since 1981. he s married. he has three children and one grandchild. he lives in a gated luxury community in the kuala lumpur suburbs. he s described by colleagues and friends as an aviation geek. he also owned that in-home flight simulator. and shah was politically aware, supporting malaysia s main opposition parties. david suchy is a cnn safety analyst. peter golds is a cnn aviation analyst and former managing director for the ntsb. welcome, gentlemen. thank you carol. u.s. officials tell cnn that no smoking gun has been found in regards to the pilot s flight simulator data. this pilot seems like a normal guy, doesn t he? i heard the term aviation geek. i guess i fall into that category as well. so i have an aviation simulate normy house. it s not like what he has, but, you know, i don t see anything suspicious about that. and i really don t think they ll
unit. what do you think? are they looking at that closely? they are looking at the youtube video very closely and unless the context of the other social media postings that they may have made to get an insight into the man. he is a self-declared aviation geek, but he also shows in that video and also with the simulator a real high level of understanding about electronics. and remember what we know from the time lines is the systems were systemically shut down and whether the satellite communications link was also disabled. that is a very high threshold to cross but somebody like that pilot may have had the skill set to do it. going back to him being a fanaticical follower of anwar ibrah ibrahim, were we able to independently confirm that? we were not able to independently confirm anything. there is really nothing to
house as well. and the pilot is 53 years old, and he would be of particular interest given the developments over the last 12 hours or so, because he in his house had a flight simulator, and we have known this for some time, but the police have not actually been into the house that we are aware of until yesterday. and now we don t know what he was using that flight simulator for, and he has been described by friends as a aviation geek, and he flies model planes and examiner, and he has 18,500 hours under his belt, and senior pilot. he says that his friends are very, very enthusiastic about anything to do with the aviation. we don t know what was on the sim simulator, and yet, we don t know what sort of programs he had set up, but what i can tell you about him, from the friends, he is seen as a community member, and he works with underprivileged children and works on the environmental
does it read like a deliberate turn? it looks like a deliberate turn, the question is whether the pilot did it or someone else? i fly flight simulators on my mack and change the heading in a matter of seconds. you dial it in the heading and sul you ll see the magnetic arc that is so nerdy and impressive. i can go major aviation geek on you. i ll spare you that. the point is in flight it doesn t take a lot to change direction of the aircraft. and it s a sharp turn like that. it could have been some sudden change in circumstances that triggered that? it could have been an intruder in the cockpit. i want to quickly turn to the trans ponder, the one thing we haven t talked about it. would have to be physically turned off. i m having an emergency, squawk code and radar air traffic control will see it may be a
terrorism and more to do with the fact that it was people smuggling. one of the young iranian boys, his final destination was frankfurt where his mother was waiting to meet him at the airport. the other was going to copenhagen. they are questioning their friends here in kuala lumpur as to what his connections were and what he knew about these two. the police are talking to a lot of people. they also have been to the home of the pilot and he was a 53-year-old very experienced pilot. he was something of an aviation geek and he had his own simulator in his house. police have been there and they looked at the data on that simulator. no word on what they found. i was curious as far as what police could be looking for. you have those two things happening in the meantime. i go back to the families. 239 people on board this 777 jet