Probably, someone took the cockpit, directed them to flip the breakers on the transponder, and fly to India. Somewhere between Malaysia and India, something happened and they went down. Sad deal.
I have to wonder why that's even permitted, mechanically.
There are two on every passenger aircraft but only one is on or used at a time. It's just for redundancy. As far as being able to turn off. Although some major airports require aircraft to taxi with transponder on if they were unable to be turned off then every time the batteries were turned you would be adding a beacon to the controllers screen. With a bunch of aircraft on the ground at a busy airport you would have a very crowded screen.
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