With every passing day, the odds go down that searchers will find the wreckage of MH370 on the Indian Ocean seabed. (Indeed, many independent researchers suspect that the game is essentially over.) If nothing comes up before the search’s scheduled wrap date this June, then the entire case will hang on a single piece of physical evidence: the flaperon that washed up in Reunion Island last July and is now being held by French judicial authorities at a facility near Toulouse, France.
The good news is that the flaperon could provide a wealth of information. I’ve seen photographs of the serial numbers located inside the plane, and I’m convinced that, despite my previously expressed reservations, they do indeed prove that the piece came from MH370. And experts have told me that the sea life found growing on it offers a number of different clues about the airplane’s fate.
The bad news is that the French authorities have apparently made little effort to follow up.
As I’ve described earlier, the predominant form of life growing on the flaperon is an accumulation of goose barnacles of the genus Lepas. In all the world, the number of marine biologists who study these animals is tiny; those who have carried out peer-reviewed research specifically on animals of the genus Lepas could fit in an elevator. Each has contributed something unique to the field; each has a unique body of experience with which to inform the investigation of this important Lepas population. Yet the French authorities have reached out to none of them. (I have been informed that they have contacted two French marine biologists, one of whom is unknown to me and the other of which is an expert in crustaceans of the southern ocean; Lepas belong within this much broader category of animal.)
That’s a shame, because only by tapping the world’s leading experts in this little-understood species can we hope to wrest the most information from this solitary piece of evicence. Here’s what we could learn:
- Hans-Georg Herbig and Philipp Schiffer in Germany of the University of Cologne have carried out genetic analysis of the world’s Lepas species to understand their geographic distribution. By examining the animals on the flaperon up close they could determine the mix of species growing on it, they could derive a sense of were the flaperon has drifted. The image above shows Dr. Schiffer’s best guess of the identities of some barnacles in one small section, based on photographic imagery alone.
- Knowing the species of the barnacles, and measuring their exact size, would allow scientists to gauge their age, and hence the amount of time that the flaperon has been in the water. Such an analysis has been performed forensically before: Cynthia Venn, a professor of environmental science at Bloomsburg University, helped Italian researchers identify the how long a corpse had been floating in the Adriatic Sea, as described in their paper “Evaluation of the floating time of a corpse found in a marine environment using the barnacle Lepas anatifera.”
- By measuring the ratio of oxygen isotopes in the animals’ shells, scientists could determine the temperature of the water through which they traveled as they grew. “All one needs in an appropriate shell, a fine dental bit in a handheld Dermel drill, a calculator and access to a mass spectrometer,” says legendary marine biologist Bill Newman, who helped pioneer the technique at the Scripps Instition of Oceanography in La Jolla. In the past, this technique has been used to track the passage of barnacle-encrusted sea turtles and whales. But again, it would require access to the flaperon barnacles.
Why haven’t the authorities been more proactive in seeking help from the world’s small band of Lepas experts? One possible answer is that they’re befuddled. As I’ve described earlier, photographic analysis of the barnacles’ size seems to suggest that they are only about four to six months old. This is hard to reconcile with a presumed crash date 16 months before the flaperon’s discovery. Something weird might be going on—which would not be that surprising, given that the case of MH370 has been tinged with weirdness from day one.
After nearly two years of frustration, the key to the entire mystery may well lie in this single two-meter long wing fragment. But if the authorities don’t examine it—and publish their findings—we’ll never know.
PS: In my aforementioned piece about the barnacle distribution on the Reunion flaperon, I argued that the piece must have been completely submerged for months—an impossibility without human intervention. However, it’s been pointed out to me that barnacles sometimes grow on surfaces that are only intermittently awash. A very vivid example of this is a section of SpaceX rocket that was found floating off the coast of Great Britain last November. The piece (pictured below) had spent 14 months floating across the Atlantic with its top surface apparently above the waterline, yet sufficiently awash to support a healthy population of Lepas.
While this suggests that the Reunion flaperon could have accumulated its load of Lepas while floating free, it also provides another example of how thickly covered by large barnacles a piece can be after more than a year in the ocean.
@Dennis: thanks. Which Richard? Which spreadsheet, tab(s), row(s), & col(s)?
Even better: what is the value I seek, in nmi?
Sorry to trouble – hoping for expert assistance, to minimize error, confusion, and time wasted.
