MH370 departed from Kuala Lumpur Airport on March 8, 2014, destined for Beijing, China, with 239 people on board, including captain Zaharie Shah. The Boeing 777 last communicated with air traffic control at 1:19am while travelling over the South China Sea, before disappearing altogether. However, investigator Christine Negroni says she can pinpoint the exact moment things went wrong, claiming Mr Hamid was in charge.
She claimed in her book “The Crash Detectives” the plane suffered a sudden depressurisation while Captain Zaharie Shah was out of the cockpit.
Ms Negroni said the plane’s flight path proves co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid took control, but soon lost the ability to think rationally.
She wrote last year: “Once Malaysia 370’s last radar echo faded – the one showing it somewhere at the northern tip of Sumatra – Fariq made a final turn.
“No data suggests when, but the plane turned south and flew on for five hours more until it ran out of fuel.
“This final turn is the point where I believe Fariq’s deprived brain reached its limit.
“Like Number 14 fixed on the four of spades, Fariq was locked onto some thought.”
Ms Negroni then revealed how she spoke to airline captain Peter Frey to gain a better insight into the pilot’s actions.
Mr Frey said: “Who knows what he was doing? He didn’t know what he’s doing.
“He’s lost all sense of time, so now he thinks he’s back there [conscious].
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“Whatever happened, it could not have caused damage serious enough to affect the airworthiness of the plane, since it flew on until running out of fuel many hours later.
Likely, the men in the cockpit were overcome by the altitude sickness known as hypoxia, which robbed them of the ability to think clearly and land the plane safely.
“Many of the links in the bizarre chain of events that night can be explained by hypoxia, because past cases have shown how rapidly those who fall victim to it turn imbecilic.”
However, this idea is just one theory among hundreds of others proposed over the last five years.