first off, I've never heard of looting at the site of the Northwest MD80 crash in Detroit...and there was one survivor, a little girl with painted finger nails...wasn't there/
anyway...some have been using the term fuel exhaustion and some fuel starvation...
please remember that fuel exhaustion means there aint no more fuel onboard the plane (useable0
fuel starvation means there is useable fuel aboard, but for some, as yet unknown reason, it was not feeding the engines
when I made my scenario posting, I took into account that perhaps these planes were not particularly well maintained...can you imagine switching crossfeed valve on, then off, but the cable moving the valve broke somewhere along the way to not allow closing the crossfeed? couple that with either bad boost pumps, or not properly switched pumps or certain check valve cracking pressure being incorrect?
We all know that having two engines should prevent BOTH from quitting at the same time without OUTSIDE factors (birds ) ...so what happened?
also...if you really know you are going down...no hope for relighting the engines, "stalling down" shouldn't be the option you take, as landing with the plane under control is more likely to produce survivors.