Recently two pieces of debris that may have come from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 were found on the coast of Mozambique.
The first piece was discovered on February 27 by American lawyer Blaine Alan Gibson on a sand bar near the town of Vilankulo (top left). Composed of fiberglass skin around an aluminum honeycomb core, and bearing the words “no step,” the piece is widely presumed to be a part of a 777 horizontal stabilizer. A fastener found attached to the part carried an identifying number that is consistent with, though not exclusive to, a 777. Soon after the find was made public Malaysia’s transport minister Liow Tiong Lai tweeted that there was a “high possibility debris found in Mozambique belongs to a B777.”
The second object was reported on March 11 by South African teenager Liam Lötter, who found it on a beach near the resort town of Xai Xai in southern Mozambique in December. Approximately a meter long, it carries the stencilled code “676EB,” which is written on the right-hand outboard flap farings of Boeing 777s. Its material, a hybrid of fiberglass and carbon fiber, is also consistent with a 777 flap fairing.
The fact that MH370 was the only Boeing 777 lost over the ocean lends weight to the supposition that both parts come from that aircraft.
The pieces’ appearance, however, is quite different from that of the first (and so far, only confirmed) piece of MH370, the plane’s right-hand flaperon, which was found on Réunion on July 29, 2015. Every edge of the flaperon, and much of its broad surface area, was encrusted with goose barnacles of the genus Lepas. The flaperon also had been settled across much of its surface by a brownish algae. Both of the recently discovered pieces are relatively free of marine growth.
This article will explore what the presence or absence of marine growth indicates about how the three pieces traveled through the ocean.
Marine Fouling
When man-made material is immersed in an oceanic ecosystem, a number of plant, animal, and microbial species will begin to settle and grow upon its surface, a process known as “marine biofouling” because historically the process has attracted the most attention as a nuisance to mariners.
Marine biologists study the process using devices called “settling plates” or “fouling panels,” rectangles of material which are put in the water and then observed as time goes by. “The first thing that settles is microalgae, which looks like a slimy brown scummy scuzz,” says Cathryn Clarke Murray, a marine biologist who studies floating debris at the North Pacific Marine Science Organization. Out in the open ocean, microalgae is followed by bryozoans, moss-like filter feeders, and goose barnacles of the genus Lepas. “I’ve found paper bags that have blown into the Pacific and have barnacle larvae on them,” says Bloomsburg University professor Cynthia Venn, who has been studying marine organisms for decades.
Given the great size of the Earth’s oceans, and the relatively slow speed at which objects drift (on the order of dozens of miles per day), objects encountered on the open sea have plenty of time to become colonized. During a survey of debris in the Pacific, marine biologist Miriam Goldstein collected 242 objects and found that all had organisms growing on them except for two that were one square inch in size. University of Florida biologist Mike Gil conducted a similar survey voyage in the eastern Pacific and says that “we didn’t find any clean debris, bottle cap size and larger.”
The mix of species present on an object can yield clues about how it has drifted, a process that renowned invertebrate biologist James Carlton, director of the Williams-Mystic Maritime Studies Program, has labeled “bioforensics.” In his study of marine debris washed out to sea during the Japanese tsunami of 2011, Carlton says, he found “we can track debris across the ocean using two species of bryozoans. One’s cold water, one’s warm water. When I get a boat that lands in Washington or Oregon and has the warm-water bryozoan, it tells me that it went well south before turning north.” Similarly, Carlton has been able to identify debris that traveled south along the coast of Japan before crossing the Pacific by the presence of sea life endemic to that area.
Unfortunately, the flaperon discovered on Réunion Island has been closely held by French investigators since its discovery, so is not known if such a bioforensic analysis has been conducted.
While the presence of certain species can indicate the route its home drifted, the size of individuals can indicate how long an object has been at sea—with some important caveats. Water temperature and the presence of nutrients both affect how quickly an organism will grow. Those on tsunami debris that was carried along through the nutrient-rich waters of the Aleutian chain and wound up in the Pacific Northwest grew faster, and in greater profusion, than those which grew on debris that followed a more tropical route and came ashore in Hawaii.
In order to gauge the time that an object has been in the water, then, it’s important to have a baseline against which to measure. For instance, here’s a boat that spent eight months drifting from Australia to the island of Mayotte in the western Indian ocean.
By comparing the size of the barnacles with the known dimensions of the boat, it is possible to ascertain that they have a maximum capitulum length of 3.5 cm.
And here are Lepas barnacles that grew on the Réunion flaperon.
Given the similarity in latitudes between Réunion and Mayotte, and the fact that the flaperon is believed also to have begun its journey off the west coast of Australia, the temperatures and nutrient levels experienced by both objects should be roughly the same. Applying the same photographic analysis yields a capitulum length of 2.3 cm. Adjusting known Lepas growth rates for the age and size of the Mayotte Lepas specifimens, the size of the Lepas barnacles on the Réunion flaperon suggests it was in water between four and six months.
