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.
@CosmicAcademy,
Those are wise words. Thank you for pointing out the inherent (even if justified) craziness of looking for a plane in the SIO, when it was last seen on primary radar going in the opposite direction and no satifying narrative can be constructed, why exactly the plane ended up in the designated search area. And the search rests on nothing but a few pings. No debris has been found and allegedly nobody supplied primary radar tracks. But of course: The pilot was crazy! And everybody who doubts the SIO solution must be a crazy conspiracy monger, too!
You’re right, it was a mistake to approach this search like any other accident – with just a higher chance of failure due to the huge search area.
Even if GlobusMax is still looking in the SIO, his idea “to think like a criminal” is basically sound.
As to certain convictions thrown around here, I’m not ready to let the pilots and the crew off the hook just yet. Whatever went down, there’s still the possibility that a crew member was involved or someone else working for MAS. It would be wrong to rule that out categorically, since the perps would profit enourmously if they had inside help. And there were telltale signs right from the beginning that the Malaysians are hiding SOMETHING. As Nihonmama said, we shouldn’t fall for the stereotype of the lazy slipshot Malaysians, who are so stupid that they believed their plane was happily flying over Cambodia. And who insisted on a South China Sea search despite clear evidence that their “friendly” plane had doubled back without giving a peep of a distress call. Wouldn’t it be downright racist to say “Oh, those Malaysians, who knows what they were thinking”? On the other hand: to acknowledge some obfuscation – maybe hand in hand with corruption – going on here, is not a knock on Malaysians per se. It can happen anywhere in the world.
Step back for a moment, and ask what attributes does any terminus theory have to satisfy. My minimal set is below:
1> Motive
2> Debris (lack thereof)
3> Primary radar (lack of additional sightings)
4> Satellite data (fuel range implied)
The Kepner-Tregoe link below applies these attributes to several terminal locations.
http://tmex.smugmug.com/Other/My-Smug-Mug/i-jRMbd9L/0/L/Screen%20Shot%202015-03-02%20at%208.19.34%20AM-L.png
Jeff and Everyone- I’ve followed you all since this incredible tragedy first happened and wanted to ask you all something that I just read in the Guardian article- ‘Nobody cares any more’: the relatives who went looking for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370′. The PI the families have hired claims the following:
He pauses. “I have a theory. Philip had a thing where he’d always send Sarah a text message from his seat: ‘I’m on board. Sitting down. We’re about to take off. See you soon.’ She never got anything from him that day. There’s no contact phone-wise from anybody after they got on that aeroplane. Nobody tweeted. Why? Chinese people will talk on the phone as the plane’s taking off. I once sat next to a Chinese woman in business class, in the front row, facing the flight attendant, and she was on her phone at the tip of the runway as the plane was about to launch. After she was warned five times, I said to her, ‘Turn off your phone.’ She just looked at me. So I grabbed her phone, turned it off and put it down the side of my seat. The flight attendant gave me a thumbs up.” Ethan smiles at the memory. “But on MH370: nobody. Not one.”
“Wait,” I say. “Are you saying that after the plane doors closed, nobody sent a single message?”
“Before the doors closed!” Ethan says.”
Has anyone heard this before? Thank you all.
@Brock McEwen:
“While not nearly as “expert” as others, I’ve tried to perform the role of “auditor” of the official story – and have uncovered glaring holes.”
I truly appreciate your analysis “Time to Investigate the Investigators”. Has it been endorsed by the IG ?
Those here, who kept saying that the official search is actually just an exercise in RUNNING OUT THE CLOCK (while pretending otherwise), seem to have a point. It doesn’t look good:
“Australia says hunt for missing MH370 jet may be called off soon”
http://reut.rs/1K8UjcJ
Today (probably or hopefully due to the public outcry) they are backpaddeling though, albeit just a little bit:
“The Australian deputy prime minister’s office has moved to contradict a report that the government is in discussions about whether to end the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, saying the comments were overstated.”
http://j.mp/1E9Zwxc
Dennis,
As I mentioned, technical failure SIO terminus complies with all your points. In addition, it complies with a number of other points you missed.
