Aviation Safety Expert Presents Theory for MH370 Disappearance

The disappearance of Malaysia Airline flight MH370 on March 8, 2014 is one of aviation history‘s greatest mysteries — and one Canadian expert Larry Vance believes to have solved it. The Boeing 777-200ER disappeared from radar while enroute from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing without sending a distress message and has never been found.

The aviation safety expert is convinced that the Boeing‘s pilot intentionally steered the aircraft into the ocean, thereby committing suicide and murder in 238 cases. Vance presented his theory in his book called “MH370 – Mystery Solved,“ which was published this week in the United States.

This theory has always been considered as one of the more likely causes of the crash. The 69-year old accident investigator now believes to see this theory confirmed based on his analysis of the wreckage pieces found in the Indian Ocean.

Some of the parts of the aircraft, for example, a flaperon measuring almost 2.5m in size, are relatively well preserved. Vance has therefore ruled out the possibility of the aircraft having crashed into the sea at a high speed. “This would have meant that the aircraft would have shattered into millions of smaller pieces, which would have floated on the water’s surface for a longer time,“ Vance wrote.

He, therefore, believes that the pilot carried out a controlled descent and touched down on the surface as if he was landing. The airplane then sunk to the bottom of the sea.

He also theorized that the 227 passengers and 10 cabin crew died from lack of oxygen after the pilot had turned off the cabin air supply shortly after takeoff. This would explain why the passengers did not react to being on the aircraft for over 7.5 hours instead of the scheduled 5 hours of flight time.

It would, however, mean that the Boeing 777 remained relatively intact on the seafloor. Despite years of intensive search efforts by the Malaysian Government and private parties, no trace of the fuselage has ever been found.

Vance’s book does not provide a theory on the motive of the pilot’s alleged actions. Other crash investigators did not find any indication of a suicide risk by the pilot or the first officer after thoroughly reviewing their background and lifestyle.

Meanwhile, the Malaysian government announced that it would stop the last search expedition for flight MH370 still underway. The expedition had been run by a private U.S. company using submarine robots. This follows the end of the larger scale recovery mission which ended in 2017. What happened to MH370 may likely remain a conclusively unsolved mystery forever.

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Adrian Vannahme

Adrian joined AirlineGeeks as a writer in 2017. He had always wanted to become a pilot and while he chose a different career path for now, his interest in aviation continues to grow every day. Adrian was fortunate to travel extensively for business in the past five years. As a result, he focuses his research and writing on passenger services and experiences on a variety of airlines. His favorite aircraft include the Airbus A350, A380, and the Embraer passenger jets.

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