Earlier this morning a South African radio station posted a story about a local family that found a piece of aircraft debris while on vacation in Mozambique in December.
18-year-old Liam Lotter has told East Coast Radio Newswatch while they were on holiday in Inhambane in December – he and his cousin came across what he describes as the “shiny object” while walking on the beach. They brought it back to KwaZulu-Natal. Lotter says it was only after seeing news reports last week about another piece of debris found on a sandbank off Mozambique that his family saw a possible link. Liam’s mother Candace Lotter has since been in contact with South African and Australian authorities.
The story included a couple of pictures:
UPDATE: On Friday, March 11 Reuters published more photos:
Here’s an image that provides a sense of scale:
The code “676EB” in the top photograph refers to an access panel hatch in the right-hand outboard flap of a 777. The images below show the equivalent structures on the left-hand side.
Given that no other 777 has gone missing at sea, and that the Réunion flaperon has been conclusively identified as coming from the missing flight, then it’s very hard to imagine that this part didn’t come MH370.
Given that after nearly two years only a single piece of debris had heretofore been found, it’s extraordinary that in the span of less than two weeks three pieces of possible MH370 debris have come to light.
First, of course, was the piece found by Blaine Alan Gibson on a Mozambique sand bar in late February:
Followed a few days later by reports that Johnny Begue, who found the flaperon later linked to MH370 in July of 2015, had found what might be another part of the plane:
One striking feature of these three latest finds, that many people have commented on, is the striking absence of barnacles, algae, or other forms of sea life. That’s in striking contrast to the flaperon:
Some have suggested that the pieces might have been grazed clean by crabs after making landfall, or scoured clean by the action of waves and sand. According to IB Times, one Mozambique official believes that Blaine’s piece probably did not come from MH370 for this reason:
Abreu was also quoted Friday by state news agency AIM, saying that any claim that the debris belonged to the missing Flight MH370 was “premature” and “speculative,” according to All Africa. He also expressed doubts that the debris may not be from the missing Boeing 777 as the object was too clean to have been in the ocean for the past two years. However, he reportedly said that “no aircraft which has overflown Mozambican airspace has reported losing a panel of this nature,” First Post reported, citing AIM.
Hopefully a thorough investigation by the authorities will clarify the issue.
Worth noting that the second Mozambique piece was found 125 miles south of the first one, while both of the Réunion pieces were found on the same beach.
@Ken this witness is far more creditable as it fits into http://m.phuketgazette.net/phuket-news/I-thought-saw-MH370-fire-says-Phuket/29654 path.
@VictorI – Perhaps after taking the floating pix of the “NO STEP” part, Blaine separated the sheets to expose the honeycomb? Doing so would allow water to access the air chambers allowing the piece to sink. In other words, the honeycomb was sealed when he first found the piece but it wouldn’t float after separating the sheets.
@sk999 – Would you be able to generate fuel burn rates for each altitude and weight in your “How Slow Could It Go” table? If so, we could compare these values with the actual burn rate and determine a minimum speed.
Notice that clams and barnacle need thickness and angles (or the shell of another) to harness to. None are attached to the flat surfaces of the flaperon (vertical AND horizontal) this might explain very simply why there aren’t any on the other parts.
Jeff, AM2,
The surface current pattern in the Mozambique Channel is generally southward, but it can feature numerous eddies, resulting in temporal localised northward currents. Given that it is more likely that the fragments entered from the northern boundary, and the fragment discovered by Blaine landed first.
Now, if you compare with the figures in Brock’s study, both Deltares and IPRC were capable to reproduce arrival of all the fragments (Deltares origin 32S). Furthermore, towelette at the Australian coast also fits into these two models.
@Lauren: I don’t think it is likely that Mr. Gibson pried the skin off the honeycomb core after the buoyancy test. For one, if the seal was good, it would have been difficult to pry the skin away from the honeycomb without damaging the skin. Secondly, as a lawyer, he would understand the importance of preserving the evidence.
