Goose barnacles of the genus Lepas live exclusively on debris floating in the open ocean. Like other barnacles, their larvae spend the early part of their life swimming freely and then, in a final larval phase called the cyprid stage, search out a floating object on which to settle. Once they find a suitable object, says marine biologist Hank Carson, “cyprids in general do do a fair bit of exploration for that cementation spot” upon it, and with good reason: they’ll spend the rest of their life there. Among the criteria they assess is how crowded a spot is, what the underlying substrate consists of, and how deep it is. Once satisfied, they glue their heads in place.
In general Lepas barnacles like to spread out, and prefer a spot in the shade; they grow best away from the top of the water column. The reason is that close to the waterline, the rising and falling of waves periodically exposes the animals to the air, which interferes with their feeding. It’s unhealthy for them in other ways, too. “The uppermost centimeters of water are normally a quite harsh environment with strongly changing ecological parameters, like water temperature, salinity (heavy rains or intense evaporation in tropical areas). Moreover they are subjected to intensive UV radiation,” says Hans-Georg Herbig of the Institut für Geologie und Mineralogie in Cologne, Germany. “From several organism groups it is known that they avoid the uppermost centimeters of the water column.”
Given a healthful environment, Lepas barnacles are notoriously fast-growing. The animals evolved to live on floating organic debris which after a time will break apart and sink, so time is of the essence. Whereas a species of goose barnacle that lives attached to a rock might take five years to reach sexual maturity,1 Lepas can do it in mere weeks. Japanese researcher Yoichi Yusa and his colleagues raised L. anserifera barnacles on tethered debris in a bay in Japan and found that “individuals on the average grew from 3 mm to more than 12 mm in capitulum length within 15 days and some were brooding.” Thus, in less than a month after settling onto a piece of debris, Lepas can begin producing new generations to further their colonization.2
As a result Lepas-settled flotsam can become extremely crowded in short order, with individuals crammed onto every available surface right up to the uppermost limit of what they can survive. Pictured above in Figure 1 is a Japanese skiff that was swept to sea after the Tohoku tsunami in March, 2011, and made landfall on a beach in Washington state in June of the following year, meaning that it floated capsized for about 15 months. If you think it’s remarkable that the barnacles could have grown so huge in so little time, think again. “They grow really fast,” says Cynthia Venn, a professor of oceanography and geology at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania. “That boat could get covered like that in six months, even.”
Venn has studied the genus Lepas intensively for more than twenty years. For ten of them, she collected specimens from NOAA’s Tropical Ocean and Atmosphere array of research buoys dotted across the central Pacific Ocean, carefully preserving material that the maintenance crews considered pesky marine fouling. “It was basically a 3-D time series of barnacle settlement,” she says. “I couldn’t find anyone to take the project so I just did it myself. I was able to go two cruises, for the rest I sent my studentsand they then shipped the barnacles back to me so I could work on them. I’ve got hundreds of thousands of barnacles in my garage.”
Looking at the skiff more closely, we see that the upper part of the hull is ringed with a very well-defined boundary below which the Lepas are cheek-by-jowl (orange line in Fig. 2, below). Above that lies an intermediary zone, extending to the waterline (green line), where algae predominate. While some barnacles are visible, they are small and few in number. “They get a better shot at what they’re going to eat if they’re a little bit below that,” says Venn. “I don’t know if it’s too much UV or just they don’t like the temperature changes, or what.”
A Lepas line is also easily seen in the picture below (Figure 3), which shows meteorological research buoys before (“a”) and after (“b”) a 26-month deployment in the North Pacific. “The waterline is at the center (max diameter) of the buoy, where there is a seam in the hull,” says Jim Thomson, a scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who studies the buoys.3 “The barnacles appear to start about 10 cm below that line.”
Here’s another piece of tsunami debris, this one a refrigerator that made landfall in Hawaii in October, 2012, meaning that it was in the water for just over a year and a half. Both the Lepas line and the algae zone are clearly visible. The waterline, Venn says, would lie about where the green algae shades into black:
You may have noticed that while the hard part, called the capitulum, is of similar sizes in all these pictures, the fleshy, goose-neck part (called the peduncle) is dramatically smaller on the Hawaii debris. Like other fleshy appendages, peduncles can change in size fairly dramatically, especially when they’ve been pulled from the sea. “How long they are kind of depends on how long they’ve had to dry out,” says Venn. So when scientists talk about the growth rate of barnacles, they usually talk about the length of the capitulum.
How Composite Objects Float
According to reader Gavin Grimmer, The upper and lower surfaces of 777 flaperon are “made of honeycombed composite – presumably carbon fiber” while “the leading edge is mainly made from high tensile aluminum (2024-T3) apart from the fibreglass doubler.”4 As a general rule, things made of composite material exhibit excellent buoyancy. The honeycomb materials which makes up most of the volume of the composite skin weighs only about 5 percent as much as water.5 Composite aircraft parts, therefore, tend to float fairly high in the water, like this:
Mike Exner, one of the leading members of the Independent Group, conducted his own study of how the flaperon must have floated, building a model out of plastic poster board. After the interior compartment was flooded it settled into the water like this:
Another example of a composite floating object is this motor boat, which capsized in a storm off the northwestern coast of Australia and then was carried for eight months by waves and currents across the Indian Ocean to the island of Mayotte, near Madagascar — a very similar route that the MH370 presumably took on its journey from the 7th arc. Though the resolution is too low to discern the Lepas line from the algae zone, you can clearly see which part was above the water and which part was below:
Now let’s turn our attention to the 777 flaperon that washed up on a rocky beach on Reunion Island. More than two months later, the French authorities still haven’t released a report detailing what they’ve learned about the piece, which now resides at a facility near Toulouse. Fortunately journalists took photographs of the flaperon from every angle shortly after it was discovered so that just by gathering publicly available images from the web we can assess the whole surface.
