Authorities believe the pilot of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared mysteriously six years ago, flew the plane down in an act of mass murder-suicide.
Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott revealed the theory on Wednesday in an interview with Sky News. Abbott said the Malaysian government has long suspected that pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah intentionally flew the plane off course and crashed it into the Indian Ocean, killing all 239 people on board.
“My very clear understanding, from the very top levels of the Malaysian government, is that from very, very early on, they thought it was murder-suicide by the pilot,” Abbott said. “I’m not going to say who said what to whom, but let me reiterate — I want to be absolutely crystal clear — it was understood at the highest levels that this was almost certainly murder-suicide by the pilot.”
Abbott was prime minister of Australia when Flight 370 disappeared over the Indian Ocean March 4, 2014. The plane was flying from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China, when the plane’s pilots, Shah and his co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid, switched off the autopilot and took manual control of the plane.
Investigators believe the pilots shut off the plane’s communications system. Flight-path data shows that the plane began on its planned route and then veered left toward the Indian Ocean. Although the plane flew outside ground radar’s tracking range, investigators suspect that the pilots flew the plane south, opposite from its planned route, until it ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean.
Weeks of searching for the downed plane turned up nothing. Debris from the plane washed up on the coast of the African island of Reunion more than a year after the crash.
An international team of investigators led by Kok Soo Chon released a report on the missing flight in July 2019. During a press conference on the report, the chief investigator said that investigators turned up no evidence that the pilots would have hijacked the flight and intentionally downed the plane.
“I’ve read all these stories that the Malaysians allegedly didn’t want the murder-suicide theory pursued because they were embarrassed about one of their pilots doing this. I have no reason to accept that,” Abbott said.
