In the weeks since MH370 debris began washing up in the Western Indian Ocean, I’ve struggled to understand the condition in which they were found. Particularly baffling were the three that washed ashore in Mozambique and South Africa, which were almost completely clean and free of marine fouling. I’ve talked to a number of marine biologists who study organisms that grow on floating debris, and they told me that given their pristine appearance these pieces couldn’t have floated for more than a few weeks.
Some observers have suggested that perhaps the objects had failed to pick up significant fouling because they drifted through waters that were too cold or low in nutrients, but further examination showed that this could not be the explanation.
One commenter on this blog suggested that the pieces were too shallow, or too small, to permit the growth of Lepas barnacles. This, too, is an unsuitable explanation, since Lepas can grow on bits of floating debris that are as small as a few centimeters across. The photograph above shows a small but vibrant community growing on a piece of pumice spewed from a volcano in Tonga; the largest Lepas (goose barnacle) in the image is 23 mm long.
In acknowledging the very obvious problem that this lack of biofouling presents, David Griffin of the Australian government’s science agency, CSIRO, has written (referring to the first Mozambique piece) that “this item is not heavily encrusted with sea life, so it has probably spent a significant length of time either weathering in the sun and/or washing back and forth in the sand at this or some other location. The time at sea is therefore possibly much less than the 716 days that have elapsed since 14 March 2014, and the path taken may have been two or more distinct segments.”
The idea then, is that these pieces washed across the Indian Ocean, were deposited on a beach, were picked over my crabs and other predators, bleached in the sun and scoured by wind and sand, the were washed back out to sea, then came ashore again within less than two weeks and were discovered.
One problem with this scenario is that while we might just about imagine a sequence of events happening to one piece, it seems incredible to imagine it happening to three pieces independently, in different locations and at different times. (To be fair to Dr Griffin, he proposed this idea at a time when only once piece had yet been found.)
Another problem with Dr Griffin’s idea is that no major storms took place in the two weeks preceding the discovery of each of the pieces in Mozambique and South Africa. Indeed, the region has been experiencing a drought.
In short, there is not plausible sequence of events by which the three pieces found in Africa could have arrived there by natural means.
What about the piece which turned up on Rodrigues Island? As I wrote in my blog post, the size of the barnacles blatantly contradict the possibility that the object was afloat for two years. And given that Rodrigues is surrounded by a reef, hundreds of miles from the nearest land, the idea that it might have washed ashore somewhere, gotten re-floated, and then came ashore again to be discovered is close to inconceivable.
Taken separately, these objects defy explanation. Taken together, however, they present a unified picture. Though discovered weeks and months apart, in locations separated by thousands of miles, they are all of a piece: they are all wrong. They do not look–at all!–like they should.
There is only one reasonable conclusion to draw from the condition of these pieces. Since natural means could not have delivered them to the locations where they were discovered, they must have been put there deliberately. They were planted.
In fact, we can go even further than that. Whoever put these pieces on the shores where they were discovered wasn’t even trying very hard. It would only have taken a little bit of imagination and a small amount of effort to put these pieces in the ocean for a few months to pick up a healthy suite of full-sized Lepas. This clearly was attempted in the case of the Rodrigues piece, but no effort at all was expended on the African pieces.
Why? Were they being lazy, or simply overconfident? Or did they know that it wouldn’t matter?
Perhaps the events of last July influenced their decision. After the flaperon was discovered on Réunion Island, it was whisked away by French authorities, given a cursory examination, and then hidden away. The public were never told what the investigators found, or didn’t find. No one seriously questioned whether the flaperon could really have come from a crash in the Southern Indian Ocean. (Well, almost no one.)
Six months later, the failure of the seabed search was looming. The Australian government had already begun saying that it might not find the plane, and preparing the public for the decision to call off the search. The narrative that the plane had nonetheless flown south to some unknown point in the southern Indian Ocean needed bolstering. Given how little inquiry had been directed at the Réunion piece, whoever planted the most recent four pieces might reasonably have assumed that the public would accept the new pieces uncritically, no matter how lackadaisical their preparation.
Maybe they were right. Past experience has shown that people have a remarkable ability to squint their eyes and avoid seeing the obvious ramifications of evidence plunked down in front of them. A good example was the seabed search that took place after acoustic pings were detected back in the spring of 2014. The frequency of pings was wrong, and the physical distribution of the pings indicated that they could not possibly have come from stationary wreckage. So it was clear from the data that the pings were not coming from black boxes. But numerous experts twisted themselves into knots explaining how the deep-sea hydroaccoustic environment was very weird, with salinity gradients and underwater valleys that channeled sound, and so on. I was on a panel on CNN one day when famed science communicator Bill Nye explained that the sound waves probably were refracted by passing through water masses of varying densities, and refraction causes frequencies to change. When you have to start changing the laws of physics to justify your interpretation of the data, it might be time to start looking for a new interpretation.
