I received this message from an EAA friend via email and decided to post this analysis from a professional pilot's point of view.
A Startlingly Simple Theory About the Missing Malaysia Airlines Jet
BY CHRIS GOODFELLOW
– WIRED
There has been a lot of speculation about Malaysia Airlines Flight
370. Terrorism, hijacking, meteors. I cannot believe the analysis on CNN
almost disturbing. I tend to look for a simpler explanation, and I find it with
the 13,000-foot runway at Pulau Langkawi. We know the story of MH370: A loaded Boeing 777 departs at
midnight from Kuala Lampur, headed to Beijing .
A hot night. A heavy aircraft. About an hour out, across the gulf toward
Vietnam , the
plane goes dark, meaning the transponder and secondary radar tracking go off.
Two days later we hear reports that Malaysian military radar (which is a
primary radar, meaning the plane is tracked by reflection rather than by
transponder interrogation response) has tracked the plane on a southwesterly
course back across the Malay Peninsula into the Strait of
Malacca .
The left turn is the key here. Zaharie Ahmad Shah1 was a very
experienced senior captain with 18,000 hours of flight time. 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 are
always in our head. Always. If something happens, you dont want to be
thinking about what are you going to do–you already know what youu are going to
do. When I saw that left turn with a direct heading, I instinctively knew he
was heading for an airport. He was taking a direct route to Palau Langkawi, a
13,000-foot airstrip with an approach over water and no obstacles. The captain
did not turn back to Kuala Lampur because he knew he had 8,000-foot ridges to
cross. He knew the terrain was friendlier toward Langkawi, which also was closer.
Take a look at this airport on Google Earth. The pilot did
all the right things. He was confronted by some major event onboard that made
him make an immediate turn to the closest, safest airport. When I heard this I immediately brought up Google Earth and
searched for airports in proximity to the track toward the southwest.
For me, the loss of transponders and communications makes perfect
sense in a fire. And there most likely was an electrical fire. In the case of a
fire, the first response is to pull the main busses and restore circuits one by
one until you have isolated the bad one. If they pulled the busses, the plane
would go silent. It probably was a serious event and the flight crew was
occupied with controlling the plane and trying to fight the fire. Aviate,
navigate, and lastly, communicate is the mantra in such situations. There are two types of fires. An electrical fire might not be as
fast and furious, and there may or may not be incapacitating smoke. However
there is the possibility, given the timeline, that there was an overheat on one
of the front landing gear tires, it blew on takeoff and started slowly burning.
Yes, this happens with underinflated tires. Remember: Heavy plane, hot night,
sea level, long-run takeoff. There was a well
known accident in Nigeria of a DC8 that had a landing gear fire on takeoff.
Once going, a tire fire would produce horrific, incapacitating smoke. Yes,
pilots have access to oxygen masks, but this is a no-no with fire. Most have
access to a smoke hood with a filter, but this will last only a few minutes
depending on the smoke level. (I used to carry one in my flight bag, and I
still carry one in my briefcase when I fly.)
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. You
will find it along that route–looking elsewhere is pointless. Ongoing speculation of a hijacking and/or murder-suicide and that
there was a flight engineer on board does not sway me in favor of foul play
until I am presented with evidence of foul play.
We know there was a last voice transmission that, from a pilots point of view, was entirely normal. Good night is customary on a hand-off to a new air traffic control. The good night also strongly indicates to me that all was OK on the flight deck. Remember, there are many ways a pilot can communicate distress. A hijack code or even transponder code off by one digit would alert ATC that something was wrong. Every good pilot knows keying an SOS over the mike always is an option. Even three short clicks would raise an alert. So I conclude that at the point of voice transmission all was perceived as well on the flight deck by the pilots.
But things could have been in the process of going wrong, unknown
to the pilots.Evidently the ACARS went inoperative some time before. Disabling the
ACARS is not easy, as pointed out. This leads me to believe more in an
electrical problem or an electrical fire than a manual shutdown. I suggest the
pilots probably were not aware ACARS was not transmitting.
As for the reports of altitude fluctuations, given that this was
not transponder-generated data but primary radar at maybe 200 miles, the
azimuth readings can be affected by a lot of atmospherics and I would not have
high confidence in this being totally reliable. But lets accept for a minute
that the pilot may have ascended to 45,000 feet in a last-ditch effort to quell
a fire by seeking the lowest level of oxygen. That is an acceptable scenario.
At 45,000 feet, it would be tough to keep this aircraft stable, as the flight
envelope is very narrow and loss of control in a stall is entirely possible.
The aircraft is at the top of its operational ceiling. The reported rapid rates
of descent could have been generated by a stall, followed by a recovery at
25,000 feet. The pilot may even have been diving to extinguish flames. But going to 45,000 feet in a hijack scenario doesn't make any
good sense to me.
Regarding the additional flying time: On departing Kuala Lampur, Flight 370 would have had fuel for Beijing and an alternate destination, probably Shanghai , plus 45 minutes–say, 8 hours. Mayybe more. He burned 20-25 percent in the first hour with takeoff and the climb to cruise. So when the turn was made toward Langkawi, he would have had six hours or more hours worth of fuel. This correlates nicely with the Inmarsat data pings being received until fuel exhaustion.
The now known continued flight until time to fuel exhaustion only
confirms to me that the crew was incapacitated and the flight continued on deep
into the south Indian ocean .vThere is no point speculating further until more evidence
surfaces, but in the meantime it serves no purpose to malign pilots who well
may have been in a struggle to save this aircraft from a fire or other serious
mechanical issue. Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah was a hero struggling with an
impossible situation trying to get that plane to Langkawi. There is no doubt in
my mind. Thats the reason for the turn and direct route. A hijacking would
not have made that deliberate left turn with a direct heading for Langkawi. It
probably would have weaved around a bit until the hijackers decided where they
were taking it.
Surprisingly, none of the reporters, officials, or other pilots interviewed
have looked at this from the pilots viewpoint: If something went wrong,
where would he go? Thanks to Google Earth I spotted Langkawi in about 30
seconds, zoomed in and saw how long the runway was and I just instinctively
knew this pilot knew this airport. He had probably flown there many times.
Fire in an aircraft demands one thing: Get the machine on the
ground as soon as possible. There are two well-remembered experiences in my
memory. The AirCanada DC9 which landed, I believe, in
Columbus , Ohio
in the 1980s. That pilot delayed descent and bypassed several airports. He didn't
instinctively know the closest airports. He got it on the ground eventually,
but lost 30-odd souls. The 1998 crash of Swissair DC-10 off
Nova Scotia was another example of heroic
pilots. They were 15 minutes out of Halifax
but the fire overcame them and they had to ditch in the ocean. They simply ran
out of time. That fire incidentally started when the aircraft was about an hour
out of Kennedy. Guess what? The transponders and communications were shut off
as they pulled the busses.
Get on Google Earth and type in Pulau Langkawi and then look at it
in relation to the radar track heading. Two plus two equals four. For me, that
is the simple explanation why it turned and headed in that direction. Smart
pilot. He just didn’t have the time.
Very interesting theory, and it sounds pretty likely!
ReplyDeleteI also have a 1980 sunburst UL plane.
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