Brock,
I am getting confused: was there second acoustic signal, mentioned to you by ALSM, with the source estimated at the 7th arc according to LANL, or is it still about these two signals recorded by Curtin?
Jeff,
Perhaps you should really have had opened another thread to discuss the impact of the export of Malaysian mangustines on the climate change and oil price…
@Cosmic:
THANK YOU for your comments today. It’s impossible for me to convey how insightful they are.
@Matty, @JS:
There are a handful of us who’ve been screaming about the WHY question (which actually informs the WHO question) and the possibility of a spoof — however it could have been achieved — for a long time. Inmarat’s disclaimer was THE clue. But the answer was always the same: ‘conspiracy’. Don’t feel bad – I got it here and on Twitter.
@Littlefoot:
“Wouldn’t it be downright racist to say “Oh, those Malaysians, who knows what they were thinking”?
NO.
“On the other hand: to acknowledge some obfuscation – maybe hand in hand with corruption – going on here, is not a knock on Malaysians per se”
Saying that there’s obfuscation on Malaysia’s part (and there IS) does not equal cultural bias. It’s all of the OTHER comments that people make, because they hold cultural biases (Malaysia, Russia, other) — with or without awareness of it — that is the point.
Separate from everything else to do with this missing plane, there are enough of those comments on this board, DS and Twitter to keep an intercultural expert busy for years. It warrants its own study.
That being said, here’s an excerpt from a recent email to me from someone who actually KNOWS Malaysia. Note the last sentence:
“My reservations about Malaysian military radar records fed to media days later stem from knowing the area. Not sure if you know very much about Butterworth or its air base. Butterworth is on the mainland facing Penang. A bridge and a ferry cross the strait between them. It’s no more than a few miles wide. On the strait’s north-south sides, western Butterworth has factories, eastern Penang has tourist hotels.
The airbase is on the coast side of Butterworth, a few miles north of the bridge. It is a multinational leftover from the 1960s “Malay Emergency” when other Commonwealth countries stationed air and ground troops with their Malay counterparts in Butterworth to fight communist Chinese (very poor descendants of miners in the mountains). A public road passes through it, separating seafront barracks from the main section.
Dislodging the various Air Forces from their nice seafront shakedowns didn’t happen. The Australians retained a beachside bar and barracks where a Malay guard wears an “I love Canada” cap.
All in all, Penang/Butterworth is an odd place for a mobile phone tower to connect with the mobile phone of the co pilot of a missing plane. The Air Force personnel who didn’t notice him waving as his plane flew past were from a lot more places than just Malaysia.”
@Spencer: I wonder, in your zeal to slam him (along with Capt. Zaharie Shah), if for five seconds, you stopped and considered that Gerry, who works in aviation in Indonesia, might have had a legitimate reason for NOT openly discussing his information until now. He’s a very smart guy. Maybe as he says, he forgot this bit and JW’s exercise was a memory prompt. Or maybe not. Did your approach achieve the desired result?
I can’t speak for Gerry, but I could suggest (with good reason) that at least part of the reason for his withholding until now has to do with culture. Here’s that key word again: ASIA. But I’m not going to waste my time having THAT conversation. Because, despite it being the elephant in the room (and it has been), it goes right over people’s heads here. And as a result, so much has been missed.
And, regarding my last post to you: I wouldn’t change one word of it.
@DennisW:
I agree with you.
@Nihonmama, while we might disagree on the first point I raised re: cultural bias,you might have misunderstood my second point: I actually agree with you, accusing the Malaysian officials of obfuscation is not a cultural bias in my book. Especially since other factions might be guilty of the same.
Interesting insights in the Butterworth community.
