What Was Going On at Yubileyniy?

1 - Yubileyniy overview 2012 smallAs readers of this blog or my Kindle Single (or, now, New York magazine) know, I’m intrigued by the possibility that MH370 might have been hijacked and flown north to the Yubileyniy Aerodrome within the Baikonur Cosmodrome. If so, it would have come to rest on the specially-milled concrete at approximately an hour and a half before sunrise on Sunday, March 8. And then what? If it stayed where it was, it would have been easy to spot by land-imaging satellites overhead. To avoid detection, it would have to have either refueled and taken off again, or found some kind of shelter.

As it happens, the Kazakh steppe is a terrible place to hide a 210-foot long, 60-foot-high airplane. The flat, desert plain is sparsely populated and almost featureless, so that anything large and unusual is apt to stand out. There is no natural canopy of trees to shelter under. Though there are large buildings at the cosmodrome where space vehicles are serviced, there are no large structures near Yubileyniy.

After I began developing my “Spoof” hypthesis I spent days scouring first Google Earth, then free commercial satellite imagery looking for any hint that a plane could have been stashed in the vicinity. The pickings were slim. The Yubileyniy complex was built in the ‘80s as the landing site for the Buran space plane, and after the program was cancelled in 1989 it has largely sat disused. Occasionally the runway is used by planes carrying inbound VIPs and cosmonauts, but otherwise nothing has really happened there in decades. An overview of the area is depicted above.

The dark, fishhook-shaped line is the rail line connecting the airstrip to the rest of the Baikonur complex. Alongside it is a road from which a series of driveways lead off to the north. One of them leads to an isolated six-story building that stands surrounded by debris, berms, and trenches. I came to think of the area as Yubileyniy North. Here’s what it looked like in 2006 (click on images to enlarge):

2 - Yubileyniy North 2006

As you can see, the area is desert, where vehicle tracks persist for many years. The six-story building casts a dark, short shadow to the northwest — the sun is nearly overhead. The road from the airstrip comes up from the bottom of the frame and curves to the right. Here and there rectangular patches of debris suggest where buildings once stood. Essentially, it’s a ruin. Here’s the same area, six years later:

3 - Yubileyniy North 2012

Not much has changed. The sun is lower in the sky, so the six-story building’s shadow is longer. But nothing seems to have changed at all. The entire area of Yubileyniy is like this—the place seems have been left to slowly crumble in the desert sun for decades. There’s nowhere to stash a 777. On the other hand, the most recent imagery viewable here in Google Earth comes from 2012. Perhaps something has happened since then? I didn’t know anything about what kind of imagery is available from commercial sources, but I set out to learn. Before long I came upon a company called Terraserver, which lets you view high-resolution satellite imagery for free. I used it to scope around the general area of the Yubileyniy complex, and here’s what I found in an image of Yubileyniy North from October 31, 2013:

4 - Oct 31 2013 small

Suddenly, things are happening. A number of trucks are lined up in the parking lot in the upper-right part of the image. The six-story building is being disassembled. And what looks like a large rectangle of dirt has been bulldozed to the left of the building. The image resolution is so good that you can make out what I take to be the stripes left by the bulldozer blade as it worked back and forth horizontally. At the northern end of the rectangle is a berm which casts a shadow to the north. At the far northeastern corner lies what appears to be a trench with a well-defined corner on the upper right, with treadmarks leading out of it toward the southeast. I’m not sure what this dirt rectangle represents — are they building a pile of dirt, or a hole? — but what really gets my attention is the size of the thing. To give you a sense of scale, I’ve superimposed an equivalently proportioned 777 silhouette onto the image:

5 - Oct 31 w 777

This struck me as interesting, to say the least. Naturally, I wondered what happened next. Fortunately, Terraserver had one more image that I could browse for free. This next one was taken on April 26, 2014:

11 - Apr 26 2014 small

Holy cow. All traces of both the building and the dirt rectangle have been erased. Various debris piles have been swept away, too. At first I thought that maybe the image had been digitally scrubbed, but if you look closely you can easily make out individual pieces of junk in between the cleared areas. So my interpretation is that the site was actually cleared and swept up.
So here’s the situation: nothing happens at Yubileyniy for decades; then, four months before MH370 disappears, the Russians start building a 777-sized something-or-other a mile and a half from a giant disused airstrip. Then, a month after the plane disappears, the area looks like it’s been erased.
What had happened in the meantime? To find out, I had to shell out cash from my own pocket to buy imagery from the main commercial satellite imagery provider, Digital Globe, via one of its resellers—in this case, a company called Apollo Mapping. The cash drain was painful, but at this point I was very far down the rabbit hole. Here’s what Yubileyniy North looked like on December 17, 2013:

