Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah sits in front of his home flight simulator. (NY Daily News)
After Two Weeks Malaysian Authorities Finally Interview Wife of Pilot
Pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah was separated from his wife but the two still lived together.
The family said 53-year-old pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah was a devout Muslim who was often seen attending prayers at a local mosque.
Reuters reported:
The focus of a probe into the plane’s disappearance could be turning to the flight crew or passengers with aviation experience after sources with knowledge of the Malaysian investigation told Reuters they increasingly suspect foul play.
Radar evidence suggests it was diverted hundreds of miles off course, the sources said, an action that could only have been taken deliberately, either by flying the jet manually or by programming the auto-pilot.
Investigators were still looking at “four or five” possibilities, including a diversion that was intentional or under duress, or an explosion, Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said on Friday. Police would search the pilot’s home if necessary and were still investigating all passengers and crew, he said.
The captain of the flight, 53-year-old Zaharie Ahmad Shah, was a flying enthusiast who spent his off days tinkering with a flight simulator of the plane that he had set up at home, current and former co-workers said. Malaysia Airlines officials did not believe he would have sabotaged the flight.
Fariq’s relative confirmed police had come to question his family about his background this week.
The son of a high-ranking civil servant in Malaysia’s central Selangor state near Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Fariq was often seen attending prayers at a mosque near his family home, family and friends said.
“I haven’t stopped praying to Allah in hope that my grandson and the other passengers are safe,” Fariq’s grandmother, Halimah Abdul Rahman, 84, told media in the northeastern Malaysian state of Kelantan from where the family hails. “He is a good person, respectful to elders and religious.”
The family of the co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid, was also interviewed and say he was religious, not reckless.