What could have happened to the missing Malaysian Boeing 777 plane?
Nearly five days since it disappeared while en route from Kuala Lumpur to
Beijing, there is still no trace of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
Conflicting information, false alarms over debris and confusion over the
focus of the search have produced more questions than answers.
AFP takes a look at the possible scenarios being weighed up by industry
experts as the world waits for clues as to the fate of the Boeing 777, which has
one of the best safety records of any jet.
THEORY: Explosion on board
WHY: According to Malaysian authorities the plane was cruising at 35,000 feet
(11 kilometres) above sea level when it last made contact and vanished without
making a distress call, pointing to the possibility of a sudden catastrophic
event.
The presence on board of two suspect passengers travelling on stolen
passports fuelled fears of a terrorist attack.
It was revealed Tuesday they were probably just Iranian migrants, but CIA
Director John Brennan said a terror link had not been ruled out.
Other possibilities include a strike by a missile or military aircraft.
EXPERT VIEW: “I don’t believe it is anything to do with the
serviceability or the design of the aircraft,” Neil Hansford, chairman of
leading Australian airline consultancy Strategic Aviation Solutions, told
AFP.
“The way I see it there are three scenarios. There was a bomb on board… the
aircraft was hit by a military aircraft or a rogue missile; or…the captain is
locked out of the cockpit and the plane is put in a dive,” he said.
THEORY: Technical difficulties
WHY: The sudden disappearance could also point to a technical problem that
could have led to a rapid descent. Reports from the Malaysian authorities that
the jet may have made a sharp turn west before it lost contact, possibly
pointing to the pilots struggling to rectify a problem, have bolstered this
theory.
EXPERT VIEW: “To me that (the veer) suggests there was a stall,” says former
Inspector General of the US Department of Transportation and aviation lawyer,
Mary Schiavo.
“That doesn’t mean you lose your engines. It means that you’re losing your
air flow over your wings, sufficient speed to keep the plane in the air…it would
lose altitude really dramatically.”
She compared the possible scenario to the fate of Air France 447 — which
crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009 after its speed sensors malfunctioned —
in an interview with Australia’s ABC television.
If the plane did crash, a combination of technical difficulties and pilot
error would be a likely scenario, Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific aerospace
consultant Ravi Madavaram said.
“There is no single factor which generally leads to an airplane crash, but a
combination of technical glitches and pilot decisions. Each of these glitches
and decisions taken independently are harmless and often happens. It is the
combination of these factors that lead to a catastrophe.”
THEORY: Structural disintegration
WHY: The lack of wreckage or black box transmission has led to speculation
that the plane may have disintegrated mid-air.
EXPERT VIEW: While structural disintegration has been behind some previous
aircraft disappearances, new planes use “better materials, technology and
maintenance schedules”, Madavaram says.
“This last happened to China Airlines flight 611, during its cruise at 35,000
feet in 2002. Flight 611 was a Boeing 747 aircraft and the reason for that crash
was faulty repair.”
He added that the technology on a Boeing 747 was 20 years older than on a
777.
THEORY: Hijacking
WHY: The absence of debris around the intended flight path, the possibility
that the flight turned back, and conflicting reports over whether the plane was
spotted by Malaysian military way off course have added to speculation of a
hijack, which has still not been ruled out by investigators.
Malaysia Airlines says that all its aircraft are equipped with the Aircraft
Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) system — which puts out
information about location and airspeed — but has so far declined to release
whatever data it got from flight MH370.
EXPERT VIEW: The reports of a “turn back” raised yet more questions, says
Scott Hamilton, managing director of US-based aviation consultancy Leeham
Co.
“If it were near the Vietnam coast, why turn back when there probably would
have been a closer airport in the event of an emergency?” he wrote on his
company website.
The larger question was whether the turn was intentional “under the command
of the pilots (or hijackers),” or due to other causes such as engine problems or
an explosion.
But Frost & Sullivan’s Madavaram believes several factors rule out a
hijack, including a lack of a credible claim of responsibility and the
difficulty in evading radars and witnesses.
THEORY: Pilot suicide
WHY: While rare, there have been cases in the past of pilots crashing planes
to take their own lives. According to the US Federal Aviation Administration,
pilot suicides account for less than 0.5 percent of all fatal general aviation
accidents.
EXPERT VIEW: A suicide bid “is possible and if that’s the case there might
not be a lot of debris because the plane would have come down in relatively
structural integrity,” said Terence Fan, aviation expert at Singapore Management
University.
“The airplane is not meant to float and if the airplane sinks in the water,
water will go inside because the door seals are not meant to seal water.”
Culled from PMNews
Comments
Post a Comment