After a Boeing 737 operating as Flydubai Flight 981 crashed in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don Saturday, preliminary accounts suggested that the plane had clipped a wing or struck the ground with its tail while attempting to land in stormy weather. Indeed, in a story published later that day, RT.com quoted Rostov region governor Vasily Golubev as saying, “The plane was descending and then suddenly dived down. Experts say this was an air pocket that dragged the plane to the left of the runway center. And the plane debris were scattered to the left as well.” Obviously, there is no such thing as an “air pocket.” But it makes intuitive sense that a plane attempting to land in high, gusty winds might succumb to shear at low altitude and low airspeed as it nears touchdown. But this, it appears, is not what happened at all. Frequent contributor Victor Iannello has created a graphic based on ADS-B data transmitted by the plane during its final moments. What it shows is that the plane had descended to land, then aborted the landing and climbed, accelerating as it went. It had already gained 3000 feet altitude and reached a speed of 200 knots when it suddenly plummeted from the sky. Here’s the data in graph form:
This security-camera footage offers a visual sense of what happened:
Mar19 #Rostov, #footage of FZ981 crash, view from Aleksandrovka micro-ds @Eisenhoden pic.twitter.com/TqIdvOmMys
— English Lugansk (@loogunda) March 21, 2016
What happened? Authorities on the scene have found the black boxes and hopefully will have answers soon. For the time being, some have speculated that the plane encountered severe windshear or a microburst, causing it to stall and plummet. But the plane’s descent was nose-down at high speed, so the pilot should have been able to at least attempt to pull up. Personally, I’m reminded of AA587, which crashed in 2001 on takeoff from Long Island after the pilot flying applied to much rudder after encountering wake turbulence from the plane ahead of him on climbout, causing the vertical stabilizer to rip off; the plane dived nearly vertically into the ground. If something similar happened here, parts of the tail should be found at some distance from the main wreckage. Another case that may offer parallels was Kenya Airways Flight 507, which crashed in 2007 while on climbout in bad weather. The pilot lost situational awareness while the autopilot was only partially engaged, the plane entered into an increasingly steep bank, and plunged into the ground. What’s different in the present case is that the plane impacted right on the runway it had been trying to climb away from, implying that it stayed on the same heading the whole time. (That is to say, it hadn’t gone into a roll.) Another unusual aspect of the case was the fact that the pilots had been holding for two hours before making a second landing attempt. I asked Phil Derner, an aircraft dispatcher and aviation expert, for his take. He replied:
For me, as a dispatcher, 1 hour is my max to let an aircraft of mine hold. It’s just a waste of gas; might as well divert and wait for conditions to improve. Shit, even fitting an additional 2 hours of holding fuel to a flight is tough as it is, and then to burn it away in a hold? Also, I only let my flights sit in a holding pattern if I think they WILL get it. If conditions don’t look to be improving right away, I won’t even have them hold…I divert and would rather have them wait it out on the ground. It saves gas, and is safer on the ground. But then again, I don’t know all of the conditions they were facing, what conditions were at their alternate airports, etc. There are so many variables and we just don’t have a lot of info, so it’s tough to determine or judge. But 2 hours….damn.
Meanwhile, on an unrelated topic, I might as well put up a picture of the latest piece of aircraft debris, this one found on a beach in South Africa. Not many details forthcoming yet, but it’s worth noting that MH370 was equipped with two Rolls-Royce Trent 800 engines. 
A quick glance at there not-very-high-res images suggests that the piece is roughly similar in appearance to the two pieces recently found in Mozambique, though perhaps somewhat more discolored/weathered. Apparently the piece is on its way to Malaysia.
UPDATE: Here’s another picture that @Susie provided a link to in the comments section:
For those interested, I used higher resolution data to produce another graphic that compares the first and second approaches to the runway. The approaches follow very similar flight paths prior to the go-around executed during each approach. The altitudes shown are AMSL.
https://twitter.com/RadiantPhysics/status/713110617456926721
@JEFFWISE
Re the Flydubai: Yes I agree, it does sound confusing. Could they have been having trouble with the horizontal stabilizer trim (all moving tailplane)? Like with the Air Alaska flight? Different aircraft type I know.
