How does he explain NO RADIO CONTACT for five hours? Any onboard emergency results in the tower being immediately notified.
RE: How does he explain NO RADIO CONTACT for five hours? Any onboard emergency results in the tower being immediately notified.
______________________________________________________
Here is how Chris Goodfellow, a 20 year Canadian Class-1 instrumented-rated pilot for multi-engine planes, explains it:
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2014/03/mh370-electrical-fire/
“the loss of transponders and communications makes perfect sense in a fire. And there most likely was an electrical fire. In the case of a fire, the first response is to pull the main busses and restore circuits one by one until you have isolated the bad one. If they pulled the busses, the plane would go silent. It probably was a serious event and the flight crew was occupied with controlling the plane and trying to fight the fire. Aviate, navigate, and lastly, communicate is the mantra in such situations.”
There are two types of fires. An electrical fire might not be as fast and furious, and there may or may not be incapacitating smoke. However there is the possibility, given the timeline, that there was an overheat on one of the front landing gear tires, 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. Once going, a tire fire 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 last only a few minutes depending on the smoke level. (I used to carry one in my flight bag, and I still carry one in my briefcase when I fly.)
What I think happened is the flight crew was overcome by smoke and the plane continued on the heading, probably on George (autopilot), until it ran out of fuel or the fire destroyed the control surfaces and it crashed. You will find it along that route–looking elsewhere is pointless.
It is not true that the tower is immediately notified. I have had a total electrical failure in flight under instrument conditions, and I assure you that contacting air traffic control is not the first order of business. It is to keep the plane under control, stabilize the situation as much as possible, and to try to figure out what went wrong. Then, it becomes more possible to make a rational report and request to air traffic control.
That is the one that will not go away.
>> Any onboard emergency results in the tower being immediately notified. <<
There’s no “tower” out in the middle of the South China Sea. Not even close. Moreover, the “towers” in Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam are usually going to be out of range for normal VHF contact.
Now to be sure, there is HF ATC. But those folks can’t do anything to help during the kind of emergency theorized by Goodfellow and others.
Following Goodfellow’s logic, the pilots certainly would have wanted to contact the tower at Pulau Langkawi when they got close enough. But if the smoke was extremely dense by then, they probably couldn’t see well enough to look up Langkawi’s frequency and then punch the numbers into their VHF radio.