Blaine Alan Gibson, a 58-year old lawyer who lives in Seattle, Washington, has spent much of the past year traveling around the Indian Ocean region trying to solve the mystery what happened to Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. He’s been to the Maldives to talk to villagers who say they saw a large plane fly low overhead the day after the disappearance; visited Réunion Island to interview the local who found the flaperon from MH370; and met with Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss to discuss the ongoing seabed search. He has no professional background in aircraft accident investigation or journalism, and no professional accreditation. He is simply motivated by the desire to know what happened to the airliner. “I do not have a theory,” he emailed me last September. “I am just looking for evidence that may have been prematurely dismissed.”
Last week, Gibson found himself in Mozambique searching for debris on local beaches. On February 27, he says, he hired a boat captain to take him someplace where flotsam from the ocean tended to wash up. The captain chose a sandbar called Paluma a half-dozen miles from the coastal town of Vilankulos. They arrived at around 7 a.m., and after about 20 minutes on the flat, low stretch of sand the boat captain spotted something unusual and handed it to Gibson.
The next morning, Gibson emailed me a description of the object:
The debris appears to be made of a fiberglass composite and has aluminum honeycomb inside. NO STEP is written on one side. It appears to be from an aircraft wing … The piece is torn and broken into a triangular shape, 94 cm long at the base and 60 cm high. The remaining highlock pin has a 10 mm diameter head. The pin itself is about 12 mm long. The bolt holes are spaced about 30 mm apart from center to center of hole. The distance from the edge of the hole with the pin to the intact edge is about 8 mm. At the bottom of the intact edge there is a very thin (1 to 2 mm thick) strip of dried rubber remaining that runs about 30 mm along the edge before it was broken off. The intact edge is only 65 mm long. All the rest is broken.
In a video that Gibson posted to a closed-access Facebook page, the fragment looks quite light and insubstantial, easy enough for one man to pick up and wave around — unlike the flaperon found on Réunion, which required several people to lift. Gibson asked me to keep his find a secret, explaining, “It is too large and metallic to be easily taken out of the country, and needs to have its provenance documented. The procedure with other possible debris discoveries in La Réunion, Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia has been to report it to local authorities first. Then the responsible international investigators can come to inspect.”
On Tuesday, Gibson bundled up the piece in cardboard and flew with it to Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, to turn it over to the authorities. Wednesday morning, news articles about the discovery appeared on CNN, the BBC, NBC, and elsewhere. According to these accounts, experts believe that the piece could be part of the composite skin from the horizontal stabilizer – that is, one of the miniature “wings” on either side of the tail — of a 777. And, of course, no other 777 has been lost in the Indian Ocean except for MH370.
On Wednesday afternoon, I managed to reach Gibson by phone in Maputo. He sounded tired but elated, having just gotten off a live interview on Richard Quest’s show on CNN. “I did not expect that this would all hit this early and so fast,” he said. He told me that he and the Australian consul had met earlier that day with the head of civil aviation in Mozambique, who promised that he would do the proper paperwork and then turn the piece over to the Australian Transportation Safety Board, who are overseeing the search for MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean. “It’s in very good hands,” he said.
When he first held the piece, he told me, his immediate reaction was that it was so light and thin, that it was probably from some light aircraft or small plane — “but maybe it’s from MH370.” Only when back on dry land and able to consult with other MH370 researchers did he realize that the lettering looks identical to the “NO STEP” warnings on the wings of 777s, and the alphanumerical code on the head of a rivet indicates that it’s a fastener used in the aerospace industry.
To verify that the part could indeed have floated its way naturally to the beach, he had put it in the ocean and photographed it floating “just absolutely flat as a pancake” at the surface. He was struck by the absence of marine life. “There were a few little things that looked like a little bit of algae or calcification that may have come from something that tried to attach there,” he says. “But the top surface with NO STEP on it was very smooth, and the bottom was a little rougher but still pretty smooth.”