I wanted to ask Mr. Gibson many questions about the circumstances of the find, including who might have been aware of his travel plans and his method of making arrangements for the boat expedition. Unfortunately, after I began posting on this blog about his find and raising questions, he chose to block me on Facebook, and then @h1ppyg1rl removed me from the Facebook group where his evidence was first disclosed. It was their right to do this, and I am not complaining. (In fact, as it was my only Facebook activity, I can now once again proudly proclaim that I don’t use Facebook!) However, as the record shows, although the timing, circumstances, and condition of the part lead me to question whether there was human intervention, I never accused Blaine of malice. On the contrary, I said he impressed me as sincere.
We need to question all the evidence (not just the recently found debris) surrounding the disappearance of MH370. It is naïve to think that we can simply wait for the officials that have custody of the evidence to make their determination because we have seen that the official statements have been either late, non-existent, ambiguous, or false. (We need only look at the investigation of the flaperon as proof. I could list many other examples.) Others and I expressed strong concern that Malaysia might intervene and take custody of Mr. Gibson’s evidence rather than delivering the part directly to Australia. Unfortunately, this is exactly what occurred.
Jeff’s blog is a good place for a critique of the evidence to occur and for new ideas and possibilities to be presented and tested. For instance, I raised questions about the floatability of the part and sought input from others. The fact that this discussion occurred here is a virtue of this blog, and not a failing, as some believe.
@Olexandr, now that more debris seems to have turned up – did you start to believe in Blaine’s story?
Perhaps this was already discussed:
if both flight director switches are OFF, the autopilot engages in:
• heading hold (HDG HOLD) or track hold (TRK HOLD) as the roll
mode, or if bank angle is greater than five degrees, attitude hold (ATT)
• vertical speed (V/S) or flight path angle (FPA) as the pitch mode.
HDG HOLD and TRK HOLD were discussed in details. ATT HOLD for bank angle >5° was recently mentioned by Gysbreght in a slightly different context. The existence of V/S mode was recently mentioned by Victor. I can’t recall I ever seen discussions of FPA mode.
With regard to V/S and FPA modes, does anybody know what is “vertical direction”: geocentric or geodetic?
http://www.smartcockpit.com/docs/B777-Automatic_Flight.pdf
Littlefoot,
“did you start to believe in Blaine’s story?”
No.
About “forward” drift studies:
The IPRC study as well as Richard’s study (see duncansteel.com) are interesting, but in my understanding mainly show that pieces could have landed where they did assuming a certain crash location (35S and 37S resp.). I’m wondering how wide is the range of other possible crash locations for which you could show the same. IOW what do we learn from them other than that they don’t exclude the assumed crash locations?
@Oleksandr: We have discussed FPA mode, and I have suggested a flight path in which FPA was constant at -0.1 deg, the speed was M0.84 followed by 310 KIAS at the altitude cross-over, and the roll mode was magnetic heading.
As for the vertical direction, both V/S and FPA reference the pressure altitude, that is, pressure altitude is constant for either V/S=0 or FPA=0.
Victor,
“I wanted to ask Mr. Gibson many questions about the circumstances of the find, including who might have been aware of his travel plans and his method of making arrangements for the boat expedition. Unfortunately, after I began posting on this blog about his find and raising questions, he chose to block me on Facebook”.
This is something expectable.
I wholeheartedly agree with Victor’s last comment. And we should be glad the we have Jeff’s site as a neutral zone where we can discuss things in a rational and civilized way from diverse points of view.
