Malaysia Jet missing-Officials conclude crash in Indian ocean/all lives presumed lost

[Ducay]

Originally Posted by normtwofinger

Had to be fire. Burned out electrical systems (transponder, radio etc.), loss of pressure, navigation chaos, final act of pilot or co-pilot is to resume auto pilot. Auto pilot settings could have been changed during the pressure loss/navagation chaos/fire.

Won't be autopilot in an emergency setting, but the plane does have options to maintain exsting heading when not in autopilot, which could have been the case.

However,still too many erratic movements and obvious circumventing of Indonesia to be purely a fire.

My money: Forced hijacking by someone who killed the ACARS/transponder in order to avoid detection and the transmission of a mayday/hijacking code. The hijackers couldn't fly so they left the crew at the helm (but at gun/knifepoint). And rather than following their demands to wherever they wanted to go, after diverting around the Straights of Mallacca/Indonesia, they simply pretended they were following directions, but instead flew down south where no one else could get hurt. Pilots end up as heros

[TheyCallMeBruce]

Why am I not surprised?

http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/22136527/...argo-manifest/

Hansford, chairman of Strategic Aviation Solutions, said the Malaysian government's decision not to publish the cargo manifest from flight MH370 suggests they are not being fully transparent.

“To me, there is no reason why they wouldn’t declare the cargo manifest unless you’ve got something to hide,” he said.

“There is no reason you wouldn’t have given it to AMSA (the Australian Maritime Safety Authority) on the first day of the search.”

In my opinion, this should cause some alarm bells to go off. If there's nothing to hide, why not release the full details of the cargo manifest to aid in the search? The Australian's have politely asked for it (to make their job easier), and the malaysians have refused. Very suspicious.

[JonDuke]

Agreed about the cargo manifest. Why release the info about mangosteens but nothing else? Smells fishy.

[Acey]

Originally Posted by normtwofinger

Had to be fire. Burned out electrical systems (transponder, radio etc.), loss of pressure, navigation chaos, final act of pilot or co-pilot is to resume auto pilot. Auto pilot settings could have been changed during the pressure loss/navagation chaos/fire.

Nothing supports fire, IMO. A fire would be far more likely to cause a swift demise than 7 hours of seemingly controlled flight into terrain/water.

[KelVarnsen]

Here is a random thought.

Lets say the flight was hijacked. Maybe the reason for hijacking and continued flight to nowhere was to humiliate and expose the Malaysian government?

[nik-]

Originally Posted by KelVarnsen

Here is a random thought.

Lets say the flight was hijacked. Maybe the reason for hijacking and continued flight to nowhere was to humiliate and expose the Malaysian government?

Flying them back into the Petronas towers would be a little more embarrassing though.

[darklord700]

Originally Posted by normtwofinger

Had to be fire. Burned out electrical systems (transponder, radio etc.), loss of pressure, navigation chaos, final act of pilot or co-pilot is to resume auto pilot. Auto pilot settings could have been changed during the pressure loss/navagation chaos/fire.

Don't think this whole thing was purely accidental. It's got to be a combination of hijacking/suicidal pilot and some accidents that happened later on.

[normtwofinger]

Sorry I should have elaborated. Just a gut feeling, but I think the pilots depresserized the plane to put the fire out and never recovered. I don't think the fire was big, just big enough to knock out comms. Call me crazy.

[#-3]

I heard an interview with a commercial pilot, said any pilot making those types of maneuvers without reporting them would know that he was losing his license and would never fly again.

So unless the radio some how went out before the fire started, and the fire was small enough not to effect the planes engines and ability to fly for over 7 hours. that is not likely.

the cabin decompressing does not explain the at least 4 maneuvers that took the plane off course. or the lack of an attempt to signal an emergency. And if there was some kind of a leak in the cabin and nobody at the controls, could the plane have made it to the maximum possible range without something happening.

I don't know what happened, but with both accident theories it seems that a few things would have had to go wrong in sequence. Tampering or massive instrument malfunction seems more likely to me.

Its going to be a long time before it is at all clear what has happened.

[Acey]

Originally Posted by normtwofinger

Sorry I should have elaborated. Just a gut feeling, but I think the pilots depresserized the plane to put the fire out and never recovered. I don't think the fire was big, just big enough to knock out comms. Call me crazy.

Not crazy... but I study aircraft electrical systems and we had a good discussion about this today. None of us particularly like the idea of a fire perfectly knocking out every comm system but not affecting others, and the aircraft can maintain stable flight for so long afterwards. It just doesn't make sense. Fire doesn't discriminate.

