Since October, 2014, the search for MH370 has been guided by the assumption that sometime after it disappeared from Malaysian radar screens over the Malacca Strait it turned south and flew straight and fast into the Southern Indian Ocean on autopilot. The ATSB, which is conducting the search, has always been agnostic as to why exactly the plane would have done such a thing—maybe the pilots succumbed to hypoxia, or fire, or committed suicide—but the underlying assumption is that the plane would have flown its last few hours without control from a human being: that is to say, it flew as a “ghost ship” until it ran out of fuel shortly before 0:19 on the morning of March 8 and spiralled into the sea.
Analysis of the satcom signals received up to that point, combined with understanding of how 777s fly, indicate that a “ghost ship” plane should have wound up somewhere in a box 40 nautical miles wide and 400 miles long. As I’ve described earlier, the highest-probability areas of this box have already been searched and no aircraft wreckage has been found.
Previously, I’ve suggested this means that the plane did not fly to the current search area. On January 5, several members of the Independent group published an article on Duncan Steel’s website that agreed with this premise:
we now have a new piece of information. Simply: the aircraft has not been found within the priority search zone. If that continues to be the case then we must consider other possibilities which might conform to the known data (Inmarsat BTO and BFO values, and the fuel limits which can work either way, either setting a range limit or else requiring fuel to be burnt more quickly per unit distance) and lead to a revised end-point for MH370 that is outside of the search zone, and north of it (given that the fuel limitation prohibits end points further south).
The question I’d like to address today is whether the absence of MH370 from the current search area means that the plane COULDN’T have flown to its endpoint on autopilot alone. The reason such a suspicion might arise is that to reach an endpoint north of the current search box the plane would have to have flown a course that was either curving steadily to the left, or slowly decreasing in spead, or a little of both. But the 777 autopilot cannot be programmed to fly in a curve or to steadily decrease the thrust of the engines.
At first blush, then, the answer would be: no. MH370 couldn’t have flown to its endpoint without a human at the controls. That means that one of three things might have happened: 1) The perpetrator took the plane on a slow, curving course to the northeast; 2) The plane hit the 7th arc over the current search area but held it in a glide so that it wound up beyond the current search; or 3) The plane was commandeered by someone who managed to spoof the signal so that it wound up going north instead of south. The first two scenarios presupposes a suicidal pilot, most likely Zaharie; the third requires demonically clever perpetrators. Which of these scenarios is more likely should become more apparent if and when we get to see the results of the examination of the flaperon held by French criminal investigators since its discovery on the island of Réunion last July.
Coincidentally, this would also rule out “hero pilot” scenarios that have remained proven remarkably popular despite the vast weight of evidence against them.
However, the case is not closed.
Our own demonically clever Victor Iannello points out that there is a way to program a 777 autopilot such that it takes a curving path of variable speed. He points out that if MH370 loitered near the Andaman Sea for awhile, its autopilot could then be set to follow a magnetic heading as the plane descended at a steady, one-tenth of a degree flight path angle. As it descended with its engines at constant thrust, the increasing thickness of the air would have caused its speed to decrease. And the winds aloft, combined with the steadily changing magnetic declination, would have caused its path to curve. In such a scenario, the plane could have wound up more than 500 nm from the search box. (See image and table below).
Now, I should hasten to point out that Victor doesn’t think that this actually happened. He believes, as I do, that such a solution is incredibly arcane, and it’s hard to imagine why anyone would want to program a plane’s autopilot is such a way. But it’s not correct, technically, to say that a ghost-ship scenario is impossible.
By the way, several flaws with the suicidial-Zaharie scenario have been pointed out before, but I’d like to add a new one. If Zaharie wanted to disappear, he could have done so more safely and effectively by waiting until BUNTA (the boundary between Ho Chi Minh and Sanya AOR) or IKELA (at the boundary between Sanya and Hong Kong) to go dark and then head out over the open ocean. (You can see the route of the originally filed flight plan here.) From either spot he could avoid flying over land, with the risk of detection and interception: there’s a 200-mile wide gap between Taiwan and Luzon, and beyond that lies the open Pacific beyond. If you really want to vanish, there’s no beating the Marianas Trench.
