As 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):
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
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:
This image was taken two days before MH370 disappeared, on March 6. The next one was taken eight days after, on March 16:
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:
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.
@Harry and @Adam: Have we ever seen a serious fire on an aircraft cause severe damage yet permit the aircraft to fly for an additional seven hours? While I agree that what Jeff has proposed is improbable (and I have suggested some modifications which I believe make it only slightly more probable), what you are proposing also requires quite a leap of faith.
@Victor,
A short while after the disappearance of mh370 aviation security expert Phillip Baum ran many accident and disaster simulations which incorporated all known facts. And he said that they couldn’t find any disaster scenario which would allow the plane to go as far as it did. No matter what scenario they tried they couldn’t bring the plane even close to the 7th arc.
We need to understand that any disaster scenario is equally or even more implausible than scenarios which feature criminal intent and controlled action.
@Jeff
Read the kindle book – seriously great read!!! I appreciate you ‘dumbing it down’ for those who don’t understand geosynchronous orbits and Doppler shifts. A couple minor editing glitches in there – email me personally and I can help.
Again great work and great read – keep it up!
@VictorI Cockpit fires are rare and usually catastrophic, but the fire need not be widespread. It is possible to envisage a fire that quickly makes the cockpit uninhabitable, renders communications equipment inoperable, breaches the pressure hull, but does not damage the air frame or flight controls systems. The de-pressurisation may have then extinguished the fire and life. As long as the engines are connected to a fuel supply they will continue to run. I do not know of any in the past but that is the point. There is a first time for everything. Such a scenario would not have been possible until the relatively recent advent of sophisticated automation. Not really comparable but it does bring to mind the evidence that someone, probably the co-pilot, was attempting control inputs in the cockpit of Swissair Flight 111 before impact after it was completely destroyed by a fire that killed the Captain and disabled communications, including trying to or actually shutting down an engine.
Harry it is possible in theory but you’d still have to explain how has that brought the plane precisely along thai border and down the malacca strait around indonesia, that can’t be the coincidence. It needs a very sober and calm human to program such a path.
@StevanG RE: your post on motive & hijack being to simple a distraction from Ukraine invasion- yes a hijacking would not have been a big enough distraction, but we were all waiting for the hijack, or the crash site. That’s what made it big enough. We never got anything. We just waited, and still are. So many people, a commercial airliner n just gone? That doesn’t happen. Not in this age of technology and information. So whatever it was meant to distract us from, if that was the motive, it was very effective. And if it was Russia? We have seen what happens to Russians that talk when told not to. 🙁
@Harry: The scenario you described, with a major fire causing selective systems to fail while other systems continue to work flawlessly until fuel exhaustion, is possible but highly unlikely, in my opinion. That is why I said it requires a leap of faith. You won’t convince me otherwise. Just because your theory requires no malice does not make it more likely. To me, the series of events indicates an intent to divert and obscure.
So they stole a plane just to bury it in the desert?
Why?
@ALL,
I have some new results to report at:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzOIIFNlx2aUSlRwNmNSSlFLQ00/view?usp=sharing
This is a map showing all the predicted locations for MH370/9M-MRO on the 7th arc based on analysis of the Inmarsat satellite data plus the LANL single-station acoustic event.
I have added a colored overlay of Kirill Prostyakov’s multi-station acoustic analysis, which shows a best result at 39.6S 84.3 E with an estimated time of impact of 00:20:51 UTC +/- ~10 seconds.
His estimated impact point is very close to my 3 predicted locations based on the satellite data:
Best-Fit True Track: 39.70 S 84.83E
Best Fit Great Circle: 39.99 S 84.15 E
Great Circle through WITN: 40.24 S 83.53 E
I believe Prostyakov’s results may be credible for the following reasons:
1. The estimated acoustic position is only ~22 NM from the 7th arc.
2. The estimated acoustic position is only ~27 NM from my best-fit Great Circle location, which is based on and consistent with the Inmarsat satellite data.
