My thanks to @socalmike_SD, who has been researching airplane crashes that closely resemble AirAsia Flight 8501. Particularly striking is the case of Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise Flight 612, a Tupolev Tu-154 which crashed in 2006 near Donetsk, Ukraine. The plane was flying at 37,000 feet when it entered an area of thunderstorms and experienced severe turbulence. The flight crew asked for (and was granted) permission to climb 2000 feet to avoid the worst of the storm, but soon after doing so entered into manual flight mode, stalled, and entered a flat spin. Here is an excerpt from the cockpit voice recorder transcript:
11:33:06 CPT: Lets temporarily go to 400 or whatever, this is completely ###. Yes, ask for 390, otherwise we won’t be able to go around!
11:33:12,5 [Sound of Angle of Attack alarm (AoA)]
11:33:17 NAV: Changed
11:33:20 NAV: Tower, this is Pulkovo 612
11:33:21 TWR: Pulkovo 612, receiving you.
11:33:22 CPT: Climb, yes?
11:33:24 NAV: Pulkovo 612, temporarily requesting flight level 390.
11:33:28 CPT: Tell him that its pretty shaky.
11:33:34 TWR: Pulkovo 612, cleared for 3-9-0.
11:33:34 NAV: Climbing to 3-9-0 thank you very much, Pulkovo 6-12
11:33:37 CPT: We will still get this ### (unintelligeble)
11:33:39 CREW: (unintelligeble)
11:33:45 CPT: Where are those (unintelligeble)?!
11:34:24 CPT: That ### is ###! (referring to the thunder storm – author)
11:34:27 CPT: Holy ###!
11:34:32 CPT: She, oh and hail too?
11:34:40 CPT: Give me (unintelligeble)
11:34:43 CPT: And where to? Maybe to the side? Igor, move a bit more.
11:34:48 CPT: Igor.
11:34:49 NAV: What?
11:34:49,5 CPT: Maybe to the side? Where else can we get away from her (Referring to the storm cloud – author)
11:34:52 CREW: (unintelligeble). No.
11:34:54 CPT: Tell me, did we take 390, Andrew?
11:34:56 ST: Pulkovo 612, we are at flight level 390.
11:34:58,5…
11:35:00,3 CPT: Say something? Ah ###! (this is when the crew lost control of the aircraft)
11:35:00,2…
11:35:05 CREW: We are descending (unintelligeble)
11:35:06 CPT: Where the ### are we descending, ###!
11:35:09 CPT: Full power, ###!
11:35:10 EN: Full power.
11:35:12 CPT: Tell them that we are ### descending, ###!
11:35:13 ST: Descending, Pulkovo 612.
11:35:15,9 [Computer Alarm – AoA].
11:35:17 CPT: Carefull.
11:35:20,9 [Computer Alarm – AoA]
11:35:22 CPT: Watch the bank!
11:35:23 CREW: At full power.
11:35:24 Signal
11:35:28 NAV: Pulkovo 612, descending to 3-6-0.
11:35:30,8 [Computer Alarm – AoA]
11:35:31 CPT: Say ### severe turbulance.
11:35:33 NAV: Serious turbulance.
11:35:34 TWR: Pulkovo aircraft, descend 3-6-0.
11:35:36 CPT: ### descending!
11:35:38,9 Signal
11:35,37 CREW: (unintelligeble).
11:35:41 CPT: Carefull, we’re all holding it.
11:35:44 CPT: Holding, ###!
11:35:45 EN: Generators (unintelligeble).
11:35:48 EN: Flameout. Descending. Vanya, flameout. (Vanya is a kind form of “Ivan” – author.)
Less than three minutes later, the plane hit the ground. Everyone aboard was killed.
Recall that AirAsia reportedly requested permission to climb from 32,000 to 38,000 in order to avoid a thunderstorm; after Air Traffic Control denied the request the plane climbed anyway, then apparently stalled and entered an increasingly steep spiral dive or spin to the left, as shown in this image supplied by Victor Iannello:
If you study the sequence of events, it looks like QZ8501 turned about 26 seconds before the steep climb. Perhaps the yaw control was not functioning, which caused the left wing to dip, resulting in the left turn. Perhaps there were problems with both the rudder and elevator.
https://twitter.com/RadiantPhysics/status/558788530529656832
@ Victor:
Figure 2 in jeff’s earlier post (which looks fairly authentic) has geo-altitude 24,025 ft at 23:19:46. The “blue” graph above has geo-altitude 24,025 ft at 23:18:45. The latter seems to be in error?
