Theory: Why Zaharie Left the Cockpit

I have to confess that I made a blunder a month or two ago. I fell victim to the easy Google search, and snagged what I thought was a picture of the overhead circuit breaker panel (CB) for the B777. In that image, it showed CBs for the passenger O2 system, both the deploy and sensing circuit. Seemed easy enough to reach up there and pull 3 CBs and disable the passenger oxygen.

But a nagging thought was that it did not seem right. It was too easy.

So I started another search a few days ago, and could not come up with confirmation that those CBs were indeed on a B777. I found study guides and images of the CB panels, but the O2 CBs simply were not there. I was upset with myself in part because I was wrong, and in part because I try to be honest about what I do and do not know.

I also could not find the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) CB in any of the study materials. That made me even more upset. I was convinced that Boeing left the CVR CB in the cockpit so it could be pulled to preserve data in the event of an incident. At least that's how my B767 works. I knew the B777 is a more modern aircraft, but Boeing does such a good job in commonality even in diverse aircraft.

But I was back to basics. I was wrong about the CVR CB, and I was wrong about the passenger O2 CBs being in the cockpit. I was reasonably sure the flight data recorder (FDR) was downstairs in the Main Equipment Center (MEC) below the floor behind the flight deck. This is the area that cannot be reached from the cockpit, but could be accessed from the main cabin through a hatch in the floor. It was the reason I felt Zaharie made a mad dash to the MEC—to disable the FDR.

The B767 has a similar place. It's cramped. But it's jammed packed with all kinds of cool stuff, racks, wire bundles, and fans whirring. It's a kind of a tech kid's tree house, but below decks. I often pop down there during maintenance activities just because...well, just because.

I assume the B777 MEC is a little more roomy, but not by much. Making something like that roomier and more comfy for the mechanics won't sell more seats. My airline does not have B777s...or I would have been below decks putting eyeballs on the stuff I've been talking about.

I feel confident I've made a reasonable case in my last post that there's a clue Zaharie left the cockpit soon after leveling off at FL350. Literally there is a full 14 minutes that Zaharie could have been out of the cockpit, and there's no reason we would know about it.

Except young FO Fariq's stumbled and unusual radio call made around 17:08 UTC.

That was such an unusual call because Zaharie would be "working" the radios as the pilot monitoring (PM). It strongly suggests to me that Zaharie was not in the cockpit. If he was, he would not allow young Fariq to make that call, since he called in earlier, and if he was, HE should have made that call. This was a training flight, and Zaharie should be following standard cockpit protocols.

No, my surmise is that Z was out of the cockpit. I presumed it was for the FDR CB that I was convinced was below decks. This is the graphic I put together to make my case. If you follow me, you've seen this before:

So this evening, I decided to take some time, and really press on to understand just where those CBs are. I am well familiar with something airline manufacturer's publish called Component Locator Guide (or sometimes Manual). It's a goldmine of stuff that pilots rarely need to look at, but if you teach aircraft systems as I do, it's a treasured resource in preparing training materials.

Lo and behold! It was not the Twitter Gods who brought me the needed tablets, but Scribd. I found the B777 CLG published there, and downloaded it and started pawing through those electronic pages like a kid digging under the Christmas tree, looking for the right package size for that expected gift.

It did not take me very long, and I discovered all that I needed to know. I feel I know why Zaharie needed to get below decks, and into the MEC. Everything he needed to disable is located down there. Everything. Those passenger O2 deploy systems. The flight data recorder. And yes, the cockpit voice recorder.

The Component Locator Guide, it's sorta like a roadmap. Everything you need to find has a numbering system and an illustration that will help you find it (for you Millennials a roadmap is sorta like Waze). I quickly found my way through the tables and found this:

Right there in the middle of the list are the passenger oxygen CBs I was looking for. The Left, Center, and Right passenger oxygen. The A and B channel CBs to deploy the passengers oxygen...and to the right, in the column PANEL/RACK, it tells me where to find it: P310.

Next step is to find P310. That was not difficult. I knew where it would be—down below decks, in the MEC. Panel 310 Standby Power. That's where you put things that you're gonna need when you're down to your last trick. Like making sure the O2 masks deploy when you need them.

The illustration shows it labeled in the top-left graphic.

Moving on to other issues. What about the flight data recorder? Can I confirm that? Yup. Right there in the component locator, dutifully telling me the CIRCUIT BREAKER FLT RCDR AC CB is found on panel P210. The Boeing 777 FDR runs both on AC power and DC (battery) power. I won't bother including the image, but on the next page we find CIRCUIT BREAKER FLT RCDR DC CB. Pull both of those, and the FDR goes dumb.

And yes, the P210 panel is below decks (you can see it in the above graphic).

Plane made dumb, now the plane must be made deaf.

The cockpit voice recorder was my next search. I had a hard time finding that. There was no CVR or Cockpit Voice Recorder in the list. I knew it had to be. It was not in the "INDICATING/RECORDING SYSTEMS" as I expected. But with some persistence, and being not young, I found it under CIRCUIT BREAKER VOX RCDR CB in the COMMUNICATIONS system. Back in my younger years, VOX was common term for "Voice Activated Switch" (or variations of that). In other words, the CVR. Where was that? Panel P110. Where is Panel P110?

Down in the MEC, next to P310 where the passenger oxygen CBs are found.

Bingo!

I now feel I know why Zaharie left the cockpit. IF my hunch is correct, he left the cockpit, and under some kind of "I'm the captain" sorta thing, opened the floor hatch (highly, highly unusual), and headed below decks. Once there, he would have known exactly where the CBs were to be found, and would have pulled them, making MH370 deaf, dumb, and dangerous (no O2 for the passengers).

The maximum of 14 minutes he could have been out of the cockpit is MORE than enough to pop into the cabin, open the hatch, do what he needed to, and get back topside prior to reaching IGARI. When Zaharie made the first call as they leveled off at FL350, he knew exactly when they were going to reach IGARI. The flight computer would have told him that.

He had the time to go below, and he would have known the time he needed to be back before reaching IGARI. He just had to have time to order young Fariq out of the cockpit for some reason (any reason, it would not matter).

He may have even sprung it suddenly on FO Fariq, who quite possibly left his mobile phone on the right side glareshield.


NOTE: Everything I put in the blog can be found with minimal effort on the Internet. This is not some kind of state secret. Bad actors who might be interested in such things, already know such things. Safety and security are important to me. I'm going to have some discussions with my airline about securing that hatch (I hope that some airlines already do).

