Missing MH370: Stanford student’s theory goes viral
— PHOTO: FROM ANDREW AUDE’S LINKEDIN
SINGAPORE: A young American undergraduate student at Stanford University has come up with a theory – yet to be verified by aviation experts – on the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 that has gone viral on the Web.
Andrew Aude, 20 and a computer science student, told The Straits Times that he “considered studying Aerospace engineering” as his father had an airline pilot licence and he grew up around aviation. When he was in middle school, he also attended the Boeing 787 roll-out premiere with his father.
In his Tumblr post, Aude cited a 2013 Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) Airworthiness Directive for the 777 which spotted a weakness in the plane.
According to the directive which he quotes, there had been a report of “cracking in the fuselage skin underneath the satellite communication (satcom) antenna adapter”.
From this, he theorised that MH370 could have experienced the same issue, leading to the failure of satellite-based communications as well as to a slow decompression of the plane which left passengers unconscious and pilots disoriented. “If the decompression was slow enough, it’s possible the pilots did not realise to put on oxygen masks until it was too late,” he wrote.
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