Suicide has become the most likely cause of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370's disappearance, with a senior industry source believing that the plane was deliberately flown to an extreme altitude to knock out the passengers.
Shortly after the last voice communication from the cockpit of the plane on March 8 it was tracked by military radar flying between 43,000 and 45,000 feet.
The source, who wished to remain anonymous, told MailOnline: 'It was tracked flying at this altitude for 23 minutes before descending. Oxygen would have run out in 12 minutes [in a depressurised cabin], rendering the passengers unconscious.'
New data may have been able to indicate flight
MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean, but what led to its demise and
that of the 239 people aboard is still yet to be discovered
Solution: Inmarsat's scientists analysed the
faint pings from MH370 using a technique based on the Doppler effect,
which describes how a wave changes frequency relative to the movement of
an observer, in this case the satellite. The changes in ping times
indicated that the plane was moving south
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak today said a
new analysis of satellite data shows that the missing Malaysia Airlines
flight ended in the southern Indian Ocean
HOW INMARSAT USED THE DOPPLER EFFECT TO TRACK DOWN MH370'S LAST KNOWN POSITION
British
satellite firm Inmarsat discovered on March 9 that MH370 had continued
flying for at least another six hours after its last voice transmission
from the cockpit at 1.19am on Saturday March 8.
It knew this from an electronic 'handshake' that the plane gave to one of its satellites. This placed it in one of two corridors, running north to kazakhstan, or south to the Indian Ocean.
The satellite received several more pings from the aircraft, but Inmarsat weren't immediately able to work out its trajectory because the satellite isn't GPS enabled.
However, the pings contained hidden clues in their wave frequencies. Inmarsat, using some very clever mathematical modelling, deduced that the frequency of the waves were changing in a way that gave away the plane's locations.
It's called the Doppler effect, named after the Austrian physicist Christian Doppler, who proposed it in 1842.
He noticed how wave frequencies changed as an observer moved around the source. In modern life we experience it frequently as the sounds of sirens from emergency service vehicles change as they move away from us.
A similar effect was occurring with MH370 that enabled Inmarsat to rule out a northerly trajectory. The frequencies of the pings it was returning meant it was travelling south.
It knew this from an electronic 'handshake' that the plane gave to one of its satellites. This placed it in one of two corridors, running north to kazakhstan, or south to the Indian Ocean.
The satellite received several more pings from the aircraft, but Inmarsat weren't immediately able to work out its trajectory because the satellite isn't GPS enabled.
However, the pings contained hidden clues in their wave frequencies. Inmarsat, using some very clever mathematical modelling, deduced that the frequency of the waves were changing in a way that gave away the plane's locations.
It's called the Doppler effect, named after the Austrian physicist Christian Doppler, who proposed it in 1842.
He noticed how wave frequencies changed as an observer moved around the source. In modern life we experience it frequently as the sounds of sirens from emergency service vehicles change as they move away from us.
A similar effect was occurring with MH370 that enabled Inmarsat to rule out a northerly trajectory. The frequencies of the pings it was returning meant it was travelling south.
The 777-200ER Boeing aircraft used on the ill-fated flight has a maximum service ceiling of 43,000 feet, but at this altitude where the atmosphere drastically thins it would take mere minutes if not seconds for hypoxia - a lack of oxygen - to set in if the cabin was manually depressurised by one of the pilots.
Oxygen masks would have dropped down, but these only supply between five and 10 minutes of gas.
The air used for pressurising the cabin comes through the engine and wing and is filtered before it enters the passenger environment.
A pilot might need to turn off the pressurisation system if the aircraft enters dirty air, but investigators are looking at the possibility that it was turned off for sinister reasons on MH370.
Scientists at British satellite firm Inmarsat used a wave phenomenon discovered in the nineteenth century to analyse the seven pings its satellite picked up from MH370 to determine its tragic final destination in the southern Indian Ocean.
From the time the signals took to reach the satellite and the angle of elevation, Inmarsat was able to provide two arcs, one north and one south that the aircraft could have taken.
Inmarsat's scientists then interrogated the faint pings using a technique based on the Doppler effect, which describes how a wave changes frequency relative to the movement of an observer, in this case the satellite, a spokesman said.
Britain's Air Accidents Investigation Branch and experts from the European space industry were also involved in the analysis.
The Doppler effect is why the sound of a police car siren changes as it approaches and then overtakes an observer.
Using this technique, Inmarsat was able to rule out that the aircraft had travelled in a northerly direction.
