Amid a good number of theories – ranging from mechanical failure to alien abduction – on the mysterious disappearance of Malaysian Flight MH370, a veteran Canadian pilot offered what others considered as the “simplest” of them all.
Chris Goodfellow, described online as having “20 years experience as a Canadian Class-1 instrumented-rated pilot for multi-engine planes,” initially published his theory on Google+ on March 14 and was picked up and spread across the Internet by several news sites.
Goodfellow’s hypothesis on why the MH370 vanished without a distress call and without a trace is anchored on his assumption that the aircraft could have caught fire along the way and the pilots attempted to land on the closest airport known to them.
But Goodfellow theorized the crew could have been overwhelmed and eventually knocked down by the smoke with the plane flying on auto-pilot for a few hours before crashing into the Indian Ocean.
The Canadian pilot dismissed several other theories, and said he was trying to find a simple explanation for the mysterious incident.
He said, the key was in the “left turn,” referring to earlier reports the aircraft had changed course and attempted to turn back westward from its original path to Beijing.
He said Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah is an experienced pilot like him and must have been trying to save the people on board as he maneuvered the aircraft towards the safest and closest airport available – the 13,000-foot airstrip in Pulau Langkawi.
“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,” Goodfellow said.
He added, an in-flight fire, most likely of electrical nature, could have caused the pilots to divert to Langkawi before they were incapacitated by the smoke.
Goodfellow
An impression of Goodfellow’s theory
Photo Credit: The Daily Mail
It also explains the absence of radar communication between MH370 and ground control because the crew could have turned off the transponder while trying to determine the source of failure.
“For me the loss of transponders and communications makes perfect sense in a fire,” he explained. ”In the case of fire, the first response is to pull all the main busses and restore circuits one by one until you have isolated the bad one.”
Goodfellow further related that if these busses were switched off, the plane would have turned silent, undetected by radar.
He said the incident could have been fairly serious that the pilots and the crew were simply occupied with navigating the aircraft and fighting the fire.
“Aviate, Navigate and lastly communicate,” he said.
He also raises the possibility the fire could have been caused by an overheated front landing gear that could have been blown on take-off and slowly burned producing thick smoke that engulfed the inside of the plane.
“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,” he continued.
“I said four days ago you will find it along that route – looking elsewhere was pointless,” added Goodfellow.
To underscore the probability of his theory, Goodfellow stressed, “Fire in an aircraft demands one thing – you get the machine on the ground as soon as possible.”
Then he went on to cite two previous similar accidents in Ohio and Nova Scotia, both fatal, where the planes caught fire while cruising and the transponders and communications systems were later found to be switched off.
He also praised Captain Zaharie, whom he described as a “hero struggling with an impossible situation,” for trying to get his people safe to Langkawi, which was the main reason why the pilot turned the plane back, and not being hijacked as most people tried to believe.
“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,” he explained further.
Finally, Goodfellow said the captain was a smart pilot, but just didn’t have the time.
Originally Posted by AntitaniC
Reply With Quote
Posting Permissions