@Gerry
From your pen:
From your pen:
“In 2011, I led the Aerospace and Defence Solutions department at one of the local Inmarsat resellers here in Indonesia. I told him that back then I have heard rumours of 2 Indonesian guys who have managed to remote spoof the BFO’s while they worked for Inmarsat during integrity testings of the Inmarsat 3 system. And then in several defence related meetings in 2011, I was also told that the other guys who can spoof the BFOs (remote or through the satcom terminal) are Israelis (using Russian immigrant engineers), the Chinese (using the Israeli expertise) and the Russians too, but obviously my sources didn’t want to go into details. The other interesting thing is that the Israelis do have their own set of satcom engineers dealing with “new innovations” for Inmarsat satcom, through one of the Inmarsat Distribution Partners, so, nothing surprising there if anyone can spoof the BFO”
And you JUST NOW remembered all of THIS? Multiple meetings, multiple discussions, ALL of which, according to you, involved some discussion about spoofing BFO. Including the possibility of the Chinese and Russians having this capability.
You rack your brain over the AES issue for months on end and fail to remember these discussions?
Sorry, but I’m having none of it.
@Nihonmama
So by your lousy logic, Gerry was precluded from being forthcoming and transparent NOT necessarily because of a memory ‘lapse’, but rather because of matters of ‘sensitivity’?
You would do well to let Gerry chime in again and speak for oneself.
His public version simply doesn’t add up.
What I don’t understand: Not long ago, the search team said they were “very confident” that MH370 will be found in the designated search area. And now they seem to have gotten quite pessimistic, saying they “cannot go on forever” with the search, almost as if they wanted to prepare the public for an end of search soon to come. Why is it that their mood changed so quickly, from optimistic to pessimistic, without any (at least published) new facts ?
I agree DennisW, that’s actually the only logical point on the 6th arc that fits all the data and I don’t understand why it hasn’t been searched at all.
Spencer – it sounds like the whole thing has the better of you, and not just you either. You once chipped me for going the man but you are doing it now. We have a bevvy of eminently qualified sat people right here who still don’t seriously engage with the spoofing angle. Gerry has come from this camp so a conversation from 4 years ago can stay out of the frame. When ALSM turned his mind to it he found that it wasn’t quite as onerous as he imagined and that was many months after we had banged on about it with our own basic grasp. He may not have thought about it since for all we know as it is well down his list. Simply put spoofing was well down Gerry’s list. Maybe not even on it at all.
I agree with Dennis W, officials are just relying too much on assumptions.
@Matty
Simply put spoofing was well down Gerry’s list. Maybe not even on it at all.
This is untrue in every sense. Gerry has discussed possible spoofing on a.net COUNTLESS times, as he has countless times posed the question as to why the AES would be ‘repowered’. I will gladly post Gerry’s many thoughts on the matter from that thread that demonstrates he has been over this (spoofing) ad nauseam.
But maybe Gerry would care to once again clear the air?
Jeff,
Just wondering: have you left IG or Duncan has ‘forgotten’ to include you in his list of IG members? Compare:
duncansteel.com/archives/date/2014/09
with the most recent (yesterday’s) list at:
duncansteel.com?
Brian Anderson, BE: Havelock North, New Zealand
Sid Bennett, MEE: Chicago, Illinois, USA
Curon Davies, MA: Swansea, UK
Pierre-Michel Decombeix: Maurs, France
Michael Exner, MEE: Colorado, USA
Tim Farrar, PhD: Menlo Park, California, USA
Richard Godfrey, BSc: Frankfurt, Germany
Bill Holland, BSEE: Cary, North Carolina, USA
Geoff Hyman, MSc: London, UK
Victor Iannello, ScD: Roanoke, Virginia, USA
Barry Martin, CPL: London, UK
Henrik Rydberg, PhD MSc: Gothenburg, Sweden
Duncan Steel, PhD: Wellington, New Zealand
Don Thompson: Belfast, Northern Ireland
Yap Fook Fah, PhD: Singapore
Coincidence? For those, who can read between lines, I think the following citation extracted from the statement by Duncan is sufficiently clear:
“The IG operates by consensus. Any opinion that is expressed by an individual member of the group should not be attributed to the IG as a whole.