The 737 has had problems in the past, with the rudder actuator, as everybody knows, but this is different.
@Jerry M said, “I suppose there are additional hypotheses about collision or coverup that could be added but you also then have to argue the ground radar, satellite pings, and flaperon discovery are all fake. Lots to assume.”
If all the evidence is real, AND we assume the plane flew in autopilot with automated roll and thrust modes, the flight ends in the SIO in the current search zone. Every other version (to my knowledge) requires fake evidence and/or pilot input. If the current search ends with no result and we believe the search results are valid, we have to decide how to relax the automated flight assumption, or which evidence to ignore or re-interpret. It will be very difficult to objectively do this.
I think we need to continue to exert pressure to release more data, such as the results of criminal investigations, the results of the flaperon investigation, all the radar data, and the results of the investigation of the new debris, any of which could help to decide how best to proceed if the search is empty.
@Rob
you said:
“And how can you have a motiveless hypothesis? That’s like searching with one hand tied behind your back, which incidentially is why the ATSB search is going to fail.”
The only class of scenarios which fall into the motiveless category are those postulating some sort of failure involving the aircraft or cargo.
We know from decades of statistics that aircraft hull losses from these sorts of failures hover around 20% of hull losses. Since the aircraft continued to fly for many hours after the onset of the incident I will lower the 20% number to 10%. A generously small reduction on my part.
So the ATSB and IG have spent 100% of their time looking at 10% (probably less) of the possibilities.
@Richard: thanks for the reply (and apologies for posting both an initial and later draft). To me, a cover-up theory is falsified by transparent disclosure of all evidence and analysis to which the shadowy SSWG has access, in detail sufficient to permit independent verification that the search has been based on sound decisions, and conducted in good faith.
Absent such disclosure, we should remain skeptical of all “evidence” paraded before our eyes. Particularly evidence which seems designed for today’s news cycles.
Absent such disclosure, we should in fact fear the worst: that whatever happened to MH370 was so appalling, it must be kept from public view.
I am amused by the subtle accusation that my mind might be less open than those in the “trusting” camp. The only theory I’ve ever “pushed” is that demanding transparency and accountability from our leaders is critical to our society’s current and future health. By contrast, the public record is saturated with instances of logic being stretched to absurd degrees to deliver life support to the terminally ill notion that MH370 search leaders have earned our trust. I have learned from hard experience that, once a colleague decides to put his or her faith in whatever the SSWG says, there seems to be no gap between theory and evidence wide enough to shake it.
Brock McEwen: “Absent such disclosure, we should remain skeptical of all “evidence” paraded before our eyes. Particularly evidence which seems designed for today’s news cycles.”
Agreed. Most here can agree that full disclosure is what is required.
A missile need not make a bullseye strike. Just exploding within a certain distance would do and let shrapnel complete the task. And a plane need not explode to smithereens in such a scenario. Either incapacitated by shrapnel, it’s skin pierced etc or by a conflagration,it can fly on albeit in its last throes. The fire explains the missing C in ANC . The pilot could aviate and navigate but with comms knocked out, he couldn’t communicate its death throes. But someone from an oil rig saw its final demise (as did fisher folk off the Malaysian coast ) and because the plane was being steered in desperation it was where he should not have seen it but he did given it was off course probably coming to terms with its own inevitable demise…….
