The disappearance of the Malaysian Airlines 777 has inspired two basic schools of thought in attempting to explain what's behind it - the "sudden emergency" versus the "foul play". Media pundits are busy choosing their sides as we, the fascinated consumers of their written and spoken prognostications scratch our heads with each passing revelation.
Part of what's creating this situation is down to the somewhat fluid nature of the information that's being released, and the spin being applied on release. So we can be forgiven for not comprehending just what happened and when.
What can't be misconstrued, and is now universally agreed, is that MH370 made an acute turn to the West when it was expected to continue North, and flew on for around 6 hours until it was at the point of fuel exhaustion. Nobody really believed the aircraft landed safely-but-secretly in some airfield, except perhaps friends and relatives of the crew and passengers, and even then, very few of those truly harboured such belief.
The sudden emergency theory refuses to die despite it requiring acceptance of numerous coincidences and an unimaginably selective but ultimately benign catastrophic onboard occurrence. Yet even the most convinced adherents to the sudden emergency school of thought have yet to put forward a unified, coherent explanation that satisfactorally answers all the questions arising from the theory. Instead, there are a fragmentary series of speculations that provide only vague possibilities to counter the specific points raised against it.
However, that's not to say that such a comprehensive and coherent explanation may never be found. But so far it's conspicuously absent. And in its absence, the unexplained flaws in the theory colour it with the suspicion that it's actually attempting to clear the flightcrew of any blame in the loss of MH370 rather than being an honest search for a rational explanation.
Meanwhile, the captain's cellphone call from the flightdeck to a woman using a phone with a SIM card obtained with a fake ID, has added to the suspicion about his possible actions. It's also a matter of record that he and his wife had separated, and the revelation that he recently wiped log files from his flight simulator setup have added further to the possibility of his deliberate involvement in the 777's fate.
The captain and first officer, are by no means the only possible candidates for foul play, but until the background checks into the passengers and crew are completed, the possibilities remain just that. But that's not so far from the situation regarding the sudden emergency theory. A great deal of supposition with little to back it up.
The biggest mystery to my mind is why there was no mayday call if there was an emergency, and the oft-repeated "Aviate-Navigate-Communicate" old saw isn't an answer in a two-pilot cockpit where each has divided responsibilities. Could it be then that there was only the one pilot in the cockpit at the time of an unexpected emergency? Given the position of the aircraft within its flight regime at the time it went off air, that's not just unlikely but would have been highly irresponsible if true.
So an unexpected emergency doesn't explain failure to communicate unless the emergency was related to the comms system. But the transponder is not a part of the comms and that too went offline. So the emergency struck down those two critical systems at the same moment yet left the navigation system intact. Possible? Maybe, but probable? No.
So to buy into the unexpected emergency theory requires suspension of critical evaluation of the timing and peculiar nature of the systems failure. It seems that many air safety analysts are quite happy to suspend that critical evaluation to accept the sudden emergency theory. But as Ben Wedeman from CNN wryly observes, the preponderance of coincidences is perhaps a coincidence too far.
Today's announcement from Malaysian officials that it's beyond reasonable doubt the aircraft crashed in the South Indian Ocean means at least the search will continue to concentrate on the areas that have seen most action for the past few days. It should make recovery of some wreckage from the doomed airliner a possibility although finding the black boxes will be a daunting task with little likelihood of success without the involvement of the US's submarine fleet.
Yesterday, CNN began reporting that following MH370's turn to the West, the aircraft descended to an estimated 12,000 feet, a piece of information seized upon by CNN aviation expert Miles O'Brien as more evidence for the sudden emergency. However, the report did not contain any statement to suggest that the descent was accomplished in the few minutes necessary for it to prevent hypoxia/anoxia among those aboard. On the contrary, the descent was reported only in the context of the aircraft's altitude on disappearance from military radar, over an hour later.
Once again, a CNN aviation expert adds one plus one to make five.
The theory takes another hit with the new revelation from Britain's AAIB that the Inmarsat ping data they analysed with the satellite company's assistance, has the aircraft flying at above 30,000 feet on its fatal flight to the South. So MH370 apparently climbed high into the thin air that not long before, it supposedly left to stave off the deadly effects of hypoxia. And its flight path was more or less straight until the pings ended. That's a scenario that is highly unlikely unless the aircraft was hand-flown, or a human programmed the navigation system to accomplish it.
Either way, taking a one-way flight to one of the remotest places on the planet, doesn't sound like the actions of a heroic flight crew.
The mystery deepens even more.
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