Chris McLaughlin, Senior Vice President, External Affairs, at Inmarsat, said: 'This is first and foremost a tragedy for the passengers and their families and we extend our deepest sympathies to them all at this time.
'After detailed analysis and modelling of the messages passed across the Inmarsat network from flight MH370 and other known flights, we have been able to pass additional information to the relevant authorities regarding the likely direction of flight of MH370.'
Chris Goodfellow, a Canadian pilot with 20 years experience, meanwhile believes that a fire broke out aboard the plane.
He claims captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah was doing exactly what he needed to do in an emergency - and trying to get the plane to the nearest airport as soon as possible.
In this case, that was a 13,000 foot strip on the island of Palau Langkawi, and that is directly where the aircraft was heading when it was last tracked.
However, Goodfellow believes the crew were overcome by smoke and the aircraft flew as a 'ghost plane' for hours past the chosen airport before finally crashing into the Indian Ocean near the Maldives.
'We old pilots were always drilled to always know the closest airport of safe harbor while in cruise. Always,' Goodfellow wrote. 'Instinctively when I saw that left turn with a direct heading I knew he was heading for an airport.'
He said he immediately brought up Google Earth and discovered the runway, which was had fewer obstacles blocking the plane's approach than if Shah attempted to return to Kuala Lumpar, which was also further away.
'This pilot did all the right things. He was confronted by some major event aboard that made him make that immediate turn back to the closest safe airport,' he says in the post.
Goodfellow's initial post went took the web by storm after he posted it on Google Plus and then Reddit.
Simple theory: Chris Goodfellow, a Canadian
pilot with 20 years experience, has hailed captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah a
hero, not a hijacker, in his interesting post, which took the internet
by storm
He wrote a number of follow up posts answering the hundreds of questions he had received as more information, and speculation, came to light.
In his last note late on Tuesday, he claimed reported sightings of an aircraft over the Maldives corresponds to his theory and he predicted it will be found sometime Wednesday a small distance west of the Maldives.
In his first post, Goodfellow said the loss of transponders and communications makes 'perfect sense' in the event of a fire.
He suggests an electrical fire may have started inside the plane, perhaps incapacitating crew with smoke. The plane's cargo - which reportedly included a shipment of lithium batteries - may have ignited.
Or possibly one of the tires overheated during takeoff and began burning slowly, eventually making it to the cockpit where the pilots were overcome by smoke.
He said all the circumstances that night - a full plane, hot weather, and a long run takeoff runway - make this incident all the more plausible, and he cited a similar occurrence in Nigeria of a DC8 that had a landing gear fire on takeoff.
He believes at that point, the Malaysian plane 'just continued on (that route)probably on (autopilot) until either fuel exhaustion or fire destroyed the control surfaces and it crashed.'
'I said four days ago you will find it along that route - looking elsewhere was pointless,' Goodfellow added in his captivating piece.
He said he has been stunned that no officials, pilots or reporters have looked at the case from the pilot's point of view.
'Thanks to Google earth I spotted Langkawi in about 30 seconds, zoomed in and saw how long the runway was and I just instinctively knew this pilot knew this airport. He had probably flown there many times,' the pilot wrote.
As for the last voice transmission, Goodfellow said 'Good night' is customary as a hand-off to a new air traffic controller and also strongly indicates to him that all was OK on the flight deck.
So far, ships in the international search effort
have been unable to locate several 'suspicious' objects spotted by
satellites in grainy images or by fast-flying aircraft over a vast
search area in the remote southern Indian Ocean
High school students hold candles during a vigil
for passengers of the missing Malaysia Airline flight MH370 in
Lianyungang, east China's Jiangsu province, on Tuesday
Scores of angry relatives of the Chinese
passengers aboard Flight MH370 set out on a protest march to the
Malaysian embassy in Beijing on March 25 to demand more answers about
the crashed plane's fate
Nation in mourning: MH370 disappeared on March 8 with more than 150 Chinese passengers on board
So what happened? Some serious theories that have been put forward in the more than two weeks since the aircraft disappeared
EXPLOSIONOne possible explanation is an explosion on board caused by a bomb or something in the cargo hold blew a hole in the frame of the aircraft.
It was not powerful enough to bring the plane down, but caused such a sudden decompression that all on board were rendered unconscious and the plane continued flying on auto-pilot until it ran out of fuel.
This appears to be one of the most logical theories.