He knows that sounds odd: after two years in the ocean, a piece of floating debris should be encrusted with growth. But having spent the last year steeped in the oddness of the case, he’s learned to expect the unexpected. “I’m open to anything,” he says. Even the timing of the discovery was eyebrow-raising: Just a few days before the second anniversary of the MH370’s disappearance.
The yearlong plunge into the case is just the latest rabbit hole for the California-bred Gibson, who is fluent in six languages. In the past he has traveled to remote Siberia to investigate the Tunguska meteor, to Central America to figure out why the Maya disappeared, and to Ethiopia in search of the Lost Ark. So he knows not only about unraveling weird mysteries, but also the skepticism that such efforts can engender. “I can tell you this about that piece: it is absolutely authentically there,” he says. “There is no way that that was planted there by any shenanigans. I rode with those guys on the boat there, and they didn’t carry anything there. It was a completely natural find. It was just freak luck or destiny, whatever you want to call it.”
This piece originally appeared on the New York magazine web site on March 3, 2016.
@Olexandr, I’m familiar with all the facts you cite. And I’m find them as bizarre and puzzling as most people here. But so far I’m unable to make any sense of them. I fail to see how this piece – if authentic – will help the next of kin to establish any claims before the deadline. There are many other possibilities why and how this piece was found now. I guess a pattern will establish itself eventually.
@Oleksandr: is your theory that MH370 looped or landed…undetected…near Sumatra, then, or that it followed an explicably slow and curved path which set down BTO arcs which perfectly match…by total fluke…those which would have been generated by a straight path at cruising speed (the curvature precisely cancelling out the slowness)?
If you trust the 18:22 primary radar, the BTO arcs, and the 18:40 BFO indication, it has to be one or the other to impact north of 30 degrees south latitude.
@Jeff: if the piece appears planted, your last question to @Dennis is germane – whether it actually came from MH370 or not.
(I’m not arguing it was planted.)
Littlefoot,
According to ChannelNewsAsia, MAS and Malay government already declared that they are not liable for what has happened to mh370. What legal claims can be made by next-of-kin against MAS in this situation? Keep in mind they must submit their claims before March 8, 2016. And also keep in mind that the only evidence (flaperon) is kept by Malay government, which owned MAS.
Does this explain strange delay in French report on the flaperon analysis? Does this explain how another piece of evidence can help in a legal battle? Does this explain why Blaine handed over this piece to Australia, while local authorities were supposed to forward it to Malaysia? Does this explain why he initially asked for secrecy? Does this explain why Blaine did not call experts when he made his discovery?
Where is Dennis with his citations of Sherlock Holmes?
Bugsy,
A professional lawyer finds potential evidence of the crash a week before deadline for the submission of claims against MAS. By a chance? Maybe. But why did he ask for secrecy if this discovery was made by a chance?
@Brock
I think it is a (common) misunderstanding that the slower paths are necessarily curved. They could be composed of a small number of straight segments. The data is too sparse to distinguish.
I agree that the coincidence with a straight path at normal cruise speed remains striking.
Brock,
The latter. There is a number of studies, including mine, which showed that it is possible to fit BTO/BFO data under relatively simple ‘mechanical’ assumptions with regard to flight mode. The problem, however, is that none of these modes appear to be “practically possible” due to sophisticated electronics and tripled hardware redundancy. Can hardware/software fail despite “triple redundancy”? I think yes.
@Oleksandr
Per my previous comments, I am as suspicious of the timing and provenance of this Mozambique discovery as anyone, but I can’t follow your line of thought. Can you explain the following:
1) How does finding another piece of MH370 impact (positively or negatively) the NOK filing lawsuits before the deadline?
2) As for the request for confidentiality, is it really surprising that a person would want some confirmation that he had discovered a actual jet aircraft fragment before subjecting themselves to international scrutiny (and potential ridicule)?
@Brock:
“BTO arcs which perfectly match…by total fluke…those which would have been generated by a straight path at cruising speed”
You make it sound as if that were the first coincidence in this mystery.
