A former Malaysia Airlines engineer who made a 45-minute call to the captain of Flight MH370 weeks before it went missing was his cousin and says he does not believe the experienced pilot hijacked his own plane.
In an exclusive interview in The Australian newspaper with reporter Kristin Shorten, former Malaysia Airlines engineer Zulhaimi Bin Wahidin also denied he provided technical details to Captain Zaharie Ahmed Shah to help him to hijack the plane.
MH370 remains one of aviation ‘s greatest mysteries after it disappeared on March 8, 2014, during what should have been a routine flight between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing.
Many people believe Zaharie was behind the disappearance of MH370 because of what was done to disable communications and the way it changed course in the initial phases of the doomed flight.
However, there is no solid evidence one way or another and the Malaysian Government has tried to implicate an unknown third party.
READ: Did MH370 pilot try and deceive radar operators?
Zulhaimi’s call to Zaharie on February 2, 2014, has sparked theories of a conspiracy between the two but Zulhaimi said they had spoken regularly over a period of 10 to 20 years and rarely discussed aviation.
He said they went to school together, played together as children and Zaharie often dropped around his home.
He did not believe Zaharie needed d information about the missing Boeing 777 because he was a highly experienced pilot with licenses to train and check other pilots and “knew a lot about aircraft”.
“We didn’t discuss much about aviation because we worked in the same company and we knew about the aircraft,” he told The Australian.
“Most of us had been with the airline for more than 25 years at that particular time so it’s a boring subject to talk about aircraft … we don’t want to talk about work.”
Zulhaimi also revealed he was the source of three attempted phone calls to Zaharie on the day of the MH370’s disappearance that have been the source of conjecture among those closely following the disappearance.
He said he attempted the calls because he was in disbelief that the flight was missing.
He told The Australian that Malaysian police, who interviewed him several times, were initially unaware of the relationship but accepted it was genuine after interviewing him and pulling phone records.
He also found the accusations against Zaharie hard to swallow.
“He was a jovial person. He had a lot of money,’’ he said.
“He was enjoying his life. Why would he kill himself for no reason?
“He had a good family and a good life. Successful children. I don’t think people are crazy (enough) to kill themself for nothing.”
The fifth anniversary of the disappearance is already sparking calls for a renewed search for MH370, something the Malaysians are resisting unless there is credible new evidence of a potential crash site.
Two searches of swathes of the Southern Indian Ocean failed to find the Boeing 777 but experts still believe it is somewhere in the vicinity of those sweeps.
Finding the plane will shed more light on its disappearance, particularly if the “black boxes” can be retrieved and can still be downloaded.
Other theories for the disappearance include a fire on the plane and a slow form of hypoxia.
READ: Yet another ludicrous theory debunked.
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