Eclan

I examined the evidence, looked at all possibilities, and arrived at the most likely solution.
This theory and flightpath has been around since 2016.

JustinHeywood

Refer to SIR page 27 and the multiple Royal Malaysia Police (RMP) Forensic Reports.
Quick recap:
RMP seize PIC home flight simulator and fly it on 15Mar2014
CyberSecurity Malaysia examine Simulator from 16 to 18Mar2014
Simulator Logbook file shows Microsoft FSX flown on 09Dec13, 23Jan14 (B738,B77L at Kuala Lumpur), 01Feb14 (DC3 at Yellowknife), 20Feb14 and 15Mar14.
Report documented more than 2700 coordinates from separate file fragments.
Report found seven ‘manually programmed’ waypoints (without timestamps), that when connected together could create a flight path from KLIA through the Malacca Strait and then to an area south of the Indian Ocean. (note stitched together flightpath is not to IGARI)
The final waypoint was flown in a Phoenix Simulation Software (PSS) Boeing 777-200LR
(note PSS B777 is not compatible with Microsoft FSX in 2014)
The report could not determine if the waypoints came from one or more files (ie different flight sessions)
(note the waypoint in the southern Indian Ocean is over 800 nautical miles from arc 7 and beyond the range of MH370)
Report conclusion: “there was no activity captured on JP01 and MK26 that conclusively indicate any kind of premeditated act pertaining to the incident MH370” and “there was no unusual activities other than game related flight simulations.”

So a system failure that takes out the transponder, radios, ACARS, cabin altitude warning, but leaves every other system intact. That’s a very specific failure to mimic human intervention almost perfectly.

15,000 ft is the elevation of cities in Peru and Bolivia, so not exactly where hypoxia sets in without supplemental 02. It’s in the 20,000ft range.

So that theory postulates the aircraft suffered a catastrophic systems failure, turned 180 degrees towards what they believed was the nearest alternate, which was Penang, but eventually the pilots become overwhelmed by hypoxia.

But top of descent for Penang was about 10 minutes after that turn. So they would’ve been incapacitated so much they didn’t have the thought capacity to descend. But 20 minutes later they weren’t incapacitated enough to make a 45 degree right turn to the WNW overhead Penang and then start tracking towards the Andaman sea where there are no alternate airports, and then over 30 minutes later make a left turn to fly over the top of Sumatra and out over the Indian Ocean?

That just does not make sense, and is impossible to play out in reality. It means you have to believe they were overcome by hypoxia to make irrational decisions but then recovered from that hypoxia to make conscious inputs once again a long time later.

If they turned for Penang as a result of a known failure they would have descended. No question.

if the aircraft was flying a new route they programmed as a diversion to Penang due an abnormal, then why did they have waypoints in the FMC beyond Penang?

BuzzBox

How did I calculate the fuel figures?

From the B777 Performance charts for the 777-200ER/TRENT892
Modified for the actual aircraft’s (9M-MRO) OFP (PDA of 1.5% with the right engine burn rate 2% greater than the left engine), altitude, speed, wind, ISA deviation, turning FF adjustment, and bleed air selection.
This resulted in third degree polynomial equations for FF/weight calculations which was used in a 15 page excel spreadsheet to follow the flightpath until fuel exhaustion at 34S 93E.

I don't think anyone said the cabin altitude alerting system failed. It defaulted, according to this theory, to a higher trigger value but did not fail.

No, that's not what anyone's saying. It would be detected by any conscious person with the presence of mind to check the cabin altitude indicator and would eventually trigger the cabin altitude alerts. In this theory, however, it was not detected and acted upon and presumably when the alerts were finally activated the pilots were no longer conscious.

You seem to forget the effect of the still-functioning packs which would be working, but failing, to overcome a leak of the right magnitude. There is nothing unrealistic about this circumstance.

No, see above. It would take much longer. How long exactly is unknown.

If the MH bottle had failed in the same fashion it would've had a similar result. Obviously it didn't fail in exactly the same fashion. If it had, now that would be harder to believe.

That's extremely misleading and plain wrong. As we know from Avmed, every 1000ft lower increases the time of useful consciousness. At FL250 it's 3-5 min. At FL200 it can be 30min. Obviously these figures vary from person to person and are worse for smokers.

If you can understand the above factors you can see how a gradual decompression fits the theory neatly.

I'm not sure how in-depth your avmed training has been but I suspect these days it is pretty short for a lot of pilots. Have you been in a decompression chamber? If you have only then will you best understand how hypoxia can affect different people at different rates and in varying ways during onset. People who live in Peru are born and bred there and well and truly adjusted to it. KL (where I think these guys lived) is at sea level. You can see the point, I think.

Also, it is implied the pilots were smokers. I've had smokers report difficulties breathing at only 10,000ft in an unpressurised aircraft.

​​​​​​​Once again if you haven't been in a chamber it will be difficult for you to appreciate how hypoxia will affect you. You rule it out as a factor based on your belief or knowledge or feelings about the condition; Others, based on theirs, do not.

Humans will begin to make errors and experience difficulty assimilating information at early stages of hypoxia but without losing consciousness. It is impossible, in this theoretical scenario, to predict the effect of hypoxia on the awareness and decision-making abilities of these pilots other than to say it would be impaired to slowly increasing degrees and would appear to a healthy observer (such as you) to make no sense.

Speaking of Helios, there is a very prodigious (and some say pesky) poster around here who I seem to recall has firsthand experience of a scenario almost identical to the Helios event but with a happier ending. He's notable by his absence on this thread but it would be very interesting to hear his take on it all.
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So they were hypoxic enough not to descend but alert enough to program a new track to Penang, randomly add waypoints beyond Penang, their assumed alternate, oh and then the FO picked up his phone to try to make a call. He must of rallied very well an hour after this "explosion".