PREDICTION: If the CVR and FDR is found in the debris field, both will have stopped working sometime after 17:05 UTC but before 17:14 UTC.

MH370. Putting the Early Clues Together.

It's been nearly two years since my last blog post about MH370. There did not seem to be much purpose in doing so. The search area is concentrated on the southern end of the 7th arc, and I don't believe the airplane is anywhere near there.

I'm pretty sure that a flotilla of AUVs won't be sent near the Zenith plateau because some dude posits the debris is there based on cloud imagery at 00:00z, 20 minutes before the plane disappeared. The folks at ATSB don't have me on their speed dial. So why bother? Won't make a difference anyway.

I suffer from a nagging sense that I am right, and have been right all along. My theory has required no modification over the years even as new evidence emerges. I respectfully waited a year before sharing all the details of how I believed Capt Zaharie caused the disappearance and subsequent murder of his passengers and crew.

However, recent mulling over the details of the KNOWN facts (no conjecturing about aliens or black holes), has only cemented my belief that Zaharie caused the disappearance of MH370.

16:26:22z "Malaysian 370 we are ready requesting flight level three five zero to Beijing."

I've read that from the Factual Report many times. It was a few weeks ago that I connected the dots. MH370 already had FL350 in the flight plan, and was scheduled to receive that clearance from Ho Chi Minh ATC. The request for FL350 is so out of place, and so unneeded, that it sticks out.

What's the big deal?

I admit it is from a western hemisphere pilot perspective (that's my caveat that I don't know procedural stuff in the Malaysian-part of the world) that I don't understand why this unusual language was used. Normally, if asking for a higher altitude when getting a clearance, it's because the filed flight plan does not include it. The western-style pilot speak would include something like "...requesting three five zero as a final." But that sort of vernacular is reserved when the flight plan has a higher than desired altitude, and the crew simply does not need or want to climb higher, or amend the ATC instruction en route.

There will be some who disagree with my evaluation, but I stand by my many thousands of hours as a a globally experienced heavy jet pilot. It was unusual.

I have to directly answer the question of: "why does this request for FL350 seem important?" In short, because in my scenario, Z would need the time at cruising at the 35,000 to prepare his plan. He would need to prepare the cabin for the pandemonium about to be visited upon the passengers and crew by disabling the handsets (no PAs would be possible), and possibly to disable one of the emergency locator transmitters located in the main cabin. Yes, just a theory, nothing else. Haters, please understand I am only interested in teasing out clues that may help find MH370.

17:01:17 "Malaysian aaaah three seven zero maintaining flight level three five zero." Nothing unusual about that call, and it is an expected one. Captain Zaharie has just affirmed that MH370 has reached 35,000. ATC would expect that confirmation. All is normal.

Available to Zaharie would be the time he would be crossing IGARI, the last navigation waypoint prior to crossing into the Ho Chi Minh airspace (known in aviation-speak as a FIR "Flight Information Region" boundary). This is important because up to IGARI, controllers might be sitting next to each other as the aircraft is guided through the country's airspace. On the other side of that boundary, controllers are sitting in another country and another part of the world.

A controller can't lean across and query the controller seated next to them "Hey Bob, have you heard from that guy I just handed off to you?" In a FIR boundary handoff, the controller in one country calls the other, and coordinates the handoff via phone (or perhaps electronically). Once that handoff is arranged the controller handing off the aircraft is done with it. They have other matters to attend to.

On the other end of the handoff, the receiving controller is awaiting for the aircraft to verbally "check in" so the formal procedure can be completed. They have other things to do than to watch one phosphor on a radar screen. They await a radio call.

In short, the nether regions between one country and another, a FIR boundary, is an excellent place to effect a head fake—and Zaharie would know precisely when the B777 would arrive at that boundary.

17:07:56z "Malaysian eight se...three seven zero maintaining flight level three five zero."

For years I agonized over that call. I blogged about it in "MH370: An Important Change in Protocol—A Clue?" I finally realized that the call at 17:07 was FO Fariq starting to say 87...then corrected it to 370. This is not unusual. Pilots often have to read the flight number off a piece of paper, or their schedule, or put it on the screen somewhere. We simply have too many flight numbers to remember the daily changing script.

Fariq misread his note, and saw an "8" instead of a "3," but quickly corrected himself.

This is a vital clue because he should never have made an unnecessary radio call anyway. As the pilot flying (PF) that was not his job to talk on the radio. That would have fallen to Zaharie to do, and he already made the earlier call.

That suggests to me that Zaharie was not in the cockpit when young FO Fariq made the radio call. Zaharie would either have stopped him from making the unneeded call, and he would never direct him to make a call that Z had made only a few minutes before. Some suggest that this call is to drop a hint that they were looking for a hand off to Ho Chi Minh but this is geographically too early, and is pointless.

From the time stamps we know that Z was in the cockpit at 17:01z. Had to be. He made a radio call. We know that FO Fariq was in the cockpit at 17:08z, but we don't know if Zaharie was there or not. The final call, the famous "Good night" call, was Capt Zaharie, made at 17:19z. We also know from the quality of his voice that he was not wearing his oxygen mask yet (it's a distinctive  Jacques-Cousteau-talking-underwater thing). That would be donned shortly.

The 18 minute spread in time from the initial call at FL350, and the last call, would allow at least 13-15 minutes for Zaharie to be in the cabin, return, then have young Fariq leave the cockpit under some instruction. Could be anything.

From there we know about the diversion, well-executed turn at the FIR boundary, and all the issues that began within a minute or so of the last known transmission by Captain Zahaire.

I cannot begin to express the disgust that envelops me when even discussing the potential that a captain, entrusted with the lives of passengers and crew, could be capable of doing such a heinous act.   Yet, in the face of real, tangible facts, an honest broker of MH370 information must acknowledge that Capt. Zahaire certainly unwittingly left a few bread crumbs suggesting as much.

MH370: An Important Change in Protocol—A Clue?

I've been following the events swirling around MH370 from day one. I was leaving on a trip to Constanta, Romania, when the news flash came across. I arrived in the hotel room after an 11 hour flight, and had TV on during my stay, following the unhappy story.

Of course I later found my voice in the Twitterverse, and love me or hate me, I have always tried to be a voice of calm and reason—all the while trying to be polite to my detractors (I do have a few). I bring years of Boeing experience into the discussion, and have spent many years in the professional airline world, as I continue to do.