Recent publications by Jeff Wise regarding the fate of MH370 have been incorrectly attributed to the IG. These stories have been published without the prior knowledge of the IG and do not reflect the position of the IG members.”
Duncan’s blog has dried up, and I was somewhat surprised to find such a statement there.
Jeff, keep going. Just don’t let it roll into the “Mangustines hypothesis”.
@Oleksandr: definitely TWO SEPARATE seismic events. I’ve added annotations to the bottom-right graph to show Dr. Duncan’s identification of both “Curtin” and “LANL” events:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-r3yuaF2p72eTZaV29tWExqbEU/view?usp=sharing
The “Curtin Event” or “Curtin Boom” was just west of the Maldives.
The “LANL Event” was an Antarctic ice-cracking event which only becomes a tantalizing potential 7th arc corroboration if, according to my read of Dr. Duncan’s analysis, you
a) miscalculate heading by 57 degrees (Alec’s team says 190=from south=Antarctica; LANL’s 247=from WSW=7th arc), &
b) mistakenly take a well-known (to acoustic experts) low-frequency precursor to ice-cracking events as something mysterious.
M Pat,
Soon.
Spenceer the words I used on the subject of spoofing were “not seriously enagaed.” That applies to most of the resident authorities here on this blog. If your view of spoofing changes then the stuff you have filed away can leap out at you. This isn’t strange to me but you are free to continue with your thinking of course.
A lot of the Maldives being brought up again. I never thought those folks to be delusional, that loud noise apparently woke some of them up. Backtrack it a few hours before them to the Vietnamese fisherman out and about in the waters at 1:30 or 17:30ish. He saw a low flying plane, now he’s on the opposite side of land that Kate Tee and the Maldives folks are on. Could they all have seen the same plane, does the flying time work out that way? If the Vietnamese guy saw the plane at 1:30 could the Maldives folks have seen it at 5:30 or 6:00? Bottom line is they all claim to have seen a low flying plane, the question is what the heck did they all see?
So asking for 2 hours of fuel is normal then according to how Chinese ATC is as one poster mentioned. How DO they act, delay flights routinely?
Whatever became of Malaysia asking for permission at the very onset of this to search in Khazakastan? Was that request denied or was it abandoned to focus on the SIO?
Oh dear, the next headlines we are going to read are “Jeff Wise James Bond’s into Cosmodrome!” Be careful Jeff, do tons more research before attempting that one. (Amen to that sighs Mrs. Wise)!!!
Putin enlists organized crime.
http://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2015/02/26/pkg-pleitgen-russia-putin-biker-gang-endorsement.cnn
Brock,
Thanks. Is my understanding correct that the 3rd time series plot is the record at Scott Reef station? Do you know the accurate (say within 1 km) location of this station?
@Cheryl, I believe the request was dropped after the US pushed for the acceptance of the SIO as the only viable route. This of course was reinforced after the Malaysia announced the results of Inmarsat’s BFO analysis on March 24.
I won’t be sneaking into Baikonur — that ship has sailed.
@Oleksandr, I will keep going, thanks! I appreciate your support. Everyone here is free to publish whatever theory they think might fit the facts and still find a welcome reception from me. As long as it doesn’t include the word “lightning.”
Brock McEwen:
It appears that you do not understand the LANL analysis and you are mischaracterizing their findings. I urge people to read the details for themselves. The HA01 signal had a bearing of 246.9 ± 1.0°. It was not an “…Antarctic ice-cracking event…”.
A timeline re Kazakhstan and the search for MH370:
MH370 Press Briefing By Hishamuddin Hussein
March 16, 2014 at 7:22 pm
“In the last 24 hours, the Prime Minister has spoken to the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, the President of Turkmenistan, the President of Kazakhstan and Prime Minister of India.”
“At 2pm today, the Foreign Ministry of Malaysia briefed representatives from 22 countries, including those along the northern and southern search corridors, as well other countries that may be able to help. These include Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, China, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Australia.