As a general observation, we should note that the general shape of the flaperon is plank-like: rectangular when seen from above, with an airfoil cross section. In referring to the part, I will use the nomenclature shown in Fig. 8, below.
Note that the geometry of the piece is essentially planar, by which I mean that the faces do not bulge outwards. As a result, if one point on the edge of an end-cap is underwater, and the corresponding point on the edge of the far end-cap is under water, then the surface between them will be immersed, too. (You can get a sense of this “flatness” in Figures 10 and 14, below.)
To begin with, let’s look at the outboard end cap. Barnacles, either individual or in clumps, are circled in green. I have not necessarily circled all of them, but at least those necessary to show the range of distribution. (To see the full-resolution version of this and all subsequent images, click on the link in the caption.)
Given that the end-cap is rimmed in barnacles, it must have all floated below the waterline. One could argue that a small portion of the strip marked with the red line could emerge from the water, but to my eye it lies between the outer edges of the barnacle clusters marked “A” and “B,” which would not grow up out of the water.
Moving on to the leading edge, we see in Figure 10 (below) that there is a substantial accumulation of barnacles on the outboard end of it, as well as some growth on the inboard side. Though there is little or no growth between these areas, that portion must have been submerged by virtue of lying between those two submerged areas:
This view offers more detail of the inboard end of the leading edge. Growth is quite heavy, though only the tips of barnacle clusters extend outward beyond the plane of the leading edge:
It’s fairly self-evident that the top surface was immersed:
As well as the trailing edge, where the flaperon was evidently severed along the line of a transverse spar. Here we see the top edge, along with some of the bottom:
Here’s the rest of the bottom part of the trailing edge:
Now let’s look at the inboard end cap.
Onward to the object’s final face, the bottom surface. It does not exhibit the same degree of encrustation as we see on the top side. In Figure 16, below, we see the underside of the flaperon with the trailing edge at top. We’ve already noted the presence of barnacles on the bottom of the trailing edge and the bottom of the inboard end cap. We haven’t seen as much yet of the bottom of the outboard end cap, so I’ll focus on that area in this image:
Barnacle growth is much less profuse on the bottom than it is on the trailing edge, but there are enough individuals present on this portion to suggest that the entire bottom edge of the outboard end cap must have been submerged. So, therefore, must have the entire underside. Note that the numbers “1,” “2,” and “3” correspond to the clusters of barnacles marked likewise in Figure 9.
How did the Reunion flaperon float?
The contrast between the Reunion flaperon and other floating debris we’ve looked at is quiet stark. The piece that came off MH370 does not have a Lepas line. There is no significant area that could have protruded above the waterline. The entire surface resembles the deeply submerged areas seen on the other flotsam.
This fact evidently did not escape the French investigators who took custody of the piece. On August 21, the French news outlet La Depeche reported in August that “According to a Toulouse aeronautics expert who requested anonymity, the element of the wing would not have floated for several months at the water’s surface but would have drifted underwater a few meters deep.” Similarly, an article that ran in Le Monde on September 3, 2015, stated that “Les études de flottabilité du flaperon ont quant à elles confirmé que le débris flottait légèrement en dessous de la surface de la mer.”: “Studies of the flaperon’s flotation have… confirmed that the debris floated slightly below the surface of the ocean.”
This seems a reasonable assessment to Venn, based on the distribution of barnacles visible in photographs of the flaperon. “I think it was probably floating just barely subsurface,” she says.
This presents something of a paradox. “It is very hard to build something that will float slightly below the surface,” wrote David Griffin, an oceanographer with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), in an email. “The probability that an aircraft part does this is miniscule. The only way it can do this is if some of the object breaks the surface. If it does not break the surface AT ALL it must sink.”
One could just about imagine that, by sheer good luck, the flaperon might have wound up taking just enough water to give it an overall density almost exactly that of seawater, so that it floated with perhaps a minuscule portion above the water. But such a situation would not be stable. Objects floating with only very slightly positive buoyancy can be pushed below the surface by the action of large waves, says Sean Kery, a hydronamicist at CSC Defense Group who has extensive experience modeling the impact of waves on floating objects. If storm waves push down an object being held afloat by open air pockets, the increase in depth would cause those pockets to shrink, reducing their buoyancy and causing the object to sink further, a phenomenon well-known by recreational scuba divers, who must learn to keep inflating their BCDs as they descend. Of course, without an active compensation system like a BCD a flaperon that was neutrally buoyant at the surface would become negatively buoyant below it.
What’s more, even if an object did manage to float just barely touching the surface, it would eventually sink lower as marine life accumulated. “Things never stay statically neutral,” says oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer. “It’s a dynamic situation. It has to do with infiltration of water, it has to do with the weight of barnacles growing on it.”