With that as a backdrop, there's always been something nagging at me about the little we do know about MH370, the timeline, and her pilots. Something I could not put a finger on...something just seemed...so...so out of place.

I needed to dig deeper.

Pilots generally have the same quirks and voice mannerisms. We will often have the same "uhs" or inflections. We also rarely switch roles when it comes to radio work. The FO (there are exceptions, but that does not apply here) picks up the ATC clearance, and in the vernacular "works the radio" on the ground. Once airborne, whoever is not flying works the radio while the other pilot flies.

That in mind, when MH370 gets the clearance, it is the FO who speaks first (all times are UTC, and from the Factual Information report):

16:25:52 Fariq Hamid picks up his clearance to Beijing. He does not have an "uuuh" between Malaysian and 370. He somewhat stretches the "zerooo" but not too distinctly.

16:27:31 Fariq once again is on the radio, and with his distinctive lack of an "uuuh" requests a clearance for push back and start. It's virtually always the FO's job. Tonight is no different.

16:40:40 We hear Fariq accept the takeoff clearance. That's a little non-standard for my Western sensibilities. Much of the time the pilot who is not flying takes this radio call, but not always. In the industry, this role is called the "pilot monitoring". The other role, inventively, is the "pilot flying."

16:42:50 For the first time, we hear Captain Zaharie Shah talk. He has a distinctive "Malaysian...aaah...three seven zero" cadence. It's different. It's not Fariq. In fact, in the FI report, the transcription dutifully adds the "aaa" which was missing from the earlier transcripts with Fariq.

What this means to me is that Zaharie is now taking the role of pilot monitoring, and Fariq is the pilot flying. I would expect to hear mostly Z talking from here on out.

16:46:42 As custom dictates, Zaharie takes the handoff to Lumpur Radar. The flight is on the way, and the captain is not flying the airplane.

16:50:08 ATC clears MH370 to climb and maintain flight level 350. Zaharie accepts this clearance.

17:01:17 Zaharie checks in at level 350. This is standard stuff. He's verifying that the previously issued clearance has been reached. I often don't bother with this report myself, unless specifically asked. It's not wrong to report it either. Let's call it a discretionary report.

NOTE: The FI report has the transcription slightly wrong. The transcript has it as "Malaysian aaa three seven zero maintaining flight level three five zero." What he actually says is "[...] maintaining level three five zero" (he does not use the word "flight").

17:07:48 the Aircraft Communications and Addressing System (ACARS) makes its last transmission and goes silent. 

17:07:56 Z inexplicably reports his altitude again. Or was it Z? The voice pattern has changed. I swear it actually could be Fariq's voice. I can't pick up on the "aaa" It seems different. It's also odd because the previous report was given six minutes earlier, and there was no change in altitude, nor an apparent request to report the altitude. Something's different.

17:19:30 We hear the well-known "Good night, Malaysian aaa three seven zero" I noticed that the transcript does not record the "aaa" as it has been, but it's there.

Z's was the last voice we hear. Of that, there's no doubt.

17:21:13 Less than two minutes after Z's last transmission, the transponder stops reporting MH370's unique ATC-assigned code, and information drops from ATC radar screens. Military radar shows a hard left turn occurring at this time.

I had to resolve who the hell was talking 12 minutes before the final sign-off. Was it Z or Fariq?

I have some professional audio software that I ran the clip through. I concentrated on the "three seven zero maintaining level three five zero" which was clearly common between the call at 1707:56 and 17:19:30. The cadence is perfect. The time to say the phrase matches perfectly. I listened to it over and over.

It was Z.

So there's no doubt in my mind that Zaharie made the last call. He also made an oddly placed call just eight seconds after the ACARs last communication. That places him in the cockpit right before MH370 disappeared. But was he alone? We can't know based on ATC transmissions.

But here's the thing. WHY was he even talking on the radio? He actually should have been flying if normal protocols are being followed. At least, that's the way it should have been.

A little backdrop.

Fariq Hamid was being checked out as a B777 first officer. Captain Zaharie Shah was assigned as a check airman who would be assessing Fariq on his final training flight. Fariq was to receive his final evaluation on his next scheduled flight (Source: Factual Information, pg 14).

I confess to having no knowledge how MAS culture works with training flights, but if they follow Western-style culture, the training flights alternate flying duties and monitoring duties. In general terms, the check airman assigned to train a pilot will take the first leg of the journey. They often also like to fly the legs that are not involving landing on home turf...in other words, flying back to your home base is boring.

There's another reason check airmen normally fly the first leg. They want to show the newbie who's boss. It's an Alpha-male (or Alpha-female) thing where the check airman says, in effect, I fly better than you...I'm going to prove it by setting the standard on our first leg...I'll set the gold standard for you to follow.

They also want to get a chance to see how the new pilot performs and works in the cockpit. It's a rare check airman who lets the newbie fly first. It's just the way it is. At least in Western cockpits. I suspect that's probably true in Pacific Rim airlines.

So why the hell is Z even on the radios? He made it a choice not to fly that leg. Why?

***Conjecture alert. I'm just guessing here***

[Edit/addition based on some comments on this post] A poster suggested that Z might have flown first so that he had time to make changes to the Flight Management System (FMS). As the pilot monitoring, anything he might be doing with respect to "the box" would not seem out of place. That seems plausible to me.

I think it also comes down to a bit of compassion. IF Z was behind all this, he basically took some professional pity on Fariq, and at least let him fly for a bit. Even if Fariq did not know this was his final flight, Z knew.

How did Z wind up in the cockpit by himself? Simple. He would only have to order Fariq out under the guise of some instruction—get me some tea, for example.

With the sudden and inexplicable change in the flight path, there's no way that Fariq would have been docile and subservient. Fariq certainly was not flying. Fariq was new to the airplane, and was in the presence of a check airman. This was not a young pilot who was going to go rogue at that time. The ACARS shenanigans happened while Z was in the cockpit. The transponder went off line in less than 2 minutes while Z was demonstrably in the cockpit.

All of this happened precisely in the middle of a handoff between two countries. It could not have been more precisely timed. It was planned and well-executed by someone who was in the cockpit, by someone who was intimately knowledgable about the B777.

[Edit/addition based on a comment to this post] A really insightful poster suggested that the oddly timed altitude report was made to encourage a handoff to HCM. That's a little early to attempt that (MH370 was more than 50 miles from the ATC boundary at that point), but it is a very real possibility. For those unfamiliar with the concept, sometimes air traffic controllers simply forget about you. When you've passed a point where you'd expect a handoff, it's normal to say something to call attention back on yourself. I found a nifty trick is to hit a button on the transponder (the "Ident" button) which brightens up your data on their screen. It calls attention to you. Works nearly every time—hit that button, get a handoff.