MH370 Press Briefing by Hishamuddin Hussein
March 17, 2014 at 5:30 pm
“Countries including Malaysia, Australia, China, Indonesia and Kazakhstan have already initiated search and rescue operations.”
MH370 Press Briefing by Hishammuddin Hussein on 18th March 2014 at 5:30 pm
“On analysis of radar data, in the southern corridor Australia and Indonesia have agreed to take the lead of their respective parts of the search corridor. In the northern corridor, China and Kazakhstan have agreed to lead in the search areas closest to their countries.”
MH370 Press Briefing by Hishammuddin Hussein on 20th March 2014 at 6:31 pm
“Until we are certain that we have located MH370, search and rescue operations will continue in both corridors. I can confirm that Malaysia is sending 2 aircraft to Kazakhstan, and the UK is planning to send 1 ship to the southern corridor.”
MH370 Press Briefing by Hishammuddin Hussein on 21st March 2014 at 8:41 pm
“The Kazakhstan authorities have assured us that they have found no trace of MH370, and we are awaiting permission for Kazakhstan to be used as a staging point for search operations.”
MH370 Press Briefing by Hishammuddin Hussein on 22nd March 2014 at 5:30 pm
“In the northern corridor, in response to diplomatic notes, we can confirm that China, India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Laos, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan have verbally informed the search and rescue operation that, based on preliminary analysis, there have been no sightings of the aircraft on their radar.”
Oleksandr – if Duncan’s blog has dried up I guess it’s because for crunchers it’s now just a waiting game. For investigative journalists though it’s game on, and even more so with each passing day. So the IG is ruled by consensus? Who regulates the consensus? It’s starting to sound like a club. Will they all split if nothing is found? No consensus maybe equals no IG. The Beach Boys found a way to keep going so who knows. There could be a block within the IG who will not deviate from the SIO no matter what while others branch out, then we might have the title of former IG member. Really if the location science has exhausted itself then the IG is pretty much defunct anyway? It was a moment in time. It’s not like there is some revered brand to guard….is there?
@Matty
I think the crunchers are still crunching. Like any difficult problem, the solution space evolves over time. Speaking for myself, I learned a great deal from Duncan’s blog, and would probably not have been motivated to even look at the MH370 problem if not for the IG. Their roll in the history of this investigation has been vital to all of us.
The aircraft may still be found in the SIO at any moment. Alternate theories are just that, and I welcome those as well.
Dennis – “The aircraft may still be found in the SIO at any moment Exactly, which is why I called it a waiting game for the crunchers. Jeff has probably pumped the wares of the IG as much as anyone out there been a reliable mouthpiece so if he’s been unilaterally de-badged for looking at alternate theories then it looks ridiculous.
When the search area was defined pretty much everyone was happy with it. Not now apparently.
Matty / Dennis,
Duncan’s blog was an excellent one too. It became a Herculean effort (in Duncan’s defense) to maintain it, especially when you have to work at your career and make a living whilst maintaining a blog. I too learned a lot from Duncan’s blog and it sent me reeling into my dad’s background, avionics, of which I knew diddly squat. Monitoring thousands of posts per day, most from crazies, keeping all of us in check technically, and sticking to the factual evidence where it was easy to stray ad deviate from it, was all not easy. I think Duncan is just basically stating the majority of the IG believe in the SIO terminus, whereby Jeff has branched out of the box and developed an amazing, intriguing theory, as well as has Victor. Nothing wrong with either, all are healthy and all should continue to be explored and open minds kept. See how easy it is to develop a little “rift” fictitious or not amongst the IG, that is what I meant above when I said about human nature that there could be a rift right in the hijacker camp, if they themselves do exist. Keep going Jeff, keep going IG data scientists! A lot of things fit both scenarios.
I do see your point, Matty. I don’t think Jeff is losing any sleep over it. I certainly would not. Problem solving invariably entails bruised egos. You have to put that aside, hard as it sometimes may be. Jeff can hold his head high.