This technique cannot be applied to the objects found in Mozambique because there are no identifiable forms of marine life visible on them. This absence of visible growth, however, allows us to put an upper bound on the amount of time they were in the water.
“If I put a piece of fiberglass into the ocean, I would expect to see that kind of scummy scuzz about a month after,” says Murray. However, in photographs the pieces of Mozambique debris “look pretty clean to me,” she says.
Shown an image of the new debris and asked how long the pieces look like they’ve been in the water, Jim Carlton says, “My gut instinct would be [that these pieces have been] not long at sea. Not long at sea, because we presume that if you are at sea, you’re going to get Lepas and bryozoans and other oceanic species on you. If you drift in the coastal zone, you’ll pick up coastal barnacles.” Given all that, he cites a possible immersion time of “a couple of days.”
Sam Chan, who studies invasive species at Oregon State University and regularly conducts settling plate experiments on the Pacific coast, says that he finds the clean condition of the honeycombs to be telling. “Not to see marine growth in the honeycomb structure was surprising to me,” he says. “The settling plates we put in the water actually look very much like the honeycomb structure, because it’s a good environment for them to settle.” He says the amount of time the objects have been in the water “could be a couple of weeks. It’s certainly not indicative of something that has been in the water for multiple years, let alone even half a year.” He adds, “If there’s no fouling, was it even in the water?”
Local Mozambique officials who were able to examine the Gibson piece firsthand were similarly skeptical. Joao de Abreu, the director of Mozambique’s National Civil Aviation Institute, was quoted by his government’s official news agency as saying that the object was too clean to have been in the ocean for two years.
Henry Carson, a marine biologist at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, points out that fish sometimes congregate around floating debris in the ocean and can reduce the populations of organisms growing on it. “A colleague of mine encountered a piece of a boat in the middle of the Pacific–I believe also made of fiberglass–that had very few barnacles–and a lot of fish,” he says. “Presumably the grazing fish had kept the barnacles from becoming established. Your pieces could also have sheltered a substantial fish community. Not sure the fish would keep it 100% clean, though, especially of all algae and bryozoans.”
In the Pacific Northwest, it’s not uncommon for beachcombers to find pieces of tsunami debris that have no significant accumulation of marine life on them, but these tend to be highly buoyant objects like pieces of polystyrene foam or smooth, round buoys and floats. “I can only think this stuff rolls on the sea surface,” says Carlton. “Between the UV and getting baked and dried out, dessication’s going to do a job, these things come in whistle clean.”
Obviously that neither of the Mozambique pieces would fit that description, but Carlton points out that it might be possible to imagine a scenario in which they floated across an ocean and then became beached, whereupon it dried out, was foraged upon by terrestrial animals and scoured by wind and sand, then washed out to sea again for a few days before becoming beached again. “One can imagine these scenarios,” he says. “Their probability is another matter.”
Other biologists disagree that weathering and predation could plausibly erase all trace of prior colonization. “We usually see some evidence left, even if it’s been dried out on the beach for a while,” says Murray. “You would see barnacle shells, or the byssal threads from the mussels, even if the mussel’s gone. Usually you see something. I can’t see anything in these pictures.”
“Even if beached and tumbled and baked for some time, I would expect to see a lattice of bryozoan skeletons, barnacle attachment scars, and some staining from where algae had grown. A lot of those things are pretty resilient,” says Carson. “I don’t see any of that in the close-up pictures.”
Says Chan, “There could be some time of feeding or predation, but within that honeycomb structure you would probably still see some remnants, and I just don’t see any.”
Carlton agrees that the condition of the Mozambique debris is puzzling. “Without any bioforensic evidence,” he says, “it’s just a headscratcher.”
Conclusion
The absence of biofouling on a piece of suspected aircraft debris recovered in Mozambique in December, 2015 suggests that it entered the water no earlier than October of that year. The absence of biofouling on a piece of suspected aircraft debris recovered in Mozambique in February, 2016 suggests that it entered the water no earlier than January, 2016. It is entirely possible that one or both of the Mozambique objects were never in the ocean at all.
All of these results counterindicate a scenario in which these pieces of debris were generated by a crash on March 8, 2014 near the area currently being searched by the ATSB. It is incumbent on all the relevant authorities to make public the details of a close examination of the parts, in order to determine how these objects could have arrived in the western Indian Ocean.
Update 3-17-16
I’m adding a couple of videos that Blaine very graciously shared with me, to show how his piece floated in the water. It should be fairly clear that this is not a spherical-float kind of situation. One end of the piece is denser than seawater and is going to be submerged whether or not the piece is occasionally flipped by waves.
Update 3-18-16
David Griffin, an oceanographer with Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), has expended considerable effort working with drift models to understand how ocean currents may have dispersed debris from a crash site in the southern Indian Ocean. In response to Blaine Alan Gibson’s Mozambique find, he writes on the CSIRO web site: “this item is not heavily encrusted with sea life” and therefore “time at sea is therefore possibly much less than the 716 days that have elapsed since 14 March 2014.”
