UPDATED 1/29/16: Here’s an image from Victor Iannello showing how EY440 diverted from its normal flight path about two minutes after takeoff on January 7, when it was still climbing and at an altitude of 5000 feet:
Just to clear up any potential confusion, it seems most likely that this incident does not have anything to do with MH370, but it’s very interesting in its own right. What is the dynamic at work here? Is it part of a trend? If so, does it potentially represent a system-wide vulnerability?
Here’s another image from Victor showing the plane’s continued path over Malay Peninsula. He writes: “I re-examined the FlightAware ADS-B data and noticed that there is a gap starting at BIBAN and ending at Kota Bharu. The FlightRadar24 coverage looks more comprehensive than the FlightAware data, especially in the South China Sea (SCS). I have re-plotted the flight path such that each underlying FlightAware data point is shown, and estimated the path in the SCS from the FlightRadar24 video. The path does indeed seem to follow airways across the SCS. (It would be helpful to have the underlying FR24 data.) The route seems to be ANHOA-L637-BIBAN-L637-BITOD-M765-IGARI-M765-Kota Bharu-B219-Penang-G468-GUNIP-HOLD-Langkawi-B579-Phuket.”
ORIGINAL POST:
The case of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is an incredible strange one, as we all know. But what only the true obsessives know is that orbiting around the giant mystery is an Oort Cloud of lesser enigmas. I’d like to briefly diverge from this blog’s main line of inquiry to cast a glance at some of these issues.
My first installment concerns Etihad Airways Flight 440, which took off on January 7 for Ho Chi Minh City bound for Abu Dhabi. Scheduled to depart at 20:10 UTC, it actually left 13 minutes early. Then, instead of flying along its normal route, to the northwest, it flew almost due south, crossed waypoint IGARI, then flew along the Thai/Malaysia border to the Malacca Straits, where it flew in circles for an hour before finally heading off in the direction of Abu Dhabi. By this point, however, the plane no longer had the fuel to reach Abu Dhabi, so it stopped to refuel in Bombay and reached its destination many hours late, leaving some passengers irate. (Special thanks to reader @Sajid UK for bringing this to our collective attention via the comment section.)
This is all very strange, but what makes it interesting to the MH370 crowd is the fact that a portion of its bizarre route was an exact match with that taken by the Malaysian 777 when it initially took a runner. Had EY440 been taking part in some kind of experiment to recreate MH370’s route, perhaps to get a better understanding of the Inmarsat data or the radar data?
We may never know. Katie Connell, who heads up Etihad’s media relations for North America, was very friendly when I called her and asked her what had happened. She said she’d check with her colleagues at the head office in Abu Dhabi. “It was simply a scheduling decision by ops that was later adjusted,” she wrote me in a text earlier today. I wrote back, asking if her contacts had been able to explain why the plane had flown south instead of northwest, and why it had flown a holding pattern over the Malacca Strait. She answered: “No; I did not get into that level of detail. I go with what my folks said.”
So there you have it. Make of it what you will.
UPDATE: I should have pointed out that this topic has been discussed for quite a while in the comments section of “Free the Flaperon!” and “A Couple of MH370 Things.” One of the ideas mooted there was that the flight crew inadvertently entered the wrong route into the Flight Management System, somehow overlooked the fact that they were heading in the wrong direction (scary!) and then circled for an hour until they could get the proper flight plane figured out, filed and cleared. This would be embarrassing enough to the airline that they would prefer to call it a “scheduling decision that was later adjusted.”
UPDATE #2, 27 Jan 2016: I’ve received a clarification from Etihad via Katie Connell, who writes: “The standard route flown by Flight EY440 from Ho Chi Minh City to Abu Dhabi on January 7, 2016 was automatically amended by the Flight Planning System which calculated and filed an alternative route as the most favorable, due to high winds. Shortly after takeoff, a new route was re-plotted which required Flight EY440 to fly through Thai airspace. While awaiting the overflight clearances the aircraft went into a holding pattern which resulted in the aircraft needing to refuel in Mumbai prior to continuing its journey to Abu Dhabi.”
