One of aviation history's greatest mysteries continues to baffle experts and relatives of those lost. A decade after Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 vanished from radar en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers aboard, a leading expert on the case has come forward with a new theory.
The search for the missing aircraft officially ended in 2017, yet numerous theories have circulated over the years about its fate. Among those relentlessly seeking answers is aviation expert Simon Hardy, who participated in the official search efforts. In a recent interview with The Sun, Hardy proposed that the aircraft was buried in "the perfect place" making it impossible to find.
Hardy also suggests that the pilot, Zaharie Ahmas Shah, intended to kill everyone on board, deriving "a sick pleasure from executing his suicide plan."
He believes the aircraft was deliberately plunged into the Geelvinck Fracture Zone, a trench running hundreds of kilometers under the southern Indian Ocean, making recovery nearly impossible.
While Hardy has been unable to prove this theory, he remains convinced the aircraft met its end in this seismically active area. "If you manage to get the plane in there, you might find it gets buried after a few years under rocks, so it could even be on the bottom of the ocean," Hardy told The Sun.
His theory is partly based on the pilot's request for extra fuel and additional oxygen for the cockpit—but not the cabin—before takeoff. This extra fuel would have allowed the pilot to fly for an additional seven hours into the middle of nowhere, undetectable by radar.
In 2015, a year after the disappearance, the Malaysian government officially declared all onboard presumed dead. However, the families of the missing have never ceased in their quest for the truth.
"Whether it's 10 or 20 years, as long as we live, we will never stop pushing to find the truth," said Bai Zhong, whose wife was on the ill-fated flight, according to AP.
