Hijacking not ruled out over disappearance of missing flight MH370

An independent report into the disappearance of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has found that hijacking cannot be ruled out.

The report, released more than four years after the aircraft vanished, reiterated the Malaysian Government’s assertion that the plane was deliberately diverted and flown for more than seven hours after severing communications.

It said the cause of the disappearance still cannot be determined conclusively, but the “possibility of intervention by a third party cannot be excluded”.

Earlier this year, a panel of aviation experts announced that they believed MH370 captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, was attempting suicide when the plane vanished.

They believe he selected a remote and isolated part of the route so the plane would disappear.

The MH370 captain ‘deliberately evaded radar’ during the final moments of the doomed flight, according to the experts.

The plane carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing vanished on March 8 2014 and is presumed to have crashed in the far southern Indian Ocean.

Scattered pieces of debris have washed ashore on beaches in Africa and Indian Ocean islands, indicating a remote stretch of the ocean where the plane probably crashed.

But a government search by Australia, Malaysia and China has failed to pinpoint a location.

And a second, private search by US company Ocean Infinity that finished earlier this year also found no sign of the wreckage.

Officials said Monday’s report is still not a final report, since the plane has not been found.

Malaysia’s government has said it is open to resuming searching if credible evidence of the plane’s location emerges.