Z's unsolicited altitude report 50 miles from boundary with HCM might have been just that. A way to get attention to MH30, and encourage an early handoff. Seems like a plausible thing,

My additional guess is that the oddly placed altitude report concurrent with the ACARS last communications was about the time Fariq was ordered out of the cockpit. He had to have been ordered out of the cockpit at some point. Perhaps Z was a bit rattled by his own actions, and for some reason reaffirmed his altitude unnecessarily. Pure conjecture, obviously—but if Z did indeed fly the aircraft into oblivion, Fariq would have been ordered out of the cockpit sometime after level off, and well before the transponder was disabled.

My nagging sense of something being out of place turns out to be that Z was not flying to begin with. It was also the odd second altitude report call. I'm satisfied with my research that it was indeed Zaharie making the last radio calls, placing him in the cockpit before MH370 disappeared.

The military radar did, however, capture the radar signature of MH370 passing near Penang...the boyhood home of Captain Zaharie Shah.

A Human Factors Aspect to MH370—It's Not Just Math

I've been musing for the past few weeks on my observation about the turn towards Mecca that may, or may not, have happened. I'm not someone inclined to work out the Inmarsat data and calculate all those scary formulas. I've gotten myself out there by posting what I thought really happened that night. What I failed to convey, I think, is that what happened to MH370 is a very human one.

My turn-towards-Mecca theory has been decried as not meeting the "ping ring" critera—mostly, I think—because I don't accept a straight path scenario. I've been quite clear that what I believe is just that: what I believe. I don't put it out there as the correct one, or even the only one. It's just one of many scenarios

I accept that the arcs do indeed represent a "somewhere along this line" location for MH370. So regardless of my personal hunch, the reality is that the arcs must be considered in any scenario one can concoct.

So in that vein, I want to share that my initial thought, looking at the arcs, was that there must have been some kind of turn towards the east in order to widen the gaps between the 21:40, 22:40, and the final ping (missing, of course, the 23:40 ping). It seemed visually evident that something changed in the direction of MH370 sometime after 21:40.

I say "visually" because I am disinclined to do all that heavy math. Besides, frankly, although I get the concept, I do not possess the skill set to crunch those kinds of numbers. I'll just let the creative side of my brain sort it out.

So when I worked out what may have happened, and really guessed about how far MH370 travelled in between pings, I came up with my estimate of when that turn towards the Mecca may have occurred (if indeed it happened at all). The next thing was all about trying to hit that arc around 0010z. To do that required pointing my vector towards the sun and see if the time/distance would work out roughly close.

It did. But this was simple circle drawing. No math involved.

Last week I wondered about the cloud cover. Just what did the pilot see as fuel was running lower than he'd ever seen it before? I found some archived satellite IR/visual satellite images that I overlaid in GoogleEarth, and roughly put them in place using the Australian and Sumatra coastlines to fix the images.

Another insightful moment.

With less than an hour's worth of fuel, there appears to be a solid undercast that was along the route if a southerly route was to be re-established. From experience, I know that this would have appeared to be a solid (or nearly solid) undercast all the way to the horizon for the pilot. Simply as a human factors thing, I tried to imagine the choice to be made: continue on and run out of fuel over an undercast, descend below the undercast while fuel remained, or try to find a path that offered clearer skies.

Not that he needed visual conditions of course. As an experienced aviator, flying through clouds was a routine experience. He was looking to set up the final plunge, and needed to ensure there were no ships around to witness it.

So he continued to fly along the dividing line between the undercast clouds, and the relatively clear area north of it.

As fuel began to dwindle to a precious few minutes, he would have started a descent below the clouds, sometime about 30 minutes before fuel exhaustion. Managing the fuel to ensure the tanks were nearly empty, his final plunge would have occurred on the clear area, north of the extensive cloud cover he was seeing to the south.

The images I include in this entry reflect an overview of the southerly path, and the diversion towards the NW, followed by a turn towards the sun. The zoomed in image shows a closer view of the last two hours.

Yes. Pure speculation with not one fact to back any of this up. Well, there are a few facts. The ping rings, the cloud cover, and the best estimate of time of fuel exhaustion.

Put this all together, and it ends at a location that is really close to the sonar pings heard on April 6th. Really close.

If MH370 is not found by June 2016 in the current search area, it will reaffirm in my mind that they've been looking in the wrong spot—guided there by math, having not considered the human factor.

My hunch about MH370's path—and it affects everything.

I had a bit of an epiphany yesterday.

If MH370 is actually found anywhere near the current search area, then there never was a pilot suicide scenario, and my theory was wrong. I, like seemingly most people, presumed a straight-ish path to fuel exhaustion. The number of possible paths is staggering but some pretty smart folks have come up with a probability map based on some form of straight-ish path solutions. IF MH370 is found in this area, I will owe his family very public apology for putting the suicide theory on the table.

In my earlier post, I laid out a case that Captain Zaharie Shah was solely responsible for the deaths of all those people in an as-yet-explained suicide flight in which innocents were taken. My case fell squarely on the presumption that if he did this, it was to hide the crime. He would not want his family name to be forever sullied with such a heinous act that would forever be associated with wanton evil.

In the back of my mind was the choice of flight path. Why that direction? Why not more to the south-west and in an even more remote area? It came down realizing that Zaharie wanted to have his final morning prayer before his own imminent death. It all made sense to me, and nicely explained why the path was were it was—it placed Captain Shah where he could see his first light, and have his required morning prayer. The timing of it all was just perfect.

Based on some really rough estimates of the general area, first light at 32,500 feet (or thereabouts) civil twilight would be around 23:30 UTC. There are so many variables with that, it's difficult to work with it. Firstly, the altitude generally causes solar events to happen about 10-12 minutes earlier than on the earth's surface. Secondly, well, it requires knowing where MH370 was. But since it was within a few weeks of the vernal equinox the Earth's terminator was somewhat north-south (not exactly, but close).

My epiphany occurred last night.

Mecca.

Or more precisely, the Ka'aba. Observant Muslims seek to face the Ka'aba when praying. I've flown on Kuwaiti Airways which displays, on a more or less continuous basis, the direction to the Ka'aba. This direction is always in relationship to the front of the airplane.

