Originally Posted by
KC10 FATboy
I think your theory is plausible. I just read the Egypt Air 667's accident report. That fire quickly developed and spread throughout the cockpit. Those pictures are shocking.
Additionally, Boeing knows of 29 known cockpit fires caused by electrical arcing in the cockpit windows. In many of those cases, flames were present. One American Airlines jet used two fire bottles on a window fire during an Atlantic Ocean crossing.
I heard on the news that ATC queried the crew several times about what altitude they were at prior to the handoff. Either they were lying (knowingly switched transponder off), or there was a system failure already in progress.
Thank you, my belief regards the transponder is either they were in a SSR radar black spot, or they were taking advantage of a radar black spot to make an illegal shortcut from IGARI to BIBAN bypassing BITOD, or that a creeping electrical failure disabled their transponder altogether.
That after an emergency turn back to southerly heading the aircraft kept flying on autopilot with crew expired.