MH370: A different point of view

https://plus.google.com/106271056358366282907/posts/GoeVjHJaGBz

by beaner • 12 years ago

404 198 12 years ago

plus.google.com

This seems like a simpler explanation.

hauget• 12 years ago

The big thing that's been bothering me about the hijacking hypothesis is that there's no clear logical motive behind it. This indeed makes more sense than anything else I've read so far.

meritt• 12 years ago

Sadly logic isn't required in the media. "Cabin fire" isn't nearly as exciting as "Eight days after Flight MH370 vanished, Malaysian authorities are seeking diplomatic permission to investigate a theory that the Boeing 777 may have been flown under the radar to Taliban-controlled bases on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan"

chrisyeah• 12 years ago

I agree. And the fact that this article's author is also a pilot ("We old pilots were always drilled...") makes his thesis even more trustable.

InclinedPlane• 12 years ago

What do you mean? There's plenty of motive for hijacking, just as always. Especially a flight filled with Chinese civilians headed to China. There has been a rash of terrorist attacks within China recently from Xinjiang separatists, including several different mass stabbing attacks just this year which have claimed dozens of lives.

One might hypothesize that terrorists managed to take control of the airplane and divert it only to have the passengers counter-attack and then in the chaos that followed either control of the plane was lost and not able to be recovered or it was intentionally crashed. Even with reinforced doors it would not take very long for highly motivated individuals to breach them, whether that's the attackers or the passengers or whomever.

I'm not saying that anything of the sort is likely but similar things have happened before.

username42• 12 years ago

I had the same idea. This remains the most plausible theory (IMHO) I have heard since the beginning.

easytiger2• 12 years ago

There aren't logical motives for school shootings, yet they still happen.

013• 12 years ago

There are motives for school shootings. There are motives for terrorist attacks. There are no known motives (as of yet) for hi-jacking MH370.

robryan2• 12 years ago

Group/ state with low morals wanting a plane seems reasonable to me. Obviously if you were attempting to make a point with hijacking a plane there would be someone out there loudly claiming responsibility.

chris_wot7• 12 years ago

MH370 might have entered into a blackhole and come back as a dove.

What's with all this speculation?!?

tomelders2• 12 years ago

So you're saying the best way to figure out what happened to MH370 is to do nothing, don't think, don't have any ideas, in no way make any effort to interpret the facts as they present themselves or try to fill in the blanks with educated guesses?

Nice plan.

chris_wot7• 12 years ago

I'm curious how idle speculation has been helpful in finding the plane in any way?

DrJokepu2• 12 years ago

Well it definitely won't be bloggers and armchair investigators who figure it out. Unfounded speculation is irresponsible and immature behaviour the very least.

Udo• 12 years ago

While it's all speculation, it's a hell of a lot better than what the government does with these baseless terrorism claims which they disguise to look like facts. At least going through these scenarios (fire in the cabin, electrical damage, loss of cabin pressure) might lead to some clues worth pursuing.

I do share you pessimism a bit though because I believe since we haven't found the plane by now, it's probably at the bottom of the ocean. There might be an accidental discovery in the years ahead though. And with a little luck they can reconstruct a credible scenario from the engine telemetry... it wouldn't be the first time.

roc• 12 years ago

Armchair speculation is perhaps the most common, most universal game humans play. It really shouldn't be a surprise.

pastullo• 12 years ago

this is actually a not that bad theory. The question is: have they already scanned that area?

tsaoutourpants• 12 years ago

According to the author, the plane may have continued on auto-pilot after the crew had been killed by smoke inhalation. It's a large area to search.

sschueller• 12 years ago

This could also explain the climb to 45,000 feet if the plane was on auto pilot and the fire was messing with the instruments.

wikiburner2• 12 years ago

This doesn't explain the zigzagging trajectory of the plane after its disappearance:

Indeed, soon after MH370 disappeared, reports emerged that recordings of Malaysian military radar returns showed an unidentified track that could correspond to the flight turning left onto a westward course and descending. At the time it was difficult to assess the validity of that claim. It’s been bolstered, however, by a Reuters report earlier Friday stating that Malaysian military radar showed the flight following a course westward over the Malay peninsula and then heading out over the Indian Ocean, passing specific navigational waypoints as it went.

