Imagine one day all of a sudden a low-quality few seconds long video is uploaded to the channel showing only someone filming their feet as they stroll on on a beach.
Unlikely that he's still alive, but the evidence of a controlled landing makes the whole thing more puzzling from a psychological perspective. Why slowly and consciously drag it out until the very bitter end when you've already completed your suicide mission?
I find the controlled ditching hypothesis less psychologically puzzling, not more, for at least three reasons: ego, agency, and practicality.
First, successfully ditching an aircraft at sea is the ultimate test of piloting skills, and possibly one difficult to resist for the ego of a seasoned captain on his final flight.
Second, it seems out of character for a meticulous pilot to just let the aircraft slip out of his control and crash haphazardly at the very end of a carefully-plotted sequence of murderous steps.
Third, a ditching would better obfuscate the final resting place of the aircraft compared to an uncontrolled dive, as it would result in fewer scattered debris floating away.
Fourth, if he had any last minute regrets about offing himself (which he had hours to contemplate), it would probably be practically reflexive to keep the plane aloft as long as possible and ditch it as smoothly as possible.
> Several leading air crash investigators, along with the French team that initially examined the flaperon, reported that the damage to the trailing edge would be consistent with the plane impacting the water in a level attitude with the flaps extended to the landing position. The fact that the flaperon (as well as several other pieces) were relatively intact also suggested that the energy of the impact couldn’t have been especially great.
Just some fun speculation on what's written in the original article, not like we'll ever know for sure.
this is mentioned in the article. there are things pointing to the contrary, mostly that the plane didn't shatter onto a million different pieces upon impact
While not impossible, it's unlikely - he'd have to survive the crash first (and given it's likely the plane ran out of fuel and power it would be more difficult), and even then, given he went all the way out to the middle of nowhere, it would not have been his intent. Even if he did survive the crash and get out before the plane sunk and got on a life raft with a planeload of supplies like food and water, he'd still have a very low chance of being found or washing up somewhere. And it took a while before they even started to look in the general direction of where the plane would have crashed, so it's not likely he'd be found that way either. It took nearly a year for debris to start washing ashore in Africa.
Yeah he almost certainly drowned or died on impact, but imagine if he brought a parachute and jumped out a bit before, then got picked up by a friend in a boat. That would be some serious DB Cooper shit. Wouldn't really make sense for a guy committing suicide though I guess.
