Flight MH370: Could it have been suicide?
By Richard Westcott
BBC Transport Correspondent
A year after the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines plane with 239 on board, investigators still don't know what happened. Could pilot suicide have been the cause?
"Someone was looking at Penang. Someone was taking a long, emotional look at Penang. The captain was from the island of Penang."
There are times when Captain Simon Hardy's analysis of flight MH370 sends shivers down the spine. An experienced Boeing 777 captain, he knows the Asian air routes like a commuter knows short cuts home. He flew them them for 17 years.
He's convinced about something that no pilot, no passenger, nobody in fact wants to think is possible - that the captain of the flight, Zaharie Shah, deliberately hid the plane from radar and flew it thousands of miles off course, before it came down in the ocean.
He says the clues are in the route it took after it vanished from air traffic control. It turned back on itself and flew along the border of Malaysia and Thailand.
"It flew in and out of the countries eight times," he says. "This is probably very accurate flying rather than just a coincidence. As both air traffic controllers in both those countries would probably assume that the aircraft was in the other country's jurisdiction and not pay it any attention.