Thus, the distribution of barnacles on the Reunion flaperon is difficult to understand. Because they are found all over its surface, the flaperon must have settled into the ocean with a buoyancy exactly identical to that of seawater. And somehow it remained there, floating in a stable manner. Yet this is close to physically impossible.
How could the flaperon have remained underwater?
Given the seeming impossibility of the flaperon floating free across the ocean while submerged, is there another way it might have arrived in its current barnacle-encrusted condition? Since the piece must have been completely underwater, it might have become colonized on the sea bottom. That explanation, however, is problematic. The 7th arc passes through an area of the southern Indian Ocean that is thousands of feet deep. In order to have become colonized by Lepas on the seabed, it would have had to have floated thousands of miles to shallower water, sunk, then refloated to the surface and almost immediately been washed ashore. Also, while Venn says that while she has collected specimens from as deep as 100 meters, “that was not on the bottom or anywhere close to the bottom. It was simply 100 meters below the surface where the ocean was probably more than 5000 meters deep. I have never heard of Lepas colonizing anything on the sea bottom.”
Another possibility is that the flaperon was positively bouyant but remained beneath the ocean surface because it was tethered to the seabed. As it happens, in the past researchers have successfully managed to raise Lepas on substrates anchored offshore. In Yoichi Yusa’s experiment noted above, he collected Lepas specimens growing on pieces of driftwood and floating plastic and attached them to tethers in a bay in Japan. There he monitored their progress as they grew over the next month and a half.
The view of the flaperon seen in Figure 17, below, might provide evidence of how the tethering was accomplished. On the inboard edge of the upper face one can observe a peculiar strip where the surface appears considerably less weathered than the surrounding area:
When this was first pointed out to me I figured it had to do with the missing piece of rubber gasket along the inboard edge of the top surface, which might have been knocked off by contact with a reef. But now that I look closer I see that it isn’t actually that. I’ve marked the “white area” on a photo of a new flaperon below (image reversed to make a left flaperon look like a right one):
It seems that something was clamped to the “lighter patch” that isn’t normally attached to a flaperon, and which was detached after the part spent some time in the ocean. Since it’s hard to imagine this happening without human agency, perhaps it was part of a tethering/untethering operation. Perhaps an anchor line was attached there.
Duration of immersion
Up until now, it has been assumed that the flaperon was deposited somewhere along the 7th arc soon when MH370 impacted the southern Indian Ocean on March 8, 2014. If it was actively tethered to the seabed, obviously, this timeline is no longer relevant. Instead, we can turn to the barnacles to provide some indication of the likely duration of the flaperon’s immersion.
“Assuming they have enough food, and the temperature is good, barnacles will follow a steady growth progression,” Venn says.
The clock starts running the moment the flaperon hits the water: So long as the water is warm enough, Lepas will begin to colonize an object almost immediately. (Yachtsman who make long oceanic passages report that after spending a few weeks heeled over on a single tack a section of hull that is normally high and dry can pick up a colony of Lepas; Venn says she has seen cyprids attach to material as ephemeral as floating paper bags.) While the precise growth rate depends on water temperature and food availability, a rough notion of these parameters is enough to yield a ball-park figure for how long immersion has continued. Earlier this year, Venn co-authored a paper in which she and her colleagues ascertained that a human body found floating off the cost of Italy must have been in the water at least 65 to 90 days, based on the size of the Lepas barnacles growing on its clothes.6
We can do something similar for the barnacles on the flaperon, using the Mayotte boat as a reference. Since both traveled through a similar stretch of the southern Indian Ocean, their growth rates should be in the same ball park.
By comparing features on the flaperon to reference objects of a known size (e.g., the rear door of a Gendarmerie Land Rover Defender in Figure 16) we can estimate the capitulum lengths of the largest barnicles on the flaperon. They turn out to be approximately 2.3 cm.
Applying the same technique to the Mayotte barnacles yields capitulum lengths of about 3.5 cm.
Yusa’s paper on Lepas growth rates states that “Individuals <5 mm long (mean ± SE = 3.09 ± 0.19 mm) grew rapidly, reaching 12.45 ± 0.54 mm on day 15 (Fig. 2). After that, their growth slowed and finally reached 16.26 ± 0.49 mm on day 42.”
The Lepas anserifera that Yusa studied are somewhat smaller than the Lepas anatifera that predominate on the flaperon, but if we use Yusa’s growth rate as a conservative lower bound, and suppose that the largest flaperon barnacles were 16.3 mm at day 42 and grew at 0.1 mm/day thereafter, that means it would take them another 67 days to reach 2.3 cm, for a total growth time of 109 days, or about four months.
If they proceeded to grow at 0.1 mm for the following four months, that would take them to 3.5 cm, which is what the Mayotte barnacles achieved.
Interestingly, when I asked Yusa via email how long it seemed to him that the colony had been growing on the Reunion Island flaperon, based on photographs I sent, Yusa answered: “I would guess that they had been there for a short time (between 2 weeks and a few months).”
Venn’s seat-of-the-pants estimate was “less than six months.”
Conclusion
Photographs of barnacles living on the MH370 flaperon discovered on Reunion Island, combined with expert insight into the lifecycle and habit preferences of the genus Lepas, suggest that the object did not float there from the plane’s presumed impact point, but spent approximately four months tethered below the surface.
UPDATE 10/10/15: Could the distribution of barnacles be explained by continual flipping?
