The captain of the Malaysian Airlines aircraft that vanished somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean with 239 people on board had flown a route on his home flight simulator six weeks earlier that was “initially similar” to the one actually taken, Australian authorities said on Tuesday.
The details were contained in a 440-page final report by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) on the unsuccessful search for flight MH370.
The disappearance of the Boeing 777 on March 8, 2014, on a flight to Beijing from the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, has become one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries.
The report concluded that the reasons for the loss of the aircraft could not be established with certainty until the aircraft was found.
“It is almost inconceivable and certainly societally unacceptable in the modern aviation era...for a large commercial aircraft to be missing and for the world not to know with certainty what became of the aircraft and those on board,” the ATSB said.
The aircraft was thought to have been diverted thousands of miles off course out over the southern Indian Ocean before crashing off the coast of Western Australia.
Australia, which led the underwater hunt, and Malaysia and China called off a A$200 million ($160 million) search for the plane in January, despite the protests of families of those onboard.
Malaysia has continued to investigate the plane’s whereabouts and in August said it received an offer from a private seabed exploration firm, Ocean Infinity, to resume the search.
Malaysian investigators said in 2015 there was nothing suspicious in the financial, medical or personal histories of pilots or crew.
