MH370 pilot’s sister rejects ‘hijack’ theory
More than four months after the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, the sister of the pilot has rejected speculations that Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah was responsible for the aircraft’s disappearance.
Sakinab Ahmad Shah had been unforthcoming on allegations concerning Zaharie’s role in the March 8 incident but broke her silence yesterday in a television interview with Channel NewsAsia.
In the special entitled “The Mystery of MH370”, Sakinab rejected the theory that Zaharie had hijacked his own plane.
“If it was done, if he was the one who planned it, he has to be some kind of Einstein, which he was not,” she was quoted as saying in the interview.
“We couldn't figure out why somebody who would want to commit suicide would prolong the agony of flying for four, five, six hours just to land down there.
“He was just a man who took so much to aviation. He loved aviation, he spent a lot of his funds buying model airplanes. If he could, I think he would attach wings to himself and fly – he loved flying that much.”
Questions have been raised regarding the possibility that MH370 was deliberately steered off course from its scheduled route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, and Zaharie has been seen by some as the prime suspect behind the flight’s disappearance.
UK daily The Telegraph reported last month that a deleted flight path had been recovered from Zaharie's simulator, which had been used to practise landing an aircraft on a small runway on an unnamed island in the southern Indian Ocean.
The same report said the flight path in Zaharie's home simulator had been deleted before MH370 disappeared.
Speculations regarding Zaharie’s possible involvement in the disappearance of MH370 were also bolstered by the confirmation by Zaharie’s wife, Faizah Khan, that the voice which delivered the final sign-off was that of Zaharie.
It was initially revealed by Malaysian officials that the final words from the cockpit were "All right, goodnight", and that they were spoken by the co-pilot First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid.
However, on June 24, Faizah said that her eldest son had identified the voice as being that of his father.
Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein had denied the Telegraph report, calling it “irresponsible” to boost the paper’s circulation.
"If we want to entertain the newspapers in UK, they will have new stories every day.
"If there is a basis to it, they have to give us the proof and leads. We will investigate. There is no need to announce it in the newspapers," he said in a report made by Bernama.
Theories have also been raised that Zaharie had hijacked the plane out of sympathy for his friend and opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, who days before the plane vanished, had been convicted of sodomy and sentenced to jail.
Malaysian authorities said radar data indicated that the plane had diverted from its intended path and headed towards the southern Indian Ocean, which is where the Boeing 777 is believed to have ended its flight.
The jetliner has yet to be found despite the largest search operation in aviation history.
Investigators are now preparing for the next phase of the search in August, focusing on an area in the southern Indian Ocean off the Australian coast. – July 14, 2014.
