Malaysia Airlines MH370 Pilot 'Loved Flying So Much That He Would Attach Wings to Himself and Fly if He Could'

Zaharie Ahmad ShahReuters

The sister of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370's pilot has defended her brother saying he would not be the reason for the plane's mysterious disappearance.

Breaking her silence for the first time since the airliner vanished four months back, Sakinab Ahmad Shah has said her brother Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah was truly fond of flying.

In her interview with the Channel NewsAsia, she said: "He was just a man who took so much to aviation. He loved aviation, he spent a lot of his funds buying model airplanes. If he could, I think he would attach wings to himself and fly -- he loved flying that much."

The pilot has been at the centre of the investigation following the flight's disappearance with allegations ranging from hijack to suicide having popped up.

The Boeing 777 passenger aircraft with 239 people onboard was travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on 8 March when it suddenly lost contact while cruising above the southern Indian Ocean.

Speaking about the speculation that the pilot could have attempted to hijack the jetliner, the captain's sister said: "If it was done, if he was the one who planned it, he has to be some kind of Einstein, which he was not. We couldn't figure out why somebody who would want to commit suicide would prolong the agony of flying for four, five, six hours just to land down there."