Reader's Digest

WHO BROUGHT DOWN MALAYSIA AIRLINES FLIGHT MH370?

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On Malaysia March Airlines 8, 2014, Flight MH370 left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing with 239 people on board. It never got there, and conspiracy theorists wanted answers. Why had radio communicat­ions ceased 40 minutes after the plane left Malaysian airspace? Why, when did it it bypass turned Kuala back toward Lumpur Malaysia, 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 been no 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 incapacita­ted from carbon monoxide or decompress­ion. 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.

 ??  ?? Some respondent­s to a CNN poll believed Flight MH370 fell victim to aliens or beings from another dimension.
Some respondent­s to a CNN poll believed Flight MH370 fell victim to aliens or beings from another dimension.
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