MH370 - And Now A Word From The Crazies

It didn't take long for the mainstream media to begin regurgitating the fancies of presumably well-meaning "aviation experts" as staple of their quest to pad out reporting on the Malaysian Airways 777 disappearance. Probably not surprising, given the paucity of actual facts available, but goodness - a quick pass through the logic filter wouldn't have hurt.

Take CNN's efforts in the last 24 hours.

Former Trans World Airlines captain Barry Schiff was interviewed in the studio as to what he believed, considering the few facts currently known, had happened to MH370. What follows is a quote from his contribution to solving the mystery.
"If you have a serious problem aboard a jetliner like a fire, one thing you're going to want to do is get on the ground as soon as possible. And turning back towards Malaysia, towards a large airport is the first thing I would do. 

The most imperative thing is to take care of that fire. The last thing you're going to do is communicate unless you have the time to do it because no one on the ground can help you."

In brief, the former captain believes that an emergency occurred which necessitated the crew to execute a radical change of direction and a drop in altitude which was so urgent that neither crew member had the time to utter "Mayday, mayday, mayday - Mike Hotel three seven zero onboard emergency - descending to level one four zero" - a phrase which would take around 7 seconds in total to transmit.

He also postulates that the crew had managed to set a descent limit of 10,000* feet on the navigation/autopilot before succuming to whatever sparked the emergency procedure. Yet the 'emergency' was so benign that the 777 continued to fly for another 6 hours.

A remarkable turn of events.

Mr Schiff considers the above the mostly likely fit with the known facts and with his 34 years as a pilot, his view commands significant gravitas. But does it deserve to?

Besides the report from an oil rig worker that he saw what appeared to be an aircraft on fire at a high altitude, on a heading that doesn't correspond to either Mr Schiff's scenario or the known information, (and despite clear skies), no aircraft was reported as being ablaze in the region. So an actual aircraft-destroying blaze seems most unlikely.

Maybe toxic smoke was the issue, rather than fire?

Mr Schiff's scenario has the pilot(s) initiating an acute turn which required at least one member of the crew remain conscious to accomplish the manoevre, and which in turn means that person was on oxygen, the standard procedure with a smoke emergency.

And there was time, once the aircraft leveled off at the 10,000* feet altitude he speculates about, for the crew to contact Malaysian ATC or other entities over the Mayday omnicom frequency to declare their emergency.

They didn't do that, as we know.

In reality, there is no evidence that the aircraft actually descended at all during the turn. That's Mr Schiff's invention in order to support his theory.

Perhaps then, the smoke/fire was in some way connected to the 777's radios? Possible, but that wouldn't affect the Acars or transponder - unless there was a catastrophic failure of the electrical system. But how then could the navigation system still function? The short answer, it couldn't. Yet it's now well accepted that the nav system was indeed functioning.

As a pilot himself, I can understand Mr Schiff's instinctive impulse to find the good in the MH370 aircrew, defending them against circumstantial evidence that points ominously to one or other of the pilots doing the unthinkable. But it's harder to understand CNN's lack of rigor here.

It doesn't take a great amount of thought to find those glaring holes in Mr Schiff's theory, and I can't believe that there's not a single member of CNN's editorial staff who didn't see those failures of their expert analyst's logic. So it seems that they intentionally allowed their news service to sink toward some kind of entertainment purveyor instead.

All in the name of ratings, I suspect.

[*Mr Schiff refers in his interview to 10,000 feet altitude, but it's generally accepted that most humans can easily tolerate the higher 14,000 feet that is mandated by the FAA and other civil aviation authorities as the maximum altitude before oxygen must be used.]