So it sounds like the problem was not a human mis-entry, but a faulty flight-plan solution by a computer, which then had to be fixed while in transit. Software bug? Non-optimal algorithm? It will be worth keeping an eye out for more incidents like this one. Here’s one that took place in December involving a Malaysia Airlines flight from Auckland to Kuala Lumpur.
UPDATE #3: Victor Iannello has directed my attention to a Wired article suggesting that hackers have disrupted flight plans in the past and could do so again.
Here’s a chart showing the path the flight took as it circled over the Malacca Strait, created by reader Oleksandr:
@Clara, No, after considerable effort I’ve been able to find out nothing about Chustrak and Deineka except for some dodgy-seeming social media pages. Friends and relatives refuse to say anything about them.
@DrB
My logical flowchart linked below:
http://tmex1.blogspot.com/2015/12/sherlock-holmes.html
@clara ffrench & @jeffwise: I’d say the two Ukrainians and the Russian don’t seem like the type to take on a suicide mission. If they were involved with the disappearance of MH370, the likely intention was to divert the plane and land safely.
I still think that everyone that has been under investigation had nothing to do with it. I think the answer to why it happened lies between the pings on the seafloor. Weird as it seems I don’t think we will ever know how it happened, and I mean using todays knowledge of science. Too much unscientific about MH370. Yet I believe there are minuscule and not obvious clues, that should be checked out, before giving up.
@DennisW- the flowchart for me comes out inconclusive, as the background checks on Shah are clean as anybody else to make a statement by doing an attempted landing on CI. And if it was such a controlled ditching then survivors would be coming ashore while the aircraft be floundering about.
@MH
CI was one of number landing places on Shah’s menu depending on how negotiations were proceeding in KL. The fact that he ran out of fuel to the West of the Island might indicate that he either intended to set up for a North to South landing on CI (surface wind was from the South that morning) or proceed Northward to Bandung.
Hopefully we will get some flaperon forensics that will shed light on whether the damage was done by aerodynamic flutter or by contact with the water. My guess is the latter, but I obviously don’t know.
What might have happened on a water impact at a shallow angle would be speculative. Like you, I would expect some survivors to have escaped the aircraft. Maybe not.
I do notice the news is all aglow with the fact that the ATSB might have to abandon their steep descent theory. I would wonder if this change of heart was prompted by a leak to them from the Malaysians relative to the flaperon forensics. I think that is likely, since there is no need to make statements like that at this time.
@DennisW – If there were negotiations going on how would it be declared all forms of RF were blocked for the estimated duration of the flight? Facts just don’t fit.
@ DennisW – in regards to your endeavor to make (or not make ) people happy…..we’re not happy…til you’re not happy…….( LOL…LOL…LOL…LOL…LOL…)
@MH
Your comment makes no sense.
@Niels,
I am not aware of any public disclosure of ping recordings made at a great depth, and they may not exist. If you know of one, please send me the link. All the videos I have seen of computer displays and the replaying of 1 Hz audio pings used data taken with near-surface microphones.
The ULB’s use ceramic disc resonant vibrators. The broadcast frequency is set by the material and the dimensions of the disk. That is one of their appealing features – the frequency is quite stable and essentially independent of the local environment. Aging or temperature effects in the electronics won’t cause the frequency to shift noticeably. The “clue” seemed too good to be true, and it was. The pings were far too loud near the surface, they were not at the ULB frequency, and the sources were moving with time. Therefore they could not be coming from the ULBs, and the search in that area was abandoned. ATSB has never, to my knowledge, acknowledged why they went there in the first place. Some lame excuse about fuel range and speed was given, and Brock torpedoed it. If I were to speculate, I think the real reason was that pings were heard initially in that area by a submarine (possibly even from the USA), but it was decided not to divulge that information. Remember that the US Navy was somewhat involved back then. I believe they had an officer doing TV updates.
@GC Dennis out of the gravity?