@ Victor:
There is also a mismath between the “blue” altitude at 23:17:29 and the altitudes in the “Reuters” image, see here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wd0q5y7n611nfgx/AWQ8501.xls?dl=0
I believe my “blue” figure is correct. The barometric altimeter dropped out at 23:18:45 and the geometric altimeter froze at the same time. Previously, I created a graph that compares the Reuters data with the geometric and barometric altitude.
https://twitter.com/RadiantPhysics/status/558300820023037954
The Reuters data aligns with the barometric data. The data sets were combined in the tweeted figure from my previous post here.
@ Victor:
Thanks for your reply. I wasn’t aware of the geometric (GPS) altimeter freezing. That’s strange, isn’t it?
Here is a new map that shows that the plane might have banked around 60 deg at 470 kt for the first turn around 23:16:52, which is 26 seconds before the steep climb at 23:17:18. That is a wing loading of about 2g (1.7g for the turn and 1g for the weight). The maximum bank angle allowed by the A320 flight protection system is 67 deg.
https://twitter.com/RadiantPhysics/status/559058744500158464
It may be that we should looking more at problems with the rudder as opposed to the elevator as the initiating event.
Just to clarify, official report on Flight 612 does not find fault with the decision to try to fly over the thunderstorm per se. As quoted by the the Wikipedia article Jeff links:
“The cause of the crash of the Tu-154M RA-85 185 airlines “Pulkovo” was the aircraft entering in manual flight mode, supercritical angles of attack and stall mode with the subsequent transition to a flat spin and collision with the ground with a large vertical velocity. In the absence in the Flight Manual (RLE) and crew training programs of recommendations on peculiarities of piloting in the longitudinal channel in manual mode and using the trim mechanism, and inability to work on the skills of piloting the aircraft in hand mode at high altitudes and angles of attack due to the lack of appropriate simulators, the crew while avoiding area of thunderstorms and turbulence allowed the aircraft to enter pitch oscillations exceeding the operational range of angles of attack. Lack of control over flight speed and not following the instructions of RLE to prevent the aircraft entering stall mode and poor crew coordination allowed the situation to escalate into a catastrophic one.”
@ Victor said:
“It may be that we should looking more at problems with the rudder as opposed to the elevator as the initiating event.”
OTOH a load of 2g, perhaps combined with a minor upward gust, may well have triggered the high-angle-of-attack protection mode, and resulted in the climb once the bank angle was reduced.
@Gysbreght, as I just wrote on Twitter, I wonder if a runaway rudder trim caused extreme yawing; to coordinate the turn, the pilot used the ailerons to roll, and to lose speed (and thereby cut the g-load) he pitched up. The turn radius did seem to subsequently increase — but then, losing too much speed while still turning, he got into an accelerated stall/spin.
@ Jeffwise:
The pilot had asked clearance to turn left to avoid weather and also to climb to FL 380 in accordance with the filed flight plan. ATC approved the turn but told him to wait for approval of the level change. So the pilot started the turn to avoid the weather. Perhaps he was late in asking permission, or ATC took longer to approve the diversion than anticipated, and he was closing in on the weather he wanted to avoid, so he banked more steeply than usual, though perhaps closer to 50 than to 60 degrees. When he was nearing the desired heading he started to level off, and only then the airplane started to climb. It seemed a plausible scenario to me.
@Gysbreght, The envelope protection will normally prevent an A320 from exceeding 25 degrees bank. Fifty or 60 degrees is pulling major Gs, getting close to the load limit of the airframe. Bear in mind also that we’re hearing a lot of chatter about rudder malfunction.
@Jeffwise,
“The envelope protection will normally prevent an A320 from exceeding 25 degrees bank.”
I doubt that. Perhaps you mean the autopilot?
“Fifty or 60 degrees is pulling major Gs, getting close to the load limit of the airframe.”
