Part 2 of my diatribe:
Being in aviation, heck, having grown up in aviation, I've been fed information about aircraft crash investigations nearly my whole life. There is almost always one consistent factor that arises in a crash investigation: the cause of a crash is almost never due to one thing but a number of things (usually very strange or odd events) working against the dynamics of safe flight.
90% of the time, crashes are attributed, generally speaking, to crew action or inaction. While the flight crews do assign a certain magnitude of blame to themselves when they sit in the seats, it's rare (if it ever happens) that they simply "Whoopsie" and crash an airplane like a 16 year-old with the keys to the family car.
Usually, it's a bunch of factors leading up to the "Whoopsie" that causes the pilots to do something out of the ordinary which subsequently ends up in a crash. Such was the case with AF447 - the co-pilot basically violated the first rule of stall procedures but not until after he had bells, whistles, and everything else in the world blaring in his ears. Having worked on aircraft for a number of years and having been heavily involved with every aspect of the complex avionics systems, I do know that one thing aviation is good at is finding statistical anomalies. Airlines want to keep their planes flying as long as possible because that's how they're making money. They make no money sitting on the ground. So, when an airline has 100, 200, or even 500 airplanes, they're running hundreds of flights each day. Hundreds of flights each day, adds up to tens of thousands of flights a year and hundreds of thousands of flights over the years. With the complexities that aircraft have, it is not unlikely that a strange situation will occur where you say "What are the odds that 'x' and 'y' and 'z' and 'xx' and 'yy' and 'zz' happened all at the same time? Well, actually, I've repaired a number of aircraft where that just so happened to be the case. Sometimes you have to really think outside the box and when you explain it to your manager or to the maintenance operations center, you say, "Yeah. The plane's been flying like that for two years - at least. No, sir, I don't know why it's never been written up before. Yes, sir, I know it sounds crazy but it's the only explanation. Yes, sir, that wire was never even installed in the connector."
It happens. I see stuff day in and day out and you scratch your head and say "Damn. How the heck did it get like that?"
So, knowing all that, and as much as I like to think a nefarious pilot stole an airplane and is packing it full of cocaine and heroin for some South American drug lord - I seriously doubt that's what happened. Aliens didn't abduct it. And though pilot suicide is possible, I don't necessarily completely buy it either.
I think it's every bit as likely, given what I've seen in past accident investigations that the crew may have entered their flight plan incorrectly and, yep, you guessed it, never even noticed the aircraft turned. A lot of Asian airlines (particularly the Koreans) have come under a lot of scrutiny in the past because of Crew Resource Management - aka - the first officer isn't allowed to tell the big man in the left seat that he screwed up.
It happens. I've seen aircraft nearly break their tails off because flight crews entered a landing weight 100,000 lbs. heavier (or was it lighter? I can't remember
) than it was supposed to be. And maybe the first officer noticed it and decided it was best to keep his mouth shut. Or, maybe the captain was in the bathroom when the plane turned and the first officer made the mistake. Or vice versa. Remember, human factors are the biggest causes of accidents and incidents in aviation.
After "The Turn," I think it's every bit as likely that something else happened. A fire broke out, there was rapid decompression, you name it... Or maybe the crew got locked out of the cockpit (yeah that's happened too). Why? Because another set of unlikely events occurred. Someone forgot to store some Lithium Ion batteries correctly. Someone pencil-whipped a structural inspection. Someone did this... Someone did that... That's what happens in scenarios like this. You just say "You mean to tell me that 'so and so did this' and 'so and so did that?'" Yep... That's exactly what I'm saying.
Now, suddenly, there's some sort of emergency on board the aircraft, you're headed in the wrong direction, and the captain is back there choking to death on burning lithium-ion battery fumes as he beats on the cockpit door he's locked himself out of. Then he hears the lavatory door open and the first officers steps out from behind him.
Or, maybe, everyone's panicking and you're the first officer with 2,000 hours in the right seat while the captain is snoozing... What do you do? Wake him up or fix the problem? Maybe you figure you'll go to a higher altitude to choke the fire out. Maybe you make a few other turns to try and get yourself back on course. Maybe you just make some flat out panicky mistakes.
Or, maybe junior was locked out of the bathroom and the captain with all those flight hours made a few mistakes. It can happen. Maybe after all that happened, they lost pressurization, had a new heading dialed in on the autopilot and they all suffocated. But, the 777 being the airplane that it is, didn't crash until it ran out of fuel.
Or, maybe the mechanic forgot to take his wrench out from under the electrical panel and as the plane was flying it was bouncing around shorting out all the electrical systems and starting fires.
I'm not saying there was a fire. I'm not saying the crews DID enter something incorrectly. What I'm saying is that if/when the investigation comes out, you will read about things just LIKE that. Everything adds up to catastrophe - from the amount of sleep the flights crews had the night before, to the moment the plane drops out of the sky.
I'll admit, a good aviation mystery floors me and I love to speculate as much as the next person but it'll most likely be something far more rational than what most are thinking. Just remember... "A series of unfortunate and untimely events..." That's the type of wording you'll see in most investigations.
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I feel like a mushroom, kept in the dark and fed BS.