According to the report, this latter portion of the flight followed an unusual zigzag trajectory as it worked its way toward the north and west. This is a very inefficient way to get from one place to another, but it had some consequences that may have been useful for whoever was in control of the airplane. For one thing, by navigating between well-traveled waypoints, the plane would have seemed to military radar operators to look just like all the other well-behaved commercial traffic traveling over that stretch of ocean. “That’s going to seem like unsuspicious traffic,” says Maarten Uijt de Haag, a professor of electrical engineering at Ohio University. Had the plane left the well-traveled routes and struck out on its own, it would have been far more conspicuous.

Another consequence of the zigzagging trajectory is that, like a fox crossing back and forth over a stream to eluding a pack of hounds, it obscured where exactly it might be heading.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/03/14/mh370_dis...

Implicated• 12 years ago

or the climb to 45k

rplnt• 12 years ago

If it was outside fire (tire), wouldn't it die out in higher altitude?

nl3• 12 years ago

Plenty of weird reasons to climb like that[1]. I think people dramatically underestimate how mechanical and/or electronic system failure combines with human misjudgement to make things operate in entirely unpredictable ways.

I've never been involved in an air crash investigation, but I have done many system outage investigations. The majority of them[2] involve a failure of a hardware/software system, followed by manual intervention done without complete information. The number of times I've seen small problems escalate dramatically by the combination of automatic systems and manual intervention is enough to make me assume accident when something like this happens.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#Final_rep...

[2] Ok, the majority that don't involve the deployment of new software.

confluence9• 12 years ago

That's from primary radar. Those altitude readings are unreliable at that range.

tom_morrow4• 12 years ago

one theory is that the aircraft was still climbing towards cruise altitude when all control was lost.

a stall, a recovery, and a randomly meandering flight followed.

webmonkeyuk• 12 years ago

I don't know much about VNAV but couldn't have they configured a vertical ascent rate with no upper ceiling?

graeham2• 12 years ago

Also doesn't address telemetry being turned off dozens of minutes before last radio comm.

winslow• 12 years ago

The following is speculation:

If there was an electrical fire maybe it disabled the telemetry system before the last radio comm without them knowing? I don't know all the systems on the plane and what the possibility is of an electrical fire going unnoticed for ~12 minutes. That's my only guess for why the transponder was turned off before last radio comm IF we assume this article/post's point of view is correct.

fafner2• 12 years ago

Couldn't a fire in the electric turn off the telemetry minutes before it gets noticed?

spartango3• 12 years ago

It's being reported[1 - NYT] that the 107 "turn off time" is inaccurately quoted. It wasn't that the system was turned off at 107, as much as the next expected report at 137 was not received. This leaves a 30 minute window during which the system was disabled. Note also that the last voice communication was at 119, so it could have been disabled after that. We simply do not know.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/world/asia/malaysia-airlin...

TillE2• 12 years ago

Or the last ping received by the satellite, which would require a sharp turn to either the north or south after the last known trajectory. After it was well past the supposed target airport.

leoc2• 12 years ago

It's also hard to square with the fact that the satellite system was still pinging 7+ hours later. It doesn't appear to have been powered down at all, it just stopped sending ACARS reports. And so it wasn't powered down deliberately (or if it was, it was then powered up again), and it wasn't powered down by fire damage, even seven hours after "goodnight", and it wasn't sunk under water or torn apart by a plane crash within that time either. I think it's conceivable that that could happen as the result of the suggested fire accident, but it would take a very specific set of circumstances. And you'd also have to have an explanation for the other apparently contradictory information, such as the reported radar pings west of Malaysia and heading north, or (as you said) the later deviation from course. Doesn't seem likely.

