Malaysian Flight 370, Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah Had Deviant Flight Path in his Simulator

Looks like flying a planeful of innocent passengers into the ocean was his jihad. NYTimes:

The pilot of the Malaysia Airlines jetliner that mysteriously vanished more than two years ago had used his personal flight simulator to practice a path over the remote southern Indian Ocean, where the aircraft is believed to have crashed, the country’s transport minister said on Thursday.

The remarks by the minister, Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai, represented the first time the Malaysian government had acknowledged that the flight simulator belonging to the pilot of Flight 370, Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah, contained such a path, leading far from any route his airline flew.

The minister did not say when the pilot might have practiced that route, and he emphasized that it was one of many found on the simulator, which the pilot kept at his home. The minister also said it would be premature to draw any conclusions from the disclosure.

Nonetheless, it added to telltale indications that the aircraft, a Boeing 777-200 jet carrying 239 passengers and crew members, might have been deliberately crashed into the sea by Mr. Zaharie after departing Kuala Lumpur for Beijing on March 8, 2014.