With little information to go on, armchair detectives — ranging from aviation experts to conspiracy buffs — have their theories about what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.
Among their theories:
■ Hijacking. A former head of security for El Al Israel Airlines told The Post he suspects terrorists overpowered the crew of the Boeing 777 and forced them to fly to an undisclosed location.
“So many ships are looking for debris. So many aircraft are looking for the aircraft. And to this moment, nobody can tell us where it is?” said Isaac Yeffet, who spent 10 years at the Israeli airline.
■ Catastrophic midair failure of the plane’s engines or structure, such as its frame or wings. This could at least explain the plane’s sudden disappearance from radar and lack of any distress call from its pilots. Still, the lack of debris is troubling.
Officials have indicated the jet may have been turning around just before it fell off radar screens, leading to speculation that the pilots were reacting to some difficulty.
■ A bombing. Kip Hawley, a former administrator of the Transportation Security Administration, told Bloomberg News it’s possible that terrorists smuggled powerful explosives on board in their shoes.
Fueling the terrorist theory is the fact that stolen passports were used by at least two men to get on the flight. Still, no credible group has stepped up to claim responsibility, and intelligence officials said there’s been no chatter among terrorist networks, as there usually is after a bombing.
■ Pilot suicide. That’s one of the suspected causes behind at least two other air catastrophes: the crash of an EgyptAir flight from LA to Cairo in 1999, which killed 218, and a SilkAir flight from Jakarta to Singapore in 1997, which killed 104. But there is no evidence of this regarding the Malaysia Airlines flight.
■ A missile attack. WABC Radio host Aaron Klein said, “Investigators would be wise to thoroughly examine the possibility of a missile attack in light of recent information about the global proliferation of such projectiles capable of downing civilian airliners.”
Writing on his Klein Online website, he cited “unverified claims” last week that a cache of shoulder-fired, surface-to-air missile launchers “went missing in Ukraine.”
■ They’re alive — the “ringing cellphone” theory. A blog post on the Chinese government’s China.org.cn site reported that “19 families signed a joint statement requesting Malaysia Airlines to … explain why they could get through to their family members’ cellphones but they could not hear anything and the calls hung up.”
“They submitted the telephone numbers to the airline, which failed to respond to their questions with active measures,” according to the site.
Key facts involving the mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370:
- Flight departs Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at 12:21 a.m. Saturday (7:21 p.m. EST Friday) and is due to land in Beijing at 6:30 a.m.
- On board the Boeing 777-200ER are 227 passengers and 12 crew members.
- Controllers lose contact with the plane between one and two hours after takeoff, about 120 nautical miles off the east coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu.
- No distress signal is received; weather is clear at the time.
- Plane fails to check in as scheduled at 3:21 a.m. while flying over the South China Sea between Malaysia and Ho Chi Minh City, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam.
- Radar indicates jet might have turned back from its scheduled route before disappearing.