The pilot doesn’t need to pull, nor use the rudder, the FBW does that automatically in a coordinated turn commanded by a lateral sidestick input. The envelope protection will prevent structural overload.
“Bear in mind also that we’re hearing a lot of chatter about rudder malfunction.”
Chatter on the internet? How come?
The ADS-B data contain both track angle and heading. A sudden yaw as from a rudder runaway would have been apparent on day one. Since then the DFDR data have been downloaded and decoded. They contain both pedal deflection and rudder angle. A rudder runaway would have been apparent immediately. The investigators have intimated that they have gained an understanding of what happened. Would they have remained silent if they had found the cause of the crash was rudder runaway?
CORRECTION
In my last post what I wrote about the need to pull was not entirely accurate – see following extract from the A318/A319/A320/A321 FLIGHT CREW TRAINING MANUAL:
LATERAL CHARACTERISTICS
NORMAL CONDITIONS
When the PF performs a lateral input on the sidestick, a roll rate is ordered and
naturally obtained.
Therefore, at a bank angle of less than 33 °, with no input on the sidestick, a zero
roll rate is ordered, and the current bank angle is maintained. Consequently, the
aircraft is laterally stable, and no aileron trim is required.
However, lateral law is also a mixture of roll and yaw demand with:
– Automatic turn coordination
– Automatic yaw damping
– Initial yaw damper response to a major aircraft assymetry.
In addition, if the bank angle is less than 33 °, pitch compensation is provided.
If the bank angle is greater than 33 °, spiral stability is reintroduced and pitch
compensation is no longer available. This is because, in normal situations, there is
no operational reason to fly with such high bank angles for a long period of time.
Operational Recommendation:
During a normal turn (bank angle less than 33 °), in level flight:
• The PF moves the sidestick laterally (the more the sidestick is moved laterally,
the greater the resulting roll rate – e.g. 15 °/s at max deflection)
• It is not necessary to make a pitch correction
• It is not necessary to use the rudder.
In the case of steep turns (bank angle greater than 33 °), the PF must apply:
• Lateral pressure on the sidestick to maintain bank
• Aft pressure on the sidestick to maintain level flight.
FWIW, here is my speculative chain of initial events:
At about 23:16:50 the pilot moved the sidestick to the left to initiate a left turn to avoid weather. Up to a bank angle of 33 degrees the flight control system automatically applied turn coordination, including the pull to 1.19 g. Once the bank angle increased beyond 33 degrees the pilot needed to pull for the increased ‘g’ required to maintain level flight. At some point, perhaps aided by turbulence, alpha-prot was exceeded, putting the FCS in alpha-protection mode. In alpha-protection mode the FCS maintains the angle-of-attack commanded by the sidestick longitudinal position, or alpha-prot with the sidestick in neutral position. If the sidestick is then moved to the right to level the wings to end the turn, while relaxing the pull force, the FCS maintains alpha-prot and the corresponding ‘g’, and the airplane starts to climb without further sidestick input. That is the start of a phugoid motion, trading airspeed and altitude in a cyclic fashion, but never stalling. As I recall it for the A330, the FCS exits the alpha-protection mode when the AoA is below alpha-prot for a certain time with neutral sidestick, or the sidestick is moved forward of neutral a certain time or angle.
To stall, something else must occur to disable the high-angle-of-attack protection.
@gysbreght, my apologies about the 25-degree bank limitation, I was wrong. Retract!
Here is my hypothetical chain of events:
1. The pilot wished to divert to the left to avoid weather.
2. Near the beginning of the turn, a malfunction caused excessive rudder action to be applied, causing a yaw to the left.
3. The yaw-induced roll characteristics of the plane cause a steep bank angle between 50 and 60 degrees. A plane with swept wings like the A320 would roll with yaw as one wing turned into the wind and the other turned away.
4. Aileron action was automatically applied to correct the bank within seconds, but the yaw continued due to the incorrect rudder position. The plane path began to straighten as the bank was reduced, but the yaw to the left continued.
5. To the pilots, the highly yawed plane exhibited the signs of a plane in overspeed. The airflow over the skewed fuselage would separate, leading to audible noise and vibration. Meanwhile, the flow over the right wing might experienced high speed buffeting.