Fast forward to debris field …… given the above scenario it wouldn’t have been vast as postulated especially since no direct hit was involved. In any case newspapers in HK, Malaysia, Vietnam etc were indeed talking about debris fields until the story fell off the radar when military radar purportedly witnessed the fabled turn back and the rest is history……
Press hounds are always seduced by the meat of the story and are as such easy to feed. Just throw them a sirloin cut and watch the feeding frenzy. But there were holes in that narrative from get go. Would a suicidal pilot deliberately turn into an area teeming with radar just to show off his intent? How come no interceptors from at least three countries pursue an intruder even if the Malaysians were asleep? How come the super sophisticated JORN didn’t detect the incoming craft? What was Singaporean airborne radar stations doing? How come the pilot didn’t try to land at Kuala Terengganu if there was an emergency onboard?
And many more keep popping outta the woodwork! And pings, signals etc is child’s play for any spoofer or electronics wizard…… so there is nothing much to be explained away in reality.
Maybe it’s human nature to fall for complicated theories as they are probably sexier than mundane straightforward run of the mill stuff. As I said life can be strange but probably in this case, it vaulted itself above absurdity.
@Wasir Rosian
Nicely put Wasir. That’s it in a nutshell.
Who would want the ATSB’s job? Not me, for sure.
Wazir you would have hard times writing a movie script for your scenario and making it plausible for any >3 yr old.
@ROB
Re ATSB job.
What could be better? My employers always insisted on results, and that generated a lot of stress. It would be sweet to wake up in the morning simply wondering if something was going to happen that day, kiss wifey good buy, try to find your way out of the house, and get on with it. And when the ATSB comes up empty the “Nuremberg Defense” is sitting right there waiting for them – “I was only doing what I was told”. Where do you sign up?
A statement in the ATSB’s “Correcting the record” response to Mr Bailey has caught my attention:
I’m referring to the FL300 (or 30,000 ft). Based on the True Airspeed that VictorI has derived from the radar data, FL300 apparently assumes that the 17:07 UTC Mach number of 0.82 was maintained after the diversion at IGARI. The LRC speed at FL300 is M.786, 298 kIAS, 473 kTAS, reducing to M.727, 274 kIAS, 438 kTAS at fuel exhaustion. These True Airspeeds are then close to the groundspeed of 450 kt used after the turn south in Inmarsat’s flight path reconstruction based on the BFO values.
I have followed the discussions on MH370 particularly related to the debris or lack thereof. What has surprised me is that I have seen no reference to US Airways Flight 1549 landing on the Hudson. A smaller twin engine aircraft than a 777 but surely a good reference accident.
That plane was well flown by a highly skilled pilot who managed to ditch/forced land close to the Airbus recommended flight parameters … one might think landing better than an auto-pilot would manage.
It still sank – thankfully slowly enough that all on board were evacuated.
It sank because the hull was breached in a 125kts landing but at a higher AOA than desired . That caused damage to the rear fuselage behind the wing and the passenger area was flooded from aft.
One engine stayed on the wind, one was torn off. It was barely one wind low on impact and I am not sure which of the engines separated – the low wing engine or the other.
That aircraft is presently on display at Carolinas Aviation Museum – fuselage and tail but I did not see any reference to the wings.
Accident report talks of extensive damage to the under surfaces of fuselage and wing but is not specific as to flaperons if indeed Airbus 320 have similar surfaces to 777.
My main thrust is that the fuselage was undamaged above its centerline. The seats were not displaced and they sank, with their cushions, and stayed in the aircraft not scattered as debris. Any bodies, and there were none, would have stayed with the aircraft below the surface – there were no fuselage gashes to allow them to float to the surface.
So does that suggest why there might be no bodies and Australian coast is without visible debris from 777? A controlled landing indicated not a terminal dive at 500kts. Debris found from 777 is from where you might expect debris in a good on water landing. Could a suicidal pilot realistically land it that well and why would he? Could the auto-pilot emulate that performance?
I suggest 777 crash analysis should focus on debris, where is was found and where it might have come from. Ocean modelling may be hard, particularly reverse flow, but it is the best we have and IMO least susceptible to human interference. B
@VictorI – You said, “If all the evidence is real, AND we assume the plane flew in autopilot with automated roll and thrust modes, the flight ends in the SIO in the current search zone.”
