A cleaner version of the above:

Loose ends:

​Did the lithium ion batteries catch fire, either before the oxygen-fed fire or as a result of it?

What did drilling rig worker Mike McKay see that night? He wrote a very detailed report of something burning in the sky. If the flash fire burned through the hull, the escaping fumes and flames would have made for a spectacular display in the night sky. While it appeared to McKay that the object descended directly into the water, his observation could also be explained, due to the geometry, by a plane quickly descending and heading west.

Could the Kota Bharu fishermen have seen MH370 as it rapidly descended on its return westbound? The timing and aircraft behavior both fit.

A Japan Air Lines captain heard a somewhat incoherent radio call on the emergency frequency just after the time MH370 went silent. Was this a call for help?

March 2014 media graphics show radar hits in the northern reaches of the Malacca Strait. Could these be of MH370?

Evidence: The New Straits Times said ... the Boeing 777-200ER dropped to 5,000 feet (1,500m) to "evade commercial radar detection".

The Straits Times had much of the Malacca Strait flight path correct.

ATSB's early analysis is essentially correct.  My notation in light blue.

            Sometime after the 0011 hour ping, MH370 finally runs out of fuel. The plane has been flying with a great amount of trim to cause the plane to “lean” onto the good engine; the loss of right engine thrust rolls the plane to immediately into a right turn until the autopilot can readjust the trim. The plane is now gliding to the southwest. The ram air turbine, an emergency generator, is automatically deployed to restore electrical and hydraulic power to the remaining systems.

            At about 0019 hours, MH370’s SATCOM issues another log-on request having just been powered up for the third time this flight. It will be the last the world hears from MH370 until its final resting place is discovered.

            The splashdown was a crude belly flop but still good enough to only cause the loss of a wing or two. Landing with no flaps or slats (no data bus, no pilots), the landing is a rough one but the fuselage remains intact. With the cabin breached in multiple places, the plane fills with water and sinks within a few hours with little loss of contents. What debris does escape may someday be found on a Madagascar or African beach. Otherwise, the debris will forever circle counter-clockwise in the Southern Indian Ocean current. One is reminded of US Airways Flight 1549 where pilots Sullenberger and Skiles ditched an Airbus A320 into the Hudson River. Not only did the plane remain intact, there was no aircraft or content debris.
            The plane crashed into the Southern Indian Ocean west of the Zenith Plateau, west of Exmouth Australia. This is at roughly 21 degrees south, 104 degrees east. The ATSB’s first attempt at locating the crash site was actually quite close.

Evidence: The satellite ping BTO (burst timing offset) places this western extreme at 80 west of the aircraft upset noted for 1822 hours. This location is about N6°, E94°.

            At about 1953 hours, the plane is at its western-most excursion and headed south towards the Southern Indian Ocean. MH370 SATCOM terminal automatically continues to send hourly satellite pings as it proceeds on its ever-straightening course to the southeast. MH370 continues to fly along at a relatively low altitude (about 10,000 feet) and airspeed (330 knots) towards the northwestern corner of Australia.

Evidence: Katherine Tee gives a very detailed account of what she saw, where she saw it, and when she saw it at: https://saucysailoress.wordpress.com/.

             With a persistent load and thrust imbalance plus left-side fuselage damage, MH370 can do no better than fly in an ever-increasing radius left turn -- an exponential spiral. This left turn will not stop for the next six hours but will become less pronounced as the fuel load gets balanced due to the fuel management system moving all available fuel over to the right engine. This left turn first takes MH370 to the east then up to the north before continuing south, all over the Malacca Strait (see graphic on first page and below).

            Another side effect of the flash fire is the loss of the inertial guidance system. The autopilot now relies on the standby attitude guidance system and little else as all other navigational systems -- GPS, intertial, magnetic, ground-based beacons -- are broken and without a working data bus.

Evidence: The Inmarsat satellite receives a log-on request, the equivalent of a cold boot, from MH370 at 1825 hours. The satellite data indicates MH370 is about 40 miles west of the last radar data; it also indicates the plane is in an aggressive climb. Since the data buses are burnt through, there is no ACARS data, no nav data, no AES ID, and no flight ID for the rest of the flight.