rdsubhas• 12 years ago

And, just curious though, in case there was a fire and they turned the transponders off on purpose - How difficult would it be to just say "Fire" or something over the wire before turning things off? Does abruptly going cold and switching everything off make sense? Would a fire hit so fiercely that the very first response would be to turn everything off without any communication?

stcredzero2• 12 years ago

Airplane fires can and have been so fierce, that pilots barely have time to utter a single sentence to ground control after they know they're in trouble and before they lose consciousness. It really is that time critical.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ValuJet_Flight_592

einhverfr4• 12 years ago

Ordinarily, you keep your plane in the air as your top priority, go where you need to go as your second priority, and communicate as your third priority. So ordinarily, I would say that's too far down your list of priorities.

In this case, however, there was a communication at 1:30, ten min. after the transponder was turned off. Once you are on the radio, it makes sense to say "we have a fire" I would think.

3327• 12 years ago

"By signing off from Malaysian airspace at 1.19 a.m. on March 8 with a casual "all right, good night," rather than the crisp radio drill advocated in pilot training, a person now believed to be the co-pilot gave no hint of anything unusual.

Two minutes later, at 1.21 a.m. local time, the transponder - a device identifying jets to ground controllers - was turned off in a move that experts say could reveal a careful sequence."

-Reuters

Turning off the transponder two minutes after communication and turning IMO rules out fire. It would have had to take place in a 2 minute window.

einhverfr4• 12 years ago

10 minutes later (1:30am), and this is the thing that dooms the article's theory for me, a jet half an hour ahead was asked to radio the plane and request location. The captain did make contact and heard the copilot answer. It's possible there were electrical problems since he said the line had lots of static on it, but in the end there was no mention of an emergency. Once you are communicating I would expect there to be mention of a fire, etc (but maybe not a hijacking).

johnw• 12 years ago

One big hole in this theory is that its been widely reported [1] that a transponder was switched off before the pilots last radio contact. The pilots would have had no reason to pull the breakers before the last communication if they weren't already aware of a fire.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/17/world/asia/malaysia-airlin...

wikiburner2• 12 years ago

Damage from an electrical fire on board could possibly explain the first transponder going out, even if the crew wasn't aware of the fire yet.

libria• 12 years ago

So, is there a publically traded company that makes fireproof transponders? Because I have this hunch...

gnaffle• 12 years ago

If so, they would probably already have seen other faults as well, and at the very least have a warning about the transponder being disabled. Their last communication made no mention of any problems.

leoc2• 12 years ago

You'd imagine that the transponder going out would immediately bring up a fault warning in the cockpit, though, even if the fire itself had somehow not been detected. But I suppose a sufficiently bad bug in the flight systems might be invoked to cover that.

cornholio2• 12 years ago

Another massive hole is that the closest airport ,at the point where communication was lost, was Sultan Mahmud in Kuala Terengganu. Long runway, approach directly from sea, can accommodate a 747 according to Wikipedia. There is no justification to go to Langkawi which is on the other side of the Malay Peninsula.

nl3• 12 years ago

It's quite possible to think of reasons why they decided on that course of action. I'm no expert, but here's some based on previous incidents:

They wanted to burn off fuel.

There was a fault with the rudder

There was a fault with the control system

They pilots were dead, and the autopilot was doing something off.

mh3702• 12 years ago

Yeah: http://findmh370.tumblr.com/post/79861358803/closer-airport-...

VolatileVoid3• 12 years ago

Never underestimate "pilot familiarity." In an emergency, a pilot is going to favor an airstrip he/she is familiar with over an unknown one. Perhaps the captain was more familiar with Langkawi?

prodev422• 12 years ago

there was also rumor captain grow up around that airport. i suggest research his childhood schools if possible.

