Conspiracy Theories: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Ideas Include Alien Attack, Pilot Suicide

Conspiracy theories abound as to the fate of Malaysia Airlines flight 370, with explanations for what happened to the missing airplane ranging from an alien attack to a connection with American NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The flight disappeared on March 8 shortly after leaving Malaysian airspace, dropping contact with air traffic control and vanishing. Satellite data would later indicate that the plane flew far off course, heading toward the Indian Ocean and even possibly back onto land.

As the search widened in the days after Malaysia Airlines flight 370 disappeared, a number of conspiracy theories began to spread. Some were outright hoaxes, including a viral Facebook post that the plane was found near the Bermuda Triangle. This was actually an attempt to spread malware among people who clicked the link.

Other conspiracy theories about Malaysia Airlines flight 370 claim extraterrestrial involvement. Alexandra Bruce of Forbidden Knowledge TV claims that a flight mapping website indicates that a mysterious object flew at the plane at an accelerated speed.

But this too was debunked, as the “UFO” was shown to be a flight from Korea.

One Reddit user speculated that the fate of the 777 was connected to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The user said that the plane carried an employee of Texas-based Freescale Semiconductor, a company implicated by Snowden in assisting the NSA.

“So we have the American IBM Technical Storage Executive for Malaysia, a man working in mass storage aggregation for the company implicated by the Snowden papers for providing their services to assist the National Security Agency in surveilling [sic] the Chinese.. and now this bunch of US chip guys working for a global leader in embedded processing solutions (embedded smart phone tech and defence contracting) all together..on a plane..And disappeared.. Coincidence??”

The user wrote that after United States intelligence learned of Chinese plans to detain the passenger, they may have “sanitized” the plane in flight.

Other conspiracy theories are not so far-fetched. Pilot Chris Goodfellow suggested that an emergency on the plane may have forced the pilots to change course toward a 13,000-foot runway on the Malaysian island of Pulau, but the plane never made it.

In an explanation posted to Google+, Goodfellow wrote:.

“For me the loss of transponders and communications makes perfect sense if a fire. There was most likely a fire or electrical fire. In the case of fire the first response if to pull all the main busses and restore circuits one by one until you have isolated the bad one….What I think happened is that they were overcome by smoke and the plane just continued on the heading probably on George (autopilot) until either fuel exhaustion or fire destroyed the control surfaces and it crashed.”

Other conspiracy theories about Malaysia Airlines flight 370 suggest that the pilot may have crashed the plane in a lone act. Some believe that if either pilot were intent on committing suicide, they could have intentionally flown the plane into an area where it would not be found.

[Image Via globalvoicesonline.org]