March 30, 2014
Having been an aviation fanatic myself since childhood, the fate of missing Malaysian aircraft MH370 has really baffled me. I would like to share this write-up with you based on the investigations in progress over the southern Indian Ocean
I would like to draw a small analogy here, imagine you are driving a car from your office to your residence, you have a tracking device with you which gives you your exact location. Its your mobile phone in your pocket. At a given point you decide to switch off your mobile phone and drive your car away from your destination. You avoid driving through areas where you have accomplices so that no one would ever report having sighted you. You drive the car as long as you’ve fuel left in it and then crash it far away from your destination. Something similar has happened to MH-370.
Modern day aircraft are very sturdy and reliable. The case of a mechanical failure without being followed by distress signals is intriguing indeed. The Boeing 777 is an excellent aircraft and has clocked thousands of flying hours across the skies of our planet. There are distress signals like PAN, PAN, PAN or MAY DAY, which are sounded by Pilots in case of emergencies. There was no such scenario in case of MH-370. What could go wrong in a modern jet airliner from a reputed airline with a good safety record, fitted with the most sophisticated navigation system on-board? This is a mystery which may not be answered in the immediate future.
Flight MH-370, a Boeing 777-200 with 239 passengers and crew takes off into a clear night sky on 8-Mar-14 from Kuala Lumpur at 0041hrs. The flight is bound towards Beijing which is a 6 hour journey. The flight path is heading North-North East wards, crossing the Malayan peninsula over the South China Sea, entering into Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, re-entering Vietnam and then flying over the Chinese mainland to reach Beijing at 0630hrs local time.
The weather system through the entire flight path was ideal as the skies were clear with good visibility all the way. Aircraft rely on ground communication to navigate through. MH-370 radios in to KL tower and confirms its location over the South China Sea midway between Malaysia and Vietnam. The aircraft was entering into Vietnamese airspace, it is here we lost contact with the aircraft.
Based on the radar information and the string of events which follow, the write-up below is purely speculative as we’ve no real evidence to substantiate this. Until the wreckage is retrieved and the Black box decoded we cannot for sure say that this is true.
Boeing 777 is flown usually by 2 crew members, one hour into the flight, dinner would be served to all the passengers and most of them would be retiring on their seats to get some sleep before they reach Beijing early morning. This is when something sinister would’ve happened in the cockpit. One of the crew member might have asked the other to fetch something from the cabin, thereby ensuring that he is alone at the controls. Locking himself in the cockpit the crew member might have switched off the Transponder and the ACARS which are required to communicate with the ground radars, having done this the aircraft has been ascended to an altitude of 450 level which is 45,000ft. At these levels the Oxygen supply is very less and the cabin gets de-pressurized, ideally Oxygen masks are deployed to help passengers breathe, but this would not have happened and all passengers and crew, due to lack of Oxygen would all lose consciousness. But there can be an Oxygen mask used by the lone crew member to stay awake. Now with all the other members in the flight crippled, the aircraft is at the mercy of this lone crew member. He then probably decides to change course and takes a left turn heading back over the Malayan peninsula. With navigation systems turned down the aircraft is flown in such a way so as to be completely invisible to any radar. There are however confirmations from the Malaysian Airforce of sighting a blip on the radar on that fateful night.
A person well trained and someone who knows the topography very well can only pull of such a maneuver. Having flown over the Malacca Straits and over the Indonesian region of North Sumatra and being invisible to any radar is quite possible and likely as there are no major airports at such odd hours looking up for a rogue aircraft. Having crossed North Sumatra, we’re out into the open ocean, the Indian Ocean. Now probably the crew member has re-positioned the aircraft to fly south-wards far away from any regular flight path or from any shipping lane on the face of our planet. The aircraft is now destined to fly into the oblivion. A point of no return. It would probably fly as long as fuel would be available and would then plunge into the ocean.
The mystery would still remain unresolved as to why would anyone do this? Why would anyone kill so many other passengers for no fault of theirs. The other most interesting feature is that the aircraft may be lying at such a remote part of our planet where no one would ever reach and retrieve it. This way those sinister events in the cockpit would remain a mystery forever....