To my mind, the only reason you’d head west at IGARI is because there was someplace specific you wanted to go.
Jeff, I do not know about 777’s autopilots. But I have been told these are pretty sophisticated planes. I would think they would program them to follow a North-South heading and be able to stay on a heading with course-correction to compensate for the earth’s rotation. But then…I really don’t know.
@Robert, Yes, you can certainly stay on a heading, but except in the very special case Victor describes, this wouldn’t take you outside the current ATSB search area.
@jeffwise
“The first two scenarios presupposes a suicidal pilot, most likely Zaharie;”
it doesn’t presuppose because we don’t have the faintest clue if whoever has done it actually achieved his goal
“By the way, several flaws with the suicidial-Zaharie scenario have been pointed out before, but I’d like to add a new one. If Zaharie wanted to disappear, he could have done so more safely and effectively by waiting until BUNTA (the boundary between Ho Chi Minh and Sanya AOR) or IKELA (at the boundary between Sanya and Hong Kong) to go dark and then head out over the open ocean. (You can see the route of the originally filed flight plan here.) From either spot he could avoid flying over land, with the risk of detection and interception: there’s a 200-mile wide gap between Taiwan and Luzon, and beyond that lies the open Pacific beyond. If you really want to vanish, there’s no beating the Marianas Trench.”
that has been pointed many times by me and other people so nothing actually new, except if you mean your acknowledgement of it then yes it is new
@StevenG, Whoever was in control of the plane was in control of the plane. Ipso facto if they went south their intention must have been to die. Hence the term “suicidal.”
As to your assertion that this claim has been elsewhere, you’re probably right. This insight is just new to me.
@Jeff: Good topic for consideration, I am especially interested in scenarios as you stated
” From either spot he could avoid flying over land, with the risk of detection and interception: there’s a 200-mile wide gap between Taiwan and Luzon, and beyond that lies the open Pacific beyond. If you really want to vanish, there’s no beating the Marianas Trench.”
As the goal likely was to avoid any detection to get where ever it was going.
I see no reason to rule out the theory that the passengers and crew were unconscious or perhaps dead at some point soon after the turnback at Igari when a new course was programmed with the intention of a return to KL, or a more likely a landing at Penang.
Had this been the case and the crew were then disabled the plane would have simply continued on this course with an Autopilot Heading setting.
I also believe the plane went straight over Aceh after a failed adjustment of the landing intention at Penang. It just kept going on the same heading. There was no working radar in Aceh after midnight, that is a fact that has been confirmed by several sources so to add in a route around Aceh is not necessary. 370 could just as easily have flown straight across Aceh with no crew intervention and not been seen.
The Factual Report stated only that the Indonesian radar did not see MH370, not that they could not have seen it so this has caused a lot of confusion and suspicion that Captain Zaharie somehow flew a route to avoid radar. I do not believe he was able to do this as he was no longer conscious.
If 370 continued on the route via the autopilot heading mode it would not be heading to the SIO where we know it has not yet been found. It would have been on a direct course to the Maldives, a theory that relies on eye witnesses rather than science.
One of the reasons the Maldives is discounted is that the witnesses unanimously say the plane approached from the North East. We now have the ATSB report that suggests the right engine flamed out before the left in the end of flight scenario. If this is the case, it would explain this anomoly. An approach to the Maldives South of Kudahuvadhoo just before the right engine flame out could have resulted in a yaw and cirle to the north which fits a north east approach over Kudahuvadhoo and ‘turn’ to the south as seen by these witnesses as part of a wider circle.
Yes, there is onboard kit to correct this but the plane had probably been on autopilot for a long time and we have no idea what damage it may have dealing with.
I am not an aviation expert (you probably all guessed that!) but I hope those of you here who are can give this a few mins of your brain time to give this a bit of consideration?
