5 ms·

Everyone seems to be jumping on the hijacker theory, but I have yet to see any evidence to contradict the theory of a fire aboard the plane. It explains the su

Everyone seems to be jumping on the hijacker theory, but I have yet to see any evidence to contradict the theory of a fire aboard the plane. It explains the sudden course change, the failure (or deliberate shutdown) of some electrical circuits, and the altitude change (an effort to starve the fire of oxygen in the unpressurized regions of the aircraft). It seems like aircraft fires occur more often than hijackings. Is there any reason at this point to prefer the hijacking theory, other than that it's a bit more sensational?

TrevorJ 13y ago
The engines 'phoned home' long after the plane went off the radar so to speak. The altitude data has also been said to be unreliable.
- vannevar 13y ago
  That doesn't contradict the fire theory, though. It simply means that the fire didn't directly bring the plane down, but it could still have incapacitated some of the systems and possibly the crew.
mpyne 13y ago
But it doesn't explain why none of the flight crews bothered to let any of the ATCs know that they had a fire on the plane...
hga 13y ago
Responding to mpyne: you can envision scenarios where the fire took out their radios. TrevorJ is a lot closer to the mark, although it wasn't the engine system phoning home, it was some sort of generic hourly "ping" with no other content (since the airline didn't sign up for the service that would have done more). Since these were pings from or to IMARSAT geosync satellites, very rough estimates of where the plane could be have been were made from them. I assume based on which satellites heard them (vs. ones over the horizon), perhaps comparing time-stamps and transit times to 22,000 miles in orbit, etc. But of course the bottom line is that these pings went on for hours, which evidently would only stop when the engines stopped for whatever reason. That makes a plausible fire scenario more complicated.
vannevar 13y ago
Update: Good discussion of this scenario at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7414030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7414030 .

TrevorJ 13y ago

The engines 'phoned home' long after the plane went off the radar so to speak. The altitude data has also been said to be unreliable.

vannevar 13y ago
That doesn't contradict the fire theory, though. It simply means that the fire didn't directly bring the plane down, but it could still have incapacitated some of the systems and possibly the crew.

mpyne 13y ago

But it doesn't explain why none of the flight crews bothered to let any of the ATCs know that they had a fire on the plane...

hga 13y ago

Responding to mpyne: you can envision scenarios where the fire took out their radios. TrevorJ is a lot closer to the mark, although it wasn't the engine system phoning home, it was some sort of generic hourly "ping" with no other content (since the airline didn't sign up for the service that would have done more). Since these were pings from or to IMARSAT geosync satellites, very rough estimates of where the plane could be have been were made from them. I assume based on which satellites heard them (vs. ones over the horizon), perhaps comparing time-stamps and transit times to 22,000 miles in orbit, etc. But of course the bottom line is that these pings went on for hours, which evidently would only stop when the engines stopped for whatever reason. That makes a plausible fire scenario more complicated.

vannevar 13y ago

Update: Good discussion of this scenario at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7414030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7414030 .