[nik-]

Perhaps one pilot suicide. The pilot and the co-pilot struggle when the other realizes what's going on. The plane climbs and descends erratically during this struggle. The one who desires the suicide wins the struggle, regains control and starts heading north towards Andaman Islands, but then changes track again to direct the plane off into the Southern Indian Ocean. Either decompressing the cabin, or not, and lets the plane fly til it drops out of the sky.

[bluejays]

Originally Posted by speede5

A fire doesn't explain how the plane got off track, at least not to me. Any fire is going to consume that aircraft and cause it to crash in a very short timeframe. If a fire was the reason for the turnabout, then I think the plane would have crashed in the first 30 minutes or so following. To burn to the point of incapacitating everyone on board but yet allow the aircraft to fly for 7 hrs is so improbable I can't even entertain it.

I'm really leaning towards a malicious act at this point.

Me too. The fact (or is it?) that the transponders were intentionally turned off, along with the general sequence of events, doesn't necessarily say fire. If it was a catastrophic fire the plane would have been down much earlier you'd think. I would lean more to a psychotic episode from one of the pilots, causing hypoxia then running out of fuel. Makes a little more sense given what happened, and is actually pretty sad if that's in fact what occurred.

[Acey]

They keep talking about "only highly trained individuals" would have been able to do some of this stuff... but it's a just a matter of finding the pressurization section of the overhead panel, flipping the outflow valve switches to manual open, then boom... anyone who doesn't get their mask on in 10-15 seconds is done (at 41,000 feet) and will die in a minute or two assuming nobody gets a mask on them. It's frighteningly easy. Maybe pull the breaker for pax oxygen so they all just die anyway.

Oxygen supplies last maybe 20 min? So just wait ~25 minutes after opening the outflows if you've had difficulty disarming the masks. Same result.

Then you're free to repressurize and resume your attempt to reach the South Pole, or wherever he was going.

[Ryan Coke]

Acey has it right. At this point I doubt a fire had anything to do with it. A depressurization likely does, however I doubt it was an accidental depressurization---a slight chance, but a small one.

Unfortunately, it may be one of the pilots that is responsible.

Here is an article supporting the theory.

[Acey]

Got a 2,000 page 777-200ER flight manual here... I'll amend the oxygen supply I mentioned above to approx. 22 minutes, and add that the outflow valves may take 6 seconds to start moving, and you may have to press the switch down for 30+ seconds for the outflows to fully open. But if you've properly locked your other pilot out of the flight deck neither of these intervals are particularly concerning.

Why is it so seemingly easy to open them? Part of it (apparently) is so you can open the damn door if you have to bail out of the airplane.

[Emergency evacuation....] Select the FWD and AFT outflow valve switches to manual to facilitate depressurizing the aircraft in preparation for evacuation should the
Captain confirm the need to evacuate.

There's also procedures in here for closing one outflow and opening the other to vent smoke/fumes from the cabin if said fumes are concentrated in a particular area of the cabin.

[hwy19man]

I have been surfing the internet about fire at high altitudes and how combustion is much more difficult. If a plane is depressurized at 12,000 metres (40,000 feet), the air up there has far less oxygen. How strong can the fire be?

[nik-]

The first notice of the final fate to family members.



nicely done Malaysian Airlines, jeez.

source: http://news.sky.com/story/1231059/ma...o-indian-ocean

[Acey]

Originally Posted by hwy19man

I have been surfing the internet about fire at high altitudes and how combustion is much more difficult. If a plane is depressurized at 12,000 metres (40,000 feet), the air up there has far less oxygen. How strong can the fire be?

Yeah but you're inside a pressurized vessel whose oxygen conditions are the same as those atop an 8,000 ft mountain... and either way, an electric fire couldn't care less. Swissair's fire started at 33,000 feet, but the altitude is irrelevant cause it was flammable insulation-type material that was burning. They found pieces of the ceiling that were melted. The cockpit was engulfed in flames.

[normtwofinger]

Could a pilot depressurize a plane to put out a fire?

[Acey]

Originally Posted by normtwofinger

Could a pilot depressurize a plane to put out a fire?

Depends where the fire is, the source of its ignition, how high they are, etc... so many variables. I'm not qualified enough to even pretend I could definitively answer that question, but in terms of the level of fire that's being suggested here I'm gonna say no.