Countless theories have surfaced about the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 nearly two weeks ago.
Malicious pilot action
Investigators are looking at the histories of Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, who has been flying for Malaysia Airlines since 1981 and co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, who just started flying a 777. Zaharie had built his own flight simulator at home, unusual but not out of the norm. Many aviation enthusiasts have similar setups; one Los Angeles flight attendant recreated a Pan Am first class cabin in his garage. Investigators are now trying to restore files deleted from that simulator.
Why suspect the pilots? The plane's transponder stopped signaling its location to air-traffic controllers and other planes at the perfect moment: the handoff from Malaysia's controllers to those in Vietnam. In the final radio contact from the plane, the co-pilot told Malaysian controllers "All right, good night." Vietnamese controllers were never contacted and the transponder shut off. The plane abruptly turned and then kept flying for up to seven hours.
The way several key communication and tracking devices in the cockpit were disabled — at different times — also places suspicion on the pilots.
The idea of pilots using a plane to commit suicide and mass murder is scary, taboo within the industry but not unprecedented. A SilkAir crash in 1997 and an EgyptAir crash in 1999 are both believed to have been the result of deliberate actions by pilots.
Terrorist hijacking
This theory was prominent early on after it was discovered that two Iranians on board — one 18, the other 28 — were traveling on stolen passports. Investigators haven't found anything linking either to terror groups; it is believed they were trying to illegally immigrate to Europe.
Ever since 9/11, it's much harder for an unauthorized person to enter the cockpit. Cockpit doors have been reinforced and procedures have been put in place to ensure nobody gains entry when a pilot exits. And passengers and crew have shown a willingness to confront anyone trying to take over or damage a plane.
Could someone have been allowed into the cockpit? It's against protocol, but does happen. Back in 2011, Flight 370's co-pilot and another pilot invited two women boarding their aircraft to sit in the cockpit for an international flight. During the journey, the pilots smoked and flirted, one of the women said this month.
Still, no credible group has taken credit for the disappearance and intelligence agencies say they haven't noticed any chatter in terrorist circles regarding the jet.
Sudden catastrophe
Aviation experts initially suspected that something sudden and horrific happened. Perhaps a bomb on board, or some type of failure with the engines or airframe. But if that were the case, debris would have been found in the spot where the transponder went off. Also, the Boeing 777 has just one fatal crash in its 19-year history — last year's Asiana Airlines crash in San Francisco. If there was a sudden breakup, pieces of the plane would have been visible on radar.
Fire
An electrical fire, or perhaps a fire from hazardous cargo, could have knocked out communications equipment and prevented crewmembers and passengers from calling for help. Some people have speculated that smoke incapacitated the pilots. It's possible, but flight attendants and passengers would have had time to try to enter the cockpit and take control of the plane.
Decompression
A slow or sudden decompression, causing a loss of oxygen, could have killed everyone on board. If oxygen levels dropped, a loud, automated warning would have alerted the pilots to put on their oxygen masks and immediately descend below 10,000 feet, where there is enough oxygen to breathe without aid.
If the plane depressurized and killed its occupants, which happened on golfer Payne Stewart's business jet in 1999, that would explain the silence from crew and passengers. But aviation experts say in that case, the plane should have kept flying automatically toward Beijing and been visible on radar.
Hidden plane
It's possible that somebody landed the plane at some remote airport and is hiding it from the world. Maybe they want to hold the passengers hostage, although nobody has taken responsibility or demanded a ransom. Maybe there was something of value in the cargo hold — and this was the world's most elaborate robbery. Maybe terrorists have the plane and plan to load it with jet fuel and explosives and use it as a missile in the future.
Those scenarios all have holes. A very skilled pilot would have to land the plane at a small airport that normally doesn't accommodate 777s. They might have had to land in the dark, without normal navigation aids to assist. And they would have to dodge several nations' radar systems, though some have suggested that it stealthily flew in another jet's shadow.
Yet it's hard to rule out anything. It took Thailand's government 10 days to acknowledge that it spotted what might have been Flight 370 on its radar. Governments aren't necessarily open to sharing all their information, especially when it comes to their military radar capabilities.
But why go to all the trouble of stealing a commercial jet? A cargo plane would be easier to steal.
