MH370 Search to End Later This Year; Pilot Flew Suicide Route on Computer Simulator

Now down to the last 10,000 square kilometers of designated search area, the hunt for the main body of wreckage from lost Malaysia Airlines MH370 looks set to end before the year is out, according to Australian officials.

The announcement comes as a new report in New York magazine seems to indicate that the plane's pilot had simulated a flight into the middle of the Indian Ocean on a home computer a month before the plane disappeared, supporting a theory that the crash was pilot suicide.

"'The decision came not lightly. But in the absence of new credible evidence it is not possible to continue searching. Every effort has been made. We have used the most high tech and the best people for this search,'" Australian Transport Minister Darren Chester said, according to CNN.

The search off Australia's west coast has itself produced no debris or evidence of a crash site, whereas material washed up on beaches in Mauritius and Reunion Island in the western Indian Ocean were conclusively shown to be parts of the missing aircraft. Those discoveries support the prevailing theory that the Malaysia Airlines flight crashed in the southern Indian Ocean off Australia, with parts then floating on ocean currents westward towards Africa.

The simulator flight information revealed in the New York report shows a flightpath eerily similar to the one the missing plane is believed to have flown. Taken from the home computer of Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, the flight follows the Straits of Malacca northwest to the Andaman Sea, then turns to the south and flies south-southeast over the Indian Ocean towards Australia.

If true, MH370 would join Egyptair flight 990, Germanwings flight 9525, and SilkAir flight 185 as examples of air disasters caused by pilot suicide.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared from radar on the night of March 7, 2014, while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, with 239 passengers and crew aboard.

The majority of passengers were Chinese, and many of them from Beijing and the surrounding area. A number of Beijing-based foreigners were also on board, including members of a French family, a Canadian couple, and an American businessman.

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Photo: NYMag