More than two years after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared from radar, and nearly a year after the first real piece of debris was found, an Australian aviation expert says authorities are still looking in the wrong place.
"I have said since day one that the aircraft was not under full control and was flying on a course set on the flight management system but with incapacitated pilots unable to make changes," Desmond Ross, a commercial pilot with 25 years experience as an aviation and defense industry manager, told Fairfax Media. "The aircraft descended to a low altitude because the pilots had set an emergency descent when a catastrophic event occurred on the aircraft, but they had been unable to complete their maneuver due to incapacitation."
MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014. In July of 2015, a flaperon later identified as a piece of the plane, was found washed up on the shore of Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean. And, this past April, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, confirmed that two debris pieces - also from a Boeing 777 - were found on the beaches in Mossel Bay, South Africa, and Rodrigues Island in Mauritius.
The Transport Safety Board said they were "almost certainly" from the missing plane.
Ross disagrees, however, that the search should be concentrated on those areas, saying the debris could have floated thousands of miles.
"Isn't it also true that these same parts may have come from somewhere much closer? How about a crash site to the west of Malaysia?" he asked rhetorically.
Ross believes the plane actually crashed closer to Malaysia, where it took off from Kuala Lumpur heading to Beijing, and then took an abrupt turn away from its intended destination back toward Malaysia.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, "Investigators say turning the plane around would have required typing a complicated code input into a flight management system, indicating either foul play or an event that caused the pilots to lose consciousness after they had done it.
Eyewitnesses also reported seeing an object on fire over the sea closer to Malaysia.
Ross castigated investigators of the likely crash, saying "The scientific theory could not allow these reports and they were discarded."
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