The BTO fits with the Maldives, the fuel calcs fit, how reliable is the BFO data? Is it so concrete that only the SIO can be considered? We do not know what damage this aircraft may have had, should we treat this data with the same reverance we would with a normal flight? This was a new concept for Inmarsat and based on normal activity, what happens with a possibly damaged plane and kit?
I can only ask questions. I hope one day we will have the anwers.
I’m still curious why Victor retains 310 kIAS, when the the A/T limit speeds are Vmo/Mmo of 330kIAS/M.86.
The A/T maintains the selected speed but does not exceed the limit speed. That is not constant thrust.
@Jeff
Abandoning the “ghost ship” scenario is a slippery slope. It leads to places where you probably do not want to go. 🙂
@DennisW, Oh, no, I want to go there!
@HippyGirl, No, the BTO does not fit with the Maldives, so all your speculation is sunk.
@DennisW I think this comment thread is already a place where we ‘don’t wanna go’ anymore. I mean @Jeff’s spoof theory… Every day we go without debris (don’t get me started on the ‘flaperon’) is just another day which backs up the ludicrousness of this entire situation.
@Gysbreght: The thrust mode was really not “constant thrust”. The scenario is the SPD mode of the autothrottle, with a selected value of M0.84. When the IAS reaches 310 knots during the descent, the MCP displays IAS rather than M. (This is undisputed.) I believe the autothrust would continue to hold 310 KIAS from that point on because the autothrust maintains the value selected and displayed on the MCP. You have already stated you believe the speed would increase to Vmo=330 knots. So unless we have definitive proof one way or the other, we will have to disagree. I am willing to change my mind if documentation is found.
@jeffwise
“Whoever was in control of the plane was in control of the plane. Ipso facto if they went south their intention must have been to die. Hence the term “suicidal.”
my assumption has always been that something unplanned happened between 18:40 and 19:40 (a “loiter”) which disrupted original plan that should be to land on one of the two australian islands
also I have since the beginning of the search contemplated idea about distracted pilot first going to Cocos than trying to reach Learmouth and then abandoning it too and getting back to Christmas Island and unfortunately not reaching it
I know it’s far-fetched but if Captain was really on a whim and had people disrupt him during the flight I could envision that happening.
all in all I’m 99% sure that he/they didn’t succeed to do whatever they wanted to do
Whoever was in control of MH370 while it supposedly crossed back over Malaysia would have to be very awake to avoid collisions and other flight path density issues. Not sure how the aircraft could do it by itself, loiter/circle, then fly south to the SIO.
Thanks for that explanation for your position. Yes, we will have to disagree on that point.
My remark about “constant thrust” was in response to Jeff’s repeatedly referring to constant thrust, you never suggested that.
There are many who continue to say that there is no debris. It would be more correct to state that there has been none found, related to MH370 [other than the flaperon].
Then, what is the item in this photograph, not exactly rectangular in shape, photographed on 28 March 2014, at approximately 32.5 degS, 97.8 degE
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cvxv1l67fdx1263/2014-03-28_U_14-005809.jpg?dl=0
[The image file is 5.7Mb, and I’ll follow with a couple more . . . ]
And this one, on 29 March, similar location . .
https://www.dropbox.com/s/a2eeopt1ek4nqsi/2014-03-29_U_14-005832.jpg?dl=0
And another . . 29 March, similar location
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zh26b7pl6ljrjcr/2014-03-29_U_14-005834.jpg?dl=0
Doesn’t look like a seastate that would prevent a succesful ditching if a competent pilot was at the controls.
I’m going to ask a really dumb question: What is the percentage of certainty that the flaperon found last summer was actually a part of MH370? 70 percent? 80 percent? 90 percent?
@Nate:
That question has been asked before. The judicial examination of that flaperon and of manufacturing and maintenance records has established beyond reasonable doubt that it was fitted to 9M-MRO when it left Kuala Lumpur on flight MH370.
@Gysbreght
northern you go, more chances for a calm sea you have(well, on average)
ATSB search area is some 5 degrees to the south…a lot
@Nate
99,99% quite literally
@Brian Anderson
there is lot of junk in the sea, hard to recognize anything from this
@Brian
You make a valid point, and ALSM pointed the same thing out earlier. It is certainly possible that the imaged debris is from the plane. However, I believe it is a weak argument that does not play well in the context of other recent crashes at sea.
