Kuala Lumpur: The ice-cold trail for missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 has spawned an expanding array of theories -- from the sensible to the outlandish -- as a fascinated public attempts to fill the information vacuum.
Did distressed pilots veer toward a nearby airstrip? Was the plane hidden under another jet's radar "shadow"? Did it fly on for hours past the remote Maldives?
Some of the hypotheses would strain the creativity of a Hollywood screenwriter, but in the absence of firm facts in one of aviation's greatest mysteries, few can be completely ruled out.
One new theory exploding across social media is that a cockpit fire or other emergency disabled MH370's communications and forced the pilots into a heroic attempt to land in a nearby Malaysian airfield.
Former airline pilots say this could explain why the plane was diverted -- "deliberately", according to Malaysian authorities -- westward toward the Indian ocean and off its Kuala Lumpur-Beijing path with 239 people aboard early on March 8.
"It is very possible that they were working their asses off, doing the very best they could to combat a very difficult problem and became overcome by perhaps a fire, perhaps smoke," Barry Schiff, a TWA pilot for 34 years, said on CNN.
Suspicions have mounted that the cockpit crew or hijackers disabled the plane's communications systems to mask its location.
A motive for that remains unknown, but everyone from media mogul Rupert Murdoch to alternative rocker Courtney Love and millions of social-media users worldwide have pushed their ideas.
Murdoch piled on to wild early speculation that the plane may have been commandeered by unknown persons to Africa, Pakistan or even North Korea.
Such theories are widely debunked due to the unlikelihood that a jumbo jet could have crossed numerous international boundaries and radar spaces undetected.
19/03/14 Dan Martin/My Sinchew.com
