[2014] Most plausible explanation of mystery of Malasyian Flight 370

Clemson Fan said:

An electrical fire actually answers your questions quite nicely. What would be the first thing you would do if you were running your microwave and it began to spark? Would you make a distress call to the fire department? Of course not. You would shut the microwave off.

If there was an electrical fire, they would immediately turn all those systems off to try and isolate and stop the fire thus causing those systems to be turned off and communications to be cut off. Once the fire is under control you would then systematically begin to turn things back on and make whatever distress call you're going to make. Obviously they never made it to that point - probably because they were asphyxiated and died along with everybody else on board.

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Pilot...

Clemson Fan said:

There's no evidence that the left hand turn was pre-programmed. In fact the evidence points to it being hastily done. To me that seems like something one of the pilots would do in an emergency situation to turn the aircraft towards the nearest landable airstrip.

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Navigate...

Communicate, which did not happen.

Though the wife and kids moving out is an interesting twist and certainly questions the mental health of one of the pilots.

We are getting our information from the news industry -- an industry where getting there first is more important than getting all the facts straight. The news business -- particularly the television news business -- shoots first and aims later.

Don't put trust in the news. When the investigators release their final report; when the plane (or what's left of it) is found, then we'll know. (Or we may never know, at least not in our lifetimes. We are so used to getting our information immediately that we chafe at the notion that we have to be patient.)

Clemson Fan said:

You mean to tell me that a reporter actually wrote the inference that, "the course change into the flight computer was not executed manually by one of the pilots at the controls."?

Man, that would be some horrible reporting!

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Let's go through this again, shall we? Here's the report: "...the mysterious turn that diverted the missing flight off of its scheduled route to Beijing was programmed into a computer system on board, meaning it was not executed manually by one of the pilots at the controls."

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"It" refers to the turn. The turn that took the aircraft off course. It means the pilot didn't maeuver the stick to turn the aircraft, the turn was preprogrammed.

Still sound like there was a fire?

Phydeaux said:

Let's go through this again, shall we? Here's the report: "...the mysterious turn that diverted the missing flight off of its scheduled route to Beijing was programmed into a computer system on board, meaning it was not executed manually by one of the pilots at the controls."

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"It" refers to the turn. The turn that took the aircraft off course. It means the pilot didn't maeuver the stick to turn the aircraft, the turn was preprogrammed.

Still sound like there was a fire?

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All this means is that instead of the pilots grabbing the yolk or stick to turn the aircraft, they typed it into the flight computer with approximately 10 keystrokes. It doesn't mean that somebody other then one of the 2 pilots typed in those keystrokes. The pilot was an experienced pilot and he probably knew those keystrokes by memory and when whatever emergency happened he plugged them in.

I have to admit I misread this initially. I read that, "the course change into the flight computer was not executed manually by one of the pilots at the controls." to mean that the author thought it was somebody other then one of the pilots who programmed the flight computer. The author actually meant that the pilots didn't manually use the yoke or stick to turn the plane and instead used the flight computer. You have to admit, though, that it's pretty poorly worded by the author.

ScoopLV said:

We are getting our information from the news industry -- an industry where getting there first is more important than getting all the facts straight. The news business -- particularly the television news business -- shoots first and aims later.

Don't put trust in the news. When the investigators release their final report; when the plane (or what's left of it) is found, then we'll know. (Or we may never know, at least not in our lifetimes. We are so used to getting our information immediately that we chafe at the notion that we have to be patient.)

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Bingo! The reporting on this has been absolutely atrocious! Even the NY Times is guilty of terrible reporting!

This is an excerpt from that NY Times article.

"The fact that the turn away from Beijing was programmed into the computer has reinforced the belief of investigators — first voiced by Malaysian officials — that the plane was deliberately diverted and that foul play was involved. It has also increased their focus on the plane’s captain and first officer."

I can't believe they actually wrote, "and that foul play was involved." Of course officials suspect and are investigating foul play, but to make that definitive statement in an article in the NY Times is just atrocious!

One of the big side stories here is how our news system has deteriorated so much by reporting suspicions and investigations as fact!

Clemson Fan said:

All this means is that instead of the pilots grabbing the yolk or stick to turn the aircraft, they typed it into the flight computer with approximately 10 keystrokes. It doesn't mean that somebody other then one of the 2 pilots typed in those keystrokes. The pilot was an experienced pilot and he probably knew those keystrokes by memory and when whatever emergency happened he plugged them in.

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...and then systematically began shutting down all of the electronics, without ever making a distress call? That makes sense to you?

SMHarman said:

Though the wife and kids moving out is an interesting twist and certainly questions the mental health of one of the pilots.

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And also the trial of the opposition leader that he attended that day. Is it possible that the pilot was trying to make that a public issue and the Malaysian government is trying to squelch that aspect?

Sorry If I offend anyone but with all the crazy theories swirling in the media, I find this the most plausible.

Phydeaux said:

With due respect, this is absurd. Here's why:

Yes, the course change was preprammed. Re-read the article. The course change WAS NOT automated by the pilots. The aircraft changed its course because the course change was entered into it system ahead of time. Ahead of time means preprogrammed.