@DrBobbyUlich
“the sources were moving with time.”
That’s new to me. Where did you pick that up?
If it is true then they really can abandon that place.
@Trond, Yes, you can abandon that place. No horse has ever been deader.
@Trond,
Jeff is right on this one. Email me if you want me to provide details on the side.
The B777 ELT is a fixed ‘autonomous’ device sited at the upper rear of the fuselage. It can be activated manually, or overidden, from controls located at the top of the flight deck o/head panel. Autonomous, as it’s got a battery & own GPS recvr source plus nearby external antenna (the top centre sharkfin nearest vert stab).
EPIRB’s are installed either in the door slide assemblies or in a cabin crew grab kit. The EPIRBs would be effective only outside the fuselage.
If there was some catastrophic MEC event that took out all three VHF transceivers (spread across the MEC racks and power sources), the two HF transceivers (similarly distributed across the equipment racks) and the AES which is located above the cabin door 3 then throwing the ELT activate switch might’ve been a good move to alert the SARSAT agency. That didn’t happen.
Concerning the quest for a motive: those seeking to evoke terror tend not to play by established rules or precedents. What could be more terrifying than not knowing the outcome? Which is exactly the situation we have been discussing for nearly two years.
@DrUlich
The Phoenix personnel onboard of Ocean shield deployed the TPL to depths ranging from 3000 – 6000 m, according to the paper “Deep ocean search for Malaysia Airlines flight 370” by leHardy and Moore. If you mail me through niels44nl (gmail.com) I’ll mail you the paper in reply.
@ falken – you know how much we all love Dennis…..breath of “fresh” air ( so to speak )…so it should go without saying that we’re appreciative, and glad, he has a good sense of humor….or we might all be dead meat… @ Dr. Bobby – I am a strong supporter of your 40 S. inclination, my question is, is that along the 7th arc track…or within aprox. what “possible error” either side of the arc…and first and foremost, how much further south and west of that area would you calculate (in the sense of a maximum distance), or guestimate, the “terminus” to be or maybe stick your neck out to say….keep in mind this is just off the record thoughts….and I guess i’m just kinda looking for some reinforcement of an idea i’ve been working on for over 20 months….hope the question came out somewhat coherently….thanks in advance GC
@DrBobbyUlich
I can only think of the sources moved if they were being chased. (quantum physics, i’m not trying to be obscene.)
When you say side, do you mean a website? Just share it, or if it is a file use dropbox.com or any upload site so anyone can download from please.
@DrUlich
Concerning ULB frequency:
I’ve based my understanding on the original ULB patent, fig 3. You can download it from:
http://www.science4u.org/external-links.html
Indeed there is a piezodisc, however it is driven by an oscillator. It is the oscillator that determines the frequency. Preferably the oscillator freq. matches the natural resonance freq. of the disk. However, if the driving oscillator drifts, the output freq. will be off.
Falken – what I’m getting at is, I suspect the Malaysians have had some help to keep the lid on. There has been no pressure to disclose anything and in the article we have the FBI standing by dutifully assisting when asked but not overstepping. And as I’ve said all along it’s clearly not a crash investigation.
Keeping Russia out of the ME was a bedrock of US ME policy for a long time and it went into the shredder, though I can understand the trepidation of any further ME commitments. The coalition bombing effort there(which Australia is a part) are often going many days without dropping a single bomb due the rules. Degrade and destroy IS?? Getting them out of Raqqa/Mosul will be a major ground offensive and the plan seems to be let Russia do it while we moan about civilian casualties – and it’s this “leading from behind” as you call it that could be in evidence with MH370. The events of that evening in March could fall into the very sensitive category. They could have put the blowtorch on this but no one wants to, and it has never looked right.
Obama said it was either a nuke deal with Iran or we go to war. The war he is referring to would not just be with Iran. Russia and China are backing them so it’s clear who is now in charge and the bad news is the free world has lost it’s leader. Obama now tip toes where the US once asserted and who can restore it? Is he tip-toeing with MH370 as well?
