Autopilot

Everything I have studied about the Malaysian flight or seen on Television leads me to the autopilot. This was the same thing that brought down the Air France flight a few years ago in the Atlantic in it's flight between Brazil and Paris I believe.

In that case the air pitot that gave airspeed readings froze over and gave incorrect readings to the autopilot of air speed. This caused the plane to do a flat descent from not enough air speed in a slow stall which reduced the altitude slowly so no one in the cockpit noticed until it was likely too late to recover and not crash.

In this case I'm convinced now both logically and intuitively that the problem was also with the autopilot, and the fact that a previous 777 from Malaysia airlines also almost crashed within the past few years from an autopilot problem which they could not safely disengage.

On flight 370, turning off transponders might have been the only way the pilot or pilots could think of to disengage the autopilot when they realized the autopilot had taken them to 45,000 feet.  Instead of losing altitude this time as occurred on the Air France flight,  the autopilot likely took them higher for some reason. If the cockpit or whole fuselage air seal failed in some way (either catastrophic decompression or slow decompression) everyone would have become unconscious within 30 seconds (either just in the cockpit or whole plane). Possibly before the pilot passed out, he turned the plane in an emergency bank back towards Malaysia and as he passed out he reset the autopilot in that direction. Since the pilot was unconscious or dead (likely both) no one could get into the cockpit because it is bulletproof and axe proof. So, the plane flew until it eventually crashed off of Perth. This likely was not pilot error, it was moisture in the Autopilot or a software glitch and the crew hadn't been trained to deal with the software locking them out of controlling the plane stick and rudder, resulting in catastrophic failure of the fuselage or cockpit or both at 45,000 feet or above.

So here are the three catastrophic failures that eventually caused the crash.

1. The autopilot was malfunctioning and the co-pilot likely didn't notice and likely the captain was going to the rest room out of the cockpit and possibly the cockpit door was locked. Then when the co-pilot noticed the altitude was near hull pressure breach he was alarmed and tried to disengage the autopilot realizing it must have malfunctioned. But by this time they had reached quickly or slowly 45,000 or more.

2. At this point there was a partial or full decompression of either the cockpit or full fuselage as the air pressure grew too great inside because of not enough air pressure outside to compensate (passenger planes are not guaranteed above 45,000 feet not to explosively decompress). So, when this decompression occurred the pilot or pilot's were soon unconscious. As they were dying slowly (after they found a way to disengage the autopilot by turning off the transponder and whatever else they had to disengage to make this happen, the pilot or pilots reset the autopilot towards Malaysia hoping that they or someone could fly this thing home as they passed out.

3. Then since there was no way into the cockpit by any of the stewards or stewardesses or even the captain if he wasn't present when all this happened without someone opening the door for him, the plane flew until it eventually ran out of fuel and crashed near Perth.

This makes the most sense from everything I have learned so far from the Air France crash and from the Malaysian air lines crash. Likely the software patch that was available to fix the autopilot problem the previous 777 had experienced had not been installed in this latest Malaysian 777 leading to this problem becoming catastrophic for this plane and now the whole world.

Solution for future flights:

I'm thinking that the combination of autopilots which led to the crash of the Air France and now the Malaysian air lines plane as well as the crash recently in San Francisco need to be fully rethought.

Autopilots are now in rare circumstances preventing pilots from saving themselves and their planes. This will continue to get worse and worse in planes, ships and cars until people realize that computers are not infallible. They are just better some of the time than humans are at some things. But, some times they are much much worse than humans when there is a malfunction. Disengaging all autopilot functions must become much easier for pilots to do in order to save more lives worldwide.

Also, more stick and rudder time in simulators with crisis events including malfunctioning autopilots should be given to pilots to train them how to save themselves and their passengers better in the future. This is a real turning point in flight, shipping and in ground transportation that must be dealt with effectively for more and more people not to die in crazy strange ways from automation and autonomously flown, sailed and driven technology.

If companies and countries try to sweep all this under the carpet so to speak much like Toyota did with the throttle problems and now GM is doing with other problems then many many more people are going to die in problems like the Air France one and now the Malaysian airlines one.

Being realistic about this as companies and nations and in the training of pilots will eventually save millions of lives in flight, shipping on the ocean and in autonomously driven cars as well. However, if this is swept under the carpet by nations or companies as a way to temporarily or permanently dodge liability then we are going to see this kind of thing regarding computer glitches over and over again in flight, in sea shipping and on land in all types of self driven vehicles ongoing.