@Warren
I agree on your bottom line, that any math solution as to the whereabouts of MH370 should include the important two initial phases of the flight, first the normal part until the turn around and loss of secondary radar contact, and the second part up to the disapearance from primary radar and the assumed turn to the south.
You wrote:
“Therefore, the null hypothsis should be IMHO that the observed behaviors would continue throughout the flight. So after the turn south, waypoints to the south would have been selected.”
How do you explain then, why the flight was initially diverted to the northwest, when the final destination is assumed to be a water grave in the south? Such a fate could have been found in other parts and with other routings too.
There must have been either some motivation to fly exactly that routing first to the northeast and then to the south, or something unplanned happened prior to the turn south and the flight from there was the autopilot zombie flight which is on the table at the moment.
Simple said, the initial flight northwest would not point to the endpoint in the south, so applying your theory MH370 could be expected to fly to the west or to the north. And if it flew south, which the BFO and BTO math points out, your theory concerning its flightpath and its final minutes is on weak legs.
It turns out that there is a corridor consisting of waypoints POVUS ISBIX MUTMI RUNUT that is fully consistent with the ping rings for a plane at cruising speed. All four are aligned on a course of about 189 true.
@Oleksandr
“Re : That is a very interesting thought. Yes if the aircon was down: no energy is spent for pressuring and heating.”
We are talking every day about an zombie flight after the FMT. The most plausible assumption for me is that the aircraft was depressurized for over 5 hours.
What other assumption makes sense when we talk about an zombie flight – The leading assumption by the ATSB ?
So, the main question is : How much fuel can i save per hour when i depressurized an B777-200ER at FL350 ?
Very important to know, or not ?
@Brock – About 3500 nm.
You asked for the range based on the ACARS readings at 17:06 of 43,800 kg fuel, altitude 35,004 and speed of M .821. There are no readily available tables for these exact values but page PI.21.5 of the FCOM has the following range from a “checkpoint:” Using a gross weight of 220,000 kg at the checkpoint at an LRC speed of M0.84 a range of 3600 nm is listed for 42,400 kg fuel and a duration of 7h 60 min (or 8 h) at a pressure altitude of 35,000 ft. Since the 220,000 kg weight (FI Table 1.9A says 480,600 kg but it that should be 480,600 lb equal to 217,860 kg which is close to 220,000 kg in the table) is 20,000 kg above the nominal 200,000 kg checkpoint weight you need to add somewhere between 2,400 and 3,100 kg of fuel to carry the extra weight. Since 43,800 is only 1,400 above the 42,400 kg value in the table, the range would be a little less than the nominal 3600 nm. Also, a net headwind reduces the land range by about 16 nm.
Now, one problem with this range from a checkpoint is assumes a normal descent (.84/310/250) of 124 nm over 23 minutes with both engines running. The second problem is the final weight of 174,400 kg is low enough that the LRC speed would have started to be reduced between the 5th and 6th Arcs. The critical challenge for MH370 is modeling the path after the speed reduction for the lower GW and further reduction after the flameout of the right engine.
@Brock
I was referring the Richard Godfrey’s latest spreadsheet. I thought he had fuel burn numbers in there, but going back and looking it turns out I was wrong (for about the 7th time this year).
Sorry about that. Someone else will have to chime in. I have not spent any time looking at what you need.
@RetiredF4
Excellent points, IMO. My own belief is that Shah fully intended to land the aircraft somewhere (not Beijing). You have heard my story before, so I won’t repeat it. I think he was just milling around stalling for time until events in Malaysia played out. Banda Aceh was probably at or near the top of his list of preferred choices.
@Jeff
You said
“@Warren, I agree with you strongly. If the plane did go into the SIO, I think piloted scenarios are more plausible at this stage than unpiloted, and I think that a glide far beyond the 7th arc, in the region of the current search, is the most plausible outcome.”
No doubt. Just consider the numbers. In 2014 there was one hull loss per 4 million flights globally. Of all hull losses 4 out of 5 were due to pilot error. That leaves 1 in 5 to other causes. Together that means only 1 hull loss per 20 million flights was due to aircraft failure of any kind. Couple that with the fact that the plane flew until fuel exhaustion and exhibited a piloted flight path before the FMT, and you are looking at a ridiculously small probability that an aircraft failure or cargo fire occurred.
