After I put up my post on Tuesday, some people questioned why I would even pose such a question whose premise is so unlikely. The reason is that at present there seem to be only two possible end-of-flight scenarios for MH370:
- Flying south on autopilot, the plane ran out of fuel shortly after 0:11 and thereafter plunged into the sea at high speed, hitting the surface near the 0:19 ping arc. This is what I would call the mainstream default view; it is implicitly endorsed by the ATSB and the Independent Group, and is the justification for the current subsea search area.
- A conscious pilot flew the plane until fuel exhaustion—possibly along a curving path—then guided it to a soft landing (the “ditching” scenario) beyond the current search area.
Scenario 1 has largely been discounted by the failure of the seabed search (the Australians cling to hope that the wreckage will turn up in the extended search area, which should be completed within the year; if it does not they have admitted that they are out of ideas). Scenario 2 would explain the lack of wreckage on the seabed and the scarcity of surface debris; the idea is that the plane could have come to rest on the surface largely intact and then sunk in one piece, leaving little floating debris.
The condition of the Reunion flaperon might also be evidence for ditching, given its relatively intact condition. Some have surmised that the aft portion was ripped away at the moment of impact with the water. (Fans of scenario 1 propose that the flaperon could have been ripped of by aerodynamic forces during a very high-speed descent, and then fluttered intact the surface while the rest of the plane hit the surface at near-Mach speed at was smashed to smithereens. This would explain why the flaperon is intact, but not why the subsea search has failed.)
As I pointed out in the original post, an inherent problem with the ditching scenario is that it is an intentional act that dooms the pilot to a prolonged death. Indeed, while pilot suicides are rare, ditching suicides are so far unknown. It woud be like committing suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge while wearing a parachute.
So how to explain such an occurrence? Here are some of the answers that commenters came up with:
— To hide the crime. First-time commenter @Rob (welcome!) wrote: “If you plan to make the plane disappear into the SIO, and you choose to stay aboard for 6 more hours, this suggests that you personally wanted to make sure the plane was properly ‘ditched,’ maybe to prevent a lot of debris from showing up.” @Jason Skidmore proposed that the disappearance was “some new form of terrorist-type attack.. If the plane is never found, and no one knows what happened it’s going to be pretty tough to prevent it in the future.” PRO: If a perp were to fly the plane into the remotest part of the ocean and ditch it so that it would come to rest intact and sink to the bottom of the ocean without leaving a trace, they would go to their deaths knowing that they had created the greatest aviation mystery of all time. Wrote @Kikeena: “Ever since the 4th century BC people have recognised that others will commit a criminal act to become famous. Herostratus destroyed the temple of Artemis for fame, though he was killed by the authorities to try to quiet the story. I think the reward for Zaharie was in the planning and execution. Suicide wasn’t the main motive, though he was prepared to die in persuit the fame of creating a mystery. And waiting the 6 hours to land the plane would be exhilerating.” CON: They wouldn’t be around to enjoy this knowledge, and if their goal was to become famous by generating an unsolvable mystery, their success undercuts that goal, because no one knows they did it. If, on the other hand, their aim was to achieve some terroristic objective, e.g. to show the bankruptcy of the UMNO regime, the fog of mystery is too vaporous to do so. To put it another way, no one has visibly benefitted from the disappearance of MH370. Also, I wouldn’t put much stock in a plan that requires a 777 to ditch successfully in the open ocean—a manifestly dangerous and perhaps impossible feat.
— Botched hijack. @Zoe drew a comparison to Ethiopian 961, in which hijackers told the pilots to fly to a destination that lay beyond the plane’s fuel reserves; when the plane ran out of fuel, the pilots managed a semi-successful ditching. PRO: Only scenario based on historical precedent. CON: Requires hijackers to be numbskulls, which is contra-indicated by the sophisticated nature of the turnaround portion of the flight.
— Chickened out. This one I came up with by myself. The idea is that Zaharie decided to kill himself, and turned off the cockpit voice recorder by isolating the left AC bus so that it wouldn’t record the sound of him killing his copilot. But then he found himself unable go through with his plan to dive the plane into the sea, and instead just kept flying. Too scared to go home, too timid to nosedive into the sea, he just kept going, maybe turning the plane now and again as if starting to head for home and then thinking better of it. Finally, the plane ran out of fuel, but he was still too scared to face that deadly final plunge, so he eased the plane down into the water. PRO: Seems pyschologically plausible, to me anyway. CON: The acceleration and careful maneuvering post IGARI, as described in Victor’s recent guest post, doesn’t exactly smack of timid indecision.
