Occam's Razor and the Malaysian Airlines Mystery (Update)

UPDATE:   Yep... it was a garden variety plane crash.    Apparently they have found the debris field in the Indian Ocean west of Australia.   Perhaps CNN can get back to its regularly-scheduled programming now, for it's dozen or so viewers.

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Somewhere in the new novel (ongoing), the Regular Guy says something like, until you show me the evidence, always assume that people die in ordinary, boring ways without any foul play.   Because that's just more likely.   Occam's razor, and all that.

Anyway, this article about the Malaysian Airlines disappearance, makes a whole lot of sense to me, and it doesn't involve terrorism or "sudden onset insanity" syndrome on the part of the pilots:

There has been a lot of speculation about Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Terrorism, hijacking, meteors. I cannot believe the analysis on CNN; it’s almost disturbing. I tend to look for a simpler explanation, and I find it with the 13,000-foot runway at Pulau Langkawi. 

We know the story of MH370: A loaded Boeing 777 departs at midnight from Kuala Lampur, headed to Beijing. A hot night. A heavy aircraft. About an hour out, across the gulf toward Vietnam, the plane goes dark, meaning the transponder and secondary radar tracking go off. Two days later we hear reports that Malaysian military radar (which is a primary radar, meaning the plane is tracked by reflection rather than by transponder interrogation response) has tracked the plane on a southwesterly course back across the Malay Peninsula into the Strait of Malacca. 

The left turn is the key here. Zaharie Ahmad Shah¹ was a very experienced senior captain with 18,000 hours of flight time. We old pilots were drilled to know what is the closest airport of safe harbor while in cruise. Airports behind us, airports abeam us, and airports ahead of us. They’re always in our head. Always. If something happens, you don’t want to be thinking about what are you going to do–you already know what you are going to do. When I saw that left turn with a direct heading, I instinctively knew he was heading for an airport. He was taking a direct route to Palau Langkawi, a 13,000-foot airstrip with an approach over water and no obstacles. The captain did not turn back to Kuala Lampur because he knew he had 8,000-foot ridges to cross. He knew the terrain was friendlier toward Langkawi, which also was closer. 

Take a look at this airport on Google Earth. The pilot did all the right things. He was confronted by some major event onboard that made him make an immediate turn to the closest, safest airport. 

The loss of transponders and communications makes perfect sense in a fire. 

When I heard this I immediately brought up Google Earth and searched for airports in proximity to the track toward the southwest. 

For me, the loss of transponders and communications makes perfect sense in a fire. 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.

This is strong and logical analysis from someone who knows what the hell they're talking about.   As opposed to talking heads on CNN regurgitating Twitter feeds.