Since I posted this piece yesterday evening, a number of people have suggested that perhaps the flaperon flipped over every few hours, allowing barnacles to survive on both sides. Such a scenario might also explain why the density of Lepas is rather low compared to that seen on other objects. It faces two difficulties, however.
First, the flaperon is broad and flat, and once its inner cavities were filled with water it would weigh thousands of pounds. With only a few inches of freeboard in even the most optimistic scenarios, it would be very resistant to being flipped — much more so than, say, the fridge, which nonetheless clearly floated in a stable manner. Even if it were fairly easy to invert, high waves and wind would be required to do so, which would mean that flaperon would have had to have spent a year or more in constant storm conditions. Yet tranquil conditions are actually more normal. “Calm seas are actually pretty common in the stable high pressure cells that more-or-less permanently inhabit the center of ocean basins,” says Hank Carson, who has traveled across the Pacific gathering floating debris. It’s hard to envisage anyhing flipping over a day like this.
Second, the reason that the Lepas line exists is that these animals don’t like to be exposed, even for a few seconds. They can survive close to the waterline, where they are risk being exposed and immersed with every wave cycle, but only a few small outliers attempt it. They are simply not adapted to frequent long-duration exposure, like their relatives who live attached to rocks in the intertidal zone. “I do not think they can survive more than one day above the water,” Yoichi Yusa told me, while Venn says she has seen them live as long as three days. Apart from the physiological stress of being exposed to what to them is a toxic environment, the animals would spend half their time unable to feed. So even if we imagine the essentially impossible scenario in which the flaperon keeps flipping back and forth every few hours, we would not expect to see dense aggregations of mature individuals.
The implications of low settlement density
While we can learn a lot about how long an object has been afloat by the length of Lepas capitula, it’s harder to draw conclusions based on the density with which they settle. Barnacles do not land randomly, like plant seeds, but actively sniff out an object’s surface in the cyprid stage before settling down in the spot they like best. While they prefer living in the shade, they even more prefer cracks and crevices, and dislike a smooth surface. You can see several places on the top of the flaperon where they’ve preferentially settled down into dings and divots. Most of the broad expanse of the upper and lower surfaces they have avoided, most likely because it’s just too smooth and exposed. They especially seem to like the exposed broken honeycomb on the trailing edge, which presumably offers a nice rough surface for holding fast to. Here they are living in quite high density, with some actually growing on top of one another:
By way of comparison, here’s a shot of the barnacles on the Mayotte motorboat. Their distribution is much more uniform on every surface — here Lepas seem to like everything equally well:
Therefore, I wouldn’t necessarily say that Lepas density on the flaperon is low, but rather that the suitability of the substrate is very heterogeneous.
@Dennis, @Bruce, let’s not revive this one.
@Susie ya, conspiracy theories are crap; best is to kill ’em all
meanwhile
http://english.cntv.cn/2015/10/15/VIDE1444890246228521.shtml
@DennisW: I will email you a list of what I believe are the shortcomings in the CI scenario. There won’t be anything on the list you haven’t seen before.
Thx Victor. That would be great.
I am old and forgetful.
Sajid – you weren’t alone in the case of the reaper debris. I was thinking that ordinarily if you had such an occurrence you would be tempted to conclude there was some illegal disposal of trashed parts occurring with some contractor.
Just a question – the first 777 serial numbers found in the flaperon were splashed across the media(657BB), but the numbers that identify the flaperon conclusively are not?
@DennisW
please forward when you get it (hope Victor has nothing against)
@Bruce
Jeff is right there but Dennis (as well as me) doesn’t claim the plane went there, just that it was the goal of the flight (at least at some point) and the plane crashed east of the island for mysterious reasons.
sorry Jeff just had to point this out
I just had a crazy thought (unrelated to the flaperon). If MH370 was taken by Russia (or China) as part of their hybrid warfare program (which is mentioned in Jeff’s book, from memory) then MH370 might not be an isolated incident, but instead, be part of a growing trend of accidents which are not really accidents, but covert attacks.
If so, this trend might be noticeable in Google statistics i.e. noticeable in the hit count returned when searching Google, Google News, Google Trends, etc.
To crunch the data would require a different type of Independent Group i.e. one that would (a) speculate about what types of “accidents” might be part of hybrid warfare and then (b) interpret/plot the search results from Google to see if there’s a growing trend.
As I understand it, from reading about China’s hybrid/unrestricted warfare, it can include any type of attack whatsoever i.e. from obvious attacks (like the dozen times fibre cables have been severed in California), to all manner of things like: minor aircraft malfunctions, burst water mains, sinkholes, chemical spills, fires, explosions, pest infestations, disease outbreaks, lakes running dry overnight, boats capsizing, missing yachts, train derailments, terrorism which doesn’t fit the usual suspects (Bangkok), dead fish washing ashore, etc. The list is endless.
And maybe even high-tech attacks like weather warfare, seismic warfare, assuming spooky technologies like these have arrived on the scene. The list of possible covert attacks that can be disguised as accidents is endless.
Presumably we would see a growing trend of such “accidents” in countries that Russia/China are in opposition to, but no trend in countries that are allied with Russia/China.
The “search area”, so to speak, is enormous. But at least the answer isn’t at the bottom of the ocean, it might be within reach.
It still wouldn’t prove anything about MH370, but if there is a growing trend of accidents, it does make the hybrid warfare theory more plausible.