— Schizophrenia/Hypoxia. It being so hard to find a rational motive for the disappearance of MH370, perhaps it was carried out by someone who had lost their mind, perhaps as a result of hypoxia or a psychotic break. PRO: Removes the need for a motive. CON: Commenter @Roberta wrote that she has personally known people who underwent psychotic breaks: “They are generally unable to function at a very basic level when they are going through a true psychosis. They have literally “lost their mind” and often do not recognize loved ones, cannot take care of themselves and cannot speak with any clarity about very simple things. This includes psychosis caused by schizophrenia, bipolar mania and depression. Statistically psychotic breaks rarely lead to suicide. Most psychotic people don’t have their shit together enough to make and carry out a prolonged suicide plan, let alone fly a Boeing 777 and precisely know when and how to turn off ACARS, when to fly high or low to avoid primary radar, etc.” Hypoxia produces even more severe incapacitation and is unlikely to leave pilots in a state of steady semi-consciousness for six hours.
— To meet a ship or sub. There was something valuable on board the plane that plotters wanted to steal untraceably, so they arranged for the plane to ditch in the vicinity of a getaway vessel. PRO: Writes commenter @agreen: “No detection by radar or satellite and deep waters to dispose of the plane.” CON: As @alex immediately pointed out, it would be sketchy to plan such a transfer right at the limit of the plane’s fuel reserves. Also, as noted above, a plan that depends on successfully ditching a 777 in the open ocean seems fundamentally flawed.
Jeff your opening, definitive statement on scenario 1 is flawed. You say that scenario 1 has been discounted by the failure of the seabed search. I do not agree. I think it much more likely that the search was not properly executed – with the right equipment and the right CONOPS, and as a result is far less than 100% thorough.
@Robert Hall
I basically agree with Robert Hall. The search team is limited by time and money. This is why the search team is searching in the area that they are searching—limited search area because of limited money and limited time. I believe the “true” search area is huge.
More on this latter.
If the target was something or someone aboard, do it on ground is far more better than in-flight.
I’ll take a real flyer here, and speculate that Z thought he had more fuel than he actually had (while lightening the load for the CI approach, of course). Could it be that the fuel remaining instrumentation was corrupted by the bus switching shenanigans prior to the FMT? I know my BMW’s fuel gauge gets confused by a dead battery followed by a jump start. Older vehicles simply have a tank float the gives a crude estimation of fuel remaining. Of course, that system, while not sophisticated, had the advantage of “antifragility” in the Taleb sense.
While I tend to believe a controlled ditch is what happened, I have no credentials whatever to advocate that end of flight scenario.
“As I pointed out in the original post, an inherent problem with the ditching scenario is that it is an intentional act that dooms the pilot to a prolonged death”
Such a pilot could ditch (maybe its something they always wanted to do?) and then shoot themself, gulp a bunch of sedatives, etc.
@Jeff
“As I pointed out in the original post, an inherent problem with the ditching scenario is that it is an intentional act that dooms the pilot to a prolonged death. ”
you again assume the plane was fully working (nav, comms etc.) although he (or they) most probably fiddled with E/E bay and possibly f*cked up something and the pilot had intention to ditch nowhere (which is again not plausible looking at human behavior patterns)
why you refuse the possibility that ditching act was everything but intentional?
@Rob (welcome!) wrote: “If you plan to make the plane disappear into the SIO, and you choose to stay aboard for 6 more hours, this suggests that you personally wanted to make sure the plane was properly ‘ditched,’ maybe to prevent a lot of debris from showing up.”
awful location for such a plan, they also wouldn’t have any reason to turn towards Australia to do so
@Zoe drew a comparison to Ethiopian 961, in which hijackers told the pilots to fly to a destination that lay beyond the plane’s fuel reserves; when the plane ran out of fuel, the pilots managed a semi-successful ditching. PRO: Only scenario based on historical precedent. CON: Requires hijackers to be numbskulls, which is contra-indicated by the sophisticated nature of the turnaround portion of the flight.
you got this right, someone who would know how to make the plane “invisible” would sure know about its range and wouldn’t choose that flight to reach australian mainland
@— Chickened out.
that’s interesting and possible, but then again why would he make that SE turn?
