What does zombie flight mean in Malaysia Airlines or have experienced zombie flight

"Zombie flight" here refers to the condition in which a manned aircraft still flies "autonomously" without the intervention of a pilot or other personnel.

Most aircraft, including civil airliners, are designed to be "statically stable", that is, within a certain range, the aircraft can reduce and eliminate external interference and maintain a stable flight attitude, and what the pilot has to do is to change the attitude of the aircraft when necessary. The opposite is the "static unstable" design, which is generally used in fighter jets with high agility requirements, and if left uncontrolled, the aircraft will amplify external interference and eventually lose control. Aircraft with static unstable design are almost impossible to control by humans, and they require an automatic flight control system to constantly make attitude adjustments, so it is only in the last two or three decades that they have begun to be used in the field of military aviation.

Regarding static stability and static instability, the most classic interpretation is the small ball and the bowl, as shown below, at a glance.

The most famous "zombie flight" incident in history was the crash of Cypriot Helios Air Flight 522 on August 14, 2005. The Boeing Flight 737-300, which was scheduled to take off from Cyprus to Athens, crashed near Marathon, Greece, killing all 121 people on board. Flight 522 took off at 9:07 a.m. local time, seven minutes later the crew reported an air conditioning failure, and 13 minutes later the ground made the last contact with the crew, at an altitude of 8,809 meters.

After that, the plane continued to climb to 10,000 meters and could not be contacted. At 11:05, the Greek Air Force sent two F-16s to monitor Flight 522. At 11:32 a.m., fighter pilots reported finding the captain's seat empty, the co-pilot unconscious, and all the oxygen masks in the cabin had fallen.

At 11:49 a.m., the F-16 pilot reported spotting someone coming to the captain's seat with a portable oxygen cylinder in an attempt to take control of the aircraft. A minute later, the plane's left engine stopped working because it ran out of fuel, and the plane fell. The plane crashed 14 minutes later.

Without a pilot, the plane flies on its own. Then after a long time, it slowly landed and crashed.

There is no pilot operation, and the aircraft flies autonomously.

"Zombie flight" here refers to the condition in which a manned aircraft still flies "autonomously" without the intervention of a pilot or other personnel. Most aircraft, including civil airliners, are designed to be "statically stable", that is, within a certain range, the aircraft is able to reduce wells to eliminate external interference and maintain a stable flight attitude, and what the pilot has to do is to change the attitude of the aircraft when necessary. Therefore, once there is an accident that leads to an "uncontrolled" state, the aircraft can continue to fly, not to mention that many modern aircraft are equipped with computer-aided driving devices such as autopilots, which can better maintain a stable flight attitude.