@Michael R – Good idea. Why don’t you do, say, a five year study and then let us know what you have found. Better still, ten years might be more statistically valid.
@Michael
Actually you’re theory is not too far off the mark. BUT, a better description for it would be ASYMMETRIC WARFARE. China & Russia cannot fight head-to-head battles with the U.S. for obvious reasons. However by using cyber-warfare, human resources can be deployed for probing weaknesses and inflicting maximum damage to infrastructures, both military and industrial.
In the case of MH370, it would be considered a demonstration of capabilities, because it was deliberately diverted using technical means, and visibly flown over Malaysia. It also achieved the tactical objective of distraction of the public, which in turn relieved pressure on the U.S. & other gov’ts from having to act in the Ukraine crisis.
Yesterdays B-day…
“In America the President reigns for four years, and journalism governs for ever and ever.”
– Oscar Wilde (applicable worldwide)
In what could be a very interesting development, Richard Cole is reporting on Twitter that Fugro Supporter (now not officially part of the search) is working close to the presumed path of MH370 north of Banda Aceh, Aceh Province, North Sumatra. The ship suspiciously followed close to airway N571 until waypoint MEKAR.
Hopefully, Richard will keep us posted.
https://twitter.com/richard_e_cole/status/655355647924510720
@Victor, Curioser and curioser! If they find paragliding harnesses I’m going to buy you a case of whatever you want…
@jeffwise: I can think of many possibilities beyond paragliding. I wonder:
1. Is Fugro Supporter’s current effort related to MH370?
2. If related to MH370, for what is it searching?
3. Why does somebody believe it is there?
4. Who is funding the search?
@Victor
I scanned Fugro’s news releases as well as offshore energy.com and seaworldnews.com for any new contracts in that region. Nothing mentioned at all.
It is either an extension of an existing contract (i.e. MH370 search) or some sole source award that had a non-disclosure requirement. Furgro is publicly traded, and except for non-disclosure clauses would be required to announce new contract awards.
@Victor, re: Supporter: thanks. Agree: intriguing.
I hadn’t bothered mentioning Mike Chillit’s tweets about Supporter having turned off its AIS feed while off the coast of Vietnam on August 26. He didn’t seem to follow up, so I’d assumed it was either an honest mistake he’d made, or a rational explanation surfaced. But in light of Richard’s observation today, I’m thinking possessors of AIS feeds should mine the back trails of as many “MH370 alumni” as they can.
@DennisW: Thank you for looking for new contracts for Fugro. We should be able to figure out what Supporter is doing and if it is related to MH370.
@Brock McEwen: The “MH370 alumni” that I can name related to subsea survey and search efforts are Fugro Discovery, Equator, and Supporter, and GO Phoenix. Are there others?
Maybe it has something to do with the SOMS-Project ?
“Hydrographic Survey of Malacca Strait Underway”
started on 06-10-15……
“A hydrographic survey of the Straits of Malacca and Singapore (SOMS) has been launched this week by the three littoral States – Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore – and the Malacca Straits Council of Japan.
This initiative was one of the key recommendations that arose from a study conducted by OMC International – a maritime engineering consultant – commissioned by the littoral States of the SOMS in 2013 on real-time monitoring of under keel clearance in the SOMS.
The data from the survey will be used to produce large-scale Electronic Navigational Charts (ENCs) covering five areas in the Straits critical to navigation. This will complement existing ENCs of the SOMS and will provide the shipping industry and authorities with high resolution bathymetry information relating to the depth of waters.”
http://www.maritime-executive.com/article/hydrographic-survey-of-malacca-strait-underway
@LouVilla: The article you cite refers to the survey of five specific areas in the Malacca Strait. On the other hand, Fugro Supporter’s activities seem to be north of Sumatra in the Andaman Sea. It is also strange that despite working an area with significant traffic, we have not been able to identify a Notice to Mariners. Are there reasons that this work is meant to be low-profile?
@Victorl
I agree, it makes not much sense at all to be related with SOMS.
My first thought was the FUGRO Supporter might be looking for a drone, especially some type of an i.e. ADM-160B missile decoy who might simulated an Airliner on 8th march 14.
Specs of an ADM 160-B :
Length : 2.84 m (9 ft 7 in)
Wingspan : 1.71 m (5 ft 7 in) fully extended
Weight : 115 kg (250 lb)
Speed : Mach 0.91
Ceiling : Over 12,200 m (40,000 ft)
Range : Approximately 920 km (575 mi) with ability to loiter over target
Endurance : Over 45 min at altitude
Propulsion : Hamilton Sundstrand TJ-150 turbojet
I think the Chinese or Russia had something similar in their arsenal.
Some conspiracy theory i know but the Radardata is still questionable. Is Malaysia thinking it was a drone and FUGRO Supporter is currently looking for drone who was running out of fuel past MEKAR ?
Victor,
If I were an investigator, I would definitely spent some effort two scan the two areas: IGARI and 18:22. These are small and shallow compared to the 7th arc, but if any debris is found there, its analysis would provide new clues.
Dennis, StevanG,
Re shortcomings of CI hypothesis…
It appears both of you already forgot the batch of gaps. I will remind that you needed to add external helper(s) in the cabin, negotiations with the Malaysian government, accident by inexperienced pilot at the very end, and “small” geographical error of 200 km. On top of it you were unable to explain some technical issues, a number of coincidences, not talking about ridiculous motive. Summarizing, if we take your explanation as a background hypothesis, CI can be ruled out.
