Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah was lonely and depressed according to those who knew him.
When Malaysia Airlines flight 370 suddenly disappeared from radar screens on March 8, 2014, in one of the biggest aviation mysteries in history, public scrutiny turned to the aircraft's captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah.
The last contact with MH370 occurred when it entered Vietnamese airspace in the early hours of March 8, after which the flight changed course. The Boeing 777 was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing at the time of its disappearance.
Following the aircraft's final communication, it suddenly took a sharp left turn and flew for almost six hours over the Indian Ocean before dropping off radar completely.
One theory that has been touted following the disappearance was that Shah was responsible for a mass murder-suicide.
Shah's home flight simulator appeared to indicate he had practiced flying a similar route. The theory suggests he manually switched off radar communications and depressurized the cabin, leaving the plane on auto-pilot until it ran out of fuel and crashed.
However, in an official report from the Malaysian government about the disappearance in July 2018, lead investigator Kok Soo Chon dismissed this theory.
He said: "We have examined the pilot and the first officer and we are quite satisfied with their background, with their training, with their mental health.
"We are not of the opinion that it could have been an event committed by the pilot."
Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER (9M-MRO) taking off at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport (LFPG) in France in 2011.
Shah's family have also denied that he could have been responsible, saying he was not capable of such an action.
The pilot's sister, Sakinab Shah spoke to the BBC in 2016 about her brother and said of their childhood: "We were brought up in a very decent family. A simple village boy, from poor beginnings and he became a commercial pilot. It was a dream come true.
"He stayed with Malaysia Airlines for 30 years, recorded over 18,000 hours of flying time. No bad record, nothing untoward. He was just a few years from retirement. Do you think he would want to throw this all away?"
Sakinab Shah said her brother had "no money problems, no mental health problems, no marriage problems, no drug or alcohol problems, no history of odd behavior" at the time of the plane's disappearance.
However, friends of Zaharie Shah claimed the pilot was "lonely and sad" and was believed to be "clinically depressed," The Atlantic reported.
Shah's sister told the Guardian: "Until and unless we have evidence, tangible evidence, I maintain his innocence. Simply put, the suicide story is but another story. My brother loved life, he loved his lifestyle, period."
The publication also shared details of a note that Shah's sister had written, in which she said her brother had a "passion for life, for family and above all for flying" and added: "I want the world to know here is a loving man who will stop at nothing to render help when it is needed."
Shah was married and had two sons, a daughter and a grandson at the time of MH370's disappearance.
Shah's wife and children have not spoken publicly but his sister told the Guardian that the accusations made against him had had a hugely negative impact on his family.
She said: "Sad is an understatement. No one can even begin to make out our feelings about MH370 and our beloved brother being accused of ill intent."
All but one of the 239 people on the doomed Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 had probably been unconscious — incapacitated by the sudden depressurization of the Boeing 777 — and had no way of knowing they were on an hours-long, meandering path to their deaths.
Along that path, a panel of aviation experts speculated Sunday, was a brief but telling detour near Penang, Malaysia, the home town of Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah.
On two occasions, whoever was in control of the plane — and was probably the only one awake — tipped the craft to the left. The experts believe Zaharie, the plane's pilot, was taking a final look.
That is the chilling theory that the team of analysts assembled by Australia's “60 Minutes” have posited about the final hours of MH370. The conclusions have not been backed by any official findings from investigations into the mystery surrounding the March 2014 flight. But the experts on the "60 Minutes” show sought to draw the most likely scenario of the plane's fate from the little that is known.
They suspect that the plane's 2014 disappearance and apparent crash was a suicide by the 53-year-0ld Zaharie — and a premeditated act of mass murder.
But first, the experts said, they believe that Zaharie depressurized the plane, knocking out anyone aboard who wasn't wearing an oxygen mask. That would explain the silence from the plane as it veered wildly off course: no mayday from the craft's radio, no final goodbye texts, no attempted emergency calls that failed to connect.
That would also explain how whoever was in control had time to maneuver the plane to its final location.
The wreckage has not been found, though hundreds of millions of dollars have gone into the four-year search. The secret of what happened in the final moments of the ill-fated flight — and the motive behind it all — probably died with its passengers and pilot.
