Flight MH370

Freebird

Was it the captain who done it? An interesting article that looks at some of the groups and figures involved..

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/mh370-malaysia-airlines/590653/

SouthpawMark

Yes. 

darthed1981

Freebird said:

Was it the captain who done it?

We can't blame him and Chappers for everything...

ICBM

Freebird said:

Was it the captain who done it?

Probably, but not certainly. This is something I've spent quite a lot of late-night time on.

There are at least two other credible possibilities -

A failed hijack (or perhaps successful, depending on the motives and whether the hijacker/s were on a one-way trip) by third parties.

A cockpit fire and failed attempt to turn back to an airport, leaving the plane just barely flyable but without most electrical power.

For the second possibility, it's worth looking at the two Egyptair cockpit fires, the first in a 777 on the ground in Cairo and the second in an A320 over the Mediterranean - both have potential parallels.

There are also some coincidences with flight MH17, but whether they're at the level of more than just coincidence is difficult to tell.

And if there is a link that would require a big conspiracy, and I don't generally believe in conspiracy theories...

This site is worth a look, if you have time - http://jeffwise.net . Wise himself is a conspiracy theorist, but there is a very large amount of third-party information and discussion there too.

VimFuego

I reckon the chem trails backfired. That, or they flew too close to the edge of the world the NWO AA batteries shot them down.

underdog

Well that was a bloody good read, cheers for that, never paid the event much attention before 

Freebird

underdog said:

Well that was a bloody good read, cheers for that, never paid the event much attention before 

Me too, and that's why I posted it 

lt's everything in one place, with just enough depth to get an overview of what went on.

Have a look at ICBM's link above if it's tweaked your interest.

ICBM

Despite what that article says, a fire is a credible possibility. If the crew disabled most of the electrical systems in an attempt to fight the fire, while a hole burned through the fuselage and caused depressurisation, the same conditions would exist as in the supposed hijack-by-captain. If they had no means of communication, landing safely or barely of navigation, trying to use a mobile phone to contact the ground at Penang might have been their last chance before deciding to simply keep the plane from crashing anywhere inhabited, knowing that everyone in the cabin was probably already dead.

The EgyptAir A320 which definitely did have a fire in either the cockpit or avionics bay also turned off the airway immediately and made no communication until it crashed. I’m always more inclined to believe an accidental cause rather than deliberate until proven otherwise. Air accidents can be very complex, and just because an *identical* accident has never happened before doesn’t rule out something quite similar.

Freebird

I know hardly anything about this incident, other than what I have just read, but wouldn't a fire have had to come into play at the exact moment that the captain calmly wished the Malaysian air traffic control goodnight? How else would the responder have been switched off? He also failed to make immediate contact with Vietnamese air traffic control. That's a lot of things happening in a few moments, i.e. going from complete calm to total chaos. Could a fire have even spread this quickly without being detected by the smoke detectors and fire alarms? At this point he would have also been over the sea, yet he turned around and flew over land towards Penang.

The flight sim is a big coincidence too, along with the fact that he skipped ahead during the running of the simulation. The Malaysian government painting a perfect image of the captain is also very sketchy.

https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2019/06/WEL_MH370_MapInsetWithLetters/2ee9d76af.jpg

underdog

It does seem that it was intentional by someone on board the plane, too many things are too hard to explain otherwise.

If there was fire why was the plane flown for hours in the wrong direction? Was the plane taken off course for other reasons and then a fire caused the crash? It just makes little sense.

The flight sim just backs up that this probably was the captain succumbing to mental illness of some kind.

thermionic

Great read. I always tend to think the simplest explanation is most likely in these kinds of situations. I know on what I’d put my money on.

ICBM

Freebird said:

I know hardly anything about this incident, other than what I have just read, but wouldn't a fire have had to come into play at the exact moment that the captain calmly wished the Malaysian air traffic control goodnight? How else would the responder have been switched off? He also failed to make immediate contact with Vietnamese air traffic control. That's a lot of things happening in a few moments, i.e. going from complete calm to total chaos. Could a fire have even spread this quickly without being detected by the smoke detectors and fire alarms?

Yes. The one on EgyptAir flight 804 was so rapid they didn't have time to send a mayday. Smoke was detected, but only one ACARS message relating to it was sent, and given the interval between them it's possible it would have been missed if it had been a few seconds earlier or later. It would certainly have had to happen right at the point of handover - but so did flight 804, midway between Cyprus and Egypt, which then turned rapidly to the left, just as MH370 did - that's the standard procedure for an emergency, to avoid other traffic in the air lane. It was picked up on Greek military radar but not Egyptian civil radar.

The fire in EgyptAir flight 667 on the ground involved an oxygen tube as well, and burned so rapidly that the crew barely had time to get out of the cockpit. It then burned through the skin of the fuselage, which obviously would cause immediate depressurisation if it happened in flight. This was the same type of aircraft as MH370, a Boeing 777-200ER.

The similarities between both these cases and MH370 make me think it's unwise to rule out a fire, since there is a plausible - if very specific - chain of events that could fit.

Freebird said:

At this point he would have also been over the sea, yet he turned around and flew over land towards Penang.

underdog said:

If there was fire why was the plane flown for hours in the wrong direction? Was the plane taken off course for other reasons and then a fire caused the crash? It just makes little sense.

If they'd pulled most of the electrical systems in order to try to stop the fire, they may have then had very few options for getting the plane down safely, especially if a large part of the cockpit was also fire-damaged. Continuing to fly while trying to get enough working again to control the plane would be the only option. If they managed to get some of it powered up again after Penang, that would explain the re-log-on which produced the Inmarsat data. The question then would be, if they were flying an aircraft with no means of communication, no means of landing, and probably with all the passengers dead, what would they do?

