The final end-of-flight scenario is crucial to establishing the possible location of the MH370 wreckage. Photo / File
The final end-of-flight scenario is crucial to establishing the possible location of the MH370 wreckage. Photo / File
Byron Bailey is so confident he knows where the MH370 wreckage is he'd bet his house on it.
The former pilot with more than 50 years of experience has been saying for years investigators have been searching in the wrong place and they should in fact be looking south ofthe search site.
To be precise — latitude 39'10 S,88'18E.
Zaharie Ahmad Shah the pilot of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 prepares to board the plane. Photo / AP
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) search was based on the assumption the plane ended as a ghost flight, or a death dive, meaning the pilot was also dead when the aircraft ran out of fuel at 40,000 feet.
The final end-of-flight scenario is crucial to establishing the possible location of the MH370 wreckage.
In the first part of Sky News' gripping documentary MH370: The Untold Story, which is available to stream on Foxtel Now, Mr Bailey said there could not have been a death dive and believes Captain Zaharie Shah glided the plane as far as possible and landed it on the water outside the search zone.
"All the evidence points to the fact it was ditched," he said. "I'm sure the captain was trying to ditch the aircraft in as far south, remote location as possible, and leave as little wreckage as possible that would sink."
Mr Bailey said the search came within about 30km of where he thought the wreckage was.
"If I'm wrong then it probably means the aircraft has been taken by aliens or is sitting in a hangar somewhere in Kazakhstan," he said.
"I'm so sure. I'd bet my house on it. As far as I'm concerned it's game over, we know where it is, we've always known where it is."
Even former ATSB officials now tend to agree with Mr Bailey's theory.
Originally they had concluded that the small piece of debris found indicated a high speed impact with water that was not consistent with a controlled ditching.
"I think the evidence is less clear now, given that we have managed to eliminate most of the area associated with that scenario," Martin Dolan, former head of the ATSB, said in the documentary.
Fariq Hamid the co-pilot of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 prepares to board the plane. Photo / AP
"There's nothing fundamentally different that we would do, it's just we now have some additional information, which has been brought to bear, and still leads to the conclusion that the mostly likely location is in or around the area that we have been searching.
"That means there's an increasing likelihood there was someone at the controls at the end of the flight."
He said someone like Mr Bailey could be right.
"I don't disagree with any of the basic assumptions Byron has," Mr Dolan said.
Mr Bailey said $200 million had been wasted in search efforts.
"Anyone can come up with a third best option but how far do you go?," he asked.
Mr Truss said he had not changed his mind in the view that there was no one alive on the plane in its last few hours.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott, who was head of the country at the time of the disaster, says he was told "early on" by Malaysian officials that the pilot of missing flight MH370 had likely committed mass murder.
"If it is a fact that the furthest reaches were not explored because of assumptions of a pilot who was no longer at the controls, I would say let's ditch that assumption, let's assume that it was murder-suicide by the pilot, and if there is any part of the ocean that could have been reached on that basis … let's get out and explore it," he said.
