Aviation experts have cited the July 11, 1991 Nigeria Airways crash which killed 261 persons as they look for reasons why the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH 370 disappeared.
It would be recalled that Nationair (chartered by Nigeria Airways) left Jeddah, Saudi Arabia enroute to Sokoto, Nigeria but crashed shortly after take off.
After taking off, fire was reported in the landing gear well. The aircraft crashed while trying to return to the airport. Loss of hydraulics and electrical systems after a fire, started in the wheel when two tires disintegrated due to under inflation of one tire. This caused a fire which ignited years of accumulated flammables in the DC-8’s wheel well leading to an uncontrollable fire. The plane was allowed to leave with an under inflated tire. Twenty minutes prior to departure, the Nationair lead mechanic made a request for nitrogen to inflate the low tire. Nitrogen was not readily available and a delay would probably have to occur to procure it. The Nationair project manager, without conferring with the flight crew, released the plane.
The McDonnell Douglas DC-8 Super 61 with Registration: C-GMXQ had 261 persons on board (247 passengers and 14 crew members). All perished in the crash.
Part of an article by Chris Goodfellow and entitled, “A Startlingly Simple Theory About the Missing Malaysia Airlines Jet,” had stated that fire would likely be the cause of the loss of communication with the airline.
“And there most likely was an electrical fire. In the case of a fire, the first response is to pull the main busses and restore circuits one by one until you have isolated the bad one. If they pulled the busses, the plane would go silent. It probably was a serious event and the flight crew was occupied with controlling the plane and trying to fight the fire. Aviate, navigate, and lastly, communicate is the mantra in such situations.
“There are two types of fires. An electrical fire might not be as fast and furious, and there may or may not be incapacitating smoke. However there is the possibility, given the timeline, that there was an overheat on one of the front landing gear tires, it blew on takeoff and started slowly burning. Yes, this happens with underinflated tires. Remember: Heavy plane, hot night, sea level, long-run takeoff. There was a well known accident in Nigeria of a DC8 that had a landing gear fire on takeoff. Once going, a tire fire would produce horrific, incapacitating smoke. Yes, pilots have access to oxygen masks, but this is a no-no with fire. Most have access to a smoke hood with a filter, but this will last only a few minutes depending on the smoke level. (I used to carry one in my flight bag, and I still carry one in my briefcase when I fly.)
“What I think happened is the flight crew was overcome by smoke and the plane continued on the heading, probably on George (autopilot), until it ran out of fuel or the fire destroyed the control surfaces and it crashed. You will find it along that route–looking elsewhere is pointless.
“Ongoing speculation of a hijacking and/or murder-suicide and that there was a flight engineer on board does not sway me in favor of foul play until I am presented with evidence of foul play.
“We know there was a last voice transmission that, from a pilot’s point of view, was entirely normal. “Good night” is customary on a hand-off to a new air traffic control. The “good night” also strongly indicates to me that all was OK on the flight deck. Remember, there are many ways a pilot can communicate distress. A hijack code or even transponder code off by one digit would alert ATC that something was wrong. Every good pilot knows keying an SOS over the mike always is an option. Even three short clicks would raise an alert. So I conclude that at the point of voice transmission all was perceived as well on the flight deck by the pilots”.