MISSING MH370: Fishermen find life raft near PD

[BlueStreak]

33. Just a theory ...

It was dark. They lost all their instruments. Their radio was only the low power system -- only good for 20 miles or something -- not enough to talk to ATC where they were when the problem happened.

They were from Malaysia and had flown for decades. They made a decision that if they had to navigate by sight at night, they wanted it to be on approach to Kuala Lampur. Their flight path (assuming the reports they headed back to Malaysia are correct) was consistent with this thought process. On a clear night, they should have been able to see some light from Malaysia and they headed for an approach over the strait then turned left. If there are any international pilots out there, maybe they can tell us if that would be the normal approach to Kuala Lampur -- heading south down the strait. Even if it isn't the normal approach, it would be a good way to navigate visually because these pilots were intimately familiar with that coastline.

And they probably didn't know exactly what was wrong with the aircraft. When they made the turn-around, they may not have made conscious calculations as to whether they had enough juice to make it to Kuala Lampur. They may have just thought. "OK, this is a really crippled craft and we have to fly by the seat of our pants, but for now we are able to control this. Let's head back to home base."

As I say, it is just a theory, but I can easily see this happening under the circumstances.