How about a different speed and/or a higher starting altitude? Or perhaps there was control but only for the first few hours after the FMT? This did not increase the glide but it allowed the input of a step climb that might have increased the range. As Dr. Ulich showed in his latest Addendum, the impact could have occurred less than 1/2° further to the southwest than the proposed expanded search zone.
@Dennis
Very funny Dennis. Trouble is, you’re very probably right!
Article posted today on the Astro Awani Malaysian language news website: “MH370: Special tripartite meeting to be held in near future”
Link: http://english.astroawani.com/malaysia-news/mh370-special-tripartite-meeting-be-held-near-future-jailani-99969
@JDB
Sounds interesting! Perhaps they have been following this blog.
Oleksandr – I’d say most beach-goers would stroll past a towelette sized piece of litter about 100 times out of 100. On this day the woman who retrieved it said to her partner – I wonder if we will see debris today. It’s an oddity that we have the towelette with us.
MAGfly – having gotten it down without too much carnage – an achievement – what does a suicidal pilot then do? Calmly go down with the ship? Along the way you commit a mass murder or listen to the suffering around you as you go down? Suicide was always off the table – for me anyway.
Richard – I hear you alright. I have the same issue with climate. If floods, droughts, heatwaves, cold snaps, more ice, less ice, less fish, more fish, no birds, tonnes of birds etc etc, are evidence of man made warming then what isn’t? 0.85C of a degree in 150 years is not enough to excite the average geologist and 400ppm CO2 is well below past high points – but here we are?
We heard Brock mention his “tingling statistical spider sense” when we got presented with ‘RR’out of all the junk we could expect and some people senses went tingly as soon as we heard a 777 had done a runner. Dennis says from time to time – to a carpenter everything looks like a nail – so there has to be a difference between how a scientist digs into it and how a political scientist digs into it and they end up studying two different things. Your side of it you pursue in accord with your training and experience – and I’m sure Jeff is glad to have you. The other side of it is a mess where nothing looks satisfactory. It would be the most convoluted macabre mass murder/suicide in history, or the most ill conceived tragic political protest in history, while govts sit around in mute secrecy, while the ATSB fends off an agitated global public. If there really was something funny going on then it could be pretty ugly. Saying that I don’t believe it would extend to planting stuff in the SIO as there is already sufficient ambiguity over where the plane is. One bit of debris spotted there would mean a new concerted focus and you wouldn’t want that.
@LaurenH: I’m sorry, but I can’t imagine a reasonable scenario where there was pilot input up until 20:40 and then none after that, if that is what you are proposing.
I haven’t studied Bobby Ulich’s recent flight paths in detail, but his previous ones required an early turn, stepped climbs, and optimistic fuel efficiency to reach his proposed end point. Fuel consumption should be something that Boeing is able to calculate better than the rest of us.
@ROB
“Very funny Dennis. Trouble is, you’re very probably right!”
I have a long history of being right. ROB. This event is a windfall for the ATSB. It gives them something to do.
The reality is the underwater search of the SIO should have never been undertaken. Australia could have done an aerial search, and walked away (rightfully).
Where is Gary Larson when you need him? I see a Far Side Cartoon with a banner declaring the the 10th Annual Reunion of MH370 Analysts ,and a sketch showing a bunch of geeks with a drink in one hand, and waving a spreadsheet in the other.
Would any responsible government agency spend $100M+ USD on an underwater search with the “evidence” at hand? Deplorable IMO.
What this undertaking is missing, IMO, is world class scientific participation i.e. a Richard Feynman on the NASA o-ring disaster. Steel is a clown. The IG is amateurish. I have no idea who the SSWG even is.
@All: the Chinese search ship, Dong Hai Jiu (DHJ) – on its maiden voyage – lost its towfish. This is the second lost towfish in two months – Fugro Discovery lost one in January. Apparently, this time the cable snapped. Likely all discussed here before.
