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Comment by lolo_ | Hacker News Reader

Of course it's really early so you have to be very careful as to making judgements at this point, but if it really is pilot murder/suicide there is some (limited) precedence:-

* An EgyptAir flight in 1999 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EgyptAir_Flight_990

* A Silkair (Singapore airline) flight in 1997 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SilkAir_Flight_185

There is debate in both flights as to whether it was murder/suicide, but the evidence is totally overwhelming that it was. Horrific but thankfully massively rare (as you might expect.) I do hope this isn't the cause here :(

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The Egyptair flight had the crashing pilot saying prayers to Allah all the way down, captured on the voice recorder. The engines were shut off and the other officer was fighting the stick all the way down. There is zero doubt as to what happened, only a political cover up by Egypt air authorities after they realised what had happened.

Yes this is what I said - 'but the evidence is totally overwhelming that it was'. But it is worth highlighting, particularly in the Egyptair case!

The thing about those two flights is the pilots tried to make it look like an accident - but was ultimately determined to be intentional.

In this case it would seem that no effort was made to hide the fact it was intentional.

I don't think we know enough at this point to be sure of that at all (and we don't even know if it's murder/suicide.) Also I don't think you are correct about the Egyptair flight - that was more of a sudden dive, whereas on the Silkair flight the perpetrator intentionally disconnected the flight data and cockpit voice recorders.

Just because the governments of the countries involved didn't like the outcome of the investigations (far more so in the case of the Egyptair flight) doesn't mean it was covered up by the perpetrators, this was clearly for political/religious reasons - the failure mode suggested by the Egyptian investigators was totally unsupported by evidence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAM_Mozambique_Airlines_Flight_...

Also

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Air_Maroc_Flight_630

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines_Flight_350

...and of course deep suspicions remain about MH370.

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