you might be able to tell from the pilot s voice inflections what was going on. it doesn t sound like the co-pilot, if that s who it was, was under any duress. right. this sounds like like a plan. the reason that i have a hard time with mechanical failure is that there are two guys flying the airplane. certainly one of them would have had an opportunity to turn and say to any controller that they are in contact with, we ve got a problem, we are coming back toward toward malaysia. last quick final point to that i have a yate, navigate, communicate, we know the order that you re to do things n. and i appreciate that. and the fact that the traps ponder came up, i agree that that s not something we could do under normal operation. however, it s in conjunction with the acars turning off also, which indicates to me something was happening in that compartment, albeit a fire, a smoldering fire, something was might have been systematically shutting it down