What I suspect has not been discussed is what DHJ was doing just prior to losing it:
1) for three weeks, it appeared to be doing an assigned grid – a very regular back-&-forth pattern extending coverage in the SE corner of Fugro’s zone.
2) then – after a couple of days going in apparently random directions (which some ascribed to run-of-the-mill weather avoidance), it ended up “blown” considerably WNW of this assigned box – whereupon it started following – perfectly – one of the first tracks Fugro Discovery ever did: the third track outside Arc 7 (FL350), near the centre of the original high-priority search box. Before the cable apparently snapped, it had redone a ~50nmi strip nearest the IG’s epicenter of [-37.71, 88.75].
I offer this just in case the JACC update doesn’t go into this much detail on Tuesday…
Best wishes to all participants of every faith in this forum, on what is for many of us a holiday weekend celebrating the power of hope.
@Matty Perth
“MAGfly – having gotten it down without too much carnage – an achievement – what does a suicidal pilot then do? Calmly go down with the ship? Along the way you commit a mass murder or listen to the suffering around you as you go down? Suicide was always off the table – for me anyway.”
After a successfull ditching surviving souls in the cabin would open the doors, I think. That would activate the exit slides, which serve as floats as well. Each slide had an ELT installed which would automatically activate upon contact with the water. No signal was received by SARSAT.
@Dennis,
‘Would any responsible government agency spend $100M+ USD on an underwater search with the “evidence” at hand? Deplorable IMO.’
This is precisely why I think they have a lot more information on where it went than they are able to release to the public. I think it would be very odd if we had been told everything.
That means either a major conspiracy theory or it means they are doing what governments do and protecting classified information for good reasons (radar capability and so on).
I have no issue with the latter. It’s frustrating though if it’s the case.
I hope I’m going over plowed ground.
However, if the new MH370 debris shows little or no marine life, then it may never have been in the ocean. It might have spent the last ~2 years on land, up on some mountains, finally being washed down to the beach, in some river or stream, by the rains of the wet season.
The flaperon would have left the intact plane at some earlier moment, before the crash. This might require some adjustment to some previous assumptions of the plane’s final path, of course.
they may not be 100% honest about everything they know, but they as well have no clue about what happened and where the plane and those people are. the search is real.
I concur that the search is real. I’ve no idea what they know or don’t know but I feel certain that in order to spend so much cash they probably know something more than we do.
@Dennis
‘Would any responsible government agency spend $100M+ USD on an underwater search with the “evidence” at hand? Deplorable IMO.’
As this is a general question my answer should be understood the same way. It would depend, what that government could gain from such a search. To state fund a deep sea exploration of that size budgeting would take years in planning and financing, and might fail in the end some votes short.
To our case here I raise the questin: As leading economy in that area, would they have had a chance to say “no”? What would this group and others say after two years and no search having started at all?
they owe it to the family.
it is not an option not knowing what happened. could it happen again and how would they avoid it happening in the future?
and it is scary that a plan with 239 people in this modern technological age can just vanish.
is humanity scientifical and intellectual ready to solve this?
@MagFly
@RetiredF4
@Matty
It was not suicide in the conventional sense but an act of political terrorism. The pilot was prepared to die and kill his innocent passengers/crew in the same way that a suicide bomber is prepared to die in a crowded airport lounge, for a cause.
MagFly what you said about the Hudson ditching, I find very interesting because it’s my theory that he carried out a controlled ditching in order to breach the fuselage and sink the plane as quickly as possible, but without leaving surface debris to betray the location. He will have succeeded in his intentions, well almost, if the search is abandoned. We have parts from the RH side to indicate he entered the water RH down. Nothing from inside the plane will ever be found, unless they locate the wreck, and the wreck is basically an entire plane. Should be easy to spot when/if searchers get to the area in due course.
