A commenter at Rand Simberg's site postulates that Malaysia Airlines flight 370 went down because of a failure on the cabin pressurization system. The crew then lost consciousness because of hypoxia, simple lack of oxygen.
If the plane was off autopilot when the crew lost consciousness, it could have flown on, erratic in both altitude and heading, for quite some time. What makes me think hypoxia due to a pressurization system issue is the timing; it had only been airborne 40 minutes, so would have only been near cruising altitude for less than that. And, even if the cabin O2 masks deployed, if the crew was unconscious and thus the plane stayed at high altitude, the cabin O2 masks would run out of O2 in short order (they only have a few minute’s capacity).
This hypoxia scenario has occurred in the past, including in the USA.But what about the transponders being disabled, a technical procedure that is much more involved than snipping wires of flipping a switch like Hollywood movies show? The commenter says that if the plane was on course when the pressurization failed, it would have dropped below transponder signal altitude at about 28,000 feet.
A transponder system is not radar. What happens is that a ground-control radio emits a signal that another transmitter on the airliner responds to. Below 28,000 feet at the plane's range, says the commenter, the ground signal would have gone over the plane, hence to signal would be sent back.
See here.
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