Airliner missing between Malaysia and Cambodia/Vietnam, terrorism possible

[Biggus]

I understand the reason for the heading, but why remain at the same altitude. Wouldn't you tell the computer that you were going to land, allowing not only the direction but the altitude of the plane to change automatically. From what I have read the 777 is capable of landing itself if programed. Would you not want to tell the plane that you were going to land, or would that take too much effort?

It'd entirely depend on how that initial couple of minutes played out. You can plug the waypoint in without saying 'I plan on landing here pretty soon' to the FMS. It's not incredibly hard to set a different alt for a given waypoint if you have the time to do it.

It would presumably be the only option so I would think that for whatever reason it wasn't a possibility be it the crew or hardware was no longer operational. Given that the plane will find 0 AGL on its own at some point, I couldn't imagine fighting to get that done until it just wasn't possible or I was dead instead of spending 7 hellish hours waiting to fall out of the sky.

That's more or less my impression, if I'm understanding you correctly. Do what you need to do to get the aircraft to remain airborne (mission accomplished to one degree or another), but die before positive results are evident.

At this point the most probable explination is electrical fire, assuming the timeline is correct. I can discount the strange altitude changes as radar error. But now you start looking at the "if a, then b" sequence. If fire, then you would expect a mayday. None receive, but explainable as crisis in the cockpit along with electrical issues. Yet still, the pilot/copilot had time to puch a new heading into the computer. If I was after the closest airport, then I would want to drop altitude. If I was not sure I could make it I would want to drop altitude and speed.

I don't know, I am not a commercial pilot familiar with proceedure, so I ask.

Communicating 'mayday' is a tertiary objective. You pull those radio circuit breakers (along with a heap of others) ASAP when you're fighting to survive. Getting off the flightpath was one of the first steps you'd take if you're pulling the transponder CB in making sure that your current emergency isn't suddenly made into a secondary issue when you smack into another airliner. You don't wait for the fire to get worse so you can tell everyone where to find your body, you do your best *right now* to ensure that your body remains alive and disable the radio.

In terms of time to plug in a waypoint for the nearest useful runway in the FMS, it's surprisingly quick to do. Only a matter of a few keystrokes. It would probably have been done whilst the other driver was pulling the breakers.

Regarding the altitude radar data, I don't really know what to make of it. I know radar isn't perfectly accurate at times, but I still scratch my head at the track being as wrong as it apparently was. I have heard that the subsequent descent was staggered which would make sense, but I am unsure that this was confirmed.

Dropping speed and alt aren't necessarily a good thing in an emergency. If I thought there was a risk that I'd be gliding soon and I wasn't spoiled for choice in terms of places to land, I probably wouldn't slow down and descend. If you lose motive power, altitude gives you a chance to maintain a glide. If you descend, you no longer have the altitude to trade for lateral speed, and your glide will soon become a stall from which you can't recover.