Confidential Malaysian police documents obtained by New York show that the pilot of MH370 apparently once plotted a murder-suicide flight path similar to the one ultimately followed by the doomed plane, which vanished into the southern Indian Ocean in 2014. Pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah had apparently used his Microsoft flight simulator program to “test” taking a plane northwest over the Malacca Strait, then turn south over the ocean until the fuel ran out. The recovered data points on his flight simulator were plotted less than a month before he apparently flew the plane along a similar course. One major difference, though, is that the simulated end point is 900 miles from where officials believe the plane actually went down.
Malaysian authorities apparently kept hidden the evidence that Zaharie was seemingly behind the plane’s disappearance and crash; he was described in an official report as having “no known history of apathy, anxiety, or irritability.” The U.S. and Australia have long been suspicious of Zaharie’s involvement.
Officials said Friday that once the current seabed search for MH370 wreckage is completed, they won’t continue their current efforts to find the plane. The search has cost many millions of dollars. The passenger jet went down in the ocean with 239 people on board. Read the full report in New York. Jeva Lange
THE WEEK
