By Victor Iannello
Don’t be fooled by claims of the red tape causing the delay in the determination of the provenance of the flaperon.
Boeing and the NTSB were parties to the investigation when the flaperon was first brought to Toulouse. It is very unlikely that the Spanish subcontractor ADS-SAU did not immediately turn over all documentation when requested by Boeing. The investigators had to know soon after the start of the investigation what the provenance of the part is, whether or not that determination was made public.
I have said before and continue to believe that there was an attempt to delay the release of the results of the investigation in parallel with planting a seed of doubt regarding the provenance of the part. Just look at the series of events this week. First the claim that Spanish vacation schedules have delayed the identification of the part. Then the claim that the identification was not possible. This was followed by the claim that the flaperon was certainly from MH370.
The pattern of leaking contradictory or false information to the media from off-the-record sources continued in full force this week. I believe this is a story in its own right that should be getting a lot of attention. Perhaps when enough journalists are made to look foolish by reporting contradicting statements, their “reputation instincts” will kick in and compel them to dig deeper.
We who are following this incident should demand that more facts be fully disclosed. Technical reports should be released so that we are not parsing statements from a judge-prosecutor to understand the true meaning of what was written. And journalists should not blindly report statements without attribution.
@retiredF4
Please tell me again what would be the motive for a hijacking?
@Gysbreght, if we just apply formal logics you’re right. But I think for all practical purposes we can neglect a scenario where someone brought along a parachute which was accessable during the flight just by chance and decided during the course of the hijack to try his luck and exit the plane through the E/E hatch. If the perps have contemplated a bailout through the hatch they would’ve carefully evaluated the feasibility of such a stunt. If the chances of a successful outcome were zero or slim at best it’s not very likely they would include such a risky maneuver in their overall plans.
@Retired F4, there are many scenarios where Shah is a massmurderer from the very beginning. The most broadly published scenario – he abducted the plane in order to make a political statement by taking the plane into the SIO and create an aviation riddle for the ages – makes him a massmurderer from the very beginning, too. Whatever we think personally, we can’t be sure of his motivations one way or the other. I simply excluded him from being a candidate for hatch jump because he is too bulky. He would have had difficulties to even fit throught the hatch – let alone with parachute and swimming gear.
But I agree with you insofar: whatever Shah was or wasn’t up to, I can’t imagine that he would kill everybody on the plane and then callously safe his own life. On the other hand, Jay made an interesting remark a couple of weeks ago. He said that someone who was out to create the greatest aviation mystery of all time would want to stay around if possible in order to witness and enjoy the outcome. I agree with Jay.
It has been stated quite often that Shah simply doesn’t fit the profile of a cold blooded killer. But the truth is that we can’t really be sure one way or another. Andreas Lubitz was psychologically evaluated and nobody would’ve thought it possible that he would become a massmurderer. As far as we know Shah was never evaluated recently. All we know about him is anecdotal and from his social pages. And besides the many positive testimonials there is certainly also some very dicey material in his social pages.
We should keep an open mind. But as far as his size and the size of the hatch is concerned – that’s a mechanical problem 🙂
@Littlefoot
Lubbitz was a deeply troubled man by any measure. I don’t now how you could possibly use him as an example. Shah had none of the baggage Lubbitz was carrying.
Ok, so if he can’t fit through the EE hatch, what about the rear side exit, closest to the horizontal stabilizer?
I haven’t yet heard that the 12 foot gap (or so) between the door and the stabilizer would allow sufficient acceleration to cause either injury or damage to the plane. So is this theoretically possible?
(If not, then presumably everybody is still on the plane wherever it rests.)
@Dennis, what do you really know for sure about Shah that you can be so certain about what kind of baggage he was or wasn’t carrying? While Lubitz’s disturbed mind was documented to a certain degree this documentation is missing in Shah’s case. Which doesn’t necessarily imply it wasn’t there. His social pages show that he was carrying and grappling with his own load. Some of this material is quite disturbing. Have you ever taken the trouble to read all of it?. If Lubitz had left something like this behind everybody would’ve jumped at it in hindsight. And you yourself think it’s possible that he abducted his own plane in order to abscond to CI. This action as a political statement isn’t exactly the sane act of someone in an emotional equilibrium IMO.
