MH370: Analysts believe plane has landed, not crashed

Crime analysts believe that there are no elements of suicide in the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 and that the plane has actually landed safely in an unknown location.

Malaysian Crime Prevention Awareness Authority president Datuk Seri Dr Saharuddin Awang Yahya said based on the facts of the incident announced so far, whoever took over control of the plane clearly did not have the intention to commit suicide.

He said this was because they appeared to have made proper planning and seemed to be experts in aviation and radar positioning system, including on how to avoid a plane from being detected.

Dr Saharuddin also believed that whoever took over control of the plane probably had vast experience in handling such an aircraft.

"Although there are various probabilities of what could have transpired, I don't think they involve a suicide attempt by the pilots," he told Bernama.

The Beijing-bound Boeing 777-200ER aircraft, with 227 passengers and 12 crew on board, disappeared about an hour after leaving the KL International Airport at 12.41 am on March 8. It was scheduled to arrive in Beijing at 6.30 am on the same day.

The fate of the passengers is unknown as the multi-national search for the aircraft has drawn a blank so far.

It has been revealed that the plane veered off course after someone deliberately switched off the communication system on board and, according to the Inmarsat satellite, it had flown for several hours after that.

Based on the flight projection, Malaysian authorities believed the plane could have gone into one of the flight corridors which was a northern corridor stretching approximately from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand, or a southern corridor stretching approximately from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean.

The search and rescue operation has been intensified involving 26 countries, including Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia.

Dr Saharuddin holds a PhD degree in Social Anthropology from Wisconsin International University in the United States and is a patron of various non-governmental organisations, besides being a lecturer at the Kuala Lumpur campus of the Asian Institute of Medicine, Science and Technology (AIMST) University since 2009.

Having championed consumer issues over the past five years, the 52-year-old social anthropology expert has also been interviewed by various media, especially on matters concerning security and consumerism.