@ — To meet a ship or sub.
bad location again, they would choose another one with better chane of ditching
@DennisW
my guess is that there is a possibility something was (unintentionally) rendered inoperative from airplane electronics after entering E/E bay and turning off/on several C/Bs
DennisW asked in a previous thread what could be so valuable as to make a hijack/theft scenario worthwhile.
I do have an answer, though on closer consideration, it doesn’t make sense.
A working nuke.
The problem is, MH370 was going to China, and China, Pakistan, and India all already have nukes. If the nuke was already in Malaysia (having already come from China on a different flight),
why not just take it away? Put it in a shielded container and ship it somewhere? Like everything to do with MH370, the pieces just don’t quite fit together.
@Jeff
“Scenario 1 has largely been discounted by the failure of the seabed search (the Australians cling to hope that the wreckage will turn up in the extended search area, which should be completed within the year; if it does not they have admitted that they are out of ideas).”
I am going to key on ‘….they are out of ideas.’
As per my first comment the investigative team is not out of ideas. They are out of time and money. I do think that team needs to do a major rethink and come up with a new (maybe) search area. The following is the equation for the new search area:
Reunion flaperon + computer simulation + pilot/turned-off = new search area
Explanation of terms:
Reunion flaperon—The flaperon washed-up on the island more or less intact. Its existence points to two things: 1) The plane landed somewhere in the Southern India Ocean. 2) Because the flaperon is in “good” shape this makes a number of people believe that the plane may have had a soft landing or a low-impact landing. Jeff would call this a ‘ditching’.
computer simulation—I believe that I can make an educated guess and say that the investigators are performing computer simulations at this moment. They will try to simulate how a flaperon can survive a crash intact. If the results show that the best candidate is a ‘ditching’ then the search team will have to perform new calculations based on this finding. I believe they based their calculations on the ‘assumption’ that the plane made a hard landing or maybe it dived bombed into the ocean.
Pilot/turned-off—The pilot intentionally turned-off the ‘handshake’. The investigators assumed that the next ‘handshake’ did not happened because the plane crashed into the water. The investigators will probably not use this term in their new calculations. They believe that there are too many unknowns for them to use it in the calculations. I believe that this would be a mistake. It would not take long to add the term to the calculations—do it and see what shakes out.
I believe it ditched not only because of physical analysis of the flaperon but because now that we know there is debris, if there was a lot of debris (which would be the case in high speed impact), something would be noticed by now out of so many pieces, as small as most of them were.
also what is the chance that out of so many debris only flaperon would get found, which is one of the rare parts that would break off the plane in case of ditching?
hi jeff (from south fla.)….with your access to certain resources…could the plane have reached these co-ordinates: lat. S. 39 49’41.26″ E. 81 25′ 14.15″ it would be pretty close to the limit of fuel starvation and maximum glide capability….but isn’t this whole thing ..? ? will be in touch with an “out to lunch” scenario if this works….the whole thing seems to be “out to lunch” so, it just might take an “out to lunch” scenario….BTW miss your input on CNN……you and David Scouce were the best…along with David Gallo from Woods Hole….I’m sure Richard Quest miss’s you to….(right). G.L.
Sometimes it is easy to be blinded to the obvious. I’m not saying that this is the case, but everyone is jumping to the conclusion that the trailing edge came off from impact with the water. There is another possible reason and this was pointed out to me by a very wise old man…. Look at the trailing edge in the photos. It’s very jagged… Sharks are known to ‘nibble’ away at fibreglass objects floating in the water. The bulk of the trapped air would be in the thicker section meaning the thinner trailing edge would be floating lower, and the trailing edge being thinner would be a better ‘target’ for the sharks. We need to be more open minded in these matters….
@George Lucas, That’s probably beyond the fuel-exhaustion range, but looks to be about where Dr Bobby Ullich proposed, so you wouldn’t be alone in wanting to examine that area further.
jeff…. me again…has anybody broached the fact that a 777 can glide over 100 nm…probably closer to 120 nm…..BTW how can i get in touch with Dr. Bobby Ullich send him my contact info please….i have an idea that might just blow his skirt up…over and out…G.L.