3. The estimated impact time is only 74 seconds after the last satellite data transmission at 00:19:37 UTC.
The multi-station acoustic results, if confirmed, are potentially an extremely valuable search aid because they are independent of any assumption based on the satellite data (except that a noise event may have occurred in a broad area and within a reasonable time span).
@joe josh, My bad for implying that I think it’s buried in the desert. I don’t know what the “dirt rectangle” is, it’s curious. The gist of my theory is that if the BFO data were spoofed, the plane went to Kazakhstan. Why and exactly where are more speculative issues.
This is fascinating. I’m not a conspiracy theorist kind of guy, but when I scrolled down to the 4th image above, I gasped aloud. I’m going to get this book. Is it available for Nook?
@Nate, Sorry, it’s just Amazon Kindle…
@Bobby,
Dr. Alec Duncan – politely, and at my request – analyzed the LANL result, on which the Prostyakov finding rests. Here was his response:
• Even though the LANL analysis is purported to have been published July 3, 2014, Dr. Duncan had never heard of it
• When he analyzed the same HA01 acoustic event, he solved for a heading of 190 degrees (Antarctica), not 247 (7th arc)
• He explained that the “low frequency underlay” LANL thought might have been an impact being masked by ice-cracking was in fact a precursor component of the ice-cracking event itself
• He explained clearly how this makes sense (low frequencies apparently beat high frequencies in long deep-sea races by diving deeper into the “deep sound channel”, where they travel faster)
• He DEMONSTRATED this effect by showing acoustic data from an ice-cracking event recorded by the same equipment just an HOUR LATER on the same day, which had the same low-frequency precursor pattern.
I am no acoustic expert. If anyone reading this is, I beg you please to invest some time understanding Dr. Duncan’s response to the LANL analysis before putting weight on anything on which it is based. The details are summarized here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-r3yuaF2p72dUdCWGlqb3JZZm8/view?usp=sharing
Bobby, I’ve supported your (E84, S40) point since August, and have nothing to gain by downplaying the LANL analysis. I just want the supporting science to be SOLID. If Dr. Duncan is correct, LANL didn’t even get the HEADING right.
@Victorl No, never in the history of aviation has a fire taken out the transponder, radio, satcom, and incapacitated the crew whilst simultaneously leaving the autopilot and the structural integrity of the airframe intact. It’s impossible.
Jeff, you wrote: “[To] the best of my knowledge, this airstrip is the only one in the world built specifically for self-landing airplanes. The 777, which was developed in the ’90s, has the ability to autoland.”
That isn’t true, and considering you have a PPL, I think you knew it wasn’t true. How hard have to tried to correct that falsehood in the weeks since your theory was published?
It all makes for interesting reading but I’m not convinced.
Remember the satellite images of Mars decades ago that may or may not have shown a face and buildings? More recent high-res images show the true, humdrum nature of those areas.
So be careful about thinking you can tell what you’re looking at in these let’s face it, low res and vague imagery.
Always be wary of someone who’s selling a book. That advice has never been more timely.
Brock,
Could you ask one more favor of Dr. Duncan and have him label the plots on page 2 properly? In particular, as I understand it, there are three hydrophones at HA01 arranged in an equilateral triangle. What is their geometry, and which hydrophone corresponds to which panel in the plots? Also, the time is UT, right?
(One of the dark secrets of science is that its practitioners are chronically inept at labeling plots. Myself included.)
Clarification – when I asked “what is their geometry”, what I really meant is “what is their orientation”. A picture of the layout with N and E labeled and each hydrophone numbered would do nicely.
sk999,
I gave you the coordinates of each of the three HA01 hydrophones. You have the array geometry already.
I’m an engineer that deals with earthworks. I’ve been fascinated reading your theory in the last couple of days, and I think it answers more questions than the other “southern” theory.
My two cents is that burying a Boeing 777 would be an enormous undertaking. I assume the timeline would be 1-2 days, although we know it turned out to be 8 days until the next satellite photo was taken. Most people would immediately say it couldn’t be done, but since I keep an open mind, I asked myself: If the KGB called me and asked me to bury a 777 in a day or two, money is no object, what would it take?
