Hyderabad: With the hunt still on for missing Malaysian airlines flight MH370, there are several theories out there that are trying to explain what may have happened to the aircraft, which was carrying 239 passengers. Perhaps the most shocking one is the hijack angle.
But Farhad Viccajee, an Indian Airlines pilot, has dismissed the hijacking theory. “There is no way the flight was hijacked as any aircraft, during flight is always in contact with ground control and this plane did not even send out a distress call before it went off radar,” he said.
He added that it takes just a split second for the pilots to punch in a code or press a button to send out a distress call, in case of a hijack. But Mr Viccajee said that the flight must have suffered mechanical failure when it went off the radar. “The most plausible explanation right now seems that either the hydraulics of the craft or the air frame suffered catastrophic damage,” he said.
“This means that the craft could have simply disintegrated into pieces after loss of cabin pressure in the aircraft,” he added.
However, when asked why the pilots didn’t send out a distress call if they had suffered a mechanical failure, Mr Vicajee said in cases of extreme structural failure, the pilots may not have had the time to dispatch a distress, as the craft would have disintegrated in seconds after the loss of cabin pressure. He also said the transponder going off on the plane theory doesn’t hold much water. A transponder is a beacon that relays position and type of aircraft.
“Radar holes only last for a minute or two, so the flight couldn’t have gone completely dark,”
Can a plane vanish like this in India?
Mr Viccajee says that the aviation sector worldwide takes safety very seriously. “This could have happened anywhere. These are the things about the industry, tragedy happens, we learn to take precaution against it,” he said. He also dismissed arguments put forth by others that the Indian airliners were using old planes which were more susceptible to mishaps.