@Victor, Orion, & OZ – In case you missed them, I addressed some comments/questions to you two threads ago but after this thread was started:
http://jeffwise.net/2015/08/18/why-would-anyone-fly-a-plane-into-the-middle-of-the-ocean-and-then-ditch-it/#comments
@GL – I do not believe that your point is on or even near the 7th arc, but your point is about 2982 nm from MEKAR where we’ve postulated 35,600 Kg fuel remaining (actually that fuel remaining point is 10 nm past MEKAR but is close enough for this rough estimate). FCOM PI.21.5 for LCR and a 2800 nm checkpoint shows 34,300 Kg fuel required at 33,000 ft. That would indicate MH370 could have reached your point as long as it flew at FL330 or higher. At FL310, it falls short.
well i believe the maximum cruise altitude of the B777 ER200 is in excess of flight level 430 (43,000 ft.) best gas mileage is around 34,000 ft….at the end of the day, in this case the end of the morning, THE DARN THING COULD HAVE MADE IT TO those coordinates….keep in mind there are some allowances for variables in BTO and BFO data when configuring said data, or so i’ve been lead to believe….NOW the idea i’ve got is that the perpetraitor (sic) of this deed had a target, another clue, another bread crumb, in the continuing drama unfolding by him, on the global stage of discovery, by someone fortunate enough to expose them. NOW… what is the “symbolic significance” of the intended ditching point at those coordinates….you will have enough to chew on for tonight….film at eleven….i will be in touch tomorrow…..G.L….SIGNING OFF (for now)……………….
oh…..by the by i am not claiming to know the WHO…the WHY…or the HOW….simply the WHERE….we already know the WHEN…the black box’s will really help….again signing off….Sherlock Hol…. I mean G.L.
@ Lauren. Thanks! I just replied in the radar post since it was related to that topic.
P.S. i’m not a psychic OR do I endorse alien abduction theories…..(YET)…..bye bye…..
@ george lucas
Dude, just say your theory.
@Jay
As George Carlin put it so eloquently – “Think about how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half the people are stupider than that.” The IG would probably correctly argue that Carlin should have used “median” instead of “average”. But then fewer than half the people would understand the joke. Note the use of the term “fewer” (preferred when dealing with indivisible things such as people instead of “less” which is preferred for fractional expression i.e. 1.2 is less than 1.3).
It was announced that the “first phase” of the investigation in France is complete, and the results will be reported in due course. Well if the flaperon is not from 9M-MRO, there would be no need of additional phases. The investigation would be complete. So we already know what will be reported.
Jay, as this “news” relates to the location of GL, we can safely say debris could not have arrived at Reunion from that terminus in this time frame.
Jeff wrote – “an inherent problem with the ditching scenario is that it is an intentional act that dooms the pilot to a prolonged death.”
Prolonged death may not bother someone who is committed to a “higher purpose” (aka create the biggest civil aviation mystery). For eons, soldiers, pilots, rebels, freedom fighters etc have fought for their causes, knowing fully well they cannot choose how they die. Religion and personal philosophy play a strong role in dealing with life/death issues. Also, it’s a slippery slope to rationalize the workings of a mind that has crossed the point of no return. For me, this is precisely the most baffling part of this tragedy – the complexity of the human mind. A person lives a mostly moral life for 470,000 hours of his life on planet Earth, yet in the last 6 hours he descends into murder.
Being awake till the plane hit the ocean was the only way to complete his mission. So he was. I also speculate he opened one of the doors after ditching, so the plane sinks as soon as possible.
@DennisW
I expect you are right about what the “first phase” complete means. Just hope they let the NoK know first before announcing their findings to all.
An announcement today would be good (POETS day 🙂 )
@all
We have the space cadet, GL, talking in riddles. Rakesh, pondering the meaning of life. Gavin speculating on sharks chewing corners off the flaperon. It is a wonder I am not in an asylum sucking my thumb.
I have tried going outside my ranch door and screaming. No one is close enough to hear me, but it has not helped at all.
Still, I cant imagine that today, set of military sattelites cant track something which emits radio waves with known digital protocol using predictable transmit times and having lost “unidentified” plane, turned in fact into cruising missile this way, I suppose guys at NORAD or so can have prepared text semantic analysis filters/trigers over NSA to catch any weird event of this kind worldwide and focus the sattelites and simply triangulate it and do something. Six hours is plenty of time. Still not expecting anything bad from captain, who as electronic enthusiast also knows very well that any left transmitting thing (the handshakes) is for sure triangulable. What Inmarstat sed(?), that they invented yet unused method to track position by BTO/BFO, is nonsense. As far as they have logged the timings, there we have nice south/north ring dancing in media for a while. But even only with known 1 hour window between transmits, the military satellites can track it, IMHO.
