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:
@CliffG
Fantastic post!
And yes, you are spot on… “…If the conspiracy among countries to hide the truth AFTER the plane disappeared is real, then the perps had to have done something of geopolitical significance.”
You are absolutely right. If this was a multinational cover-up, it would be far easier to conspire after the event rather than collaborate during it. If this is what happened, I dread to think the ‘something’ was!
@all @Jeff @CliffG
Dr David Grime’s conclusions start to get very interesting when applied to MH370. Of course, the smaller the group, the longer the secret lasts – that much is common-sense!
But in actual figures, 2531 people could maintain a cover-up – for a full 5 years (surprising in itself, to say the least). And with just 251 people – here’s where it gets crazy – any cover-up could potentially last a whopping 50 years!
You could even argue these results favour a Kazakhstan-type conspiracy scenario over a multinational one. Non-state or semi-state actors, working independently or at least autonomously, capturing the plane for whatever reason. For argument’s sake, 250 people ‘in on the secret’ (quite a large number already). Then add to that, potentially many more who may have worked on the plot unwittingly, not knowing then, never to know afterwards, the true nature of their work. And such a cover-up could last up to a whopping 50 years… 50 long years!!! Or using the lesser number (‘125 people with first-hand knowledge of the plot’), potentially a whole century!!! Absolutely fascinating stuff!
(Sorry to go off-topic… once again)!
The only coverup might be that an muslim country like malaysia is facing heavy difficulties when it comes to the question : “Did one of the two pilots hijacked MH370 for an massmurder suicide run ?”
Historically, muslim countries have heavy difficulties to blame their pilots when massmurder suicide came into play, see Egypt-Air 990 or SilkAir 185.
On this case here, we´re talking about the greatest aviation mystery of all time that shocked the world. It would be better for this muslim country of Malaysia and his national flagship MAS (MAB) when this aircraft will never be found to avoid the investigation to answer the central question here : “Who did it and why ?”
This incident might be way too much for an muslim country like Malaysia to handle that sort of investigation properly. So, the only reasonable behaviour of the government is what we still see nearly 2 years after the incident. The government acts like the 3 wise monkeys from the beginning : Didn´t saw anything, didn´t hear anything, didn´t know anything.
It all might be an religious cultural problem here. At the end it could be also an political problem. This is all way too much for this tiny country like Malaysia.
The best way is to forget what happened and to never tell the public who did it and why. I´m sure, the government know the truth and the truth does not fits to the religion and culture of this country.
So let´s cover all things up.
@all
Yesterday another incident occurred, though not directly related to MH370 and a medical emergency in this case, but a 777 nonetheless.
Flight AA109 scheduled from London Heathrow to LAX turned back to London 2.5 hours into the flight after 6 cabin crew felt light-headed, 1 collapsed, and 3 passengers fell ill. The pilot and cabin crew decided not to land at Reykjavik, Iceland (which was closer).
At Heathrow, luggage was ‘confiscated’ and checked by AA and Heathrow authorities and a specialist team carried out tests for ‘elevated levels of any substances.’ Nothing was found, nor any reason given in the end for removing luggage. One passenger speculated that ‘loss of equilibrium’ is what may have caused some to fall ill.
Quite a bit in the papers and Twitter with this one:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/12126524/London-to-Los-Angeles-flight-turned-back-to-Heathrow-after-mystery-illness.html.
Hmmmm, another oxygen deprivation case? A very similar B777 case happened a few months ago, also out of Heathrow.
Could it be that MH370 had multiple events unfolding after a hacked flight plan or “software glitch” (rearing it’s head again)? Could MH370 been dealing with an oxygen/decompression event on top of a glitch as well? The loitering or meandering (or assessing the situation in the Straits) in the Straits of both, EY440 gets out of it successfully, no so for MH370. Could the difference be the degree of impairment of the MH370 pilots in the Straits and whatever else they were contending with aside from a glitch or hack? The oxygen supposedly was filled or checked for MH370 on March 7th.