Please delete “natural”
The disk is a damped resonator so we should speak about the resonance frequency.
@Guarded Don,
Thanks for the info on ELTs/EPIRBs.
You said: “What could be more terrifying than not knowing the outcome? ”
In my view it would be more terrifying if one knew it was a deliberate act and that it would happen again – just not where or when. Not knowing the cause allows one to chalk it up to a freak accident that is unlikely to repeat itself. In my opinion that is a much less terrifying result for many people.
@Matty I really dont believe there are any issues between big players governments; lot more coldwar residual contamination in billions of regular minds… the ME approach may be intent too; they must realize itself whats good and bad – and negotiate deals; bombs alone dont solve the problem
Hello GC. Sounds to me like you “fancy” the area south of 40S? Same here. The trouble is that the area where multiple objects were detected (early days) is much further south (around 44S) and incompatible with current BTO interpretation. See http://www.findMH370.com
Dolan’s words – “We’re not at the point yet, but sooner or later we will be — and we will have to explain to governments what the alternative is,” Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief commissioner Martin Dolan told The Times.
http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/rogue-pilot-theory-may-be-revived-if-the-search-for-mh370-ends-and-the-plane-is-not-found/news-story/cb1ba0d67b51b1894ba33b190cabb43f
I have challenged anyone to come up with what the pings were and where they came from.
If not, then they are clues.
Just the same with the flaperon, the pings and the flaperon are not from MH370, but somehow meant to guide us to find MH370.
If there is nothing down there then the pings are just as mysterious.
Bobby,
I will try to respond both your last comments in one post.
Response to your post dated February 17, 2016, 12:48 PM.
Re: “My AES theory satisfactorily answers your questions.”
No. Neither my interpretation, nor yours. Your AES hypothesis does not answer the first question. It would imply that AES update can be less frequent than 7 seconds. Turns are normal operation of aircrafts, and such updates would cause large variation of BFOs. In addition, this could pose a problem for the stirring of antenna. In my paper I explained why I think missing compensation is better than the use of the last known position/velocity, though it does not mean AES software is actually designed in that way.
——
Re: “The cited reference is the only one I have seen. If there is a more recent reference, would you please provide a link.”
It was discussed at Jeff’s site last October:
http://jeffwise.net/2015/10/03/guest-post-on-the-possible-interpretation-of-abnormal-bfo-values
Let me know if you can’t open the paper itself.
——
Re: “I am not aware of any route that matches all the BTO and BFO data and also has an average speed from 18:40 to 00:11 that is significantly below 450 knots. Can you provide a counter-example”
Don’t mix up things. A number of models really predict higher speed after 19:41, but the location 19:41 is significantly close to the equator. For example, Niels’ model, Dennis’ model (though I am not sure about his BFO fit), magnetic heading models (the review was recently published by sk999 at Jeff’s site), or my CTS model(https:[slash][slash]www[dot]dropbox.com/s/8vrt72o783262he/TN-CTS-Rev1.1.pdf?dl=0).
——
Re: “What I meant here is that in order to reach the 7th arc at 00:19, the average speed from the 6th arc to the 7th arc is not greatly reduced compared to the previous legs”.
That is incorrect. For your location and heading – probably. My CTS model, for example, predicts nearly orthogonal heading to the 7th arc, and it actually causes notable overshot of the 7th arc (that is because I did not implement the first engine flameout into my model). Good that you remind me about my “to do” list.
——
Response to your post dated February 17, 2016 12:30 AM
Re: “The answer is simple. The FMT BFO data requires 3 turns for consistency. You don’t need more and you can’t do it with less. Ask Victor.”