The fact that hijackers were technically brilliant does not make them any more courageous or physically able than anyone else. I do not find it at all difficult to believe that two pilots, convinced they were going to die, might make a last ditch attempt to regain control of the plane.
A terrorist hijacking at least makes sense, not much else does. If people are prepared to believe that Z making a plane disappear would embarrass the Malaysian government, wouldn’t a plane crash in the centre of Penang make a rather more forceful point?
Do we? Probably no evidence has been found to prove that it is not from MH370, nor that it is.
There is an update reported in a French newspaper (info from Reddit, thanks). Suggest copying these (below) into your search engine and using translate. Google is OK but translation is only fair.
ladepeche.fr mh-370-a-balma
Considering the options alien abduction theories start looking better and better – especially since I firmly believe in their existence. Although so far I always thought the best proof of intelligent entities existing far away out there is that they had the good sense NOT to show up here on our little planet. But maybe there are some numbskull idiots amongst them who have developed a fascination with human airtraffic vehicles 😉
Anyway,
@Dennis, you’re engaging in crystal ball reading: the announcement that the first phase of investigating the flap is complete doesn’t say anything at all about the flap’s identity. Do you honestly think that they say:”Flap doesn’t belong to missing plane – too bad, but it’s none of our business anymore. Let’s just discard it and forget about the last three weeks”? They would investigate thoroughly where it came from and how on earth the flap made it to La Reunion of all places.
That said, it’s not a very likely scenario. Gysbreght is probably right and they will announce that there’s room for a rest of doubt but most likely the flap belonged to the missing plane.
So, let’s wait what they have to tell us.
Regarding Jeff’s scenario (1) : On Sept 9, the Independent Group presented a report suggesting that there are TWO locations where the Inmarsat pings and the fuel-exhaustion circle intersect.
https://www.metabunk.org/attachments/screen-shot-2015-08-13-at-12-40-52-am-png.14390/
One is in on the South side of Arc 7, where current search efforts are on-going.
This area is consistent with a “high and fast” autopilot scenario.
Incidentally, is there a good overview of which areas we have searched to date ? And which area will be searched in the months ahead ?
The other intersect point however is on the North side of Arc 7. Somewhere around 17 deg S, 107 E.
That location is consistent with a “low and slow” autopilot scenario.
I wonder how much of searching has been done around that (northern) area of Arc 7, and if very little, why not ?
@AM2, Thanks very much for the link to this amazing story. Based on my high-school French and an online dictionary, it seems to be saying the the French technical experts who have examined the flaperon are unable to find any forensic clues that can definitively link it to MH370. What’s more, they believe (presumably based on the distribution of barnacles and/or other sea life on its surface) that the flaperon was not floating on the surface but several meters below it. What that signifies, I do not know, but I find it odd that a piece of random debris would happen to have exactly neutral buoyancy, as this would require. Unless it was tethered…
The Toulouse experts of the Directorate General of Armaments finished expertise Flaperon found in Reunion. Nothing would certify 100% belonging to MH370!
in Balma , near Toulouse, technical analysis of wing flaperon supposed to belong to the Malaysia Airlines Boeing ended. The Toulouse engineers have indeed submitted their findings to the Paris Prosecutor’s Office who is in charge of the judicial inquiry. For now nothing has filtered their comments. “The investigation team headed by the French to consider the flaperon concluded the first phase of its inspection work,” announced from Sydney the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB).
Circumstantial evidence
“The French authorities, in consultation with Malaysia, will report on progress in due course,” said the ATSB. The judicial authorities in fact keep silent and refuse to comment. According to our information, the experts have found no compelling technical element that would certify 100% that this piece belongs to the MH370 flight. “The conclusion of the experts is that the technical part of the judicial investigation, which itself continues its course” tempers the near certainty of dossier.Seule for now, the flaperon which was transferred to the island of La Meeting in Toulouse on August 5, corresponds to a moving part of a wing of the Boeing 777. The representative of the American manufacturer Boeing was quickly confirmed when he arrived on site DGA Aeronautical Technical Center (DGA AT) of Balma . If the deputy prosecutor of the Republic of Paris expressed “very strong evidence” on the membership of this piece to the plane of flight MH370 disappeared for eighteen months is due to a beam concordant presumptions.
First, the piece belongs to the aircraft model corresponding to that of Malaysia Airlines, a Boeing 777. In addition, no other aircraft of this type except that of the Malaysian company were reported missing.