Back on point. I do sense some softening in the SIO hypothesis. I regard this as normal in the flow of events.
From time to time I ponder the audio recording of MH370. Ah yes, remember that infamous, almost forgotten little ditty? Chill out Spence, I’m not going to get into who it was that said what when. What I was thinking of were the mood changes or pace changes in it. And there is one adjective that I did not fully attribute to the voices speaking and that is “nervous.” “Tired”, yes I’ve said that, “dazed”, maybe somewhat “confused”, yes I’ve said that, draggy in the beginning, yes, fast paced and urgent sounding by the repeated line, yes, but are they nervous about something other than a restroom urgency or flight level change request? At the get go, whoever is speaking sounds like they have just been awaken from a nap, by the time they get to an undetectable ATC voice they sound more giddy like they are doing a darn good impersonation of Peter Sellers doing Inspector Clouseau in “you are unreeeedable, say again.” (linguist that I am I pick up these strange little details), and by the repeated line they sound a tad frantic. Coincidental mood changes, I don’t know but I now apply that adjective “nervous” to the mix as well. Any comments?
@ALSM: I, too, urge readers to read the details for themselves – and then to read my Feb.26 10:47 PM post to this thread, which relates Dr. Alec Duncan’s team’s analysis which concluded that LANL’s 247° heading is WAY wrong – their analysis of the exact same HA01 site data solved for 190° for the event occurring at LANL’s time. In the page of figures I uploaded, the boxed data in the bottom right graph are what Dr. Duncan identifies as the LANL event.
Just for completeness, here is Dr. Alec Duncan’s exact words from his e-mail to me:
“I checked our HA01 analysis results and we do get a strong correlation at that time, but our solution gives a bearing of 190 degrees, which makes it much more likely that it is ice cracking noise from Antarctica, which is the dominant source of impulsive arrivals at HA01. To put this in context the first fig below shows all of the arrivals at HA01 that have good correlation between the three hydrophones over an 8 hour period starting just after 00:00:00 UTC on 8th March 2014. The prominent band of arrivals with bearings between 150 degrees and 210 degrees is ice-cracking noise, and this bearing range corresponds to the portion of the Antarctic coast that has line of sight from HA01. The arrival we’ve spent all our time on is the one arrowed, which sticks out because it is coming from an unusual direction. The arrival time in the plots you sent correspond to the box.”
The “one arrowed” is the “Curtin Event” west of Maldives.
This – together with Alec’s explanation of the low-frequency event as a normal (and clearly common) feature of ice-cracking events – is why I have rejected the LANL data, and have accordingly asked you to answer those straightforward questions about its history.
@Cheryl
LOL. I’m chilled.
@Jeff: I second Oleksandr’s encouragement – huge thanks for your efforts.
@Michael Gallo: thanks for the kind words. The IG is not of a single mind on ANYTHING (particularly these days, it seems), and my report is no exception. IG reaction has ranged from broad, albeit qualified, endorsement (e.g. see Duncan Steel’s blog) to dead silence.
Christine Negroni was in Malaysia for five weeks and writes this:
“Every scrap of knowledge provides a way forward. Instead all hope is tied up in the extremely unlikely possibility that the plane will be found in the South Indian Ocean.”
http://t.co/hQQ4SCWQgp
Dennis – ” Problem solving invariably entails bruised egos.
Boy, you’re not wrong. As Rand once said after a respected cruncher snapped at him – seems I have stepped on some very large toes. I always sensed many of these endeavors weren’t as entirely altruistic as was made out and this confirms it. There is plenty of ego and professional jealousy involved, and has boiled down to camps of belief. On the basis of the handshakes it’s becoming clear that there will be people who remain adhered to the SIO no matter what, and their theory cannot be invalidated because we can’t possibly cover the whole lot. In the court of public opinion though; if the analysis does not turn up a tell-tale piece of aluminium then it was wrong, and we may never know how wrong. A waiting game. Interestingly though the ATSB have raised their confidence level in the current area. Couple with the absence of debris and you have a problem. As I’ve often said I look forward to being wrong and clearly not everyone can say the same.
