According to a report in The Daily Express yesterday, there seems to have been one person unaccounted for when the Boeing 777 disappeared in the early morning hours of March 8, 2014.
According to the report, flight documents revealed that 228 passengers were on board and not 227 as per official figures.
Referring to an official report from the initial investigation into the missing aircraft, the Express said that towards the end of the report is a cargo manifest from the day that listed 228 passengers were on board at the time of the incident.
However, this has been explained by a spokesperson for the MH370 safety investigation team, according to the Express.
“We are aware of this discrepancy. The actual number of passengers on-board was 227.
“Page 575 is a copy of the computerised Load sheet which was transmitted about two hours before the aircraft’s departure.
“The actual figures can differ from that transmitted on the load sheet due to last minute changes (LMC),” the daily quoted the spokesperson as saying.
Officially, MH370 is recorded as having 239 passengers on board, comprising 227 passengers and 12 crew.
Still, according to Andre Milne, a volunteer investigator who has taken an active interest in the mysterious disappearance of MH370, that is not the end of it.
He told the Express that he has uncovered what he believes is proof that there was an unaccounted-for passenger onboard the flight.
“The 228 is the actual number of seats sold as of two hours before the flight. The 228 does not include the two children (both aged two or below) who sit with their parents.
“It has been claimed that four people did not board plane. That would make the final number of seats used down at 224.
“Add the two children and you get 226 passengers. Now add the 12 crew. That means that there should only be 238 missing people and not 239 as is the official record.
“So now we have an ‘extra’ person on board MH370,” Milne was quoted as saying by the Express, in explaining his theory, that took into account the four people whom the airline previously said had failed to check-in for the flight.
He further speculated that the “extra” person on board could have been a hijacker, and may have caused the incident, saying: “The extra passenger likely acted in conjunction with larger external operational support to take full command and control of the cockpit of MH370.”
The report in the Express, a UK tabloid, is just the latest of many conspiracy theories that have plagued the investigation into the mystery of flight MH370 which left KLIA shortly after midnight enroute to Beijing before disappearing from radar and being cut off from all communication in the early hours of March 8, 2014.
The aircraft was later confirmed to have turned back while over the South China Sea, flying over the northern skies of peninsula Malaysia, making a turn over the Andaman Sea and headed towards the southern part of the Indian Ocean.
MH370 conspiracy theories: The good, the bad and the bizarre