It explains why no ELT transmissions were picked up.
as i said earlier by analyzing the pieces that so far have been found, starting with the flaperon that was found first, the experts concluded with controlled ditching. after that smaller pieces was found that concluded with a crash landing. the rr piece is the best example.
you can’t have both. and it certainly wasnt controlled ditching.
there is nothing pointing to that something was wrong with the aeroplane. there is nothing pointing to that the pilots had a motive of flying to that spesific area to crash the aeroplane.
all we have is satelitte and radar trackings, that could be spoofed.
shortly after mh370 vanished all sorts of people was called in to the investigation, some were quantum physicists. that tells me the range of confusion of this bizarre incident.
if that plane isnt found im standing by what i think happened since the days i heard on the news about all the condradictory information, and about mh370 could cloak and fly faster than a fighter-jet.
all we have is satelitte and radar trackings, that could be spoofed.
the debris has a different colors and the marine life doesnt hold water for the pieces to have travelled that far over 2 years period of time.
until someone proves otherwise the debris is not from mh370.
Matty,
Re: “I’d say most beach-goers would stroll past a towelette sized piece of litter about 100 times out of 100.”
You contradict to yourself. First you said that everyone in Perth is well aware of MH370 and looking for debris. Then you are saying that most beach-goers would not bother to pay a little attention to a towelette with MAS logo.
Anyhow, let’s see how much air-travel-related litter you will be able to find during, say 1 month, and how much litter can be attributed to MAS. My understanding is that “day one” passed without any ‘success’, right?
Re: “It’s an oddity that we have the towelette with us.”.
Depends on. If ALSM is correct with regard to M=1 speed, it is possible that fuselage destruction occurred at certain altitude, which is actually supported by ALSM’s idea with regard to fluttering. As I noted earlier, towelettes were likely distributed among the passengers before MH370 reached IGARI. Hence we have initial distribution of towelettes within the cabin. If the fuselage cracked upon reaching M>=1, no wonder that some small-size debris from the interior of MH370 dispersed in a large area, and then some were eventually carried to Australia.
Also, as noted earlier, some debris may not be discovered yet. Initially you objected this idea, but now it looks like you admit that debris could be missed. Just put these two your statements together.
@Oleksandr
“Depends on. If ALSM is correct with regard to M=1 speed, it is possible that fuselage destruction occurred at certain altitude, which is actually supported by ALSM’s idea with regard to fluttering. As I noted earlier, towelettes were likely distributed among the passengers before MH370 reached IGARI. Hence we have initial distribution of towelettes within the cabin. If the fuselage cracked upon reaching M>=1, no wonder that some small-size debris from the interior of MH370 dispersed in a large area, and then some were eventually carried to Australia.”
If the cabin broke like you state above we would not have to worry about a towelette found on some beach in Australia. MH17 was an inflight breakup and all the parts ended on terra firma. Check the pictures of Jeroen Akkermanns of the crashsite in Ukraine. (flickr.com/photos/jeroenakkermans/albums)
Take your time and check for all the lightweight and floatable materieal of the aircraft.
There was no inflight breakup in or close to the search area.
How well does a towelette float in its aluminium foil wrapping?
@Brock
Thanks for the reply – that is clear.
On the DHJ101 movements, for me this is part of the question of what happens next in the official search and whether the debris analysis will have any effect. ATSB statements to date indicate the position of the discovered debris will not; the drift analysis is already in the can so it is doesn’t take much time to check the position data, unless the discovered parts were to be from wildly different locations, which they weren’t. As discussed, the mechanical state of the parts might indicate the energy of the impact with the water, and thus (perhaps) distance from loss of 2nd engine. That analysis might take longer.
A large portion of the search area, greater than 35km inside the arc, remains untouched, not even bathymetrically scanned, which is believed to be a requirement before the tow-fish work can start. This bathymetric duty was originally performed by Equator, but that ship is currently heading towards the south-centre of the Bayesian ‘target’ so no sign yet that work will start.