6. The pilots might begin to doubt the accuracy of their airspeed indicators, especially since they were flying in a thunderstorm and icing of pitot tubes were known to cause erroneous readings.
7. As the plane began to shake from the yaw, the pilots were desperate to reduce the speed. Their reaction was to climb by pulling the stick back fully, putting the plane in a 2.5g climb. (A climb of 1700 ft in 6s as described in the Reuters graphic matches a 2.5g climb almost exactly.)
8. With the plane ascending and with the limited thrust available at high altitude, combined with the extra drag from the yaw, the airspeed of the plane dropped and the lift component in the vertical direction did not exceed the weight. The plane began to fall, even if the angle of attack (AoA) did not exceed alpha-max at this time.
9. The pilot reaction to the falling plane was to pull back the stick, leading to aerodynamic stall as the plane’s rate of descent increased.
@VictorI: Fascinating, and quite plausible. I’d add for #9 that if the plane was in a spin with the pilot unable to apply opposite rudder due to a rudder malfunction, OR the plane was in a steep spiral dive with the pilot unable to level the wings for the same reason, then in either case the plane would likely be in a very nose-low attitude, and it might seem to the pilot like a good idea to pull back on the stick to get the nose up.
I could put this up on my blog as a guest-post if you’d like.
Victor, Jeff:
Fascinating – yes, plausible – no. With the fuselage yawed and the wings level I don’t think the airplane develops the lateral force (1.7 g according to Victor) that changes its track angle by 38 degrees in 10 seconds at 480 kTAS.
Jeff Wise @ManvBrain 16 Jan: #AirAsia #QZ8501 investigators now completely understand the chain of events. Big mystery now is when do the rest of us get to find out.
@Gysbreght: Please read what I wrote. I said the yaw induces a roll of 50-60 deg that produces a turn. At 60 deg, that’s 4 deg/s, corresponding to a radius of 1.87 nm and a wing load of 2g at 470 kt. But look at the path. The plane flies only slightly curved before the steep climb, which indicates to me that plane’s wings were relatively level before the climb. Not perfectly level because the plane was still turning, but the steep bank was clearly corrected.
Please again look at the image I created which explains the first turn at high bank angle:
https://twitter.com/RadiantPhysics/status/559058744500158464
In creating the path around the first turn, it was modeled as near constant speed of 470 kt and a turn consisting of 6 seconds at 4 deg/s followed by 5 seconds at 1 deg/s for a total turn of 29 deg. Afer that, there is a more gentle turn of about 0.5 deg/s for about 20 seconds, turning an additional 10 deg.
When I said the aileron corrected the bank within seconds, I was referring to the turn at 4 deg/s, which only seemed to last about 6 seconds.
@ Victor:
I must admit that I was misled by your “4. Aileron action was automatically applied to correct the bank within seconds, but the yaw continued”.
I would think that automatic response of the control system to an uncommanded roll would be in fractions of a second, not 5 seconds.
BTW my estimates of radius and headings were based on the undistorted original “DATA SURVEILLANCE AWQ 8501”.
@ Victor:
P.S. It would take several seconds to roll through 60 degrees, plenty of time to apply opposite aileron before it gets to 60 degrees of bank.
@Gysbreght: The yaw-induced roll will be strong and quick. Look at this thread on pprune. The rudder on the A320 has the capability to produce a roll moment that may exceed the authority of the ailerons:
http://www.pprune.org/3963480-post406.html
There is no forward loop compensation on the A320 to compensate for yaw-induced roll. Rather, the A320 flight controller compensates for this effect by treating it as an external forcing function, and reacts to the change in bank angle. The amount of aileron action applied is probably controlled by a PD or PID controller, where there is a fast acting term (the proportional term) with limited authority added to an integral term with a much longer time constant (for stability reasons) that would compensate for stronger, slower forces. Considering how strong the yaw-induced roll could be, it is not surprising that the time to remove the large bank is on the order of 6 seconds. An integral term with a long time constant is necessary to not de-stabilize the eigenvalues of the system.
If yaw-induced roll did occur by excessive rudder motion, it may be that the resulting roll moment was never fully compensated by the ailerons. Notice that the flight path never fully straightened before the severe climb.