I’ve seen this movie a few times, and I have never known it to have a happy ending. A sinking ship is best abandoned. Particularly when there are other observations weighing it down – flaperon drift models, motive/causality, lack of identifiable debris found in the area.
The “Search for MH370” is following the “phases” of an endeavor gone wrong.
1) Wild Enthusiasm
2) Dissillusionment and band aids
3) Panic and fear
4) Search for the guilty
We are now somewhere in phase 2).
Nate,
Regarding the percentage of certainty that the flaperon was actually from MH370, nobody here actually examined the flaperon. All we have are published reports, whose credibilty needs to be weighed. Every person will apply their own judgement. My assessment is as follows:
100.000%, within rounding error.
Re the photos:
Yes, there is a lot of flotsam in general, but it is certainly not evenly distributed. Some is easily identifiable as fishing debris, but this is not.
How far would this debris have drifted in 20 days since the crash? Maybe easier to figure that out than reversing the drift of the flaperon.
The sea state is that for 28/29 March, not the day of the crash.
I’m just offering this as a counter to the “no debris” argument. It would be very hard to find this stuff in a later surface search.
Brian,
All this stuff was discussed in detail 1.5 year ago. Including images, including magnetic heading. And it was discarded as virtually impossible, particularly by IG members. After that any mention about magnetic heading was not tolerated (I mean Duncan’s site). I am still struggling to understand why this “Eureka!” now?
I also don’t understand why discussions of any other flight modes besides AP are totally ignored. What happens in AT, TO or TOGA mode, for example? Apparently some hardware or software controls aircraft’s stability in these modes. The question is “How?”.
@Oleksandr
To my knowledge only one of these images has been seen previously. I just thought it might be interesting to consider what the debris may be, and where it might have been on 9 March.
@Gysbreght
“The SDU uses groundspeed obtained from inertial sensors or GPS, i.e. not affected by pitot error.”
Of course! Thank you for spotting the mistake!
@Oleksandr
Thanks for pointing out that the crew would most likely start the APU before. That would be true if at least one of the engines flamed out before ditching.
This to me rules out a long glide scenario after dual flame out. If the plane was under control to glide, the APU would have been started and there wouldn’t have been a power interruption to the SDU.
My scenario is slightly different. The pilot attempts ditching BEFORE any engine flame out. To maximize chances of successful ditching power is needed.
The pilot follows the ditching checklist (which is what I attempted to describe in my previous post). It is not an “exotic scenario” it is just an non-normal procedure.
The APU is located in the tail cone. The air inlet is on top of that cone (see http://www.airliners.net/photo/513265/M/ ). The APU will start automatically as soon as loss of power on both AC transfer busses occurs. Which will be as soon as the engines hit the water (they do not need to be severed). As the fuel tanks are almost empty the plane will float quite high above the water line (in comparison the hudson landing was just after take off).
Finally as per non-normal procedure the APU is switched off.
@all
Now the question is :
Is there a point on the 7th arc that is
– reachable before fuel exhaustion
– at the right time
– that would satisfy the BFO with a static plane
If this point cannot be found :
What is the smallest BFO obtainable on the 7th arc for a static plane? And what is the minimum speed needed to find such a point?
Thanks for your help with this.
Brian Anderson – it’s disgusting I know but ships are throwing tonnes of stuff overboard everyday and some of the rubbish patches snapped from satellites at this time but never really identified by the planes may well fall into this category. The images look rather like many others and plenty of junk was retrieved. There was always plenty of crap out there and it washes up here weekly, but I’d bet my house up here in the hills that we didn’t get any MH370 stuff.