Then the trajectory of the wing piece that ran aground on a beach in the Reunion matches the sea currents that link the research area of the wreckage of the plane to the French overseas department. Finally, the found shells hung on the flaperon also belong to an endemic species of South Indian Ocean which is believed to have disappeared the unit.
According to a Toulouse aeronautics expert who requested anonymity, the element of the wing would not have floated for several months at the water surface but would derivative, immersed in midwater a few meters deep. According to Jean-Paul Troadec, former chairman of the Investigation and Analysis Bureau (BEA), the state of flaperon, even if it is not intact, indicates that there is no impact violent with the surface of the ocean. “If this had been the case with the MH370, one would have expected much smaller debris that Flaperon” said the expert.
Michel Polacco, pilot, aviation specialist, defense and space
“Only the black boxes will lift the mystery”
What do you think of technical analysis conducted in Toulouse?
It was a conclusion could be expected because each piece of metal is recovered from a plane does not always have an identifier that associates the debris of an airplane with certainty. But let’s be clear: flaperons Boeing 777, there are none who roam the world. It is one of only two that are missing. The second should be the bottom of the ocean off Australia. It is necessarily the Boeing flight MH370.
What have we learned the flaperon?
We know, considering its size, the aircraft was not sprayed when entering the ocean. The flaperon was in pretty good condition and suggests that the plane cow on the water for lack of fuel. I do not think that the airframe will be broken into many fragments.
Why the Parquet de Paris is it so careful in his statements?
Just because there is always a gap between the legal truth and the technical truth that proceeds much by logical deductions. There, Justice seeks an affirmation while aviation experts can work only on scientific certainties.
Find the wreck he will be the only way to understand what happened?
It’s obvious ! We have already imagined everything: an explosion in flight depressurization, an incident in the bunkers, etc. We first searched the Gulf of Thailand before realizing it was the wrong place. The northern runway – South then appeared the most obvious but, relief lost a month. More than enough to drift debris.
What could we learn from the black boxes?
Only the black boxes will raise part of the mystery. With the flight data recorder (FDR) we will get a wealth of information on autopilot or decisions that were taken, how the plane stopped, but we do not learn the motives of the driver: criminal, terrorist or pathological? The recorder conversations will indicate if sound alarms went off in the cockpit or if someone tried to break the door of the cockpit for example.
Regarding Jeff’s scenario (2), that : “A conscious pilot flew the plane until fuel exhaustion—possibly along a curving path—then guided it to a soft landing (the “ditching” scenario) beyond the current search area.”
There is one thing that bothers me in that scenario :
At 18:25, the perpetrator switched power back on.
That action switched SATCOM back on either (1) deliberately, or (2) inadvertently (simply as a consequence of switching the left power bus on), while the perpetrator did not know about SATCOM.
If it was (1), the perpetrator switched SATCOM in deliberately, then (since the goal was to make MH370 disappear) we may be faced we a scenario where the SATCOM pings are “spoofed”. Maybe not as bad as Jeff’s earlier theory that the plane went to Kazachstan, but still we cannot trust the Inmarsat pings in this (satcon deliberately switched on) scenario.
For (2), at 18:25 UTC SATCOM was switched on inadvertently (probably as a side-effect of switching the left AC power bus back on), then the perpetrators did not know about SATCOM’s pings.
Under (2), they must have assumed the plane was “dark” after they switched off the transponder and all VHF and HF radios.
Here they are at 18:25, the sole survivors of MH370, assuming the plane is invisible to anyone, intending to make MH370 disappear into the SIO, sitting there because they want to “ditch” the plane 6 hours ahead.
And then, at 18:39, they receive a satcom phone call.
They must have gotten a heart attack !
And if they were thinking logically, they would have found that circuit breaker in the E/E bay and switched off the SATCOM that they overlooked.
Yet, they did not do that.
There was even a second SATCOM call that came in at 23:13 UTC, which they also ignored.
All this suggests that EITHER satcom was deliberately left on-line, to deceive (scenario (1)) in which case we can’t trust the Inmarsat ping data, OR, under scenario (2) where the perpetrators did not know that satcom would be switched on, the perpetrator(s) left the plane between 18:25 and 18:39.
There is no shortage of “aviation experts”.
Michel Polacco is a journalist (french wikipedia).
@LaurenH,
The APU is not normally used in flight unless there is a generator inoperative, in which case the crew will start it. If both generators fail (in flight) then the APU will automatically start to attempt to restore power to the aircraft.