Another possibility……
FUGRO Supporter is working with underwater cables ?
Please zoom in to view the SUBM CABLE on the map…..
http://webapp.navionics.com/#@8&key={ouf%40y|vtQ
FUGRO Supporter Info :
“Fitted with state-of-the-art geophysical and geotechnical equipment, this full-ocean depth vessel specializes in cable route surveys and is a versatile platform capable of deploying work class ROVs, AUVs, and both 2-D and 3-D High Resolution seismic spreads.”
Victor,
Re: “I have yet to see a theory that does not have major holes”.
Failed hijacking involving accidentally locked cockpit door does not have major holes… Does it?
Another site….
http://www.submarinecablemap.com/#/submarine-cable/safe
I think this might be the explanation. FUGRO Supporter is working on underwater cables.
@Oleksandr
I do not know what you mean by your statement below.
“Summarizing, if we take your explanation as a background hypothesis, CI can be ruled out.”
What do you mean by a background hypothesis?
@Oleksandr
It’s the only reachable airport after turning SE around Indonesia. If you assume the turn was intentional (as it most likely was) then it’s logical to assume the CI was the goal of the flight.
“I will remind that you needed to add external helper(s) in the cabin,”
why? maybe if he had them he would actually succeed
“negotiations with the Malaysian government”
unnecessary, also why would he turn off the transponder if he wanted to negotiate, they would throw a look on primary radar and find immediately where he was anyway
“accident by inexperienced pilot at the very end”
something happened after 18:25 that disturbed the plan, being it technical glitch after E/E bay excursion or who knows what, my bet would be on conflict in the cockpit
““small” geographical error of 200 km”
distance is irrelevant here
” ridiculous motive”
nah it’s actually the most plausible motive of all I’ve heard of in this case
@StevanG
No need to be defensive. The facts speak for themselves if you are listening.
Relative to the SIO current search area:
1> No plausible motive/causality has ever been put forth.
2> No surface debris attributable to MH370 has been found.
3> Underwater search has come up empty.
4> Drift models suggest flaperon originated far to the North.
Oleksandr is living in a dream world with a spreadsheet under his pillow.
Some terminus to the North of the current search area is becoming the default hypothesis. For sure the 7th arc is where the aircraft is located. Where is the question.
The Fugro Supporter activity cannot be related to MH370. It makes about as much sense as the Maldives or Bay of Bengal – no sense at all.
@LouVilla: Your new explanation for the activities of Fugro Supporter is plausible.
@Oleksandr: I can’t comment on your scenario without a much more detailed description.
@Victor
Start by asking why anyone would hijack the plane to the SIO. Duh?
Dennis,
What I meant is that you scenario “as is” is close to nonsense, with many gaps and inconsistencies. However, given that CI is one of a few possible landing spots in the SIO (w.r.t. the equator), it still could be an originally intended destination.
Now I will apply your points to CI. Relative to the CI search area:
1> No plausible motive/causality has ever been put forth. Political statement from CI is absurd. Only Australians hypnotized by local propaganda can think that life in CI prison is better than life in Malaysia.
2> No surface debris attributable to MH370 has been found.
3> Drift models do not suggest the flaperon originated from the CI area.
1> People have done many weird things because of higher cause, this would be nothing unusual.
hell, you have hundreds dying daily in war because of different interpretation of a sky pixie
2> true, but the difference is there was no search at all in that area while current search area has been thoroughly searched, even underwater
3> not true, majority of drift models(actually all not including external factors or conditions)suggest area off NW australian coast
StevanG,
Re: “It’s the only reachable airport after turning SE around Indonesia.”
Absolutely no. I noticed you have a problem with geography. First you thought that Somalia is off the range, now you state that CI is the only airport. What about Jakarta or Bali?
Btw, where did you get it that there was a SE turn around Indonesia? Even BFO data are not conclusive with regard to it. In addition, in your post October 9, 2015 at 2:43 PM, you wrote:
“…but there is a BFO error margin that could send plane literally 45 degrees off supposed direction at any of the pings, especially if we include possible altitude variations it’s simply not reliable, not anywhere close to BTO at least”.
If you think BFO is not reliable, then I have no idea what is a basis for your statement.
——
Re: “If you assume the turn was intentional (as it most likely was) then it’s logical to assume the CI was the goal of the flight.”
I have a permanent problem with your logic. Firstly nobody knows if the turn was intentional or not. Secondly, even if it was intentional, there could be a plenty of other destinations: Maldives, DG, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc.
——
Re: ““I will remind that you needed to add external helper(s) in the cabin,”
why? maybe if he had them he would actually succeed
”
Either you or Dennis suggested for explaining certain things. Not me. I’m leaving this between you and him. When you come up with a solid hypothesis, it will be my pleasure to discuss it.
——
Re: ““negotiations with the Malaysian government”
unnecessary, also why would he turn off the transponder if he wanted to negotiate, they would throw a look on primary radar and find immediately where he was anyway
Ask Dennis. He suggested for explaining certain things. Not me.