I agree replicating an MH370 flight by EY440 makes no sense to me. You would want identical conditions, weather, time of night, time of year, would want same satellite as ALSM suggests, etc.
To what pilot Bailey is suggesting that a rogue Captain Zaharie is the saboteur, to him I have two words, “Mary Schiavo.” “What appears to be terrorism may really be heroism.” I haven’t forgotten that one. I still cannot see the guy forsaking all he owns and family, not to mention never doing the one thing he loves most, flying, over an expected trial outcome, despite the nepotism and the rigged voter flights, etc. It wasn’t the first time that was done to Anwar.
Doubling back over one’s own country isn’t exactly hiding, neither is loitering near airports. The EY440 is troubling to say the least, if MH370 happened it could happen again and it unfortunately is trending to look like it will.
Re: hacked flights: banks struggle to keep up with hackers more than they’d like to admit. It would not surprise me if airlines face similar challenges.
Re: conspiracy math: strict upper bounds on breadth and duration? Not since Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, PhD. have formulas been so out of place.
A conspiracy will hold whenever there exists the requisite morals, means, motive, and opportunity. Period.
Of course a bigger boat is harder to keep from springing a leak. But any numerology one conjures to quantify this is immediately obsolete, because the ability of the public to seek and find leaks is changing rapidly. The skills we need to root out conspiracy (critical thinking, courage) are being inexorably squeezed out of us by a culture increasingly geared to DEPEND on authority.
This week’s example: despite being presented with stone cold proof the Thailand debris was a rocket, many of us waited with bated breath for the official say so before believing their own eyes. That chills me to the BONE.
All it takes is an official claim, and today’s media will sell it.
And today’s public will BUY it.
If, in my zeal to turn over every MH370 stone, I tip over a few sacred cows, I apologize. I seek only to counterbalance what I see as a horrendous global trend.
@oriondt,
I think you have the location of the “rectangular” object a little adrift. The GPS coordinates on the photograph that I have show 32deg 28’S and 97deg 49’E. Photo on 28 March 2014.
By the way, a flaperon is certainly not a true rectangle in plan view.
My question of Brock was . . where would this object have been 20 days earlier.
Jeff – No offense to Katie Connell but the explanation offered is no less bothering than the idea of a hack as pointed out by Victor. So a computer issue sent the plane down the Thai-Malay border? That could start WW3 in plenty of other places and I sincerely doubt this. Accident or interference?
Cheryl – If I get your post correctly then things could have snowballed in that cockpit. If so I agree. Sometimes the crew completely butcher it. Depowering the SDU from the cockpit involves switching off a lot of stuff is my understanding. Had something small become something big?
If Shah intended to double back over his own country and disappear the safest way was with the transponder on, then go dark in the Strait. He had no need to go all the way to Igari. Sure you create some confusion but you spend any tactical advantage by the time you fly all the way back to Malaysia.
The only comparative value with this dodgy replication of MH370 would be to compare radar data but you would need access to it? What if a bunch of pilots thought the radar data was suspect and decided to provide some real stuff? Would a comparison have been performed by the RMAF by now?
@Cheryl, What the failure of the SIO search has done is to rule out scenarios like Mary Schiavo’s. A “hybrid event” such as a hijacking-turned-decompression, while once appealing, no longer holds up if someone had to have been in active control all the way through to the end.
Gysbreght, RetiredF4,
AIP Malaysia, 1.3.5:
“In uncontrolled airspace the pilot-in-command may increase the length of the holding pattern…”
Now, if you recall my technical note on abnormal BFOs (https://www.dropbox.com/s/r551bp495n2juoc/TN-ABFO-Rev1.0.pdf?dl=0),
the heading towards IDKUT would be ~330-340 deg. Should holding be switched “on” at IDKUT, outbound leg’s heading would be at 150-160 deg.
Does this ring the bell or not?
