Quote:
Originally Posted by spence
Some interesting remarks by pilots I read today. They suspect the front tires caught on fire on take off or a fire started in another manner. The captain would know what airport options he had in case of an emergency and entered this into the autopilot first thing. Then they'd start shutting down systems to isolate the issue. Pilots get overwhelmed by smoke and are knocked out...the plane then continues on autopilot until it runs out of gas.
There is an ideal airport on the new heading they took...they would have flown right over it.
Doesn't answer everything but it is a plausible scenario.
-spence
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There's one major flaw in that theory. The tire/landing gear wells aren't pressurized, and at 35,000' there's not enough ambient oxygen in the atmosphere to keep tires burning. Every so often, a clueless stowaway gets the stupid idea to crawl into a wheel well while a plane is on the ground. Once the plane takes off and the gear is retracted, they die from hypoxia, well before they die from hypothermia. Their bodies fall like a block of ice to the ground when the gear is lowered on the final approach.
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