A number of readers have speculated about various factors that may have kept marine organisms from taking up residence on these objects. The fact is that unless a piece is made entirely of smooth unbroken plastic (and usually even then), it is going to acquire a coating of marine life after a certain amount of time at sea. To see a lot of examples of how objects of different size, shape, and material accumulate debris, here is a gallery of Japanese tsunami debris found washed up in Hawaii. And here is a gallery of stuff that washed up in the Pacific Northwest of the USA.
@olexandr,
I don’t know why, but my chandlery does not stock airplane grade marine antifouling paint.
RetiredF4,
I am struggling to understand your idea: why landing at Car Nicobar military Base is more risky than landing at CI?
Descent after NILAM, landing, unloading passengers and cargo within 10-15 min, and then sending empty aircraft to the SIO to get rid of any evidence? Is it more risky than flying to CI?
Btw, what coating is used for hydroplanes?
Jeff W wrote: “here is a gallery of Japanese tsunami debris … And here is a gallery of stuff that washed up …”
Um if you actually LOOK at those pictures, the vast majority of them are as clean as the NO STEP and the 676EB piece.
Also, if you think about it, if someone went to the trouble to steal a perfectly functional B777 worth god-knows-how-many millions of $$$, why would they disassemble it in order to “salt” the beaches of Mozambique?
As for the idea that the NO STEP piece and the 676EB piece did not come from the 9M-MRO: lets not forget that (a) the “NO STEP” font is identical to a million pictures of MH17 debris; (b) the “676EB” piece is also of the identical font (compare the “E” in both parts); (c) the “676EB” piece is certainly consistent with diagrams from the 777 AMM, as well as a million photos of the B777 No. 7 flap actuator fairing.
Therefore, the default, Bayesian assumption at this point is that both pieces came from the 9M-MRO. IOW, the burden of proof is squarely on those who would claim they did NOT come from MH370.
On pages 2 & 3 of the site that Jeff linked (https://www.flickr.com/photos/jtmd/with/25319576341/) you will find very unusual growth:
water bottles with many barnacles (but without the row of indentations seen on those on the flaperon) below the waterline
plastic & foam buoys that are clean except for barnacles and/or mussels clinging only to the rope
a plastic box that is clean except for barnacles inside the indent along the bottom
Based on these pictures it seems to be very difficult to predict where you’ll find marine growth and which pieces or areas of pieces will be clean.
@Lauren,it’s not that difficult to predict if you roughly know the drift route. Everything whichnis made from smooth plastic without any crevasses will only be sparsely populated – if at all. That’s why the buoys are very clean. But everything which has even a mimimum of crevasses and spent some time in the water will show some amount of marine growth or traces of it. That’s why the plastic boxes show growth where the indents are.
The new debris has enough crevasses where dirt and marine growth could collect – if it was long enough in the water.
@Olexandr, yes, Blaine’s floating test might’ve washed some evidence like accumulated sand away. We would need to know if he took all the pictures which show the inside of the pieces before or after the floating test. But the floating test would not wash away traces of algae and dried up marine live. That’s not possible. Liam Lötter fortunately told Jeff that he didn’t do any cleaning whatsoever.
You asked me which explanations I could offer. The most obvious explanation is of course that those pieces- whether they come from 9M-MRO or not – didn’t float for the better part of two years and didn’t reach those beaches without human intervention. Why they are so devoid of marine life traces is hard to answer because I would’ve expected that our hypothetical planters would’ve tried a little harder to make it more realistic. But that they are unrealistically clean doesn’t make the more convincing for me. Maybe, there wasn’t enough time to give them the “fouling treatment” or the planters wanted to avoid mistakes.
@ROB
No problem… I’m in no rush 😀
I’m still unclear as to the suggested motive of the SDU reboot(s).
You said… “he momentarily isolated the LH Main AC bus to make the SDU reboot and issue a log-on request.”
Why would he do this if “deception was the name of the game”? The logon request would create a log record from which the final time & possibly location could be derived. Without it, we would have no idea whatsoever as to the flight duration.
Why reboot the SDU at 18:25 UTC either? Clearly he was able to fly without it, as evidenced by the traversal of Malaysia…
@Olexandr
Who is he or she? If you don’t know now, you never will! Apologies in advance for being cheeky.
Bearing in mind there’s still a criminal investigation going on in Malaysia (or am I being unduly naive here?) I should in theory be cautious, so I will let caution be the better part of valour an just refer to him as “Z” I mean “X”.
The guy who was a paragliding enthusiast until he injured his back in a heavy landing, a model plane enthusiast, a fanatical supporter of the political opposition, a do-gooder (always dangerous when they are ignored by the establishment), a champion of the common people who was driven to an obscene and unprecedented act because he thought, rightly or wrongly, he had no alternative in the circumstances.
There, you have it.