@Brock
“culture increasingly geared to DEPEND on authority”
that was true, but I feel that US gov few years ago told simply that “look, we dont want to pay for all this world policymaking anymore, at least not alone; we have our neighbors here, you have your neighbors there, so take care for yourself too; then we all rich together can help to poor Africa and stop the wars etc.” – this relates mostly to EU, but can be in fact recursively propagated down to countries inside EU, where some things dont work till now; but there is opportunity to reunite at different level
Cheryl “Could MH370 been dealing with an oxygen/decompression event on top of a glitch as well? The loitering or meandering (or assessing the situation in the Straits) in the Straits of both, EY440 gets out of it successfully, no so for MH370. Could the difference be the degree of impairment of the MH370 pilots in the Straits and whatever else they were contending with aside from a glitch or hack?”
In regards to 370, It could have, but we do not know. You would have to explain why SOP of an emergency decent to FL100 wasn’t executed. O2 systems or not, if you have a decompression you need to aviate to the safe zone. ASAP.
There have been instances where decompression has snuck up on pilots because they were unaware of said decompression. Couple that with sensory overload of all hell breaking loose in the cockpit and you could possibly see that happen. I don’t know if the evidence in MH370 supports this scenario though.
Pilots, whilst being well trained, also fail. The amount of aircraft lost in recent years from an aerodynamic stall and not following sop is alarming.
@ Brian Anderson,
Thanks for the coordinates- it was interesting to see that point appear at the extreme corner of SAR activities on 3/28- as well as an apparent focus of SAR activities for the next 2 days before conditions worsened.
To me, it seems a plausible answer to your question would be somewhere in the ‘diamond A’ shape as seen on Fig 6. of the ATSB report 8/18/14. I’ve also overlaid the ‘diamond A’ here:
http://imgur.com/gallery/leEzQcY
From the ATSB report – “A number of items were sighted by aircraft especially from Area A, though most of the sightings were unable to be relocated by surface assets and no debris considered to be from MH370 was recovered.”
To raise another question- what is the likelihood of a flaperon detaching intact from a crash or ditching scenario?
On a side note- after all of this time, it’s very frustrating that there is no apparent conclusion as to the cause of damage to the flaperon. One would think there would be microscopic stress evidence showing whether it fatigued, broke on the rocks, or was gnawed on by a Tiger Shark.
More rocket debris? New story from a few hours ago….
‘Plane debris’ washes up on Malaysian east coast:
http://news.yahoo.com/plane-debris-washes-malaysian-east-coast-135757033–finance.html
@Alex, Thanks for the heads-up. Funny how these things come in clusters. Seems unlikely that it came from MH370, but bears keeping an eye on.
@oriondt: “likelihood of a flaperon detaching intact from a crash or ditching scenario?”
Possible. If the plane had appreciable forward momentum (150-200 knots) upon contact with the water, I can envision the right engine hitting the water, resulting in a tremendous deceleration. This could result in the outboard portion of the wing failing in a forward sweeping motion. This could release the flaperon without too much damage other than that due to the flutter encountered when the plane was without power between engines out and APU start. A contributing factor is the right wing was previously damaged and repaired in the field.
As usual, lots of if’s and could’s . . .
I have plotted the path of EY440 using the ADS-B data recorded by FlightAware. Soon after the departure from HCM, the aircraft diverted and followed the route ANHOA-L637-BIBAN-Kota Baru-Penang-GUNIP-HOLD-Langkawi-B579-Phuket. Note that IGARI was not on this route.
The explanation given by Eithad makes no sense. Even accounting for winds, many extra miles were added to the route by flying so far south. And once past Penang, there was no need to enter Thai airspace unless there was a desire to fly near Langkawi and/or Phuket. The plane could have stayed in Malaysian airspace until it reached reached Indian airspace.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wqpzj963kx6wysn/EY440%20Flight%20Path.png?dl=0
I have tried to determine at what point EY440 on Jan 7 deviated from its typical flight path.