6 - Dec 17 2013

The sun is low on the snow-dusted steppe; it’s almost winter. In a month and a half, workers have removed all but the bottom-most floors of the six-story building. You can make out the shadow of a crane projecting to the north from the middle of the remaining structure. A handful of trucks can still be seen in the parking lot. The dirt pile has been extended a few yards to the north; the berm at that end now overlies the what we saw as the sharp corner of the trench in the October image. Beyond the berm lies either a dark strip that could either be a long trench or just a shadow; to my eye the line of brightness at its northern edge implies the lip of a trench, but who knows. Work is clearly continuing. The next image, in black and white, is from three weeks later, January 9, 2014:

7 - Jan 9 2014

Now winter is in full effect. Snow blankets the entire region, and cold has descended: in the four days before this picture was taken, the temperature fluctuated between -15F and +14F. The disruption of the snow cover shows that work is very much underway. The building seems to be down to its last story. Trucks can be seen in the parking lot. I’m not sure what to make of the northern end of the rectangle; two dark strips are visible, perhaps one of them is a trench and the other is the shadow of a berm. Unforunately the resolution is not very good because the image was taken at a fairly low angle. The fact that work is continuing under such harsh conditions suggests a sense of urgency, to my mind; or perhaps these are simply hardy mofos. By the time the next image is taken, nearly two months have passed.

8 - Mar 2 2014

In this black-and-white image, the building has been completely dismantled and the dirt rectangle bulldozed flat. No berm remains at the northern end. Horizontal bulldozer tracks are still visible. The dark dirt is framed with a lighter border, suggesting perhaps a snowy slope. No trucks are visible, suggesting that the work crew has moved on. A color image taken four days later looks almost identical:

9 - Mar 6 2014

This image was taken two days before MH370 disappeared, on March 6. The next one was taken eight days after, on March 16:

10 - Mar 16 2014

When I first saw this picture, my heart leapt. The two scenes, taken just before and after the disappearance, looked so different that I was certain that something significant had occurred in the interim. Perhaps what was a rectangular depression in the March 6 image has now been filled in with sand (along with maybe, oh, who knows, a plane?).
I began pricing out tickets to Kazakhstan and searching the internet for advice on detecting large buried things with metal detectors. I located a Russian from St. Petersburg who’d made a gonzo two-day bike trek across the steppe to reach the Yubileyniy strip and sought his advice on how to get to the area without permission; he told me that he’d camped out at the airstrip overnight without anybody noticing him but then had tried to visit a busier part of the cosmodrome and gotten arrested. After he told them he was just scouting around because he was a huge fan of the Buran project, they let him go. I figured that if I was more careful I had a good chance of making it in and back.
But then I looked more closely, and examined the weather records. It just so happened that during this time interval spring fell on Baikonur like a hammer. On March 6, the temperature had only just peeked above freezing, by the 16th the daily highs had been in the 40s for the better part of a week. The thaw has completely changed the color palette. Everything that was covered in snow, and hence lighter colored, is now sodden and hence darker colored. White plains of snow are now damp brown sand. The darker earth of the rectangle is now drier and lighter-colored. After staring at these images for many hours I concluded that the most likely interpretation is that nothing has changed except for a temperature change.
And so we wind up back at our April 26 image:

11 - Apr 26 2014 small

By now the desert has returned to its normal dried-out state. The cluttered jumble seen over the winter has been replaced by almost featureless swatches of tan. A vehicle track overlies the northernmost part of the dirt rectangle, its borders now smudged and indeterminate.
I showed some of these images to construction experts and satellite imagery professionals, and received very little encouragement. Most likely, they told me, the work being performed was site remediation: a building was torn down, and construction debris thrown in a trench and covered up. As successive trenches are dug and filled in, a rectangular shape is formed. Simple as that.
And yet: the entire cosmodrome is littered with decades of abandoned equipment and derelict buildings, evincing a constitutional lack of interest in the concept of remediation. There is no commercial or residential activity for miles of Yubileyniy. Why, after decades, did the Russians suddenly need to clear this one lonely spot, in the heart of a frigid winter, finishing just before MH370 disappeared? And why is it that the greater part of the dirt rectangle was already laid out in the Oct 31 image, before the building was substantially demolished?
I don’t know. I tried to reach out to people who might know, but had no luck, and eventually I had to turn my attention to projects that might earn me some money. But I’d love to find out. If any readers have any special insight, I’d love to hear it.