By the way, I did not use the “DATA SURVEILLANCE AWQ 8501″ as the source for my path analysis because the image I have was severely distorted by the camera angle.
@ Victor,
I’m impressed by the depth of research you have done, but when it comes to quantifying these effects you, like your source on pprune, are mostly guessing.
We’ll know on wednesday.
I found the undistorted graph somewhere down in the twitter daisy-chain.
I’m working on a version of my report which focuses strictly on the HOLES in the official account, and strips out all speculative attempts to fill them in – on advice (from folks I respect) that this will facilitate broader endorsement.
(In my defense: filling in the holes is what the human mind is built to do – and what nearly all of us have indulged in at some point. And I think my Canadian = distant/detached perspective may actually HELP, here – it is comical to me the extent to which most “patriots” – the world over – can be counted on to just barely fail to take anything other than the “home team” side of every. single. damn. issue. My own view is that TRUE love of country asks us to bend [its agencies] to the service of [the truth], not vice versa. But I digress.)
It occurs to me that answers to my report’s questions are needed not only for the reasons Duncan Steel eloquently outlined in his site’s preface (i.e. accountability), but also to help focus the live search. To wit:
The IG has recently asked Mike Chillit (who is tweeting search progress maps) to put a 30 x 300 nmi zone of uncertainty around its best estimate coordinate. My questions:
1) Roughly what probability was used to establish this zone?
2) To what would this zone shrink if ALL pertinent information KNOWN to exist (with Inmarsat and Boeing, and perhaps downstream) were made available to you?
I will turn your answers into expected dollar & time savings on the search – and will replace my conclusions with this information.
Thanks in advance!
(P.S. I haven’t asked why this zone stops well short of e84. I hope this omission is taken in the spirit of consensus-building in which it was intended…)
@Brock:
“(In my defense: filling in the holes is what the human mind is built to do – and what nearly all of us have indulged in at some point. And I think my Canadian = distant/detached perspective may actually HELP, here – it is comical to me the extent to which most “patriots” – the world over – can be counted on to just barely fail to take anything other than the “home team” side of every. single. damn. issue. My own view is that TRUE love of country asks us to bend [its agencies] to the service of [the truth], not vice versa. But I digress.)”
This statement alone could be the basis of a year-long, graduate level course encompassing psychology, sociology and political science — or a book.
BTW, did you see?
“Australian former defence chief Angus Houston has now warned there is ‘every possibility it won’t be found.'”
http://t.co/huigbiK3k6
Dusted off the Impact Distribution Model again:
Columns A-Z: unchanged from last month’s posting. These attempt to model impact distribution/coverage probabilities, assuming NO BTO error.
Columns AA-AJ: Tried to add BTO error into the mix. Picking up on @airlandseaman’s “+/-5nmi for BTO error” tweet, I’ve created a normal distribution which attempts to place all the material density within those limits.
Columns AL-BA: Simply the sum of the two:
[Impact point – True arc7] + [BTO-indic. arc7 – True arc7] = [Impact point – BTO-indic. arc7]
The histogram graph and stats suggest that adding the two errors together leads to a distribution whose density does range from -15 to +15nmi (the spreadsheet, annoyingly, continues to be in statute miles, to this is more like -17 to +17), but is heavily concentrated in the middle.
For example, if the 11 passes now completed cover a width of roughly 12 statute miles (I think it’s actually closer to 14), then the search has already covered 82% of the probability density.
If the primary calc makes no sense to you, I’ve computed it a different way (cells AV:AZ27): the basic idea is that each row in range V73:Z132 calcs last month’s basic probabilities, but assumes a slightly different BTO error (i.e. they’re searching off-center). All these rows are then collapsed into a single row by taking a probability-weighted averages based on the assumed distribution of BTO errors.
Here’s the spreadsheet. Feel free to re-parameterize, or to request different distributions (I suspect certain rounding errors have triangular or even uniform distributions).