@Phil
Thank you for your patience here. As the answers to your questions will necessarily be quite involved, I will tackle them after dinner ( which I am responsible for preparing) so I hope to give you the answers later this evening ( say in a couple of hours)
@ ROB I like your comments. You are brave enough to go against the flow, and speak the unspeakable. I think so much of the evidence points in only one direction.
@Ed: I think Rob is actually articulating the mainstream view. I have yet to find an actual B777 pilot online who finds the weird fire scenario to be plausible. However, for purposes of finding the plane, it is not necessary to assume that any particular person took over; heck, for our purposes, we could assume that the evil tiger spirit possessed the aircraft itself a la Stephen King Carrie.
Bottom line: the initial phase was normal, except for the deviation from the flight plan and lack of coms; therefore, the default assumption for behavior after the FMT is that it would also be normal: normal cruising speeds and altitudes; since the evident goal was to avoid detection, there would have been an attempted ditching in order to minimize the amount of debris, which would seem to entail a long gliding phase that would put the aircraft about two degrees of latitude south of the 7th arc.
ROB,
Re: “I should in theory be cautious, so I will let caution be the better part of valour an just refer to him as “Z” I mean “X”.”
This is a tough group. May I ask you whether this conclusion is based on coconuts or crystal balls?
@Oleksandr
RetiredF4,
I am struggling to understand your idea: why landing at Car Nicobar military Base is more risky than landing at CI?
Descent after NILAM, landing, unloading passengers and cargo within 10-15 min, and then sending empty aircraft to the SIO to get rid of any evidence? Is it more risky than flying to CI?
I never implied that it landed on CI.
The assumption, that a landing could take place without the local controling agency noticing it is not on my list. Wherever it landed (if it did) somebody on the ground had to be deep in on the planning and execution. The right people had to be available for groundhandling. This would be not the normal soldier, but some kind of special ops people. With population living nearby the chance would be that later in the search phase someone reports some sighting, and thus rraises attention to this airport.
What would that mean in clear text? Landing at an official airfield and especially on a joint use one would require the involvement of the state or at least a powerfull state agency in control of that airport. For Car Nicobar, can you see in any way the involvement of India in the disappearance of MH370? Or the Indonesians for Banda Aceh?
@ Warren Platts. I was aware that a majority of pilots favour Z as the the pertetrator. I mean, calling in good night, and then 2 minutes after, going ‘dark.’ It’s just that almost everyone on this forum seems hell bent on defending him. He might well be innocent, but a helluva lot of evidence points in his direction. Just because he was a nice guy and a family man doesn’t mean he couldn’t have done something bad. Just because a man has a wife and family doesn’t mean he doesn’t have dark thoughts.
Littlefoot,
I know that “Liam Lötter fortunately told Jeff that he didn’t do any cleaning whatsoever”, and that is why I explained what I meant under “cleaning”. In my understanding Gibson refused to provide any photos of the undisturbed fragment he found (I asked Victor, who was in contact with Gibson – you know the result). What about this boy? Does he have a clear memory about the place where he found it?
Re: “The most obvious explanation is of course that those pieces- whether they come from 9M-MRO or not – didn’t float for the better part of two years and didn’t reach those beaches without human intervention.”
– Why would someone bring these fragments to Mozambique?
– If in relation to 9M-MRO, then what goal could be achieved by this, given that the flaperon was confirmed to be from 9M-MRO? The risk of potential providing new clues can hardly be justified.
– Why couldn’t hypothetical perps make a bit more efforts to make all the fragments consistent?
– Why did hypothetical perps fail to ensure that all the fragments are ‘discovered’ and reported in timely manner? I mean Liam kept it for 2 months.
I don’t know how this can be called “obvious explanation”.
Surely the most obvious explanation is that those pieces came from Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961, a Boeing 767-200ER, which crash-landed on 23 November 1996 in the Indian Ocean near Grande Comore, Comoros Islands, due to fuel exhaustion after being hijacked by three Ethiopians seeking asylum in Australia.
@Ed
I’m not sure anyone is “hell bent on defending” anyone… it’s just that there are questions regarding certain aspects of that and any potential scenario that should be addressed.
Again, for example: why reboot the SDU at 18:25 UTC. And again at 00:19 UTC. (Rob is going to provide his take on this later, at least). Why fly in front of EK343 instead of behind (assuming current estimates are correct). Why transit Malaysia at all, really… with primary and secondary radar coverage and all. Why doom oneself to a decidedly unpleasant way to go by drowning (that’s what a glide scenario implies)?
A “helluva lot of evidence” may point in his direction; but that same evidence could just as easily be construed to point elsewhere. A “helluva lot of (other) evidence” could be construed to point elsewhere as well, hence the controversy.
RetiredF4,
“The assumption, that a landing could take place without the local controling agency noticing it is not on my list.”
Indeed. Who said they were not aware? With regard to Car Nicobar I meant that it could be well organised and executed military operation. Local controlling agencies would be indeed aware. And because these controlling agencies are military, located on isolated island, without any third-party control, the risk of being discovered would be minimal.