I found that on Jan 11, EY440 departed from RWY25 and followed the standard departure pattern for a flight to the northwest, which would be to turn right and intercept airway R468, which is aligned with radial R294 TSN, and then follow airway R468 to waypoint SAPEN.
On Jan 7, EY440 departed from the same runway, turned right, and was on the same path to intercept R468 as on Jan 11. However, at an altitude of 5000 ft, climbing at 2217 fpm, and just 2m20s after takeoff, the plane veered to the right, creating offset from R468, and then turned to the left, crossing R468 at about a right angle. It then proceeded southwest to waypoint ANHOA and then towards Malaysia.
If I have correctly identified the point at which a new route was followed on Jan 7, the timing of the deviation so close to takeoff seems odd.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lu5ids9wuh07tat/EY440%20Departure.png?dl=0
Byron Bailey again: From The Australian
Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss released the latest Australian Transport Safety Bureau report on the search for Malaysia Airlines MH370 in early December, and the next day a concerned airline captain of 30 years’ jet experience forwarded me the report with the comment: “How could they be so stupid?”
I have since sent the report to four other experienced captains and all expressed a similar view. It took me only a couple of minutes to realise that this report was seriously flawed as it showed ignorance of basic principles of flight.
The ATSB says a “hypoxia/unresponsive flight crew” scenario, in which the pilots were unconscious or dead because of loss of oxygen through decompression or some other event, is the “type” that best suits the evidence of the last leg of the flight south, rather than that of a pilot being in control to the end and performing a controlled ditching.
ATSB chief Martin Dolan says he does not have to worry about what happened on the flight before that point — during which it turned back to Malaysia on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, with no radio contact and with its radar transponder switched off. That is to say, it is fine to ignore the overwhelming evidence that captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah hijacked his own aircraft on March 8, 2014.
The ATSB used Bayesian mathematical modelling to project the most likely flight path of the Boeing 777 after fuel exhaustion and flame out to define the search area. It is important to note that introducing the variable of an input from a conscious pilot renders the modelling invalid.
I tested the ATSB “flame-out theory” in a B777 full flight simulator in Dubai. The results led me to totally disagree with the flight path assumed by the ATSB’s modelling, which used only an engineering simulator.
First, the ATSB states “the right engine flamed out and in each test case the aircraft then turned left and remained in a banked turn”.
That’s strange because, as any experienced multi-engine pilot knows, if the right engine stops, the aircraft will want to turn right because of simple moment of forces. Strange also because when I flamed out an engine in the FFS, the thrust asymmetry compensation via the autopilot kept the aircraft flying straight.
Now comes the flame out of the second engine in which, as the ATSB correctly states, “the autopilot disconnects” before the air-driven generator deploys. It then states they performed a basic trajectory analysis of an uncontrolled “but stable aircraft” for 230km.
What utter rubbish — because jet aircraft are not naturally stable and require either an autopilot or pilot hand flying to keep them in controlled flight.
If the autopilot is disengaged the aircraft would rapidly roll into a spiral dive because the autopilot would have turned the control surfaces to compensate for flying on only one engine. Less than two minutes later, the aircraft would have hit the sea at more than 1000km/h, resulting in masses of debris that would float for months.
So the reality is that even if pilots were unresponsive — that’s to say, dead — the ATSB’s search area projection is flawed.
If MH370 is not found in the next few months and the search is called off, one can hope China will commission the US National Transportation Safety Board and American oceanographer Robert Ballard, who has found a series of underwater wrecks including the Bismarck and Titanic, to start afresh using real experts.
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 time he flew the same model Boeing 777 passenger jet as MH370.
Thank you @victorI for the EY440 flight graphic..
its amazing why they flew all the way to Malaysia when a circling to “recover” couldn’t be done near ANHOA or BIBAN??
@VictorI
CUCHI – SAPEN R468
PENANG – GUNIP G468
Coincidence?
@MH: I agree. It makes no sense.
@Gysbreght: That is interesting, but I don’t see how confusion over the airway could have caused this. Do you have a suggestion?
