
(London) – The missing Malaysia Airlines’ flight MH370 was shot down during a joint Thai-US military training exercise and then was the subject of an elaborate international cover-up, according to a book released about the lost plane that has caused anger among relatives of those on board.
Tomorrow, just 71 days after the Boeing 777 vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, Flight MH370: The Mystery will go on sale in Australia. It has been written by the Anglo-American journalist and author Nigel Cawthorne.
Cawthorne introduces his book by claiming that the families of MH370’s passengers will “almost certainly” never be sure what happened to their loved ones. But he goes on to support one theory, based on the eye-witness testimony of New Zealand oil rig worker Mike McKay, that the plane was shot down shortly after it stopped communicating with air traffic controllers.
At the time there was a series of war games taking place in the South China Sea, involving Thailand, the US and personnel from China, Japan, Indonesia and others, and Cawthorne has linked this to Mr McKay’s claims to have seen a burning plane going down in the Gulf of Thailand.