[downandout]

IMO, that's the most likely scenario. This highly advanced airplane was in clear weather in a spot where any distress signals it sent would have been received. The plane itself can send automated signals even if the pilots were incapacitated. No signals went out, and according to media reports, the plane simply "vanished" from radar (i.e. the data didn't indicate the plane descending before it disappeared).

All of the data indicates a mid-air explosion. There are some possible causes of such an explosion that are not terrorism related, such as mislabeled/improperly stored explosive cargo, but IMO those causes are at least as likely as terrorism in this case. It will be interesting to see if any groups come forward claiming responsibility.

[einhverfr]

I can think of two likely possibilities. The plane might have disintegrated in midair (that is not necessarily intentional btw, and most midair breakups are bad maintenance), or something could have gone drastically wrong. For example this plane had a previously damaged wing. If something went south, it is possible that the plane could have ended up in a flat spin and crashed.

Another possibility is AIRDU failures leaving the plane to fly into the sea.

Before jumping to conclusions, you really need to read this piece in IEEE spectrum (I promise it isn't computer-generated nonsense): http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/automated-to-dea...

[tzs]

From the IEEE article:

> The fault-tolerant ADIRU was designed to operate with a failed accelerometer (it has six). The redundant design of the ADIRU also meant that it wasn’t mandatory to replace the unit when an accelerometer failed.

This seems unwise to me. I could understand if the rule was that you could put off replacing a failed accelerometer until the next regular maintenance. If it is OK to simply never replace it, then why not just ship the plane with five and save money?

[einhverfr]

> I could understand if the rule was that you could put off replacing a failed accelerometer until the next regular maintenance.

I think that's the idea. Whether or not it is followed in practice is another matter, and testing further failures was not the priority it should have been.

[tarre]

Thanks for sharing the link. It was a very good read.

[ewoodrich]

Of course I may be proven wrong, but I feel that it is quite premature to make such an assumption. A plane can rapidly disappear from radar for a number of reasons: not including your suggestions of terrorism or explosive payload.

A prominent example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Airlines_Flight_611#Metal...

[downandout]

The thrust of my comment was that the data indicates a very rapid breakup of the plane (explosion), and I indeed said that there are other possible causes of mid-air explosions besides terrorism. My mention of explosive cargo wasn't intended to be an exhaustive list of alternative causes. I just think that terrorism is certainly within the realm of possibility given the totality of the circumstances.

[userbinator]

From your link:

Radar data suggests that the aircraft broke into four pieces while at FL350.

So it seems they saw it disintegrate, whereas MH370 just... disappeared.

[Freestyler_3]

There is also a long stop in the flight data, is it possible this was one of the pilots trying fool a hijacker, by secretly change something so that data was sent again? Hope they find it quickly.