I beg your pardon, but that is nonsense. FMT BFO data does not require 3 turns. As a matter of fact, data exist independently on your assumption. You could say “Fitting of BFO data into your model requires at least 3 turns”. But frankly I think it can hardly be called as a requirement even for your model. Anyhow, my question was more on a logical side? Why would the crew performed 3 turns combined with a climb, and navigated via waypoints? It requires either manual programming of the AP, or manual piloting, which conflicts with you assumption that the crew was about to pass out. Finally, I strongly disagree that 3 turns are needed to keep it as simple as possible (yours “You don’t need more and you can’t do it with less” does not work for me in this case, because 3-turns trajectory has no logical meaning). If the crew selected a point near NILAM as a fix point, and performed several loops like EY440, there would be many turns, or a continuous turn, which makes for me a lot more sense than 3-turns trajectory you suggested. As long as you mentioned Victor, what is his opinion?
——
Re: “Let me explain the three processes happening here. I understand the navigational data going to the AES is updated frequently (at > 1 Hz) but at different rates. That does not tell us how often the frequency compensation algorithm in the AES is run. In my model I assume that it is run once immediately preceeding each transmission using whatever the latest navigation parameters happen to be. ”
This conflicts with the statement that AES does not proceed without data, because AES would always have some data, let it be even initial zero speed.
——
Re: “My integrating path computer model has a step size of 1 second, but again that is asynchronous with the AES computation schedule”.
So your results depend on your integration time step? If you assume 1 second for the AES update, there must be a physical reason. I understand you selected it for simplification of your algorithm, but that is a wrong approach. Why not 3.14 seconds?
—
Re: “Since these items are located nearby, physical damage to rack wiring or an electrical short in a rack could affect multiple equipment items simultaneously”
Well, you are approaching to “nose landing gear tire blast” or “flash fire” hypothesis. Either way such an event is not minor, and it would likely cause decompression.
——
Re: “I am suggesting there might have been a problem in the electrical power delivered to the comms equipment items.”
No, there are multiple back-up power sources, including batteries and whatever. Oz knows more details. But I guess there could be multiple problems, including power and damages of coaxial cables.
——
Re: “The physical routing of power wiring might have multiple cables adjacent to one another such that several power lines could be affected simultaneously.”
Agree. That is what I said a year or more ago. But not only power cables, but also coaxial cable (2 VHF + HF appear to be on the top, and 1 VHF + SATCOM on the belly behind the cockpit).
——
Re: “However, there is also a limit to the maximum detection range for all radar systems, even for targets above the horizon. ”
Agree. But you need to remember that if data was sourced from RTADS-III, the distance was not large.
——
Re: “The third reason is potential blockage by an intervening landmass or building at that bearing as seen from the radar site.”
There was no blockage if the source was Batterworth radar. I have not seen any convincing calculations with regard to RTADS-III, especially if applied to your route.
——
Re: “my climb does “satisfy the absence of re-appearance condition.” ”
Disagree. You need to check the respective criteria point by point as the ascent was in progress, and the dependency is not linear. You applied it only to the last point of your FMT.
Matty,
If they abandon search, Malaysian, Thai, Indonesian, Australian, and US military would automatically become primary suspects for shutting down the aircraft and misleading the search, rather than a rogue pilot.
Trond,
If I recall correctly, except “Chinese pings” around 25S, all other pings were later attributed to devices attached by marine biologists to sharks, dolphins etc. to study their migration.
@Trond, Please give it a rest.
@Oleksandr
you said:
“If they abandon search, Malaysian, Thai, Indonesian, Australian, and US military would automatically become primary suspects for shutting down the aircraft and misleading the search, rather than a rogue pilot.”
Think about it for more than 60 seconds. Why would Dolan be making these remarks at this time? He is establishing a reason for why the search will not be successful well in advance (4 months or so) of the self-imposed search stopping time. My take on it is that Dolan knows the search will not be successful, because the Malays told the ATSB what the results of the flaperon forensics are, and they are not compatible with a spiral dive scenario. Rather they are compatible with a controlled ditch.
The controlled ditch would expand the search area beyond any reasonable limit, and no sensible person would sign up for the added cost.
As far as becoming primary suspects is concerned, it falls into the “who cares” category. People are far more concerned with governments putting fluoride in water than shooting down airliners. Trust me on this – the world is not watching and waiting.