But in my last comment I simply wanted to say that we should keep an open mind re: Shah and stay away from absolute statements about what he was or wasn’t capable of. We just don’t know enough with any certainty about the man.
@JS, I agree with you. If we are discussing bailout and exit scenarios we should include other exit possibilities besides the E/E hatch as well.
If only in order to rule them out as impossible or highly unlikely.
Here’s an interesting article about midflight exits from an airliner:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/05/130528-airplane-door-open-midflight-pilot-eject/#
Who knew that the mysterious hijacker D. B Cooper is responsible for a new safety practice? Anyway, he’s so far the only known hijacker who ever exited a plane midflight with a parachute. If he survived with his booty isn’t known for sure to this day.
Here we go again with the JamesBondesque jumpers again. I stood there and watched live the helicopter jumpers perform jumping onto the field at the Travers and the Belmont right out of helicopters in NY. Captain Zaharie into the SIO? Oh come, now!
The diver may have had the finesse and athleticism to jump but again out of the EE bay, difficult at best. I agree with Airlandseaman on this one.
Besides if we have a possible controlled ditching then who the heck is flying and who the heck is jumping?
Now 3 great quotes to keep in mind through all of this:
Jeff Wise: “Actions do not speak louder than words when the actions are unknown.”
Duncan Steel: “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
Mary Schiavo: “What appears to be terrorism may really be heroism.”
Put them all together and what do we have? Yes it may be in the SIO and the Inmarsat data stands correct as evidenced by the flaperon, Zaharie has not made any statement crystal clear as we are all still guessing at it, and we don’t know under what degree of duress that plane was flown or by whom.
And to me that duress began at 17:19 with the curt and abrupt verbal communication ending to KLATC. There has to be a reason for that abruptness.
The suggestion that the perpetrators of the highjacked MH370 escaped by jumping out with parachutes from the fast moving aircraft does not make much sense when one considers the possibility that they have an equally good if not better chance of surviving the flight by ditching the aircraft in the water in a controlled fashion, and escaping via the exits.
In the discussion of the possible end-of-flight scenarios for MH370, the bizarrest hypotheses have received the most attention. Yet, the mundane and most plausible scenario, namely the controlled ditching and subsequent sinking of the aircraft, is not discussed in any great detail.
The ditching of the aircraft in the open ocean can be done relatively safely, and the larger the aircraft, the better the chances of survival. After landing the aircraft in the water, it’s subsequent sinking by the perps can also be accomplished without resorting to explosives or any other action that causes debris.
The keys to understanding this end-of-flight scenario are the specifications and guidelines that must be adhered to by the aircraft’s own manufacturer.
As per federal regulations of the US FAA, all large passenger aircraft are designed to withstand the forces of impact when ditching into the water (as opposed to an uncontrolled crash), and stay afloat for long enough to enable passengers and crew to escape. If the perps wanted to make the aircraft ‘disappear’ after flying it out of radar/satcom coverage, they would’ve had ample information and instructions on how to ditch the aircraft in a controlled fashion, courtesy of the aircraft’s manufacturer Boeing.
Of all the crashes investigated by the FAA, the controlled ditching of an aircraft in a body of water has one of the highest rates of passenger survivability.
Furthermore, after having safely ditched the aircraft in the ocean, the perpetrators wouldn’t have had to worry about how long the fuselage remained afloat. Dynamic flotation studies of the aircraft done by the manufacturer would once again provide insight on how best to ‘manage’ the sinking of the aircraft as flooding progresses through the fuselage. After the blackboxes and any other incriminating evidence had been removed from the aircraft, it could be sunk intact by flooding, and sent in one piece to the bottom of the ocean.
One more interesting point from reading the FAA ‘ditching’ regulations relate to the weight of the aircraft at the point of impact. As per the regulations, it is assumed that the pilot would have had time to jettison most of the fuel in order to keep the aircraft as light as possible when hitting the water. The fact that MH370 flew on until the limits of it’s range suggests not only that the perps tried to hide the aircraft’s location in the vast SIO, but they also succeeded in lightening the aircraft’s weight without leaving a trail of aviation fuel in the ocean or atmosphere which could possibly be spotted by search vessels or Earth Observation Satellites.
