Yodabunny wrote:
The reports of Malaysian radar saying the plane traveled 500 miles in another direction suggest a couple of scenarios to me.
1 Hijacked and ran out of fuel in the long distance detour to wherever they were being forced to go, this is the most likely I think though it requires someone with knowledge of the plane's electrical systems to disable the various tracking methods (transponders etc.) Doesn't necessarily mean terrorism, could just be a wigged out pilot.
2 Electrical system failure resulting in an incorrect heading which was stabilized by the pilots but left them without a reference point or electronics to correct their heading until some catastrophic failure finished them off, lack of fuel with no land in sight or further electrical problems perhaps. This is less likely as I expect there are some pretty heavy redundancies and training to handle this type of situation. I mean, they must have a manual compass at least...
All assuming, of course, Malaysia know what it's talking about.
The 777 has a huge fuel reserve. It could have flown another 1,000 miles beyond its rated destination. An electrical fire in 777 wiring is not unheard of. they could have lost communications and heading computers. the aircraft controlls are hydraulic but use fly by wire so something major enough firewise could have done it eventually, but the critical control wires are generally separate from the data and instrumentation runs to prevent fires from taking out the circuits, and there are redundant pathways for the control and engine runs themselves. To cut all of them you would need to basically chop and separate the aircraft, destroy the wing box, or take out the cockpit itself. The instruments in the cockpit are in separated metal panels, with redundant runs. There isn't enough flammable in them by design to allow the entire thing to catch fire without some sort of accelerant, and even if one side fried, the co pilot station would still function, along with the emergancy control stations at the hydrolic panels in the cargo holds, etc.
Turin wrote:
My own personal theory based off of absolutely no evidence whatsoever is that a decent sized meteor impacted the cockpit of the airplane. This would have not only instantly killed the pilots, but also destroyed pretty much everything you would need to fly the plane and send distress calls. The plane crashed and the majority of it's bits are now at the bottom of the ocean.
Meteor large enough to kill an airplane would have shown on a radar track. Maybe it was made of antimater though!
His Excellency Aethien wrote:
So there's some news about 777's maybe having a fatal flaw that causes rust and/or tears in the hull near the antenna after several years that in the worst case may cause the plane to decompress and break apart.
There are a few problems with the initial 777 design which have been revised over the years, but they all required mandatory FAA inspections if the aircraft ever entered the US, and they were fairly major and well publicized, so they likely would have been fixed. The most major one was the flaw in the engine fuel-oil heat exchangers, but nothign structural. The entire structure pretty much set the record for aircraft hull strength in a civilian airliner. I saw that one article where the guy speculated that the antenna port for the satcom array near the tail caused catestrophic failure. That's just a fairing though. even if that entire structure ripped away, the rudder and elevator control surfaces are still intact and undamaged. It would explain communications being out, but not the eventual crash. Definitly wouldn't have caused decompression, and again, even if it did, the cockpit is sealed post 9-11, and the crew has independant air bottles.
If the aircraft was under power, the track it was heading according to malaysia would have been an odd choice.