For his last and most important prayer of his life, Zaharie would have to face in the direction of the Ka'aba. There is software available to pilots who can plug in their altitude and route of flight, and it will provide the correct heading for Mecca, and the listing of prayer times. I presume that Zaharie would have had a similar tool available to him.

Zaharie would have been in a very nasty and unhappy place with all the dead people in the cabin. Under any normal circumstance, one could easily face the Ka'aba in an open area in the passenger cabin. But this was no normal circumstance. There would be, if the pilot-caused decompression theory is right, a lot of dead people in the cabin, likely many near the cockpit door. These would have been the last desperate people trying to enter the cockpit to save themselves—likely led by the young First Officer Fariq Hamid attempting to return after being locked out by Zaharie.

Death most likely occurred 5-6 hours earlier, and these bodies all would have been in nearing full rigor mortis in the chilly cabin. Moving them would be difficult and onerous. I doubt that is what happened, simply because facing the horror of his act would have been psychologically paralyzing.

No, what Zaharie would have likely done was to turn the plane towards the Ka'aba in Mecca. The cockpit of a Boeing 777 is large enough to offer a place on the floor to prostrate one's self if need be. The autopilot would be a snap to simply turn the heading to the desired direction, and the plane Mr. Boeing built would dutifully maintain that course.

My rough guess would be a true heading of about 304°. That's basically heading to the northwest. Of course, that is probably not precise enough, but the greater point is that at some point during his journey, Zaharie would have flown towards the northwest for nearly 30 minutes during that first light.

I will probably regret pointing this out, but that particular course does coincide with pointing towards Diego Garcia. Lest the stalwart fans of MH370-Diego-Garcia rejoice, there was not enough fuel at that point to even get close. That was not a destination. That's simply a geographical alignment, that's all.

So what happened after his final prayers?

I don't know. I presume that he would have turned the airplane around, and continued in broad daylight to the south until fuel exhaustion. At least that's what makes sense to me. A southerly route pointed away from civilization and ships. The final plunge he would take would be in full daylight, and he would want full control to the very end.

Some of you reading this may have noticed the timing of the turn towards the Ka'aba. Around 23:30 UTC. Yes, a guess, but it's close. Here's the key point: the "handshakes" occurred at regular intervals. 19:41, 20:41, 21:41, 22:41...but the 23:41 handshake is missing. IF my timing of the turn is in the ballpark, it's possible that the aircraft antenna had lost contact with the satellite, and was still trying to find it during that time. The airplane would have turned around and was flying towards Mecca with an antenna that was mis-oriented.

So here's my new take on the disappearance of MH370.

I still believe it was pilot suicide. I now believe that Zaharie actually turned the B777 towards Mecca so he could have a proper final prayer facing the correct direction. I think he then turned the airplane back towards the south, and crossed that Inmarsat 7th arc before he flew a high-speed dive into the water after fuel exhaustion.

The act of turning the plane to the NW for 25-30 minutes before resuming a southernly route would inherently cause the crossing of the arc to be much further north than is currently assumed.

If the MH370 is found anywhere in the southern arc, then the pilot suicide theory no longer makes any sense to me. With such meticulous planning, Zaharie would have certainly wanted to face Mecca, and he could not in the cabin of the B777. He would have had to point the nose in that direction.

***LET ME BE PERFECTLY CLEAR***: I do NOT presume that Captain Shah caused this because of his Muslim faith. I don't believe that for a moment. This heinous act could have been caused by a Catholic. A Mormon. Pick a faith. I don't have any reason to believe that religion had anything to do with MH370. If he did indeed cause the death of his passengers and crew, the motive and reasons went to his grave.

Here's a prediction I'll make: IF somehow a more precise path can be built on these assumptions I am now putting out there, then MH370 will be found significantly more to the north of the current search area. The aircraft will be shattered and the only identifiable parts will be the big things: gear, engine cores, perhaps the tail. A debris trail will be spread out with the current, with the heaviest parts near the entry point.

There will be no information on any recording device. Those would have been deactivated before the flight deviated from plan.

Find the plane, find the cockpit door. The truth of what happened that night will be etched in the desperate attempts to enter the locked cockpit by whatever means possible. That may be the only silent witness to that night that can be deciphered.

Find the wreckage. Find the cockpit door.

My Full MH370 Theory. What I withheld for a year.

I’ve been withholding my final clue since late March of 2014. It’s time for me to reveal what it is, and why I have been holding back on it.

But you are going to have to indulge me as I finish my full theory.

As I left it in Part 2 of my South Indian Ocean theory, I believe the captain was cold and miserable with the oxygen mask clamped to his face. He may only have had to endure this for a few hours, perhaps. He did his best to warm the cockpit using the bleed air system, and it certainly helped. But it would still be cold.

When he caused the aircraft to go “dark” electronically by pulling circuit breakers and shutting off everything—all the things that communicate—he also would literally cause the plane to go dark: he shut off all the external lights, the navigation lights and strobe lights—anything that would light the aircraft from the outside. To preclude anyone from seeing lights on the inside, he turned off the emergency lighting system, and turned off the cabin utility and lighting and in flight entertainment (IFE) systems. He de-powered the utility bus which sent power to the cabin lights. It was truly a dark airplane. He would have taken the precaution of turning off the cockpit dome light, and any reading lights.

He had one mission at this point. He pointed the airplane towards the South-South East and noted the time. He could not know if he successfully evaded being detected yet, but he would have tuned at least one radio to 121.5 MHz. That’s the universal emergency frequency. He knew any fighter sent to intercept him would fly alongside and attempt to communicate using that frequency. He listened for the MH370 callsign but heard none. Several hours into the flight, and no intercept, he would feel confident he had succeeded with his plan so far.

I seriously doubt that he would have sufficient oxygen to last all the way to fuel exhaustion, and he could not survive at high altitude without it. On any modern Boeing there are computer screens that will display many things. One of them is the oxygen pressure available to the flight deck. This is measured in pounds per square inch in an O2 tank, and is typically in the 1600 to 1800 pound range for larger cockpits (particularly long-range aircraft that might have three or more crew members like the B777). A warning will display CREW OXYGEN LOW at some point—the Boeing manual does not say exactly when—but I don’t believe the captain ever saw that.

There was no need to.

After he felt there was no one who would recover from the decompressed cabin, it was time to re-pressurize the cabin once again.

Reversing the order, he threw two switches to close the outflow valves, and placed the pressurization system back into the automatic mode. He could feel the pressure increasing in the cabin as the conditioned air began to press against the fuselage.