As for some of us doubting the debris: quite a few commenters have voiced their concern that Malaysia has taken custody of Blaine’s debris – against his explicit wishes. We also have complained about the French investigators who have been less than forthcoming with their results of the flaperon examination. Our trust in the investigating authorities is pretty low. Some have even voiced concern that Malaysia might manipulate Blaine’s debris. If we think this is a possibility – why is it so difficult to imagine that the debris might’ve been manipulated even earlier and that it was not found just by chance? Mh370’s disappearance was most likely a criminal act after all. Either one of the pilots or hijackers made that plane disappear somewhere near IGARI. For those who believe it was shot down: that’s also an unlawful act and covering up what happened to the plane is a crime, too. Therefore we’re dealing with criminals on one end of the investigation and possibly with criminal or at least obfuscating investigators on the other end. Under these circumstances – is it really so far fetched to consider the possibility of planted evidence? It’s an age old strategy after all and nothing exotic or unheard of.
@DennisW
I am sure the ISAT data is irrefutable. But what about the several people in Maldives that saw this very unusual, big, low flying plane? That was also very noisy? One even saw the red and blue stripes. If happened to be Maldivian airways, the current designs don’t have stripes. FYI: http://www.maldivian.aero/flying-with-us/our-fleet.html
And there is a possibility that these localities know what their national carrier looks like…The other dimension being, these villagers are probably not used to seeing such low flying big jets consistently. If they did, they would just pass it off as another aircraft flying over them. But this one happened to be strange as it was loud and made them get out of their homes in the wee hours of the morning to check it out!
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/04/04/mh370-maldives-islanders-low-flying-missing-malaysia-airlines-flight_n_7003406.html
@Olexandr, thanks. I just wanted to know where you stand right now.
Victor,
I meant exactly that discussion; my mistake if it was FPA but not V/S.
Do you mean that in V/S=0 mode the aircraft would remain at an isobar surface? And as the air pressure growths away from the equator, the aircraft would actually be ascending in V/S=0 mode. I guess data might be sourced from SAARU for this mode; ADIRU is not needed, right?
I studied constant V/S, but at the minimum allowable value (100 fpm, if I recall), it would descend too fast for the conditions I studied.
Planes maintain separation based on pressure altitude, and therefore the condition V/S=FPA=0 is along an isobar surface, as you say. That’s not to say that the instantaneous pitch attitude is not controlled using outputs from the ADIRU.
@Victor: to your 2:45pm response to Lauren: outstanding, in every regard. I try not to seek out people with the same opinion; I try to seek out people with DIFFERENT views, but keen and open minds. Thank you for being one of those people.
In that vein:
The IPRC (one of the nine drift experts my comparison covered) was good enough to accede to my plaintive requests, and sent me three large datasets from their “shoreline hit probability” model. I wanted to compute just how likely the following shoreline hit pattern actually was:
“Réunion, yet neither Australia in the 507 days prior nor Africa in the 200+ days hence”
I will publish my results at 0, 0.8, and 1.0% windage (their word for leeway) shortly – but wanted to offer to this group the Coles Notes version:
Under the assumption that a large number (i.e. 1,000+) of debris pieces were generated in the search box, the probability was shaping up to be very, VERY low:
If paths were deemed to be independent of each other, then zero pieces making landfall in Australia was astronomically improbable.
If paths were deemed to be strongly correlated to each other, then zero debris discovery during France’s Réunion area air search alone was astronomically improbable.
The correct correlation is surely somewhere in between: the ocean tends to greatly disperse debris, but if it starts at EXACTLY the same spot, it stands to reason the debris will tend to follow paths more similar than would be indicated by random chance.)
The ink was still drying on this work when news of Blaine’s Mozambique discovery emerged.
I had two options:
1) Narcissistically ASSUME that evidence was being planted in an attempt to blunt my research, or
2) Simply continue on, and present it for public scrutiny, whether the Mozambique discoveries blunt it or not.
In the interest of science (and common sense!), I am choosing option 2. Expect a brief report shortly.
But even if these pieces prove authentic – and even their location and timing are consistent with drift modelling – these discoveries merely raise the stakes on both sides of the “is this all a charade?” debate:
– yes, it increases the number of moving parts in any “ISAT data was fabricated” scenarios: now must add “bits of 777 shrapnel” to a growing list of planted evidence.