Accidental shoot-down
Civilian aircraft have been unintentionally shot down by a country's military. In July 1988, the United States Navy missile cruiser USS Vincennes accidently shot down an Iran Air flight, killing all 290 passengers and crew. In September 1983, a Korean Air Lines flight was shot down by a Russian fighter jet. There is no evidence that Flight 370 was brought down by a government entity.
Landed in the Andaman Islands
The plane was apparently at one stage heading in the direction of India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the most easterly part of Indian territory, which lies between Indonesia and the coast of Thailand and Burma. It has been reported that military radar there might not even have been operating, as the threat level is generally perceived to be low.
Flew to Kazakhstan
The Central Asian republic is at the far end of the northern search corridor, so the plane could hypothetically have landed there. Light aircraft pilot Sylvia Wrigley, author of Why Planes Crash, says landing in a desert might be possible and certainly more likely than landing on a beach somewhere. "To pull this off, you are looking at landing in an incredibly isolated area," says Wrigley. The failure so far to release a cargo manifest has created wild rumours about a valuable load that could be a motive for hijacking. There has also been speculation that some of those on board were billionaires.
But the plane would have been detected, the Kazakh Civil Aviation Committee said in a detailed statement sent to Reuters. And there's an even more obvious problem. The plane would have had to cross the airspace of countries like India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, which are all usually in a high state of military preparedness. But it's just possible that there are weak links in the radar systems of some of the countries en route to Central Asia, Wrigley speculates. "A lot of air traffic control gear is old. They might be used to getting false positives from flocks of birds and, therefore, it would be easy to discount it."
It flew south
The final satellite "ping" suggests the plane was still operational for at least five or six hours after leaving Malaysian radar range. For Norman Shanks, former head of group security at airports group BAA, and professor of aviation security at Coventry University, the search should therefore start from the extremes of the corridors and work up, rather than the other way around. He thinks the southern corridor is more likely for a plane that has so far avoided detection by radar.
The southern arc leads to the huge open spaces of the Indian Ocean, and then to Australia's empty northern hinterland. Without knowing the motive, it is hard to speculate where the plane's final destination was intended to be. But the plane may just have carried on until it ran out of fuel and then glided and crashed into the sea somewhere north of Australia.
Taklamakan Desert, north-west China
There has been speculation on forums that the plane could have been commandeered by China's Uighur Muslim separatists. Out of the plane's 239 passengers, 153 were Chinese citizens. One possible destination in this theory would be China's Taklamakan Desert. The region - described by Encyclopaedia Britannica as a "great desert of Central Asia and one of the largest sandy deserts in the world" - has no shortage of space far from prying eyes. The BBC's Jonah Fisher tweeted on 15 March: "Being briefed by Malaysia officials they believe most likely location for MH370 is on land somewhere near Chinese/Kyrgyz border."
But again, this theory rests on an extraordinary run through the radar systems of several countries.
It was flown towards Langkawi island because of a fire or other malfunction
The loss of transponders and communications could be explained by a fire, aviation blogger Chris Goodfellow has suggested. The left turn that the plane made, deviating from the route to Beijing, could have been a bid to reach safety, he argues. "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." He aimed to avoid crashing into a city or high ridges, Goodfellow argues. "Actually he was taking a direct route to Palau Langkawi, a 13,000ft (4,000m) strip with an approach over water at night with no obstacles. He did not turn back to Kuala Lumpur because he knew he had 8,000ft ridges to cross. He knew the terrain was friendlier towards Langkawi and also a shorter distance." In this theory it would be assumed that the airliner did not make it to Langkawi and crashed into the sea.
But Goodfellow's theory has been disputed. If the course was changed during a major emergency, one might expect it to be done using manual control. But the left turn was the result of someone in the cockpit typing "seven or eight keystrokes into a computer on a knee-high pedestal between the captain and the first officer, according to officials", the New York Times reported. The paper says this "has reinforced the belief of investigators - first voiced by Malaysian officials - that the plane was deliberately diverted and that foul play was involved."
The plane is in Pakistan
Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch has tweeted: "World seems transfixed by 777 disappearance. Maybe no crash but stolen, effectively hidden, perhaps in northern Pakistan, like Bin Laden." But Pakistan has strenuously denied that this would be possible. The country's assistant to the prime minister on aviation, Shujaat Azeem, has been reported as saying: "Pakistan's civil aviation radars never spotted this jet, so how it could be hidden somewhere in Pakistan?" Like the Kazakhstan theory, this all seems far-fetched, not least because the junction between Indian and Pakistani air space is one of the most watched sectors in the world by military radar. And despite the remoteness and lawlessness of northern Pakistan, the region is watched closely by satellites and drones. It seems scarcely believable to think an airliner could get there unspotted.