There are quite a few tools available to the captain. He could see the cabin temperatures in several zones, but the most important figure to him was the cabin altitude display. He needed to have sufficient pressure so he could finally remove that damn mask that was keeping him alive. He would have been watching the cabin begin to lower from his cruising altitude. He watched intently for the cabin to at the very least, register an altitude below 14,000—something that he could breath normally.

Being cautious not to succumb to hypoxia, he patiently waited until the cabin was finally below 10,000 feet.

Only then did he remove that mask that tormented him. His face would be deeply grooved with the outline of the plastic part covering his face.

It would have been a while since he heard any sounds coming from the cabin. The call “dings” on the intercom stopped well over an hour before. He re-powered the utility bus and restored some cabin lighting to the back of the plane. The autopilot was engaged and holding steady. He slid his seat back and to the left, unbuckled, and stood up.

Stepping back to the hardened cockpit door, he took a look through the security peep hole to see if there was anyone moving. Straining to see, he saw nothing. No movement at all.

I can’t even begin to imagine the horror of what happened next, but he had to open the door to take a look. What he saw would only be unnecessary conjecture on my part. I so won’t go there.

The captain may, or may not, have elected to do something quite natural. He had to use the bathroom. He would have had basically two choices, simply find a place in the cockpit, or actually step back and use the lavatory in first class.

I suspect that he may have actually used the forward lavatory, rather than soil the cockpit.

Whether or not he decided to walk through the airplane at this point is anybody’s guess. Well, actually, everything I’m writing is a guess. I’ll go with he did not. The horror of what he did probably sank in with what he was seeing in the cabin. He did not want any more of it.

He returned to the cockpit, and as a precaution, closed and locked the door.

At this point of his last flight, he successfully flew a B777 out over the water, and was now heading to the South Indian Ocean…just as he planned.

He had only one thing left to do.

He looked at his watch and looked at the fuel remaining. He still had three more hours to go. But it was not the fuel that had three more hours to go.

************************************

Now we come to what I believe is the reason for the South Indian Ocean. Why that path. Why that direction.

Take a look at this simulated depiction of the Earth about just over one hour before MH370 is calculated to run out of fuel. I used a solar system simulator to pick the date and time. I wanted to see what the conditions were around that area when the fuel ran out. Was it night? Daylight? What was going on. Could the plane’s final plunge be seen by anyone?

Then I noticed what you’re now noticing.

The captain, by all accounts, was a practicing Muslim. The most important prayers to a Muslim is the Fajr prayer. It is marked by the first light and ends at sunrise. It is the first of five daily prayers by practicing Muslims.

It simply jumped out at me. He was flying to dawn! He needed to pray the Fajr before he died, and he would have known where that would have occurred. As an airline pilot he would have had the software to determine his prayer times, and he certainly could have planned approximately where he needed to be at first light.

PLEASE UNDERSTAND. I am NOT suggesting the hijacking of MH370 by  the captain was because he was a Muslim. I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT IN ANY WAY. I simply believe BECAUSE he was a Muslim, he NEEDED to get his Fajr performed before he died. I have withheld this aspect of my theory out of religious respect, and hope that the plane would be found within a year. I fear the plane may never be found, so perhaps my clue may be of some worth in thinking where it is not.

Got it? No hate comments please. I’ve been respectful and patient.

Anyone ignoring this aspect of the mystery, combined with the observation I just offered, is simply ignoring a clue in front of them. The sunrise pattern must be taken into account when discussing where the airplane wound up.

This is why I don’t believe he flew north. The fuel exhaustion point would have been at night anywhere to the north. I don’t believe the Inmarsat rings too far to the west is right either. His final plunge would be sometime after sunrise. There is no way this occurred during darkness. The sun was above the horizon before the plane smashed into the ocean.

Let’s return to the cockpit again to finish out my theory.

It would have been difficult, even for a senior and experienced pilot, to predict with absolute accuracy when the B777 would run out of fuel. The flight management computer (FMC) has calculations that are pretty accurate, and it will provide some time information. Available to the captain would be a display of fuel burn and a very accurate fuel quantity indicating system. I’m pretty sure that he was managing the clock, watching the fuel, and watching the eastern horizon.

I suspect that as he flew further south-southeast, he may have hedged his calculations, and added a few more degrees to the left to ensure he had that last, first light.

There must have been relief on his part as he saw the unmistakable hint of light as the sun crept towards the horizon. If he flew directly east towards the sunrise, he would have artificially hastened a natural sunrise as the forward motion of the big Boeing moved against the Earth’s rotation. I presume that the flight path would have been, at the very least, somewhat parallel with the Earth’s shadow terminator line.

From his perch on the left seat of the cockpit, he would have had full view of the sunrise and may, in fact, have gotten out of his seat to perform the ritual sajdah in the space behind the captain and first officer’s seats.

The moment the sun crested the horizon, the obligatory Fajr would have been complete, and now the captain would be lost in his thoughts as he prepared for his own death.

A about an hour or so earlier, he passed a point beyond which there was no turning back. He had neither the fuel nor inclination to do so. There simply was no fuel to get to any airport at this point.

The captain picked this remote area of the world to hide his crime. He fully understood that even at that hour, search crews were looking for the aircraft in the Gulf of Thailand. He must have had some sort of satisfaction that his plan, for whatever reason he came up with it——worked. He needed to plan his final dive with minimum fuel on the aircraft so as not to create any kind of post-crash fire and subsequent smoke. Even in this remote area ships might spot the plume.

He felt confident that there was no way this act could ever be conclusively blamed on him. It must have been important to him to go through all the planning for this moment.

I’ve little doubt that he anticipated the suicidal dive he was about to take would destroy the plane, all the evidence, and send it to the bottom of a very deep sea. There would be no plan to attempt to ditch the airplane to keep it intact. Why go through that only to drown a miserable death? As I outlined a few entries ago, pilot suicides end in a violent crash, typically a nose dive. They are cowards.

What he could not have known, because it simply was too deep into the systems description—was for the entire flight, an antenna was trying to phone home.

Little bits of electronic crumbs were being left every hour.

As the fuel began to dwindle, one engine probably flamed out first. The engines did what they needed to do, and he did not need them anymore. As he practiced in his flight simulator, he turned off the autopilot, and banked the airplane towards the blue water as his final act.

As the airplane took that final plunge, the antenna noted the change in attitude, and attempted to connect one last time.