UPDATE 4/3/2106: Since I wrote the above, Google Earth has added a new high-quality image of the site, taken October, 12, 2014. It gives a different impression from the last image–it doesn’t look any longer like the dirt was swept flat, like someone trying to cover their tracks.

October 2014

659 thoughts on “What Was Going On at Yubileyniy?”

  1. @Nihonmama I do not believe that MAH 370 could have gone south on the flight path that has been represented without the USAF air defense radar system on Diego Garcia seeing it. They say they didn’t see anything. One is left to conclude there was nothing there to see.

  2. @Nihonmama

    I’m sure the plane lies somewhere on the southern arc(as noone has disproved official analysis up to that point), I just don’t agree with official theory that speed and/or heading and/or altitude HAD to be constant through IO(but I leave the possibility of course), especially because that flight has changed speed&heading&altitude multiple times up to the 18:22h point…

  3. @dj

    MH370 didn’t come closer than ~1000 miles to diego garcia so it was way over the horizon for their ground radar to see it, now if they had an AWACS plane active at the time that would be another story however I’m not sure if they have those planes stationed on the island at all

  4. littlefoot Posted March 4, 2015 at 10:47 AM

    “I’m not sure what’s more unlikely: such a stroke of luck or highly sophisticated perps.”

    Hi littlefoot ~

    And I’m not sure if an Inmarsat satellite controller’s death was a simple heart attack:

    http://interactive.satellitetoday.com/inmarsat-exec-talks-about-operators-role-in-search-for-mh370/

    Maybe Mr. Stuart James Fairbairn was silenced. I hope Scotland Yard investigated his untimely demise.

    ~LG~

  5. @Ajai Banerji

    I mentioned that cargo plane flying between Sri Lanka and the Maldives back in Dec.

    jeffwise.net/2014/12/23/sense-and-nonsense-in-mh370-coverage/comment-page-1/

    Glad I’m not the only one.

  6. @Dennis: re: “BFO extremely sensitive to RoC”: suppose you were given two paths from FMT to 00:11 UTC:

    1) steady horizontal 500kt = cruising speed, constant bearing, zero RoC = acceptably small BFO error, or

    2) steady horizontal 400kt = ??? speed, curving path which adds BFO errors of X, RoCs which add BFO error of precisely -X (i.e. happen to perfectly offset) = acceptably small aggregate BFO error.

    Which would you pick?

    Also: the ATSB Oct.8 report seems quite firm on the NE limit of its feasibility zone – which rules out Xmas Isle. What did the ATSB do wrong in their performance limit calculation?

    I don’t RULE OUT your path. I just consider the RoC insertion to be an arbitrary fudge factor, and the slow, lazy curve to be both implausible and fuel-inefficient.

    Or do you get to Xmas Isle via path circuity? I honestly forget.

  7. @Brock

    “Also: the ATSB Oct.8 report seems quite firm on the NE limit of its feasibility zone – which rules out Xmas Isle. What did the ATSB do wrong in their performance limit calculation?

    I don’t RULE OUT your path. I just consider the RoC insertion to be an arbitrary fudge factor, and the slow, lazy curve to be both implausible and fuel-inefficient.

    Or do you get to Xmas Isle via path circuity? I honestly forget.”

    the ATSB feasibility zone is based on assumption the flight had constant altitude(or speed or heading), if you remove assumptions the BFO means nothing as it is highly dependable on altitude, the plane could hit anywhere on the southern arc

    fuel-inefficient circular path was maybe(just maybe) pursued because he wanted to land on the short runway as light as possible but miscalculated under pressure and fell short…yes he could just circle above island before landing or dump fuel but stressed people sometimes make very strange decision

  8. @Brock

    In your example there is insufficient basis for picking either path. I would consider additional factors such as motive, lack of debris, and lack of radar sightings.

    BTW, my path to Christmas Island is relatively straight at a ground speed of 270 knots (altitude ~ 4000 meters). Without making any altitude adjustments the BFO deviations are under the 7 Hz error confidence limit recommended by Inmarsat in their Journal of Navigation paper. That is why I included both in the spreadsheet I posted here earlier.