I’m not saying that people’s attempts thus far to explain the condition of the MH370 debris through non-nefarious means is misguided. Far from it–as the saying goes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and when presented with evidence like the MH370 debris which invites such an uncomfortable (some will no doubt say outlandish) conclusion, it’s necessary to carefully rule out simpler explanations. However, once that has been done, we must not avert our eyes and say, “Well, I just can’t accept that conclusion, it’s not reasonable, there must be some explanation you’re missing,” or come up with a Nyeism that posits as explanation some phenomenon previously unknown to science.
If the MH370 investigation has taught us anything, is that restricting the discussion to “acceptable” explanations is a fatal trap. Early in the mystery, Duncan Steel hosted a discussion on his web site for people to exchange views and information. He had a rule, however: it was forbidden to discuss any scenarios which posited that the plane had been diverted intentionally, as he felt that this was disrespectful to the people on board. Of course, we now know that the plane was certainly diverted by someone on board, so effectively what Steel was outlawing was the discussion of any scenario that might possible be correct.
This mindset is alive and well. Recently on a discussion forum, one of the participants flatly stated that she was not interested in hearing about any theories that involve a hijacking. The ATSB has shown itself to be equally narrowminded. It has on multiple occasions declared that its interpretation of the Inmarsat data is unassailable. First it said that there was 100 percent chance that the plane was in the first 60,000 square km search area. When it turned out not to be, they drew a 120,000 sq km search area and declared that there was a 100 percent chance it was inside there. Come June, they will find (as we know now because of the condition of the African debris) that it is not there, either. Yet their recurring failure has not shaken their faith in their “reasonable” belief about what happened to the plane.
So maybe whoever planted the debris in Mozambique, South Africa, and Rodrigues weren’t lazy–maybe their understanding of human psychology simply allowed them to take the minimum steps necessary. Whether their calculation was accurate or not will now become apparent.
@Dennis
Hamid, his being a newbie on type, his very subordinate status, and his inexperience and naivety (relative to Zaharie) cumulatively conspired to present Zaharie with a lowest risk occasion. Regardless of Anwar, length of planning, Beijing, it being night time etc (all critical elements/factors nonetheless), it was having Fariq in the right seat that evening that was the catalyst. Z waited patiently for the stars to align.
Good day mate.
@Matty – Perth
They dont hide information to cover something up, they hide it because it goes down the rabbit hole.
@OZ. You seem to have quite some knowledge or access on information about specific parts and systems. So if you don’t mind I ask you.
Could the square hole on the left bottom side of the Rodrigues piece be an opening providing a see-through of somekind of door safety beam device?
Could not find anything about it on the net. Maybe you or someone else has a clue?
And maybe telling for people who didn’t saw this article. Pieces seem to fall off spontanious sometimes:
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/1840190/heavy-metal-plate-mystery-boeing-777-falls-through-roof-shanghai
@Jeff Wise. I’m sure you and others allready read this file long ago but others maybe didn’t. Thats why I post the link.
Just try to contribute.
https://www.google.nl/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwiIuraQ3pLMAhXFthQKHSt_AOUQFggjMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fipissedoffanattorney.com%2Fdownload%2Fi%2Fmark_dl%2Fu%2F1797997%2F11656716%2FBUAP_May-2014_Folder3.pdf&usg=AFQjCNHuxl6j7ODWb95YiTYzl7ixuFxLRw&cad=rja
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/malaysia-airlines-mh370-money-wasted-for-no-logical-reason/news-story/55ab2fec847b67d3c0e023861052daaf
@Ed, we can’t read the Australian without subscription. Can you supply a transcript?
@Matty, maybe you can do it? You’ve supplied us well in the past. 🙂
Just found it
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/malaysia-airlines-mh370-money-wasted-for-no-logical-reason/news-story/55ab2fec847b67d3c0e023861052daaf
@Littlefoot and All
Byron Bailey, The Australian 16/04/16
Another month has rolled by and still the Boeing 777 of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has not been located, though a few aircraft bits suggesting an attempted ditching in heavy seas have been turning up.
Martin Dolan, head of the Australian Transport Safety Board, which is not a specific aviation entity, was supposedly confident that MH370 would have been found by now.
I am hopeful but not confident because only now has the ATSB-led operation begun searching farther south and west to the likelier position of a ditching by a rogue pilot intent on hiding the aircraft in as remote a location as possible.
