraft down... That aircraft has probably depressurized, the people died of asphyxiation, it was premeditated murder."

Explaining the reason about Zaharie's alleged attempt to avoid detection by flying a course along the border between Malaysian and Thai air space, Simon Hardy said this was done "so both of the controllers aren’t bothered about this mysterious aircraft. Cause it’s, ‘Oh, it's gone. It’s not in our space any more’.”

Flight MH370 went missing in 2014 with 239 people on board while on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. A multimillion-dollar search failed to yield concrete clues as to the plane's whereabouts. Currently, a U.S. company named Ocean Infinity is searching for the jetliner, under a "no cure, no fee" structure.

Since the plane went missing, several conspiracy theories emerged about the fate of the doomed jet. Most recently, an Australian mechanical engineer and crash investigator claimed MH370 was found with "bullet holes." This claim was made based on Google Earth images purporting to shows the missing jetliner in the water 10 miles south of Mauritius, an island nation in the Indian Ocean where the plane debris had earlier washed up.

However, authorities rejected the claims saying no such finding was made.

The latest comments from the experts are not the first time doubts were raised about the plane's pilot's involvement in the tragedy. In 2016, reports surfaced alleging the pilot of the missing Boeing 777-200 took the plane on a premeditated suicidal flight, giving rise to the "death dive" theory.

An investigation was launched after New York Magazine reported Zaharie performed a simulated flight on his extensive home-built flight simulator that mirrored MH370's known flight path and ended with a crash in the Indian Ocean.

But, authorities investigating the disappearance of Flight MH370 did not confirm the theory.

The death-dive theory isn't the only one that made the rounds when Flight MH370 went missing. Other theories included claims of the plane being hijacked and crashed into sea.

Multiple theorists also claimed Flight MH370 was shot down by military forces. While some claimed the plane was accidentally shot down during a joint U.S.-Thai military exercise, others blamed North Korea of doing so.

Some reports claimed a possible electrical issue resulted in a fire on board the plane. Due to this the crew allegedly passed out from smoke inhalation, and the plane continued on autopilot until it ran out of fuel and crashed.