Were the pilots of the doomed flight MH370 killed when a blaze consumed all the oxygen in the cockpit, knocking out the pilots?
A veteran pilot and aviation safety expert thinks so.
Ross Aimer, who used to fly for United Airlines, told the Daily Star the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200's lithium-ion batteries might have caught fire, spreading so quickly the pilots would have had no time to save the plane with 227 passengers on board.
"Their oxygen supply is... adjacent to the cargo hold" where the batteries are stored, he said.
"So if that had happened, the pilots would have probably been incapacitated immediately."
But it's likely the high-tech jet would have kept flying for hours on its own, despite being on fire.
"The aircraft maybe, my theory is, flew for a long time on its own and finally ran out of fuel and crashed," said Mr Aimer.
MH370 had more than 220kg of lithium-ion batteries on board. A lithium-ion battery fire brought down a UPS Airlines flight in Dubai in 2010, killing two people. There has also been a rise in lithium-ion mobile phone batteries catching alight on planes.
An investigation earlier this year said a battery fire was highly unlikely to be the cause.
- Revealed: MH370 pilot's 'self-destructive' behaviour before final flight
- France reopens MH370 investigation after Malaysia accused of cover-up
- Experts declare MH370 disappearance a 'murder-suicide' mission
Another clue Mr Aimer points to is that the plane's flaps - used to slow the aircraft down ahead of landing - are believed to have been up when the plane hit the water.
"The flaps basically proved that whatever happened to the airplane, it did hit the water with the flaps up, meaning no one was in control of it in that moment... If the pilots were alive and they were trying to ditch the aircraft in the water, they most probably put the flaps down or extended. They were in the fared position, which is the normal in flight mode."
MH370 vanished in March 2014, and is believed to have crashed somewhere in the Indian Ocean.
Newshub.