EPILOGUE

For the families of those lost on MH370, I believe your loved ones really did not suffer. I truly believe that the effects of hypoxia caused them to feel a sense of well-being although somewhat bewildered by what was happening. They simply fell asleep.

None of them would have been aware of anything or ever regained consciousness when the cabin re-pressurized.

I wish it had a different, happier, ending.

The Case for the South Indian Ocean Part 2

Over the last few blogs, I’ve been building my case for my personal theory about what happened to MH370. I’ve lost a few days with reading the new report released by the Malaysian government.

Some of you may even have read the somewhat alarmist-sounding tweet I sent out regarding the report. Inexplicably, Malaysia released a non-secure report that anyone with professional software (like Adobe Acrobat Pro) can simply edit the content and save the document with new content. I’ve little doubt that will happen. Some may even remember the debacle with the supposed iPhone image sent from Diego Garcia by a passenger of MH370. Anyone with a few dollars can edit the GPS metadata to make it appear that’s what happened.

I subsequently took a picture of a pink plastic chair, set the metadata to the same Diego Garcia location (and date and time, mind you) and tweeted that out. I proved that it was not difficult to spoof an image. Some went absolutely nuts when I did that—babbling about violating Twitter terms of agreement. Yikes.

But I digress.

So what is it about the South Indian Ocean that I think is the final resting place of the Boeing 777? And just where is it, in that vast ocean?

Let me take you back to the beginning of that awful day. I need only really start with MH370’s departure from KUL. I won’t attempt to describe all the detailed stuff about where it was, or what time it got to yadda yadda intersection. I really don’t care about that detail. It does not matter yet.

Here’s what I believe happened (Spoiler alert: I won’t be covering anything new here. It’s been tossed out there before):

At some point, just prior to entering Vietnamese airspace, a very carefully planned action was put into effect. I believe (let’s take that as a given…from here out. This is all just what I think happened) the captain concocted a reason for the young first officer (FO) to leave the flight deck.

Get me tea. Get me my bag in the back. Whatever. He created a reason for the FO to leave the flight deck. He was told to just leave the cockpit without a flight attendant entering. I don’t know Malaysian Airlines procedures, but airlines I am familiar with do not allow a pilot (intentionally) to be in the cockpit by themselves. Ever. A flight attendant must replace the departing pilot until they return.

Why? Simple. Who will open the door for the returning pilot?

It’s of course more complex than that, but basically you need someone to let the pilot back in—preferably someone not flying the plane at the time. So how did the FO allow the captain to send him out leaving the captain alone?

Again, simple. In the airline culture of that part of the world, captain is king. You don’t question authority. Especially a senior check airman. Especially when you are new to the airplane. It’s not done.

It’s not the time or place for me to go into recent headlines about unfortunate airline crashes, but the root cause is often culturally deeply engrained. Western cockpits have a deeply evolved Crew Resource Management (CRM) culture in which the cockpit works as an integrated crew. This is not uniformly true in a global sense. There’s no way to really tip-toe around it. Asian cockpits have a reputation for having difficult captains who simply will not allow themselves to be criticized or corrected…particularly by the perceived subordinate FO. There will be airline pilots “in the know” who will be silently nodding in agreement with me right now. Readers outside the airline industry won’t likely get it. As an aside, Asian airlines are working on solving this problem. They know they have a problem, and are diligently working to fix it.

Let me be clear. I am NOT suggesting that the captain of MH370 was such a person. I am suggesting that when a captain in that culture says “leave the cockpit now and get me a tea” you do it. You don’t question it.

Even if it means leaving that captain alone in the cockpit.

Why was the FO ordered out of the cockpit prior to entering Vietnamese airspace? If you want to create some confusion, that would be the time to make an unexpected maneuver. Like change directions without warning. And you can’t normally get away with that when you are flying with another pilot who’s not with your program.

The Air Traffic Control (ATC) handoff is rather mundane. Even when crossing country borders. There’s a bit of a window where you are in between controllers. As an aircraft approaches an international ATC boundary, a hand off occurs. It’s not particularly exotic. The controlling agency contacts the next “sector” and says basically, “Hey Ho Chi Minh, I’ve got MH370 approaching IGARI can you accept him?”

They do that because they don’t know what other controller is doing, or what aircraft they are dealing with. It’s basically a coordinated hand off. Can you take ‘em? Yep. Send ‘em over.

It’s almost that simple.

There’s a bit of an understood delay. The ATC controller tells the aircraft to contact the next controller, gives them a frequency, it gets acknowledged, and the controller doing the hand off is done. They don’t even think about it anymore. It just works.

Good night. See ya. (I know quite a few languages around the world for that hand off. My favorite in Hungarian is “Veeslat” Not sure how it’s spelled, but it does means “see ya”).

What’s happening on the other side?

The receiving controller is now expecting to hear from the new inbound aircraft. But they know it takes a few minutes for the process. The “Hey Joe, can you take…” to the “Good Evening, Ho Chi Minh, MH370 level 350” will take a bit of time. The time this can take starts to get even lengthier at night. There are not as many aircraft airborne, and frankly, I suspect, the controllers are not as attentive. At least it seems that way.

The handoff of MH370 occurs very early on Saturday morning. It may have been a somewhat quiet and sleepy time. It happens more than you might think.

The MH370 captain knows this. He’s highly experienced, and can expect just this kind of environment. If there were a time to initiate a plan to take control of an aircraft, and execute a diabolical plan, that would be exactly when it should be done. In the middle of the handoff.

Once the FO was out of the cockpit, and the captain alone, there was little that could be done to save the airplane from any experienced aviator with ill intent. Boeing makes a great hardened, bullet-proof cockpit door. It’s damn difficult to get through.

That’s the whole point of the door.

I won’t go into the specifics. As a professional aviator, I owe it to the community not to discuss exactly how the door works, but I feel comfortable with sharing that the door is under full control of the person in the cockpit. That’s all I’ll say.

Now it’s a just matter of getting the airplane to wherever the captain wanted to take it. But he had some natural issues to deal with. Namely the passengers and crew on the other side of the door. They were not interested in being part of the plan as they sit on the sidelines waiting for what’s next.

With a plane load of passengers, an able FO who could fly the airplane by himself (and who knew how the cockpit door worked), it would have been only a matter of time before the door would be breached. Yes, the door is a strong one, but it won’t take a continuous and vigorous assault. It’s presumed that any terrorist attempting to storm the door would be stopped by passengers and crew as the door buys time.

The scenario evolving on MH370 was never part of the equation.