  9. @LGH: Thanks for mentioning Fairbairn. I remain intensely concerned about his death:

    – He was very young for a heart attack
    – I have reason to believe he WAS involved in Inmarsat’s end of the MH370 investigation
    – he died Mar.17 = exact same day search moved to the SIO based on the Inmarsat data
    – we still haven’t found a SHRED of evidence to corroborate the Inmarsat data

    I would like to see a spectacularly PUBLIC inquiry into his death.

  10. Dennis that’s an interesting path, do you have the link? Also could you leave an e-mail here or facebook account as I’d like to contact you?

  11. @LG,
    thanks for that link. I always meant to find out more about the Inmarsat member who died. It’s still very hazy info. But at least Dickinson admitted the guy was a key member, not a minor figure as we were led to believe by other media outlets.
    Yes, I agree with Brock,this death concerns me intensely. Most of us here think we are dealing with a crime one way or another. I think we are looking at something very evil. I don’t use the term lightly. But IMO it has to be said. Some of us might be attracted by the riddle or mystery. I have to admit that I belong to this group. I simply don’t like unsolved riddles. But I try never to forget what unspeakable harm came of the unexplained loss of the plane. And it gets worse if – as I personally believe – mh17 is connected to it. Someone or a group of people who are ready to sacrifice the life of so many innocent people wouldn’t hesitate to be responsible for one more death. And because he died we should look even closer at the satellite data and raise our level of suspicion.
    Brock contemplates that we can’t exclude that the data got corrupted downstream from Inmarsat for reasons yet unknown. I speculated a couple of days ago that someone from Inmarsat might’ve told something of their procedures re: flight data collection to someone who shouldn’t know that. Or they were nudged into developing their BFO math wizz by an interested party. Who knows?
    Sorry, guys for being so melodramatic…

  12. “And it gets worse if – as I personally believe – mh17 is connected to it. Someone or a group of people who are ready to sacrifice the life of so many innocent people wouldn’t hesitate to be responsible for one more death.”

    Why would they have to be connected? The only way I could think of is that MH17 has been chosen because of greater “effect” on the public, but these two incidents are unrelated IMO.

  13. @Jeff,
    Just read your last twitter: Did you have contact with the “Bild Zeitung”? Be aware of that German proverb: “You go all the way up with them – and you will go all the way down with them” 😉
    It’s the mightiest tabloid of our country, but they are not known to be a beacon of truth.

  14. @Stevan,
    I don’t believe in such mindboggling coicidences. The connection could be simple: mh17 was chosen because of the notoriety of mh370.The rebels could’ve been drunk and said: “Oh look – is that a MAS B 777- rings a bell- let’s go and get it!”
    It could’ve been an act of revenge, it could be a message. I have some ideas. But, as Victor once said: solve mh370 and we might be able to see clearer re: mh17.
    And, of course it could be a mindboggling coincidence. They do happen once in a while.

  15. @Stevan,
    I forgot to mention the most obvious connection between the two planes: Malaysia Airlines, which was brought down to it’s knees by the two plane losses and a flurry of other incidences, which luckily did not result in the loss of another plane. But I think three or four planes had to return to the airport because of mechanical problems last year. Their aviation shop in Kuala Lumpur burned down. No airline can be that unlucky and they started officially to investigate possible acts of sabotage.

  16. @littlefoot

    I also believe it was the rebels who fired the missile but I am sure it wasn’t intentional(which doesn’t justify them) and I’m sure it’s not the coincidence the plane was rerouted to overfly their territory coming from the same direction as ukrainian bombers…conclude for yourself.

  17. Is it even possible to rule out a circular path? Without knowing the diameter or speed, isn’t it at least theoretically possible?

    I realize the chances of a plane on a perfectly circular path receding from the satellite at the perfect time are slim. However, a degrading path, like a spiral, could increase the possibility of 6-7 pings showing a BFO comparable to a straight path.

    VictorI – as I’m sure you’re aware, just about any formulaic path – line, arc, circle, etc. could create a BFO curve like the one we have, under certain conditions, because the distance between two moving objects is always going to be roughly either a sine curve or a parabola, right? Even a stationary plane would cause a sine curve of the BFOs. A plane parked for 24 hours would have been a better validation of the BFOs than a trip to Amsterdam. Hmmm.

    My concern is that if there were other independent variables affecting the BFO, they may go unnoticed if they are cyclical with a 24-hr period, like air temp or sunlight or atmospheric interference, or if they are linear and correlated with the plane’s flight, like remaining fuel, altitude, or speed.

