MH370 was travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, China, when the jet mysteriously vanished with 239 people on board. The Boeing 777 aircraft last communicated with air traffic control at 1.19am when the plane was flying over the South China Sea, before vanishing from civilian radar screens. One of the popular theories on aviation’s greatest mystery is the possibility that the cabin was depressurised during an emergency situation.
This would have caused a lack of oxygen in the cabin and as a result, Captain Zaharie Shah and First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid would have passed out and lost control of the plane.
This theory is supported by Alastair Rosenschein, a former RAF and jumbo-jet pilot who is convinced a rogue oxygen tank exploded on board.
He told Medium in 2017: “I am fairly sure they passed out due to oxygen depravation and they kept on flying until they ran out of fuel.
“This is not the first time this has happened on an airliner, it´s a fairly common thing.
“It happened most famously on Apollo 13, everybody knows that.
“These oxygens bottles have exploded already three times on a Boeing 777.
“Oxygen is a highly reactive gas, it operates with electronic valves, which opens the damn thing, there are electrics nearby and these things have blown up occasionally.”
Mr Rosenchein went on to reveal how such an incident could have blown a hole in the side of the plane, much like what happened with Qantas Flight 30 in 2008.
He added: ”You get an oxygen leak it can cause an explosion.
“There is a picture on the Internet of a B-777 on the ground with a hole in it.
“Let’s just take that scenario, there could have been other reasons that caused this to happen, it could have been an explosive device, it could have been a door blowing off the aircraft.
“The exploding oxygen bottle would depressurise the aircraft without destroying the aircraft, but it would deprive the pilots from oxygen.
“These are highly unusual events, but this was an unusual event.”
Mr Rosenchein went on to explain why he thought this was the “most likely” answer to the five-year mystery.
He continued: “I have experienced a depressurisation twice myself, once in a B737 and a partial depressurisation in a 747 Jumbo.
“The danger is an explosive decompression when the cabin depressurises very rapidly.
“A big aircraft like a 777 needs a long time to depressurise unless there is a big hole in the aircraft.
“I tend to look at the most likely cause, and the most likely cause is a technical issue because that’s how most accidents happen.