– but it also adds to a growing list of unexplained incongruities in the “ISAT data was authentic” scenarios: if this was a high-speed impact, then THOUSANDS of debris pieces – by coincidence – evaded all satellite, air, ship, shoreline, and subsea searches. More importantly, the seemingly strong evidence of a pilot in control for the entire westbound leg must now be reconciled to the seemingly strong evidence of NO pilot in control for the entire southbound leg.
@littlefoot
It’s important we recognize the limitations, it does not matter what Blaines’s wishes were or whether the French want the flaperon report released.
The Government of Malaysia, under international law has overall responsibility for the search and retain overall authority of the investigation.
As loosely as Annex 13 defines it’s guidelines, it gives Malaysia Carte Blanche
Victor,
Is V/S=0 allowed? Do you mean minimum discrete increments (say 100 fpm)? Or minimum absolute V/S?
“That’s not to say that the instantaneous pitch attitude is not controlled using outputs from the ADIRU”
True if ADIRU is on, and works correctly. If not? Would SAARU be sufficient to make these two modes functional?
Brock,
“If paths were deemed to be independent of each other, then zero pieces making landfall in Australia was astronomically improbable.”
Towelette? We don’t know if this piece is from mh370 or not. Discovery time seems to be consistent with model predictions. Also we don’t know if there any other pieces. You need to take this into account in your analysis.
@Oleksandr: Yes, I mean 100 fpm is the minimum descent rate. The increments are 100 fpm.
As for what happens with a bad ADIRU, I don’t know. I suspect pitch and roll control modes would not work and the pilot input is directly controlling air surfaces. It’s not difficult to find the control mode and the behavior if you look.
Oleksandr – MAS issue thousands of these towelettes everyday in this region alone and they are sitting in handbags all over the world as we speak, and one shows up at a well visited tourist beach north of Perth. By itself this doesn’t indicate a crash in the search area – to me. If it does, where is the rest of it? If it was viable for that to make landfall there would be more. If you can find it in Mozambique you will find it here. It’s a well traversed coast and everyone was looking. Thousands of bits got brought forward.
Victor,
Thanks; that is what I needed to know for now.
The other question nobody was able to clarify so far, if ADIRU fails or switched off, will SDU and AES still receive data from GPS via FMS/FMC?
Brock
Excuse me for asking, but just what is the seemingly strong evidence for no person in control during the southbound flight?
The ATSB said no person in control at the end of the flight, to simplify the search and avoid the need to broach sensitive issues about how/why the plane ended up where it did. Look where this approach got them, 120,000 sq km searched and no sign of the plane.
And just exactly where in the flight did the switch from pilot to no pilot occur and why?
Sorry if I seem cynical but I don’t buy the no pilot scenario. If there was no pilot at the end, we would have seen a mass of teltale wreckage at the time.
@Matty – Perth
I have already suggested that to him, if towelette managed to escape the plane and reach the coast we would see a lot of other debris there.
Lauren H,
Regarding “slow” flight paths, if I assume I start at MEKAR with 209.4 tons total mass (my best guess extrapolating from the last ACARS report and integrating the DSTG data), I end up with 176.1 tons +/- 0.2 for all altitude 25,000 to 35,0000 feet. Efficiency increases for lower altitudes, and I end up with 180.6 tons for an altitude of 20,000 feeet. That is probably the optimum altitude for longest endurance. I do not ascribe high accuracy to my fuel model, however, and none of the above results should be used for actual flight.
On the topic of the article, the “676EB” letters match the Glaser Stencil font, which is also the font used for “NO STEP” and for various signage on MH17. I give a probability of 100% that this piece is from MH370.
Matty,
I am not saying “it was from MH370”. But can you conclude “it was not from MH370”? Brock is implicitly assuming the latter.
If I am not mistaken, the towelette was unpacked. So for proper assessment you need to consider proportion of towelettes taken out from aircrafts, and multiply it by the probability of losing them on beaches. I am sure it will be a lot less than 1000 per day. On the other hand you have right time and right place. Coincidently.
