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So what really happened to Malaysian Airlines flight MH370?

As the days continue to pass since Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 went missing, a number of theories have been put forward, ranging from a possible hijacking to somewhat more far-fetched ideas such as alien abduction. During this time, you can’t help but feel for the families of those involved and what they must be going through – it really must be awful; let’s hope that they will be presented with some definitive answers soon. Indian Ocean In the meantime, one theory that’s emerged more recently and appears to have gathered credence is that put forward by an experienced former pilot, Chris Goodfellow, on his Google+ page (and that’s subsequently gathered momentum on sites such as Reddit).  His is refreshingly simple. First let’s look at precisely what he says:
MH370  A different point of view. Pulau Langkawi 13,000 runway. A lot of speculation about MH370. Terrorism, hijack, meteors. I cannot believe the analysis on CNN – almost disturbing. I tend to look for a more simple explanation of this event. Loaded 777 departs midnight from Kuala to Beijing. Hot night. Heavy aircraft.  About an hour out across the gulf towards Vietnam the plane goes dark meaning the transponder goes off and secondary radar tracking goes off. Two days later we hear of reports that Malaysian military radar (which is a primary radar meaning the plane is being tracked by reflection rather than by transponder interrogation response) has tracked the plane on a southwesterly course back across the Malay Peninsula into the straits of Malacca. When I heard this I immediately brought up Google Earth and I searched for airports in proximity to the track towards southwest. The left turn is the key here. This was a very experienced senior Captain with 18,000 hours. Maybe some of the younger pilots interviewed on CNN didn’t pick up on this left turn. We old pilots were always drilled to always know the closest airport of safe harbor while in cruise. Airports behind us, airports abeam us and airports ahead of us. Always in our head. Always. Because if something happens you don’t want to be thinking what are you going to do – you already know what you are going to do. Instinctively when I saw that left turn with a direct heading I knew he was heading for an airport. Actually he was taking a direct route to Palau Langkawi a 13,000 foot strip with an approach over water at night with no obstacles. He did not turn back to Kuala  Lampur because he knew he had 8,000 foot ridges to cross. He knew the terrain was friendlier towards Langkawi and also a shorter distance. Take a look on Google Earth at this airport. This pilot did all the right things. He was confronted by some major event onboard that made him make that immediate turn back to the closest safe airport. For me the loss of transponders and communications makes perfect sense if a fire. There was most likely a fire or electrical fire. In the case of fire the first response if to pull all the main busses and restore circuits one by one until you have isolated the bad one. If they pulled the busses the plane indeed would go silent. It was probably a serious event and they simply were occupied with controlling the plane and trying to fight the fire. Aviate, Navigate and lastly communicate. There are two types of fires. Electrical might not be as fast and furious and there might or might not be incapacitating smoke. However there is the possibility given the timeline that perhaps there was an overheat on one of the front landing gear tires and it blew on takeoff and started slowly burning. Yes this happens with underinflated tires. Remember heavy plane, hot night, sea level, long run takeoff. There was a well known accident in Nigeria of a DC8 that had a landing gear fire on takeoff. A tire fire once going would produce horrific incapacitating smoke. Yes, pilots have access to oxygen masks but this is a no no with fire. Most have access to a smoke hood with a filter but this will only last for a few minutes depending on the smoke level. (I used to carry one of my own in a flight bag and I still carry one in my briefcase today when I fly). 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. I said four days ago you will find it along that route – looking elsewhere was pointless. This pilot, as I say, was a hero struggling with an impossible situation trying to get that plane to Langkawi. No doubt in my mind. That’s the reason for the turn and direct route. A hijack would not have made that deliberate left turn with a direct heading for Langkawi. It would probably have weaved around a bit until the hijackers decided on where they were taking it. Surprisingly none of the reporters , officials, other pilots interviewed have looked at this from the pilot’s viewpoint. If something went wrong where would he go? Thanks to Google earth I spotted Langkawi in about 30 seconds, zoomed in and saw how long the runway was and I just instinctively knew this pilot knew this airport. He had probably flown there many times. I guess we will eventually find out when you help me spread this theory on the net and some reporters finally take a look on Google earth and put 2 and 2 together. Also a look at the age and number of cycles on those nose tires might give us a good clue too. Fire in an aircraft demands one thing – you get the machine on the ground as soon as possible. There are two well remembered experiences in my memory. The AirCanada DC9 which landed I believe in Columbus Ohio in the eighties. That pilot delayed descent and bypassed several airports.   He didn’t instinctively know the closest airports. He got it on the ground eventually but lost 30 odd souls.   In the 1998 crash of Swissair DC-10 off Nova Scotia was another example of heroic pilots. They were 15 minutes out of Halifax but the fire simply  overcame them and they had to ditch in the ocean. Just ran out of time. That fire incidentally started when the aircraft was about an hour out of Kennedy. Guess what the transponders and communications were shut off as they pulled the busses. Get on Google Earth and type in Pulau Langkawi  and then look at it in relation to the radar track heading. 2+2=4  That for me is the  simple explanation why it turned and headed  in that direction. Smart pilot. Just didn’t have the time.
To my mind, this sounds one of the most simple explanations, consistent with much of the information so far presented, but in an article written on the BBC website titled “An MH370 theory that was simple, compelling and wrong“, it’s being discredited. So why? Well, the article draws first on the comments of Jeff Wise in Slate who writes:
“While it’s true that MH370 did turn toward Langkawi and wound up overflying it, whoever was at the controls continued to maneuver after that point as well, turning sharply right at VAMPI waypoint, then left again at GIVAL. Such vigorous navigating would have been impossible for unconscious men.”
I personally don’t think this discredits the theory at all.  Could it not be that the pilots became unconscious and someone else on the plane tried to tackle the situation? That would be plausible and consistent with Goodfellow’s theory.
“Goodfellow’s theory fails further when one remembers the electronic ping detected by the Inmarsat satellite at 8:11 on the morning of March 8. According to analysis provided by the Malaysian and United States governments, the pings narrowed the location of MH370 at that moment to one of two arcs, one in Central Asia and the other in the southern Indian Ocean. As MH370 flew from its original course toward Langkawi, it was headed toward neither. Without human intervention – which would go against Goodfellow’s theory – it simply could not have reached the position we know it attained at 8:11 a.m.”
Once again, I would suggest this might be consistent with someone else having attempted to take to the controls, because the pilots were unconscious, in order to remedy the situation, thus changing the direction. Finally, Greg Feith, a former National Transportation Safety Board crash investigator, told NBC News:
“Typically, with an electrical fire, you’ll have smoke before you have fire… you can do some troubleshooting. And if the systems are still up and running, you can get off a mayday call”.
I think a simple answer to that would be that, in an emergency, pilots may be forced to act first and talk later. It’s perfectly possible that the situation escalated so rapidly that they didn’t have time to make that communication and they were pre-occupied with addressing the problem as best they could. For me, these are weak attempts to discredit Goodfellow’s theory. What are your thoughts? Do you see the theory as a plausible one or do you feel there are flaws in it? If it’s valid, it should presumably help those searching narrow down their search area quite significantly and hopefully provide the families with much-needed answers.

