Just when you think you’ve heard it all someone comes along with a new hypothesis as to what caused the disappearance of MH370, although this one may well hold water.

Alarm bells started ringing when both the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing publicly issued warnings about the “immediate and urgent risk” of allowing consignments of lithium-ion batteries to be shipped in the cargo of passenger-carrying flights.

This has caught the attention of many investigating the flight, with the scenario of a fire in the cargo hold one that consistently surfaces. Here’s Daily Beast with more:

…the FAA and Boeing warnings add weight to the credibility of a scenario involving a battery fire. There are nine areas that Boeing urges should be the subject of a “safety assessment.” Three have a salient bearing on what investigators into the case of Flight 370 will have particularly focused on:

The fire protection and suppression equipment in the 777’s two cargo bays; the location of battery consignments in the cargo bays, and the flight profile—the route, the duration of the flight and whether it involves flying over water.

Now it is common knowledge that the flight was carrying a large shipment of said batteries, 220 kilograms to be precise, an amount sufficient to fuel a catastrophic fire.

In the case of Flight 370 the exact location of the batteries in the cargo hold is potentially of huge importance. A fire originating in that location could degrade the airplane’s ability to suppress a fire by crucially changing the flow of air (and oxygen)…

An expert with long experience of the Boeing 777, who for professional reasons cannot be identified, was shown the position of the Motorola containers on Flight 370.

He told me that a “sufficiently serious” lithium-ion battery fire could have overwhelmed the fire suppression equipment in the cargo hold. A fire initiated in the battery consignment and sustained by fuel in the form of baggage would, he said, be far more severe than the fire protection system was able to handle…

If this sounds like something that might interest you more then read the full piece HERE, the various scenarios discussed at great length and generally ending with the same conclusion.

[source:dailybeast]