Malaysia Airliner Communications Shut Down Separately: US Officials Say

[Xithras]

60. Yes, eventually. That could be what took it down.

The theory is based on events that have taken other aircraft down in the past. Can a fire erupt quickly enough to incapacitate the flight crew? Yes, it's happened before. Can a fire take out specific aircraft systems while leaving others operational? Yes, it's happened before. Can a smoldering fire in a low oxygen environment continue to do damage? Sure, ask any firefighter. A fire in a low oxygen environment can burn for hours or days, slowly spreading through the remaining combustible material.

For the theory to work, the fire only needs to have done two things: 1) Prevented the flight crew from sending a distress call, which we know is ENTIRELY possible from previous crashes. 2) Eliminated cabin pressurization. In fact, this step may not have even been needed. The original site that I picked this theory up at contained a reply by a pilot stating that many older pilots were once taught to depressurize the cabin in response to a major onboard fire, to reduce the amount of oxygen available to it and slow it down. In a real disaster, the crew might have depressurized the cabin THEMSELVES in a desperate attempt to get the flames under control. But even without this step, it's plausible that an onboard fire could have rapidly eliminated the cabin pressurization systems on its own.

If the oxygen was cut off before the aircraft skin was breached, the fire would have slowed to a crawl and the flames would have almost vanished. They would have continued to burn slowly, fed only by the chemicals outgassed from the materials in the aircraft. In that condition, the flames would have slowly spread for hours, taking out system after system. If it didn't run out of fuel first, it would have eventually taken out the autopilot or breached the aircrafts skin, either of which would have brought it down.