The busbar merely conducts electricity to other components. It’s like your house circuit breaker. Once it goes off, everything goes dark, you don’t need to turn off individual lights from the switches. The ELT does not work underwater and there was no underwater beacon on this aircraft. I fear many of you are being mislead by fire. What many pilots (and not just ‘Chris Goodfellow’) are referring to isn’t orange flame. It’s an electrical wire arcing creating immense amounts of smoke.

Regardless, believe in conspiracy if you must.

1. A seasoned captain would IMMEDIATELY report any problem with the plane more so if it is a fire on board.

[Daphne – Apparently not, given past experience. Many such examples have been cited here already.]

2. The tyre theory is nonsense. The plane had been in air for 41 minutes before the abrupt turn. A tyre fire would have been detected much sooner and return to airport required ’emergency clearance’ – none was requested.

[Daphne – The tyre fire was an example of a fire. The theory is not dependent on the tyre being the cause of a fire, but on there being a fire, from whatever cause.]

3. The ‘circuit breakers’ are NOT located in the cockpit but under the cockpit through a hatch only accessible by a special key not accessible by anyone except the cockpit crew, according to a 777 pilot.

4. It is inconceivable that anyone would send out a message “OK good night” if there was the slightest indication of trouble on board.

[Daphne – The change in direction was after the last voice contact.]

5. If the fire was such that it burned through the cockpit controls, why did it not affect the ‘autopilot’ electronics?

6. If the debris 1500 miles West of Perth Australia is from MH370, it means that the plane flew for seven and a half hours after the last contact by which time it would have been burned to a cinder had there been a fire on board.

While there have been dozens of experts on CNN and elsewhere, no one has so far dared make a statement such as Chris Goodfellow based on tit-bits of information released from time to time by the various investigation teams, Boeing engineers and 777 pilots.

[Daphne – There have been some appalling statements, including suicide and terrorism by the pilot himself.]

They were wrong on many knee-jerk assumptions among which the locations they started searching the missing plane and the time wasted in assuming that the plane headed North, when in fact it was headed in the exact opposite direction.

Why would it have flown North when a number of countries would have detected the plane on their radar systems? Obviously the crew’s intentions were to reach their ‘intended’ destination with minimum chances of detection.

I wrote earlier here that, again, from my observations garnered from the information given, the plane would have headed in WSW direction. If the debris is confirmed as coming from the MH370, I would have been somewhat close.

And I am not a pilot, know little about the Boeing 777, but I follow details of every accident or near miss as closely as possible.

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-26640114

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/aviation-expert-disputes-missing-jet-fire-theory-n56011

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/03/18/mh370_disappearance_chris_goodfellow_s_theory_about_a_fire_and_langkawi.html

Some counter-reading ….

Yes, obviously, there is no disagreement on that point.

What I am saying is that I can imagine a situation where the crew are overwhelmed yet manage to perform some of their action items, allowing the fire to incapacitate them yet extinguish itself shortly after and not affect the structural integrity of the aircraft too severely, allowing it to fly for another 7+ hours.

The absence of a Mayday call should not be taken as indicative of someone doing something wrong. There are as many accident reports where crews have sent distress calls as there are that have not.

“The priorities are always aviate, navigate, communicate”. Your words.

As a pilot, you know as well as I do that at some point you will have to inform ATC of an emergency and your intention to divert unless you and crew are incapacitated, unable to communicate for any reason or have no comms. On that I am sure we would mutually agree.

The cockpit fire is a hypothesis and I used Swissair-111 as a marker to show that pilots can and will communicate with the ground whilst dealing with an emergency.

If there was a cockpit fire similar to the EgyptAir MS-667, then the plane probably would have suffered a catastrophic failure in flight and crashed into the South China Sea where wreckage would have been found. This did not happen as the aircraft continued in flight for several hours.

So, it’s my opinion that if there was a in-flight fire, the pilots would have issued a distress call at some point unless they were unable too for the reasons given above.

http://www.avherald.com/h?article=44078aa7&opt=0

Yes exactly, ‘once it has been dealt with’ and ‘if we have time’. Your words and quotes.

Not all airlines have smoke hoods.

I’ve not seen any reputable evidence of a climb. The authorities only mentioned the turn.

The priorities are always aviate, navigate, communicate. The turn was towards a known airport with a long runway.

Often this is one of the first instincts drilled into a pilot. Keep it flying, point it to an airport, sort the problem out.

I am a licensed pilot, albeit not on anything as fancy as a 777. I’m not saying we are told to keep our peace and not let anyone know anything. But there is a significant amount one does before attention can be diverted to less important things.

I have already discussed why Swiss Air 111 was different. Think of an electrical fire in the central pedestal. Immediate, near and vigorous.

OK. Firstly, the checklists are there to ensure pilots follow the correct procedure for the situation at hand. The general procedure is for ATC to be alerted for any emergency situation at hand once it has been dealt with (or is being dealt with). You can check this link if you want.

http://flighttraining.aopa.org/students/flighttestprep/skills/fire.html

“If we have time to communicate before powering down the electrical system, we have three options. Call ATC, broadcast in the blind on the emergency frequency of 121.5 MHz, or tune the 7700 emergency code into the transponder and IDENT. Taking a few seconds to do any of these things before we shut down the electrical system might alert someone to the problem and bring fire/rescue services to the scene as we head for an airport. Finally, if it has a manual switch, we can activate the emergency locator transmitter. The beauty of the ELT is that it has its own power supply and will bring help to the scene of a forced landing should that become necessary.”

And another checklist overview for Smoke, Fire and Fumes onboard an aircraft:
http://www.skybrary.aero/bookshelf/books/948.pdf

Note the reference to smoke goggles that pilots will don in the eventuality of acrid smoke. Also, note the consideration to be given for emergency communication including crew and ATC.

ATC cannot magically fix the problem, but they can alert authorities and prepare the ground for an emergency landing.

And this is the Quick Reference Handbook for the 777 which has a comprehensive section on Smoke Fire and Fumes.
http://ebookbrowsee.net/777-quick-reference-handbook-qrh-rev15-22122010-pdf-d286932076

Clearly, there was no catastrophic situation which quickly overwhelmed the aircraft as it deviated from it’s intended course and changed altitude plus continuing to fly for many hours by all accounts. That sounds like controlled flight to me which may mean that the pilots were trying contain any possible in-flight fire that there may have been.

In that situation it is also very certain that the pilots would have issued a distress call unless they did not have the means too.

If you want to use your imagination and think of what a pilot would do in a in-flight fire situation, then listen to the Swissair 111 ATC-Ground comms. At one point, you hear the pilot say that they are going through the checklists.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw2R1PuXlC8

If the Concordia was our arrogance, this one’s our helplessness.

It’s our arrogance which tries to blame the pilots, we need an explanation that confirms our omnipotent power to control our destiny.

A sequence of events which we haven’t predicted thus unable to control cannot, should not, happen. Indeed, terror, something greater than us, is now the work of terrorists, ergo man-made. The size of the planet, nature, domesticated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Caspar_David_Friedrich_006.jpg

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2014/03/mh370-electrical-fire/