BuzzBox

If we use the oxygen bottle rupture on QF30 as a guide to the immediate blast area damage, then the L GCU and L BTB are not in the direct “blast” area.

The Left Main AC Bus (ie power to SATCOM) may have been isolated automatically because of a fault caused by the oxygen bottle rupture, or the crew, who were overwhelmed by failures, have conducted the ELEC AC BUS L checklist or depowered/repowered the Left Main AC Bus in an attempt to restore lost systems.

There are sufficient videos of people in hypobaric chambers clearly demonstrating their gradual slip from fully aware to becoming incapacitated in managing even simple skills. The worst part is the general feeling that everything is OK even when their performance is getting far worse. They do seem to recognize they are having trouble but not in a way that indicates the fear they should be having at being deprived of oxygen.


In a short time Kimberly says she feels like she needs oxygen but is unable to figure out how to put the mask back on her face even though it is already nearly in place.

Less amusing:

Samuel exits the test and soon another is pleased to simply be able to hold his pencil

The main take-away for me is to not dawdle when the masks drop. No "one last thing' or "just a second."

I expect that for commercial pilots it's also, if the other guy is acting stupid, put your mask on right now and then figure out the other guy; don't stop to ask "Are you OK?"

Running out of fuel after 7 hours is not usually associated with pilot suicide flights.
Pilot suicide flights are usually over quickly. eg GermanWings

The Captain of Helios 522 didn’t descend and he had a fault: “My cooling light is off”.
RIP Flight Attendant Andreas Prodromou

The diversion flown from IGARI to Penang was not in LNAV, as observed by primary radar.
It was flown manually or in heading mode on autopilot.
Without a L FMC, and no auto reversion to the R FMC, there is no active route, VNAV or Top Of Descent from IGARI to Penang.
Not until someone manually switches to the R FMC will a LNAV/VNAV route become possible.
This causes a software reset, which DELETES THE FLIGHT ID.
When the R FMC became available, someone programmed a diversion to Banda Aceh, hence the LNAV track observed on radar west of Penang through the Malacca Strait via VAMPI-MEKAR-NILAM.

I think there was a history of mental illness with the perpetrator of the GermanWings crash.

It's been suggested that if, as has been speculated, the Captain of MH370 had taken control of the flight and deliberately navigated it to the Southern Indian Ocean, his motivations were very different. If all you want to do is kill yourself, there are easier ways to do it. But if you want to leave behind a huge mystery and maybe cause enormous embarrassment to a government you are bitterly opposed to, then it makes sense.

Perhaps so, but the damage that caused the loss of power would still have been there when the crew completed the ELEC AC BUS L checklist. So how were they able to restore the power?

Highly unlikely.

What makes you think there was no "auto reversion" to the R FMC? Are you basing this on the PMDG model or some other flight sim software? If so, it's wrong.

Sorry if I’ve missed something here, but how do you know it wasn’t flown in LNAV?

BuzzBox

Re read, not damage but a fault.

Huh! If there is an electrical fault, conducting the ELEC AC BUS L would be a reasonable solution.

Read the manual.

After I stopped watching Harry and Meghan, I needed something to fill the void until Batchelor started! This thread fills the bill. Thanks.

Stop being obtuse. How did this "fault", presumably caused by a ruptured oxygen bottle, miraculously disappear, allowing power to be restored? Divine intervention?

Yes, if the ELEC AC BUS L EICAS caution was displayed, but "depower[ing]/repower[ing] the Left Main AC Bus in an attempt to restore lost systems" would not.

Thanks for the advice, but with considerable time on type, you can be assured that I have "read the manual" plenty of times.

Are you the guy who promoted this theory on Victor Iannello's MH370 blog and was subsequently banned for repeatedly pushing crap that was technically incorrect or had been disproven?

As previously stated, by the primary radar recording from IGARI to south of Penang.

How does the primary radar track reveal which mode the aircraft was in laterally?

What the report actually says:

”The RMP Forensic Report dated 19 May 2014 documented more than 2,700 coordinates retrieved from separate file fragments and most of them are default game coordinates.
It was also discovered that there were seven ‘manually programmed’ waypoint4 coordinates that when connected
together, will create a flight path from KLIA to an area south of the Indian Ocean through the Andaman Sea.

A nice, subtle bit of editing there. You said it ‘could’, they say it ‘will’.

I cannot see that this supports the claim that these waypoints were ‘cherry picked’ by nefarious actors.

Were there were numerous other manually entered waypoints that were not mentioned in the report? Again, where is the support for the claim that the waypoints were cherry picked?

There would be Cabin Altitude EICAS messages alerting them of the problem. If it gets the the stage where hypoxia becomes a possibly (FL150 or above) then the Cabin Altitude warning would wake the dead.

Not neatly at all. So according to this “theory” there was a gradual leak, that went unnoticed by the crew, even though EICAS should alert them if cabin altitude is rising, even gradually. It got to just below 15,000 ft, in which TUC should be well more than 30 minutes, so as to not set off the very audible Cabin Altitude Warning, significantly decreasing their mental capacity to the point within 10 minutes they couldn’t make a decision to descend. But then, for some reason, they regained some level of mental capacity 20 minutes later to turn right, exactly overhead Penang. Then kept that mental capacity for another 30 minutes to turn out over the ocean?

I know how Hypoxia works. But the facts of the case don’t match up with a hypoxic scenario.

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