On March 8, 2014, a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER departed from Kuala Lumpur with 227 passengers and 12 crew members. It departed at 12:41 am (1441 GMT), and was due in Beijing at 6:30 am (2230 GMT) that same day. It hasn’t been seen since. This report attempts to debunk some of the theories about that disappearance and make a new assertion about what might have befallen the passengers and crew of that ill-fated flight. Flight MH 370.

Conspiracy theories don’t hold water because they ignore certain things that have to happen in conjunction with those events in order for them to be correct. What all the theories about the disappearance of this plane leave out are the important aircraft systems that would react (or try to) in any mishap involving the plane. Here are a few.

The Cabin Emergency Depressurization Oxygen System. The “Rubber Mask Jungle” drops if the cabin pressure drops below a certain level – typically at 14,000 feet. The pilots can deploy the system manually or leave it set on automatic. But the pilots cannot turn it off.

B773 Cutaway

Conspiracy theories about shutting this off to kill the passengers fail to take the system design into account. That theory is also based on the claim that the plane climbed from 35k to 45k feet. Two problems with that claim. First, it exceeds the plane’s service ceiling by 3k and occurred in a few seconds on the recorded radar track that Flightradar.com has. An SR-71 can’t climb 10k feet in 5 seconds. This ascent occurred at the edge of the detection range of Kuala Lumpur’s ATC system. It is a radar anomaly. It didn’t happen.

The Emergency Landing Transponders. Depending on the model, the 777 has either 4 or 6 of these transponders located throughout the fuselage. They automatically turn on when they detect rapid deceleration of the aircraft due to a crash landing. The pilots can manually turn this system on to broadcast its signal prior to a crash or ditching at sea or leave it on automatic, but they cannot turn it off.

Conspiracy theories about a bomb going off and obliterating the plane so that all the ELBs are destroyed doesn’t account for the number of explosives needed and their placement to hit them all at the same time. Must have been the same crew that packed 10,000 tons of explosives and ran a couple of thousand miles of det cord up and down the Twin Towers without anyone noticing anything.

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