New MH370 analysis suggests no one was at controls during crash

Aircraft appeared to be out of control when it plunged into the ocean

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Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, the pilot of doomed flight MH370, with the flight simulator he built. A report into missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 by the Australian safety investigator leading the search supports its view that the aircraft descended rapidly after running out of fuel with no human intervention. File photo: SCMP Picture

Published: 1:56pm, 2 Nov 2016Updated: 10:26pm, 2 Nov 2016

A fresh analysis of the final moments of doomed Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 suggests no one was controlling the plane when it plunged into the ocean, according to a report released by investigators on Wednesday, as experts hunting for the aircraft gathered in Australia’s capital to discuss the fading search effort.

A technical report released by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which leads the search, seems to support the theory investigators have long favoured: that no one was at the controls of the Boeing 777 when it ran out of fuel and dove at high speed into a remote patch of the Indian Ocean off western Australia on March 8, 2014. Most of the 239 people on board the aircraft that vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing were Chinese nationals.

Watch: New report says MH370 ‘descended rapidly’

In recent months, critics have increasingly been pushing the alternate theory that someone was still controlling the plane at the end of its flight. If that was the case, the aircraft could have glided much farther, tripling in size the possible area where it could have crashed and further complicating the already hugely complex effort to find it.

In July, Australia dismissed a media report citing a secret FBI document showing the jet’s captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah used his elaborate home-built flight simulator to chart a route similar to the one believed taken by the doomed plane just weeks before it disappeared.

The shadow of a Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) P3 Orion maritime search aircraft can be seen on low-level clouds as it flies over the southern Indian Ocean looking for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 in 2014. File photo: Reuters

But Wednesday’s report shows that the latest analysis of satellite data is consistent with the plane being in a “high and increasing rate of descent” in its final moments. The report also said that an analysis of a wing flap that washed ashore in Tanzania indicates the flap was likely not deployed when it broke off the plane. A pilot would typically extend the flaps during a controlled ditching.

Peter Foley, the bureau’s director of Flight 370 search operations, has previously said that if the flap was not deployed, it would almost certainly rule out the theory that the plane entered the water in a controlled ditch and would effectively validate that searchers are looking in the right place for the wreckage.