Second, there is NO evidence a preprogrammed course change was "hastily done". Where are you getting this??

Third, in an emergency, pilots are not fumbling with auto controls. They're busy flying the aircraft, manually, just as you stated in one of your earlier posts.

Fly much?

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Again, there's no evidence that the course change was pre-programmed meaning that there's no evidence it was put into the flight computer prior to the plane taking off or prior to whatever event happened.

Saying "hastily done" may be a bad inference and it was only said because it appears that whatever maneuver they were trying to execute does not look like it was completed. This is complete speculation, but the inference is that they were trying to program a course change to the nearest landable airstrip and it doesn't look like they were able to complete that task. Why were they not able to complete that task nobody knows, but I think it's reasonable that to believe that they lost consciousness due to asphyxiation and died.

In an emergency it's reasonable to believe that the pilot had memorized where he wanted to divert the aircraft and thus reasonable to believe that instead of grabbing the yoke willy nilly and jerking the aircraft to the left that he would've plugged in those 10 or so keystrokes into the computer.

You keep asking me if I fly much. I don't know why that's relevant, but I actually almost completed my private pilots license about 10 years ago and I've logged 60 hours of pilot in command of a Cessna and I have about 20 hours of solo time. However, my wife got pregnant with our first child and she shut me down and didn't want me to fly anymore. There were some minor arguments, but I did stop and didn't complete the license.

I'm a physician and EMS certified and have been involved in several emergency life saving situations. When your in charge of working the emergency situation calling for help is one of the last things you do. If you find somebody down and aren't trained for that emergency situation, then yes calling for help is the first thing you do. However, if you're in charge of working the situation then it's actually the last thing you do. You first stabilize the patient or situation and then you call for help. If there was a fire on the aircraft, why would they communicate first before stabilizing the situation? It's not like whoever they would be communicating with could do anything to help stabilize the situation. They would be working frantically to stabilize whatever potential life threatening situation may be going on and then when they have things somewhat under control they would then send out a distress communication. It's also plausible that an electrical fire immediately burnt out and disabled their communications. There are multiple non-nefarious possible explanations as to why there was no distress call.

Phydeaux said:

...and then systematically began shutting down all of the electronics, without ever making a distress call? That makes sense to you?

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They're not firm on the timeline of how it all went down and a lot of the "reporting" is just in fact pure speculation no different then all of the things we've said on this thread.

Clemson Fan said:

They're not firm on the timeline of how it all went down and a lot of the "reporting" is just in fact pure speculation no different then all of the things we've said on this thread.

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The news: Garbage in, garbage out.

A reporter can get 95% of the facts right, and people will fixate with laser-like precision on the 5% that's wrong.

Clemson Fan said:

They're not firm on the timeline of how it all went down and a lot of the "reporting" is just in fact pure speculation no different then all of the things we've said on this thread.

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Unless you're a real conspiracy theorist and believe a distress signal was sent, but isn't being reported, you have to believe that there was no distress signal ever sent, can we agree to that?

The likelihood of an aircraft experiencing smoke or fire and neither the pilot nor copilot making a distress call is nearly non-existent. Certainly nothing I would ever believe.

Phydeaux said:

The likelihood of an aircraft experiencing smoke or fire and neither the pilot nor copilot making a distress call is nearly non-existent.

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Unless their communications equipment was malfunctioning and part of the problem. Face it, we don't know. We'd all like to think that the passengers are alive on some evil-genius' remote airstrip (preferably on an island with an active volcano for the three-hour blockbuster production).

But face it, we don't know. We've become so accustomed to knowing what we want immediately that we've forgotten what to do when a story is slow to unravel.

ScoopLV said:

Unless their communications equipment was malfunctioning and part of the problem. Face it, we don't know. We'd all like to think that the passengers are alive on some evil-genius' remote airstrip (preferably on an island with an active volcano for the three-hour blockbuster production).

But face it, we don't know. We've become so accustomed to knowing what we want immediately that we've forgotten what to do when a story is slow to unravel.

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Is it likely that *all* communications equipment was malfunctioning, but the aircraft would have still flown on for hours, and altered it's altitude?

You're correct, we don't know. I'd also like to think that the passengers are all alive. By the way, not all remote airstrips are accompanied by volcanoes and evil geniuses. Fact is, there are hundreds of remote airstrips within range of that aircraft. That is a simple fact, and I doubt any of them are controlled by an evil genius.

We have become accustomed to very quick answers, however, I haven't forgotten what to do when a story is slow to unravel. Inductive reasoning comes into play, and ruling out the least likely scenarios is just common sense.

Phydeaux said:

Inductive reasoning comes into play, and ruling out the least likely scenarios is just common sense.

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Ruling out anything at this point is counterproductive. First we have to actually find the airplane, or what's left of it. Until that has been accomplished, everything else is jumping the gun. We have to first answer "what" before we can ask "why?"

Phydeaux said:

Unless you're a real conspiracy theorist and believe a distress signal was sent, but isn't being reported, you have to believe that there was no distress signal ever sent, can we agree to that?