            At the point of upset, Boeing’s autopilot system goes into Flight Envelope Protection mode or, in other words, the autopilot takes control until the humans can sort out the problems. The autopilot begins by attempting to level the wings and bringing in some more power, including from the left engine. The left engine never does restart but the Left Main Bus Tie did get re-activated in order to restart the left engine, resulting in electrical power going to many of the electronics that have been off since the initial turnback. The SATCOM terminal receives power and begins transmitting, giving the world the first signs of life from MH370.           

             MH370 passes Penang, turns northwest, and begins a climb that places it in view of radar. Soon, the plane stops its short climb and begins a descent due to the plane’s now reduced airspeed. The descent continues through the previous straight-and-level altitude, sending the plane ever closer to the water’s surface. Now at a higher airspeed than before, the plane arrests its descent and begins to climb once again. This phugoid oscillation can be seen in the radar display where the upper altitude extremes make the plane visible but the lower excursion puts the plane below radar range.
            MH370’s average airspeed through the Malacca Strait is about 330 knots, the appropriate initial airspeed for an approach. While Fariq trimmed the airplane for level flight, the top of the second oscillation caused the airplane to roll to the left due to an imbalanced aircraft. Not only is the thrust unequal (no left engine, right only), the left fuel tank hasn’t been touched since the left engine was shut down. The left turn starts off gradually but becomes more pronounced and risks putting the plane into a classic graveyard spiral. The time is 1822 hours (02:22 local time). MH370 drops again below radar coverage, never to be seen on radar again.

Evidence: Fariq's cell phone is detected by a Penang cell tower trying to connect for service.

Fariq waits for his phone to show cell service so he can call ATC and land. Crossing Penang, he turns the plane to the northwest to keep it over water, the Malacca Strait. Now well below 10,000 feet, Fariq trims the aircraft to hold altitude; the autopilot holds a constant heading to the northwest. Fariq soon finds himself losing consciousness even though he believes he should have breathable air. MH370 is now a ghost ship with no life on board.
            The plane is blind to the world as there is no working navigation system and autopilot flight programming to make use of it. There is no GPS, no waypoints, no intersections, and certainly no straight lines. Likewise, the world cannot see the plane as almost all communication systems are disabled. Only the bounced signals of military radar provide the slightest clue of what’s happening to MH370 and even then the signals aren’t continuous with a large gap existing.

Evidence: Most of MH370's electronics are shut off, with no further transmissions of voice or data.

             With the left engine shut down and the Left Main Bus Tie (electrical power) cut, most of the remaining electronics are disabled. The pilots turn the now-darkened MH370 to the west and throttle back the right engine as they begin a rapid descent. Descent throttle settings are such that the engine continues to produce good forward speed without exceeding the structural limits of the aircraft. The throttle setting is also one that, upon leveling off, puts the aircraft at an appropriate approach airspeed in anticipation for landing. Co-pilot Fariq starts to plan his arrival in Penang by looking up the telephone numbers for local ATC so he can alert them to his arrival and need for fire equipment. 

            Preparations for the last flight of MH370 started out as normal as any other flight leaving Kuala Lumpur with the ground crew was performing maintenance on the Boeing 777. In the two months since the previous check, the oxygen tanks had lost about 40% of their charge. The loss could have been spread over the two-month period and assumed to be due to pilots regularly checking the equipment; this was the assumption of the Kuala Lumpur ground crew. However, the oxygen leak was more serious than thought, with most of the recent loss occurring over just the past day or two. The recharge only added more stress to an already weakened system; any overcharge would have just compounded the situation.
            MH370’s takeoff was completely normal, followed by ATC (air traffic control) instructions to turn to the right and climb to 18,000 feet. But already the oxygen tanks were leaking in the electronics bay but the plane's internal airflow kept the levels to a safe level. As the cabin altitude rose to the usual 8,000 foot level, the low air pressure only accelerated the oxygen leak. At some point, an oxygen line or regulator blew off, quickly releasing the full oxygen load into the small volume of the electronics bay. It didn't take much for an ignition source to start a flash fire that quickly burned throughout the bay, much like the Apollo 1 spacecraft accident of 1967. With few flammable items to support combustion, the fire extinguished itself almost as soon as it began but the damage was done, nonetheless.

            The flash fire didn't burn long enough nor hot enough to damage much of the equipment but the interconnecting wiring was heavily damaged. The B777 uses high-speed serial data buses (similar to USB) to route data between the various components that supply data and use that data. The non-essential components, such as the radio altimeter and engine data interface unit, only have a single data bus connected to it. Components essential to safe flight, such as the primary flight computer and autopilot flight director computer, are connected together with three redundant data buses to insure high reliability. This triple redundancy is what saved MH370 from an immediate crash into the South China Sea.

