If fire was the problem, why didn't the pilot just land by sea?
You clearly don't understand how unsurvivable water landings are.
MH370: A different point of view
61–70 of 224 posts
Re: MH370: A different point of view
#62Re: MH370: A different point of view
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
Those were primary radar readings which aren't accurate at range.
Re: MH370: A different point of view
#64Sequence 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 t…
It's a pretty massive area and the boxes might be trashed.
Re: MH370: A different point of view
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
or the climb to 45k
If it was outside fire (tire), wouldn't it die out in higher altitude?
Possibly explaining the climb to 450? To remove more oxygen from the depressurized compartments to try to smother the fire? I don't know if this is a legitimate fire-fighting technique for an aircraft though (i.e. somehing that the flight crew would have been trained to do).
Re: MH370: A different point of view
#66The 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.
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 An under-inflated tyre caught fire during take-off, the plane took off unaware of the fire, when the landing gear was retracted the fire spread burning through electrical and hydraulic lines.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.
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.
Re: MH370: A different point of view
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
In an emergency, the safest way to burn fuel is to reach the closest airport and then circle it. Not head to a more distant airport which you might not reach because of the very emergency. All hypotheses will invalidate the major premise: that the pilots chose that particular heading not randomly, but in a calculated attempt to reach the nearest airport because of an emergency. Basically, no matter where the plane wo…
In a dire emergency, you would just dump the fuel and not try to burn it off.
Re: MH370: A different point of view
#68Sequence 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 t…
It's a pretty massive area and the boxes might be trashed.
Those boxes are built to be untrashable.
Re: MH370: A different point of view
#69In 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.
Re: MH370: A different point of view
#70It'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.