The answer is, I’d need 50 or so excavators (backhoes) to fill in the small holes around the fuselage and fill dump trucks, 30-40 scrapers to move the dirt in the open spaces, probably 50 dump trucks to move the dirt from the piles to the backfill locations, and all the dirt in the right shaped piles (scrapers need piles they can drive over and scoop) ready to go. On first glance it doesn’t look like there is enough dirt there to fill a 777-size hole, but that can be deceiving too. Let’s say it’s there and ready to go. It’s still a big operation. All those equipment operators need to live somewhere, travel to the site, and be fed. The are also 10-20 site foremen needed to coordinate it all. I’ve seen dirt like that moved, but only in 3 weeks! Doing that in a day would leave a footprint, I would think, that you’d notice on the next satellite photo.
Jeff’s “theory” is ludicrous and he knows it.
sk999: I passed on your request that Dr. Duncan provide labels for each of the three elements in each of the two graphs of the “control” event I summarized.
I see Bobby has provided you the coordinates already – great.
@Adam: I have not read Jeff’s book, but on this blog he has said clearly that he is not adamant that the aircraft was buried. He mainly just thinks it odd that there was activity at Yubileyniy that month when the whole air strip had been ignored for so long.
Personally I think the disturbed earth was for disposal of the buildings (I agree that the location is too far from the runway). However if we are exploring the possibility of MH370 landing at Yubileyniy, it is possible that the tear-down of the building was done as a cover-story to explain other busy-ness around the long-deserted facility to get ready for the hijacked plane. If that was true, we should see small changes (e.g. a new generator, new tire tracks) at other locations where the significant action occurred.
Is his theory possible? Yes, absolutely. It doesn’t violate any laws of physics, so it is therefore possible. But I don’t care about what could have happened, I care about what probably did happen. That’s where Jeff’s theory falls apart. And I remain disturbed by his willingness to deceive his readers and his disinterest in correcting those mistakes.
Jeff,
First of I admire your sense of logic and tenacity. But more to the point.
What is the point of bulldozing dirt? How does the 6 storied building fit into this? I will try to propose an answer the first question.
If you want to hide an airplane that big and real quick you need a hanger. But you don’t want a new buildkng to show up on satel;ite images. So what you could do is to dig a pit in the earth but build a roof as you dig the pit, trench by trench. so you dig; remove the earth; build a roof and cover the roof with sand. then dig right need to it. This way even as work progresses not much difference will be seen from the sky. Actually you could put the roof in place and then dig, then you can never tell the difference. The roof must be held in place somehow without too many intermediate pillars. So I am not sure how that would be done. And it must look flat. Hmmmm. A problem for an engineer to solve. However, if you leave that aside for the time being I can see how a plane can simply taxi into this just under the surface hangar. And hide long enough to remove passengers or their bodies, or simply refuel and take off. Perhaps it stayed there an entire day and waited for the next nightfall to takeoff again. I suppose by the time the plan had real pilots and some changes might have been made to leave to trace this time as it flied out. people and or bodies could have left by separate vehicles. All other scaffolding used for the hangar could be buried along with the debris of the 6 storied building to avoid any suspicion. Hope this helps.
Ray
I have a theory regarding why the other plane was shot down. Let us say the Russians did this and they wanted the original plane intact. Let us also say that they did not want the world to know they have it. Then the only way the search would end is if they found the plane in the Indian Ocean. So what if they shot down another plane to salvage parts that could be later be dropped into the Indian ocean and found , much ot the relief of the rest of world and to the victims families, and also let the original MH 370 that went to Kazakhstan be forgotten.
Ray
@Ray, It’s an intriguing idea, something similar had occurred to me as well. At this point the best we can say is that it’s a possibility, albeit a rather far-out one. I’ve spent a lot of time staring at these satellite images over the past week, and have at last convinced myself conclusively that this is a mound, not a hole, on Mar 2/6. I’m also pretty sure that significant work was done between then at Mar 16; the dirt rectangle is somewhat larger, rounder-edged, and debris has been removed.