People suggesting a zombie flight scenario are bucking horrendous odds.
However, I do not think MH370 was flown into the SIO current search area or beyond it as you do.
@Jeff
…more
Of course, the purists out there (and we all know who they are) would say that the hull loss is a prior given, and you cannot count the 1 in 4 million factor.
I am OK with that. The 1 in 5 coupled with piloted behavior, loss of coms, and flight until fuel exhaustion is still very small number.
@DennisW
“Banda Aceh was probably at or near the top of his list of preferred choices.”
As a proven democracy warshipper I’m quite sure australian territory was his primary goal, indonesian airports along the way might have been considered an option if the plan doesn’t go well.
*worshipper, damn
@Victor
you said,
“Duncan was trying to maintain some semblance of order lest the crazies take over the site.”
So now it finally comes out, I was being profiled as a “crazy” in addition to Jeff characterizing my theory as “nonsense”. I can’t even publish what my SO has to say.
As it any wonder I spend most of my days talking to myself?
@DennisW, And in 2015 there were NO commercial jet aircraft fatalities due to accident or pilot error–only suicide (Germanwings) and homicide (Metrojet). Add in the constraint that you’d have to have massive parallel system failures (without simultaneous failure of other key systems needed to keep the plane flying at LRC) all within six seconds of passing the last waypoint in Malaysian airspace… the odds start to get pretty astronomical.
BTW, just because a thing is physically possible doesn’t mean it can actually happen. There’s no physical reason why I can’t pick up an unfamiliar combination lock, twirl the dial this way and that, and make it unlock. But as a practical matter, it’s not going to happen.
@DennisW: You made me laugh even if it was not intended.
I did not mean to imply that anybody censored was crazy in Duncan’s mind. I simply meant to say that he felt he had to apply restraint and it is often difficult to draw that subjective line between productive and non-productive posts. But I am not here to explain Duncan’s actions because he can do that for himself if he chooses. I have enough trouble explaining my own actions.
@Victor
Laughter and self-deprecation was intended. At the end of the day we are all engaged in this endeavor because we want to be, and we feel it is important. I’ve never actually felt anything resembling disrespect here or on Duncan’s blog. That is saying a lot relative to most other places out there.
That flaperon was floating above the wreckage the day of the crash, so has anyone looked for it in old satellite images of the Southern ocean? Are there any old satellite images of that part of the ocean?
I hope that Duncan follows up with complete routes, especially for the magnetic heading ones, since these would result in the most radical revision of the search area. I’ve spent some time eyeballing the table in his most recent post and the numbers don’t seem to add up.
Now the search moves even further south.
How will that ever fit with the flaperon evidence?
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/mh370-june-cutoff-as-searchers-alter-target-area/news-story/2156670a156c648c81f459b4d3c4237e
@Warren
I think that was your work back in 2014 which also included northern path possibilities.
https://mcleodsean.wordpress.com/2014/04/25/mh-370-forward-tracking/
Does that work of yours still still hold some value or has something changed since then?
@Jeff: re: “vivid example” of barnacle growth above water lines: are you certain of your water line on the rocket fragment? Could the photo have been taken while the object was beached? The photos taken after the barnacles have fallen off do not, to my eye, reveal a distinct water line. Did I miss a key photo, somewhere?
@Brock, The idea is that when an object is floating so that its top is nearly flush with the surface, and hence frequently awash, there will be no distinct waterline. I wouldn’t say the topic is totally nailed down–it’s possible for instance that the rocket has rolled so that what was previously underwater is now above the surface–but I think that there’s enough of a suggestion that my barnacles-cannot-live-above-the-waterline theory is wrong that I’m backing away from it.
@RetiredF4, This is behind a paywall for me, could you summarize the gist or excerpt a few key paragraphs?
@RetiredF4, This is behind a paywall for me, could you summarize the gist or excerpt a few key paragraphs?
Jeff,
I do not know why the linked article is now closed or gone, don´t know what happened.
If you do a search for MH 370 with a time window of 24 hrs it will show as link and it opens up just normal.
Here the beginning of the article:
Search authorities last month changed the search area to concentrate on a more southerly and western target section of the Southern Ocean, which the pilots identified as the more likely end of MH370’s flight path.
An Australian Transport Safety Bureau spokesman said that “the prioritisation of the search area is not the result of any new assumptions regarding the circumstances under which the aircraft disappeared.”