@Brock
It is really not difficult to arrive North of 30S if you assume a piloted flight mode. Somewhat more difficult without a piloted mode, but RetiredF4 shed light on the latter possibility recently. The problem with a piloted scenario is explaining why the pilot allowed the aircraft to run out of fuel when:
A> the fuel remaining instrumentation was accurate to a precent or less (per Don’s revelation)
B> the pilot was not suicidal. If suicide was intended it would have been far easier to dump the plane in the South China Sea and be done with it.
Your collection of drift studies shows that a terminus North of 30S is strongly favored by the location of the flaperon finding. I simply cannot find any logic or causality that would support that flight path without invoking some sort of unplanned chain of events occurring on board the aircraft.
@ DennisW – symbolism…grasshopper…pure, and simple unadulterated symbolism…the PIC was not a cold blooded mechanical robot… a legacy needed to be left behind…so as not to be regarded as a “killer”..a “murderer”…more as a man with a mission, and that my dear friend, we can understand, and whats more we can live with.
@Brock
“@Oleksandr: is your theory that MH370 looped or landed…undetected…near Sumatra, then, or that it followed an explicably slow and curved path which set down BTO arcs which perfectly match…by total fluke…those which would have been generated by a straight path at cruising speed (the curvature precisely cancelling out the slowness)?”
I acknowledge the probability is low but it’s not that low as people think it is, especially if only slight altitude changes are applied .
@DennisW
“unplanned chain of events occurring on board the aircraft.”
yupp, if I got that right you can turn off basically anything from E/E bay except basic flight controls, so someone at 18:25 could try to distract the pilot or get the door open by fiddling with C/Bs, accidentally turning off FMS computer navigation etc.
PIC stays only with basic flight controls and analogue compass, flies along the coast of Sumatra trying to visually spot the CI but misses it and ditches.
(just one of a million possible scenarios, I don’t claim it’s what happened of course)
@StevanG
Could be something like that. I still like that general flight path a lot.
@Neils: sounds like we agree that there is no path construction that doesn’t leave a big coincidence unexplained.
@Gysbreght: re: “not the first coincidence”: you, my friend, are preaching to the choir.
@Dennis: re: “difficulty” of impacting further NE (which I take to refer to BTO/BFO error tolerances): yes, you can get the mathematics to fit as tightly as you please – but only by assuming a combination of unconventional flight speeds/direction changes which happen by fluke to cancel each other out, and replicate the BTOs of a conventional straight path at cruising speed. This fluke haunts your scenario whether it includes a pilot or not.
Sounds like you still lean toward viewing the large gap between [where the SSWG remains determined to search] and [where flaperon drift studies suggest searching] as merely yet another instance of outsiders being well ahead of bumbling insiders. It is your right to so lean. If this were the only glaring error, I would lean that way, too.
But the flying public can’t afford to ASSUME this is true; we must audit the SSWG, and VERIFY that this is true.
PhilD:
>1) How does finding another piece of MH370 impact (positively or negatively) the NOK filing lawsuits before the deadline?
If the flaperon analysis concludes that it is indeed from B777, but nothing can be said with regard to its relevance to 9M-MRO, NOK will be left with no physical evidence at all. In this case any court will likely stand at MAS side. If the “Mozambique debris” was already analysed and confirmed to be from 9M-MRO, NOK can safely submit their claims, knowing that these will not be rejected due to the lack of evidence. And as long as the analysis is to be conducted in Australia, Malaysia and France will have little to no influence on the outcome. Furthermore, from now French and Malaysia authorities will have to cooperate with Australians.
>2) As for the request for confidentiality, is it really surprising that a person would want some confirmation that he had discovered a actual jet aircraft fragment before subjecting themselves to international scrutiny (and potential ridicule)?
Is it question or answer? I can imagine that photographs were sent to a number of experts, but I can’t find a sounding reason to justify the attribute “confidential”. Ridicule for what? Has anyone ridiculed Thai, when the recently found fragment turned out to be from a Japanese rocket? The photographs were posted virtually immediately. In contrast, in case of “Mozambique fragment” we had suggestion by the media that it is skin of stabiliser, and only one or two days later some actual images emerged.
