going to be before the fire burns through the flight control services and makes the airplane completely uncontrollable. that s the problem. forgive me for cutting you off. i m no pilot. i m just trying to wrap my head around what you said. that s number one. number two was what? well, it s hard to wrap your head around. you think it s hard to wrap your head around for you. as a pilot, conditioning yourself that there s a fire, you re not going to try and go to an airport. the second one is that if there was a fire, this airplane actually flew over some waypoints, some spots in the sky. that indicates to me that there was a working auto pilot onboard the airplane, because those are things that happened. if he had a working autopilot, if the airplane was flying that kind of tracks, that would not be consistent with the fire. his explanation is the reason why this plane would have been on auto pilot, maybe everyone was discombobulated. maybe everyone was passed out because of the sm
hugely advance our sum of understanding. they may well have told the malaysians about this earlier in the week. it s just it s another nugget on the table. another piece of the jigsaw on the table. i ve this interesting idea i mean, this chris goodfellow article about the fire. well, let s row back just a little bit and not put it down to a fire. because let s just say a mechanical issue. because once you start talking about a fire, that raises a whole other raft of other issues. but let s say a mechanical issue that overwhelms both the pilots and the plane and leads to its eventual demise. this has always been the most logical, basic aeronautical explanation for what has taken place. it has only one fundamental flaw. which is? and it is this. there were no messages.
that plane down on land in the maldives. not many. they have very little land and a lot of water. you go down here a little bit farther, you will find that island right there. that is a 1.6-mile-long runway and not too many people on that island either. bill, what do you think? simple as a fire and that he wanted to find a place to put this bird down? well, i agree with the premise. i m not convinced that there s any indication there was a fire onboard. with a mere two button push on the flight management system computer, it brings up the five closest alternate airports from your present position that are suitable to land an aircraft of that size. and i agree we are trained to pick the closest suitable airport in an emergency, and head for that position to put the airplane on the ground, particularly in a fire.
sense in a fire. how does that, fred so simple. how does that theory sit with you? well, i actually read that closely this morning because i was fascinating by his theory. let me tell you first and foremost, when you re a pilot and you have a fire onboard an aircraft, his premise is that there was a fire. first thing you do you don t try to get to the airport. you need to put the airplane on the ground as soon as possible. the jet crash in miami, that pilot, she tried to make it back to miami and crashed in the everglades because the fire burned so quickly. there was an md-11 crash in halifax, nova scotia. that airplane crashed because the pilots were trying to make it to an airport. actually trying to dump fuel. you re better off putting that airplane in one piece actually in the ocean than trying to get to a fire. the second thing about what he says hang on, let me stop you. you re saying better off to put the plane, instead of land it on land, you re saying you want to put
through all of this and listening to it all and trying to make sense, because it s quite honestly impossible. i think christine, to you, the next if. that s all this is. if and i know your expertise is in rugged terrain. you think it s possible the plane may have landed or maybe crashed in the jungle or in other conditions. again, if that happened, how does one survive? agreed. it s all really if at this point. we just don t know. and every day, there seems to be a new twist to it or a new story. possibility. i agree with these gentlemen in the sense that if you have a landing or a fire, or anything that caused this plane to come down, not over water, but in land or on land, rather, you have very rugged terrain following the trajectory that it seems to be showing, which would be going over burma, possibly towards nepal. you ve got very different elevations, you ve got burma, which is all jungle.