    Considering how well the BFOs and BTOs correlate to the satellite’s z position, and how near in time the closest flyby was to the satellite’s northernmost position, it’s hard NOT to think that at least some other factor is at work, however minor.

    If that’s what you’re looking for, I think that’s a worthwhile effort.

  18. @Stevan,
    Yes, I think there is not much doubt left that the rebels shot the plane down because they mistook it for a Ukrainian Antonov cargo plane. That’s what they apparently claimed at their social pages – until they pulled the messages.
    I wasn’t completely serious, when I said the rebels did it intentionally because of the other plane’s fame. And the big questions are indeed: why was the plane redirected a bit, thus flying smack over the rebels’territory? Was there really a bad weather zone? Why was the plane directed to fly lower than the captain requested? Also, there were other passenger planes nearby. Why didn’t the rebels down them, too, but identified them as passenger planes?
    There was a German/Dutch report for tv, which claimed it was all a terrible coincidence, but I didn’t find the report conclusive at all. As far as I know is the official investigation still in progress.
    What I really hate is that all this turned me into such a suspicious conspiracy monger. And I’m sure I must be wrong at least about a few things.

  19. @Littlefoot, @StevanG:

    “I don’t believe in such mindboggling coicidences.”

    +100

    “we’ve got three crashes within a year and all three planes were Malaysian-owned?”

    That’s not a coincidence. That’s a message.

    “12. Dec/14 – QZ8501, a flight of the Indonesian affiliate of AirAsia (which is based in Malaysia), crashes en route from Surabaya, Indonesia to Singapore. TWO WEEKS BEFORE 8501 CRASHES, a Chinese blogger (‘OP’/’Landlord’) warns of an AirAsia disaster in a Chinese online forum (which then appeared in rough translation on Reddit):

    “the people that brought down MH370 is going to target another Malaysian airline… and it all has something to do with the US… Black hand has hijacked and shot down MH370 and MH17. This has pretty much killed the 6th largest airline: Malaysian airline. Now the black hand are targeting AirAsia to ruin this airline cause it too belong to Malaysia. Given how powerful the black hand are I suggest that all Chinese thinking about traveling to avoid AirAisa, so that you don’t disappear like those on MH370… Don’t be a victim go hid. avoid Malaysian airline and AirAsia and life is precious, and your safety is important.”

    How did ‘Landlord’ know two weeks before the fact that disaster would befall an AirAsia airplane?”

    http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1skoopj

  20. @Nihonmama, the AirAsia loss sure gave me pause. But I can’t see atm, how it could’ve been anything else than a terrible accident.
    Is this post of the Chinese blogger confirmed? I can’t read Chinese unfortunately. Is it certain that it was written before the crash?

  21. Missile systems like a Buk, like all others do need ways and means of distinguishing between friend and foe otherwise they are useless. That Mh17 was plucked out of a line of aircraft just 90 seconds apart, om a civilian route, was interpreted correctly by many as deliberate. Once again Obama was virtually mute. The strongest response by far came from the Australian PM who then had the Russian Navy prowling his doorstep for the duration of the G20 as payback for daring to confront. 2014 was an interesting year.

  22. NORTHERN ROUTE (continued):

    Point #2: SPEED & FLIGHT PATH

    The Reuters story on March 14, 2014, reported MH370 was on P628, and last plotted heading towards waypoint IGREX at 2:15 am (later updated to 2:30 am).

    Where exactly the plane was between waypoints GIVAL and IGREX is difficult to ascertain precisely, and whatever starting location is assumed can affect how far the plane could fly before the clock runs out at 8:19 am. Using a conservative but logical assumption, let’s assume the plane was located about 60 miles from IGREX at 2:30 am, flying northwest on P628.

    The question I struggled with was this: How could MH370 fly about 6 hours, if it crashed in the Bay of Bengal? Obviously, following flight paths to waypoints, it could not have flown over any of the surrounding countries without potential radar detection.

    If flying slower than 475-500 kts….. the question was: How slow was it flying? A map posted by the IG in July observed that between two early arcs over the Andaman Sea area, the plane flew 195 miles in 73 minutes.

    I wondered if that speed of 160 kts (184 mph) could be indicative of an approximate air speed for the duration of the flight?
    (http://www.duncansteel.com/archives/date/2014/07)

    For this northern scenario, I assume a starting location about 60 miles from IGREX at 2:30 am, flying at 160 kts (having slowed down while on P628). At this slower airspeed, the altitude was most likely lower at about 10,000-12,000 ft.