An irony though; subtract Jeff and most people would never have heard of the IG.
@Jeff,
Thanks again for keeping the lines open here.
@Nihonmama,
Thank you too. I’ll never get over the way that questioning becomes “conspiracy.” I’ve rarely, if ever, stated a hypothesis, and certainly not a belief. I’m not even sure I have one, nor will I until we have better data.
If I had to put money down, it would probably be on the SIO, but only because I assume the agencies have some data we don’t. Even still, it makes sense to raise every hypothesis, even ones that are begging to be shot down. Something is missing here, obviously, and nothing will be found if nobody asks any hard questions.
The thing about the crowd and social media – someone will poke the corrupt politicians in the eye until somebody leaks while somebody else asks the experts to do the satellite data math in public until they admit they fudged some numbers. Sounds like a good thing to me. I learned a long time ago that if you keep asking the experts questions publicly, eventually they either answer or they step out of the limelight and ultimately lose their credibility.
@Spencer – what’s the deal with the Gerry criticism? I get that he may have changed his views along the way, but why is it significant? As the vacation cruise in the SIO drags on, won’t we be seeing a whole lot of reversals? Is it a bad thing? Just asking.
One for Spencer –
http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-senior-boeing-777-captain-simon-hardy-reveals-a-credible-theory-of-where-the-plane-landed/story-fnizu68q-1227246153714?sv=678f3b5d38fd4993a976f246891536fd
@Matty
Thanks.
@JS
My problem with Gerry has nothing to do with whether his views have changed. This is of no concern to me.
My problem is that he claims Jeff’s ‘story’ jogged his memory about the BFO spoof discussions he had been privy to in 2011.
I find this unbelievable, as Gerry has discussed spoofing ad nauseum for the past year, time and again….including Russian scenarios, BFO spoof, Chinese etc…
Gerry has never mentioned anything similar in regard to this matter, and now, all of the sudden, we have him PLACING HIMSELF in active discussion about this very BFO spoof matter.
This is not a minor point, IMO. Anyways, I’m done with the discussion about this (to the relief of most). I do, however, believe Gerry owes a further explanation as to why he just now is coming forward with such ‘sensitive’ information. Of course, I have my own opinions.
@Spencer, that might be very interesting for you: what Gerry said when. And if you have been in contact with him, you are entitled to your opinions. But all this is besides the point, at least for me atm. All that matters is the technical merit of Gerry’s scenario. Can it be done the way he describes it? That’s what we should discuss and I hope someone knowledgeable chips in here.
Axiom
@Brock
Thanks for your comments. You seem to me one of those who kept their mental health because you did admit, when you lost it. I liked that very much because because i see a lot of pretenders around, who want to make others believe how perfect they are and forget what a difficult mess we are all in, without exception.
In your comment you wrote:
“Another distinction I think is worth making is between EVIDENCE and AXIOM. The former is provable fact, the latter is un-provable, but taken on faith.”
I dont want to sound narrow-minded, but the expression ‘Axiom’ is quite too much honor for a scientific blunder. The ineptness of the investigation to take into account the overwhelming dangers of the information technology is quite thrilling. In an age, where the IT-Industry tries to connect any screw in my home to its networks, well knowing that their research left out the question of safety, and also builds in backdoors for my government agencies who will soon register every drop of piss in my toilet and all the other shit i do, the backwardness of the airline industry in respect to software and network activities is pure arrogance.
Its a scientific paradigma of the now ruling scientific establishment, that information technology is safe. So any hint that this might be wrong will be refuted as rule, regardless whether its true or not.
But the Information Technology is not even unsafe, it includes much more risks, than the nuclear age ever posed to us. Fukushima will be just a footnote, when the electronic breakdowns cause some megalopolis to become deserts, where nobody can find food or water anymore, be it by war, by hacking, by corrupted software.