@Brock
Yes, the farther North a flight path goes the more tweaking of speed and heading is required for BTO/BFO constraints to be met. However, the tweaks are certainly not in the “outrageous” category. The DTSG report raises some issues relative to BFO accuracy that are pretty much swept under the rug with a rather lame attempt at an explanation. In my view it is drift in the oscillator chain plain and simple. Constructing flight paths that exhibit sub-Hertz BFO matching is the mantra around here, and I believe it is not warranted or supported by the physics.
The rather casual treatment of the flaperon finding relative to the primary search area is definitely a point of annoyance for me as well.
Coincidently Mozambique does not have Malaysian embassy or even consulate. But it has Australian consulate…in Maputo indeed.
StevanG,
Re “if it crashed a bit northern up the arc (as some of us think), you don’t get any debris on australian coast according to drift models”
So you are sure that the towelette with MAS logo has nothing to do with MH370? Even if its location is consistent with 25-35S drift models?
@Olexandr, the flaperon already HAS been confirmed to have been part of 9M-MRO. No guesswork there. So, we know, there is some physical evidence out there – unfortunately we just don’t know what exactly the flaperon has to tell us. But I don’t think the delay of the French report has any impact on the deadline when the claims have to be submitted.
Blaine’s piece of debris on the other hand may well have been part of a B777, but it’s so small and rudimentary that it may never be possible to link it positively to 9M-MRO. Strange as it is, it could have come from another B777. If we consider a plant because of the relatively pristine condition and the peculiarities surrounding it’s discovery then it’s not out of the question that someone used a piece from another B777. Also a report – if there ever will be a conclusive report – on this piece will come out even later than the report on the flaperon. Therefore I can’t see how this iffy piece of Mozambique debris can be of any help in the impending deadline and a future law suit.
The suspicious timing can be related to other dates than the deadline. The impending second-anniversary FI or Florence de Changy’s book which will hit the stands on March 9, 2016, come to mind. Both might contain uncomfortable information which needed some counter-action and a re-affirmation of the SIO scenario in the public mind. Since most journalist don’t report the details of the Mozambique discovery and a majority of readers who aren’t as well versed with the details surrounding mh370 as our geeky community rejects the idea of a plant, the discovery of the debris might indeed do the trick and re-affirm the SIO scenario. Which was indeed in need of rescue after Martin Dolan gave up the ghost ship scenario.
And if the latest CNN reports are true, the piece of debris will go to Malaysia – and not to Australia, contrary to Blaine’s explicit wishes. But I guess, the ICAO rules trump Blaine’s personal preferences.
Between 18:39:55 and 18:40:56 we have 84 C-channel BFO measurements, all between 86 and 90 Hz, standard deviation 1.26 Hz, no sign of any drift. You don’t need “sub-Hertz BFO matching” to conclude that the airplane was travelling at about 450 kt groundspeed on a near-southern heading at that time.
@Gysbreght
An oscillator exhibits drift (due to aging and temperature variations) over much longer time periods. You will not get much drift from any oscillator over a one minute measurement interval.
@Gysbreght
In a loitering scenario it could as well be descending at a near constant rate around 18:40 and continue in a roughly westerly direction, couldn’t it?
@Neils,
It is impossible to infer speed and heading from any single measurement of BFO. If you allow altitude variations all bets are off.
@Gsybreght
Take a long a Figure 5.4 from “Bayesian Methods…”to get a representative estimate of the oscillator drift that should be expected over time. It is very close to what I estimated a long time ago (~5Hz +/-) in discussions with Mike E.
@DennisW Please have a look at the graph at the bottom of:
http://www.science4u.org/satcom-based-path-modelling.html
These are all velocity vectors related to single BFO values…
I agree we don’t know much anymore concerning velocity if we allow for altitude variations. But an aircraft is not a car. It can move up and down 😉
Hi All,
The potential arrival of more debris in the East African region is triggering interest once more in the currents and drift patterns in the SIO. To sense check the concept that debris could drift from the current search area to these regions I did a little research of my own, the premise being that the observed behaviour of real floating objects (and I am considering of course the buoys of the Global Drifter Program) should be a useful indicator of possible drift pathways, as a counterpoint to cell-based drift simulation models (which may be calibrated to high level drifter behaviour but typically lack the resolution to reproduce drifter movement in detail).
