This happened almost one year before the Germanwings jet was flown into the ground in what is a confirmed case of mass murder. In the case of the Germanwings jet the mental health problems of the pilot responsible, Andreas Lubitz, had been documented prior to the event but I gather that German law prevented its release to his employer so he was able to continue flying even though his doctor had declared him unfit to work.
The case of MH-370 is more baffling as neither of the pilots appears to have had any history of a mental health problem. Personally I think that the jet was flown by the captain,
Zaharie Ahmad Shah, at least until the first ping with the Inmarsat satellite. At that point something/someone caused the jet to suddenly come back to life to initiate that ping having flown dark for almost one hour after the turnback just beyond waypoint IGARI. The captain not only had the experience but he will also have had the knowledge gained in part from his appetite to expand it by practicing on a home simulator and participating on online forums. The co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid was a relative newbie on the type, much younger and I gather that he was soon to be married. There is also a possibility that he might have tried to use his mobile phone during the flight to raise awareness of whatever might have happened, but that I do not think has been verified with certainty.
While the finger of suspicion points to the captain I think that it will require the discovery and the retrieval of more revealing bits of the wreckage to better determine what happened.