Now, I would have uttered my share of dumb remarks here over the last two years so I want to do this thoughtfully: It’s looking desperate to be clutching at this. It’s “Maldivian”. I respect nearly everyone who has pitched in along the way but my upstart tone was deliberate much of the time because it’s the only way I can articulate to hard scientists that I believe they have become totally blinkered. I couldn’t follow all the analytics but I could see that much. Hearts and souls have gone into it but I always suspected(luck?) that this was coming. For a lot of retirees, onlookers and volunteers such as the IG this is now a major life event. Two years and running, two years of sitting in front of a computer and scanning the net many times a day and wrenching the brain continually. What would have everyone have done with that time? And now with the possibility that it’s done I’m sensing some breakage.
@Brian: @Victor always have what seemed to me to be very good advice: before posting imagery “proving” MH370 debris, first get an expert in the field to certify that it is, in their opinion, aircraft debris.
@Dennis: Well said. I have been in Phase 4 since April, 2014.
@Matty: Well said. All I ask is that you pick a new pejorative; if the signal data – which predicts many, many things which weren’t there – turns out to be the joker in the pack, then ‘Maldivian’ theories will take on a whole different sense – even within this skeptical community. The mass sighting merely drew me in; I would have abandoned that scenario long ago, were it not for the official claims (MH370 lacked endurance, Maldivian radar definitively ruled it out, sighting was of DQA149) which have all been wilting under actual scrutiny. (Sound familiar?)
@Matty
Just about everyone has a share in the dumb remarks prize. Being afraid of putting something forward whether here or at your day job is the single biggest impediment to progress I know of. You absolutely have to expunge that fear like a virus, and of course be considerate of others.
The people I feel sorry for are my former colleagues who were capable of getting involved, but chose not do so for a number of reasons – most based on the realization that the problem was under constrained. Something died in them along their way through life, and I told them that. These are the same people who would spend more time thinking about why something would not work, than thinking about how to make it work. Used to drive me nuts, and it still does.
In any case, it is a very difficult problem with a very uncertain outcome. We all knew that going in.
@all
Ludicrous as it is, it occurs to me if $1.5B was solicited for the Powerball, why not sell tickets for a chance at the $1M reward offered for finding the plane, when the plane is found, draw a ticket and declare a winner.
How many people would be willing to spend a couple bucks of goodwill toward the potential peace of the NOK and the chance to become a millionaire?
Logistical, legal issues would prohibit it but you can’t help wonder if the bureaucratic charade was removed how much better the progression would be by utilizing the brains, passion and commitment of those determined not to let go until this mystery is solved.
And therein is my contribution for “the dumb remarks prize”
@jeffwise
Good work as always Jeff, we keep plodding….”caution and measure can bring you treasure”…great job!
@Jeff
” From either spot he could avoid flying over land, with the risk of detection and interception: there’s a 200-mile wide gap between Taiwan and Luzon, and beyond that lies the open Pacific beyond. If you really want to vanish, there’s no beating the Marianas Trench.”
I am from Taiwan and also interested in the scenarios you mentioned to fly into the Pacific if the pilots of MH370 intentionally wanted to vanish. But (my humble opinion) because the air space around Taiwan is one of the most heavily armed/monitored areas in the world (due to the hostile neighbor, Mainland China). There are dozens of military radar stations (including a huge PAVE PAWS long-range radar) and they constantly monitor all air crafts near(even outside) Taiwan air space. Of course the 200-mile gap between Taiwan and Luzon is very wide, it is still possible to be detected from radars in Taiwan if they fly through there.
@Paul, That’s a great point. Of course one of the mysteries regarding MH370 is how much the perpetrators know about radar coverage, or indeed if they thought about it at all. Without prior knowledge, one might well expect that a flight up the Malacca Strait would be painted by numerous primary radars from Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia; yet as we know the last radar return was at 18:22 (and a lone, isolated one at that, if we’re to believe the latest ATSB report) and the SDU came back on three minutes later.
As for PAVE PAWS, the system was designed to detect incoming ballistic missiles, it’s not clear to me whether it could track a plane 100 miles away at relatively low altitude, where it might be hidden behind the curvature of the earth. I sure some of the readers would know. Of course, the issue wouldn’t be so much whether it could detect a 777 at such range and altitude, but whether Zaharie (in this scenario) would think that they could, if he was thinking about it at all.
