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Topics: World News, Viral, Life, Crime
Emily Brown
A woman who lost her husband with the disappearance of flight MH370 has theorised the incident was a case of murder.
The husband of Danica Weeks was one of 238 passengers who have never been found after the Malaysian Airlines plane vanished from radar during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014.
Weeks, a mum of two, originally believed the plane went down due to a mechanical failure, but after learning about research from British aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey she began to believe something more sinister may have taken place.
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The plane has still never been recovered, and last year Godfrey speculated that it crashed into the Indian Ocean, approximately 2,000km west of Perth, Western Australia. He suggested that parts of the wreckage could be located as far as 4,000 metres deep, BBC News reports.
Speaking eight years after the plane went down, Weeks said she had previously been 'so staunch about saying it wasn't the pilot'. However, she has recently started to change her mind.
She said: 'But now I have to throw all of that out after nearly eight years and three years of searching (for the plane, by the authorities). I never believed it was the pilot. Unfortunately, Richard Godfrey has said that he believes with this point that the pilot was in control. And look, it makes sense that we've searched for a ghost plane, haven't found it. So maybe we have to step forward and... search on that basis now.'
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One of the numerous theories surrounding the disappearance of flight MH370 is that the pilot may have hijacked the plane, and Godfrey's findings appear to add weight to such theories as he said the pilot 'generally avoided official flight routes from 18.00 UTC (2.00am AWST) onwards but used waypoints to navigate on unofficial flight paths in the Malacca Strait, around Sumatra and across the Southern Indian Ocean.'
He told the New Zealand Herald: 'The flight path follows the coast of Sumatra and flies close to Banda Aceh Airport. The pilot appears to have had knowledge of the operating hours of Sabang and Lhokseumawe radar and that on a weekend night, in times of little international tension the radar systems would not be up and running.'
Godfrey has also suggested that the plane's change in movements and speed indicate it was trying to avoid giving clues about where it was heading.
In response to the theories, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau said Godfrey was 'credible' but has not launched a new investigation.
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It commented: 'The ATSB is aware of the work of Mr Richard Godfrey and acknowledges that he is a credible expert on the subject of MH370, but the ATSB does not have the technical expertise to, and has not been requested to, review his 'MH370 Flight Path' paper and workings. As such the ATSB cannot offer an assessment of the validity of Mr Godfrey's work using WSPR data.'
'The ATSB does acknowledge that Mr Godfrey's work recommends a search zone for MH370, a significant portion of which covers an area searched during the ATSB-led underwater search,' it added.
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