StevanG,
“if towelette managed to escape the plane and reach the coast we would see a lot of other debris there.”
This does not have have to be (apply the same as you said with regard to barnacles).
Brock,
Where on earth did you get the information that zero debris has washed up in Western Australia (or anywhere else) from? You have no idea if that is true, so I am not inclined to place much weight on your calculated probabilities I’m afraid.
For every person that thinks the surface search must surely have seen debris, there is another who accepts that it is quite reasonable that none was seen. One person’s gut feel against another’s again carries little weight one way or the other.
20 years of drifter buoy data suggest that the majority of any persistently buoyant debris originating close to the current search area is likely to remain hung up in mid ocean, with relatively fewer items beaching in east Africa and fewer still in Western Australia. Travel times are comparable with those inferred from recent finds in Reunion and Mozambique. There are credible drift modelling studies suggest the same.
I see little merit in trying to discredit the discovered debris on the grounds that its movement from some putative crash location to discovery location in the timeframes involved is in some way unlikely.
We now have one confirmed piece of debris from MH370 and one very strong 777 candidate, with two other pieces of potential significance. I wonder how many more we need before we might drop, for example, the idea that the aircraft went north?
@Brock, we’re looking forward to your report. Thanks in advance.
I absolutely agree with your musings re: “Let’s assume the debris is authentic”.
That would indeed create a few problems with the two scenarios which have been favored and which were conceived in order to explain the missing debris: the ghost-flight-ends-in-high-speed-descent scenario where the flaperon separated before impact and the rest of the plane was pulverized by force of impact becomes less likely with each new piece of debris. And the expert-ditch-after-a-glide scenario where the pilot topped Sully and made a perfect water landing in the Roaring Forties has always been a pretty far fetched scenario but it also becomes less and less credible with every additional piece of debris. But if the two scenarios fail, which tried to explain away the missing cloud of debris and the fact that there were no reported landfalls at Australia’s west coast at all, the whole SIO crash scenario suffers as well. Not only the motive is missing but now there are no plausible mode-of-impact scenarios left.
sk999
“Efficiency increases for lower altitudes, and I end up with 180.6 tons for an altitude of 20,000 feeet. That is probably the optimum altitude for longest endurance.”
The optimum altitude for longest endurance increases for reducing weight:
220 t – 20,000 ft
200 t – 25,000 ft
180 t – 30,000 ft
160 t – 30,000 ft
@ M Pat: Thank you! Your analysis of actual drifting buoys has been the best drift analysis posted here so far IMHO. Models of such chaotic phenomena are bound to be inaccurate and misleading. While we should expect some debris to wash up in Australia, the most likely place is actually Mozambique. The SW coast of Australia is thinly populated; therefore, we cannot assume that no debris has ever washed up there yet.
@Oleksandr: In my assessment of the veracity of the official SIO impact theory, I have assigned precisely the same weight to the towelette as have the officials themselves. Per David Stout (Time), March 10, 2015:
“Australian officials say it is very unlikely that a towelette that washed up on the country’s west coast last summer had been on board the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370”.
http://time.com/3738544/mh370-towelette-australia/
I would also point out that landfall was expected in the August to October, 2014 range – March 2015 is, I believe, counter-indicated by current seasonality.
And it is hard to imagine officials so pessimistic about the towelette, yet so keen to cherry-pick drift study assumptions to warp the Réunion discovery into a validation of their search box.
@ROB: no need to excuse yourself – it’s a very good question. The straight line path to nowhere – and the unpiloted high-speed corkscrew to impact, which the IG’s tall foreheads suggest the Mozambique discoveries indicate – both strongly suggest to me (but of course don’t rule out) no pilot in control.
You are right that the deep sea search coming up empty to date argues strongly AGAINST unpiloted scenarios – though ever since the Ulich report, I’ve argued strenuously that the 7th Arc be searched to at least 84 degrees E longitude – it is intensely frustrating to me that they still haven’t returned to that Week-1-NTSB-indicated longitude.