_nedR• 12 years ago

One problem with the theory: The first communication system was shut down before the pilot's last message 'All right, good night'. If it had been an accidental fire that caused the pilot to cycle the systems, I would imagine the last message would have been more along the lines of "Holy Smokey Bear, the plane's on fire!"

whyleyc3• 12 years ago

See wikiburner's comment:

Damage from an electrical fire on board could possibly explain the first transponder going out, even if the crew wasn't aware of the fire yet

tom_morrow4• 12 years ago

the last ACARS message was received before the ATC goodbye.

the next ACARS message was scheduled to be sent after the goodbye, but it was never received.

the time when the ACARS was disabled would be within this window.

spartango3• 12 years ago

The NYT is saying that some Malaysian government officials are confused about how ACARS works, leading to the confused reporting.

The above comment is accurate: the last ACARS message was received at 107, and the next one was expected at 137. The voice communication was logged at 119.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/world/asia/malaysia-airlin...

userbinator• 12 years ago

The part about tire fires producing "horrific incapacitating smoke" seemed a bit odd to me --- the landing gear are located outside the pressurised part of the fuselage.

rosswilson• 12 years ago

Read about Nigeria Airways Flight 2120 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigeria_Airways_Flight_2120).

An under-inflated tyre caught fire during take-off, the plane took off unaware of the fire, when the landing gear was retracted the fire spread burning through electrical and hydraulic lines.

A fire "outside of the pressurised part of the fuselage" doesn't mean the same didn't happen here.

VolatileVoid3• 12 years ago

Sure, although the NationAir DC-8 tragedy was a different jet. The 777 is significantly more advanced and I believe has some sort of fire detection in the wheel well; they would have known very shortly after takeoff if there was smoke. Unless we're saying that the fire immediately disabled the ability to communicate the fact that there WAS a fire to the pilots...

...but that seems unlikely too, because I imagine the 777 has backup systems that would alert pilots in case a system as critical as the fire detection equipment in the wheel assembly was not responding.

I'm not saying the fire scenario is impossible; I'm still erring on the side of this being a tragic systems failure, and not a malicious act. I just think it might be entirely unlike anything we've seen in the past.

mh3702• 12 years ago

Look how close it went to the airport... it flew right past it because of the fire?

http://findmh370.tumblr.com/

whyleyc3• 12 years ago

Yes, if the fire had incapacitated the pilots and the plane was on autopilot.

darkhorn3• 12 years ago

How can it turn to south east to Australia if it was on autopilot?

keepontruckin4• 12 years ago

I took a flight on a 777 from Dulles to London a couple years ago. A few hours into the flight the captain announced a suspected cabin fire and the smell of smoke in the cockpit. The crew shut off all the circuits they didn't need to fly the plane, the captain took a left turn, and we made an emergency landing at Reykjavik. Just sayin'.

jebus9892• 12 years ago

Sure. But a gas leak recently brought down two buildings in Harlem and that's akin to someone posting, "we had a gas leak and I just called the gas company, they switched it off. Just sayin".

Point is: things don't always go to plan, and successfully avoiding disaster once does not necessarily set a precedent.

jpalomaki• 12 years ago

I guess the point was that turning off transponders and other things could have been the crew's reaction to suspected fire. Obviously the radio messages do not go along well with this theory. On the other hand I'm at least a little bit confused about what pieces of information about the case have been confirmed and what is just from "anonymous sources".

keepontruckin4• 12 years ago

My post was simply to share useless aviation information in a show of solidarity with everyone else, but it would be more accurate to say it was akin to someone saying "we had a gas leak over the middle of the ocean, at night, it was dark and sweltering and smelled like smoke and everyone was freaking out but they made us stay inside for a couple more hours until we finally landed on a runway lit up by emergency vehicles and evacuated the building. Just sayin'."

haberman• 12 years ago

You could just as easily take the same facts and say:

"I took a flight on a 777 where there actually was a cabin fire (or at least the crew thought so). But our pilot never lost contact with the ground and we landed safely -- we certainly didn't disappear for over a week, fly far beyond our emergency landing opportunity, or perform bizarre evasive maneuvers. Just sayin'."

keepontruckin4• 12 years ago

Of course.

checker6592• 12 years ago

This does corroborate the oil rig worker's account of a seeing a plane burning midair.

