Quote:
Originally Posted by andyhop
The point is that if a fire is capable of producing the actions of the plane ( and I have no idea if it is, probably not from the little I have read) the odds of it being a fire is unaffected probabilitywise from the fact that it came during the ATC handover.
The probability of a fire occurring is the same as any other time, but the probability of a fire being the explanation of a plane disappearing during ATC handoff is sharply lower.
Let's say that on any given flight, there is the same probability P that an aircraft could be either sucked in to a black hole or stolen by aliens. The black hole can happen at any time, however for mysterious alien reasons the aliens only steal planes between :00 and :03 every hour.
The probability of the plane hitting a black hole is the same as it is for any other three minutes, however it is 1/21 the likelihood of the plane having been taken by aliens, because only 1/20th of black hole hits occur between :00 and :03, while 20/20 of alien steals do.
Since any theory involving hijacking necessarily includes in the theory that the pilots are trying to hide the plane (because in this theory ACARS and the transponder were turned off manually, they did not talk to ATC, etc), it's a given that it would occur during ATC handover. So it's a lot like the "aliens" theory detailed above and has to be considered more probable than events which could occur at anytime.
Edit: This is a simplified example and obviously a fire on board has a much higher probability than pilot suicide, all else being equal. I would however put the probability of "fire on board which goes from nothing to knocking out key systems in under three minutes, then somehow fails to cause the plane to crash over the next 6 hours" at substantially lower than pilot suicide, over the course of a flight. We're looking at a low-probability scenario here no matter what.
Last edited by ChrisV; 03-24-2014 at 12:44 AM.