I don't know. But any other scenario is also unlikely too - the captain doing it as a suicide is the easiest to explain technically, but hard to rationalise with a motive. I'm not certain whether the flight simulator evidence has been proven one way or the other, I'm fairly sure someone has questioned whether the data points are all from the same simulated flight. It could be another odd coincidence, of which there are many...

It really is a very deep mystery, and unless the plane is ever found is likely to remain so - maybe even if it is.

Emp_Fab

Donald Trump did it.

Emp_Fab

They will undoubtedly find the wreckage one day.... probably many years from now, when it will appear on the latest holo-vision episode of "Diving ancient wrecks".

skunkwerx

I don't know much about aviation, but I reckon if those there oxygen masks are fed from bottled oxygen canisters, they could go boom real easy and too rapidly to do much about. 

But I reckon they'd have protection in place for that reason.. I dunno. 

Freebird

ICBM said:

If they'd pulled most of the electrical systems in order to try to stop the fire, they may have then had very few options for getting the plane down safely, especially if a large part of the cockpit was also fire-damaged. Continuing to fly while trying to get enough working again to control the plane would be the only option. If they managed to get some of it powered up again after Penang, that would explain the re-log-on which produced the Inmarsat data. The question then would be, if they were flying an aircraft with no means of communication, no means of landing, and probably with all the passengers dead, what would they do?

I don't know. But any other scenario is also unlikely too - the captain doing it as a suicide is the easiest to explain technically, but hard to rationalise with a motive. I'm not certain whether the flight simulator evidence has been proven one way or the other, I'm fairly sure someone has questioned whether the data points are all from the same simulated flight. It could be another odd coincidence, of which there are many...

It really is a very deep mystery, and unless the plane is ever found is likely to remain so - maybe even if it is.

Thanks for the input and sharing your knowledge. I'm a firm believer in establishing the information boundaries that exist around any given subject, as it's the only way you can see all possibilities. Once you have mapped out the full scope of the data, patterns will emerge which can then help with the construction of possible theories. I certainly don't know enough about this event to speak with any authority, beyond the sharing of a few initial observations.

And as you say, it's a very deep mystery, so we may never know what really happened.

JohnnyPlectrum

Controlled demolition, thermite and Judy Woods' Energy weapon?

Haych

It's an interesting (and long) read.  One cannot rule out that it was a deliberate act on the part of the captain.  The article, at least to me, seems to suggest the captain must be at fault simply because no other credible explanation exists.

I don't know if the truth will ever be known about what did actually happen.  Until then the easiest answer, and not an implausible one, is that it was pilot hijack.  That theory raises questions of its own, though.

ICBM

Haych said:

It's an interesting (and long) read.  One cannot rule out that it was a deliberate act on the part of the captain.  The article, at least to me, seems to suggest the captain must be at fault simply because no other credible explanation exists.

I don't know if the truth will ever be known about what did actually happen.  Until then the easiest answer, and not an implausible one, is that it was pilot hijack.  That theory raises questions of its own, though.

Exactly. I do actually think that pilot suicide is very likely, but I don't think you can rule out a fire, given the evidence of the two EgyptAir accidents.

A couple of other things that might fit:

The captain's odd repeat of the flight level to air traffic control - if strange instrument readings due to an electrical fault were beginning and he was distracted trying to work out what was going on, before they realised it was a fire.

The eyewitness on an oil rig who claimed to have seen a bright light in the sky at the time and place MH370 turned off the air lane - an oxygen-fed fire burning through the side of an aluminium fuselage is going to be pretty bright, probably visible from many miles away at night.

This is what the EgyptAir 777 looked like, and that's given that the firefighters arrived within minutes...



(By another odd coincidence, I have been on that aircraft! Long before the fire of course - going to Egypt in 1997. I remember it well, I was very interested since the 777 was brand new in service at that time.)

If you think the fire theory requires a lot of holes in the Swiss cheese to line up at the same time, try Jeff Wise's Russian hijack theory. He believes that the aircraft was hijacked by Russian special agents on board, went north to Kazakhstan, the Russians spoofed the Inmarsat data, and the debris found in the Indian Ocean was planted, mostly by Blaine Gibson... he thinks that the reason the plane hasn't been found in the search area is because it isn't there.

But bear in mind the sheer vastness and darkness of the deep Indian Ocean. Someone likened looking for the plane down there to trying to find a crashed aircraft somewhere in Germany, searching only on a dark night, using a bicycle and a torch. If the plane was outside the search area by only a few metres they would have missed it. It's also possible that it was within the search area but missed - they couldn't cover some of the rougher seafloor terrain.

On the other hand if the captain did hijack it and intentionally flew as far as possible, gliding to a semi-controlled ditching, it may well be well outside the search area anyway. If I was looking for a place to hide an airliner for ever, that part of the ocean would be right at the top of the list...

Freebird

I think it's good to have an open-minded outlook on life   

Paul_C

Haych said:

It's an interesting (and long) read.  One cannot rule out that it was a deliberate act on the part of the captain.  The article, at least to me, seems to suggest the captain must be at fault simply because no other credible explanation exists.

I don't know if the truth will ever be known about what did actually happen.  Until then the easiest answer, and not an implausible one, is that it was pilot hijack.  That theory raises questions of its own, though.

The pilot hijack looks like the one that best fits the known facts, and if I had to put a fiver on it that's the one I'd chose.

You can make an argument for a fire, but it needs a lot more "if"s IMHO.