At the time of writing this, MH370 has been incommunicado for three weeks. With each passing day, hope of finding survivors is diminishing. Indeed, as time goes by, debris on the ocean surface may also get dispersed so widely as to make meaningful investigation and positive identification less probable. Investigators, insurers and owners are faced with a prospect of a longdrawn search extending over an indefinite and agonising period. Meanwhile, in the absence of factual information, speculation is rife and rumours profligate. A brief discussion on the possible causes of the disappearance of MH370 follows.

The first lead was the discovery that two of the passengers on the flight were travelling with stolen passports having entered Malaysia on their legitimate Iranian passports. However, deeper investigation led Interpol to conclude that the two Iranians were most probably in quest of political asylum and hence their ploy of using stolen passports. The fact that they were able to get past Malaysian immigration authorities was a black for Malaysia but did not help solve the mysterious disappearance of the MH370.

Despite ruling out the two impersonators, a hijack possibility still remained a hot favourite but with passage of time, it waned for two reasons: firstly, the flight was never found to have landed at any destination airport and secondly, no entity came forward to claim ownership of a hijack. There were some reports of the relatives of those on board the flight claiming their cell phones were ringing long after the flight’s expected endurance in the air. However, wireless analysts explain that even if a cell phone had been destroyed, the network trying to reach it, could still produce rings as if the cell phone itself was ringing.

A shoot-down theory also exercised the minds of some and the scenario went something like this. The flight had an electrical failure and the Captain decided to turn back but wandered into unknown airspace and was shot down as an intruder with the country responsible not claiming responsibility. The past cases of shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 and KAL 007 were cited as supporting illustrations of this possibility. As it turned out later, Malaysian and Thai radars did pick up an unidentified track close after the time of the last known position of MH370, but both state that they did not take any action to interdict or challenge it.

The cockpit crew themselves were natural candidates for investigation; police searched their residences. Significant findings were that the Captain had had a flight simulator at home and there was still some data about some airports on it; more importantly, data on some other airports seemed to have been deleted recently. However, no conclusive case could be made out on the basis of these findings although US Intelligence officials did seem to favour the view that the pilots could have been responsible for whatever happened to MH370. The ideas that one of the crew members carried out a suicide plan was also considered briefly.

Russian media put out a report about some suspicious cargo on board the flight. GRU, the main intelligence directorate of the General Staff of the armed forces of Russia, claimed that a highly suspicious cargo load arrived in Malaysia on board MV Maersk Alabama and was put on board MH370. The two US Navy Seals escorting it were found dead under suspicious circumstances after the arrival of the cargo in Malaysia. The report gave the names of the escort Seals as Mark Daniel Kennedy and Jeffrey Keith Reynolds, both employed by the Trident Group, a maritime security firm alleged by the GRU to protect vital transfers of nuclear and biological material across the globe. GRU claims that it had informed China’s Ministry of State Security which had assured GRU that the flight would be diverted to Haikou Meilan International Airport in Hainan for investigation of the said cargo. GRU asserts that the flight was tracked by Russian satellites and radars to its destination of Diego Garcia. The report explains the diversion of the flight to a remote takeover of the flight’s on board computers and attributes the diversion entirely to US military machinations. On March 20, Malaysian authorities confirmed that potentially inflammable lithium-ion batteries, were on board, but added that all cargo was “packed as recommended by the ICAO”, checked several times and deemed to meet the regulations. The Malaysian government has refused requests to hand over a detailed cargo manifest of MH370 raising doubts about the reasons thereof.

In April last year, Hugo Teso, a hacker who is also a trained pilot, demonstrated how his smartphone could remotely take over an airplane using an Android app he created. Teso acquired aircraft hardware and software from various suppliers, including vendors of simulation tools that use actual aircraft code and from eBay. The latter supplied him with a Flight Management System (FMS) and an Aircraft Communications Addressing & Reporting System (ACARS) aircraft management unit, both made by Honeywell. He reportedly created virtual aircraft and set up a station to send them specially crafted ACARS messages in order to exploit vulnerabilities in their FMS. He then created an app (PlaneSploit) to run on a compromised FMS that could be used to make flight plan changes or execute commands remotely. The PlaneSploit app automates the entire attack process. Investigators and watchers asked the question that if a common hacker could achieve this feat, why not a determined military or an organised criminal to achieve some unknown objective. That objective could even be just a validation of the “cyber attack” in a live environment.

Chris Goodfellow, an experienced pilot with mulit-engine experience, has propounded a practical and simple theory about what could have happened on board MH370. His theory is based on a major fire that occurred on board without warning. As an immediate response, the crew would have pulled out the main circuit breakers and attempted to restore the circuits one by one to eliminate the cause of the fire. The pulling out of the circuit breakers would explain the sudden silence of the flight as also the inactivation of the transponders. The absence of any distress call is explained by the pilots’ dictum of “Aviate, Navigate and Communicate” in that order of priority. Thus the crew were trying to first fly the aircraft safely before communicating their situation to an external agency. Chris does not rule out the possibility of a landing gear tyre fire given the combination of a hot night, a heavy aircraft and a long takeoff run. An underinflated tyre could burst and catch fire during the take-off roll and produce incapacitating smoke once in the air. The smoke would be suffocating and use of oxygen masks ruled out due to the possibility of fire. By this theory, with the pilots incapable of flying, the aircraft would have continued on its FMS route until it ran out of fuel. However, that did not happen as no crash has been reported along the extended track of the aircraft.

So back to the possibility of an electrical fire. The moment that happened, the crew could have reasoned that returning to Kuala Lumpur would involve crossing an 8,000 feet high mountain. On the other hand, Langkawi, a 13,000 feet long runway was closer and the flight and approach for landing would be over sea with no obstacles en route. Indeed, a Malaysian military radar did report a track headed in a South Westerly heading across the Malay Peninsula. So what happened thereafter? Possibly, the crew were incapacitated due to lack of oxygen and the aircraft flew on until it ran out of fuel after around six hours. That would explain the debris in the Indian Ocean West-South-West of Perth. At the time of going to press, the debris has not been identified positively as belonging to MH370.

One intriguing question is that, if the flight met a catastrophic end, why did the Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) not transmit the location of the flight. The ELT is a mandatory requirement for all transport aircraft and according to a Honeywell Aerospace spokesperson, “The ELT system is activated by G-force caused by an impact. However, it is not designed or mandated to operate underwater.” Some aviation experts have opined that the circumstance of the ELT not getting activated is evidence that the aircraft has landed safely in an undisclosed location. However, according to A.K. Chopra, a former Joint Director General, Civil Aviation, “In a number of accidents, the ELT had not got activated, though the impact was such it should have. Usually the ELT or its antenna gets damaged in an accident or gets affected by fire; so, it does not transmit signals.”

According to The Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which is spearheading the operations, “The new search area is approximately 3,19,000 square kilometres and around 1,850 kilometres West of Perth. This information is based on analysis of radar data between the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca before radar contact was lost.” Should some of the debris spotted by satellites prove conclusive evidence of coming from MH370, the next phase would be search for the black-box on the ocean floor so that the mystery can be solved and some lessons learnt.

Commenting on the episode, Air Marshal (Retd) B.K. Pandey said, “Undoubtedly, the Boeing 777 would have come down at the end of its endurance. And the fact that there is no report of the aircraft reaching an airfield or crashed on land, it would be reasonable to assume that it is sitting somewhere on the ocean floor. But what is most amazing is that in today’s day and age of technological achievements, surveillance networks across the world and in space, failed to track a large size airliner to the end of its journey. Indeed, the investigation may well throw up some new lessons for scientists and engineers in stealth technology!”