    How far could it fly in the Bay of Bengal during the remaining 5 hours 49 minutes (2:30 to 8:19 am), following only flight paths?

    Plotting a flight path!!
    Malaysian military radar plotted 370 flying northwest towards Port Blair. P628 does turn a few degrees to the north at IGREX, which might have some affect on the satellite data. But let assume that the flightpath continued on northwest following P628 & W111. (see skyvector.com for these airplane flightpaths)

    Since it could not fly over India without radar detection, it had to turn north at waypoint VATLA. Flying straight north, 369 n.m. on W111, to waypoint DOPID.

    An interesting observation about this straight flightpath north on W111. It is between E89°-90°, which appears to be almost a “mirror image” of many of the SIO models, that follow this same E89°-90° corridor.

    At waypoint DOPID, the only flightpath choice was a 135° right turn southeast on P646. Continuing north would have taken the plane over India. (Whether this southeast turn was made by a live person or by the autopilot, I do not know…. and the answer is irrelevant for this scenario.)

    How much flying time does MH370 have left?
    Since 2:30 am, flying approximately 852 n.m. to DOPID, it has about 30 minutes left. At 2.67 n.m./min., it could only fly another 75-80 n.m.

    After making an east turn at DOPID, assume it flew about 50 miles southeast on P646 until both engines flamed-out.
    Thanks to Mike Exner’s very excellent simulator report last year, concluding that this model 777 always drifts to the right after flame-out and the autopilot shuts off.

    Beginning a glide slope descent, the plane would have drifted to the right (south) from P646, flying nearly straight south before contacting the ocean. Using a glide ratio of 3 miles per 1,000 ft of altitude, the plane could have glided 20-30 miles before making a relatively smooth ocean landing, without major structural breakup.

    An intact aircraft landing at this speed and altitude would have prevented any floating debris wash-up on any of the surrounding shorelines. The crash time could have potentially occurred several minutes earlier than 8:19 am, depending on how long the plane was able to stay afloat.

    Approximate CRASH LOCATION: E90°, N20°

    E90° is also near the projected longitude of many SIO models.

    I know this location is way, way, off the 7th arc. That is above my pay grade….. hope the forensic experts can sort it out.

    Maybe the answer is as simple as what VictorI has stated:
    “…if the plane flew north, it is explained by our inability to correctly interpret the BFO values.”

  23. I present the following as fuel for thought, if nothing else.

    HYPOTHESIS
    ==========

    If the system geometry differed after the AES reboot due to unknown conditions (i.e. tampering between 17:21 and 18:22 UTC), the southern track might be an artifact of incorrect model input. If the plane continued on its last known course, is there a geometry that would produce the measured BTO & BFO data?

    METHOD
    ======

    Reverse engineering from an extrapolation of the last known course.
    Calculations have been performed by modifying Yap’s BTO and BFO Calculator provided on this site.

    Link to modified spreadsheet:

    http://goo.gl/p88TiB

    RESULTS
    =======

    The BTO graph can be reproduced with considerable precision under the following conditions:

    [1] Plane continues straight along Route N571
    [2] AES relays through satellite at 79.9 E after reboot at 18:22 UTC
    [3] AES continues to compensate for satellite at fixed position of 64.5 E
    [4] An additional offset of 13200 microseconds is added.

    The BFO graph is rather similar under the following conditions:

    [1] An additional offset of 425 Hz is added.

    I would note that a better match may be possible given that I have not recalculated the EAFC receiver + Satellite translation frequency variable.

    DISCUSSION
    ==========

    Had the data recorded at the GES in Perth not come to light, where would we be?

    According to radar data, the plane would be last seen heading northwest along Route N571.

    The GES data is the sole reason to look elsewhere.

    Now, the fact is, the GES data exists, therefore any hypothesis should probably seek to reconcile the math if it is to be given any consideration (unless one

    argues that the data is completely invalid).

    This hypothesis is merely an attempt to reconcile the measured data with different input, and surprisingly, as it turns out, requires no manipulation of the BTO & BFO formulae by the presumed perpetrators; rather, it simply requires the physical re-routing of the signal path (along with an assumption of additional fixed offsets due to the differing system characteristics).

    In this hypothesis, I would also note that perhaps the inconsistent data values at the end of flight currently presumed to be due to a crash could be explained by the sudden termination of the signal relay at the satellite as the plane made its approach to land.