As I outlined the process earlier, this was the time for the captain to deal with the passengers and crew. The captain donned the crew on-demand oxygen mask. He pushed two buttons, flipped two switches, and opened two valves to the outside pressure. This process was not immediate. There was no “fwoomp”, swirling smoke and dust as suddenly the cabin was at the same atmospheric pressure as the outside.

It takes time.

(NOTE: I am not going to attempt to account for the wild flight path prior to the turn towards the south. I won’t attempt to address the altitude excursions either. I will do that, but not with this entry)

The initial awareness of anyone on board would be through the ears. I presume the cabin would have been “climbing” at around 1,500-2,000 feet per minute. Assuming it was around 6,000 pressure altitude, about 4 minutes later the yellow cabin masks deployed from the passenger service units (PSUs).

Approaching the deployment of the masks, passengers would have almost certainly been aware something was wrong. Early effects of hypoxia would be setting in at different times for each person. One effect of hypoxia is a sense of well-being, almost euphoria. It does not sound overly unpleasant, but it would have been a confusing environment.

The sudden deployment of the yellow masks would be confirmation that something was seriously wrong. I doubt that the captain would have made any kind of public address…but who knows. Maybe he tried to explain or apologize to the passengers or crew. Hard to know.

The flight attendants and the first officer would certainly have known what was going on with the cabin pressure, and probably were not surprised when the masks came out. Pulling down the mask snaps the chemical generator into action, and oxygen flows to the user.

It also starts a 12-minute period until the oxygen is exhausted (there is a 22-minute option for the O2 generator, but I have no idea what version Malaysia chose). Once exhausted, there would be no more oxygen left to a passenger unless an unused mask was available to them.

The cabin would continue to climb during the depressurization process. To equalize to the altitude MH370 was at, would take approximately 18 minutes (a guess). With the initial 4 minutes until the masks deployed, the masks would have run out of available oxygen just about the time the cabin was fully depressurized.

The cabin temperature dropped during this time. As the pressurized air evacuated through the outflow valves, the remaining air expanded in the volume of the fuselage. This expansion of air will cool. How cold I don’t know. I’ve little doubt there is a formula for it—but suffice it to say it was cold.

The time of useful consciousness is measured in seconds at this point. As passengers oxygen ran out, they would have fallen unconscious not unlike a surgical procedure. Euphemistically speaking they fell asleep, and would never wake again.

The flight attendants and first officer had other tools at their disposal. They had walk-around bottles of oxygen available to them. These are tanks of O2 that, when paired with a special mask, allows crew members to move about the cabin assisting passengers during a loss-of-pressure event. These oxygen bottles have limited amounts of O2 available to them, but they typically have at least 30 minutes.

The crew in the cabin also would know that any unused yellow oxygen mask (one not yet pulled) would provide a lifeline of 12 more minutes of oxygen. Once the walk-around oxygen exhausted, the crew member would be stuck wherever the yellow mask was hanging. Based on the number of passengers on the aircraft, there would a limited supply available to crew.

The first officer would have been thinking about only one thing: get back into the cockpit. I’ve little doubt, absent any kind of an announcement to the passengers, he would assume that something was going very wrong in the cockpit, and would not connect the calamity to his captain.

Being on the wrong side of the armored door, the first officer would have used a special method (I won’t disclose) to attempt to reenter the cockpit. As I mentioned earlier, the door is under control by the cockpit, and any attempt to enter using “normal” methods can be overridden in a special way by the pilot. You’d want the pilot to have that ability.

Unless, of course, the aircraft is under control by a suicidal pilot.

There are ways of letting the cockpit know you want to get their attention. You’ve seen the flight attendants talking on what looks like a phone. It basically is exactly that. The handset has a button you can push that causes a “ding” sound in the cockpit. Normally, that results in one of the pilots answering with some kind of pleasantry.

Each “ding” would have told the captain that someone was still conscious in the cabin. He would have to have been on his own O2 mask, of course, and probably would be simply ignoring the calls for his attention. What he would have been doing, I suspect, was waiting for the chimes to stop.

Once the calls from the cabin stopped for an extended time, the captain would know he was the only conscious person aboard. As I discussed a few entries ago, the Helios accident investigation indicated that passengers were still alive (doubtfully conscious) at impact. Anyone planning this kind of event would have known this through a simple Internet search. The captain would need extended time to ensure those in the back of the plane were no longer alive.

The horror of what I am describing cannot be understated. It galls me that I even think a fellow pilot would be capable of such an act.

Yet, undeniably, it has happened. Pilots have committed suicide, taking passengers with them.

I’ve little doubt (in fact I know) people are upset that I suggest that the captain of MH370 committed what is undeniably a crime of historic proportions. I didn’t know the man. I don’t know what his frame of mind was like. I don’t know if he had a motive (although he must have had a reason known only to himself).

I’m sure he was a really nice guy. Someone who loved and was loved. But that was equally true of all those people on the plane that day.

What I do know, as a highly experienced pilot, that the known facts of the disappearance of MH370 fits a hijacking by a highly skilled pilot. One who intimately knew the Malaysian airspace, the Boeing 777, and could make the airplane disappear into the night.

The captain.

And he was the one who eventually turned the airplane south towards the Indian Ocean. So why there? The captain, by all accounts, was a highly respected and loved person. He would have been fully aware that suicidal pilots always become suspects after recovering the wreckage of their aircraft. The wreckage contains clues and silent testimony to what happened. When operating, the cockpit voice recorder and digital flight data recorder provide damning evidence.

He needed to ensure the plane would never be found.

Once the plane went missing, he anticipated that a search would ensue in the Gulf of Thailand. He needed to hide the B777 electronic signatures, the digital noise, and its ATC links. With the interest, he presumed, in the filed flight path, he basically did a head fake, and managed to escape attention before turning south, once he was clear of the shore-based radars.

He would be alone in a cold airplane. He had heaters available to him in the cockpit, but probably not enough to stay warm. His face would be stinging from the O2 mask. The mask keeping him alive would have also made him miserable. The mask has an elastic band that firmly clamps the life-saving oxygen mask to the wearer’s face. It works well, but it is also painful to wear over an extended time. I speak from experience. Any pilot who has worn these kinds of masks knows exactly what I mean.

As the sole user, the captain had hours and hours of available oxygen to him. But it is limited. I sincerely doubt that there was sufficient oxygen to get him to fuel exhaustion.

The captain had a trick up his sleeve, and he was ready to use it.


NEXT: I finally reveal my hidden clue I've been holding for almost a year.