A report into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has been released, and it makes for grim reading.
The Australian Transport Bureau has put out the findings of its lengthy investigation into the missing plane, which went down somewhere in the Indian Ocean in March 2014.
According to the Daily Beast, the report says that sudden electrical failure most likely crippled the plane, which would back up the popular ‘zombie plane’ theory.
This would mean the plane’s avionic systems were destroyed, leaving the flight crew helpless to control the aircraft – which would have continued on autopilot until the fuel ran out.
The flight should only have taken about five hours, but spent seven hours and 38 minutes flying over the southern Indian Ocean in pitch black until it finally ran out of fuel, News.com.au reported.
In the report, it states that ‘fuel exhaustion was probable’ and both engines would have eventually shut down about 15 minutes later, causing the ‘uncontrollable but stable’ aircraft to circle down until it hit the water.
The reports also goes on to give four possible explanations as to what caused the power outage: either someone pulled out or reset the circuit breakers, the crew did something in the cockpit to the overhead switches, an error required an Auxiliary Power Unit to turn to emergency power, or intermittent technical failures.
Flying around in pitch black until the fuel ran out, what a terrible way to spend your last moments.
Our thoughts go out to all those effected by this terrible tragedy.