But the search is concentrating on the precise area Captain Hardy identified as the most likely resting place of the aircraft, and the ATSB spokesman admitted that area had not been included in some previous iterations of the search plan.
@Retired F4, Fugro was searching that area last month but have since given up on it.
@Cheryl
Continuing the conversation from the previous article, I do appreciate your doubts about the phantom cellphone rings. Indeed your reservations match the general consensus.
Then again, I know how my own phone works. When I call someone and it rings, it means the call’s gone through. But if the other phone is turned off/battery’s dead/sim’s removed, it goes straight to voicemail or ‘caller unavailable’ (this is the default for the UK as far as I know).
Now, suppose a friend of mine was on a flight that vanished, I decide to call his cell… et voila! His phone rings! What will my natural conclusion be?
So why are we so readily dismissive of the NOK’s surprise? Can they really be that clueless about how their own phones work?!
@all
Few questions if I may. Does anyone know if the passenger seating arrangement on MH370 was ever publicly released?
Secondly, anyone know what became of the ‘recording/chatter’ that was heard on a ship/ships in the South China Sea that purportedly came from MH370? Was any material ever publicly released?
And I will end this post with ‘The curious case of Flight EY440.’ Scheduled (Ettihad) from Hanoi to Abu Dhabi last night (Jan 7th 2015). It was actually ahead of schedule, but then decides to go south (?), does a nice little loop over the Malacca Strait (??), diverts to Mumbai low on fuel (???). Thankfully landed safely in the end.
A Flightradar24 screengrab is here:
http://www.scoopnest.com/user/flightradar24/685191879361703941
Okay, well, maybe not so curious once the experts on here have taken a look. Just thought I’d put it out there for those who missed it late last night.
Sajid UK,
2015->2016
EY440 path to Malacca closely resembles MH370 path from IGARI. Unless this information is wrong, I would lean to think some test was conducted related to MH370. Otherwise CNN, BBC, ChannelNewsAsia etc would already report about such an incident.
From the Australian today – If Byron Bailey is correct with his govt source the investigation and search is a sham? And some different simulator results?
Twenty-two months ago, on March 8, 2014, at 1am, an ultra-modern Boeing 777 of Malaysia Airlines suddenly and without warning disappeared from radar over the South China Sea en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Flight MH370 had 239 people on board and the pilot in command was captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, a highly respected and very experienced aviator.
The B777 is state of the art; probably the safest aircraft flying today. I know — I have many thousands of hours as captain on B777. How then could it disappear?
Many theories surfaced but all of these can be explained away by the superb protection devices and warning systems of the B777. Emergencies such as engine fire or explosive decompression are easily handled by well-trained pilots who practise these scenarios in simulators every six months.
Malaysia Airlines is not some cut-price operator with poorly trained pilots. It is a world-class airline with well-trained pilots who can easily handle any emergency, as they are trained to do with Boeing best practice immediate action drills.
At first I thought it was a bomb, as only a sudden massive event (such as MH17 being shot down over Ukraine) could have prevented a well-trained crew from reacting according to their training.
But then a method of tracking the plane via hourly satellite handshakes revealed the aircraft had flown for more than seven hours and was most likely in the southern Indian Ocean. I, and every B777 pilot I questioned, did not know about these satellite handshakes. Then the penny dropped. The flight management system computer must have been reprogrammed. Otherwise the aircraft would have flown itself to Beijing if the pilots were incapacitated and the damage of any event was not so severe as to cause autopilot disconnect — which would have resulted in a uncontrolled crash.
An aircraft can be flown only in two ways. First is manual hand flying. This normally is done only on takeoff and landing. In a typical eight-hour flight the pilot would touch the controls only for several minutes. The second method of control is by autopilot, which reduces human error to a minimum. This is normal for climb, cruise and descent.
The B777 has three autopilots, all of which are linked — if one plays up, the other two automatically reject it. The autopilot is controlled by an FMS computer. The B777 has three — all linked — and it uses information fed in by the managing pilot to command the autopilot how and where to fly. There is no third way. It cannot meander by itself, uncontrolled across the sky, as it would crash.