——
Re: “accident by inexperienced pilot at the very end”
something happened after 18:25 that disturbed the plan, being it technical glitch after E/E bay excursion or who knows what, my bet would be on conflict in the cockpit
So, now you need conflict in the cockpit to explain… ditching? gliding? Next step you will need UFO to explain lack of debris. And why 18:25? By 18:25 the aircraft was heading NW, not SE. It seems, you also have a problem with timing.
——
Re: ““small” geographical error of 200 km”
distance is irrelevant here
Really? CI is relevant, but distance is not. That is interesting.
——
Re: “” ridiculous motive”
nah it’s actually the most plausible motive of all I’ve heard of in this case”
Well, as they say, every frog likes its swamp… everybody can see different values in different motives. I think the motive suggested by Dennis is close to absurd. Apparently you don’t. I think hijacking of the aircraft itself or some of its cargo would be a way more plausible. Apparently you don’t.
StevanG,
“majority of drift models(actually all not including external factors or conditions)suggest area off NW australian coast”.
Really?
Victor,
The hypothesis was actually suggested by Gysbreght. So far I did not find major holes in it, though my “favorite domain” is a technical failure.
In brief: SDU was off to stop ACARS and Data-3 messages. By 18:22 hijackers murdered all the passengers and crew. Then they restarted SDU as they needed SATCOM. As the mission was nearly accomplished, the person(s) in charge of the cockpit set constant AP heading to escape into the IO between Nicobar and Indonesia, then went out to the lavatory or grab some drinks, and locked door by mistake. Lack of concentration can be explained by a psychological shock, or tiredness, or perhaps just relaxation as the most difficult part was completed. Then hijackers simply were unable to return back while the aircraft continued in constant AP mode to the middle of nowhere. The terminal point would be between IG’s and Bobby’s (I would say closer to Bobby’s). They could send a SOS message from the cabin, but it didn’t make any sense because even if they were saved, they would be charged with mass murder, for which Malaysia imposes mandatory death penalty.
If you see any major drawback of this hypothesis, let me know. Then I can return to the question whether B777 has fuel dumping system or not…
Dennis,
You are always confusing “hijacking” and “failed hijacking”. That is why you still suffer from asking yourself and others the same question as one year ago: “why anyone would hijack the plane to the SIO?”
“Absolutely no. I noticed you have a problem with geography. First you thought that Somalia is off the range, now you state that CI is the only airport. What about Jakarta or Bali?”
the only reachable airport that is not in Indonesia when they made the turn around Sumatra, if they wanted to land in Indonesia they wouldn’t get around to evade their airspace
Somalia is to the west not to the east, they turned to the east
Cocos Island is also reachable but CI makes lot more sense
“Btw, where did you get it that there was a SE turn around Indonesia? ”
I was contemplating about full south heading after FMT(some strange way of suicide etc. all in all Boby Ulich theory that suggested going to the SW of current search area) before discovery of the flaperon and drift analysis that shows it’s improbable
99% of reachable southern 7th arc shows SE turn anyway
“I have a permanent problem with your logic. Firstly nobody knows if the turn was intentional or not. Secondly, even if it was intentional, there could be a plenty of other destinations: Maldives, DG, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc.”
you didn’t get me, I’m talking about intentional turn after FMT not before, if the turn around Indonesia towards SE was intentional then it means CI was the only possible destination excluding Indonesia for aforementioned reasons (OK maybe NW of australian mainland but I’m not sure if it was reachable and there was no reason to risk flying so long if he could land on CI which is also australian territory)
“Either you or Dennis suggested for explaining certain things. Not me. I’m leaving this between you and him. When you come up with a solid hypothesis, it will be my pleasure to discuss it.”
I’m not sure, maybe I have mentioned it maybe not but I have never stated he had to have helper.
What happened between 18:28 and 7th arc is a mystery, my bet is there was a conflict on board/in cockpit but I’m not putting my house on it.
“So, now you need conflict in the cockpit to explain… ditching? gliding? Next step you will need UFO to explain lack of debris. And why 18:25? By 18:25 the aircraft was heading NW, not SE. It seems, you also have a problem with timing.”
Yes something most probably happened. I know it was heading NW but someone has entered E/E bay at that point and things started to complicate.
“Really? CI is relevant, but distance is not. That is interesting.”
we don’t know if nav was in fully working order at that time, maybe someone managed to turn it off from E/E bay to distract the pilot and persuade him to open the cockpit
same is valid for comms, if someone managed to turn those off too then it would explain lack of same
” I think hijacking of the aircraft itself or some of its cargo would be a way more plausible. Apparently you don’t.”
but why would they go SE after getting around Indo? Nowhere to land at except these two islands. What would they do there with aircraft or cargo?
If you assume that turn was mistake and not intentional then yes I’d agree Somalia might be the (barely reachable) goal.
“Really?”
Yes, really.
“If you see any major drawback of this hypothesis, let me know.”
the plane would violently crash and leave lot of debris yet none has been found after lot of search including underwater
furthermore I refuse to believe those hijackers would leave the cockpit empty without supervision, they could go to the lavatory one by one
StevanG
Re: “the plane would violently crash and leave lot of debris yet none has been found after lot of search including underwater”.
You continue surprising me. One piece was found on the beach of Reunion Island.
Also, note: it is very uncertain how it crashed; there were gaps in the air search; the area is huge (only to recall the 7th arc may deviate from the nominal 7th arc by +-20 km, not talking about other aspects).
Re: “I refuse to believe those hijackers would leave the cockpit empty without supervision”.
