It’s been almost two years since MH370, and the worldwide search into the greatest mystery in the history of aviation is looking a little ragged. Nothing has been found on the seabed where satellite analytics said the plane must have gone. Only a single piece of debris has turned up, and it’s under lock and key in France. Some are starting to grumble that we’re reaching the end of profitable inquiry. Others say, maybe it’s time to consider a broader range of possible fates for the missing plane. To get a sense of the mood of the room (as it were) I’d like to pose a question to readers:
If the search of the seabed comes up empty, no further debris is found, and investigators find significant problems with the flaperon (such as proof that the barnacles are less than a year old, or that the the barnacle species mix indicates it didn’t originate on the 7th arc), would you be willing to seriously consider the possibility that the satellite signal was deliberately tampered with and that the plane went somewhere else other than the southern Indian Ocean?
- No, this is an unreasonable idea. Tampering with the satellite signal would be so complicated that no one could have attempted it, and in fact it might even just be totally impossible. The plane must have been on the seventh arc somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere at 0:19. Occam’s razor.
- Yes, and in fact we should disregard satcom data entirely. Maybe it was corrupted deliberately by Inmarsat or a Western intelligence agency, and maybe the so-called experts don’t know what they’re talking about. The plane could be anywhere.
- Yes, but we can’t disregard the satellite data entirely. The data is not illusory, it had to be generated by some physical process that originated on the airplane, and analyzing it might help us understand where the plane went.
- None of the above. (Explain).
Please answer in comments, and feel free to be as verbose as you wish.
2)
There is no good evidence that the plane ever left the place where it vanished.
The radar slides presented are just returns off cloud banks.
After the sonar pings fiasco the Malaysian prime minister admitted that he never thought the plane left the area, and that is with full access to all the radar data.
It is likely that governments would want to cover up what actually happened because the world is stranger than is generally believed. Perhaps the US picked up radio traffic on the international distress band, and know a bit more, but they have declared all the relevant data secret.
If Australia and Malaysia want to survey the sea bed then that is fine, but they should include more instruments to get back better science data.
I am somewhere between 1 and 3, leaning more towards 1, but certainly with a healthy dose of 3 in there…
The reason I lean toward 1 is this. Even without the flaperon, if one really buys 2 or 3, one would have to ask where the plane is now. Imagine the most diabolical scheme possible (something around what everyone is talking about – a group, organization or state steals the plane for the purpose of using it for unimaginable violence). If that is the case, then where is it? It has been almost two years. If it were going to be used for such a terrible purpose, then why hasn’t it been? Also, yes, I do think spoofing the data would be so hard and so original, I seriously doubt anyone would think of it. But follow it out. If they were such evil geniuses to pull that off, then where is it? That said, given the complexity and educated guesswork that clearly goes into the calculations of where it could be on the 7th arc, and the possibility that a live pilot glided it from there, I really think that the possibilities of where it could be are so vast that if we admitted it to ourselves that we would be admitting that the world would be very lucky if the plane can be found in our lifetimes. It’s like some kind of terribly sad, David Lynch/Robbe-Grillet mystery.
I would hate to say anything, lest Jeff Wise might label me as an “obsessive”.
@Disyou, I’ve got nothing against obsessives, I’m an obsessive myself. I do have an issue with people who beat a drum for a long time and refuse to listen to others’ critiques, but that hasn’t happened around here for a long time.
@Victor – you said in an earlier post that all of the initial information supplied by the Chinese turned out to be false. I have mentioned that I lived in Shanghai for the past 7 years. Chinese usually don’t share anything unless it serves their interest. So the fact that everything they shared was false leads me to believe that they are hiding something. They should have taken a more active role, see their involvement after the Sichuan earthquake and their activity in the china sea.
@Susie – Don mentioned to you that he had been in touch with the oil rig worker. Any follow up?