Say I were to fly a jet from Sydney to Auckland. I enter the departure airfield YSSY and the destination NZAA, and the FMS responds with a selection of suitable airways. I choose Airway L521. Immediately after takeoff I engage autopilot, knowing the aircraft will now fly itself to Auckland unless I delete the destination and select a new destination and airway. The savants of the Australian Transport Safety Board surely know this.
Examples abound. Take the Helios B737 flight from Larnaca in Cyprus to Athens in August 2005, the victim of a failure to pressurise due to incorrect switch selection by poorly trained pilots who were rendered unconscious because of hypoxia. Autopilot flew the aircraft to the FMS programmed destination, Athens, and went into a holding pattern waiting for landing instructions to be entered in the FMS, until fuel exhaustion caused a crash.
So, who changed the destination in MH370’s FMS?
Soon after the revelation that MH370 flew for more than seven hours to the southern Indian Ocean, I realised only an accomplished pilot could have managed this feat. The ATSB has ignored information coming from sources that should be considered expert.
Simon Hardy, a former British Airways B777 captain, wrote a book that almost conclusively identifies Zaharie as responsible for the hijack of MH370 and its flight to the southern Indian Ocean, which likely ended as a controlled ditching as per Boeing flight manual procedures.
Hardy calculated a likely ditching area based on known fuel on board and the fuel burn figures from the B777 flight manual, and allowing for known upper winds. This is well to the south and west of the area so far searched. Such calculations produce a much more accurate probable position than the very broad one indicated by the satellite handshakes and the ATSB’s mathematical modelling.
It was apparent from the start the ATSB was pushing a flame-out theory that negates any pilot involvement. Since November 2014 I have pointed out the impossibility of some of the strange stuff put out by the ATSB. Why did it never consider pilot involvement? The aircraft suddenly turned westward over the South China Sea and flew a precise track — revealed by analysis of Malaysian military radar — across northern Malaysia. It avoided Thai military radar, then turned, after circling Zaharie’s home island of Penang, to the northwest up the Straits of Malacca and around the northern tip of Sumatra, avoiding Indonesian military radar, and eventually headed south. This shows precise control of the aircraft.
Why no debris? In 2004, a Flash Airlines B737 crashed after taking off at night from Sharm el-Sheikh because of pilot disorientation. It came in from 2500 feet at about 500km/h. Masses of debris floated for a long time. A much bigger B777 hitting the sea from 37,000ft at 1200km/h would produce a huge amount of debris that would float for months. Conclusion: it did not crash and was flying under control.
The B777 has three VHF radios; two HF radios; two transponders that supply secondary radar information to air traffic control of call sign, altitude and position; ACARS (aircraft communications addressing and reporting system); a satellite phone; and even a fax machine. To disable all these systems, which are on separate electrical buses to provide fail-safe redundancy, the pilot would have to turn off everything within reach, then leave his seat to pull circuit-breakers on a panel on the rear cockpit bulkhead.
An event to disable all these systems would have to be so serious, it is extremely doubtful the aircraft could still be flying, let alone continue for seven hours.
Analysis of Malaysian military radar revealed the aircraft had climbed to 45,000ft as it tracked across northern Malaysia. The only reason for doing this would be to incapacitate passengers and cabin crew by hypoxia. Only pilots’ masks have selectable pressure breathing capacity.
Hardy’s book is quite detailed about the rogue pilot theory and draws attention to the fact the aircraft circled Penang as if in a farewell to Zaharie’s home island. Former Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has confirmed Zaharie was a card-carrying member of his party (and an very distant relative) but has dismissed suggestions he may have diverted the plane as a political act. Hours before the flight vanished, Anwar, de facto leader of the People’s Justice Party, was sentenced to five years in jail after a court overturned his 2012 acquittal on a sodomy charge. Zaharie reportedly attended the hearing.
Several months after the MH370 disappearance I was told by a government source that the FBI had recovered from Zaharie’s home computer deleted information showing flight plan waypoints. Here, I assumed, was the smoking gun. To fly to the southern Indian Ocean, which has no airway leading from north of Sumatra to the south, the pilot would need to define flight plan waypoints via latitude and longitude for insertion in the FMC.
When nothing about this emerged from ATSB I rang my source. He confirmed what he had told me and left me with the impression that the FBI were of the opinion that Zaharie was responsible for the crash.
The flaperon found on a Reunion Island beach was definitely from MH370. The flaperon sits immediately behind the engines on a B777. The engines sit well below the fuselage and in a controlled ditching would contact the water first. The engines are held on by shear bolts and are expected to rip off (taking the flaperon with them) on contact with water.
