dr dre
If the oxygen bottle has ruptured in cruise, resulting in extensive damage to the electronics bay and a gradual decompression event ensues, then the cabin altitude warning will NOT occur straight away, it would occur some time later. The cabin altitude starts to climb gradually. However, the crew will be bombarded with immediate failures, especially anything electrical and reliant on P105 & L AIMS eg 4/6 DU failed. They would be definitely overloaded mentally. Whilst they problem solve, it would be easy for the crew to be task fixated on a problem and miss the gradual decompression event. Considering both pilots were smokers, their lung capacity would be equivalent to a much higher altitude when the Cabin Altitude message finally appeared at 15000feet.
So a bucketload of failures happened almost instantaneously, one of which is a transponder failure as the SSR information is lost. But almost instantaneously the aircraft turns back degrees to head to Penang. When real pilots have a complex system failure it isn’t realistic to think they’d turn instantaneously. But even moreso is within the next 10 minutes they make no attempt to make any form of contact, and make no attempt to start a descent towards Penang. This was apparently after only 10 minutes at lower than FL150 to not set off the Cabin Altitude Warning. So they’re now suffering from hypoxia to the point they can’t communicate or descend, even if he’s a smoker the FO is only in his 20s and should have fairly decent lung capacity. No evidence Captain was a smoker, and both pilots weren’t overweight.
When the aircraft was near Penang, if someone programs a diversion to Banda Aceh via NILAM-SANOB the autopilot will follow that route and the aircraft will end in the southern Indian Ocean, without any human intervention, at 34S 93E.
All occupants may have been deceased as early as 1800Z due to hypoxia, 40minutes after the rupture.
So the pilots have been so overwhelmed to by hypoxia they lost the thinking ability to remember to communicate or descend, but then 20 minutes they recover enough mental capacity to program the FMC to an obscure airport (Aceh) a relatively long way from Malaysia, that MH doesn’t fly to, ignoring closer and more obvious airports like Phuket, Medan or KL where MH does fly. And then they have enough mental capacity they program that diversion along an airway, that doesn’t even go to Aceh, it passes well north. So they had a catastrophic series of failures but still were kind enough to follow the airway rather than track direct?
And if you say “well they were hypoxic so their decisions wouldn’t make sense” there’s levels of hypoxia. You start to lose the ability to perform complex thinking tasks first, then simple tasks, then lose consciousness. Remembering to descend into an airport you want to divert to is a fairly simple task. Programming an FMC along a specific air route to an obscure airport far away from where you want to go is a complex task. They would’ve lost that cognitive function long before losing the ability to descend. And even then the progression of hypoxia isn’t that slow. Once hypoxia starts you’re not going to spend 30-60 minutes stumbling around like a drunken fool. The progression to unconsciousness will be fairly rapid.
That whole story comes across as someone who’s spent a long time on MS FS and 777 technical manuals trying to work out a technical way their theory could work, but hasn’t spent anytime flying an airliner operationally and knowing the operational considerations that a real airline pilot makes.