I am currently writing this up, but will be away travelling for a while so thought I’d share a few early observations briefly here.
The full drifter database contains meta-data and trajectories for almost 19800 buoys worldwide (some 1400 are currently active). The meta-data includes timing of drogue loss, and a ‘death’ code to categorise the end of life status of buoys that cease transmitting. It is clear from this that drogues are typically lost in a surprisingly short timeframe. It is also notable that only 20% of all the buoys have ended their lives by running aground, with 66% simply ceasing transmission for undocumented reasons.
I have filtered on buoys that have at any time in their lives passed through the locality of the current search zone, based on a rectangle bounded by longitudes 88 to 96 degrees and latitudes -32 to -39 degrees. None were present in this area at the time of the crash, but I consider in any case all buoys that have ever been in this location (dates range from 1995 to 2014). There are 177 in this category. Of these, 39 are listed as having subsequently run aground. The locations at which they washed up are shown in the plot below (please add http: to the links for pictures) :
//tinypic.com/m/jg1tmu/4
Of the 39, 31 beached on East African coastlines, only 7 in Western Australia, and 1 in Sumatra. An example of 3 randomly chosen trajectories from the 31 that drifted west are shown below together with the box defining search locality :
//tinypic.com/m/jg1tma/4
The average time for buoys to reach their western beaching point after leaving the search box is 534 days (~ 18 months) with minimum 234 days (~ 8 months) and maximum 1263 days (~ 42 months). All but 3 were un-drogued during this journey, and those 3 lost their drogues en-route. For those arriving in Western Australia, the average time to beach was 362 days, with minimum 79 days and maximum 513 days.
If we relax the criterion that the buoys must end by running aground, and simply look at the locations where they eventually stopped transmitting after leaving the search area, we see the following three plots which display the 54 buoys that ended up west of longitude 55 deg (the longitude of Reunion Island), the 12 that ended east of longitude 109 deg (coast of Western Australia), and the 111 that remained in between :
//tinypic.com/m/jg1to6/4
//tinypic.com/m/jg1ttd/4
//tinypic.com/m/jg1v6s/4
Clearly the transport qualities of the ocean currents and weather systems will vary from month to month and year to year. It is also not clear how representative the buoys would be of the drift characteristics of floating debris resulting from a crashed aircraft. Neverthless I believe it is reasonable to propose from the buoy behaviour noted above across a 20 year drifting history that :
i) there is a strong tendency for objects that have been present in the current search area to remain trapped in the mid ocean gyre over extended periods
ii) a proportion, perhaps as high as 10% of robustly floating debris, might be expected to make landfall within 18 months of the crash
iii) the vast majority of the debris making landfall is likely to do so across the coastlines and islands of eastern Africa, with relatively little beaching in Australia.
For what it is worth, I have more background and analysis in a write-up that I hope to post soon.
Please also note that a vastly more expert analysis of drifter behaviour has been performed in October last year by David Griffin of CSIRO, in which he uses composite drifter trajectories to infer a likelihood function for where the MH370 flaperon may have originated. This is well worth a read :
//www.marine.csiro.au/~griffin/MH370/
@Neils
Back when I was bored with Maldive’s theories I did a backup of Brian Anderson’s speed derivation at 19:40 using a different method than Brian’s. I concluded that the plane was heading generally South at that time at around 450knts.
I never did much playing around with data before 19:40 since I was unable to make any progress on the radar graphics.
http://tmex1.blogspot.com/2015/09/mid-flight-speed-mh370-mid-flight-speed.html
Different links to images in case the above don’t work…
//i65.tinypic.com/2qwomqc.jpg
//i64.tinypic.com/okna85.jpg
//i67.tinypic.com/dh67er.jpg
//i65.tinypic.com/w6xftz.jpg
//i63.tinypic.com/24m6kg8.jpg
Every time a new piece is found which conforms to drift patterns, it’s a deflating feeling; I suppose a blow to more complicated and interesting scenarios (no disrespect to PAX).