@CliffG
You make a good case for the ditching scenario. Let me phrase few thoughts which imho speak against it.
If we believe the inmarsat data and the conclusions some experts drew from them here and on other reports including Boeing, then the end of flight scenario was not a controlled ditching but a crash after fuel exhaustion.
The personal risk of ditching in the SIO is not only from landing itself, but also from the recovery process. Once such a plan is executed there would be no turn back, despite worsening weather or problems with the recovery ship/ships.
The logistics involved for recovery by ship from the area in the SIO would be x-times greater than picking up one or few people around the area of FT south. Such a ship had to be in place early and the movements could be tracked later on back to some harbour.
Despite the remote area a discovery had to be drawn into consideration, first while still in the air. So any operation had to end pretty fast, achieve what is desired and then get rid of the evidence. As mentioned before, we have two complete breaks in flight behaviour, one at Igari when the deviation from flightplan and loss of comunication equipment was initiated. What followed is thought to be a deliberate flightpath to the area of the final turn south, which is assumed a to be a path to avoid any suspicion (it could go as an flightpath for landing due to an emergency) and to avoid or minimize the detection from known primary radar stations.
After that the aircraft turned south and disappeared with a more or less straight flight path according to the Interpretation of the ISAT data.
Why add another six hours flight and risk of exposure when whatever was wanted was already achieved? To move the crash zone as far as possible away from the last known position and the get away point, would be my guess. You can do that by flying it there by a pilot and make him a martyrer, by rescueing him there or by letting the aircraft fly itself on autopilot and get off the aircraft somehow after the autopilot is set up.
The next risk is that the aircraft will be found, regardless how far south it was flown and how deep it will rest. An aircraft greatly intact on the bottom somewhere is easier to detect than bits and pieces, and from an intact aircraft you can learn a lot more things than from a completely destroyed one. Therefore a crash after fuel exhaustion seems to me the more logical plan than a planned smooth ditching. Such an aircraft on the water could be detected by sats.
Now you might say, that a crash causes much more surface debris and thus gives away the crash position. Here the ISAT data come into play. Without those data we would know nothing at all, there would most probably be no search area in the SIO and only thing we would have now is a flaperon landing at a beach of a little french island. Was the usefull existence of those datas known to the planning party? If yes, they would have prevented them from emitting or they would have manipulated them to create falsified evidence, a spoof.
Imho the planners missed them, and therefore would not consider anybody searching in a remote location 6 hours flight time away from the last known position. And that is the killer for the controlled ditching scenario to minimize surface debris and take great risk in doing so.
If there was a hijacking for some until now to us unknown purpose, and there was a way out of the aircraft, although a risky one, then that’s were I would put my two cents.
@Retired F4, are you saying that if the aircraft was ditched in order to minimize surface debris and hide the location of the crash, the perps probably did not know about the ongoing pings and what kind of calculations could’ve been done subsequently with the sat data?
If that’s what you’re saying it makes a lot of sense. An almost intact airplane would give away a lot of information is indeed easier to find on the seafloor than just bits and pieces – but only if you know roughly where to look. As you say: without the sat data the plane could potentially anywhere within fuel range. Nobody would get the crazy idea to look for it in the SIO.
@littlefoot
I’m not sure about your conclusion, so let me rephrase my last two paragraphs:
I think the perps missed the existence of the ISAT data, otherwise they would have prevented them, or altered them to point to a different location. As those datas seem to be widely accepted as being genuine and reliable, I assume they missed they existed and could finally point to the final resting place.
Now to the key point of my assumption. If they had no knowledge of those data they had to assume, that the search party would not look a a place 6 hours flight time away, but closer to the last known position, what initially also was happening. To stumble on some surface debris in the SIO within reasonable time, lets say one month, while searching the Andaman sea as possible crash site would be bad luck the best. And if such debris would be found after some time like the flaperon it would hundreds or thousands of miles away and only show that the airplane was lost somewhere. So I see no reason to try a ditching with an logistical nightmare to recover the pilot under a professional hijacking scheme just to make the aircraft harder to find.