Paul Johnson

Paul Johnson is Editor of A Luxury Travel Blog and has worked in the travel industry for more than 30 years. He is Winner of the Innovations in Travel ‘Best Travel Influencer’ Award from WIRED magazine. In addition to other awards, the blog has also been voted “one of the world’s best travel blogs” and “best for luxury” by The Daily Telegraph.

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8 Comments

  1. Early UNOFFICIAL reports (given below) on March 8/9 suggested plane landed safely in a city called Nanming in China and some reports even mentioned the fact that the Malaysian airline was escorted by Chinese Jets and made an emergency landing. Later this was rubbished. Now, given that Nanming lies close to the northern corridor as suggested by US satellite data, could this have been true actually and China is hiding this? Also given that the jet made a reverse turn, went through Straits of malacca and was also spotted by Thailand. May be all passengers died because plane supposedly went from 45,000 ft to 5000 ft in a minute or so??
    (https://www.nationmultimedia.com/national/Malaysia-Airlines-verifying-report-that-missing-pl-30228717.html, https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/535538-malaysian-airlines-mh370-contact-lost-2.html#post8358600, https://inagist.com/all/442118490787680256/, https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/535538-malaysian-airlines-mh370-contact-lost-2.html#post8358600, https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/535538-malaysian-airlines-mh370-contact-lost-2.html#post8358600)

  2. What a truly terrible situation, and yes, at this stage the most important thing from a human perspective is that the families and close friends involved are supplied with the truth, whatever that may be.

    This theory does indeed seem plausible to me, although my knowledge about aviation is lacking, however it does seem logical. Any person who does a job for long enough learns to react subconsciously to certain situations. Obviously in the case of pilots, this must become very strong, because of the nature of their job.

    I think it is great to see that you have published this article here, and hopefully, before too much longer we will know what happened. This is the latest news that I have seen:
    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/missing-malaysia-airlines-mh370-live-3266508

  3. I’m sure all the case scenarios are being tried, wether or not any of the information is available to the public or family members is another question. This is such a strange mystery indeed!

  4. You know I guess it has to be expected we are going to receive a lot of theories about what has happened to this plane, some realistic whilst others are a little over the top! At the end of the day we just don’t know what has happened and realistically are all these theories and media hype helping the situation? I just don’t know!

    If you want my opinion on this, I really do follow along with Goodfellow because that sharp turn really could have been a last ditch move by the pilot to get to the closest airport before he fell unconscious due to the depressurization! But there I go theorizing!

    I just hope they eventually find the plane and put those families minds to rest.

  5. I think this makes a lot more sense than some of the other theories being bandied around. What I don’t understand though is why with all those people on board, which means a lot of mobile phones on board, why did nobody get a text message sent ? Surely some people would have been using their mobile phones at the very moment things went wrong ? So this suggests to me that something happened in a split second which took this plane apart and everybody with it.
    Heartfelt sorrow for the families involved, I can’t begin to think how bad this situation must be for them.

  6. In the absence of certainty theories will abound. The left-turn to Langkawi makes perfect sense but what happened after that defies logic. The best hope of unraveling this mystery lies in finding the flight recorder. Speculation is pointless.

  7. Probably just crashed and they’ve had a hard time finding it. The ocean is huge and we haven’t found shipwrecks from hundreds of years ago, so I’m sure the plane is somewhere they just haven’t found yet.

    1. The latest thinking seems to be that it crashed in the South Indian Ocean near to the coordinates of S34.2342 and E93.7875 (2,700 miles past Indonesia).

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