I think it’s the latter. Eighteen minutes seems more like the autopilot slow diving and going unnoticed.
Gee... you like to think that pilots would notice if the auto pilot flew the stupid thing into the ground?
I’m pretty sure that when the plane descends to a certain altitude AGL, Above Ground Level, an alarm sounds in the cockpit; similar to the Stall Alarm that sounds if airspeed falls too slow and a stall is imminent.
Since the descent was reportedly slow and gradual they should have experienced that alarm several minutes before actual crash, and even if there was hanky-panky with the flight attendants going on, there was ample time to quit it and recover the aircraft; which obviously was not done. That’s why I suspect foul play.
This makes sense to me. 18 minutes is a long time. Someone was not paying attention to what the aircraft was doing. Airbus has a record of control issues where the computer wants to do its own thing and of pilots not knowing how to overcome the computer's control of the aircraft.
This sounds like the flight was at the "set it and forget it" phase of the flight. Routine trip, daylight,waypoints already in the system, relax.
Someone was not minding the altimeter, or the altimeter was wrong.
If the crew were overcome by hypoxia, I would think the plane would just continue at 38,000 ft., as there is no other input to tell it otherwise.
Somehow this plane had a downward trajectory, and no one realized it until too late.
I wonder if ground control noticed and tried to hail the aircraft.
The Airbus is going to be called HAL9000 soon.
THe black box will tell the story. If they were conversing calmly they may have not noticed the slow descent. It was night time also right?
I think they’d be noticing when the mountains appeared to get closer and closer.