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AIRCRAFT

French ex-airline boss: Missing MH370 a cover up

A former airline boss is making waves in France after he claimed that the mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in March had been covered up, and that the aircraft was likely hijacked by a hacker and possibly shot down by the US.

French ex-airline boss: Missing MH370 a cover up
Photo: Shutterstock

In a six-page article published in French glossy Paris Match, Marc Dugain – the former head of Proteus Airlines and an established French author – went public with his theory that the missing Malaysia Airlines aircraft didn’t go down anywhere near where authorities and rescue teams have been searching for a possible wreckage.

Instead, Dugain is convinced that the Boeing 777, which had 239 people on board – mainly Chinese – crashed near the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. Dugain also suggests the plane might have been hijacked by a hacker and that it was then brought down by the United States which feared a September 11th, 2001 style attack.

Britain has a military base on the tiny island which has been let to the Americans.

“It’s an extremely powerful military base. It’s surprising that the Americans have lost all trace of this aircraft. Without getting into conspiracy theories, it is a possibility that the Americans stopped this plane,” he told France Inter in a broadcast interview earlier this week.

The US has denied that the aircraft, which mysteriously vanished from all radars on March 8th, ever came close to Diego Garcia on its flight between Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia and Beijing in China.

Dugain bases his speculations, among other things, on a trip to the Maldives where locals told him they had witnessed an aircraft flying toward Diego Garcia.

“I saw a huge plane flying at a really low altitude above us,” a fisherman told him, adding the plane carried the colours of Malaysia Airlines: red and blue stripes with a white background.

Authorities, however, have denied these claims, which were also widely carried by local media that cited several witnesses who spoke about an aircraft with the same description.

Dugain argues that due to the Boeing technology the aircraft was using, it is possible that the aircraft hijacked by remote control and steered toward Diego Garcia.

He also said a fire could have prompted the air crew to turn off its electrical devices, possibly explaining why the plane vanished from radars.

In the Paris Match interview, he supports this argument by pointing to a device – deemed by some experts to be a Boeing fire extinguisher – found on a beach on Baarah island, also in the Maldives, shortly after the MH370 went missing.

According to Dugain, the passengers could have died from asphyxiation but the fire did not damage the exterior of the plane, allowing it to continue on autopilot until it ran out of fuel and glided down into the sea.

His main arguments for the theory that the disappearance was a cover-up is based on the fact that he finds it near impossible that the Americans “equipped with the best technology in the world” could have lost track of “a 63-metre-long object” and the suppression of Maldivian testimonies.

He also said he had been warned by a British intelligence officer of taking “risks” by looking into the fate of the MH370’s disappearance.

“Someone knows,” he said.

In the past nine months, several conspiracy theories have circulated on the disappearance of flight MH370 and there have even been books written about it. Some theories have been quickly dismissed, while others have had a harder time to die down.

One of the more spectacular theories was reported by Beforeitsnews, which claimed the plane was part of an electronic warfare experiment, and that the aircraft was “'cloaked', hiding with hi-tech electronic warfare weaponry that exists and is used."

Nigel Cawthorne, author of the book "Flight MH370: The Mystery", has suggested that the plane might have been shot down in a military training operation gone wrong by US-Thai strike fighters.

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AIRCRAFT

Has a Lancaster bomber been discovered under Denmark’s seas?

A World War 2 aircraft may have been found at the bottom of the sea near the Danish island of Langeland.

Has a Lancaster bomber been discovered under Denmark’s seas?
Photo: Foto-VDW/Depositphotos

The aircraft, discovered in waters off the southern tip of the island, could be a Lancaster, a British bomber used during the 1939-45 war.

Denmark’s Navy has issued a temporary ban on diving, fishing, sailing or anchoring in the area due to the possibility of live ammunition being amongst the wreckage, vice commander of the Royal Danish Navy’s diving unit Bo Petersen told Ritzau.

“We received a civilian report that a diver had seen what looked like the wreckage of an old aircraft. It is probably a Lancaster bomber down there. The diver said there were also objects that could be bombs. We are responding to that,” Petersen said.

The vice commander stressed that the identity of the airplane was yet to be confirmed.

“We can’t go out and check what we’ve been told because there is too much wind and high waves,” he said on Sunday.

But a Navy diving team would be despatched at the earliest possible juncture, he added.

In a tweet, the Danish military confirmed investigation would take place “in the coming days”.

“We’ll dive down to the wreckage and conduct a thorough investigation of the surrounding area for ammunition. We will thereby be able to state whether the area can be re-opened or whether we need to remove the ammunition to make the area secure,” Petersen said.

The Lancaster, a four-engine British bomber, was first produced in 1941.

According to British Royal Air Force figures, 7,377 Lancasters in total were made. After the war, they were used as reconnaissance aircraft until 1956.

There are now only two airworthy examples of the aircraft in the world – one in Canada and one in the UK.

Although the discovery in Danish waters is highly unusual, Petersen noted that a bomber aircraft was also found in the area during the construction of the Great Belt Bridge in the late 1990s.

READ ALSO: Danish schoolboy finds buried German WW2 aircraft and pilot

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