            The disaster unfolds in three parts: the take-off/emergency/return, the Malacca Strait maneuvers, and the final trip to the southeast. Each of these portions stands alone and, thus, a change of an element in one part (e.g. emergency at IGARI) does not greatly affect the other two parts. Therefore, a noxious gas-related accident would result in the same outcome throughout the rest of the journey. 

            The transition points between the three parts are very key to MH370's behavior and provide the links that point the way to where the plane can be found.

• At Penang, a broken airplane was flying on one engine with nearly no one alive.
  
• At a point west of Banda Aceh, the airplane was flying southward in nearly a steady-state condition to its splash down at the Zenith Plateau.​​         
  

Nota Bene

The drift probabilities favor the suggested crash location.

The recent drift pattern for a beacon drifting in the Indian Ocean.

Evidence: In July of 2015, a Boeing 777 flaperon (a control surface of the trailing edge of a wing) was found on Reunion Island, east of Madagascar.

​Tempus Fugit

Ab Initio

            The left engine restart never did result in a successful restart but it did produce a brilliant flame due to excess fuel being flared off. At about 1900 hours, British sailor Katherine Tee is sailing eastbound towards Phuket harbor and sees the low flying MH370, now on a southwesterly heading. The plane is brightly illuminated with fire at low altitude, making a target that is easy to see and entirely out of place in the night sky.

ATSB map.  My notation in light blue.

We were so very close to finding MH370 in April 2014.

​Drift animation: ​​​

See https://youtu.be/u0W7tcObbEw for an animation of the drift patterns. The authors claim the crash debris could not have come from the very Southern Indian Ocean.

See another presentation of this animation along with a description by Deltares experts Maarten van Ormondt and Fedor Baart:  https://www.deltares.nl/en/news/aircraft-debris-mh370-makes-northern-part-of-the-search-area-more-likely/.  

Brock McEwen has written a paper on drift analysis: "MH370 Surface Debris, Comparative Analysis of Drift Models". It can be found at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-r3yuaF2p72dk9ualY1bzNLVHc/view?pli=1​​ .  

His latest revision: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-r3yuaF2p72RnNtRVZuSVdHaG8/view?pref=2&pli=1

​Deus Ex Machina

            Dr. Niels Tas of The Netherlands has written a scientific paper about the flight path of MH370.  In his paper, Dr. Tas has calculated several potential flight paths for MH370 from the satellite BTO and BFO data. His calculations suggest the 21 degrees south latitude location is correct. One may read his paper at www.science4u.org.

A British Airways B777 had a similar asphyxiation event in March of 2015. The flight crew had to keep the cockpit door open and also don oxygen masks for the emergency return to land.

In Cauda Venenum

​Sic Transit

Some real-life examples of when airplane flight data systems go bad (the first one is a B777-200 in Perth):

 http://www.airlinesafety.com/faq/777DataFailure.htm

http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/aero_08/erroneous_textonly.html

            Worse yet, all of the flight deck air supply comes from the left engine. With the oxygen system fully depleted, there is no source of breathable air to the flight deck. Worse yet, the pilots may not even had recognized they had lost their vital air supply.

            During the above excitement, the pilots shut down the left engine by deploying the fire extinguisher, thereby cutting fuel and electrical power. The loss of left electrical power also shuts off most of the communications equipment, including the transponders, ACARS, and SATCOM terminal. If the data bus loss didn't kill MH370's communicatons, the loss of electrical surely did. When MH370 is found and the flight data recorder analyzed, perhaps some clear indications might present themselves to clarify the reason for shutting down a good engine -- perhaps bad fire sensor indications or perhaps an uncontrollable engine going to full throttle. Or, if the control lines to the engine had burned through (leaving the engine uncontrollable), the pilots would need to shut down the engine in order to descend for landing.

            The flash fire presented the pilots with an emergency situation that needed immediate attention. Due to the loss of many data buses, they didn't have a full understanding of what was happening with the plane. Many indicators couldn't be trusted; some controls, such as radio control panels, no longer worked. Between the autopilot and the pilots, MH370 flew wildly through the sky as neither man nor machine could make sense of the flight data presented. These wild maneuvers resulted an altitude excursion up to 40,000 feet at one point.

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