I can’t imagine how Ray’s theory of salvaged parts would work – all aircraft parts have unique serial numbers.
But as we are raising the question of other mysterious B777s… Jeff do you have any thoughts on whether this Malaysian 777 figures into the equation? Or is it just a web myth?
my link did not show up: http://www.planespotters.net/Production_List/Boeing/777/28416,N105GT-GA-Telesis-php
Jeff, I am a believer! I think you’re onto something. I know little about aviation but in the past few months I have become really fascinated with airline crashes. I have watched videos and read about countless crashes. I can only explain this new fascination with the fact that I have little intention of ever flying again – so now I can look at the crashes without scaring myself. But after everything that I learned about crashes, nothing fascinated me more than MH370. From the first time I heard of it, I knew something was very different. I also felt in my gut that they weren’t going to find it in the ocean. I know that people don’t like the idea of psychic visions – but I have a very very good “gut” instinct about things. When my gut tells me something, it is almost always right. And my gut told me that MH370 wasn’t in the ocean. I never thought for one second that they were going to find it. It wasn’t until I read your full explanation that my gut settled down. I really think you’re right.
A comment from a professional engineer but a lay person as far as aeronautics are concerned:
Everything that has happened or not happened in connection with MH370 is what would have happened or not happened had there been a deliberate intent to hide the whereabouts of the plane and ensure it is never found.
I don’t remember every dubious issue but they include the apparent deliberate failure of Malaysian authorities to provide prompt information or tell the truth when they have given information, the failure of Indonesia to give their radar information, the lack of any international satellite information showing the path of the plane, the failure to disclose the nature of the cargo, clarity on whether the Boeing 777 could or could not be controlled remotely as has been mooted, the silence on the reason for the skilled software technicians travelling to China, the conflicting interpretations of the Inmarsat data, the unexpected death of an Inmarsat employee, the frequent major changes to the sites to be explored, the unjustified confidence expressed by the Australian government early that the plane would soon be found, the failure month after month to examine all options but rather to lock into the popular option of the day and spend considerable time and cost exploring it, the failure to completely exclude a northern route and focus on a southern route, the delay in restarting the exploration in the southern Indian Ocean while an area far to the north was examined that rightly or wrongly was suggested to be a possible oil exploration area and so on.
It is generally agreed that the sea would have had to be remarkably calm and the pilot very skilled and alert to have brought the plane down with a soft landing in the Southern Indian Ocean. It also seems that had the plane been on Autopilot when it ran out of fuel it would have had a hard landing. In either case there would have been debris.
No debris has so far been found even with very extensive aerial and sea searches. This does not prove that there isn’t any but it is very unlikely any exists. I have long known that if you can’t find something where you have looked carefully, then it must be somewhere else.
The conclusion is that the plane is not where we have been searching, that it is somewhere else and that a different approach is needed. And why aren’t we paying a lot more attention to looking for motives to see where that leads us? Who would gain most from a deliberate attempt to destroy the plane, or more importantly its passengers or cargo? Perhaps this is abhorrent to many because they are afraid of being labelled ‘conspiracy’ theorists. But the mathematical approach has failed so something else it needed if we are serious about finding the plane.
sk999: Dr. Duncan just got back to me, and confirmed that the three recorders (A, B, C) appear in both graphs in the order you would expect: A on top, C on the bottom.
Dr. Ulich already provided you with the precise coordinates, so the map Dr. Duncan also forwarded (showing B to be WSW of A, and C to be NW of A) won’t give you anything new.
I forgot to ask about UTC; seems a pretty safe bet.
@Bob: very well said.
I bought the kindle book. Good work jeff. I’ve nearly finished it, on the last leg of it. I find these photos to be certainly note worthy enough to warrent further investigative work. Given that your work is public, I imagine that if this were true, then the site would now be very well secured and off limits.
