Malaysian Airlines Flight 370: Veteran Pilot Believes Fire Hit Boeing 777 & Pilot Was Trying to Divert Jet to Langkawi for Emergency Landing
Despite the disbelief by some relatives of Chinese passengers of the ill-fated Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 that their kin are now presumed dead, more evidence are being discovered supporting the theory of Inmarsat that the jet crashed into the southern Indian Ocean.
The latest is the spotting by the French Airbus satellite of 122 pieces of potential objects that possibly are the debris of the jet. However, Malaysian acting Transport Minister Hishammudin bin Hussein, who announced the new discovery, admitted there is no confirmation yet if the potential objects are from MH370, but it is considered a new lead to help direct the search operation.
Given these new discoveries, where the plane apparently crashed appears will be positively confirmed soon with sufficient evidence to convince the grieving relatives of the Chinese passengers.
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However, what will remain a big question mark until the black box is recovered or a passenger or crew miraculously survived the mishap is what really happened.
A veteran pilot, Chris Goodfellow, shared with hellou.com an interesting theory that could dash speculations that there was terrorism or some other sinister plot involved linked to prior events such as MAH370 pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah being a supporter of Malaysia Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim and doing what he allegedly did as a protest.
Mr Goodfellow thinks a fire hit the plane and the crew tried to control it first by pulling all the main busses and restoring the circuits one by one, which explains the last priority for communicating the problem with authorities based on pilot training to aviate, navigate and communicate when in an emergency situation.
"What I think happened is that they were overcome by smoke and the plane just continued on the heading probably on George (autopilot) until either fuel exhaustion or fire destroyed the control surfaces and it crashed," Mr Goodfellow wrote.
Rather than view Mr Zaharie as a potential terrorist, Mr Goodfellow thinks he is a hero who struggled with an impossible situation to land the jet to Palau Langkawi airport, the closest airport.
He explained that experienced aviators like Mr Zaharie - who has 18,000 hours - have on their heads awareness of the nearest airport behind abeam or ahead of the jet they fly.
"When I saw that left turn with a direct heading I knew he was heading for an airport. Actually he was taking a direct airport to Palau Langkawi a 13,000 foot strip with an approach over water at night with no obstacles," Mr Goodfellow added.
Turning back to Kuala Lumpur was not an option because of 8,000-foot ridges on the path, plus the terrain toward Langkawi was friendlier and shorter distance.
Mr Goodfellow speaks from experience since he had handled a cabin fire and successfully landed an AirCanada DC9 jet in Columbus, Ohio in the 1980s
He concluded that Mr Zaharie was a smart pilot, unfortunately he and the 238 other crew and passengers ran out of time.