suspicious. the files are tiny and if they were just in a casual flight just for entertainment or for practice, that s why it would never be saved and there would be no need to delete it. a company called pmdg, manufacturer of the software captain shah used in his simulator said he had no relation to them. in an e-mail, they defended shah, saying those who connect his love of flight simulation to the plane s disappearance are engaging in wild conjecture that s insulting to pilots. if it was deleted, how do they reconstruct it? it s taking a known, good image of that data. because they re familiar with the program, they have an edge. so, they can go in, they can get an idea of the overall structure of that data and what it looks like on the inside of the file. from that point, they can go on to the pilot s hard drive and search on that for the specific