Hope that helps to clarify.
@RetiredF4, The problem with any scenario that posits an intention to disappear is that it doesn’t fit with how the plane actually behaved. The final major turn, presuming one occurred, would have taken it practically right over a major Indonesian radar facility in Aceh. If the plane had flown on for another half hour, it would have been completely out of range of all known radar facilities.
So if the perps intended to mysteriously disappear, and turned south when they did, they must have known that Indonesia had turned its radar off from the night. That, however, implies a sophisticated situation awareness; it’s not easy for average civilians to determine the status of military radar facilities!
Given that kind of sophistication, it seems unlikely the perps wouldn’t have been aware that they’d be generated Inmarsat data.
But more to the point, what would have been gained by all this complicated maneuvering? Instead of simply vanishing east of IGARI, the perps chose to double back and show themselves on primary radar–for what? To embarrass Malaysia for not intercepting them? This seems like a very small drink for a very long walk; in the event, people have complained about Malaysia for many reasons in the last year and a half but the failure to launch interceptors to go after MH370 doesn’t rank very high among them.
@Littlefoot – there are actually about a half-dozen copycat DB Cooper events, including several with surviving, parachuting hijackers apprehended later. One of the mysteries surrounding DB Cooper is why authorities so resolutely believed he could not have survived, when survival was demonstrated several times the same year.
All of them, to my knowledge, involved B727s or DC9s, both of which have rear air stairs.
Otherwise, I agree – if only to rule out a jump, it’s a relevant question.
So what is the supposed Indonesian radar coverage near FMT ?
@Jeffwise
Lets step back to the evidence, which points to the proposed fact that it did turn back. If an aircraft disappears from radar at such a point, it is likely that the agency which hands the plane over to the next one assumes mission complete. And the agency taking over expects the aircraft to check in. And it is expected that the aircraft continues on its planned track until contact is reestablished. And that is exactly what happened, nobody dared to expect a turn back and was looking at the wrong airspace.
If somebody discovered that aircraft later on live, which we do not know, it would habe been considered as an aircraft in distress returning home. Once the turn to the NW at Butterworth was completed without being intercepted, the game was completed.
Wether the aircraft turned south immidiately or continued a bit further to avoid Indonesian airspace is another open question. If we consider a jump somewhere after last radar contact neither the assumed speeds nor the assumed altitudes for the computations based on the ISAT data would hold true, but I’m not in a position to do the math. I’ am speculating there.
The jump in that area only makes sense if the task for the hijacking, whatever it was, was completed and the next step to come was the disappearance of the evidence.
The vanishing itself was not the task of the hijackers, but vanishing served the purpose of hiding the evidence for mass murder.
I can think of nothing what would habe been worth to fly to the SIO and do a controlled ditch. Then it was no hijacking in the direct sense at all. But that again would contradict the first phase of the flight and we would be back at spoof.
Drift model update:
David Griffin has confirmed to me via e-mail that, in all CSIRO model results, an assumption is built in for Stokes drift INCREMENTAL to what they call “leeway”. In other words: their leeway assumption is only valid to the extent freeboard (cross-sectional area poking out of the water) WAS present for the object in question.
Also: after a 9-month harangue, I finally received something from GEMS this week, also via e-mail: well-annotated, graphical results of CORRECTED (i.e. no longer going to Sumatra…) forward drift analysis starting at the current priority search area, under each of three alternative leeway assumptions. While I am still seeking clarification on a few technical points, these drift results seem to be corroborating what all the other results – including CSIRO’s – are saying: that current and Stokes effects alone appear highly unlikely to get a flaperon from the priority search zone all the way up and around to anywhere near RĂ©union Island.
Needless to say, this intensifies the importance of the complete-yet-unreleased results of drift profile testing conducted by French investigators on the flaperon itself. I am hopeful these will be released soon, and in detail. I also hope that any such official results are independently verified.
It is interesting to me that CSIRO has published its conclusion – which hinges on an ASSUMED flaperon freeboard – without (to my knowledge) having received any information from France on the empirical buoyancy studies.