MH370 might well turn out to be a precursor for the dangers that come with the information age. If that comes true, it would be a terrible blow to the IT industry, who is trying to persuade us into strange beliefs of safety, for the sake of their profits. Nobody would buy a “connected” home anymore, everybody would ask, why he has no control whatsoever about the controllers.
That the PI Ethan John found in KL made me think: The abscence of any mobile phone calls/text messages is stunning to me. An electronic attack even before the plane started would be a clear indication of a deliberate, planned act, where the pilots were tragic heroes and the probability of the spoof of INMARSAT data would greatly increase.
The scientific establishment is about to be shattered to pieces because of the revolution in the current scientific paradigma, caused by the implicit dangers of the IT. I hope that after MH370 this message will be all over the place.
Spencer,
BFO gets buggered if you alter the… *insert answer here*
Now if you get the right answer, you’d see that I had written the method in the blog.
I feel sorry for you to believe so much in such a ludicrous article that you’re missing the forest for the trees, but that ain’t my problem.
Littlefoot got the point of the article… but that’s not important to you anyways so why am I still typing this comment?
@GerryS,
Thanks so much for helping us out here.
The scenario you describe is fascinating and worrying. And you’re right: It should be adressed for future aviation safety. If it HAS already happened… who knows? If you say it’s unlikely, that’s fine with me and probably most of us here.
AMatty & Spencer
Looks like we have a 777 Captain sharing our thoughts. I think that Spencer & I are the only two willing to step up & say that Shah did it. I also mentioned months ago that Penang was a “Flyby”…then out to sea.
@CosmicAcademy:
“The ineptness of the investigation to take into account the overwhelming dangers of the information technology is quite thrilling. In an age, where the IT-Industry tries to connect any screw in my home to its networks… the backwardness of the airline industry in respect to softwae and network activities is pure arrogance.”
That the PI Ethan John found in KL made me think: The abscence of any mobile phone calls/text messages is stunning to me.”
Keep it coming.
You’re the only one who’s commented on the absence of calls from MH370. As Ethan said, not one message sent BEFORE the doors closed.
Who could possibly think that’s NOT significant?
And you mentioned “backdoors”. As noted in previous comments, I don’t know if THAT particular group of Freescale employees on MH370 had knowledge (collectively or individually) that was worth taking a plane full of innocent people over. BUT — and this is a fact — Freescale IS in the backdoor business.
“Freescale sells tech that works w/ CERTICOM tech, which appears to have a secret ‘back door’ and (per Snowden), #NSA has the key #MH370”
https://twitter.com/nihonmama/status/451429474026803201
@Chris
there were only two persons on the plane who could execute something like this, and that’s him and F/O that didn’t really have the experience to pull this off
my(and not just my) theory is that he originally planned to land on Christmas Island however there was a conflict in the cockpit (pressure from F/O or passengers?) that prevented him doing so, now I don’t know if that conflict was around Sumatra (where we have the famous “lost” hour of probably erratic flight) where the A/P in absence of human control took the plane on the constant bearing and cruising altitude (official SIO theory) or south of Christmas Island assuming the flight path was circular (to fit BFO&BTO values) where he just ran out of fuel unable to communicate because all comms were turned off
@All,
How do we really know there were no calls and no texts? It’s a very intriguing story, if true. But it also seems very difficult to prove. It’s more or less proving a negative because the exact identification of every device on the plane may not easily be known. If passengers had stolen passports they might just as easily have stolen phones, and nobody would ever know that some random stolen phone got on that plane.
On the other hand, if enough of the NOK claim to have tried contact in the hour before takeoff, with no response, that would be very interesting. Recall that some folks were claiming that the phones were not going to voicemail, so clearly folks were trying at some point but we would want to hear some accounts that they tried before 12:30, and that some of those accounts match billing records.
What are the possible reasons for no contact?
1) Never attempted
2) Phones collected very early – but could there really be a hijacking initiated with open doors?
3) Phones jammed
4) Unreliable accounts of attempts made
5) Diligent, across the board use of airplane mode
All are problematic but this does present a very interesting line to investigate.