Advertisement CRASH OR SUICIDE? Pilot’s friend says he was ‘upset and probably not in a state of mind to fly’

New Delhi: The world has been literally starved about the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH 370. Ever since the plane went missing, all sorts of implausible scenarios have filled the vacuum. After sixteen days the plane went missing, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that the plane may have crashed into the Indian Ocean, adding that there were no survivors. While his announcement was based on the analysis of eight satellite ‘pings’ sent by the aircraft between 1.11 am and 8.11 am, there still lie many unanswered questions. A long-time friend of the pilot of the plane said the latter was devastated over his wife’s decision to move out of their family home, and could have taken the plane for a ‘last joyride’ before it crashed into the southern Indian Ocean. The friend, on condition of anonymity, said Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah didn’t appear to be in the right state of mind to be flying, adding that it was ‘very possible that neither the passengers nor the other crew on-board knew what was happening until it was too late’. According to a report in Daily Mail, The friend said, ‘He's one of the finest pilots around and I'm no medical expert, but with all that was happening in his life Zaharie was probably in no state of mind to be flying.’ The friend said the pilot's relationships were breaking down, with Captain Shah involved with another woman and his wife having decided to move out of their family home. He said the pilot could have seen MH370 as an opportunity to try high-risk maneuvers he'd perfected on his beloved flight simulator.” The report said, “An aviation industry source, who wished to remain anonymous, told MailOnline: 'It was tracked flying at altitude between 43,000 feet to 45,000 feet for 23 minutes before descending. Oxygen would have run out in 12 minutes [in a depressurised cabin], rendering the passengers unconscious.' The 777-200ER Boeing aircraft used on the ill-fated flight has a maximum service ceiling of 43,000 feet and can very probably fly safely at even greater heights, one expert said. But at this altitude, where the atmosphere drastically thins it would take mere minutes if not seconds for hypoxia - a lack of oxygen - to set in if the cabin was manually depressurised by one of the pilots, as seen in the below video of a high-altitude experiment. Oxygen masks would have dropped down, but these only supply between five and 10 minutes of gas. Central Queensland University's head of aviation, Ron Bishop, told MailOnline that a drop in cabin pressure that had knocked out passengers and crew would mean the plane would fly on unmanned until eventually running out of fuel and crashing into the southern Indian Ocean.” The sequence of events that unfolded in this case has a similarity to another fatal tragedy that killed 104 persons 17 years back. It might be recalled that SilkAir flight MI 185 dived into the Musi River in Sumatra, Indonesia. The difference was that the recorders on board were recovered as the point where the aircraft crashed was not deep, but the recorders had stopped functioning just prior to the point where the aircraft started the dive from 35,000ft. After a lot of wishy-washy statements from the authorities for several years, it was finally hinting at unlawful human intervention and the report of Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission of Indonesia stated that the accident pointed to pilot suicide by the captain.