SYDNEY, Australia — Former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott has claimed "very top" level Malaysian officials believed vanished Flight MH370 was deliberated downed by the captain in a mass murder-suicide. The Malaysia Airlines jet vanished on March 8, 2014 carrying 239 people—mostly from China—en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. No sign of the plane was found in a 120,000-square kilometer (46,000-square mile) Indian Ocean search zone and the Australian-led search, the largest in aviation history, was suspended in January 2017. In an excerpt from a Sky News documentary airing Wednesday, Abbott claims he was told within a week of it vanishing that Malaysia believed the captain had intentionally downed the jet. In 2016, Malaysian officials revealed he had plotted a path over the Indian Ocean on a home flight simulator but stressed this did not prove he deliberately crashed the plane.

Source: Philippine Star February 19, 2020 01:41 UTC