Ditching procedure is covered in every aircraft flight manual and training is given by airlines every year for pilots and cabin crew. Common sense suggests when Zaharie got a low fuel warning he initiated descent while still heading south and performed a controlled ditching under engine power before the engines flamed out because of fuel starvation. The aircraft would sink rapidly.
When the flaperon was analysed by Boeing, the manufacturer said, along with US aviation safety consultant John Cox, that it had been broken off in a lowered position, consistent with the theory MH70 had made a controlled ditching into the sea. The ATSB initially said damage to the flaperon was consistent with a high-speed dive after flame-out. Later the ATSB changed tack to say damage to the flaperon still supported the flame-out theory but showed the aircraft glided uncontrolled to a soft landing on the sea (hence no debris). Really? Who lowered the flap?
Last month it was revealed the search for MH370 had been adjusted after Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss released a new report indicating efforts should focus on the southern end of the search area and go farther west. The wider search area was considered the most “prospective”, and the search of the northern end of the arc was to be abandoned. Only now is the search operation probably moving to the correct area. Since March 2014, they have been searching in the wrong area. All the projections assuming no pilot involvement and “flame-out theory” have placed the search area too far north and east.
If they had followed Hardy’s and my reasoning of pilot involvement they would have calculated a position much farther south and west. A B777 in cruise covers 900km in an hour and probably flew more than 7000km after the hijack event.
Two weeks ago I flew to Dubai for simulator training. On December 29, I and another senior B777 pilot put the ATSB flame-out theories to the test in a B777 simulator. The results revealed the ATSB’s theories are completely wrong. It claimed that most of the analysis from an estimated flame-out involved the aircraft making a left turn. But when we flamed out an engine at 37,000ft to simulate fuel starvation of the first engine, the autopilots remained on the commanded track.
The ATSB, under the heading “Search Area Width”, said “glide distance under active control after second engine flame-out was 125nm (230km) which favours a no active control scenario”. To a pilot this is very confusing because I don’t understand what they mean. (Boeing would be gobsmacked a B777 with both engines flamed out could glide so far while in a practically stalled condition.)
Last month’s ATSB report had me deeply troubled. It bases search area calculations of projected flight paths on grossly incorrect assumptions. A B777 cannot fly level at 37,000ft on one engine after a flame-out because of fuel starvation. The only thing I can agree on with the ATSB is that MH370 would probably not be under active — hand-flown — control. Right from the start the ATSB has assumed no pilot involvement. But only an expert B777 pilot could have disabled the extensive communications-avionics suite when the aircraft disappeared electronically. Only an expert pilot could have reprogrammed the FMS to fly to the southern Indian Ocean, otherwise the B777 would have flown on to Beijing. Only a pilot could have lowered the flap for the controlled ditching.
The only logical conclusion I can draw is that Zaharie carefully planned and executed this very clever hijack scenario to end up in perhaps the world’s most unsurveyed deep-sea mountainous terrain, 6.5km deep in a cold, dark hell that would not be found — an area not that far north of Antarctica.
Byron Bailey, a veteran commercial pilot with more than 45 years’ experience and 26,000 flying hours, is a former RAAF fighter pilot and trainer and was a senior captain with Emirates for 15 years, during which he flew the same model Boeing 777 passenger jet as Malaysia Airlines MH370.
@Matty-Perth
BRAVO MATTY BRAVO. This is necessary decemination, well done.
For those who would like to read the original article cited by Matty Perth, here is the link that I used:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/the-case-for-pilot-zaharie-ahmad-shahs-hijack-of-flight-mh370/news-story/955ed1c640c91e85a9f660fdf7ed5248?nk=b59e777b7f57fca6f80655582b784d70-1452298680
Bailey asks, “Why no debris?” and refers to the debris left by the crash of Flash Airlines flight 604 in 2004, stating that “Masses of debris floated for a long time.” I tried to find supporting documentation for this assertion but failed. There is a lengthy accident report (over a thousand pages) produced by the Egyptians, but the description of surface debris is rather perfunctory. Only 50 or so such items were recovered and listed in a ***cough*** database (a.k.a. an Excel spreadsheet). Maybe some can come up with some more informative references.