My primary concern is that there has, for some time now, been no SIO scenario that doesn’t have a fatal flaw, since many of the pieces of physical evidence we’ve been presented are mutually incompatible. I point this out regardless of a theoretician’s chosen impact latitude or flight mode. I am an equal-opportunity debunker.
@Littlefoot: “And the expert-ditch-after-a-glide scenario where the pilot topped Sully and made a perfect water landing in the Roaring Forties has always been a pretty far fetched scenario but it also becomes less and less credible with every additional piece of debris.”
Respectfully disagree. The two pieces that we can definitely know exactly where they came from are from the same region of the plane: the flaperon, and the housing for the main flap deployment mechanism. These would both be vulnerable to damage in a ditching, especially if the engine was taken off at the same time. So far, the lack of tons of debris, the fact that the debris so far is from extendable control surfaces, that it is found in the SIO is all evidence that the Inmarsat data is valid and it is in favor of a controlled flight to the SIO.
IMHO YMMV
http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/fears-souvenir-hunters-hoarding-mh370-wreckage-as-south-african-family-comes-forward-with-find/news-story/6eb0a9ede6f2a61aa78ccee25dbfffde
@Warren, its nice that you disagree respectfully. I prefer that to agreeing disrespectfully 🙂
But what does YMMV mean?? Is it something nice or is it an insult or is it the key message of your comment? 😉
I will explain in another post why IMO a perfect ditch with hardly any debris into the SIO near the 7th arc is not only highly unlikely considering the difficulty of the task but also doesn’t make any sense from the motivational angle of trying to disguise the crash. There would be many better methods to do exactly that.
Note: I didn’t say that a ditch in general somewhere else doesn’t make sense.
Gysbreght,
Implicit in my statement was that (a) you specify an initial starting weight; (b) you maintain constant altitude and Mach (or IAS); and (c) you fly for 6 hours. Is that what you assumed? Your numbers kind of make sense, so just checking.
As an aside, somebody asked the question about how to achieve maximum endurance (with conditions similar to mine) on pprune.org a while back – clearly in reference to MH370, but without explicitly saying so. There were lots of responses saying how one would go about figuring it out, but no one could provide an actual answer.
@Matty, now we have a clear hint where all the missing debris has gone!
@Jeff & @Brock
Thanks for your info on drift modelling. [I had to look up Coles Notes and CliffsNotes – these are not used here in Aus AFAIK]. Yes, I also look forward to your report Brock; thanks in advance.
I thought Darren Chester jumped in all too quickly with his comment that the “NO STEP” find was consistent with the current search area. While that may be true, depending on buoyancy and marine growth analysis, forward modelling would no doubt also show that debris found on the Mozambique coast is consistent with many other theoretical crash sites.
Warren – “The SW coast of Australia is thinly populated; therefore, we cannot assume that no debris has ever washed up there yet.”
Actually the SW corner is where the WA population is largely concentrated. And as I’ve had to say before now – often – it is an extremely well patronized area. Australians have an obsession with the coast and enjoying it in every varied way. Highest per capita boat ownership, surfboard ownership, fishing, camping, walking – it’s an outdoors culture. There are no secret spots left on this coast, and I mean going a long way up. Thousands of items have been handed in by a vigilant public, and there are many organized beach cleaning events from region to region, as well as ongoing aerial monitoring. No one here regards the idea of undiscovered debris as being too realistic. It’s a well traversed/monitored coast line.
Warren – “So far, the lack of tons of debris, the fact that the debris so far is from extendable control surfaces, that it is found in the SIO is all evidence that the Inmarsat data is valid and it is in favor of a controlled flight to the SIO.
A number of well credentialed sat experts here will maintain that if the Inmarsat data is valid then there was no glide, and no tearing away of pieces(ditch). It was a steep spiral entry. As a layman on those matters I never trusted the data anyway. There had to be a possibility that something happened to those numbers and nobody will guarantee them.