@David, Thank you very much! Yes, unfortunately, in publishing I may have ruined a lot of avenues to learn more, in the event that there is anything there to learn. We’ll see…
Jeff, Thank you for your determination to continue to pursue this. Could the Georesonance claim be related to the falsification of the satellite data and the plane is actually in the Bay of Bengal, as their imagery shows? Everyone has seemed to go out of their way to discredit them.
@Trip, Thanks for reminding me about Georesonance! The organization appears to have sprung up out of nowhere in 2013, organized by ethnic Russian Ukrainians operating in Australia to wage an elaborate and yet technically ludicrous campaign to sow confusion in the world press about what might have happened to MH370. Needless to say I found this highly suspicous at the time and even more so now.
on you tube I was listening to the air traffic control communication with the plane. but just at the last transmission. there was like a pause, The Air traffic control was trying to get a response from Mh370 it took almost 12 minutes for a response from Mh 370 when it said Good bye Malaysia 370. while listing to the audio the voice that said good night was a clear English accent. Now, after reading your article in your first spoof 1 you made a scenario that someone could depressurize the plane in 15 minutes. the last transmission and voice from mh 370 was from the hijackers of the plane. that’s when the plane vanished. if you have a chance listen to the beginning of the transmission between the air traffic and mh 370 there English were broken.
Re: What Was Going On at Yubileyniy?
I suppose it could be a mass grave as well as a site remediation, and the aircraft is elsewhere. A sad thought.
Today 2 astronauts took off for an historic year-long stay in space, from the exact site where Jeff suspects MH370 landed… Baikanur, Kazakhstan.
Today, two astronauts took-off for an historic year-long stay in space, from Baikanur, Kazakhstan, which I believe is the exact place that Jeff suspects MH370 may have landed.
@Mike: I believe the astronauts and entourage flew into the Baikonur airport at 45.618984, 63.212565, and then launched from here 45.920175, 63.342005. So they probably did not go to Yubileyniy Aerodrome exactly. But yes, very close.
and what about the passengers ? buried along with the plane ? But the bigger question WHY ?
Theories will rebound until we have physical evidence, but the fact remains inspite of search of 13 months, nothing even a single piece of debris from the plane has been found in the ocean, lending credence to the fact that the plane may not have crashed into the ocean.
you can read their news here (just use a translator software): http://baykonur.i-news.kz/city/36001-baikonur/page-14.html
If we are to fully exhaust all options about the possible whereabouts of MH370, it is my humble opinion that a lot more attention needs to be paid to the residents of the Maldives’ claims of visual sightings of MH370 just hours after its loss of contact.
I think Putin does have it. I think it will come back in a terrorist attack which will outrage and start World War III.
@Golf Alpha: I presume there are cheaper ways for Putin to acquire a 777.
The mysterious Lack of Motivation has always been a central problem with all MH370 scenarios.
The Russia theory seems to me the work of a hyperactive imagination – what does it benefit the Russians to hijack a plane to demonstrate their power, and not tell anyone about it?
A more plausible theory is that it was taken over by Somali pirates, possibly for ransom. They hijack ships, why not a plane? The initial change of direction, and the last confirmed radar sighting had it heading for Africa, the Maldives are on that route, and Somalia would have been easily reachable by the plane. It was in the air for 8 hours and 34 minutes – KL to Mogadishu, about 7 hours at MH370’s estimated cruising speed (470-480kts).
So, instead of a pointless flight to the Antarctic or Kazakhstan, based only on a mathematical interpretaton of real or imaginary ‘pings’, a sound and cogent motivation – the best of all: money.
Given these images, how do you propose anyone would move an aircraft that size along the roads from the runway to the “burial site”.
I understand that certain large vehicles can be loaded on flatbed trucks and moved via road but that would have to be a pretty large vehicle! How would it cope with those right-angle corners? Surely there would be some seriously deep tire marks in the dirt?
If they broke the aircraft up to move it, then why need such a large “grave”?