Otherwise, the statement, “A much bigger B777 hitting the sea from 37,000ft at 1200km/h would produce a huge amount of debris that would float for months” has no support. I would agree that it would like produce more debris than a 737, but not that it would “float for months” without additional evidence.
Anyway the article is well worth a read.
@Matty
ya, its transcendent, somehow
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=19ToC8pQrCY
… together with other videos of this guy
@Oleksandr
Very interesting comment!
And yes, you’re also right about no news channels reporting it (not even a brief mention)!
As of yet, no update from Etihad themselves. Let’s see what happens…
@ Matty – Perth , excellent post mate! Absolutely spot on
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vi8DIaqBnW4
@Matty
So, summarizing your reference:
1) Aircraft was piloted most likely by Zaharie.
2) Aircraft entered water via controlled ditch.
3) Aircraft diversion was not related to failure.
Is there anything new here? I guess it carries more weight if someone else says it?
Completely missing, of course, is the notion of motive. There is absolutely no reason for the aircraft to have been flown anywhere near the current search area. That will be the next shoe to drop, and it will drop.
@Matty,
Regarding the comments about the simulator training in Dubai: What is described is exactly what the ATSB, and Mike Exner found in their sim tests. After one engine flameout the aircraft continues on track, with the TAC system providing compensation for the asymmetric thrust. But that is not the issue. The real question is what happens after the second engine fails ? Byron Bailey doesn’t answer that question.
analysis or synthesis, it doesnt matter; I am on couple fo beers now; good night or day or anything you want; BTW “the plane that wasn’t there” is good title too – who knows if it really was there… we saw only digital traces… knows anybody personally someone who was on the plane?? Sarah Bajc is one I know digitally; sorry for may be cynical view… but, we are all people on the planet Earth, ALL
@Brian, Byron seems not to acknowledge that the second engine did flame out; he believes it was ditched under power. No explanation for why the SDU would have rebooted the second time. All in all, I’d give him a B+, his overall account was quite reasonable, although there were some important errors, such as the one just noted and also the idea that the plane circled Penang. He also gives rumors of the flight simulator’s harddrive more credence than I think is warranted, and does not seem to grasp that even a plane piloted will run out of fuel before it gets to Simon Hardy’s endpoint. Having said all that, his conclusion is that Zaharie is the most likely culprit is, I think, quite reasonable (though I don’t share his degree of confidence.)
last post today; French in game here too…
despite the false intents of this youtube user, its good cut; and I like also US president a lot; who knows if they arent both even better actors than we hoped? We hope
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YD2j0otkFAI
@Jeff
You do not need power to execute a controlled ditch. You might Google “Miracle on the Hudson”.
Dennis – don’t blame me old mate, I just put it up because he goes a bit further regarding the FBI/hard-drive angle. He also mentions what I thought was discarded altitude data – the climb to 45,000 feet….
@Matty,
Hey. I’m not bagging on you. I glad you posted that because I agree with most of it, and have for some time.
The missing element, of course, is motive. When one includes that, it becomes obvious the plane is nowhere near the primary search area. The finding of the flaperon on Reunion also rules out that area if one looks at all the models well summarized by Brock.
All the evidence (nuanced as it is) points to Shah, and the also suggests that his intention was to land the aircraft safely. The flight path needed for that is very different than the consensus paths which have no landing area available, and that will become apparent over time.
I am in the process of writing up an entirely new (and off the wall) analytical model that requires no assumptions to be made relative to aircraft dynamics. It is scattered across numerous notebook pages, and will take some time organize and present. This model shows a flight path to the SouthEast after the FMT that is compatible with a number of landing options along the coast of Sumatra.
The end result is a looping path back to KL, but running out of fuel off the coast of Borneo. Goodbye CI.
@DennisW – if you can try modelling in addition to Borneo try some of the military bases in Sarawak.
Thank you for any feedback.
This is not like looking for your keys on the kitchen counter, where if you don’t see ’em, you know they aren’t there.
In the AF447 material @sk999 pointed me to, the searchers assigned a 10% probability to the debris being in an area already searched. Reading between the lines, that 10% was just a guess; there were no precedents.
Would anyone care to link me to (or state) an explanation of how the rubber meets the road in the current search? I.e., are people staring at monitors in real time hour after mind-numbing hour? Is an algorithm pre-selecting potential debris images for human review? How much has the terrain reduced the coverage or resolution of the images? How much debris of any kind has been found and how much was expected to be found? Has any potential debris actually been “pulled up” and analyzed?