    Disclaimer: I have no idea if this sort of man-in-the-middle sort of scenario is physically possible. It is certainly possible that this whole notion is nothing
    more than mathematical curiosity, and I have no issue if that is the case.

    I suspect that Jeff, at least, will find it interesting that the satellite which makes the math work for a straight path is this one:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_2473

    The destination that best fit through trial and error:
    http://goo.gl/uL9KCI

  24. @Frank Duff, Great question. It would be tough. We don’t really know enough about the ECON autothrottle mode to be able to calculate the fuel burn with great accuracy.

  25. Jay – I was going to put a link to this article as well, I bookmarked it when I first read it, but have never forgotten it. I found the comments after the article even more interesting.
    I always understood the aviation industry required multiple copies of ALL work carried out, however minor.

  26. I see the Independent Group contains only one Asian expert. Given the majority of passengers on MH370 where Chinese, wouldn’t you expect more Chinese experts to be clamouring onboard this grassroots effort to find MH370?

    With all the experts Chinese is producing, surely they would be leading the race to find MH370? Surely there is a Chinese equivalent to the Independent Group? Surely you have translators to co-ordinate both groups?

    If there is no such Chinese group, then ask yourself why? It’s almost as if they know something that we don’t.

    If the plane landed in Russian territory, then it’s a Chinese hijack, with a Putin assist. That’s why the Chinese scientists are strangely silent.

  27. “Was there really a bad weather zone? Why was the plane directed to fly lower than the captain requested? Also, there were other passenger planes nearby. Why didn’t the rebels down them, too, but identified them as passenger planes?”

    There wasn’t a bad weather. Other planes were flying typical commercial routes this one was not. Ukrainians don’t want to disclose ATC recordings which is enough information for me to conclude they set up the trap for rebels and rebels got caught.

    IMO if there was a justice both ukrainian authorities and rebels should be in jail now, first for using 300 human lives for pushing their agenda and second for not checking better if that was a civilian plane or not.

  28. @Stevan,
    Are you sure there was no bad weather zone? And was only mh17 but not the other planes redirected a bit? I’m not saying you’re wrong. But it would help immensely to establish the correct circumstances. We can’t force the Ukrainians to make the complete ATC protocolls available but we can check the local weather report.

  29. yeah I’ve checked it, the weather wasn’t any different than on days before, you can check the videos after the crash and see from the sky there were no black clouds(those that are dangerous for the planes) anywhere near

  30. @Matty I was thinking almost the same thing! Slide it n on it’s belly, retract the gear in and it’s a big sled on the frozen ground. I didn’t think of taking the tail off though. Stupidly did it once with my dad playing with the gear on a small plane when I was a teenager n when we went n with no wheels it curled the prop ;( took me awhile to get outta the dog house for that one. @Little foot ive missed reading ur posts! 🙂

  31. @Stevan,
    We can’t check the weather by looking at the clouds in a youtube clip from the crash site. We have to look at the local weather report from that day, since we aren’t interested how the weather was at the crash site. We need to know if there really was bad weather in the area of mh17’s previous routes.

  32. I note that March 8th is a big national holiday in Khasakstan every year. So the cosmodrome would be deserted. Another interesting coincidence.

  33. @Michael for the plane to reach Kazakhstan it would need to fly at cruising altitude and it would have to be seen on radar by several countries.

  34. This theory has been getting quite a bit of media attention (I personally came here from the NY mag article), so I’d like to address a few things.

    1. Baikonur is anything but “abandoned”. It is the launch site for all Soyuz and Progess missions to the ISS, which means there is a constant presence of personnel from various space agencies, including NASA, the ESA, and JAXA. In fact, on March 11th, 2014, a Soyuz capsule with an American crew member onboard landed at Baikonur, and later, on March 25th, 2014, another Soyuz, with another American onboard, departed. That crew would have been training at Baikonur at the time MH370 disappeared.

    2. The ability to autoland a 777 depends on the airport being in the aircraft’s database, and it having a functional ILS signal. Baikonur North, which you call Yubileney, does not, as far as I can tell, have a functional ILS. Furthermore, any equipment that may have been there during the Buran program, such as an MLS, would by now either be inoperative or completely absent. In either case, a 777 cannot land itself via an MLS signal.

    3. The dirt patch you show has no direct access to the runway at Baikonur North, and those taxiways that do exist are too narrow to accommodate a 777. Unless the sand is as hard as concrete there, the aircraft would have gotten stuck and/or sustained substantial damage.