FYI, here are the sources I’m now assessing for v2 of my drift analysis comparison:
CSIRO (Griffin)
UWA (Pattiaratchi)
GEMS (Hubbert)
Geomar (Villwock)
Deltares (Baart)
ICMAT (Garcia Garrido)
Adrift (van Sebille)
Ocean Motion (Ebbesmeyer)
I’ve also just heard that the French investigators may have commissioned their own study from France-based drift experts.
While v2 will make clearer that…
– in this particular oceanic region, forward drifting is more reliable than reverse, and
– models which add wind/Stokes effects are more accurate (provided they’re calibrated appropriately to the flaperon’s size, shape, and density)
…the preponderance of the evidence continues to suggest that IF the flaperon drifted nearly fully submerged, THEN the official claims suggesting the RĂ©union discovery CORROBERATES the current priority search zone are not credible.
The logic of that statement escapes me.
They may have thought the probability of primary radar detection at that time of night was low, and the airplane would have been out of radar range anyway shortly after the supposed jump. They may have programmed a waypoint like IGOGU for the turn south.
@ everybody with a pulse – can we,for just a moment, step back out if the trees, and look at the forest. Concerning drift scenarios…take two rubber duckies out to the middle of the lake behind your house, release them close together, and row your boat back home, then go back two days later, find them, and i can promise you, no i can guarantee you, they will be nowhere…nowhere near each other. Sorry if the water on the fire doused those farfetched ideas, but lets get some real world ideas to solve this thing….i think its called the KISS principal…( the Martini Chronicles will continue..)
@RetiredF4: To be clear, whether or not it occurred, the satellite data is not inconsistent with a jump at slow speed somewhere around North Sumatra. Recall, that in July 2014, I presented results that matched the BTO and BFO data with a “loiter” around Banda Aceh that ended on the 7th arc at 34.24S latitude, following a BEDAX-SouthPole route.
RetiredF4,
Your scenario is a colander. Sorry.
Btw, correction re “The longer way over the top of the wing (due to the wing profile and the AOA) forces the air going over the top to a higher speed, thus reducing the pressure on the top side of the wing”. Just letting you know that this is a common misinterpretation. The longer way has nothing to do with the lift force.
———–
Gysbreght,
Sarcasm?
———–
Brock,
My prediction is that soon you will come to the conclusion (endorsed by a reputable P.Eng. indeed) that the capabilities of the modern drift models do not allow for the refinement of the search area.
(I apologize if this comment appears twice.)
@Rob:
You had a series of comments on Sept 4, 2015, discussing access to the Bulk Cargo Door. Unfortunately, I believe many did not see these comments as we were posting to other threads and were distracted by other events of the day. I am including the link here so that others become aware of your comments and perhaps we can continue this discussion here if there is interest.
http://jeffwise.net/2015/08/20/ditching-in-the-middle-of-the-ocean-part-2-answers/#comments
Victor
@littlefoot
“While Lubitz’s disturbed mind was documented to a certain degree this documentation is missing in Shah’s case. Which doesn’t necessarily imply it wasn’t there.”
I am quite sure malaysian government would exploit that documentation if there was anything against him, and they would sure have access to it.
@all
any jumping out and similar non-ditching scenario would leave a LOT of debris, many of would HAVE to be spotted
@Rob, VictorI,
Victor, thanks for providing that link to Rob’s posts. Very interesting indeed. I recommend everyone have a look at them.
Seat 27D, occupied by one of the un-background checked passengers of spoof scenario fame, being located next to the unlocked access hatch to the aft cargo hold with the only viable door for safe exit from the plane is surely food for thought. (i love a good conspiracy theory).
With that information, an early exit by perps seems now more plausible. Two motives for the long flight to the far SIO in such a scenario would be to firstly maximise chances of the inevitable debris to be caught in the SIO gyre, never to be found, or secondly, at least maximise the time before any debris would be washed up on any shores.
Cheers
Will
@victor Didn’t you have one scenario where the loiter was a landing? So: land, deplane perps, hijackers, whatever. control aircraft as drone and launch. set
Autopilot to BEDaX South Pole and wave goodbye.
No more implausible than any number got other scenarios being proposed. Gets rid of suicidal pilot flying for hours problem too. motive still unknown.
