MH370 ‘hijacked by Russians in diving masks to survive oxygen cut off’, claims conspiracy theorist
MH370 was hijacked by Russians in diving masks to survive oxygen cut off, a conspiracy theorist has claimed.
Aviation pundit Jeff Wise believes Moscow ordered the hijack of the Malaysia Airlines flight to divert attention away from its controversial annexation of Crimea.
The doomed jet vanished March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing with 239 people on board.
While the plane has never been found, investigators believe the aircraft ran out of fuel and plunged into the Indian Ocean – although the precise reasons for this remain a mystery.
In his new book, The Taking of MH370, private pilot Wise claims the jet’s Satellite Data Unit (SDU), which appears to have been rebooted at 18.25, suggests it was tampered with.
The author believes the oxygen in the passenger plane was cut to kill everyone on board before being flown to Kazakhstan.
But Wise never provides any real evidence for his claims and the hijack theory has never been taken seriously by investigators.
He says he has identified three suspects, one Russian and two Ukrainians of Russian ethnicity.
Speculating on the plane’s final movements, Mr Wise writes: “The co-pilot and captain reach for their masks, but no air is flowing. What the hell is going on? Nothing’s working.
“The co-pilot dials up the emergency frequency for Lumpur Radio. Nothing. The sat phone is dead, too. All of it. They’ve been cut off.
“The air in the cockpit is noticeable thin. The captain feels like he’s sucking air. A desperate idea forms: the E/E bay.
“Something must be wrong in the E/E bay. He rises, stumbles, throws open the cockpit door.
“Two burly men wearing breathing apparatus block the way. He falls to his knees and passes out.”
He told the Daily Star: “For me the true smoking gun of the case is the 18:25 reboot of the SDU.
“It’s just very, very hard to come up with an innocent explanation for that.”
Several pieces of the plane’s debris have washed up in East Africa in places such as Tanzania, Mozambique and Madagascar – which backs up the official theory that the jet crashed in the vast waters of the Indian Ocean.
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But Wise contends that only three pieces are “definitely” from MH370 and that the barnacles on the wreckage are less than six months old.
However, Jason Hall-Spencer, a professor of Marine Biology at University of Plymouth, told the Star that there are numerous reasons why the debris could have been stripped of marine life.
He said that the most likely explanation is that the wreckage could have been “washed into an estuary” adding “the fresh water is going to kill everything on it.”
MH370 - WHAT HAPPENED?
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur and was heading to Beijing with 239 people on board.
Passengers included Chinese calligraphers, a couple on their way home to their young sons after a long-delayed honeymoon and a construction worker who hadn’t been home in a year.
But at 12.14am on March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines lost contact with MH370 close to Phuket island in the Strait of Malacca.
Before that, Malaysian authorities believe the last words heard from the plane, from either the pilot or co-pilot, was “Good night Malaysian three seven zero”.
Satellite “pings” from the aircraft suggest it continued flying for around seven hours when the fuel would have run out.
Experts have calculated the most likely crash site around 1,000 miles west of Perth, Australia.
But a huge search of the seabed failed to find any wreckage – and there are a number of alternative theories as to its fate.
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