If debris analysis finally indicates a very high speed impact with the water and if (if) dynamic analysis indicates that can only occur ‘close’ to the 7th arc, would the search commit its final resource to searching no closer than 35km from the arc? Options in that case could be a full rescan of the length of the 7th arc (plus/minus some distance) through the current search area, and/or extend North and South along the arc (but the latter would not be consistent with the DSTG model).
Gysbreght,
“How well does a towelette float in its aluminium foil wrapping?”
Plastic wrapping. Unopened. I guess it floats pretty well based on its photographs.
@Gysbreght
If that towelette came from MH370, then I’m a Dutchman.
No disrespect to the Dutch – it’s a saying.
RetiredF4,
Citation from SilkAir 185 Wikipedia page: “No complete body, body part, or limb was found, as the entire aircraft and passengers disintegrated upon impact. Only six positive identifications were later obtained from the few recovered human remains.”
This is what the impact does at M=1. I think life jackets would disintegrate as well.
Now you compare with MH17. You saw how huge the area of scattering was. If this initial scattering happens over the ocean, why would you wonder that different fragments ended up thousands miles away from each other in 2 years?
But the issue with MH17 is that it was completely destroyed in the air in contrast to SilkAir.
Gysbreght,
“How well does a towelette float in its”… “wrapping?:”
Not just floating. In the troughs of waves,yes.
At the peaks, however, it could be caught by the wind, which is
generally blowing eastwards, correct? So wind current becomes a
major contributor to its movement, instead of predominately sea
current in the case of the other found debris.
Wind currents could contribute enough to blow the ‘towlette in
wrapping’ eastwards into a different set of sea currents that
(when the wind isn’t blowing) carry it to an Australian beach.
@Susie
“I concur that the search is real. I’ve no idea what they know or don’t know but I feel certain that in order to spend so much cash they probably know something more than we do.”
Perhaps. I tend to think that they probably do not (know anything more than we do). We see a parallel scenario unfolding with respect to AGW. The people who have funding and legislative authority are generally not qualified to evaluate the “science”. We have seen this movie many many times, and we will continue to see reruns.
What truly astonishes me are the people who are qualified to understand the science that still keep “putting lipstick on a pig”. The ISAT data is not a predictive tool. It is qualifying tool. You can say where the aircraft did not go, and that is all you can say.
Gysbreght,
Here you can see some photos and video of the place where the towelette was found:
http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/incidents/mh370-malaysia-airlines-towelette-found-on-wa-beach/news-story/870d03173c62b6b7dbcbbb4506e4dee9
A number of other news websites explicitly stated that the unopened bag/wrapping was made of plastic. For example:
ibtimes.co.uk/mh370-paper-towel-washed-australian-beach-examined-by-search-teams-1491249
The video suggests that the towelette was found just next to intertidal zone – exactly as it could be expected if it was washed up on the shore. Btw, the “towelette” case is a way better documented than the two Mozambican fragments.
buyerninety,
I concur with what you said.
@Oleksandr
I adressed your suggestion, that the towelette could be originating from a inflight breakup at or above M1.
I used the inflight breakup of MH17, an Boeing 777-200 of the same type like MH370 to point to the fact, that there should be much more amount of prominent debris present than a towelette. That a towelette might be found from such an inflight breakup on the Australian coast is possible stays out of question. That the towelette would be from an inflight breakup of Mh370 despite being the only part found is not probable.
I do not see any relevance of the direct impact of SilkAir 185 to debris pattern of an possible inflight breakup of MH370.
But as you mentioned it anyway I would suggest not to compare apples with oranges. SilkAir 185 was a 737-300, an aircraft with a max empty OW of about 32.000KG, the MH370 777-200 has about 155.000Kg empty OW. The 737-300 has some lightweight materials, the 777-200 has about 11% as lightweight parts.
@Susie
“This is precisely why I think they have a lot more information on where it went than they are able to release to the public. I think it would be very odd if we had been told everything.