joshgel• 12 years ago

Didn't he say that he saw it crash and that they didn't find it where he claimed?

checker6592• 12 years ago

They haven't found anything yet, so not sure what to make of that.

confluence9• 12 years ago

That report was falsified.

whyleyc3• 12 years ago

Source ?

clwen• 12 years ago

If fire was the problem, why didn't the pilot just land by sea?

confluence9• 12 years ago

You clearly don't understand how unsurvivable water landings are.

jrockway• 12 years ago

This video demonstrates what actually happens when a widebody airliner attempts to land on the ocean:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE2Yn0cipTY

767s are bigger than A320s and the ocean is a lot rougher than the Hudson.

sleepyhead• 12 years ago

Doesn't make sense. Langkawi is on the other side of the country. There are airports on the north east side of Malaysia.

Shivetya2• 12 years ago

of course a fire is a great way to get the pilot/copilot to open the door - "smoke in cabin"...

I think the other guys theory about a second triple 7 better than this.

confluence9• 12 years ago

This is what I've been saying for the last couple of days.

The cool thing with watching this story develop in real time is understanding how fucking incompetent conspiracy theorists are. From confusion on how ACARS works, to the limits of radio comms, to the organization of the plane's electrical system to their complete misunderstanding of how accurate primary radar readings are at the edge of range. These people aren't qualified to speculate in the slightest.

If you don't know what you're talking about: shut the fuck up.

By default I disbelieve all conspiracy theories, unless overwhelming evidence is forthcoming, because their proponents don't know shit.

PaulRobinson• 12 years ago

Sequence of events this implies when coupled with other information:

1. Electrical fire starts, takes out ADS-B transponder, pilots unaware and continue the flight as normal 2. They radio a goodbye as they leave ATC, still unaware of anything which means that a fire has taken out a transponder and they are unaware of that fact 3. The fire is discovered. The crew put on full-face oxygen masks and the pilot makes for that airport either by dialling in a bearing into the autopilot or disengaging it and flying for it. 4. They attempt communication but fail because the systems are out due to the fire

At that point, we then have a lot of things to consider: was it pilot input or autopilot that took them to FL450? When did the pilots lose the ability to land, either because of control surface damage or because they were incapacitated? In the event of being alive but unable to fly the aircraft because control surfaces were no longer responsive to cockpit or autopilot input, is there anything else they could/would do other than do some maths and work out when the inevitable crash was coming? If they could control some surfaces but not others would they use that to buy themselves more time, e.g. climbing to ceiling (FL450), or would they get low quick?

This theory raises quite a few questions then, but it's a perfectly valid hypothesis: the issue for me around it is understanding why the pilots didn't go on to make the landing suggesting loss of control or their own lives by that point. The only way we'll get to understand that is by finding the black box which of course would explain the whole thing anyway.

This theory also suggests a likely ditching or crash into the water, and if that were the case then I would expect sonar operators over a large part of the region to hear the black box locator, pretty much as they did with the Air France crash.

confluence9• 12 years ago

It's a pretty massive area and the boxes might be trashed.

JelteF2• 12 years ago

Those boxes are built to be untrashable.

jrs235• 12 years ago

While I'm not sold on the cabin fire theory, could flying to FL450 have been an attempt to snuff the fire out?

davepage• 12 years ago

No, previous experience with fires has taught the best policy is to land as quickly as possible. Standard procedure would be to put out all available drag and descend for the nearest aerodrome with all possible haste. Ditching is preferable to cruise in the case of a serious fire. The turning maneuvers west of the peninsula are not consistent with a rational fire response by the crew.

synthos2• 12 years ago

That's an interesting hypothesis, one I have not heard discussed yet.

graeham2• 12 years ago

This requires the pilots to discover the fire at the exact time when switching from Malaysian Air Traffic Control to Vietnamese Air Traffic Control. The fire then incapacitates the radio or the pilots before they have a chance to call in the incident. Seems overly coincidental to me.

