Originally Posted by
luckypierre
Bad electrical fire in the cockpit, lots of smoke, crew frantically trying to isolate source of fire, pulling as many circuit breakers and busses as they can, they pull those associated with the transponders (or the fire short circuits them). Smoke hoods have a limited life and eventually the CO gets them. Most of the pulled breakers remain in that state.
That scenario would seem to point to a much faster crash/impact with the water, much closer to home, rather than in the southern Indian Ocean, however. Unless the fire just went out on its own, which sounds quite unlikely.