This does fit the facts and asks the right
questions. It is a repetition of a fire
produced emergency that soon enough overcame the crew. The fire itself obviously failed to knock the
plane out of the sky but the altitude maneuver may well have succeeded in
quelling the fire itself until the remnants burned out. That did not matter because all were
unconscious obviously rather quickly.
We even have plenty of known examples in
which the same scenario is played out.
We simply have not located the plane yet. At least we have an obvious heading and a
maximum range. That should do it.
We need to properly address cabin
fires. They can obviously be quelled or
at least controlled sufficiently to allow a possible landing soon enough to save
lives. This is becoming a major
risk. What needs to be provided is a
smoke respirator kit for all crew members that include vision assist as
well. It should also be put on in the
event of any emergency or drill to familiarize users.
Built in extinguishers need to be also
reviewed for major electrical complexes that may be vulnerable. Even a CO2 quench is good enough, particularly
inside the wheel wells.
At least we can stop blaming the pilot.
A Startlingly Simple Theory About the
Missing Malaysia Airlines Jet
BY
CHRIS GOODFELLOW
03.18.14
There
has been a lot of speculation about Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Terrorism,
hijacking, meteors. I cannot believe the analysis on CNN; it’s 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 loss of transponders and communications makes perfect sense in
a fire.
When
I heard this I immediately brought up Google Earth and searched for airports in
proximity to the track toward the southwest.
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’re always in our head.
Always. 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. 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.
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 pilot’s 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 let’s 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. Maybe 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.
Fire in an aircraft demands one thing: Get the machine on the
ground as soon as possible.
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.
There
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. That’s 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 pilot’s 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.
Chris Goodfellow has 20 years experience as a Canadian Class-1
instrumented-rated pilot for multi-engine planes. His theory on what happened
to MH370 first appeared
on Google+. We’ve copyedited it with his permission.
1CORRECTION
9:40 a.m. Eastern 03/18/14: An editing error introduced a typo in Capt. Zaharie
Ahmad Shah’s name.
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