As six years have passed since Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 went missing with over 200 people on board, their exact fate being unknown to this day, it seems that yet another theory about what might’ve happened to the airliner has emerged.
According to the Sunday Mirror, the theory in question, first brought forth by amateur detective named Mick Gilbert and later mentioned by journalist Ean Higgings, author of “The Hunt for MH370”, postulates that a “devastating blaze” broke out in the cockpit some 40 minutes into the flight when “the windshield heater on the pilot's side caught fire”.
The ensuing fire could’ve resulted in the destruction of some of the plane’s circuits, like the secondary radar transponder and the communication systems, and when the pilots proceeded to cut the power to the heater, it would’ve allegedly led to the satellite data unit being switched off as well.
Then, when the pilots donned their oxygen masks and one of them went to combat the fire, Ean explains as cited by the newspaper, one of the masks got yanked out of its socket, which would’ve led to the cockpit being filled with “highly flammable” contents of the oxygen bottle, thus leading to an explosion and a subsequent rapid decompression of the plane.
The passengers would then have only “12 minutes of air in the out of control plane”, courtesy of their own oxygen masks, while the surviving pilot would be left with a decision: try and crash land the plane in “over Penang, a heavily built up area”, in order to try and save himself and the surviving crew at the expense of the people below, or to divert the plane to the Southern Indian Ocean and crash land in the sea.
The media outlet points out, however, that there’s no concrete evidence supporting this particular theory.
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared from radar screens with 239 passengers and crew on board on March 8, 2014, during a handover from Malaysian to Vietnamese air traffic controllers while on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
And while there are plenty of theories about what happened to the airliner out there, the ultimate fate of MH370 remains unknown.
