More than a year after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went down in a remote part of the Indian Ocean, we're still have no answers about what actually caused the crash.
But an aviation expert at The Daily Beast has a new theory on what might have happened.
Expert Clive Irving points to new warnings from the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing that highlight the "immediate and urgent risk" tied to transporting lithium-ion batteries, which are used in cellphones and laptops, on passenger flights.
FAA officials said last week that there's evidence the batteries could cause "explosions and fires capable of destroying a plane," according to the Associated Press. In July, Boeing warned airlines that carrying large shipments of the batteries created "unacceptable fire hazards" and asked carriers to stop accepting the cargo, according to The Wall Street Journal.
MH370 had 440 pounds of lithium batteries aboard the Boeing 777 that disappeared on March 8, 2014, Irving reported last year. Debris from the plane has since washed up on an island off the coast of Madagasar.
Irving theorizes that the batteries could have caused a fire in the hold of the Boeing 777 that overwhelmed the plane's fire suppression system.
"The cargo hold has a special liner intended to contain a fire until it is extinguished," he explained. "A battery fire might well have been intense enough to breach the liner and, in doing so, allow the airflow to weaken the concentration (and therefore the effectiveness) of the Halon gas used as a fire suppressant."
If the batteries did catch fire and the flames were too intense to be controlled by the plane's systems, the fumes from the fire could have knocked out the people on the plane, Dr. Victor Ettel, an expert on the science and manufacture of lithium-ion batteries, told Irving.
15/10/15 Pamela Engel/Business Insider
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But an aviation expert at The Daily Beast has a new theory on what might have happened.
Expert Clive Irving points to new warnings from the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing that highlight the "immediate and urgent risk" tied to transporting lithium-ion batteries, which are used in cellphones and laptops, on passenger flights.
FAA officials said last week that there's evidence the batteries could cause "explosions and fires capable of destroying a plane," according to the Associated Press. In July, Boeing warned airlines that carrying large shipments of the batteries created "unacceptable fire hazards" and asked carriers to stop accepting the cargo, according to The Wall Street Journal.
MH370 had 440 pounds of lithium batteries aboard the Boeing 777 that disappeared on March 8, 2014, Irving reported last year. Debris from the plane has since washed up on an island off the coast of Madagasar.
Irving theorizes that the batteries could have caused a fire in the hold of the Boeing 777 that overwhelmed the plane's fire suppression system.
"The cargo hold has a special liner intended to contain a fire until it is extinguished," he explained. "A battery fire might well have been intense enough to breach the liner and, in doing so, allow the airflow to weaken the concentration (and therefore the effectiveness) of the Halon gas used as a fire suppressant."
If the batteries did catch fire and the flames were too intense to be controlled by the plane's systems, the fumes from the fire could have knocked out the people on the plane, Dr. Victor Ettel, an expert on the science and manufacture of lithium-ion batteries, told Irving.
15/10/15 Pamela Engel/Business Insider