Thanks, @Susie. We’re all plodding along together, hopefully in a forward direction!
MH370 may have turned towards the open Pacific before coming close to Taiwan. I am looking at the idea it may have landed at one of the Western Pacific Airfields some where before Guam.
@MH
Personally, I think the BTO data is the most reliable source of information we have relative to a terminus. I am not prepared to embrace any solution which is not on or near the 7th arc.
@DennisW, Perhaps but I’d consider Sarawak and Riau islands plus any distance gained from gliding. Still on or near the 7th arc…
@Brock
I’m not suggesting the photos “prove” anything. I offer them only to see what others think the debris might be, and for views [yours in particular . .] as to where that debris was 20 days earlier.
These are not satellite images of course. They are photographed from an aircraft at about 500ft altitude.
@Paul
as the plane wouldn’t go towards Taiwan and wouldn’t come closer than 100 miles operators likely wouldn’t pay attention at all(remember national airspace is some 12 miles from the land), although they could see it later after reviewing radar logs
@MH
that area falls between north and south arc which means it’s impossible for the plane to be there (if it was it would be covered by 3rd satellite)
@Susie if not for bureaucracy(&religion) we would’ve likely conquered half of the our galaxy by now, let alone find a huge piece of metal on our planet
@StevanG – remember the impossible happened. A B777 went missing undetected. Maybe whoever disappeared it knew of where lack of radar and weak spot of Satellite coverage.
@jeff
“there’s a 200-mile wide gap between Taiwan and Luzon, and beyond that lies the open Pacific beyond. If you really want to vanish, there’s no beating the Marianas Trench.”
I do not agree. If you head the airplane out of course to east (roughly to USA), I can expect the USA to go on alarm and do everything to intercept a probably hijacked airplane. After 9/11 I suppose the pay a lot of attention to anything like that.
Yes, I know, US would be still very far away, and maybe US Navy would not have the capability to notice the airplane.
But I assume it could be the case. And perpetretor(s) may have done the same assumption.
@MH
it’s not impossible at all to hijack a B777 and “hide” it, especially if you are the pilot…
radar operators in 3rd world are very often asleep/not up to the job especially at night, perpetrator actually had more chances than not to overfly Malaysia unchallenged
@FabioF
USA wouldn’t care about the plane if it didn’t came close to their coast, even if US Navy noticed it they couldn’t know if the plane was hijacked or not, there are many civilian planes overflying the Pacific…
of course someone somewhere could raise the alert but it was certainly more probable to get challenged over Malaysia
@Jeff – once again, another good piece!
@Jeff @all
Although my heart goes with ‘spoof,’ my head says pilot suicide is a strong possibility, going on what many here have said recently. It answers many questions raised in the piece above. Feel free to rip my scenario to shreds (as I hope you do – I prefer spoofing)!
Pilot suicide:
I don’t know a great deal about Malaysian politics, but from what I remember Anwar Ibrahim seems progressive in comparison to many other reform figures in the Eastern world. His is an inclusive grassroots party as opposed to an extremist one. For example, it is his idea to remove racial quotas beneficial to ‘ethnic’ (mostly Muslim) Malays so everyone can benefit from change.
So if Zaharie Shah did hijack the plane, it wasn’t out of a desire to follow any religious edicts. Rather, it was to avenge his friend’s humiliation at the hands of the Malaysian state (‘sodomy’ in the East still carries a massive social stigma akin to ‘rape’ in the West).
And if Zaharie wanted revenge, he had a ready-made weapon of mass casualty right in front of him. He may have planned for this day, weeks if not months in advance. Attack the Parliament? Another political landmark? The Petronas Towers?
This also explains why BUNTA or IKELA didn’t figure. As long as Captain Zaharie followed the plan in his head, he needed to get the plane back across Peninsular Malaysia and prepare an advance on KL (down the Malacca Strait).
He carefully and cleverly navigated waypoints to fly back across Malaysia undetected. This first part went to plan. What might have happened then?