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-r3yuaF2p72NU9Ia0dsN3JkeGs/view?usp=sharing
“Former Garuda Indonesia pilot Capt. Shadrach M. Nababan, said -based on its logbook data – that the Airbus A320-200 serving AirAsia flight QZ8501 had experienced problems as much as nine times on its auto rudder trim limiter flight control in 2014.”
http://en.tempo.co/read/news/2015/01/23/056637174/AirAsia-Plane-Often-Experiences-Trouble-Former-Pilot-Says
So perhaps excessive yaw contributed to the incident.
Angus Houston has turned a bit skeptical by the sound of it, but that’s where I started. To a satellite guru that data was compelling by itself, but to someone who still doesn’t really know what an oscillator looks like the whole thing looked screwy. If he has said that then there will currently be a wide range of views down there at ATSB I suspect.
About to be very ugly or illuminating or both.
@LizardMafia: More to come soon. Side note: We’re still organizing the @MAS email dump, stay tuned for that.
https://twitter.com/LizardMafia/status/559969713204514816
@Matty
I did not start with your skepticism, but I certainly share it now. Angus is an intelligent guy with a ton of aircraft S&R experience. He probably cannot twiddle matrix algebra with us math geeks, but he is pragmatic. He knows the lack of debris does not bode well for the analysts. He can’t come right out and say that. It would not serve the Aussie taxpayers, the families. or anyone else well.
You may have noticed that no one in the IG group will even touch two questions I have been asking over and over again.
1> Where is the debris? How do you explain the lack of it?
2> How did the SIO AP route get selected and (optionally) why?
I can’t even get an “I don’t know” response. But we are repeatably assured that the SIO has the highest probability of being the aircraft terminus. Of course, the use of the term probability in this context is completely incorrect. What they really mean is that the SIO route is the best fit to their assumptions. It has nothing whatever to do with probability. Don’t be fooled by that smoke screen.
@DennisW:
1. The plane either crashed in the SIO and the debris has not been found due to the vastness of the ocean and/or the incompletion of the search, or it did not crash in the SIO.
2. The SIO route that ends near 37.5S latitude requires in the IG’s judgment the fewest number of inputs to match the satellite data, i.e., a match can be found for a path that is straight and at cruise speeds and altitudes, which in the IG’s view makes it the most likely.
There is no smokescreen. I don’t know how we can be more transparent. We have no agenda other than doing our best to solve the mystery. Others are entitled to their own opinions about how to find the plane.
I’ll try one more time to explain the logic for the IG’s path. Suppose you have a graph of 7 points along a line (and the line is not drawn) and you are deciding how to connect those points. We know that there are an infinite number of curves that pass through those points, so we can’t be 100% sure that any curve we choose is correct. However,we notice that the points are aligned, and all things being equal, we conclude that the highest probability is a straight line through those points. That is the solution that requires the fewest number of degrees of freedom. The decision was not made ahead of time to fit the points with a line. Rather, there was an observation that the linear fit was acceptable, and therefore the most likely.
Now you might say, “But all things are NOT equal. We know the straight line is not possible because it defies logic based on other things we know”. But in fact, those other things we “know” are subjective, although you would never know that based on some of the comments here. (This includes the state of the pilot’s mind and the motivation for the diversion.) Hence, we revert to our linear curve fit and say it is the most probable.
If other facts surface, we may choose to eliminate the possibility of a straight line. However, it is the IG’s opinion that based on what we know today, there is no reason to eliminate the possibility of a straight path flown at cruise speeds.
Recall also that at the time the recommendation was made by the IG, the search in the current zone had not yet started, so there was no reason to conclude that no debris would be found.
@Victor
I have no trouble comprehending the IG logic now or at any time in the past. I simply do not agree with it nor have I ever agreed with it as you know.
Your parting comment on debris does not parse for me. What are you saying? If the aircraft crashed in the manner the IG suggests in the area the IG suggests debris would have washed up on beaches by now.
@Victor
BTW, the continued use of “degrees of freedom” in this context is both incorrect and misleading. Reducing the degrees of freedom in any problem by fiat is not the same as a similar reduction based on analytics or observables. There is no reason to believe your path is any more or less probable than any other path based on the degrees of freedom argument.
@victorI The straight line has no known starting point and which has not been proven to connect in anyway to last known location of MH370 at IGARI. That blip shown in Beijing is just a fleeting low chance of being MH370, if so where are there other blips from IGARI and onward to where you say the line starts.
