Prompted by this remark a few pages back:
Quote:
The captain immediately did exactly what he had been trained to do: turn the plane toward the closest airport so he could land.
From the point of last contact, RMAF Air base Kuantan would have been on the reciprocal track back towards KL.
(...)
Langkawai would have been at least three times the distance and around 60-70 degrees of the reciprocal track to Kuantan.
A "land as soon as possible - nearest divert" wouldn't equate to Langkawi or Penang airfield for that matter (...)
The original assumption was that a possible scenario was smoke in the cockpit, which caused the pilots to "aviate, navigate, communicate" and start by turning off stuff to try and stop what might have been a fire or an electrical fault generating smoke. Let's assume for a moment that it was the communications equipment that had a failure; that's not unheard of as far as I understand. Let us also assume that the pilots may not have been at the top of their performance, given the time of day and an uneventful flight. Does it sound preposterous to you experts to propose it might have happened like this:
- Comms equipment develops electrical problem, fails shortly after A/C leaves Malaysian airspace
- Pilots start trying to identify the source of the problem, and in doing so also switch off the radar transponder and eventually unselect ACARS
- At the same time, being trained pilots, they divert, but fail to recognize Kuantan as their best option and instead head towards Langkawi or Penang (for whatever reason - stress, familiarity, you name it)
- Things continue to go pear shaped and the pilots' actions start to become erratic, leading eventually to the plane steering a course over the open ocean which otherwise doesn't make sense.
I would be first to accept that the scenario is weak and can't explain why the aircraft would follow the arc that it seems to have done, but at least there is no Blofeld-style supervillain needed here. What do you think?