@All: I updated the departure deviation graphic. There are no material changes other than I centered the path so you can see more of the “standard” path flown on Jan 11. The link is the same.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lu5ids9wuh07tat/EY440%20Departure.png?dl=0
@Gysbreght – and the trip to Penang follows the shortest numbered routes.
@Victor – the right turn looks reasonable if one intended to follow R468. I would argue that the deviation occurred roughly midway between the right and left turns. From a lay perspective it looks like it was flown manually until it crossed the 1/11 path.
@Victor – let me edit my prior comment, looking at the graphic a little differently. It looks like it was flown manually to approach CUCHI and then programmed to follow G468.
No suggestions on how this could have happened but a turn to align with R468 is similar to the first stage of a turn to align with G468 and could have possibly gone unnoticed.
It doesn’t seem to be flying via normal airways in the paths shown.
Hi Jeff, thanks for covering the MH370 story. The exhaustive analysis of the possibilities re the disappearance provided by you and your commenters has left me with the uneasy feeling that some sort of coverup is afoot.
I now feel obliged to consider the possibility that MH370 never actually departed KL. Was the plane insured? If so has the insurer settled the claim?
A few months ago I read as much as I could find about the main suspect, Captain Zaharie, and found the story less that convincing, and the link between him and the Opposition politician seems a bit too convenient.
So, absolutely no proof but in light of how things have unfolded it is now on my list of possibilities.
Thanks again for all your hard work.
@Victor, Gysbreght,
Maybe it wasn’t a software bug but a real bug. Imagine a spider running across the ATC’s screen.
ATC says: EY440 cleared to follow R-(sees spider, exlaims Geeez!)-4-6-8
EY440 hears: EY440 cleared to follow (Arrrgh, must have seen a spider cross his screen) G-4-6-8.
(Tongue in cheak, that was, reminds of the great movie Airplane)
@Moonkoon, Thanks! I think it’s unlikely that MH370 never left KL. The case certainly is a strange one but not that strange! Otherwise I’m in agreement with you.
Jeff,
Agreed. If someone was in control to the end terminus then that hardly seems heroic. Time will tell when the search is officially over. We’re not there just yet. I don’t know, talking pilots, I like Les Abend’s scenario a little more over Mr. Bailey’s.
Matty – Perth,
Yes the “snowball” effect is what I was suggesting with the crew multitasking with whatever. It is hard to imagine tech savvy and methodical Captain Zaharie “butchering” anything technically though. One would think he of all people would follow sop, who knows what one would due under extreme duress though. I would think someone, RMAF, or other entity has performed a comparison flight by now with as many identical conditions as possible. Does anyone out there know?
Well …, yes, I have a theory. But I feel it is too speculative to merit posting.
@JeffWise:
Part 2 is “Comments Closed“
Jeff,
May I suggest to gather all the info on EY440 in a single thread? Now we have triplicated discussions of the same issues.
If Etihad’s update is true, then initial rerouting by computer didn’t account for available fuel, which is software glitch.
Anyhow, their explanation does not explain why EY440 cycled for nearly 1 hour in a busy area, and why standard holding parameters were modified (by pilots or ATC?), and why airspeed was a way higher than the standard of 250 kts.
@Oleksandr, Okay, I see your point — I’ve deleted the new post and folded into this one to keep the discussion in one place.
CORRECTION:
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
Here is the updated graphic:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/plnv70k9i83n7am/EY440%20Flight%20Path%20w%20data.png?dl=0
“If Etihad’s update is true, …”
It probably is, but just like the first statement, it omits the salient parts of the “whole truth”.
I am quite surprised, you haven’t commented on the plane debris found in Terengganu yesterday particularly as it comes on the heels of that discovery in Thailand, which was later dismissed as being unconnected to MH370.