@Victor, re: “there was no reason to believe that no debris would be found”.
[Considering the triple negative…no – I daren’t deny disbelief in dearth of debris.]
There were PLENTY of reasons to believe debris would not be found at the IG hotspot. Good ones.
– No surface debris found Mar.17-27, despite intensive air search smack dab on your spot
– No radar hits reported by any of the several installations which cover your path
– Primary radar / signal data disclosure of an abysmal speed and quality
– Search decisions which defied logic. (I may have mentioned some on this site once or twice.)
You are free to continue to try to make the case that it was wise to DISREGARD them all.
But you can’t pretend they didn’t EXIST.
@Victor
‘Subjective’? Yes, but they are very much predicated on FACTS.
The KL court of appeals on the morning of the 8th of March ruled against Anwar, upholding his conviction on what were widely believed to be trumped up charges of sodomy, sentencing him to 5 years in prison.
Shah and Anwar were friends, relatives (through family marriage), political allie, PKK party memebers and confidants.
Most interestingly, Anwar at first denied knowing Zaharie when asked about whether he was an acquaintance of the Kaptens. This was a blatant lie. Why? Clearly in an effort to immediately distance himself from the man. It seems that Anwar was himself suspicious of who was possibly responsible for MH370 during the first days following the event.
It is quite safe to assume that Zaharie’s state of mind only several hours post Anwar verdict was quite foul. Nothing ‘subjective’ about this, really.
The motivation for the diversion is not really in question, either. It was clearly personal and political. Shah was pleading and imploring others to not be satisfied with a “mundane lifestyle, when is it enough?” He also recognized that he himself was not exempt from the more radical and extreme forms of resistance he was urging others to take up. See Adam Adii for context…really, you should.
So, yes, I really do think we “know” who stole the airplane.
Zaharie was alive and well (IMO) after the FMT (I believe we ‘know’ this as well). Was he whittling his thumbs and contemplating his life (and his impending death) for 6 hours on AP…I highly doubt it. So just what was he doing?????
What’s truly ridiculous are these ‘highly trained terrorist’ theories (supported with erroneous supposition such a SAT ONLY being able to be disconnected through access into the
EE bay).
Try the left AC bus (which, incidentally, when de-powered may have rendered the locking mechanism to the cockpit dead, thereby preventing Fariq of any chance of reentry). I haven’t been able to confirm this, but was told by a pilot that this might be something else to consider (in regards to why he would have shut down the bus).
Does anyone here truly believe that the impeccable timing at handoff, the skill required to fly the t7, the knowledge of the FIR’s in the region, the complete silence from the intel communities, Hishammuddin and Malaysia’s strange behavior (to understate it), the confirmation that Shah’s voice was the one at handoff (where he failed to read back the frequency), the fact that the aircraft is still missing (yet not a word from anyone), the Anwar trial that very morning, the political rantings etc…does anyone really believe Zaharie was just an innocent victim? If so, WOW.
@spencer. Maybe it just crashed somewhere near IGARI.
@KJBar:
“JACC update: Around 18,000 square kilometres of the seafloor have been searched. This is 30% of the priority search area #MH370”
https://twitter.com/KJBar/status/560295447307108352
@Victor
Just to be clear, my use of the term smoke screen was not intended to imply you were less than transparent. You and your team have been very transparent, no question.
It is your use of terms probability and degrees of freedom that really annoy me. You and I both know they are totally inappropriate in this context. You are not fooling anyone by invoking those qualifiers, and you insult the intelligence of others by doing so. Get off of that, and freely admit that your conclusions are based on assumptions relative to how the aircraft was flown to the South of the Malay Peninsula.
Just-released statement from Voice370:
“Families of MAS370 Passengers will not accept any announcement or declaration of plane lost without hard evidence”
https://twitter.com/cryfortruth/status/560317133578457090
@Dennis: Please do not take the lack of SIO search success as an indication that the IG did not correctly interpret the signal data:
a) The IG are outstanding analysts; their path assumptions were SOUND (is that a permitted descriptor?)
b) Why on earth would anyone at this point still assume the signal data is authentic? If a plane is found tomorrow – ANYWHERE along the SIO’s 7th arc – it will RAISE more questions than it ANSWERS.