The plane hid in the shadow of another airliner
Aviation blogger Keith Ledgerwood believes the missing plane hid in the radar shadow of Singapore Airlines flight 68. The Singaporean airliner was in the same vicinity as the Malaysian plane, he argues. "It became apparent as I inspected SIA68's flight path history that MH370 had manoeuvred itself directly behind SIA68 at approximately 18:00UTC and over the next 15 minutes had been following SIA68." He believes that the Singaporean airliner would have disguised the missing plane from radar controllers on the ground. "It is my belief that MH370 likely flew in the shadow of SIA68 through India and Afghanistan airspace. As MH370 was flying 'dark' without a transponder, SIA68 would have had no knowledge that MH370 was anywhere around, and as it entered Indian airspace, it would have shown up as one single blip on the radar with only the transponder information of SIA68 lighting up ATC and military radar screens." The Singapore Airlines plane flew on to Spain. The Malaysian jet could have branched off. "There are several locations along the flight path of SIA68 where it could have easily broken contact and flown and landed in Xinjiang, Kyrgyzstan, or Turkmenistan," Ledgerwood argues.
Prof Hugh Griffiths, radar expert at University College London, says it sounds feasible. But there is a difference between military and civilian radar. Civilian radar works by means of a transponder carried by the aircraft - a system known as secondary radar. The military use primary radar and this "ought to be higher resolution". So how close would the two planes need to be? He estimates about 1000m (3300ft). It is possible military radar would be able to pick up that there were two objects, he says. "It might be able to tell the difference, to know that there are two targets." If this happens, though, there's then the question of how this is interpreted on the ground. Is it a strange echo that would be discounted? When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, although the US radar operator detected the incoming aircraft, they were dismissed as US bombers arriving from the mainland.
There was a struggle
One of the hardest things to account for so far with an innocent explanation is the way the plane was flown erratically. It went far above its "ceiling", flying at 45,000ft (13,716m) before later flying very low. Big fluctuations in altitude suggest there might have been a struggle, says Buzdygan. Post-9/11, cockpit doors have been strengthened against the possibility of hijack but there are still scenarios where access could be gained. Pilots talk to each other "over a beer" about how they'd deal with hijackers, he says. Buzdygan would have had no qualms about flying aggressively to try to resist a hijack. "I'd try to disorientate and confuse the hijackers by throwing them around," he says.
The even more far-fetched
Many of the above theories might seem far-fetched but there are even more outlandish-sounding ones out there.
If the plane had flown up the northern corridor, experts maintain it would probably have triggered primary radar. Key countries whose airspace it might have crossed are Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, China, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, or Thailand. After 9/11, an unidentified airliner entering sovereign airspace is likely to lead to fighters being scrambled, says Maffett. "If the plane is in the northern arc it could easily have been shot down." It's a theory circulating on some forums. The notion is that no-one would want to admit shooting down an airliner full of passengers, Maffett says, and thus might currently be concealing the event.
But there are a host of holes in the theory. Firstly, the plane would still have had to avoid numerous radar systems before finally triggering one. And the nation responsible would be trying to keep secret the fate of the world's currently most-searched for object. Covering up the incident for so long would arguably make the shooting down look far worse.
Then there are other conspiracy theories. Some forum postings have pointed to the US military base in the middle of the Indian Ocean, on the tropical atoll of Diego Garcia. The island is owned by the UK but leased to the US. One of the more extreme theories circulating online claims that the Kremlin believes that the US "captured" the plane and flew it to its base. With a conspiracy theory of this magnitude it is difficult even to know where to start with the rebuttals.
A completely different thread of conspiracy theory assumes a sympathetic regime. The scepticism about flying undetected through radar changes somewhat if the hijackers are in cahoots with a country's government. There are several authoritarian regimes within the aircraft's range, but the conspiracy theory doesn't even require a government's co-operation - the hijackers could just be in cahoots with radar operators. Again, this seems to be a conspiracy of incredible complexity to be kept secret for this length of time. And what would the motive be for those colluding?
Original Stories.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26609687
http://www.haaretz.com/news/world/1.580843
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