Aviation experts think Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 crash was a murder-suicide

A panel of experts on the Australian version of 60 Minutes presented a new theory about what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which mysteriously disappeared more than four years ago. The group of investigators and aviation experts believe it’s likely that the pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, intentionally crashed the aircraft into the ocean, subsequently killing himself and the other 238 people on board.

The panel scrutinized the pilot’s flight path–as well as other available data–and found that Shah weaved the plane between the airspace borders of Malaysia and Thailand, which could have been a way to deliberately avoid radar detection. The plane also reportedly dipped its wing as it passed over the Malaysian state of Penang, where Shah was from. “It might be a long, emotional goodbye,” said pilot Simon Hardy during the TV program.

The panel believed that Shah was in control until the very end, which contradicts past analyses that the pilot had lost control and hit the water in a “death dive.” “He was killing himself. Unfortunately, he was killing everybody else on board, and he did it deliberately,” said another crash investigator.

Still, this episode only provided new theories and conjecture. CBS News spoke with many of the flight victims’ families; “some say that this is nothing new and that without forensic evidence, they will not be convinced.”

You can watch the 60 Minutes episode here.