Comment Re:The most plausible theory - written by a pilot (Score 3, Interesting) 227
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2014/03/mh370-electrical-fire/
I believe something like that happened. Occam's razor and so on...
The fact that the pilot had built his own simulator also has a mundane reason that somebody on pprune had tracked down: He assisted with giving a real pilot's feedback to a third-party developer of aircraft for flight simulators (X-Plane IIRC).
Occam's Razor isn't the simplest explanation, it's the simplest explanation that fits all the facts. And this is definitely not that. According to the fire scenario, there's a fire and so they shut down the electrical systems, set in a new course on autopilot, and after the crew succumbs, the plane keeps going in a straight line... the problem with this scenario is that the plane DOES NOT follow a straight line.
According to the military radar the plane turns west, climbs to 45,000 feet, then descends to 23,000 feet, turns again, climbs, and flies towards the Indian Ocean- and then the satellite pings suggest it turns again, either north or more likely south, towards the Indian Ocean. All facts suggest that the plane is being actively piloted, and not towards safety but deliberately away from it, in such a way that finding the plane, let alone rescuing the victims, will be impossible.
The reason that the fire scenario is popular is not because of Occam's Razor, but because it appeals to what we want to believe about human nature, and about the people flying our planes. We'd like to believe that whatever happened, the pilots did their best until the very last, and were heroes trying to save everyone. The alternative is that the person piloting the plane- most likely the pilot or copilot- was a deeply disturbed human being, someone who not only decided to kill everyone on board, people who had entrusted their safety to him, but to do so in a way that would torment their relatives and capture international media attention. It's also unlikely that it would be possible to convince the other pilot to go along with this plan, so they would have to be killed or incapacitated before shutting down the transponders and changing course. Maybe that's not what happened, but that's the simplest explanation that fits all the facts... and it does not point to a hero.