The likelihood of an aircraft experiencing smoke or fire and neither the pilot nor copilot making a distress call is nearly non-existent. Certainly nothing I would ever believe.

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I'm not a conspiracy theorist and am far from it. Yes, I agree that no distress signal was sent.

It makes perfect sense to me that no distress signal was sent if either

1. The communication equipment was part of the problem or/and

2. The problem quickly overwhelmed them before they were able to get it under somewhat control and asphyxiation can do that.

I thought of another analogy. As a surgeon, which I am, if I get into a emergency situation in the OR, like saying an uncontrolled and unidentified bleeder, I'm not going to call for help from anybody who's not already in the room. I'm going to work the problem by trying to locate and isolate the bleeder and then I'm going to ligate it. Once the situation is no longer threatening, I'm then going to reassess and determine whether I need to call for any external assistance.

Phydeaux said:

You're correct, we don't know. I'd also like to think that the passengers are all alive. By the way, not all remote airstrips are accompanied by volcanoes and evil geniuses. Fact is, there are hundreds of remote airstrips within range of that aircraft. That is a simple fact, and I doubt any of them are controlled by an evil genius.

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Remote Airstrips within range and that have a long enough, strong enough tarmac or concrete surface for the plane to land on. If it is not the gear will collapse and it won't be taking off again in a hurry.

SMHarman said:

Remote Airstrips within range and that have a long enough, strong enough tarmac or concrete surface for the plane to land on. If it is not the gear will collapse and it won't be taking off again in a hurry.

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How many 5,000 foot non-concrete runways are you aware of?


http://project.wnyc.org/runways/

A couple years ago, on an episode of "Air Emergency" on NGC I think it was, the pilot and entire crew had passed out due to rapid decompression or something. I think fighter pilots or pilots of another plane (I forget) were able to fly close enough to witness that everyone was passed out.

Think it was this episode.

Episode Detail: Unconscious Pilot - Air Emergency

An examination of Helios Airways Flight 522, which crashed into a mountain outside Athens on Aug. 14, 2005, killing all passengers and crew.

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Okay, yes that was it. Just found it on wikipedia

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

"...Two F-16 fighter aircraft from the Hellenic Air Force 111th Combat Wing were scrambled from Nea Anchialos Air Base to establish visual contact.They intercepted the passenger jet at 11:24 and observed that the first officer was slumped motionless at the controls and the captain's seat was empty. They also reported that oxygen masks were dangling in the passenger cabin."

Phydeaux said:

How many 5,000 foot non-concrete runways are you aware of?


http://project.wnyc.org/runways/

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So I assume the response team is dividing and conquering checking in with ATC at all those 634 runways.

Lets also note that 5,000ft of runway may not be enough to get it airborne again. Wikipedia only gives MTOW runway lengths but they start at 8,000 ft.

I won't start a new thread but imo, this is the most plausible theory. http://marklberry.com/2014/03/16/high-alert-mh370-found/
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This theory is closest to mine. Awacs will pick up the aircraft if it goes airborne, but what would be the instructions to fighters if radio messages from the jet suggested "we have over 200 hostages onboard this aircraft, and our demands are...."

Although the truth is there are no passengers on board.

I too, hope I'm wrong.

Side note, I didn't know it was possible to override the O2 masks from deploying from overheads with loss of cabin pressure, but I defer to this pilot.

Well, I have my own theory. The pilot(s) were enroute to Pakistan or one of the other 'stans, at low altitude, observing radio silence, and after achieving landfall found one of those mountalns with their nose. Hence no flotsam.

Either that or it is lying at the bottom of the Indian Ocean and sooner or later some foam or seat cushions or something will wash up on some shoreline.

In about 2 1/2 weeks, the batteries in the ELT will be depleted and no longer pinging. The search will be suspended and the news will be below the fold on about section F of the newspapers.

Jim

Clemson Fan said:

What if the pilots and everybody else on board died within 10-20 minutes of whatever event that occurred? Given that situation they probably just ran out of time to be able to make a precise maneuver to get them to the nearest emergency landing field. According to Goodfellow's article that sharp left hand turn did in fact at least point the plane toward a airstrip they could land on and they just ran out of time and died before being able to complete the action. The jet then probably just stabilized itself like it's built to do and then just flew silently on for 7 hours until it ran out of fuel.

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But, if the news reports are accurate, a big if, the plane didn't just fly on in the direction it was pointed. According to the radar tracking it was navigated along at least two set navigation waypoints.

I believe this is now the third time I have made this point in response to why this theory has problems. This is why I keep saying that any plausible theory can't ignore ignore inconvenient information.


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Of course, remembering that Malaysia is a country that has battled terrorists and insurgents in the past, there's always the possibility that the Malaysian air force reacted when a large jet, flying in a suspicious manner with all communications cut off, wandered into their air space. At which point they forced it down.

And ever since they've been trying to cover it up, starting with their withholding of information that the military had even tracked the jet.

If the plane was on autopilot it doesn't just fly straight, does it? It can fly on a predetermine flight path, no?