I applaud the IG for their efforts – which become even MORE vital to posterity if the signal data is INvalid, because their sharp analysis will have helped bring matters to a head sooner than would otherwise have been the case.
Spencer – Looks like you have the noose out for Shah, but noone else does. I think that’s because you are dying to be right while everyone else is dying for answers.
@Matty
And I think that you should attack my argument on its merit rather than me personally.
Feel free to launch a rebuttal and make the case as to why it wasn’t Shah. Tell me why I’m ‘wrong’. This should be a simple task. I would hope for something better than “there’s no proof”. I won’t expect it, however.
It’s not that I’m dying to be right (I’m sure it come across that way, so apologies).
It’s that I feel strongly that I am right (at least about Shah’s role). This is quite a big distinction. It’s perplexing to me that others seem unable or unwilling to connect the dots, but so be it. I have no interest in anything other than the truth, which these families deserve.
BTW, I’ve also donated a hefty sum (perhaps naively) to the fund started by some of the MH370 families out of nothing but the goodness of my heart, and a genuine empathy for the pain they are experiencing..and played NO role in directing the course of their fledgling investigation. I now regret not being more proactive in suggesting to the families where the focus need/should be. Oh well.
My hope was/is that progress could be made once there was general agreement that Shah stole the plane…but you are doing well to see to it that this does not become the case.
Job well done.
@Brock
“Why on earth would anyone at this point still assume the signal data is authentic? If a plane is found tomorrow – ANYWHERE along the SIO’s 7th arc – it will RAISE more questions than it ANSWERS.”
If (if) the plane were found tomorrow (in the search area) it would prove that those who doubted a signal and aircraft performance based search could be successful were, in the end, wrong. Just that.
OTOH, if the plane is not found in the priority search area, then the assumption of an unresponsive crew is obviously wrong.
Oh pleaseeee…dont turn this into another MH370 discussion! That topic is getting boring. Stale. And unrelated to this post. Go find some other place to discuss that, please.
Maybe there are some aircraft related issues that could slew the analysis, even with an unresponsive crew. I suppose some subtle failure in the satellite terminal could put in enough error without being obvious, but that failure might not be possible.
@Dennis said, “You are not fooling anyone by invoking those qualifiers, and you insult the intelligence of others by doing so.”
I really debated whether to even respond to you remarks because of the tone and suggestions of the IG’s malfeasance. In the past, you have made over the top statements and later apologized after reflection. Perhaps you are again in one of your “cycles”.
First, stop the melodrama. Nobody is trying to insult your intelligence. Your words alone speak volumes about your thought process. If you think there is some grand plan on the part of me or others in the IG to deceive you and others with a “smokescreen”, it is time to increase your medication.
Second, the fact that the BTO, BFO, and fuel exhaustions models are consistent with a straight flight at cruise speeds reinforces that this interpretation is likely to be correct. It would be one incredible coincidence if the simplest of flight patterns matched the data.
Try doing the inverse problem. Choose a curved path at some non-ideal speed to some random location and generate a BTO and BFO signature. Then, see if you can find a straight path at typical cruise speeds that match the data without adding additional dials such as a variation in vertical speeds. It would be an incredible coincidence if you could find a straight path that matched the data. So, you would be correct in that case in rejecting the straight line, cruise speed scenario.
Either the plane flew a straight path into the SIO at typical cruise speeds or somebody has done a great job in manipulating the data to make it look that way.
Thirdly, you can promote your own theory about a flight that was headed toward Christmas Island all you want. The fact is it does not match the BFO data unless you overfit the data, i.e., start manipulating your model with additional inputs to match the data. That is what the IG has explicitly resisted doing. Why do you think it is that you have such little support for this theory among those that have mathematically analyzed the scenario?
I made a suggestion earlier that we should work to uncover more data instead of running over the same old ground and contributing no new information. In that regard, Brock is working on a list of additional questions to ask the joint investigative team. I look forward to seeing that list.
Victor,
My first reaction with regard to a number of your statements & posts in this thread was to say how wrong you are. Then I realized how useless this would be.
@Victor: working on it – thanks.