I find the continuous dismissal of such debris puzzling given that the WSJ did report this shortly after the plane vanished:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304732804579427991198487418
I think yesterday’s find when pieced together with the observation by the New Zealander from an offshore rig in the area wherein he reported seeing a burning plane, an observation corroborated by similar eyewitness accounts in Terengganu, all point to the fact that the plane crashed in the Gulf of Thailand shortly after its last exchange with the DCA. Such an event is suggestive of a sudden catastrophic event, most likely a deliberate or accidental missile strike. I say this given an ongoing military exercise in the area during the given timeframe. The discovery in Thailand parallels that of Terengganu and corroborates both the WSJ report and the Kiwi’s observation.
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0V61SY
I suspect that given ramifications of the missile strike, satellite data of obscure pings and sightings by military radar are mere afterthoughts created to hide the real deal as part of a wide ranging conspiracy of both coverup and disinformation. Whatever transpired on the fateful night, I am pretty sure more debris will turn up to consign the across Malaysia dash and the SIO sojourn to the sinbin of the absurd. Thanks for allowing my earlier comments in the thread below. Look forward to your views and those of others on my wholly plausible take.
Jeff,
Thank you; I think it looks a lot better now.
@Wazir Roslan. If it had been shot out of the sky over the Gulf of Thailand, there would have been a ton of debris in the sea, and it would have also washed up over en masse over the surrounding beaches.So it’s highly improbable. With regards to the wayward Etihad flight, I would like to hear the view of an airline pilot who could presumably give an insight into what the heck was going on, or what the heck shouldn’t have been going on.
One last thought; when Air France crashed, the experts gave their view on what might have happened, and after the black boxes were recover it transpired that they had got it spot on. With MH370,I know there is a LOT less evidence, but if we use the same logic and use what we have, what does it tell us? I think it was pilot intervention, and not a hijacking, and definitely not mechanical failure.
@Wazir Roslan: Independent of how MH370 actually disappeared, the reason that the recovered debris was declared not from MH370 is because the parts are not from a B777, or any other aircraft. The Thai debris was positively identified as part of an H-IIB rocket. If you don’t believe this identification, verify it yourself by reading the summary on Gerry Soejatman’s blog. He made his determination using publicly available information.
Those believing it was from MH370 have failed in identifying a specific part of a B777, which is not surprising because the design is not consistent with the design of an aircraft part.
I’ve followed the AF447 saga from day one, and don’t recall any expert who “got it spot on”. Please name the expert who expressed the view that one pilot pulled the airplane into a stall, ignored stall warning, and kept the airplane stalled until impact.
Matty – Perth,
Something you said last night I have been mulling around. You had said referencing Zaharie, “He had no need to go all the way to IGARI.” But yet they did.
Could they have gone to IGARI as instructed still with every intention of going to Beijing (turning right) but made a split-second decision to divert or were diverted at that juncture? We know they diverted but was the intended destination up to IGARI still Beijing?
Remember in the audio recording KLATC is instructing them (MH370) to “cancel SID turn right IGARI.” (I am going from memory did not go back now to look up the exact verbiage used). By SID I assume that means Standard Instrument Departure. Does that instruction by KLATC require the pilots to manually enter anything systematically in FMS or what have you? Could the supposed “glitch” have happened then?
I am probably grasping at straws with this and it is nothing but I just find it odd that IGARI is mentioned in the recording since IGARI is the point of no return in this whole tragedy. And they are specifically told to turn right and they do the exact opposite? Any ideas?
Cheryl, SID doesn’t mean Standard Instrument Departure, SID is another waypoint which was replaced by IGARI. If I remember correctly they were instructed to skip SID and go straight to IGARI. And they did. That’s all. They shortened their route a bit.
Correction, I’m not sure if SID was the skipped waypoint. But the instruction was to skip a waypoint and proceed directly to IGARI. You are probably right that they had to change the flightplan manually in order to skip a waypoint.
The transcript:
“…Climb flight level one eight zero, cancel SID, turn right direct at IGARI 12:42:48…”
Littlefoot,
Hi and great to see you back here!