Arjuna• 12 years ago

"The only way we'll get to understand that is by finding the black box which of course would explain the whole thing anyway."

I appreciate that there are technical challenges and costs associated with the following idea, but it would be quite an interesting project to create a system that would transmit Flight Data Recorder (FDR) information to a ground location.

Off the top of my head, it would need to be flexible, perhaps recording more detailed telemetry in cases where cellular networks were available, to being able to provide critical, but perhaps less-detailed telemetry, in cases where only satellite communications were available. In addition, data monitoring systems could be programmed with the intelligence to transmit more detailed telemetry in the event of an anomaly (e.g., the "left turn" with regard to MH370). This would be an attempt to find the right balance of data fidelity, with regard to available transmission capabilities and associated costs.

Sadly, as it is now, we are left with relying on essentially locating the proverbial "needle in a haystack" with regard to locating the FDR. Another example is the case with AF447 [1]. Although the FDR was recovered, it was not until nearly 2 years after the incident.

My heart goes out to those that lost loved ones. Not having closure is an extremely painful and difficult process to endure.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447

goatforce5• 12 years ago

Why Do Airlines Keep ‘Black Box’ Flight Data Trapped on Planes?

"In an airplane tragedy, however, the information stored in the so-called black box inevitably ends up inside a wreck. This seems like a terrible place to keep the clue you need to find most."

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-03-10/malaysia-air...

tlrobinson• 12 years ago

Alternatively, why don't planes have floating EPIRBs (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distress_radiobeacon) or even floating black boxes? They could be attached to one or more points on the plane where they're likely to be released if wreckage sinks.

Zancarius2• 12 years ago

and if that were the case then I would expect sonar operators over a large part of the region to hear the black box locator

Apparently the pingers are only audible for 2-3 km [1].

[1] http://www.hydro-international.com/issues/articles/id1098-Ai...

bedhead2• 12 years ago

In every instance of cabin fire, even ones where the fires spread extremely quickly and are eventually fatal such as SwissAir and ValueJet, the crew contacted the ground. And this was the case even when co-pilots were literally out of their seats actually fighting the fires. Yet every single time the ground was alerted about an emergency. This is what veteran pilots do.

Also, for a fire to destroy the multiple electronic systems so as to render the transponder and comms useless, the smell of smoke would've almost certainly been recognizable long before the damage was complete. In this case, the pilots would have alerted the ground.

It was the pilot and/or co-pilot acting deliberately. I would bet my life on it.

fafner2• 12 years ago

What does it take to switch to a new ATC? AFAIK they were in the process of switching to the Vietnamese ATC and in fact the last message was a "good night" to the Malaysian ATC. Could the process of switching to the new ATC mean that they were left without communications in the deciding minutes?

hindsightbias2• 12 years ago

An Egypt Air 777-200 had a cockpit fire on the ground. This would complicate a reponse.

http://www.avherald.com/h?article=44078aa7&opt=0

Presuming they lost the battle, instrumentation/ap would drop out. Eventually, the fire would burn through the cockpit (see pictures above) and depressurize the a/c. Fire would then go out. Engines would keep going.

Eventually, someone will correlate wind directions with any required in-flight cg changes (fuel tanking) not being completed and I won't be surprised if a pattern emerges.

bedhead2• 12 years ago

Interesting. Except is it really possible for a 777 that just had its entire avionics destroyed by a fire and a total loss of cabin pressure at 35k feet to maintain relatively level and straight flight? If the fire is really that catastrophic, I would reckon the plane would crash soon thereafter. It would also be unprecedented (as far as I know) to have the crew aware of a fire and unable to alert the ground (either because the comms were inoperative or the pilots were incapacitated). Also, another pilot is now claiming he established radio contact with 370 at 1:30, but that it was "mumbled" and brief. I guess the radio was working and there was a butt in the seat?

I dunno. Who am I kidding, it's all circumstantial at this point.

EDIT: I'm not sure if the Cairo incident is a good example of how quickly a fire can overcome a crew. They were on the ground with the jetway still connected, so it's quite a different situation.