The sector report shows the 4 hours of APU use; this will be ground time prior to departure. A simple way to look at it is a sector or leg is from engine start to the next engine start (with a take-off). Anything that happens between these periods is part of the previous leg.
The backup generators can be disabled from the overhead panel; these cannot operate the SATCOM nor can the RAT.
OZ
@Rob, Whoeover was flying the plane at 18:39 and 23:13 might not have been worried about getting an incoming satphone call, since unless they were sophisticated hijackers they wouldn’t have known about the possibility of tracking aircraft movement from BTO and BFO data. Likewise, they might well have left their radios on so that they could listen to incoming calls.
Apparently they did not bother to shut off IFE ?
@OZ – Thanks for the explanation. Does this mean that it is typical for the APU to run for 4 hours prior to each RT (Round Trip) flight? And/or you are comfortable with APU hours being 55% of Engine hours?
@Jeff – Initially the Flaperon had neutral buoyancy. Then, after a while, Gavin’s Sharks took bites of the high density trailing edge making the Flaperon more buoyant. Eventually the Flaperon came to the surface. Now, just enough sun light hit the Flaperon to allow the barnacles to flourish.
@George Lucas, One more nonsensical comment like this and you can consider yourself banned. I’m normally not so harsh, especially with new commenters, but you’re sounding an awful lot like someone I banned not too long ago.
Jeff
@JeffWise
I don’t believe the seabed search has failed for any reason OTHER than the fact that they’ve been searching in the wrong place.
Occam’s Razor.
I never bought the groundspeed assumptions that placed the priority area so far north on the 7th arc. It reeked of the sort of “groupthink” that takes hold when one search area is close to shore and easier to manage while the other search area is far away and really hard to get to and dangerous and expensive. In that case, groupthink dictates that you’re going to start searching the easier of the two areas.
The easier area has turned up nothing. Yet some hold it up as gospel to prove that the plane remained intact on hitting the water? That’s pretty goofy.
And while Bobby Ulich’s contrail theories have many detractors, I believe his assumptions about groundspeed are way more believable from a pilot’s perspective.
He worked backward from known aircraft endurance and determined that a step climb to FL390 would have been involved, which would further inform any conjecture about airspeed (the coffin corner narrowing as it does at higher altitude) and as he has been saying almost from the beginning – and now with the added backup of his contrail analysis – the SIO search has been roughly 210nm northeast of where it should have been since the BTO data surfaced.
His closing paragraph of the recent paper reads: “I recommend a new search area be established from 84.0E to 85.5E along the 7th Arc.”
So…because I believe the seabed search has failed because they’re looking in the wrong place, I can also say…
1) I believe the craft hit the water at a high rate of speed as a result of an intentionally commanded dive.
2) The notion that a suicidal pilot or hijacker would conclude a madcap journey into nowhere with a controlled ditching that was sure to result in hours of floating with flight attendants and passengers banging on the cockpit door until they all either drowned or starved to death seems absurd to me. In every documented instance of pilot suicide, the pilot chose a quick and painless high speed impact. The fact that the guy chose to be alive and well in an airborne plane for 7 hours prior to choosing a high speed impact does nothing to detract from the pattern in question.
3) There’s a flaperon that according to every expert and computer on the planet really SHOULD have come from the current SIO search area. And yet, in the immediate aftermath of the crash, weeks and weeks of airborne surveillance turned up no debris of the sort that SHOULD have drited to Reunion 16 months later. Not a single item.
What does that say about the validity of the SIO search area?
4) If I was a suicidal pilot who never wanted anyone to be able to prove that I was a suicidal pilot and I had two choices:
A) Crash close to Australia
B) Crash further away from Australia
I would choose to crash further away so my black boxes would be that much harder to find.
And yet the Australian SIO search presumes he would have chosen the crash site closer to their shores.
Pretty wacky.
I teach conflict resolution and emotional intelligence, EQ, and I have an insight about emotional responses. It takes about 15 to 30 minutes for the chemicals in the body to dissipate after a highly emotional state. After that the higher brain takes over and thinks more rationally. All of you are right in thinking that it is not reasonable that someone could hold suicidal thoughts for 6 hours, let alone a trained pilot who would be seen as an analytical problem solver. I just can’t see from an EQ perspective how someone could hold on for 6 hours.
