London (IANS): The pilot of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 killed himself and passengers by switching off oxygen supply in what is the sixth example of such a suicide, an aviation expert has suggested.

Ewan Wilson, head of Kiwi Airlines, believes Zaharie Ahmad Shah planned mass murder — locking his co-pilot out of the cockpit, depressurising the cabin and shutting down all communication links before turning the plane around, Daily Mail reported Monday.

Having examined all other possibilities, Wilson insists that Shah, 53, is responsible for the deaths of the 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board the doomed Malaysian Airlines flight, which disappeared March 8.

The MH370 flight was a scheduled international passenger flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing that disappeared March 8, 2014

(Among the passengers were two Indo-Canadians: Muktesh Mukherjee, 47, and his wife Xiaomao Bai, 37.  Mukherjee was vice-president of operations in China for the Pennsylvania-based XCoal Energy and Resources (see photo). He is the grandson of the late Indian minister Mohan Kumaramangalam.)

Wilson was scheduled to tell British aviation experts Monday that there have been five other suicide flights in recent times, as he travels from New Zealand to Birmingham for a meeting, according to a Daily Express report.

He said: “Our research indicates there have been five previous incidents of murder/suicide in commercial flights over the last three decades or so, accounting for 422 lives. The sad addition of MH370 would bring that number to 661.’

The theory is the result of the first independent study into March’s disaster by the New Zealand-based air accident investigator Ewan Wilson.

Wilson, the founder of Kiwi Airlines and a commercial pilot himself, arrived at the conclusion after considering “every conceivable alternative scenario”. However, he failed to provide any conclusive evidence to support his theory.

An earlier report from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) also concluded that passengers may have died from hypoxia.