Following a new investigation by News Corp into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines, Boeing 777, flight MH370 we believe lie detector tests for pilots should be introduced.
MH370’s pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, appears to have displayed some disturbing behaviour during the year preceding the ill-fated flight.
Stalking and political opinion
According to aviation experts and psychologists, the pilot’s obsessive behaviour should have raised ‘alarm bells’ but for some reason didn’t. Usually senior pilots do not publicly state political opinions but Shah did so, no less than 119 times on social media. He criticised the President of Malaysia, Najib Razak who was standing for re-election in 2013 referring to him as a moron. This was particularly unusual considering Shah was employed by a state owned airline. In criticising the government, he placed his own career at risk.
In addition, married Shah effectively stalked 2 young, twin sisters on social media (Facebook) inundating them with over 90 messages of a sexually explicit nature. The full story can be accessed by clicking here
Flight MH370
Flight MH370 disappeared on 8 March 2014 with 239 passengers on board. Departing from Kuala Lumpur its destination was Beijing. It took off at 12:41am. The co-pilot had voice contact with Malaysia air traffic control at 1:19am and confirmed that everything was OK. However, it failed to check in with ATC Vietnam at 1:21am as scheduled. One minute later it vanished from radar until 2:15am when it was picked up on Malaysia military radar 100s of miles off course.
Between 2:40 and 3:45am Malaysia Airlines became aware that MH370 had disappeared from radar and they raised the alarm. The final signal from the aircraft was picked up via satellite 7 hours later over the Indian Ocean. Despite extensive searching with several nations involved, the jet has never been found. Some debris assumed to be that of the aircraft has washed up on various shores around the world. However doubts remain with the family of victims as to whether this debris does actually belong to the jet.
How lie detector tests for pilots may help
Unfortunately they won’t help find MH370 but they could prevent something similar happening again. Polygraph tests are regularly used in the pre-employment screening process and also for regular screening of existing employees in business.
Quite apart from discovering whether or not a prospective/existing employee is honest, they also reveal important information about the character of a person.
Pilots are tasked with keeping passengers safe and flying aircraft worth millions of pounds to their destinations. Most pilots take this responsibility very seriously. Some have performed amazing landings under the most difficult circumstances to fulfil their roles. However, occasionally mistakes have happened and in our view one mistake is too many.
We believe lie detector tests for pilots could reduce the risk to zero. What do you think? We invite airlines to contact us to discuss polygraph services and how they can help prevent disasters like MH370 from happening.