@Matt
1) Where is debris then? If it crashed in Bobby Ulich area there would be lot of debris which would go towards E/NE…some of the search planes & ships would have to notice something
2) it does, Trip Barthel has explained why (great post Trip btw, it was needed here)
3) nah, actually drift analysis shows the probability is very low according to best oceanographers doing that stuff for a living, the probability rises the more you go to the north
4) I agree, but why would he not turn SW if intention would be to crash further from Australia? Also if his intention was to hide plane he would choose ditching not high speed impact, and he could even organize a friend with a boat to pick him up after ditching so he wouldn’t necessarily have to die and he would sure be eager to know if he succeeded in “hiding” or not.
@StevanG
1) “If it crashed in Bobby Ulich area there would be lot of debris which would go towards E/NE…”
Not necessarily. Look at this image: http://mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/waveheightindianocean.jpg
Ulich’s suggested area is at the intersection of 40S/85E. Where are the arrows pointing at that exact spot on the SIO current map? They’re going SOUTHEAST.
Meaning A) the debris could spin eastward around Antarctica literally forever; and B) maybe that was part of the objective – to REACH the 40th Parallel and thus guarantee that no debris would ever make landfall?
I’ll confess I never matched Ulich’s lat/lon with a current map until just now. Thank you very much for inspiring me to do so because I’m now even more confident in this being an area worth searching.
2) “it does, Trip Barthel has explained why”
I disagree. In fact, I find Trip Barthel’s comment almost nonsensical. By Trip’s logic, nobody with more than half an hour to think about it would ever commit suicide.
Nearly every high-profile stand-off-suicide involving a violent or dangerous character is marked by a lengthy period in which it’s clear there’s no way out. That period is an extended instance of someone having suicidal thought for 6, and often many more, hours.
Hitler sat in a bunker for 40 hours before he fed cyanide to his wife and then, after watching her die, shot himself in the head. The moment the cyanide was brought into his study, someone was having suicidal thoughts. Probably for weeks ahead of time.
After committing several murders in the prior 10 days, Chris Dorner barricaded himself into a cabin and once he was surrounded and given the option of surrender, he refused. When the next round of pyro tear gas hit, he shot himself in the head. Many hours of suicidal thoughts there.
In the spring of ’45, 900 people in Demmin, Germany committed a mass suicide rather than face the advancing Soviets. It takes many hours for that many people to kill themselves. And there are a lot of suicidal thought happening during that time.
Must I go on with this?
3) “nah, actually drift analysis shows the probability is very low according to best oceanographers doing that stuff for a living, the probability rises the more you go to the north”
First, the French are so far refusing to attribute the flaperon to MH370, so any reverse-engineering of currents leading to Reunion is, by definition, an academic exercise. What I recall most vividly is David Gallo getting on camera on CNN and saying “My analysis shows this makes perfect sense given the time adrift and the assumption of where the plane might have gone down.” Is David Gallo not one of our “best oceanographers?” The guys who found AF447 sure liked having him around.
Second, if the plane hit at 40S/85E like Ulich suggests, the current map I linked to shows debris floating south until it reached the circumpolar current, at which point it just spins around the south pole forever.
4) “I agree, but why would he not turn SW if intention would be to crash further from Australia? Also if his intention was to hide plane he would choose ditching not high speed impact, and he could even organize a friend with a boat to pick him up after ditching so he wouldn’t necessarily have to die and he would sure be eager to know if he succeeded in “hiding” or not.”
First, the “friend with a boat” thing is awesome. Good comedy there.
Second, saying “intention was to hide plane” is a gross oversimplification of the whole thing. There are parallel goals in play, right? There’s the operational objective of never wanting it provable what you’ve done. Then there’s the basic human instinct of not wanting a slow, awful death.
Drive the thing to the 40th parallel and slam it into a southeasterly current and you satisfy both objectives.
matt….me again….dont know if you have a nav. chart of the indian ocean….also dont know what part of the country you reside in but…if you google OceanGrafix they can tell you nearest location to you to have them print out a chart # 73 east indian ocean area….very professional and ship it to you…2 or 3 day us post office priority mail
Bet 84-85.5E 7th arc just happens to be roughly 40S between those two longitudes.
I can’t answer the question of why “slam” any better than i already have.
[George Lucas is henceforth banned, on suspicion of being a pseudonym for someone previously banned. — JW]
If I were to guess, I’d say our banned user works for a company called “OceanGrafix”
; )
Actually the banned user does not work for OceanGrafix as you assumed. He is a legitimate individual with a theory just as you. His theory is based on facts.