The turn into Penang, the ‘one last goodbye’ as Hardy stated, might have been a key moment. Capt Zaharie Shah, flooded with remorse about what he was about to do, may simply have lost his nerve. A crime of passion rather than blind, mindless terrorism.
And in making that decision, he’d boxed himself into a corner. 238 lives already lost, he now had blood on his hands. Lots of it! Either he lands the plane and faces the music (public humiliation, outcast status, hounding of close family/friends from all quarters, and finally death by capital punishment) or he takes the only option left to save face – completely disappear so no-one ever finds out what happened. And this is exactly what he may have done, flying round Indonesia and ending it deep in the SIO.
@StevanG- I would expect it to be detected if it overflew Malaysia by not just radar operators but pilots of other aircraft flying at about the same time as the airspace is still busy even at night. its amazing it didn’t collide with anything by flying dark and with a semi conscious pilot/crew.
@Brian – thanks much for clarifying. Apologies for assuming they were sat photos – I didn’t look at them, because I feared I would see in them only what I WANTED to see. I hope (and strongly suspect) I’m not alone in suffering from this affliction.
I will take a look at the positions, and see if the data I’ve collected from various drift experts might offer insight.
But I fundamentally question this evidence – in particular, its TIMING. Clearly, the proper time to run these photos to ground was roughly 675 days ago, when it could have helped round up surface debris, and effectively pin down the deep sea search. If these images were dismissed by the ATSB – yet in retrospect now being held up as LIKELY to have been from MH370 – then we have another VERY large item to add to our list of serious questions search leadership needs to answer.
@Jeff
There are currently only three absolutely mandatory and simple criteria required of any terminal theory (in my view). I deem these as necessary conditions for a terminal theory to be taken seriously.
1> can be reconciled with the ISAT data
2> can be reconciled with the flaperon finding
3> has an associated plausible motive or causality
That is all we ACTUALLY have. Other “information” such as lack of additional debris, surface or otherwise, would effect all possible terminal theories. While important, it is not a useful component for theory filtering.
There is currently only one area that satisfies all these criteria, and that is the area below the coast of Sumatra. Every other theory fails to meet one or more of the necessary criteria. I have a hard time understanding (and have had for some time) why people are finding it so hard to connect the dots on this.
Brian,
There were many similar images, dozens were published. Some pieces were recovered later. And all of them turned out to be rubbish. Plastic, wood, nets, etc.
The most interesting object was of clearly rectangular shape. It was never recovered, but speculations were that it could be the famous flaperon due to very similar shape.
There were also satellite snapshots of high resolution, and if I am not mistaken some French satellite captured “debris field”, but nothing was found from the air at that location. Presumably it was whitecapping.
In summary, aerial and satellite snapshots turned out to be completely useless in this case.
@Victor: while not engaging in speculation, I did want to clear up one factual discrepancy from an ancient discussion you and I had, because it was one of our best:
After accepting your direct invitation to speculate on possible actions/reactions that might plausibly trigger a cover-up, you responded by pointing out that all items on my list required a large conspiracy to corrupt the ISAT data. I just wanted to clarify that this is not entirely true:
All the scenarios which involved what I cryptically referred to as “counter-terrorism protocols” could have actually included a directive to (via remote control, presumably) divert a plane found in a particularly threatening location/heading to a “safest possible spot”.
I am NOT defending or promoting the idea that the deep SIO actually makes sense – even under exceptional circumstances – as the place to where these protocols might redirect such a plane. All I’m saying is that, IF this was the protocol, THEN the scenario I described does predict a cover-up/short-armed search/disinfo campaign, while still being true to the signal data.
@ Brock
“this evidence” . . . no, not even that, but yes it is likely that these images have been seen by ATSB. I became aware of their existence quite recently only after one image surfaced, and then after an official enquiry.
I am certainly not “holding this up as LIKEY to have been from MH370”. Who knows how well the surface was searched after this. I imagine items like this would be extremely difficult to find in a surface search days, or weeks later.
One image shows a huge quantity of small flotsam. It is unusual because none of the other 100 or so images I have show anything like the same quantity.