Originally Posted by
formulaben
Swiss Air 111.
Swiss Air 111 was able to communicate until the very last minutes. Had they not delayed to dump fuel on a relatively standard approach procedure and instead made an immediate emergency descent and landing they may even have survived.
To recap, under the MH370 catastrophe scenario:
MH370 is supposed to have had a catastrophic failure
AND
the crew not be able to use any of the aircraft systems to report the failure
AND
it took 10 - 15 minutes for these communications systems to fail
AND
be able to fly apparently under control back across Malaysia and around Indonesia then South with power to SATCOM and a working FMC for the next 6 hours
While everyone accepts the aphorism: Aviate, Navigate, Communicate - it has been my experience that even in extremely fast moving emergencies flight crew
do tell their current controller or anyone on emergency frequency that they have a problem. It only takes one button to be pressed. It is possible to have catastrophic failures that prevent communications but they would appear to be ruled out by the subsequent conditions above.