The piece recovered on Réunion would’ve been destroyed in a high-speed crash, a source close to the Boeing 777 program says. That means the plane was a ‘zombie’ when it finally went down.
With a solid chunk of an airplane to examine, the search for Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 has been re-energized.
There is a consensus among experts that the piece of wreckage washed up on a beach on island of Réunion is part of a Boeing 777’s wing, called a flaperon, and that it must be from the missing Malaysian 777.
The Daily Beast asked an expert familiar with the Boeing 777 what could be read from just one small but relatively intact control surface like the flaperon.
“It looks like the jet went into the water in a gliding/ditching attitude, because otherwise this wing component would have likely been completely destroyed.”
This is notably consistent with a scenario that Boeing engineers assigned to the Flight 370 investigation have replicated in their computers. They reverse-engineered the final six hours of the flight, creating the so-called Zombie Flight, surmising that some unknown incident incapacitated the pilots and left the 777 to continue at its cruise height and speed until it eventually ran out of fuel.
As the engines flamed out and died, according to the computer models, the 777 did not nose-dive but began a spiraling descent without power to the water and splashed down.
07/30/15 Clive Irving/The Daily Beast
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With a solid chunk of an airplane to examine, the search for Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 has been re-energized.
There is a consensus among experts that the piece of wreckage washed up on a beach on island of Réunion is part of a Boeing 777’s wing, called a flaperon, and that it must be from the missing Malaysian 777.
The Daily Beast asked an expert familiar with the Boeing 777 what could be read from just one small but relatively intact control surface like the flaperon.
“It looks like the jet went into the water in a gliding/ditching attitude, because otherwise this wing component would have likely been completely destroyed.”
This is notably consistent with a scenario that Boeing engineers assigned to the Flight 370 investigation have replicated in their computers. They reverse-engineered the final six hours of the flight, creating the so-called Zombie Flight, surmising that some unknown incident incapacitated the pilots and left the 777 to continue at its cruise height and speed until it eventually ran out of fuel.
As the engines flamed out and died, according to the computer models, the 777 did not nose-dive but began a spiraling descent without power to the water and splashed down.
07/30/15 Clive Irving/The Daily Beast
