Hacker News Reader

i don't know these people and I'm not a pilot, but is it possible the Bonin wanted to crash the plane? I find it hard to believe that he would continue to pull back on the stick almost the entire time and not 'share' that information, and after Robert took control (by stating 'Give me the controls!'. Just wondering if this is something that would be looked into.

View on HN

I believe Bonin's wife appears on the passenger manifest, which makes a suicide even more unlikely.

Technically possible but seemingly unlikely. I'm leaning towards Occam's razor here: that would be an awful lot of acting fairly consistent with panicked, unexperienced actions, and if you're a pilot it's not exactly difficult to crash the plane if you want to. Additionally, the decision to fly into the storm wasn't Bonin's, so if he did decide to crash the plane in this manner it would have been a very rapid decision, or a result of pretty specific deliberations like "next time the computer goes into alternate mode and there is confusion and panic in the cockpit I will do it," which again runs against the razor.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com