Plane with 239 people on board crashes in Southern Indian Ocean

[Likely Voter]

Well it is either...
Hijacking gone bad
Bombing
Suicidal Pilot
Shot down by military
Massive malfunction due to poor maintenance
Massive malfunction due to design
Massive pilot ineptitude

But like most air disasters it probably is...
Survivable malfunction followed up with poor crew reaction

[Likely Voter]

I watched the Malaysian press conference and the Transport Minister basically said everything you have heard is wrong, in summary:
- plane didn't fly for hours, no data downloaded to Boeing/Rolls Royce after they lost contact
- Chinese satellite image was a "mistake" and not related
- Military radar spotting and notion that the plane turned to the SW was only a "possibility" and the search focus was still around orig. spot where  they lost contact
- Police didn't question pilot's family

He also said they were handing over their raw radar data to the FAA and NTSB. The whole thing was very defensive and it seems they realize they are in over their heads.

So I still think it was some kind of catastrophic event or combo of malfunction or pilot error that brought the plane down quickly and they simply just haven't found the wreckage.

[Likely Voter]

Can't the pilot just cut the oxygen in the plane (but the cockpit)?

He can depresurize the plane but only the whole plane. That would automatically deploy the little oxygen masks in the passenger cabin, however each of those only has about 20 minutes of air. The pilots have their own separate air mask supply.

As for the door, Air Malaysia does have hardened doors so you cant get through.

If you were bent on doing this kind of horrible thing, here is how you would do it.
Step 1. Kill the other pilot - there is a fire axe in the cockpit
Step 2. Put on your air mask
Step 3. Depressurize the plane to kill the passengers (take it up to max altitude to speed things up)

But the whole suicide thing doesn't really account for why the pilot would fly around for 7 hours. Why not go from Step 1 above to "dive plane into the ocean". The only plausible thing I could think of is if one of the pilots wanted to kill himself but didn't want anyone to know he killed himself, maybe due to shame to his family or possibly insurance money.

Bottom line is that if you take all the apparent facts for this thing, they don't match any other air incident. This is a whole new kind of thing. Either that, or some of the 'confirmed' info isn't actually correct.

[Likely Voter]

This seems like a pretty simple, compelling argument: https://plus.google.com/106271056358366282907/posts/GoeVjHJaGBz

I have always assumed something like that because it is the simplest solution and the one with the most precedent. However, it does take a lot of unlikely coincidences to have the pilots aware long enough to turn the plane around but not long enough to get off any kind of emergency mayday call. Plus the ACARS system itself would automatically notify the ground at the first warning light so that means that the fire would have to have destroyed the ACARS ability to communicate or the pilots disabled the ACARS. That being said, all air accidents are usually a series of unlikely events, often compounded by human errors. It seems to me that the accident scenario is one that shouldn't be dismissed entirely.

The only other solution that puts all the (apparent) facts together and isn't completely ridiculous is suicide, but the captain seems to be such a huge aviation nut. I guess I just find it hard to imagine that he would become a mass murderer and kill all his passengers like that. The only thing I can think of, and this assumes he was really really political, is that having a plane vanish would be an embarrassment to the government. Air Malaysia is a state airline.

But for me the accident scenario is easier to believe but maybe because it is less horrific to imagine.

[Likely Voter]

Agreed- does not explain the "All right, Good Night" call after ACARS switched off.

It actually does because the ACARS was not "switched off" at the time of the last contact. The ACARS communicates every 30 minutes. The "goodnight" was in between regular contacts. Air Malaysia clarified this yesterday. There is actually no evidence it was "switched off", only that it failed to make its next report.

[Likely Voter]

Can we talk more about this idea to have a fourth of the passengers be federal officers? I, for one, think it's wonderful.

But we have to be realistic. For international flights between Malaysia and China, surely 1/8 of the passengers being US Federal officers would be sufficient.

[Likely Voter]

One of the reasons why the accident theory (fire followed by course change and then crew incapacitation) seems more plausible to me is that the final ditching corresponds to about the time the plane would run out of fuel. In the suicide scenario (where we assume the pilot not only wants to die and kill but also make it an unsolvable mystery) why would he wait until the bitter end like that? The longer he stayed aloft the more chance of being spotted by another plane or ship so the sooner he plunged it into the Indian Ocean (once out of range of Malaysia/Indonesia radar) the better.

If it turns out to be suicide I wouldn't be surprised. I just think that the media (and certainly the Malaysians) are dismissing any accident scenario too easily.

I wish that the US NTSB were put in charge and given all the data and access (along with the FBI for the criminal angle). The Malaysians have no experience doing something like this and we have not seen a great level of competence and consistency. I think that is why we are seeing so many "US officials says" off-record reports from the NYT, WSJ. And I am not being jingoistic, it could be handed over to the  UK's AAIB or France's BEA too. Just some credible outfit with the experience to handle this.

Unfortunately it is likely this will never be solved. It is unlikely they will ever find the crash site and even if they did they are unlikely to ever find the flight recorders. The French spent millions over two years to recover the ones after Air France 447, the Malaysians are unlikely to spend those kind resources. Plus it is quite likely that the boxes wont have any data on them.  That would leave analyzing wreckage which is 2+ miles deep.