It wasn’t the pilot or co-pilot, since the aircraft control was too erratic.
I guess Malaysian Airlines thought they were exempt from hijackings, since that only happens to infidels.
They may need to consider those intrusion-resistant cockpit doors after all. Not that it would help when your pilots invite infidel women up to the cockpit.
>It wasn’t the pilot or co-pilot, since the aircraft control was too erratic.
If you are referring to the “erratic” descent from 450 to 230, I have a theory about that.
For just one or two men, the pilot and/or copilot for example, to disable or kill all the passengers and crew without any of them resisting or trying to make cell phone calls, the most effective way would be depressurization at altitude. There are a lot of safeguards against that happening.
The cabin is pressurized by engine power.
I think the pilot, supplied with extra O2 from all the crew cabin masks and maybe some emergency bottles, took the plane as high as it could go for both altitude and lack of oxygen. Then the pilot cut the engines off. The pressure would inevitably leave the passenger cabin in a few minutes. The masks would drop but that O2 would last passengers less than 10 minutes if they got them on at all.
Meanwhile, the pilot let the plane glide erratically from 45000 feet to 23000 feet, which would take up to a half hour, long past the survival of any of the passengers.
I haven’t heard anyone else with that theory.
It was not erratic, it was planned.
They depressurized the cabin and flew to 40,000 feet to kill all passengers.
European new reports now say that there was a ton of gold on board as cargo. Then they descended - eventually to 300 feet and ditched the plane somewhere where their cohorts could unload the cargo.
The captain had his own flight simulator at home for 777 scenarios where he could practice his crime away from prying eyes.