Doomed Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 had a sudden, catastrophic power loss which left it cruising on auto-pilot until it ran out of fuel and crashed, new findings suggest.
A report by Australian Transport Bureau (ATB) gives reasons why vital communications systems stopped working and why air traffic control were unable to speak to the pilots.
It is thought the Boeing 777 crashed into the Indian Ocean after it mysteriously disappeared last year.
The flight was heading from from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 when it vanished along with all 239 people on board.
Investigators say the jet's Satellite Data Unit (SDU) unexpectedly tried to log in to a satellite about 30 minutes after take off.
This electronic handshake, known as a ping, is believed to have been the result of an on board power failure.
The unit rebooted itself using auxiliary power and fired off a series of new pings, allowing investigators to narrow down its final position - hundreds of miles away in the Indian Ocean.
According to the ATB report, many of the craft's other electrical systems shut down leaving the pilots unable to control the plane.
This supports the theory that a fire on board caused the problems, rather than deliberate sabotage, reports The Daily Beast .
If a blaze started in the hold, it could have damaged the Main Equipment Centre (MEC) where the plane's main computers are stored.
Flames and smoke could also have incapacitated the passengers and crew.
The SDU would have been able to continue functioning, because it is in the roof of the cabin.
The auto-pilot could also carry on - leaving the plane as a 'zombie flight' until it ran out of fuel.
The cause of the power cut is not explained by the report - only that it could have been due to technical failures.
Deliberate sabotage by Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah or his co-pilot is not ruled out however.
Neither is the chance they cut the power on purpose in a desperate bid to resolve a technical problem.
The outage could have been caused by crew members using overhead switches in the cockpit, or accessing the MEC itself.
So far they have covered 29,000 square miles based on satellite analysis of the predicted trajectory.
In July, a two-metre-long flaperon wing part was found in the island of Reunion, in the Indian Ocean.
It was later confirmed to be from flight MH370.
Mirror
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