MH370 Did Not Fall From The Sky

March 7th/8th, 2014, MH370 disappeared from radar and has yet to be found. Speculation over the first weekend erroneously focused on the plane blowing up, possible equipment failure, and or an airworthiness directive causing fatigue and a rapid depressurization causing loss of control—I knew none of these situations were the case.

Frustrated that the search was being conducted in the wrong area I finally spoke out in MH370: Time to Speculate in hope that we could send the search crew in the correct direction.

It was not until days later that the authorities ruled out that initial speculation and came on board that this was not an accident and the plane did not fall out of the sky. As the days progress I am becoming equally frustrated as to what the media is saying. 

Is the media speculating
or jumping to conclusions?

There is a significant difference between speculation and jumping to conclusions. Speculation is taking the facts we know and using deductive reasoning to come to a possibility. Jumping to conclusions is saying the captain did this because he was Muslim, or that he did this because he had a simulator.

I may have been the first social media pilot to speak out speculating that the plane was hijacked and did not blow up, fall apart, and/or depressurize and fall from the sky. Many comments are now coming in saying I was right. I don't care if I'm right, as long as we learn what happened. I have also received many emails asking how I knew the plane was taken and there was not a catastrophic failure.

How did I know?

I used system knowledge and standard aviation procedures to deduce that it was not a catastrophic event and there was human intervention. But there is more. The reason could have something to do with the fact I was able to write an aviation thriller, Flight For Control, about pilot suicide and then two months after the novel was published a Jet Blue captain was locked out of the flight deck due to a mental breakdown. 

This event was not a prophecy, but pure speculation as to what could happen in our current world. I took the condition of the airline industry, human factors, and my education in human services and speculated ‘what if’.

I foresaw what “could” happen and wrote a very probable novel. Albeit fiction, I used my 34 years in the airline industry and combined it with psychology and wrote a book that we hope would stay fiction. But the truth is—pilot suicide can and did occur, and may again in the future. But in this case, I do not believe pilot suicide occurred on MH370.

Three weeks ago the sequel, Flight For Safety, came out about the challenges of automation with some very frightening truths—pilots losing their flying skills and not able to land and or fly their planes. This novel was in the hands of an Airbus A330 technical editor the day Asiana 777 crashed in San Francisco, with an exact scenario I had written a year prior.  How did I know? I saw it coming.

Book Three: Flight For Survival is outlined and the prologue features a plane that disappears over the Atlantic without contact. Yes, this was written before MH370 disappeared.

How am I writing these novels that are playing out in real life?


34 years flying, 8 airlines, 7 type ratings and twenty-three years instructing for major airlines on international aircraft, I have watched the history of automation increase in direct proportion of skill deterioration. Once again I speculated on what could happen and it came true—a major airliner crashed a perfectly good airplane.

I am not a prophet, I am an airline pilot with vast experience in flight training and human factors, and I saw the automation issues coming over twenty years ago. There is a reason experienced pilots are landing at the wrong airports and having mishaps with their planes.

I've lived through mergers, pension loss, and furloughs and see what it does to people. I took it upon myself to get a Masters in Human Services to help understand the human psyche.

Do I think someone landed MH370 in a remote strip? No.  Maybe this is wishful thinking on my part because if it is, our world would be in trouble, as Mark L. Berry outlines in his theory. Better safe than sorry?

My belief comes from deductive reasoning based on my automation and heavy jet experience, and what would have had to happen to make that landing a probability. I always say, never say never. But tomorrow I will share with you why I hold the beliefs that I do.

The Power of Speculation

Aviation control and regulation is reactionary. Speculation is about being proactive. Being proactive can prevent accidents from occurring and can keep terrorists off planes. Being proactive prevents people gaining access to an aircraft with stolen passports. It means not waiting five days to expand the search to passengers, crew, and a possible area outside the span of a plane falling out of the sky. There was no way what happened to AF447 could have happened to the Boeing.

If we can deduce and speculate what might happen from what we know, we can prevent it from happening in the future. We can also find this plane if we zero in on what might have happened by focusing on facts instead of jumping to conclusions which wastes valuable time. We lost at least five valuable days while heading down the wrong path.

The Time To Speculate post has had 118,000 views, and still counting, with hundreds of comments. (I am still planning on responding to everyone. Thank you for your patience if I haven't got to yours yet.) 

Some people have stated, “I hate to speculate.” I ask, “But why?”

Speculation done without blame, fear, and ignorance is nothing more than brainstorming. Our challenge is whether or not we have all the facts. Due to national security I can imagine the ‘classified’ information is being withheld. So we as viewers of this horrible movie can only speculate with what we know. Do we know everything? I'm not sure that we do.

Tomorrow, Wednesday March 19th, I will tell you why I do not believe the captain was to blame and why I do not believe the plane landed someplace to be used again in my post Debunking Myths of MH370.

We will find this plane and the answers. Until then, my heartfelt prayers go out to the families and friends of those on board MH flight 370.

Enjoy the journey and keep the faith!
XO Karlene

Karlene Petitt is an International Airline Pilot

Author of best selling Aviation Thrillers:

Flight For Control and Flight For Safety