But the “60 Minutes” team — which included aviation specialists, the former Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief in charge of investigating MH370's crash, and an oceanographer — put forth what they believe is the most likely theory.
“The thing that gets discussed the most is that at the point where the pilot turned the transponder off, that he depressurized the airplane, which would disable the passengers,” said Larry Vance, a veteran aircraft investigator from Canada. “He was killing himself. Unfortunately, he was killing everyone else onboard. And he did it deliberately.”
Zaharie's suspected suicide might explain an oddity about the plane's final flight path: that unexpected turn to the left.
“Captain Zaharie dipped his wing to see Penang, his home town,” Simon Hardy, a Boeing 777 senior pilot and instructor, said on “60 Minutes.”
“If you look very carefully, you can see it's actually a turn to the left, and then start a long turn to the right. And then [he does] another left turn. So I spent a long time thinking about what this could be, what technical reason is there for this, and, after two months, three months thinking about this, I finally got the answer: Someone was looking out the window.”
“It might be a long, emotional goodbye,” Hardy added. “Or a short, emotional goodbye to his home town.”
Flight 370 disappeared March 8, 2014, shortly after leaving Kuala Lumpur, bound for Beijing.
The craft is thought to have crashed in the far southern Indian Ocean.
The governments of Malaysia, China and Australia called off the official search in January 2017. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau's final report said authorities were no closer to knowing the reasons for the plane’s disappearance or the exact location of its wreckage.
But the “60 Minutes” experts tried to answer one of the biggest questions surrounding the flight: How could a modern aircraft tracked by radar and satellites simply disappear?
Because, they say, Zaharie wanted it to. And the veteran pilot, who had nearly 20,000 hours of flight experience and had built a flight simulator in his home, knew exactly how to do it.
For example, at one point, he flew near the border of Malaysia and Thailand, crisscrossing into the airspace of both, Hardy said. But neither country was likely to see the plane as a threat because it was on the edge of their airspace.
“Both of the controllers aren't bothered about this mysterious aircraft because, oh, it's gone, it's not in our space anymore,” Hardy said. “If you were commissioning me to do this operation and try to make a 777 disappear, I would do the same thing. As far as I'm concerned, it's very accurate flying, and it did the job.”
In light of the new analysis, the ATSB should abandon its “ghost flight” theory about the plane's demise, said Mike Keane, a former military pilot and the former chief pilot at Britain-based easyJet, according to news.com.au. That theory says the plane was on autopilot and that Zaharie and his co-pilot were incapacitated when the flight crashed.
“You may recall my observation of 'complicity to a crime' if the ATSB cling to their version of events when they have knowledge to the contrary,” Keane told the Australian. “Put bluntly, the MH370 'crash' is undoubtedly a crime of the unlawful killing of 238 innocent people. The Australian government has also been remiss, they should have put pressure on the ATSB to listen, and act, on professional advice from the aviation community.”
Theories about Zaharie's culpability are not new.
Zaharie and co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid were prime suspects in the plane's disappearance from the beginning, according to news.com.au. There were rumors that Zaharie's marriage was ending and that he downed the plane after learning that his wife was about to leave, the news site said.
Another theory was that he hijacked the plane in protest of the jailing of Anwar Ibrahim, who was then the opposition leader in Malaysia.
A group called the Chinese Martyrs' Brigade has also claimed responsibility for the downing, although skeptical officials called this a hoax.
Two men on the plane were flying with phony passports, but one was apparently an asylum seeker, and neither had terrorism links.
The theory posited on “60 Minutes” has something in common with previous ones about the fate of MH370, said a skeptical Sara Norton, whose brother, Paul Weeks, died on the plane: They're all guesswork.
“Basically it's the same as everything else that's happened with this particular flight,” Norton told New Zealand news website stuff.co.nz on Tuesday. “It's all assumption and supposition and opinion.”
“They have no corroborated facts to back any of it up, and we have never had anything corroborated.”
The wreckage, of course, might corroborate or dispel theories about what caused the crash, and crews were still looking for it as recently as this year.
The latest attempt to discover it was a $70 million effort by a Texas company called Ocean Infinity, according to the Associated Press. The mission scanned 500 square miles a day during a three-month search.
Ocean Infinity chief executive Oliver Plunkett said the company's technology had performed “exceptionally well” and collected “significant amounts of high-quality data.”