Shivetya2• 12 years ago

Well it should not be too difficult to locate maintenance and build records to determine if such an issue could have existed with the this plane and if it were corrected or not.

However as someone pointed out, could it really continue to fly at this point, let alone where did the debris go?

jotux• 12 years ago

In every instance of cabin fire ... the crew contacted the ground.

How many documented cabin fires have there been?

keypusher• 12 years ago

From 1990 to 2010 there have been 18 major accidents involving in-flight fire (Flight Safety Foundation) These accidents resulted in 423 fatalities.
In the late 1990s the rate of diversion in the United States on average was more than one aeroplane each day diverted due to smoke (Shaw, 1999). Fortunately, it is rare for a smoke event to become an uncontrolled in-flight fire. Later data collected by IATA estimates that more than 1,000 in-flight smoke events occur annually, resulting in more than 350 unscheduled or precautionary landings (International Air Trasport Association, 2005). In-flight smoke events are estimated at a rate of one in 5,000 flights while in-flight smoke diversions are estimated to occur on one in 15,000 flights(Halfpenny, 2002)

source: http://flightsafety.org/files/RAESSFF.pdf

garg• 12 years ago

It's hard to believe that there are no communication failovers. A fire in the cabin should not mean a loss of contact with the rest of the world.

wil421• 12 years ago

This is probably the most intelligent explanation I have heard. Everyone wants to make this into some Hollywood action movie with terrorists, kidnappings and sneaking through airspace.

pcurve• 12 years ago

This author isn't helping the cause either. He is going as far as calling the pilots "heroes". He is grandstanding just like other journalists.

One would think that cabin smoke was one of the first scenarios experts considered.

coherentpony3• 12 years ago

Great analysis. Still, it falls under the category of "wild speculation" until the plane is found.

OhHeyItsE• 12 years ago

Except that the left turn was pre programmed into the flight computer.

http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/week-transcript-rep-peter-kin...

"KERLEY: The prime minister confirming the report by ABC News the communications gear was deliberately shut down. Now we have learned from a source close to the investigation that whoever was controlling the plane preprogrammed that sharp left turn right off of the flight path, convincing investigators that someone was in control of the jetliner, either a rogue pilot or a hijackers."

matt-attack• 12 years ago

Yes, pilots have access to oxygen masks but this is a no no with fire.

Anyone know why?

evan_• 12 years ago

A guess- oxygen feeds fire. I believe that on-board oxygen is not stored in tanks but rather generated as a chemical reaction on-demand, so if they don't start the O2 flow they would not risk feeding the fire.

nlh2• 12 years ago

I'm guessing because concentrated O2 is extremely flammable and would be fuel for a fire, when the opposite would be needed. Rapid fire-suppressant systems basically work by sucking all of the oxygen from the room/space as quickly as possible.

bdonlan• 12 years ago

The flight deck O2 masks are specifically designed to provide positive pressure to avoid smoke inhalation in the event of a fire. There's no real reason not to use them - if the fire is close enough that it would matter you're already dead.

KMag• 12 years ago

O2 isn't flammable and doesn't provide fuel unless the oxidant is something very electronegative like fluorine. In most fires, oxygen is the oxidizer, not the fuel.

royprins• 12 years ago

When I was considering a similar scenario, I looked at the airports around there and found Kota Bharu to be much closer. The runway may not be similar in length, but if your plane is on fire, you would not be picky.

It is at least 200km closer than Langkawi. The flight path was also close to Kota Bharu, so one theory does not exclude the other.

Maybe somebody with more knowledge of an autopilot can offer some insight: what happens is you overshoot your programmed target? With it go in a holding pattern? Would the autopilot disengage? Or will the plane continue on its course?

goodcanadian• 12 years ago

Apparently, the autopilot can put it into a holding pattern:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522

Whether or not it would, I suppose, would depend on how it was programed.

ttcbj• 12 years ago

I have no specific knowledge of airplane systems, but I wonder if the airplane's computers could have been hacked to produce the disappearance? It would explain why so much effort would go into the planning, with the plane then appearing to be dumped in the indian ocean. The hacker would not have been on the plane, and the indian ocean is deep enough to make recovery and diagnosis of the hack difficult. It might explain how such a precisely timed sequence of events occurred.

