Fire I was one of the first people to bring up the possibility of fire many days ago. i reject that hypothesis now. The problem is the simple and basic truth that at 8:11 AM, seven hours later, the airplane pinged a satellite. I'm convinced that this data is legit. I've looked into the computer side of it closely and it makes sense. There is no possible fire scenario that I can imagine that would allow power to that specific unit and not allow power to any other unit. For one, all the SATCOM share the same power circuit. If a fire took out ACARS and the transponder it took out all other SATCOM too. Since the SATCOM was live seven hours later, no fire. Not possible.
But, after initiating the left turn, could the flightcrew have been cycling through the XYZ checklists to eliminate the causes and switched it off themselves, and been overcome/forgetting before they were able to switch it back on? Then the fire goes out*.
I've seen very intelligent and well-trained people freak out at the sight of a small fire, and the smoke/smells can become worse
after the fire is out. Forgetting to flip a switch or two back into place wouldn't be totally surprising in a high-pressure situation. Just that one action causing all this prolonged agony, and more holes are lined up...
No, I'm not a pilot but I am an ex-investigator, and my work wouldn't have sent people down if I hadn't bottomed out every line of enquiry and spent months going through and double-checking evidence. Despite all the depravities of human nature I've seen firsthand and the lack of evidence here, I'm still of the belief that this event was caused by some kind of malfunction. (I'm rather frustrated that I can't reference the technical work I read earlier which explained the changes of direction, and what systems would have been disabled/enabled as part of XYZ system actions, just so I could link to it for you to critique, but I cleared my cache earlier. Gah.)
So, I ask of any pilots still reading this, if you smell smoke on the flightdeck, (and it's not pax trying to have a crafty fag in the loo), what would your actions be? You have your checklists to go through, you want to get the plane down on the ground ASAP, so you decide and head for your chosen airport; you know where you're going. You suspect you know what's causing the smoke, do you try something a little off the wall (in
any way, not necessarily approaching coffin corner** when your plane's fully laden), or stick to procedure? And all the time, the smoke's just getting worse...
*Is there any record of inflight fires burning themselves out, or have they
all escalated? Is it possible for the crew to have located the problem, acted correctly, and then been overcome? How fierce/smoke-heavy must the fire have been if flight crew, cabin crew and all pax are incapacitated, yet the plane continues flying? Any precedents?
**many opinions I've read find those FL readings dubious or likely to contain a high error ratio due to the methodology used to calculate, or as the 'US source' says 'may not be wholly reliable'. I'm taking most of the other readings, unless they are tested in the same circumstances and proved to be both reliable
and accurate, with a pinch of salt.
Fire > action taken for landing > partial checklist completed > incapacitation of all > fire extinguished > plane wanders undetected.
It almost fits, but not quite. Total incapacitation and the generation of no additional ACARS messages seem a little hard to believe.
Bloxin's exploding oxygen bottle seems a better fit, apart from whether the aircraft would still 'ping', and no additional messages...
Hypothetical
Hello.
This is my third attempt to make a post here. Maybe, as I'm new here I'm doing it wrong.
I am a licenced engineer, B747.
This post attempts to describe, with precedents, a possible single failure that would cause loss of coms, depressurisation and crew disablement due to hypoxia.
Precedent: QF30 25 July 2008 Pax oxygen bottle "explodes" tearing a hole in fuselage.
Ref: Please google "Qantas oxygen bottle explosion" and view photos of damage.
The picture taken inside the fwd cargo compartment shows one bottle missing.
there is no evidence of shrapnel damage in the photo. Therefore, no eplosion.
The bottle appears to have detached itself from its connections and propelled itself down through the fuselage skin.
777: The crew oxygen bottle is mounted horizontaly on the left aft wall of the nose wheel well structure with the fittings (propelling nozzle) facing forward. This aims the bottle, in the event of a QF30 type failure, directly into the MEC containing all boxes concerned with coms and a lot more.
Before all of its energy is spent, an huge amount of damage could be caused to equipment and the bottle could, conceivably, cause a decompression.
When the crew respond by doning oxygen mask, there is no oxygen and hypoxia is the next link in this proposed chain of events.
This link is entitled "Hypothetical" and is only that. I believe it ticks a few boxes.
Hoping this post make it and generates some discussion.
Bloxin.
I wonder what the maintenance records say, what tyre maintenance was or wasn't done recently, or oxygen bottle servicing (remembering that lack of evidence is sometimes as important as the presence of evidence, as per 'the Curious Incident...') and so on. Was the runway at KL ever checked for debris from MH370?