The captain of MH370 is now the “chief suspect” in the loss of the aircraft after investigators found some deleted files in his elaborate home flight simulator. According to various reports, Capt. Zaharie Shah flew a route on the sim that ended on a runway on a remote, still unidentified, island in the southern Indian Ocean. Searchers are now shifting their focus to the route plotted in the files recovered from the simulator.”We have to continue with the lead because the best lead we have is based on the handshake on the Inmarsat [satellite data] and still in the southern corridor,” Malaysia’s Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said at a news conference.
There was early suspicion that Zaharie might have had something to do with the bizarre story that gripped the world for weeks and has led to several failed searches in the vast oceans in the Asian southern hemisphere. The seizure of the simulator was widely publicized. There have been reports that Zaharie had domestic issues and that of all the people on board the Boeing 777, he was the only one without personal and business appointments scheduled for after the flight. Malaysian officials have cautioned that it’s too early to rule out mechanical failure as the cause of the presumed loss of the aircraft and its 239 occupants but if an accident is ruled out that Zaharie is the “chief suspect.”