@anyone
Dolan quote below:
“And the alternative is, frankly, that despite all the evidence as we currently have the possibility that someone was at the controls of that aircraft on the flight and gliding it becomes a more significant possibility, if we eliminate all of the current search area.
“In a few months time, if we haven’t found it, then we’ll have to be contemplating that one of the much less likely scenarios ends up being more prominent. Which is that there were control inputs into that aircraft at the end of its flight.”
All what evidence? That is about as convincing as the IG’s “that’s the way pilots like to fly airplanes”.
to me, it seems Dolan was implying that they assumed the aircraft was on autopilot to the end and no one was in control. Now they are review that assumption and considering an active PIC controlling the paths including glided landing somewhere…
Dolan is certainly preparing for the possibility (some would say eventuality) that the plane is not found after the 120,000 sq km are searched. Attributing the failure of the search to a glide away from the 7th arc puts the ATSB in the least amount of hot water compared to other explanations, such as the scanning equipment was not adequate to find the plane or the plane crossed the 7th arc outside of the current search zone.
If we believe the BFO value at 00:19:29 is valid, AND we believe the plane flew to the SIO, it is hard to reconcile the 70 Hz drop in BFO values between 00:11:00 (252 Hz) and 00:19:29 (182 Hz)with anything but a steep descent. If the plane was level at 00:11 and continued at constant speed and track, the 70 Hz drop represents a rate of descent of about 3,990 fpm. If the horizontal speed dropped to zero, the rate of descent at 00:19:29 would be closer to 4,700 fpm. So believing in the validity of the BFO value at 00:19:29 is not consistent with a controlled glide away from the 7th arc.
I recently performed a calculation of what the BFO-predicted vertical speed would be for various locations along the 7th arc at 00:19:29, assuming that the horizontal speed was zero. Based on these results, you can conclude that one of the following statements is true:
1. The BFO value at 00:19:29 is not valid and the plane was in a controlled glide at this time.
2. The BFO value at 00:19:29 is valid, the plane flew to the SIO, and it was in a steep descent at this time.
3. The BFO value at 00:19:29 is valid, the plane flew north rather than south, and the plane was on the ground at 00:19:29.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/r0ozzivz0vxiajn/BFO%20vertical%20speed%20on%207th%20arc.png?dl=0
@Trond is banned. –JW
@VictorI – Very interesting landing location for the “0Hz”. Overall very interesting map!
Dolan: “… that there were control inputs into that aircraft at the end of its flight.”
In that case there could also have been control inputs (including inputs into the autoflight system) at any time during the flight.
@Victor
Your option 2> seems to be mixing two conclusions. The reality is the BFO value at 00:19:29 could be valid at other places besides the SIO.
My personal opinion is that the 00:19:29 BFO value is not accurate. The flaperon forensics should be able to shed some light on this issue.
@DennisW: I am using a broad definition of the SIO, including geography near Christmas Island.
Yes, I fully understand that you believe in (1), as any proponent of a controlled glide must. The facts will fall where they may.
@MH: Thank you. If you believe the BFO at 00:19:29 is valid, and the plane landed to the north near the 7th arc, you can use the map to limit potential airfields, assuming you know the error bounds on the BFO.
I fixed the map to remove the Almaty label. I did not mean to call attention to this location. The amended map is at the same link.
@Gysbreght said, “In that case there could also have been control inputs (including inputs into the autoflight system) at any time during the flight.”
Exactly. That’s why this scenario has been so unpalatable to the ATSB. The ATSB has admitted in 2014 that their assumptions were necessary to keep the search area within manageable limits. (That’s not to say they knew there assumptions were wrong.) The locus of possible endpoints becomes unpractically large without additional data or assumptions. The plane could have crossed the 7th arc much further north and it could have glided far from the arc.
*their assumptions, not there assumptions
@George Connelly,
You asked me to speculate on how far from the 7th Arc the “terminus” might be. If the BFO data at 00:19:29 and 00:19:37 are valid, which I believe they most likely are, then it seems unlikely the aircraft could have travelled more than about 20 NM from its location then.
