An Associated Press report said that the defense minister of Malaysia announced on Wednesday that its investigators had been attempting to retrieve deleted files from a flight simulator belonging to one of the pilots of the missing Malaysian plane. Hishammuddin Hussein said in a news conference that authorities are looking into the possibility that the deleted files of Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah's flight simulator could shed light on the whereabouts and the events leading to the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
Malaysian police chief Khalid Abu had said that the simulation records of the program had been deleted on February 3. AP said that the authorities did not clarify whether there was suspicion over the deletion of the flight simulation files. Hussein also told reporters at the conference that Shah is not considered guilty at the moment, and that his family has been cooperative with the investigation.
According to AP, the combined efforts of all authorities who have helped in the investigation of the missing plane did not appease the loved ones of the 239 people and the flight crew onboard the plane. The results of the probe so far had led authorities to believe that the plane could be hijacked by either any of the flight crew or the passengers onboard the plane, and that the last known trace of the plane is somewhere between Kazakhstan in central Asia and down deep into the southern Indian Ocean, the news wire report read.
In an interview over the phone, 60 year-old Subaramaniam Gurusamy, whose 34 year-old son Pushpanathan Subramaniam was on board for work in Beijing, said, "It's really too much. I don't know why it is taking so long for so many people to find the plane. It's 12 days. He's the one son I have."
So far, individual efforts from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, New Zealand, Indonesia, US, Thailand and China, revealed no viable leads on the plane's current location. Malaysian investigators said that the airplane could have turned back from its planned northeast route over the Gulf of Thailand to Beijing. Malaysian and Thai military radar readings revealed that the plane was on western Malaysia in the Malacca Strait at 2:14AM on March 8, less than two hours after it left Malaysia.