“This would be not the normal soldier, but some kind of special ops people”
Yes. That is what I meant.
Re “With population living nearby the chance would be that later in the search phase someone reports some sighting, and thus rraises attention to this airport.”
What population? 4K villagers, most of whom were sleeping?
With regard to the involvement of India – I have no idea. Likewise with regard to any other state. You may find any suspicious aspects in any country based on your political preferences: Malaysia, Russia, USA, China, Australia, UK, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Somalia… I don’t think India is an exception.
Gysbreght,
“Surely the most obvious explanation is that those pieces came from Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961, a Boeing 767-200ER, which crash-landed on 23 November 1996”
After 20 years in water, or 20 years of being undiscovered under intense sun light on Mozambican beaches, these fragments still look like new? With clear “no step”? And with no signs of marine life in honeycombs?
Yesterday – the two-year anniversary of the SIO phase of the “search” for MH370 – the four ships began returning to port for a well-earned break. They will leave in their wake a scanned grid which now effectively falsifies the official hypothesis (fast & straight to flameout, unpiloted spiral to impact) as far south as 85°E. Heck, they may some day check their theory all the way back to (roughly) 82.5°E, the western of the NTSB’s two March 16, 2014 “highest probability” paths.
If the question of motive is impeding acceptance of Jeff’s assembled expert analysis of the Mozambique pieces, let me propose a new one:
It occurs to me to wonder whether these debris items could have been planted simply to achieve the result we observe: a set of car keys jangled in front of a drooling, infantile press corps – designed to help the culprits ride out the “two-year anniversary” news cycle, by ensuring bandwidth was saturated with these bits of flotsam, and not serious questions regarding search conduct.
Such as, for instance, why MH370’s range limit wasn’t defined precisely via transparent calculation, and applied as a permanent and immutable search limit. Instead, we were treated to an oft-nonsensical gnarl of ambiguity, derived in secret, which swung almost as wildly as the search zone itself – and whose latest published version emphatically rules out the latest westward search zone expansion.
Or similar questions regarding surface debris analysis, decisions and directives.
@PHIL
When He took the plane over, he had to prevent outgoing SMS/email distress calls. If he switched off the passenger seat IFE power from the overhead switch ( simplest option) he would also switch off the cabin video cameras, and he needed these to monitor what was going on the other side of the door during the first hour. So instead, he de-energized the Satcom by either isolating the LH main bus, or switching to backup generator (while keeping all other power sources off line) to force the ELMS to shed non essential load, which includes the Satcom. He depressurized the plane to knock out the passengers. After an hour, he judged it safe to switch back to normal power (prompting the 18:25 logon) and repressurized the plane so that he could stay in control for the remainder of the flight. He switched off the IFE from the overhead switch, not needing the cabin video camera any more, but not before the IFE logon was transmitted. The switch stayed off for the rest of the flight.
He would have been aware of the Satcom log-on procedure, it did not bother him, perhaps he wanted to signal that the plane was still airborne.
Come the closing stages, I believe he wanted to signal that the plane had flown until fuel exhaustion. that’s why he set to the second log-on, but it was a deception because he wanted to travel further than the fuel range, just to make certain he wouldn’t be found.
I think he was probably not aware of the hourly handshake interrogations, but even if he was, he didn’t think they could ever be used to track him.
@Warren Platts: re: “if someone went to the trouble to steal a perfectly functional B777 worth god-knows-how-many millions of $$$, why would they disassemble it in order to “salt” the beaches of Mozambique?”
I’m agnostic with regard to planted evidence, but please let’s at least construct a fair version of the scenario before attacking it: with respect, I submit that you are instead slaying a TISSUE paper tiger. Covering up a theft – in which the vehicle itself was the primary target – ranks roughly #387 on the list of plausible reasons to plant debris.
Anyone troubling to plant debris would clearly be engaged in value enhancement (or, more likely, cost avoidance) worth multiple orders of magnitude in excess of the value of a single commercial jet.
And regardless, MH370 could easily have been “disassembled” long before the thought of beach-salting ever occurred to the culprits, so an unusable plane may well have been a sunk cost.
@Oleksandr
Sorry, I can’t help you any more with that. To me it’s a no-brainer (no disrespect, honestly)
And I don’t have crystal balls to help me, just logic.
Oleksandr,
your imagination is somewhat one-directional.
The no-step piece could barely float, saturated with water it was probably lying on the bottom, partly or completely covered with sand.
Sure, if 676EB had been lying “under intense sun light on Mozambican beaches”, someone might have discovered it earlier. But perhaps it was not so exposed in those 20 years?
Anyway, let’s just await the expertise.
And as for the planted debris theory…
We have the RH Flaperon, complete with a cargo of barnacles, and if the part No is to be believed, a large piece of the RH outboard flap inboard track fairing – both component parts of the right wing trailing edge lift augmentation, parts that were in close proximity on the wing. I mean, if I were doing the planting, I would be very tempted to plant at least something from the left hand side, the tailcone or perhaps the radome. Difficult to overstate the sheer cunning of these people.
Gysbreght,
Can you explain why the flaperon from MH370 is covered with barnacles after 18 months or less, while 2 or 3 fragments from Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 remain clean after 20 years? If buried in sand – why no sand in honeycombs?
Yes, it is useless to guess. Let’s wait.
@Brock, I don’t remember: can you run by me again why the Western path proposed by the NTSB two years ago hasn’t been checked, yet?
While I haven’t made up my mind, who’s responsible for this new and highly improbable debris and what the motives were, snould it really have been planted, I can’t imagine that it was designed in order to protect those who are in charge of the search. Without the new debris the second anniversary would’ve hardly registered by most people. The missing plane was fast on it’s way to oblivion and the search will end in four months anyway – unless some sea bed debris will surface until July. There wasn’t much to ride out. Our community might be pesky. And we should by all means continue and try to be as pesky as possible. But in the end we aren’t much more than a nuisance. But the implausibilties surrounding the new debris has reawakened new interest and some sleeping dogs woke up. Old and new questions are asked with renewed intensity. Even some of the staunchest supporters of the SIO scenario have developed serious doubts concerning the authenticity of the new debris. And if the new debris generates a big question mark the flaperon will be questioned as well. Florence de Changy’s revelations already generated some waves in France. The new debris definitely won’t smooth those waves. That’s not what I’d call helping someone to ride out a problem which was about to go away in four months anyway.
@Olexandr, when I used the word obvious in connection with possible explanations for the improbable cleanliness of the new debris, I meant just this: the appearance of the pieces is simply not compatible with a two-year-drift-across-the-ocean-and-blasted-on-the-beach scenario. Many experts agree and are baffled. Therefore I don’t believe that the pieces drifted for the better part of two years and unaided by human intervention to those beaches. Consequently someone must’ve placed them there. That’s all and so far I think that’s a fairly obvious explanation. However, the motivation of our hypothetical planters isn’t quite as obvious to me. As to why they chose Mozambique: obviously because the coast of that country is compatible with most drift studies. There will have been other logistic concerns which aren’t all that important right now. Maybe, because the planters always wanted to spend some time at Mozambique’s beautiful beaches, maybe because tourism is relatively safe there. Maybe the planters knew some local people who could help them.
Caveat: I might’ve used the word “obvious” too lightly. Hardly anything is obvious in the case of the missing plane 😉
@All
Slightly off-topic: I’m in the middle of “glide” calculations based on 00:19 BFO values. (At certain latitude) I find a lateral speed component of 200 knots with a glide factor of around 5. Would someone know if there is an altitude where these values make sense for a “steady” glide path? Thanks.
@Littlefoot
You need to read my posts more carefully. Actually I could say that to just about anyone.
The level of intellectual engagement is pretty low right now.
Brock said “It occurs to me to wonder whether these debris items could have been planted simply to achieve the result we observe: a set of car keys jangled in front of a drooling, infantile press corps – designed to help the culprits ride out the “two-year anniversary” news cycle, by ensuring bandwidth was saturated with these bits of flotsam, and not serious questions regarding search conduct.” This is a pretty reasonable suggestion IMO.
The flaperon seems to be either a genuine find or a reasonably well prepared plant. One worry is that it occurred at a time when the public was saying “but where is the debris?” over and over; so could have been planted to support the current search effort. That said, I still hold out some hope for the current search and hope the flaperon did drift to La Reunion.
While I don’t have any fixed ideas: It is also quite possible that the flaperon was planted and the 2 Mozambique finds were planted by another group/state. Given that Liam took some months to report the item he found, it seems likely that more items were planted over a period of time and just haven’t come to light yet. If in fact the plane has been diverted and landed somewhere, the apparently fairly clean items could perhaps be a taunt from that group/state, “don’t forget that we have your plane”. I agree with Susie’s earlier comment to the effect that this all might be so “ugly” that it may possibly be best not to know.
@littlefoot. You mentioned Florence de Changy’s revelations. Can you provide any details or link to these please. I have been looking without any success. Is there an English translation of her book?
@Jeff. Great article. I’m awaiting official analysis by experts (as we all are) but getting more concerned that the parts won’t reach Canberra in original found condition as time drags on. [Perhaps the Easter Bunny will deliver… ;-)]
Don’t forget that there is a pretty strong history of antagonism by Malaysian govts and bureaucracies towards Australia. But all up, what we don’t have is agencies striving together to solve an issue – and nobody cares as usual. We just have the ATSB holding the baby for a few more months, and it’s their fault they burned themselves along the way. Champagne? Why not just manage expectations? Their brains exploded in the moment, giddy with the anticipation of all that international exposure. You can imagine the air that surrounded it earlier on.
I thought they would need a good deal of luck to find it with a handful of BTO’s and I’m looking right. Is that sheer luck on my part or common sense? There was no need for them to get out on that limb.
Debris: if people are prepared to disregard the pristine nature of the pieces then the rationale for planting looks sound.
Flaperon: hundreds of barnacles.
Pieces: zero barnacles or even evidence that there was any, when these bits did the same sort of trip at the same time, and we are discussing coatings when it all came off the same plane – ostensibly.
Warren Platts – “Um if you actually LOOK at those pictures, the vast majority of them are as clean as the NO STEP and the 676EB piece.”
It won’t all be tsunami debris remember, we just know that a lot of it is. This stuff is collected over a period.
“Therefore, the default, Bayesian assumption at this point is that both pieces came from the 9M-MRO. IOW, the burden of proof is squarely on those who would claim they did NOT come from MH370.”
If they can’t prove where it came from – and I don’t feel as if the Malaysian authorities are even trying – then it’s an open end with people left to fight over probability etc. Interesting though that the ISAT data will be defended grimly as the search falters, while marine data gets swept aside?
Perhaps the plane went into the waters in the regions of Reunion – Madagascar. Some pieces (the pristine ones) could have washed ashore quickly while others (the flaperon) were out there for a lot longer. Diagrams of the ocean currents seem to indicate the floating debris can go pretty much in any direction, including a trip or two around an extensive loop.
Just found this interview with Florence de Changy by Radio New Zealand.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/201793735/inconsistencies-and-deception-at-the-heart-of-mh370
To state the obvious; until and if we find the plane, we will never be sure what happened. The ATSB have let it be known that in the absence of credible new information, the search will not be extended further. But what in their (the governments’ involved) view would constitute credible new information? The plane is not going to be found in the current search zone, which means ( in my
opinion) that it finished up further south.
About the 00:19:30 log-on:
If it had occurred because the plane ran out of fuel, with nobody alive in the cockpit, I believe the plane would have been found by now, and there would have been a lot more debris than just a flaperon, a flap fairing and some RH stabilizer parts. What is more, these parts are pointing to a controlled ditching.
To me, the most logical conclusion is that the pilot intended the log-on to give the impression the plane just flew on out of control until it crashed- it seems his purpose would be the better served if the cause of the disappearance forever remained an enigma, so a line could never be drawn under it completely. That’s just my personal take.
TomL
Background: Avionics. Many years in Malaysia
Hi Jeff and all. Great discussion group. Following for a long time.
Liked the Russian excursion. Make a good movie though. Sadly
maybe a bad ending ?
Now for something completely different. Left field?
Don’t want to appear flippant, a lot of people missing.
1. Malaysia knows where the aircraft is and also another party (Country?).
Don’t want it found. Using time and muddying the water.
Salting of bits of metal? Want it to fade away..disappear. MIA.
MH 17 a warning?
2. Maybe if anywhere between the Maldives and Somalia on the East African coast.
Would not fancy a walk along that bit of beach!
3. Motive. Would not even try at this point in time.
But a lot of obfuscatory stuff coming out of KL.
All comments just a hypothesis.
@Dennis, what have I done?? The last time I addressed you I said a party at your private Pacific beach would be a great idea. Apologies if I have overlooked something crucial…
@AM2, I just found Florence’s interview in English, too. Thank you for linking it. She says a few very surprising things, especially anout the flaperon.
@littlefoot. Agreed, very surprising comments about the flaperon and ISAT.
@Littlefoot
Not to worry. We just disagree on biofouling. Don’t give it a second thought. Although I am likely to be right.
It appears that the flap fairing found on the beach was off-white in color. The flaperon was also off-white in color. Yet every airborne photo of 9M-MRO’s paint livery shows that the flap fairings and flaperons were clearly dark gray in color. The engines and lower fuselage were also dark gray. Only 9M-MRO’s horizontal stabilizer was painted white on both sides. What would explain the discrepancy in color between white and dark gray? There is a huge difference in color in the photos of the washed up debris compared to what MH370 looked like before March 8, 2014.
@littlefoot. I believe that the NTSB “possible paths” published by AMSA 18 March were indeed nearly correct. Which is to say that they are on the 0011 arc before the BTO data was altered. The end point modelled in my paper http://www.findMH370.com shows that a turnback direct to KL at time of “disappearance” takes the plane directly there, with no fancy turns, changes of speed or changes of alt) and that this matches (within radius 50NM) with the estimated location of origin of the 100s of “objects” detected by satellite in vicinity 45S 8-16 days after MH370 went missing. NTSB modelled “straight paths”. I modelled magnetic heading paths, so they end a little to the east of NTSB’s “possible routes”
@littlefoot: you asked me why the scans have never reached the first NTSB path.
One reason would be legitimate: adding a refinement for wind effects would move the limit a few nmi east.
But the main reason is more concerning to me. For the past two years – from behind closed doors – the SSWG put out a stunningly diverse array of fuel limits which were always shortened for provably improper reasons. These limits effectively forced the search ships to turn around at various points to the east of the original path.
FYI: the general public is now being denied access not only to the detailed calculations – but to the latest (#5, by my count) fuel limit ITSELF. I asked Peter Foley for it – he said he’d do his best. That was several weeks ago.
@Dennis,
I always try to read all comments carefully and we simply disagree about biofouling. Thats all. Since none of us is an expert, no worries. I thought the problem was, that I hadn’t agreed,yet, to sign your liability waver 🙂
@AM2,
yes I would like to hear everybody’s opinion on Florence’s interview. I have great reservations about a lot she says. But the revelations and implications concerning the flaperon identification process are stunning. I find it especially strange that according to Jeff she appeared to project the conviction that the flaperon originated genuinely from 9M-MRO. But apparently she really believes that the flaperon might’ve come from another B777.
@Paul Smithon,
Thank you for introducing me to your thoughts.
@Brock,
Thanks for running this by me. If your interpretations are correct and the area was avoided on purpose one could almost believe that the plane actually is down there. But for some reason it hasn’t been deemed opportune that it gets found – so far. Under this assumption could the new debris be just an overture for bigger things to come? Martin Dolan projected this crazy optimism that until July the plane will be found in all likelyhood. Is he just crazy optimistic for no reason – or does he know something we don’t? If the main wreckage gets found nobody will worry anymore about planted debris and missing marine life traces. The marine biologists will just shrug and say:” Oh, well, those barnacles! They are soo choosy and unpredictable in their preferences. Guess after tasting the flaperon word spread amongst the colonies that 9M-MRO just isn’t their cup of tea.”
These are my slightly incoherent morning musings. Thanks everybody for answering my questions.
Is it just me or do the official debris drift analysis and likely splash zone models contradict each other? The impact model based off a wobbly, pretty much out of control ex-geostationary satellite, predicts the plane as crashing/landing into the ocean just off the southwestern tip of Australia – incidentally in an area less than 1% off the Earth’s surface area, which is unbelievably precise for such a large percentage error in the data. Then the drift analysis model says that this means debris should wash up in Australia in less than 6 months. So when no debris washes up, and then more than a year later debris washes up on Reunion, they say: “This proves the impact model must be right!”
Is this the worst case of dogmatism and confirmation bias in the history of any investigation? The people responsible seem to have forgotten correlation does not equal causation.
@ALL
Surely, if the flap fairing and Gibsons stabilizer part(s) had been lying on the beach/sandbank any length of time, they would have been picked clean by seabirds. I think someone has already mentioned grazing by crabs as a possible. I assume here that birds would find swan barnacles attractive.
So this suggests the flaperon was underwater
(floating just under the surface) almost up until the time it was recovered? And the paint is going to fade on parts that are in the sea for any length of time.
@Rob, as many experts have pointed out, crabs and birds do like barnacles. But they are no expert cleaning service. There will always remain traces of marine life, like barnacle cement, bits and pieces of shells and traces of algae. Rests will remain especially in the honeycombs. The idea just doesn’t hold water, that all traces can be removed by natural processes so that the debris is nice and shiny again.
Sorry, if I’m repeating myself for the umpteen’s time. But maybe we should listen to the experts.
Please ponder the following speculative hypothesis…
———————————————————-
1:19am FO says ‘good night 370′
1:20am FO exits cockpit for refreshments
1:21am Captain hijacks aircraft
all electrical circuit breakers pulled
all communications deactivated
all air compressors deactivated
cabin pressure drops, wing deicing ends
1:30am Captain mumbles to MH88 on emergency radio through oxygen mask at 45,000’
all passengers comatose
2:25am Captain runs out of one-hour oxygen supply, and reactivates power to passenger cabin, to repressurize plane, de-ice wings
inflight entertainment system activated
FMT at IGOGU typed into autopilot
wing inspection lights turned on to check cold wings for ice
Captain succumbs to hypoxia
2:39am ghost plane executes FMT, all hands comatose, no response to satellite call
2:55am Katherine Tee observes ghost plane flying flat & level illuminated by wing inspection lights, perhaps observing effects of ice sublimating off of wings
Scenario summary
—————–
FAILED ‘rogue pilot’ hostage taking hijacking attempt, intended to negotiate with authorities & publicize his political grievances, entering the Indian Ocean with 5-6 hours of fuel to bargain with, perhaps relying on isolated location to hide from authorities for a few hours for bargaining leverage.
SIO crash due to ballistic trajectory after pilot unconscious before executing all planned maneuvers, ‘half finished’ mission due to depletion of oxygen supply and hypoxia.
@Littlefoot
No, Martin Dolan isn’t being being overly optimistic, he’s just towing the party line.
His job is to make us all trust the ATSB’s judgement, when clearly we can’t.
Alarm bells sounded when he was so quick to play down the importance of the flaperon evidence when it was first discovered – the impression was don’t rock the boat! Not the kind of reaction you would expect from accident investigator, just what you’d expect from a politician intent on damage limitation.
It doesn’t bode well for the search.