TIMELINE OF INMARSAT'S DATA CRUNCHING
Sunday March 9
Inmarsat discovered that the plane had been flying for a further six hours after its last contact with air traffic controllers on March 8.
Sunday March 9 and Monday March 10
Studied data to confirm this was the case
Tuesday March 11
Established that aircraft was moving either north or south towards the Indian Ocean
Between March 11 and 23
Inmarsat crunched the data and looked at ping returns from comparable Boeing flights, eventually ruling out a northerly trajectory.
This data was peer reviewed by colleagues and scientists in Europe's space industry.
Monday March 24
Result - that southern route was the only route - submitted to the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch.
Chris McLaughlin, Senior Vice President, External Affairs, at Inmarsat, told MailOnline that the data couldn't be released immediately because it 'was being cross-checked by all manner of parties'.
Inmarsat discovered that the plane had been flying for a further six hours after its last contact with air traffic controllers on March 8.
Sunday March 9 and Monday March 10
Studied data to confirm this was the case
Tuesday March 11
Established that aircraft was moving either north or south towards the Indian Ocean
Between March 11 and 23
Inmarsat crunched the data and looked at ping returns from comparable Boeing flights, eventually ruling out a northerly trajectory.
This data was peer reviewed by colleagues and scientists in Europe's space industry.
Monday March 24
Result - that southern route was the only route - submitted to the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch.
Chris McLaughlin, Senior Vice President, External Affairs, at Inmarsat, told MailOnline that the data couldn't be released immediately because it 'was being cross-checked by all manner of parties'.
Another possible explanation is a fire so severe that the pilots, following the emergency rule of aviate, navigate and finally communicate, managed to turn the aircraft around to head to a runway on the west of Malaysia but become unconscious before they were able to send out an emergency message - and the autopilot took over.
Another logical theory.
A SUBTLE CRACKING OF THE AIRCRAFT FRAME
This could have lead to a slow decompression that rendered everyone unconscious after putting them in an incapacitating daze.
This, included in a warning by Boeing that said corrosion might occur on some models of the jet, might account for the pilot on another plane hearing the mumbled voice of Fariq over the air waves. This condition, hypoxia - oxygen starvation - might have led to the pilots fumbling with the controls, making mistakes and being unable to issue a MAYDAY before they passed out, turning MH370 into a ghost flight.
Another convincing theory.
HIJACKING
A conclusion put forward by Prime Minister Najib Razak more than a week ago based on the belief that someone in the flight deck had turned off all communications under duress.
This can possibly be ruled out following the latest announcement - why would a hijacker order a Malaysian Airlines jet to fly to the southern Indian Ocean?
SABOTAGE
One or both of the pilots - Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah and co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid - had deliberately shut down the communications and set the jet on a course into the Pacific.
This can again potentially be ruled out as it again raises the question - for what purpose?
Another theory is human error, although the
53-year-old pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, has more than 18,000 flying hours
and has been flying for the airline since 1981
PILOT SUICIDE
Did one of the pilots subdue the other in a determined attempt to kill himself along with all on board? Nothing in their personalities shows that - but if he was going to do that, why not send the aircraft into a death plunge shortly after take-off? Why keep on flying for up to seven hours until the aircraft ran out of fuel?
However, the suicide theory has gained ground with one industry source telling MailOnline that someone may have flown the aircraft to an extreme altitude to knock out the passengers before descending and carrying on until the fuel ran out.
THEFT OF THE AIRCRAFT
Another theory is that the captain practised landing on a remote airstrip on his home-based flight recorder after being offered a fantastic sum of money by a criminal group who planned to repaint the aircraft and use it for a terrorist attack.
Nothing has been found to incriminate the captain - and what were the thieves going to do with more than 200 angry passengers? This can again possibly be ruled out following the latest announcement.
First officer Fariq Hamid, 27, has about 2,800 hours of experience and has flown for the airline since 2007
Another potential explanation is that everything broke down except for the 'clever' aircraft's autopilot that kept it on a westward course, away from any country's radar, until it ran out of fuel and plunged into the Pacific Ocean.
TERROR ATTACK
Everyone on board has been cleared of terrorist backgrounds and what was the purpose without a political or terrorist group claiming responsibility?
CYBER ATTACK
Was a passenger with a laptop computer able to hack into the aircraft's controls and render it useless in the hands of the pilot?
This would have been a complex scheme that would require a computer genius with a knowledge of that particular aircraft's controls - but why use those seemingly impossible skills to send the plane off on a flight to nowhere?
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