I looked up ATC jargon and it said SID did mean Standard Instrument Departures. SID, linguistically, does not sound like a waypoint name to me?
Anyway, ok they had to change something manually you say, so does therein lie something in the software is what I am getting at?
@littlefoot, @Cheryl: Right, a Standard Instrument Departure is a routine sequence of waypoints and altitudes that many flights will take as they’re departing in a certain direction. Its purpose is “aircraft separation” — keeping planes from running into one another in the sky. You could think of it as a major highway leading away from the airport. In the case of MH370, it was the middle of the night; by cancelling the SID air-traffic controllers were telling the flight crew, “Don’t bother with the elaborate procedure, just head straight to the edge of our airspace.” The edge of the airspace, btw, is the perfect place to make a plane disappear, if that’s what you’ve got in mind. So it’s not really a coincidence that they were cleared to IGARI, and also disappeared there.
At any rate, perhaps we should consider the possibility that EY440 was also given permission to fly straight to a waypoint, but the crew entered the wrong one. The wrong entry of waypoints into a plane’s flight management system has caused problems in the past, notably in the case of an American Airlines crash in 1995:
“The captain of an American Airlines jet that crashed in Colombia last December entered an incorrect one-letter computer command that sent the plane into a mountain, the airline said Friday. The crash killed all but four of the 163 people aboard. American’s investigators concluded that the captain of the Boeing 757 apparently thought he had entered the coordinates for the intended destination, Cali. But, on most South American aeronautical charts, the one-letter code for Cali is the same as the one for Bogota, 132 miles in the opposite direction, even though the codes for the two cities are different in most computer databases.
The coordinates entered for Bogota directed the plane toward the mountain…” http://articles.latimes.com/1996-08-24/news/mn-37195_1_american-airlines
Cheryl – Not sure, but many have built a case they believe is watertight, one where Shah planned to divert the plane at IGARI for stealth purposes by exploiting the moments of confusion between the two ATC’s. And it would work if IGARI wasn’t nearly an hour away from where he had to then go. By the time you make it back to the Malaysian coast the flare has gone up? I’d do it sooner rather than later, like just as quickly as you could manage to be alone in the cockpit which is do-able for the Capt. He could have been across Malaysia before anyone did too much, and nowhere near Thailand. There is no way on earth the RMAF will shoot down an MAS-777 at 35,000ft and he would have known it, and as we all know they didn’t even bother. There is also no way he can cover his tracks completely, and he would have known it. All part of an expertly conceived plan many say? Actually it doesn’t make great sense at all – to me. If I was going to do a runner I would get it on sooner. Even by leaving the transponder on ensures your safe passage back across the peninsular – then go dark if you want. I don’t see IGARI as integral to any great plan. To me it’s just another oddity.
It is however the likely first opportunity for the co-pilot to get hold of it? So is IGARI about stealth or opportunity? Or is it about some other aviation malady? The stealth bit doesn’t stack up for me.
Cheryl, you’re right: SID isn’t a waypoint and Jeff explained it correctly. My confusion stemmed from the BBC report, where they apparently made the same mistake. The waypoint nomenclature was confusing in the early days. But they had indeed an additional waypoint in their original flighplan which they left out by proceeding directly to IGARI. I remember seeing the original flightplan somewhere. And this change had to be made from the cockpit.
Cheryl, I doubt that in the case of mh370 an involuntary glitch was introduced when they made the slight change directly to IGARI. They got to IGARI correctly after all. Also, the loss of all communication can’t be explained by a slight change of the flightplan.
@littlefoot,
This is the procedure for standard departure from KL on runway 32R that may help visualise a SID.
After take-off proceed on TR 341°
until 11 NM VKL DME, then follow
the assigned SID. (VKL is the VOR DME navigation aid for KL)
The SID is designated as PIBOS 1C which reads:
Turn right (IAS MAX 250KT) on TR 050° until joining RDL 027 VKL VOR (TR 027°) bound to PIBOS. (PIBOS is the waypoint).
OZ