@Brock
Thanks for those further details on drift analysis
@Oleksandr
Depending very much on the floating/drifting/barnacle analysis of the flaperon by the French, I expect we won’t be able to refine the current search area or define a new one in sufficient detail to move the search but we may be able to rule out the current area. (Which would get us back to square one.)
@RetiredF4
I can’t think of any hijack type which would have achieved its purpose before the FMT… could you give an example please. (BTW, I’m using a broad definition of hijack including pilot took the plane illegally).
@Arthur Sorkin: Yes, eliminates some holes and creates some others.
@Isenhild, If you’re interested in the topic I suggest you read a post from last November, http://jeffwise.net/2014/11/18/mh370-and-the-mystery-of-indonesian-radar/
@jeffwise. Talk about closing holes and making others, the indonesion radar story seems highly significant since it has the potential to falsify other parts of the story, e.g., other alleged radar tracks. Why did it get forgotten?
@AM2, you asked:
I can’t think of any hijack type which would have achieved its purpose before the FMT… could you give an example please. (BTW, I’m using a broad definition of hijack including pilot took the plane illegally).
I’m probably not very good at that task, as I try to avoid speculating too much. I think it more important to connect known parts of the disappearance together and make any sense of it, like why we see three completely different flight parts.
But I give it a try.
If the purpose was not to reuse the airframe and not to recove some bulky load, and not to capture a person or persons alive, Then that leaves:
– Prevent something or somebody to reach its final destination and make it look like some tragic accident, were the evidence is destroyed and not found easy.
– To prevent information or documentary or a smaller cargo item from reaching its destination and use it for own purposes, without letting the initial owner know that it found its way in unauthorized hands.
Such a task could be fullfilled within minutes not hours.
I’ve just finished reviewing the transcripts in the Factual Information and its obvious there are 2 different people speaking from the plane. One person is flawless in his diction and the other has ah, aaa, aa, ehhh written into the transcript. Experienced pilots are usually flawless. The other is not even sure of the flight number. I would guess Zaharie was flawless and Fariq was halting in his speech. I say this because every cockpit voice after 1642 has some broken language. If the co-pilot had taken control of the aircraft, he would have from 1642 on (last clean speech) to disable the pilot. That would leave him until 1721 (IGARI) to prepare to disable communication. Not sure of motive but we shouldn’t remove the co-pilot from the equation.
Transcript from plane
1625 Delivery Malaysian Three Seven Zero good morning.
1626 Malaysian Three Seven Zero we are ready requesting
flight level three five zero to Beijing.
1626 Beijing Pibos Alpha six thousand feet squawk two one
five seven Malaysian Three Seven Zero thank you.
Switches to Ground Control
1627 Ah.. Ground Malaysian Three Seven Zero good
morning Charlie One requesting push and start. (first broken English)
1632 Ah Ground Malaysian Three Seven Zero you are
unreable say again.
1640 Three Two Right clear for take-off Malaysian Three
Seven Zero thank you bye. (last clean speech)
1642 Departure Malaysian aaa… Three Seven Zero.
1643 Okay… level one eight zero direct IGARI
Malaysian One… aaa Three Seven Zero.
1646 Night one three two six Malaysian err… Three
Seven Zero.
1646 Lumpur Control Malaysian aa Three Seven Zero.
1647 Level two five zero Malaysian aaThree Seven Zero.
1650 Flight level three five zero Malaysian aa Three Seven
Zero.
1701 Malaysian aaThree Seven Zero maintaining flight level
three five zero.
1707 Ehhh… Seven Three Seven Zero maintaining level
three five zero.
1719 Good night Malaysian Three Seven Zero.
@anyone
The case for a terminus off the Southern Coast of Summatra (i.e. CI) continues to strengthen as time passes,
1) ISAT data
2) drift models
3) plausible motive (not ridiculous hijack or bizarre mechanical failures)
4) lack of extensive debris consistent with controlled ditch in relatively more benign conditions than the SIO
while other conjectures are falling apart. I expect this trend to continue.
Of course, the conspiracy whackos will continue to do what they do best.
@RetiredF4
OK, thanks your ideas. I agree its “more important to connect known parts of the disappearance together and make any sense of it” as you say.
