Expert reveals calculating theory behind MH370

JUST four weeks after Flight MH370 went missing on March 8, 2014, a former Malaysia Airlines pilot from WA told news media only one scenario “ticked all the boxes” on what remains aviation history’s biggest mystery.

Retired Captain Dick Evans holds firm to his view that Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, pictured, piloted the doomed flight to the very end, ditching the Boeing 777 into the swell in the remote southern reaches of the Indian Ocean — the last action of his meticulously planned and executed disappearing act.

With many experts coming round to the same conclusion and with the underwater search set to conclude next week, it will gain more credence if nothing is located on the sea bed in the next three days.

The search area is based on a premise, held by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau and others, that an auto-piloted MH370 ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean.

That ghost flight scenario is under increasing challenge by the likes of Larry Vance, a former commercial pilot who worked as a senior air-crash investigator with Canada’s Transportation Safety Board, and Captain Simon Hardy, a UK-based Boeing 777 senior pilot. Both appeared on 60 Minutes this month, arguing Zaharie ditched the plane in a controlled fashion, which would put the plane’s final resting place south of the search area.

Closely following developments from his farm near North Dandalup, 71km from Perth, is Dick Evans.

“What they’re now saying was apparent to me four weeks after it bloody well happened,” the former pilot, now a sprightly 91-year-old, said.

He was so sure at the time he shot off emails to major news organisations including CNN and the BBC. In one email sent on April 9, 2014, he wrote that he was “astounded” that the big media contingent in Kuala Lumpur weren’t asking the right questions.

He added: “Could not the lack of detectable surface debris be consistent with aircraft making a successful planned ditching at sea when fuel was low and power available, in daylight and without significant damage, but depressurised to allow quicker water ingestion, all exits closed, then sinking intact? The response has to be, ‘Yes’.”

He then articulated in the email what he believed had occurred from the flight’s take-off, saying it was the only explanation that ticked all the boxes.

He rejects criticism that the controlled-ditching theory is speculative.

“It is abductive reasoning — a logical inference from the facts as we know them that provides the most likely explanation,” he told The Sunday Times.

“(Zaharie’s) intention was to go as far as he can and disappear, to fly the aeroplane right to the end.”

While Malaysia has defended Zaharie, saying he was suffering no psychological problems in the lead up to the flight, there have been numerous reports citing turmoil in his marriage. The suicide theory was boosted by the FBI’s discovery that 53-year-old Zaharie conducted a simulated flight deep into the remote southern Indian Ocean less than a month before MH370 vanished. Investigators recovered six deleted data points that had been stored on his home computer.

Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has conceded it “very likely” Zaharie was responsible for the plane’s fate.

For Mr Evans, the switching off of the transponder on MH370, making it invisible to air traffic controllers, screamed deliberate and suspicious action.

“A pilot in flight never turns the transponder off. It puts on the controller’s screen all things essential to track and control the flight: call sign, speed, altitude, assigned altitude and more.

“In the event of a hijack, radio failure or emergency, the pilot can dial in the appropriate code and alert ground control in an instant.”

On reaching cruise level, Mr Evans believes the Captain locked the First Officer out of the cockpit using some pretence. “The First Officer had everything to live for, he was engaged to be married and had a future ahead of him,” he said.

Mr Evans believes all 227 passengers, including Perth father Paul Weeks, and 11 other crew were killed by de-pressurisation. Oxygen masks that would have dropped down but would have kept them alive for less than 20 minutes before hypoxia sent them to sleep, not to wake up. With his own oxygen supply boosted by the First Officer’s supply in the cockpit, Zaharie was able to fly the plane and later re-pressurise the aircraft, he claims.

As Captain Hardy and other pilots argue, Mr Evans agreed the precise route and zigzag turns taken by MH370 before it headed south for the Indian Ocean revealed a deliberate intention to keep the 777 as hidden as possible. He said it was clear Zaharie had taken care to turn south only when out of radar range of Malaysia’s Butterworth Air Force Station.

Having gone to such lengths to conceal his route, Mr Evans said it made no sense for Zaharie to kill himself via de-pressurisation or some other means before the end.

“That defies logic because if his intention was to disappear he’d know that if he did that there would be debris everywhere (from a high impact crash) ... he doesn’t want to show the world where the plane crashed.

“He’s not even going to glide there, he’s going to fly in manually. He puts the flaps fully down so he reduces his air speed so he minimises damage and then ditches the airplane. It settles on the top until it gradually sinks. Flight plan completed.”

MH370 was a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Why would anyone go looking for it in the southern Indian Ocean? Mr Evans said Zaharie wouldn’t have known about hourly “pings” sent from the jet’s Rolls Royce engines to Britain’s geo-stationary Inmarsat satellite. These pings and some clever maths delivered the breakthrough for investigators that put MH370 more than 2000km south-west of Perth.

This week ATSB chiefs defended their search and told a Senate committee hearing they still didn’t believe Zaharie had performed a controlled ditching.

However, search director Peter Foley conceded: “We haven’t ever ruled out someone intervening at the end. It’s unlikely.”

Mr Foley said the last ping from the plane was incomplete and probably triggered by fuel exhaustion.

“The aircraft was probably descending in an uncontrolled manner,” he told the hearing.

One of the plane’s flaps found off the coast of Tanzania in 2016 was a crucial piece of evidence, Mr Foley said.

The ATSB’s analysis indicated the flaps weren’t deployed at the end of the flight, meaning the aircraft was uncontrolled or poorly controlled.

“We have quite a lot of evidence to support no control at the end,” he said.

But Larry Vance claims the flaps were extended when the plane hit the water to make it as gentle as possible.

In his new book, MH370MysterySolved, he accuses the ATSB of ignoring physical evidence that points to the flaps being extended.

He also contests the flap and flaperon — found on a Reunion Island beach in 2015 — would not have been left mostly intact had the plane spiralled into the ocean at high speed, as claimed by the ATSB.

Mr Evans said it is possible that Zaharie took the option to “use all fuel at altitude cruise and increase his distance to ditch from the glide”.

“If so, when all fuel eventually ran out and both engines stopped — not at exactly the same time — he would, as is good airmanship, push the nose down firmly and increase speed quickly to avoid stalling the aircraft and achieve the correct gliding speed.

“With no power the rate of descent is very high as is the ditching speed with flaps retracted (with no power to extend).

This would explain the (ATSB’s) statement that the aircraft was in a high and increasing rate of descent.

“In the end, if you accept the logic that he deliberately flew the aircraft the deepest part of the southern ocean to disappear, it’s inconsequential whether he ditched with or without power; you achieve the same result.”

The ATSB acknowledges the plane was being piloted for at least the first 90 minutes of the flight, during which it veered off course.

“It’s absolutely evident ... an aircraft doesn’t turn itself,” Mr Foley said.

The ATSB co-ordinated search scoured 120,000sqkm of ocean floor prior to being called off in January 2017.

Mr Foley said the ATSB “had bust a gut for four years to find that aircraft.” “It’s highly regrettable that we didn’t.”

A new 25,000sqkm “priority area” to the north was later identified after ocean current drift analysis by the CSIRO and the University of WA.

US company Ocean Infinity is in the final days of its search of this area.

It was contracted by the Malaysian Government on a no-find, no-fee basis.

The failure to find the plane will only embolden those who argue searchers have been looking too far north, based on a flawed assumption that it was an uncontrolled crash.

For Mr Evans, who spent the bulk of his career flying planes for Malaysia Airlines, his position is unwavering.

“My deduction in 2014 still stands good that this was a suicide flight to disappear without a trace,” he said.