On Tuesday a "startlingly simple" theory explaining the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines jet began making the rounds on social media and among journalists interested in the story. According to a fellow named Chris Goodfellow, the plane caught fire, and the pilot headed to a nearby airport to save the craft, eventually crashing into the Indian Ocean.
Goodfellow, whom Wired identifies as having "20 years experience as a Canadian Class-1 instrumented-rated pilot for multi-engine planes", begins with a dismissive wave toward the aviation experts who have been clogging the news networks.
He says that he "tends to look for a simpler explanation".
He then theorises that a fire, possibly electrical or from an overheated tire on takeoff, sent smoke into the cockpit shortly after the crew signs off with Malaysian air traffic controllers.
The pilot executes a sharp left turn and heads for a nearby emergency landing spot, while turning off electronics - such as the transponder - in order to isolate the problem.
"Zaharie Ahmad Shah was a very experienced senior captain with 18,000 hours of flight time," he writes. "We old pilots were drilled to know what is the closest airport of safe harbor while in cruise."
A quick search of Google Earth gives Goodfellow a candidate: Pulau Langkawi.
The theory "fits the facts" and "makes sense", writes Business Insider's Henry Blodget. "It requires no fantastically brilliant pre-planning or execution or motives."
Only it very likely didn't happen that way - as considerable information that was already in the public realm contradicts the story. By Tuesday evening, writers and commentators were picking Goodfellow's post apart.
"Goodfellow's account is emotionally compelling, and it is based on some of the most important facts that have been established so far," writes Jeff Wise in Slate. "And it is simple - to a fault."
"While it's true that MH370 did turn toward Langkawi and wound up overflying it, whoever was at the controls continued to maneuver after that point as well, turning sharply right at VAMPI waypoint, then left again at GIVAL," he says. "Such vigorous navigating would have been impossible for unconscious men."
Goodfellow's theory fails further when one remembers the electronic ping detected by the Inmarsat satellite at 8:11 on the morning of March 8. According to analysis provided by the Malaysian and United States governments, the pings narrowed the location of MH370 at that moment to one of two arcs, one in Central Asia and the other in the southern Indian Ocean. As MH370 flew from its original course toward Langkawi, it was headed toward neither. Without human intervention - which would go against Goodfellow's theory - it simply could not have reached the position we know it attained at 8:11 a.m.
There still should have been a distress call, Greg Feith, a former National Transportation Safety Board crash investigator, told NBC News.
"Typically, with an electrical fire, you'll have smoke before you have fire," he said. "You can do some troubleshooting. And if the systems are still up and running, you can get off a mayday call" and pilots can put on an oxygen mask, Feith said.
Nine hours after its first article on the subject Business Insider ran a follow-up, with reaction from pilots.
Read news in full 19/03/14 Anthony Zurcher/Echo Chambers/BBC News
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