Trip,
Four your sake, I’ll go over what I outlined on Duncan Steel regarding the voices and my opinion of them. I am a linguist and approached the official edited, key word there, “edited,” Audio Recording of MH370 linguistically on the Duncan Steel site.
Others can just skip over this as it is repetitive and has been hashed out here previously.
Yes, there are two distinctly different voices on the MH370 Audio Recording. One has a heavier accent, sounds a bit older, a bit more resonance to the voice, and one has a quicker more English sounding delivery time with a different intonation. The latter I take to be Fariq Hamid, different ages, different schooling perhaps. If you review Captain Zaharie’s Youtube videos, albeit he is not over radio, you will detect the aa, ah, etc. at times in his English delivery in his Aircon, Window Seal, and Ice Maker videos. Captain Zaharie has a more elongated e in his pronunciation, such as zeeero. Perhaps both of the men have a bit of the aa, ah in their English delivery.
There are 4 separate instances I detected where whoever is speaking is misnaming the flight number:
1. It is called Malaysia 0 early on
2. Malaysian 377
3. Malaysian 1, er, catching themself, 370
4. Malaysian H,8, or A, 370
What I found curious is Captain Zaharie is described as being meticulous, and Fariq Hamid was on his first unsupervised flight, two good reasons they would want to be articulate on the recording if only for posterity’s sake. Perhaps they or one was tired, it was a routine red-eye to Beijing, that unfortunately turned out to be anything but routine. Or possible the beginning effects of hypoxia, I don’t know.
If I am interpreting your post correctly, you are coming out with the end result that I did, that Fariq Hamid spoke the last words, but that is contradictory to the FI, which clearly states that Zaharie Shah spoke the final words. Also 5 of his colleagues supposedly confirmed it was him as well. If it is Zaharie, it is completely devoid of his accent and has a quicker delivery for some reason. Steve Barber, acoustic expert and drummer also came up with this scenario that it was Hamid at the end. Even Yaya, then CEO of MAS thought it to be Hamid originallt. But the FI says it is Zaharie, so we officially go with that. Perhaps in some short phrases over radio he loses the accent.
Curious also is the repetitive line of the maintaining FL350, some six or seven minutes apart. It has been said that they were prompting ATC for a higher FL, not getting it. Then comes the curt, abrupt ending, where they do not repeat the HCM frequency back to KLATC, as they had repeated most everything prior. Mad at not getting the FL, dealing with some emergency, starting the disappearing act, at gunpoint, we just don’t know?
We have nothing to compare Fariq Hamid’s voice to and only Captain Zaharie’s Youtube videos for his voice comparison. It was requested on Duncan Steel for other audio recordings of the two pilots on previous flights over radio for comparisons.
The last person to have spoken on MH370 is not necessarily guilty of anything other than speaking last.
MuOne,
If our good “Comrade X” passenger is jumping, who then is reconnecting to IOR do you think and why?
Or could it be the perp(s) jumped, the pilot(s) regained some control but too little too late?
I too think if the perps are that sophisticated, then they would have to have known that the Inmarsat handshake communications would have possible tracking capabilities.
@Cheryl:
Why would they have known about the handshakes? The handshake is initiated by the ground station after an hour of inactivity of a terminal that is loggged on, and that never occurs in normal flight operations.
Gysbreght – They knew they were connected to a satellite. Low rent crims know that much.
@Arthur Sorkin, I agree, the fact that the presumed FMT would have occurred within the zone of Indonesia radar coverage is one of those intriguing aspects of the case that has been given too little weight, I think. It doesn’t make sense to run up the Malacca Straits to avoid Indonesian radar if you’re just going to turn right into it near Aceh.
If your goal is to go south, and you know that the Indonesians can neither detect nor intercept, why not just go south?
@jeffwise and Arthur Sorkin: It may be that the perps were not trying to avoid Indonesian radar. Rather, they were avoiding Indonesian territory, which extends 12 nm from the coast, in order to minimize the possibility of a military intercept.
Cheryl – To me, the last speaker had a bit of a mid-western American accent so I agree with you that it was Fariq.
I, too, heard about the possible request for a higher flight level as a reason to repeat the current level, but the filed flight plan called for FL350 all the way to Beijing.