That means either a major conspiracy theory or it means they are doing what governments do and protecting classified information for good reasons (radar capability and so on).
I have no issue with the latter. It’s frustrating though if it’s the case.”
That’s what I though too at first, however if they had any radar information (regarding australian radars), they would know where the plane approximately is and they certainly wouldn’t need some Indepent Group to suggest them coordinates.
What they possibly have is some information from indonesian radars (which Indonesians provided them under NDA), which generally tells that plane went southwards when it was going around Indonesia and that’s all.
@All
Re the search: Nobody involved has ever been totally confident about the interpretation of the ISAT data, ATSB included. The ATSB were therefore mightily relieved (to put it mildly) when the DSTG Bayesian analysis confirmed they were indeed focussing on the right part of the 7th arc (some might find this statement controversial, I accept, but there you go) and for a warm feeling, debris finds in Reunion, Mozambique and RSA have served to independently back this up, drift analysis wise.
So what should they do now? Apparently the “big boys” are going to get together to discuss. Will they call the search off, or will they define a new search area? That’s the big question now.
But will the tripartite “big boys” have the appetite for it? I hope they will.
If they call it off now it will be a tragedy, because we now know roughly where the plane is. It will be a case of so near and so far. The furthest the pilot could have glided is, in round figures, 100Nm downrange of the 7th arc, when you take the headwinds into account, so if they confine the search the area to between longitude E88 and E89, and go down as far as latitude S39.5, they will have him in the net. This is roughly 7,000 sq km, and it’s going to be a big object they’re looking for, shaped like a B777 in fact.
RetiredF4,
The breakup of MH17 was of totally different nature: missile detonated near the cockpit; shrapnel punched multiple holes etc. In my opinion it is incomparable with a breakup, which would occur due to supersonic speed. As a matter of fact, all breakups that ever occurred in the air are somewhat unique. Daallo Airlines accident on Feb 1, 2016 due to a hole in the fuselage resulted in a man sucked out through the hole he made, but fortunately did not lead to the ‘global’ structural breakup.
http://nypost.com/2016/02/02/explosion-forces-plane-to-make-emergency-landing/
I think it is useless to discuss whether a towelette could be sucked out in case of breakup in the mid air. My point is that if some consider fluttering, why not consider breakup of the fuselage?
Re: “That the towelette would be from an inflight breakup of Mh370 despite being the only part found is not probable.”
I quite disagree with this. Why not probable? Because ROB is not Dutchman? So far I did not hear any conviencing arguments. There could be more pieces of similar size and buoyancy, which were washed up on Australians shores, but were never picked up. We don’t know. On contrary, with regard to this I see it is quite remarkable that this towelette appears to be consistent with the crash between ~25 to 35S (it is not a proof indeed).
ROB,
“If they call it off now it will be a tragedy, because we now know roughly where the plane is.”
Who are we?
@Oleksandr
Everybody is entiteled to an opinion, so I have no problem with your POV concerning the towelette itself, more though with your arguments.
An inflight breakup is what it is, the rupture of the fuselage in flight and breakup of the aircraft and its pressure cell into pieces in a range from small to big. The cause of the breakup does not matter much for the outcome, as the aerodynamic forces will rip the lightweigt interior parts out of the attachement points and disperse them along the crash path. MH 17 is the best available and comparable example, we are looking at bare metal arriving on the ground in an subsonic event.
A hole in the fuselage without a breakup would be named a rupture or a rapid decompresion event, where some pieces or even a person or a few would be sucked out, together with some loose parts like towelettes.
I can’t help if you feel happier with referencing other accidents of different types and with different failure patterns as argument for your towelette case. I for now rest this case.
RetiredF4,
I agree with regard to terminology.
@Oleksandr
In this context, “we” is a group comprising myself plus anybody who follows and agrees with my line of reasoning.
ROB,
Thanks for this clarification. Perhaps you should use “I” instead of “we”?