You are too naive to believe that modern pirates strictly follow protocols and rules, and do not drink whisky or vodka instead of rum.
I’m talking about pieces found in the search area itself not 2000 miles from it. It has been searched for debris and the probability is extremely low that not a single piece would be found among hundreds of them.
I’m fairly sure pirates skilled enough to turn off all comms would never leave the cockpit alone during the flight.
Getting locked out of places is very human, one could even say it’s a trait.
@Oleksandr your determination to stick with kept this place focused multiple times, it is your forte and we need it here
@all We could all adopt a bit of Brock McEwen integrity when commenting. He doesn’t stoop to unproductive criticism, he avoids cheap condescension and sarcasm while keeping his passion clear
Righteousness is no longer prolific, jeopardized by new breeds of superficial thought and action making the court of public opinion far more fickle and impatient
Annex-13 by bureaucratic nature, eventually morphs into protection of the industry, not the designated public. Disclosing minimum information in a maximum period of time is an effective deterrent for common interest and whether intentional or not that has certainly been the modus operandi of MH370.
Those committed to continually search for answers have earned a platform without ridicule. It is imperative that we honor each other for the common goal of what happened to MH370 and not discourage others to do the same.
Finally…. “Conspiracy Theory” has been so abused it has lost all validity. Once reserved for only the far-fetched it’s now applied in such an inconsistent brazen manner it is no longer applicable and needs to be retired
You are all amazing, and your dedication is a story within itself
@Oleksandr
You state:
“You are always confusing “hijacking” and “failed hijacking”. That is why you still suffer from asking yourself and others the same question as one year ago: “why anyone would hijack the plane to the SIO?””
I am not confused. My question is why would someone hijack the plane at all? What do you think was in the cargo to warrant that? Or was it someone on board?
You might check the published lists of aircraft hijackings. I cannot find a single one since 1970 (I did not go back further than that) that was done for anything or anyone on board the aircraft.
If you are going to postulate a failed hijacking you need to come up with a reason. You might as well say the plane was taken by aliens. A hijacking is not scenario. It is a description of a broad class of scenarios.
If you would be specific and logical it would be helpful. As it is your argument borders on a rant.
@Oleksandr. stick with “facts”
“Why would someone hijack the plane at all?”
We have the official load list. If something of interest to hijackers was in the hold or on the aircraft, it must not necessarily show up on the load list. A package with documents does not state what kind of information could be found in these documents. Part of the mangostene load could contain something of interest to third parties.
We have the official passenger list with three of them known travelling on false identity. We have backgroundchecks on others. That does not garantee that they were all true identities.
To say that there was nothing or nobody on the aircraft worth a hijacking implies the statement that everything we know about the load and the passengers is true and nothing is hidden behind screens. But actually we know only what we have been told.
If we apply the same strict rules for other scenarios and motives, those would be void too.
That is the reason that I suggested to step back from the motive driven search, it leads nowhere at the moment.
@RetiredF4
While what you say is true, hijacking makes no sense in general for obtaining cargo items or passengers. That is why a hijacking for that purpose has not been done in the last 40 years of commercial aviation, if ever. It is much easier to obtain those items (or person) on the ground before or after the flight.
It is possible that hijackers might think that obtaining whatever it was they might have been going after would be “disguised” by a missing aircraft scenario. If the cargo was that valuable (i.e. a nuclear weapon), I doubt the owners would be fooled by that.
With respect to motive leading nowhere at the moment, I agree. But you could say that about everything else as well.
@all
arent all world leaders together showing us slowly that path from total confrontation to total cooperation is something that just works?? ya, comments section is full of hate there, but everybody can try to shift oppinion of at least one guy on the other side 🙂
https://www.rt.com/news/319049-kerry-russia-syria-talks/
@Dennis, you said
It is possible the hijackers might think that obtaining whatever it was they might have been going after would be “disguised” by a missing aircraft scenario.
Let me rephrase your statement a bit and then post my comment:
It is possible the hijackers might think that whatever goal the hijacking served would be “disguised” by a missing aircraft scenario and would thus prevent the evidence from detection, the identity of the hijackers or their masters from detection and avoid any placement of suspicion to possible suspects.
If that was the case, then they had been successful until now despite the BFO and BTO data and the detection of a flaperon on Reunion island.
To add your example with the nuclear device, no official nuclear state would go public with a lost nuclear device, and an unofficial one wouldn’t either.
all nuclear capable countries have military transport planes
also private flights are so cheap these days noone would risk putting valuable stuff on an airliner, they could just hire some Gulfstream and transport whatever they wanted, that’s how drugs are smuggled in central/south america
I would generally replace “valuable” with “item or person of special interest”. It may even be the combination of both.
Travel on a scheduled flight might be less suspicious than chartering or buying a private jet, which is asociated with aditional risk of outside knowledge and aditional traces like the contract, flight weather, flight planning, refueling arrangements, hangar or apron space rental, insurance, crew hiring and other things Not mentioned yet.
The drug trafficking in central and south america works only because it is mostly tolerated by state agencies, executed from and to small / remote airfields and backed by a mighty criminal organisation with long expierience. I do not believe that this system is transferable as a working option throughout the world and for all possible hijack reasons.
But sure you have a point.
And our discussion is again a pointer where the motive driven discussion leads us, into the nowhere.