What might have happened to Malaysia Flight no MH 370?
What likely brought down the 777 "would have to be something catastrophic and unexpected," said Dave Powell, a retired United Airlines Boeing 777 captain who is now dean of the College of Aviation at Western Michigan University.
An in-flight breakup due to an explosion of any origin could have been the culprit, but Powell said the Triple Seven, as it's universally known by its crews, is a solid airplane, unlikely to experience disastrous mechanical events. "The people
The discovery that two people whose names appeared on the passenger list were in fact not on board, and had reported their passports stolen, lends some early credence to the theory that a bomb might have exploded. In previous cases of in-flight bomb explosions -- Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988; Air India 182 over the Atlantic in 1985; and UTA 772 in 1989 -- the airplanes had all disappeared from the sky without warning or a distress call.
An explosion could also be due to a fuel tank, as happened to TWA flight 800 in 1996, a crash initially attributed to possible terrorism before the investigation pointed to a spark igniting fuel vapors and causing an explosion that broke up the plane. In that case, there was no distress call either. But fuel tank design has come a long way since the late-1960s technology of the Boeing 747, and no 777 has ever exhibited any issues of that kind.
Fires on board, loss of engine power for various reasons, or instrument malfunctions have all caused crashes of big jetliners, but the sudden disappearance of MH370 with no radio contact makes those scenarios less likely.
Pilot suicide has also been a cause of crashes, although rare, and any scenario of that kind would probably be evident if the flight-data recorder (or "black box") and cockpit voice recorder are found.
Given the relatively shallow depth of the Gulf of Thailand, the possible crash area, both devices should be located fairly quickly -- a key difference between Malaysia 370 and the similarly baffling Air France 447, which went down in 2009 in the middle of the Atlantic. It took two years to find the recorders on the ocean floor 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) down. The investigation found pilots
had reacted improperly to a stall, causing the Airbus 330 to irrecoverably lose control.
At this early stage, there is no indication that the pilots did anything untoward, as was the case in the botched Asiana Airlines landing in San Francisco. "I was chief pilot for United in San Francisco with the 777, I've flown that approach hundreds of times," Powell said, "and that was poor airmanship. But this? Boy, this is just unconscionable."
What Happened To Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370?
ray2:
