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French investigators into the disappearance of doomed Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have gained access to “crucial” flight data which leads them to suspect the pilot was in control of the aircraft “until the end”, dramatic reports at the weekend revealed.

Britain’s Daily Telegraph said the revelations, which surfaced originally in Le Parisien, were based on Boeing data.

Analysis of the data apparently lent weight to suspicions that the pilot crashed into the sea in a bizarre murder-suicide, the article said.

The latest disclosures come in the wake of another account suggesting the pilot may have been clinically depressed. See: New light shines on notorious two Malaysia Airlines crashes

MH370 was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on 8 March 2014 with 239 people aboard, when it vanished and flew into history as the world’s greatest aviation mystery.

Longstanding suspicions that Malaysia Airlines Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah was behind the plane’s mysterious disappearance seem to be growing.

Inboard section of outboard flap (inverted). ATSB

Despite numerous theories over the past five years, some of them outlandish (involving aliens, wormholes in space, elaborate conspiracies or the plane being seized by remote control), Captain Zaharie has always been the most likely suspect. A plausible scenario is that he took total control of the plane, probably by sending his co-pilot out of the cockpit on some errand or pretext.

Zaharie may then have depressurised the plane to kill the passengers and crew and set a course for the Southern Indian Ocean.

Some people continue to feel that Malaysian authorities may know more than they are letting on, or that US authorities, in control of a network of spy satellites, may know more than they have admitted. That is all just conjecture, however.

France is the only country still conducting a judicial inquiry into the crash. Two investigating magistrates are probing the deaths of three French passengers aboard the aircraft.

The Malaysia Airlines B777 that vanished three years ago while operating flight MH370. Photographed in 2011

According to Le Parisien, investigators have gained access to vital flight data from Boeing, along with satellite records from Britain-based company Inmarsat.

They were obliged to sign a confidentiality agreement, meaning the documents cannot be cited in court.

More than 30 pieces of debris, some proved to have come from MH370 and some suspected to be from the plane, have washed up in various places around the Indian Ocean.

Exemplar part number and date stamp proving debris was from flight MH370

Theories that the plane may have been downed through the action of a depressed or insane pilot are not new. They were strengthened by the loss of Germanwings flight 9525 from Spain to Germany on 24 March 2015, almost exactly a year after MH370 disappeared.

In the Germanwings tragedy, a depressed or deranged co-pilot locked the captain out of the flight deck, seized control of the flight and deliberately set the plane on a crash course. The captain’s attempts to smash down the cockpit door with a fire axe to regain control of the aircraft failed and the plane crashed, killing all 144 aboard.

The co-pilot of Germanwings 9525, the man behind the crash, had been treated previously for severe depression and suicidal tendencies.

This piece of suspected MH370 debris is about one metre long

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Written by Peter Needham