I wonder if someone on HN has an understanding of what kind of safeguards go in to preventing a fly-by-wire system from being compromised. Presumably systems like communication, cabin pressure, navigation, etc are separated. Perhaps some of them are not software-based, and thus could not be compromised (but maybe their power could?)

It seems really unlikely, but so do most other theories.

prodev422• 12 years ago

i agree with the story, however the author did not write the possibility that the plane could be shot down by air force and was covered up within those 5 hrs that they failed to report.

also i heard somewhere the captain used to live around that airport and is familiar with it..thats why he decided to go there.

supremum• 12 years ago

Wow that was the most lucid piece I've read about the incident - also good to have found somewhere to point my crazy conspiracy theory family to :)

uptown• 12 years ago

This theory still doesn't explain the lack of any debris. Perhaps some will float to occupied regions at some point - but not everything sinks or burns.

elwell• 12 years ago

But how often do two passengers use stolen passports to board the plane?

NamTaf• 12 years ago

Not infrequent enough in SEA that you are surprised at <1% of your pax using them.

alexeisadeski32• 12 years ago

The autopilot until fuel exhaustion theory doesn't explain how it ended up on this line:

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/73602000/jpg/_73602229...

darkhorn3• 12 years ago

I we 100% sure that the plane turned to west? This line aligns with; where the plane lost, and where the oil platform worker noticed a fire on the sky. May be the plane was on the sky, or on the water why pinging?

alexeisadeski32• 12 years ago

Huh?

huangc10• 12 years ago

this theory follows the keep it simple rule. though simple, it doesn't apply here. I'm sure experts have already looked into the option of simply turning "left".

cyanhat• 12 years ago

Why would the satellite logistics system get shut down but still continue to send hourly pings?

blasterleb• 12 years ago

This nytimes article mentions that a satellite picked up four or five signals from the airliner, about one per hour, after it left the range of military radar. The only information which can be deduced from those signals is the angle of the plane to the satellite. From the last transmission 7.5 hours after take off they were able to draw an arc on the map which corresponds to the deduced angle(see article). If we draw an arc for each of the last five transmission, and if we assume an average speed of the plane wouldn't their pattern suggest a certain direction of flight?

zarzuelazen• 12 years ago

Surely a fire would have caused the plane to crash in 10-15 minutes, it certainly wouldn't have gone on flying for 6+ hours more! The previous cases of on-board fires I read about all have the plane crashing or landing within 20 minutes of the first systems failures.

eplanit• 12 years ago

Courageous captain dealing with a cabin fire radios "all right, good night" ???

grimmfang• 12 years ago

The 777 aircraft reports ACARS (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System) every thirty minutes and it is typical of pilots flying overseas to squawk transponder code 2000 immediately after signing off from the regional ATC. If a secondary radar was not listening to the 2000 frequency it would have no record of the plane in that region. So, if the plane did go down in the 30 minute block between the ACARS transmission, AND AFTER the sign off, it would easily explain the radio silence, because the plane wasn't silent, it just wasn't transmitting & was not visible to secondary radar.

Obviously, this means the plane had to go down very quickly (because it had so much altitude) and while being a consolidated mass (blown up or shattered planes scatter debris which are easily identified). It's very possible they suffered from an electrical failure from a fire, but it's much more plausible there was some control surface failure. For example in Alaska Airlines 261's case the horizontal stabilizer jack-screw failed unconstraining the entire horizontal stabilizer causing the plane immediately dive 31,000ft and hit the water in under 5 minutes.

mightytravels• 12 years ago

How many (remote?) airports in the Maldives are good enough to land a 777? Seems like the perfect remote spot for landing a plane! Torsten @ http://www.mightytravels.com

MH370: A different point of view

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