Malaysia Air Flight 370

[loudshirt]

Where's all the truthers that would believe it's an inside job used a diversion tactic for Putin?

FEMA did it

 

[Wheel Gun]

Interesting article. Hard to argue against this. (Although, it doesn't neatly explain the many hours of engine pings.)

http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/18/the-simplest-and-most-plausible-flight-370-theory-yet-from-an-actual-pilot/

The simplest and most plausible Flight 370 theory yet – from an actual pilot

The latest speculation over the whereabouts of missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 – from an experienced pilot – is easily the most plausible, and a far step away from hijacking, terrorism, or meteors.

Chris Goodfellow, a pilot with more than 20 years of experience on multi-engine planes, wrote on Google+ that a fire aboard the plane – and a pilot’s standard operating procedure in such a scenario – could account for almost all of the evidence surrounding the missing plane.

“I tend to look for a simpler explanation, and I find it with the 13,000-foot runway at Pulau Langkawi,” Goodfellow wrote in a post that was later edited and published by Wired Tuesday.

After the Boeing 777 took off from Kuala Lumpur en-route to Beijing around midnight March 8, the plane lost communication with air traffic control and disappeared from radar along with its transponder tracking ping. Radar evidence from the Malaysian military discovered days later picked up what could possibly have been Flight 370 turning around and heading back toward the western coast of Malaysia, specifically the Strait of Malacca.

“When I heard this I immediately brought up Google Earth and searched for airports in proximity to the track toward the southwest,” Goodfellow said.

According to the former pilot, the necessary left turn to head back toward Malaysia by pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah – a captain with 18,000 hours of flight time – is strongly indicative of a pilot’s instinct in an emergency situation.

“We old pilots were drilled to know what is the closest airport of safe harbor while in cruise. Airports behind us, airports abeam us, and airports ahead of us. They’re always in our head. Always,” Goodfellow said. “If something happens, you don’t want to be thinking about what are you going to do – you already know what you are going to do.”

The most likely explanation for the turn was to make an emergency landing at a nearby airport – in this case, Palau Langkawi, a 13,000-foot airstrip approachable by water and free of obstacles. Shah would have avoided heading back to Kuala Lumpur with a damaged plane due to the 8,000-foot ridges crossed on approach.

“It probably was a serious event and the flight crew was occupied with controlling the plane and trying to fight the fire,” Goodfellow said. “Aviate, navigate, and lastly, communicate is the mantra in such situations.”

A landing gear fire is also entirely possible, especially on under-inflated tires (common on large airliners) during a hot night on a long runway. If the blowout occurred during takeoff, the resulting fire would burn slowly but eventually produce “horrific, incapacitating smoke.”

“What I think happened is the flight crew was overcome by smoke and the plane continued on the heading, probably on George (autopilot), until it ran out of fuel or the fire destroyed the control surfaces and it crashed,” Goodfellow said. “You will find it along that route–looking elsewhere is pointless.”

 

[Okie4570]

Interesting article and simple, but yet no debris from a crash, burned or not.

 

[KOPBET]

Interesting article. Hard to argue against this. (Although, it doesn't neatly explain the many hours of engine pings.)

He has more comments if you scroll down the page.

 

[Shadowrider]

Still doesn't explain the engine pings for several hours...

 

[soonerwings]

Still doesn't explain the engine pings for several hours...

Or why the transponders were turned off in the cockpit. That's not something a pilot would do in an emergency situation.

 

[Oklahomabassin]

Or the "Alright....Goodnight"

 

[Shadowrider]

Or why the transponders were turned off in the cockpit. That's not something a pilot would do in an emergency situation.

True, but I could maybe see that an electrical fire maybe taking the transponders out? Also I wonder if the crew had to abandon the cockpit due to fire, expire from smoke some time after (along with everyone else) and somehow the plane still flew until running out of fuel. But that doesn't really jive with the ELTs not triggering or the lack of any wreckage. Personally I think it's on the ground in Indonesia or some remote place. Probably under a net awaiting it's next flight to who knows where.

 

[KOPBET]

Or why the transponders were turned off in the cockpit. That's not something a pilot would do in an emergency situation.

In a fire, it is certainly something he could do. At least indirectly by killing circuit breakers.

 

[0311]

Bingo! Here it is.

http://www.businessinsider.com/maldvies-islanders-claim-to-see-malaysia-370-2014-3

Residents of a remote atoll in the Indian Ocean claim to have seen a "low flying jumbo jet" on the morning after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished, according to a report in the Maldives paper Haveeru Daily.

Maldives, a collection of coral atolls and islets, has a population of some 400,000 islanders. Haveeru Daily is the country's longest serving daily newspaper.

Several Maldives residents on the island of Kuda Huvadhoo told Haveeru that they saw a large white aircraft, with red stripes across it (like Malaysia Airlines planes) around 6:15 a.m. local time (9:15 a.m. Malaysia time) on March 8.
From Haveeru:

Eyewitnesses from the Kuda Huvadhoo concurred that the aeroplane was travelling North to South-East, towards the Southern tip of the Maldives – Addu. They also noted the incredibly loud noise that the flight made when it flew over the island.

"I've never seen a jet flying so low over our island before. We've seen seaplanes, but I'm sure that this was not one of those. I could even make out the doors on the plane clearly," said an eyewitness.

The Island Councilor of Kuda Huvadhoo told Haveeru that several of the islanders had spoken about the incident. A local aviation expert told Haveeru that the possibility of any aircraft flying over the island at the reported time is extremely low.

If true, the sighting would upend the leading theories about where Boeing 777 went after making a hard turn west into the Strait of Malaka at about 1:30 a.m. Malaysia time.

The biggest problem with the report, beyond trusting eyewitnesses, is that a final satellite communication - received from the plane at 8:11 a.m. Malaysia time (5:11 a.m. Maldives time) - placed the jet somewhere in one of two corridors that are nowhere near the Maldives.

In any case, the accounts from the Maldives are another anomaly in the search for the missing plane and the 239 people who were onboard.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/maldvies-islanders-claim-to-see-malaysia-370-2014-3#ixzz2wLXfSGAd