    You’ve put forward an interesting theory. In particular, I found the part about the two Russian furniture salesmen very suspicious, but there are a lot of reasons to own a front company in Russia that have nothing to do with hijacking an airliner. Ultimately, you made some serious errors that, frankly, I’m surprised to hear from a private pilot and aviation journalist. In fact, I’d say this “theory” borders on deliberate deception. Perhaps a modicum of research is called for.

  35. @Adam,
    I think you misunderstand the point of my exercise. I set out to answer the question: is there any possible scenario that fits with the little data we have about the fate of MH370 but doesn’t wind up in the southern Indian Ocean? My suggestion — and it is only a suggestion — is that it might be physically possible to spoof the BFO data. I further suggest that if the BFO data were spoofed, then the BTO data alone suggests an endpoint in Kazakhstan. One further hop: an endpoint in Kazakhstan implies Russian involvement. Everything else is an elaboration on this point. Assuming all of the above (which I by no means do) is true, then the plane could have landed at Yubileyniy or elsewhere (Victor Iannello prefers Kyzylorda), the perpetrators could have been the trio I identified or someone else, the ‘dirt rectangle’ may have played a role or not. To address a few specific points:
    1. You are confusing Baikonur and Yubileyniy. Baikonur Cosmodrome as a whole is busy and famous; Yubileyniy is seldom used and isolated, as far from the residential town at Baikonur as Times Square is from Stamford, CT.
    2. Do you imagine that Russians are incapable of setting up an ILS?
    3. I don’t know what the dirt rectangle is for. I am by no means married to the idea that MH370 is buried there; in fact I have a hard time understanding how it could be. I simply find the circumstances of its creation curious and would like to know more.
    Finally: yes, there are certainly alternate explanations for the Ukrainians apparent shadiness. I want to find out what was really going on!
    Postscript: welcome to this forum. You seem an intelligent and thoughtful person, and if you’re interested in figuring out what happened to MH370 you will find a warm welcome from a lot of like-minded souls. An important part of keeping the community spirit is recognizing that we can disagree about our interpretation of the facts without calling into the question the integrity of our colleagues.

  36. I have commented before that I very much doubt the SIO end point but have yet to see anywhere a substantial refutation of the simplest explanation for the origin event. That is a cockpit fire extinguished by decompression, along with the lives of all on board. Route changes due crew battling fire. These were modern highly reliable aircraft engines. Short of fuel starvation or impact almost nothing will stop them without human intervention. Then northern route until it augurs in at a remote spot not yet found. Probably dense jungle or forest. A few weeks after that there would be nothing to see from the air or satellite.

  37. Clarification of my previous comment. I understand the BFO and BTO calculations but the mathematician in me gets an uncomfortable feeling when assumptions begin to outnumber data points that the analysis has produced more precision than existed in the original data.

  38. No, I don’t think it’s impossible for the Russians to set up an ILS at a disused airport and then surreptitiously load that information into an aircraft registered in Malaysia. I also don’t think it’s impossible for a worm hole to swallow a plane. Accident investigation, however, isn’t the search for what’s possible; it’s the search for what’s probable. Your scenario requires a few too many leaps of faith.

  39. @Harry a fire severe enough to incapacitate an airliner full of people is strong enough to cause the structural failure of the entire airframe. We’ve seen it before, and, sadly, we’ll probably see it again.

  40. Just finished reading Jeff’s book on Amazon/Kindle. It was riveting, I couldn’t stop for a break. I could barely stop to breathe! Thanks to Jeff and the IG team for their determination to solve this mystery.

    Regarding motive, didn’t Russia invade Ukraine shortly before MH370 went missing? So, the hijack could have been a distraction, to take the world’s attention and news media elsewhere.

    But China must be involved, because Putin would not take Chinese passengers. China and Russia are allies.

    BTW, here’s a video by Matt Wuillemin on the unsecured E/E hatch. Madness:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLmzvF2qkDY

  41. “Regarding motive, didn’t Russia invade Ukraine shortly before MH370 went missing? So, the hijack could have been a distraction, to take the world’s attention and news media elsewhere.”

    I could imagine 1000 easier ways to cause distraction than hijacking the plane going from Malaysia to China.

  42. @Adam

    That is the thing. I can conceive of a fire that would not damage the air frame yet breach the pressure hull.

    P.S. Cpt Wuillemin. Woodja, if you are reading. Harry=Rock.

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