The airspeed at 00:19:29 was probably lower than at 00:11:00. In Exner’s simulator exercise the steady rate of descent at constant IAS with both engines out was 2000 fpm. In a phugoid motion in the same configuration the RoD could have cycled between zero and 4000 fpm. It is also possible that the pilot was recovering from a low airspeed condition (stall warning or buffet) or a stall.
I don’t see any reason to believe that the BFO value at 00:19:29 is not valid.
P.S.
I should have mentioned that the steady airspeed in Exner’s simulation was 200 kIAS.
@Gysbreght: I was trying to demonstrate that if the BFO is valid, the range of RoD is between 3990 and 4700 fpm. I agree that the likely horizontal speed at 00:19 is less than at 00:11. I used the speed at 00:11 as an upper limit. The lower limit is a horizontal speed of zero.
@DennisW – Perhaps I did not use Google Maps properly but I measured the distance from IGARI to Brian’s 18:28 ring as 477 miles or about 414 NM.
Also, if the PIC is communicating demands with whoever, couldn’t those communications have been intercepted?
I submit that it is impossible to project the drift of the flaperon due to its ever changing buoyancy caused by the addition of barnacles over time. It could have come from anywhere is in the Indian Ocean. But I do agree that much of the floating debris could have floated to the eastern shores of Africa but not being found and/or recognized.
@Dr. Ulich – I agree that the availability of a battery-powered portable radio on board is significant. That just about makes the loss of communication an intentional act as they had plenty of time (17:21 to 18:25) to aviate and navigate.
Regaining control of the a/c around 18:25 would have allowed the PIC to choose a new speed such as ECON 52
@all – Someone recently posted a link to an article about shady financial issues related to the purchase of two submarines and another about money problems at MAS. There was also talk about a $2.25 billion insurance policy on this flight. That would be sufficient motive to make a plane disappear. So would a personal life insurance policy with a suicide exemption.
In the last few months we’ve seen a Russian airliner brought down by a bomb and a Somali airliner having a hole blown out of the fuselage. Could MH370 been an experiment to determine bomb size?
@gysbreght
There are two very good reasons to believe the BFO at 00:19 is invalid:
1) it was generated shortly after a power interruption
2) the ATSB is in denial relative to the dive at the 7th arc
@DennisW: Yes, the BFO at 00:19:29 was due to a log-on request just after a power up. But many also suspect a restoration of power just before the log-on request at 18:25:27, and the BFO value appears valid, even after the power was suspected to be disconnected for a much longer period of time, so I don’t think the BFO at 00:19:29 can be quickly dismissed.
I do agree with you, however, that the flaperon investigation will show that the flaperon was likely damaged while deployed for a ditching. That was what was originally leaked by the French judge, and nobody has officially refuted the statement. The ATSB insists they have no knowledge one way or another. They certainly have a lot of incentive to say this, whether or not true.
@ Dr.BobbyUlich
The one ELT in the forward closet can be activated manually by a cockpit switch and by direct access and actuating the toggle switch.
There are only few situations where a crew would consider to actuate the ELT. It initiates a global alert, and uf done for no reason there would be a lot explaining necessary.
Responses to comm out and other emergencies and combination of those are well thought of in advance in a structured way and laid diwn in some checklist pricedures. This leaves little room for self interpretation by the crew.
The he turnabout at IGARI due to total loss of all comm equipment without another life threatening system loss, requiring an immidiate landing is close to unreal. If such a life threatening happening existed with known comm failure and transponder failure requiring the deviation from planned routing for immidiate landing the activation of the ELT would grant identification, location and deconfliction of the flightpath and alert airfields along the routing to prepare for an emergency landing.
To answer your question why the ELT was neither used by the crew or the cabincrew I see two primary reasons: There was no intention to be identified and located despite deviation from the filed and cleared flightplan, or a gun to someones head was the argument not to do so.