https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370
A large airliner carrying more than 200 people disappeared, and over the past 8 years, we still have not found the main body of the airplane or the black boxes.
What we have are pretty good 400x400m maps, and increasingly more 100x100m maps.
I do hope for a resolution for MH370 one day but we know the bullet points: it was a deliberate action by the pilot (and/or the co-pilot) to depressurize the plane, run it out into the ocean and (most likely) make a "soft" landing after which it would fill with water and sink. There's alot of evidence for this and no other proposed scenario fits the evidence.
I'm a certified commercial pilot and I'm researched this incident extensively.
That's the most plausible conclusion that I can come to. The precise turning to attempt to evade radar at the start (even the military radars) must have meant extremely precise planning at the start.
There are a lot of other cockpit maneuveurs and flip switching you'd have to go to during this phase but I won't get into that.
You can depressurize it at altitude to kill the passengers and then put it into the furthest reaches of the ocean.
It's a very sad situation all around but I can't find any facts that would point to other alternatives.
I always imagined that our inability to find the thing was suggestive of a high speed impact that disintegrated the plane.
Since it was likely on autopilot, it would behave in certain predictable ways. If it was being hand flown once it ran out of fuel, who knows.
Why do you think that's likely? Because it was a long flight (to wherever it crashed), and pilots tend to use autopilot on long flights? Or is there some other reason?
Would the pilot be able to breathe at the altitude he was flying at? I presume he wouldn't have enough emergency oxygen for the entire time it takes to get to the presumed crash area.
Given the debris that has washed up on various coastlines, would you assume it was a soft landing or hard crash?
What's your take on theory that the plane had a fire and the pilot maneuvered the plane to a high altitude to snuff out the fire, then away from populated areas, then he himself passed away and the plane drifted on its deep ocean course until it crashed?
Seems busted:
Indeed the same thing I was thinking of, I wonder if this seafloor mapping thing will eventually discover the plane. Though perhaps the resolution is not adequate?
Edit: Someone (actual username :) ) just posted above that the grid cells are between 100x100m and 800x800m so that does indeed not sound adequate to detect a 777 accurately, sadly. The whole thing would easily fit into one grid cell of the smallest dimension.