Wazir Roslan, I liked your posts. You made a very compelling case, though 2 years on a missile strike followed by a cover-up has become quite a mundane theory (for me at least). Your link also made me smile – that photoshopped Iranian and the Chinese Martyrs who no-one bought!
Oleksandr – you are right to question the whole timing of it, quite a coincidence!
(Matty – your earlier posts about creeping the Iranian influence in Malaysia were also extremely insightful).
I don’t doubt Blaine’s integrity. He’s toured the Indian Ocean off his own back in search of answers. He interviewed folk in remote parts of the Maldives even when Male looked down their noses at them. He’s been willing to go places without any preconceived ideas.
That’s not to say no-one got wind of Blaine’s plans. With all due respect, its Mozambique, not Sweden. Drop an Easter egg, tell a few boatmen where to show up, and voila! Blaine’s happy, the boatman’s happy, the spoofers are happy…
Btw – this is the best thing I could find to a close-up of a (generic) 777 horizontal stabilizer in case anyone still needs it. The ‘no step’ is written 9x around each one, as far I can tell (pic allows you to zoom in once):
http://s11.postimg.org/7ko677u2r/777_HS.jpg
@DennisW
Interesting! I’ve checked my v_z at 1941 it is 211 m/s, pretty close to your 210 m/s! (Now let’s hope it was in level flight at that time)
I found a big difference: I’m much interested in the Maldives stories. Authorities have made it an inextricable part of the MH370 mystery with their lies and turns. A Malaysian official even managed to go almost unnoticed with the statement that “most of the debris found in the Maldives is not from MH370”
As @Sajid UK said .. No reason to doubt Blaine Gibson’s integrity. It seems he was setup with B777 placed junk for trying too hard investigating mh370’s disappearance.
@Niels: re: “MOST of the debris found in the Maldives”: I’m glad I’m not the only one who paused on that phrasing.
Littlefoot,
Re: “the flaperon already HAS been confirmed to have been part of 9M-MRO.”
Have you seen any official/formal/legal report, where this would be explicitly stated? Perhaps I am outdated, but the last formulations were rather soft, e.g. “likely” etc. And the visit of the French judge to Malaysia also fits into this “ugly show”: I guess they needed to agree on legal formulations. In other words “likely guilty” is not “guilty”.
Re: “I don’t think the delay of the French report has any impact on the deadline when the claims have to be submitted.”
Exactly. So how can claims use the flaperon as the evidence of 9M-MRO destruction/crash?
Re: “The suspicious timing can be related to other dates than the deadline.”
That was my first or even second thought.
Re: “Which was indeed in need of rescue after Martin Dolan gave up the ghost ship scenario.”
Interesting idea. So Australians also interested in this fragment. And that perhaps explains why Blaine met with Australians, and how he was able to arrange meeting with Australian consul in Mozambique so quickly.
Re: “And if the latest CNN reports are true, the piece of debris will go to Malaysia – and not to Australia”.
Initially they said so. Then latest what I read was that the fragment was on the way to Australia. Furthermore, if Blaine’s intent was to send the fragment by diplomatic post (read his response to Jeff), Malaysians have no time to intervene as there is no Malaysian diplomatic mission to Mozambique.
M Pat,
You gave us some more homework.
Victor,
Any luck with obtaining initial photographs of the “Mozambique fragment” on sand prior Blaine removed it? Preferably with Flamingoes in background. This would help to dismiss my bizarre speculations.
IR907,
“Johny Begue found a new object, close to the “beach” where he’ve found the flaperon in july.”
Do you have a link to the whole story/report?
https://t.co/Te7LNhP3i1
I am surprised the new piece of debris from Reunion didn’t make bigger news. It looks very much like from the fuselage with the blue cheat-line. It’s got the honeycomb filling too.
