Australian officials have confirmed that data recovered from a home flight simulator owned by the captain of Malaysia Airlines flight 370 showed that someone had used the device to plot a course to the southern Indian Ocean, where the missing jet is believed to have crashed.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), which is leading the search for the plane off Australia’s west coast, told the Guardian on Thursday that “the MH370 captain’s flight simulator showed someone had plotted a course to the southern Indian Ocean”.
It is not known whether the simulation was made by Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, but the simulator was in his home.
The ATSB said confirmation of the plotted course did not prove theories that the captain planned a deliberate murder-suicide. The agency had previously said in a statement on Monday there was no evidence to support the claim made by Byron Bailey, a former pilot, which was reported in the Australian newspaper.
On Thursday, it warned against inferring too much from the data found on Zaharie’s simulator.
“The simulator information shows only the possibility of planning. It does not reveal what happened on the night of its disappearance nor where the aircraft is located.
“For the purposes of defining the underwater search area, the relevant facts and analysis most closely match a scenario in which there was no pilot intervening in the latter stages of the flight.”
The best available evidence of the whereabouts of MH370, the ATSB statement concluded, remained the last satellite communications with the aircraft, which were used to inform the area of ocean that has been searched for the past two years.
The Joint Agency Coordination Centre (Jacc), which oversees the Australian government’s response to MH370, said the same in its operational update on Wednesday.
But the Australian authorities’ confirmation appears to directly contradict assertions from Malaysian officials that no such route had been found on the captain’s simulator.
New York Magazine reported last week, prior to Bailey’s report in the Australian, that an FBI analysis showed Zaharie had conducted a simulated flight to the southern Indian Ocean less than a month before the plane vanished along a similar route.
The Malaysian transport minister Liow Tiong Lai insisted there was no evidence to prove that Zaharie had used the simulator to plot the same course as the missing airliner.
“We are not aware of that and there is no evidence that was flying on that route,” he said. “As of today, the criminal investigation is still ongoing. So we leave it to the investigation team to detect whatever evidence they have.”
Regarding to FBI’s report on the evidence. “We don’t have the evidence as of now, if you have the evidence please hand it over to the criminal investigation team.”
An ATSB spokesman said he could not comment on behalf of Malaysia, but he did confirm the FBI analysis had taken place.
Earlier this week, Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull declined to offer any details on what evidence had been found on the simulator, saying it was a matter for Malaysia, which is leading the investigation into the missing plane.
“I just note that even if the simulator information does show that it is possible or very likely that the captain planned this shocking event, it does not tell us the location of the aircraft,” Turnbull told reporters.
Officials have been stymied in their efforts to explain why the Boeing 777 carrying 239 people veered so far off course during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on 8 March 2014. Theories have ranged from a deliberate murder-suicide plot by one of the pilots, to a hijacking, to a mechanical catastrophe.
A two-year search of a 120,000 sq km arc of the southern Indian ocean west of Australia has so far failed to find any evidence of the missing aircraft, although some debris has been discovered washed up in Tanzania, South Africa and La Réunion.
Officials from Malaysia, Australia and China agreed last week that the hunt would be suspended if evidence of the missing jet is not found in the current search area. Less than 10,000 sq km of that area remain, though progress is slow due to poor weather conditions. That search is due to be completed within months.
Associated Press contributed to this report.