WHEN YOU HAVE ELIMINATED THE IMPOSSIBLE.

Might Malaysian Air 370 have been running on the yellows of Singapore 68?

Remember the one challenge that is currently making everyone doubt that MH370 actually flew to Turkmenistan, Iran, China, or Kyrgyzstan?  That challenge is the thought that MH370 couldn’t make it through several key airspaces such as India or Afghanistan without being detected by the military.

It is my belief that MH370 likely flew in the shadow of SIA68 through India and Afghanistan airspace.  As MH370 was flying “dark” without transponder / ADS-B output, SIA68 would have had no knowledge that MH370 was anywhere around and as it entered Indian airspace, it would have shown up as one single blip on the radar with only the transponder information of SIA68 lighting up ATC and military radar screens.

It's an old trick for attempting to fool an air defense system. Tom Clancy used it several times.

Or might the crew have placed too much faith in the onboard computers?

In commercial aviation, the smart automated systems are also stupid. I’ve studied several incidents in aviation where the lack of communication to the pilot was deadly. Literally. Something goes wrong with the airplane, but the intelligent, automatic systems compensate. No need to bother the pilots. But the wrong thing gets worse and worse until the automation reaches the limit of its compensatory abilities. “OK, I give up,” it says, and lets the plane start to crash.

“Huh” say the pilots, scrambling to figure out what happened and what they should do about it. (Usually they succeed because when a plane is 30-40,000 feet up in the air (9-12 KM), there is quite a bit of time – minutes. Moreover, commercial airline pilots are extremely well-trained.

Smart devices, stupidly done?