Oleksandr – I agree that any drift analysis will be able to show a better search area. The best chance to refine will be littlefoot’s suggested evaluation of these very unique Barnacles (remember these have a line of pits on the shell). The freeboard area of the flaperon would vary with the size of the waves and the addition and growth of each barnacle would change the flaperon’s buoyancy and flow resistance.
Highjack Motives – Asylum in Australia. Failed attempt into the Petronas Towers with highjackers and flight crew unconscious between 18:20 and 18:40. Failed multi-plane attack of the world’s tallest buildings. Other perps were stopped at various airports, and the MH370 perps were instructed to abort and lose the plane.
ASLM has it right. The only pieces of recoverable debris are those that departed the plane prior to impact. After impact, nothing bigger than a couple feet in either direction was floating and after 4-7 days those were so well dispersed that they were missed by air and satellite search. Even if George’s rubber duckies stayed together, you still would not have spotted them from the satellites, air or ship. No debris was found because it was too small to be recognizable.
@VictorI – I like your 12nm boundary. It supports a FMT just past Banda Aceh.
Also, at what time might these have occurred in the Straight of Malacca:
Another plane might have been seen by MH370?
AES gets power and does the Air Traffic Avoidance System run from the same power supply as the AES? (Note, if the logon was at 18:25, doesn’t that mean power was restored about 3 minutes earlier at 18:22?)
MH370 makes a jog right?
MH370 drops from radar for the final time?
@Lauren
I will remind you of your post when the French conclude the flaperon damage is from a controlled ditch.
Lauren H:
FTR…I never suggested… “The only pieces of recoverable debris are those that departed the plane prior to impact.”
There may have been more pieces that separated before impact, and some recoverable debris from before and after impact. I only suggested that authorities need to consider the evidence for the possible flaperon flutter case, suggesting flaperon separation before impact.
Mike
@ASLM – You are correct but didn’t you say you believed that one reason the flaperon is as large as it is and more or less intact is because it most likely separated from the a/c prior to impact? I went on to suspect that based on the Silk Air debris, the only large MH370 pieces are those that separated prior to impact.
@Dennis – The video of the attempted controlled ditch of Ethiopian Air 961 seems to show the entire left wing being pulled off – perhaps because the engine hit a coral reef. But I don’t see the flaperon not being severely damaged after the engine hits the water and flies off up and back during a controlled ditching.
While we are on the subject of a “controlled ditching”…. I asked a little time back . . .
What G forces would one reasonably expect in a “controlled ditching” in the ocean, as distinct from the glassy smooth Hudson.
Even the Hudson ditching must have been subject to significant G forces to break an engine off, and for passengers to suffer broken shoulders etc.
So, in the MH370 case, why did the ELTs not trigger?
Well, maybe they did, because the spec for the 406Mhz ELT requires a delay of 50 seconds from the time of the trigger, to the time of the first emergency transmission. (The 121.5 MHz signal may commence immediately, but of course hardly anyone listens for that now.)
No ELT transmission…so the aircraft was severely damaged in the ditching, disabling all ELTs, or it sank within 50 seconds.
@DennisW: Don’t be surprised if the testing of the flaperon is inconclusive regarding how MH370 hit the water. It might turn out just like other evidence such as the satellite data and the drift modeling: assumptions, interpretations and conclusions will vary.
@Brian, A “soft” water landing might include impacts has hard as something like AF447, which as I recall was going something on the order of 120 knots when it hit. So, lots of loose bits, just not as shredded as Germanwings or SilkAir 185. And in the case of AF447, the ELT also was not detected. (Nor in the recent AirAsia crash–seems like these things are not all that useful in water acccidents.)
Dennis,
“The case for a terminus off the Southern Coast of Summatra (i.e. CI) continues to strengthen as time passes”
Where does it come from?
I should also note that “ridiculous hijack” and “bizarre mechanical failures” are the only two scenarios, which pass both the logic and data tests. The other scenarios do not pass. Including CI. CI hypothesis does not have a plausible motive, does it?
AM2,
“…but we may be able to rule out the current area”.
Unfortunately we were not able: the current search area cannot be ruled out based on drift studies.