The lighter blue doesn’t match the 9M-MR0 blue. But after 2 years in the SIO with salt and sun … ?
@louis. Yes, it is a lighter blue, but so to is the grey, which could mean it got faded by the elements. 777 fuselage is aluminium, does this look like aluminium?
It could be a piece of the radome. Unlikely to be from the skin of the pressurized part of the fuselage.
It looks to be composite…more than one layer..see underneath photo….vertical stabiliser…?
https://t.co/J1rTT4Tm5N
@Jinow. Vertical stabiliser is white and Gysbreght says it’s not fuselage, so it don’t look good.
The vertical stabilizer is painted white, not grey.
@Olexandr, I’m afraid to say you’re outdated indeed as far as the flaperon is concerned. I suggest you look into Jeff’s archives. On Septemper 3, 2015, Florence de Changy provided for Jeff the original text of the French prosecutor who announced that they had finally succeeded to trace back the flaperon to 9M-MRO. We can of course choose to believe that the French authorities are lying or that Boeing subcontractors are lying. But in this case Occam’s razor seems to be in favor of the flaperon being indeed from the missing plane – which doesn’t say anything about the means of the arrival on La Reunion or the authenticity of the drift from the crashsite. Jeff has published a few pieces on this dicey subject.
But legally the flaperon is the only material piece of evidence in the case. This cannot be said with any certainty so far about the newly discovered pieces.
Olexandr, I fully share your suspicions concerning the new debris. I just don’t think the connection with the deadline and the legal argument holds water.
@Ed,
You’re misquoting me. The radome is the nose of the fuselage, unpressurized, in front of the front pressure bulkhead, enclosing the weather radar antenna.
@Oleksandr
“So you are sure that the towelette with MAS logo has nothing to do with MH370? Even if its location is consistent with 25-35S drift models?”
I’m not, however if a towelette managed to escape the plane there would be a lot of other stuff floating and washing ashore on nearby beaches.
@Gysbreght ..yes I see what you mean….though on my device one of the picture looks white…faded in water?
As said this piece hasn’t made headlines at all..wonder why.
Here’s a picture of the fuselage nose:
https://truthernews.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/mh-370.jpg
Didn’t want to comment but couldn’t resist…….
@Sajid Uk, thanks bro but that was the best fit narrative mundane though it may be. Sometimes the too prosaically obvious is also the most boring for many a heart hankering for the outlandish
Admittedly though, apart from the missile thingy, i did model the other more flight of fancy stuff by imputing fuel burn from IGARI to Penang into the equation . However I found the estimated residual fuel post IGARI Penang would be too insufficient to place the plane anywhere remotely near the SIO patch currently being intensively searched. For whatever it’s worth, my calculations place its final resting spot slightly north east of Exmouth which probably explains why OZ radar didnt pick it up.
And mind you that speculative exercise of mine did involve violating BTO/BFO values. Granted the DTSG uses fuel availability as a key determinant in predicting the distribution probability of the final resting place, it nevertheless ignores an important fact that fuel burn would have occurred extensively during the purported mad dash across the peninsular. I mean if we accept the notion it did dash across then we must be prepared to accept that it must have been a pretty fast one designed to evade RMAF pursuers from either Gong Kedak Terengganu or Butterworth Penang . So whoever was at the control would not have embarked on leisurely joy flight across before his sojourn to SIO.
It’s the fuel thingy that in my opinion compromises the whole across Malaysia dash. But if it ever happened , unlikely though as it may be, a strike at an unidentified intruder before it reached down under could also be plausible if consent was given by another sovereign which in turn would probably also explain JORN’s deafening silence.
Maybe I am being off the kilter here but who knows the pieces we are finding in strange places are coming from the debris pile trawled from the Gulf of Thailand or very unlikely from the North Indian Ocean splitting South Java from north western Australia .
Whatever may be or wherever it may lie, I pray the families of those gone come to terms with their loss and find closure even if it is not the closure they seek or imagined.
Some facts about JORN
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jindalee_Operational_Radar_Network