Kuala Lumpur: The mysterious disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines (MAS) Flight MH370 since Saturday continues to baffle experts around the world.
At this point, an aviation expert has suggested historical evidence leading to six major reasons for the disappearance of the 11-year-old Boeing 777-200ER aircraft used for the flight.
The reasons he cited were a combination of technical and pilot errors leading to a snowballing effect, structural disintegration, human factors, bad weather, total electrical failure and hijacking.
Frost and Sullivan Asia Pacific Aerospace and Defence Consultant Ravi Madavaram said there was no single factor that general led to an airplane crash but a combination of technical glitches and pilot decisions.
In a statement here Tuesday, he said each of these glitches and decisions taken independently were harmless and often happened.
"This is what happened to Air France 447. There was no distress signal from Air France 447 as the pilots did not realise that they were going to crash until 10 seconds before crashing," he explained.
On structural disintegration, Madavaram said structural failure of an aircraft could cause pilots to lose control.
Touching on human factors, he stressed that deliberate actions by passengers or pilots to crash an aircraft had been highlighted in the 9/11 World Trade Centre incidents, which brought human factors to the fore.
The expert pointed out that bad weather conditions such as snow, fog, rain, and ice could affect the performance of an aircraft and result in a crash.
He said total electrical failure could occur in general aviation aircraft, and there were three types of electrical power sources ? two generators (each engine has one), APU (Auxiliary Power Unit) and RAT (Ram Air Turbine).
Madavaram ruled out the possibility that MH370 was hijacked, because it was impossible for the aircraft to have escaped all radar detection in the area where it was travelling.
Elaborating further, he said every commercial civil aircraft would have Emergency Locator Transmitters (ELT), and it would be activated during a crash based on the gravity force they experience or by pilots input.
He said another beacon was attached to the flight recorder or the black box, called Underwater Locator Beacon (ULB), and this black box beacon would be activated when it came in contact with water.
"The crash sometimes happens within a time frame of 15 minutes and pilots may realise that a crash is imminent only five to 10 seconds before a crash.
"Only after 30 minutes to an hour, does the ATC (Air Traffic Centre) realise that something is wrong and starts looking for the aircraft, by which time, the beacons are well underwater," he explained.
Read news in full 11/03/14 Bernama
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