New MH370 debris suggests that pilots lowered landing gear
thetimes.co.uk
thetimes.co.uk
It's hard to imagine a legitimate reason for lowering the landing gear if not landing. On water, as the article explains, that would make things even worse.
I find it absurd that anyone would find this proof or even a suggestion that the plane was deliberately crashed.
If the pilot or other member of the crew wanted to crash, an unrecoverable nosedive or stall out seems much easier to concoct than "deploying the gear" at the last second once a nighttime middle of the ocean landing was required.
How long would it take to deploy the gear? 15 seconds? Plenty of time for someone else to rescind the request. How long to intentionally nose dive from 2k feet ensuring death? I'm guessing it would be almost instantaneous.
Additionally, the Sully incident is famous enough that a pilot should have read about it.
To me, this move is more logical if you assume the pilot wanted to die as quick as possible, the nose wouldn't tear apart, only the back like it happened with this passenger jet: https://youtu.be/KCuh_2M4o3A?t=293
If you wanted to kill everyone on the plane you would not attempt a conventional water landing gear or not.
In the end, I'm not settled on this & we really need to find & recover the plane.