Some respondents to a CNN poll believed Flight MH370
fell victim to aliens or beings from another dimension.WHO BROUGHT
DOWN MALAYSIA
AIRLINES FLIGHT
MH370?n March 8, 2014,
Malaysia Airlines
Flight MH370 left
Kuala Lumpur
for Beijing with
239 people on board. It
never got there, and con-
spiracy theorists wanted
answers. Why had radio
communications ceased 40
minutes after the plane left
Malaysian airspace? Why,
when it turned back toward Malaysia,
did it bypass Kuala Lumpur only to
disappear without a trace over the
Indian Ocean? Perhaps the plane
had been hijacked, some speculated.
Then why didn’t it land somewhere?
Maybe it was a suicide plan by one
of the pilots—even though none had
shown suicidal tendencies. One theory
suggested that MH370 was being used
to deliver a nuclear weapon to North
Korea, so the Americans shot it down.THE FACTS: Some airline pilots believe
Flight MH370 fell victim to an electrical
fire. If pilots had smelled smoke in the
cockpit, the first thing they would have
done is shut down all the electronics
they could spare. Thus, all radio and
automated communications would
have stopped.
In any case, there would have beenno voice transmissions because pilots
are trained that communicating is the
last priority in an emergency. If a fire
was suspected, putting it out would
have taken precedence.
The second priority is to find the
safest place to land. The flight path,
as seen on military radar, suggests the
crew was likely heading not back to
mountainous Kuala Lumpur but to an
airport at Pulau Langkawi, with easier
access and longer runways. It’s believed
the pilots of the plane, at that point
west of Thailand, became incapaci-
tated from carbon monoxide or decom-
pression. The aircraft, which by then
could well have been a flying tomb, was
presumably brought down by lack of
fuel or fire damage.
The third priority, communicating
with the outside world, is something
they obviously never got around to.rd.com 101jo
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National Interest