The answers might help assess the likelihood of an overlook or other mistake. And whether less adherence to the data will define a search area more likely, notwithstanding the current search results.
Mr. Bailey appears to be a prolific writer and has been peddling his theory for many months. Nothing new really.
Bruce – I’m pretty sure nothing has been retrieved apart from some good photos of anchors and a lot of shipping containers. What I do know is there was a monstrous incentive in this case to actually find something for the contractors involved. The future of this company was assured by a positive result and as I understand it they are on the edge of their seats daily. I think we have something in common – we are both frustrated by the whole thing.
Some comments on the DSTG model and the mode of operation of MH370 during the flight.
The DSTG model up to fuel exhaustion does not presuppose that the aircraft is outside pilot control. The model demonstrates good predictive power on the validation flights that certainly were under control and some which changed course – it is also able to track MH370 round the 100 degree turn to the NW of Indonesia. So it is capable of dealing with manoeuvres, at least those that leave a signature on the data. The model is built around the behaviour seen in normal flights so assigns a low probability of manoeuvres such as multiple 180 degree turns (as noted in the report).
The speed range used as a prior by the model (Mach 0.73 to 0.84) does not lead to significant probability density in the solutions at those limits (fig 10.6 of DSTG report) which indicates that widening the limits would not materially change the results.
There are no published results on the application of the other model, the data error optimisation method, to the validation flights. If the comments on BFO bias stability in the DSTG paper are correct, then the alternate model must struggle to obtain anywhere near the same predictive power on those flights. Presumably, this has finally led to it being dropped from the search planning – the example path in the INMARSAT paper, which assumed small BFO bias drift, is now excluded together with most of the paths allowed by that model.
The DSTG model does not deal with the aircraft path after fuel exhaustion – the paper applies a notional across-arc probability distribution. Obviously, it is here that the piloted/non-piloted solutions have the most impact on range and final destination, as has been extensively discussed on this site.
By dropping their own alternate model ATSB have demonstrated it is the across-arc uncertainty that now dominates their thinking, possibly to the point of considering the aircraft under control at end of flight.
All of the other approaches to predicting the along-arc position (at fuel exhaustion) either have poor validation results (the alternate model, presumably) or none (all the rest, as far as I understand). ATSB are not going to deploy scarce sonar scan coverage area against course-prediction models that are speculative and without validation.
@DennisW, “Common sense suggests when Zaharie got a low fuel warning he initiated descent while still heading south and performed a controlled ditching under engine power before the engines flamed out because of fuel starvation.”
@Sajid, Etihad tweeted this update: https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/685585802584264705
Apparently the flight diverted for fuel reasons. Odd–perhaps they forget to fill ‘er up before takeoff?
“The only logical conclusion I can draw is that Zaharie carefully planned and executed this very clever hijack scenario to end up in perhaps the world’s most unsurveyed deep-sea mountainous terrain, 6.5km deep in a cold, dark hell that would not be found — an area not that far north of Antarctica.”
if he carefully planned it he wouldn’t overfly patches of calm sea to ditch it in high waves and inevitably produce lot of debris, hitting high waves with an airliner is not much different from hitting a wall
also he wouldn’t overfly malaysian mainland and risk interception when he could just go to the Pacific
Byron contradicts himself
Did Z actually attend the hearing???
@Richard
The fact that most of the DSTG high probability area has already been searched indicates a strong correlation to the previous models which guided that search. In my view the DTSG book did virtually nothing to alter the search area.
Both the DTSG model and previous models used by the IG and SSWG are dominated by speed assumptions which largely control the flight path via BTO constraints. The DTSG model has a very narrow range of a posteriori speeds. Figure 10.3 of the DTSG book shows that their high probability area is not influenced by BFO at all (a small pdf artifact to the North is removed by the inclusion of BFO).
If I were to give a set of range rings and a starting point on the 19:40 ring to a bright 12th grader, and told him how fast the airplane was flying, it would not take him very long to find a terminus near 38S 88E using a straight edge with a scale. You don’t need Bayesian math and a particle filter to arrive there.
My own opinion is that the DTSG and IG speed assumptions are exactly the reason that both models end up in the wrong place.