Ok everybody,how’s this for a scenario: the pilot wants to lose the aircraft for reasons not to be gone into here. He flies it into a remote part of the SIO (arranged to arrive there 30 minutes after sunrise) sends out a signal (easily arrenged)to let the world know he flew until fuel exhaustion, then he glides as far as possible and carries out a high speed controlled ditching, to damage the aircraft underside sufficiently to promote rapid sinking. The intention being to leave no trace behind. But we have a right hand flaperon obviously wrenched from the wing, plus a part of right hand outboard flap fairing – look how close these parts are to each other on the wing.
@Victor
Congrats on the Facebook stance even though I have stock in the enterprise.
I would regard Gibson’s actions as strange. Not sure what to make of that. I have not tried to “profile” the guy in any way so I can’t comment on his sincerity or any other attribute.
I have given a lot of thought to the “floating” picture of his discovery, and my current conclusion is that it is floating free just based on what the intention of that photograph was. No thoughtful person would take the picture with the part being supported by something under water. I think the clarity of the water, and topography of the bottom are inviting an incorrect conclusion.
@Niels: the locations themselves (East Africa, and its offshore islands) don’t rule out a single one of the many theorized impact points: DG, Maldives, G.Thailand, W.of Sumatra, the full length and breadth of the fuel-feasible 7th Arc – even the SCS is valid.
The combination of location and TIMING should rule many of these out. But WHICH depends greatly on the items’ buoyancy: if the pieces floated low in the water, the more plausible locations are of course much closer to East Africa. This is why France’s suppression of flaperon buoyancy testing data is so unconscionable to me.
@Rob,
absent from a plausible motive, to promote a rapid sinking there is no need to damage the underside of the aircraft. Just disregard the procedures in the ditching checklist (which would close all open valves), and after coming to a stop open the exit doors without arming the slides. And down she goes like a stone.
Oleksandr, Oz,
This ADIRU thing you guys are working on………ADIRU bugged me for some reason two years ago on D. Steel, could there be some correlation with that and/or SAARU and the repetitive FL350 line? Were they getting a correct FL reading and do you think they really were at FL350 circa IGARI or just thought they were? Or do we know for sure they originally requested a higher FL and how do we know that is it documentated somewhere?
At any rate, they are studying the Airworthiness and Maintenance (one of the 8 points) so hopefully the 2008 Airworthiness Directive regarding ADIRU was done on 9M-MRO’s equipment, which had previously resulted years back in a “latent software error which allowed ADIRU to use data from a failed accelerometer.” (source Wikipedia)
The early reports of erratic altitudes led me to start researching ADIRU but my expertise in that is equivalent to “Mr. Ed” hanging up a shingle that says “Animal Doctor!”
Following on from my previous post:
Right hand flaperon, right hand flap fairing, and if the Blaine Gibson piece turns out to be authentic, part of the right hand horizontal stabilizer – Clear evidence that the aircraft entered the water in a right wing down attitude, flaps extended. The damage to the flaperon points to flaps extended. The right hand wing took the brunt of the impact. Indicates to me that pilot lost control just before impact. Could be the APU ran out of fuel (it had estimated 13.75 minutes worth after the engines flamed out)at the critical moment, alternatively, the ram air turbine lost power as he skimmed the surface.
@RetiredF4
I’m not quite sure what you mean by absent from a plausible motive, but thank you.
The plane will sink if the outflow valves are left open, but how quickly? If he wanted rapid sinking, which I think he would have to avoid being seen by a satellite, then a high speed impact could be the preferred option. The flaperon damage suggests a high speed entry.
One thing I would note with regard to the barnacles the reports when the flaperon were found said it was likely not floating on the SURFACE of the water but was only buoyant enough to float several feet under the surface. These smaller pieces were likely floating right on the top of the water and barnacles might have preferred the dark submerged flaperon.