The search has been conducted on either side of the seventh arc — the notional flight path established by electronic “handshakes” — based on the nonsensical theory of unresponsive pilots because of hypoxia or a similar event.
But the search area should have been extended to allow for a controlled descent.
In other words, for two years the search area has been in the wrong location.
There are only two months left before the search is terminated.
It must be tough going for the crews of the search vessels in those heavy seas and strong winds. Not for nothing are the latitudes south of 40 degrees known as the roaring forties. It is also distressing for the relatives of those who were on board MH370, some very disillusioned with the ATSB and the ¬Malaysian authorities, as they have indicated to me.
Why did the ATSB go with an unresponsive pilot theory when it was obvious to airline professionals that the aircraft was under control when it turned southwest three minutes after the captain said good night to Kuala Lumpur air traffic control, and was still in control 90 minutes later when it turned south just north of Sumatra? This was after careful tracking along the Thai-Malaysian border, swinging past Penang (where I lived for two years) and up the Straits of Malacca.
This decision lacked any logic and showed a total lack of understanding of airline procedures on which pilots are trained and retrained every six months in simulators to handle any of these emergencies.
Who made this wrong decision that has had the effect of hiding the pilots from scrutiny? Did it come down to the ATSB from above? Was it former deputy prime minister Warren Truss, under whose portfolio the search fell, or former prime minister Tony Abbott, ¬desirous of cosying up to the -Malaysian government and thus avoiding difficult questions?
The ATSB has a somewhat chequered history.
It has been criticised by pilots for its handling of the Norfolk ¬Island Pel-Air Westwind ditching, where the pilot was hailed as a hero but then summarily “exe¬cuted” by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority and the ATSB.
Its rail accident investigations have been found by experts to be slow, overly lengthy and unable to establish cause, or the correct cause, and not demonstrating ¬independence (see the paper Lessons from Australian Derailment Investigations by rail engineer Ross Mitchell and solicitor Adam Bisits presented to the International Heavy Haul Association, Perth, in June last year).
Now comes the MH370 search. Does the A in ATSB stand for “amateur”? Is it composed of ¬taxpayer-funded, self-appointed armchair experts with no relevant qualifications to enable them to make sound judgment on these -issues? The identity of individuals who investigate is kept ¬secret. Self-appointed armchair “aviation experts” abound and are a real problem in getting the media to acknowledge what is real and what are conspiracy nutcase ¬theories.
I lived in the Middle East for 15 years and watched a lot of CNN. The CNN aviation correspondent, Richard Quest, has written a book about MH370 of which he is very proud. It promotes the theory of brave pilots being overcome by a situation they failed to handle such as a serious technical fault (yet the aircraft flew under control for another seven hours).
All very rare problems such as rapid ¬decompression, fire and ¬engine failure are easily handled by well-trained professional pilots — that is what they are there for.
Quest then rejects pilot suicide based on his knowledge of the human mind. How can a middle-aged English¬man understand the mindset of someone from a different race, culture and ideology half a world away?
In his writings last month to mark the second anniversary of the disappearance, Quest criticises me. He mentions “scurrilous” ¬assumptions.
Well, if anyone is qualified to express an expert opinion on what happened in the cockpit of MH370, I am.
I have flown for three airlines. I have five airline pilot licences: US, European, Australian, Middle Eastern and New Zealand. I have flown thousands of hours as captain of Boeing 777s and flown many times out of Kuala Lumpur and across the Indian Ocean. What is Quest’s qualification other than a big ego and ¬an interesting TV persona?
In Australia we have our share of armchair “aviation experts”. I heard one clown (with no relevant flying qualifications), described by 2GB radio talkback host Steve Price as an “aviation expert”, suggest that any of the passengers could have hijacked MH370 as lots of people these days, with their Xboxes and home computer cockpit simulators, would be able to fly the B777. And pigs might fly.
What an insult to airline pilots. I suppose those with Xbox Grand Prix could compete with Sebastian Vettel in an actual car. How out of touch with reality these “aviation experts” are.
In the three minutes from when the captain said good night to Kuala Lumpur air traffic control, the supposed MH370 passenger hijacker would have to get past the cabin crew, through a locked ¬reinforced cockpit door, overpower the pilots, turn off the transponder, turn the aircraft southwest, then disable the ACARS (Aircraft Communications ¬Address¬¬ing and Reporting System) — not an easy thing to do.
The National Geographic Air Crash Investigation team, in its MH370 TV special in December, debunked all the theories of hypoxia, fire, technical fault and massive structural event and is solid in its conclusion that it was a rogue pilot hijack by the MH370 captain.
Why is this important? It concerns liability. Under the Montreal convention, payout for a death due to accident is about $200,000 but in the event of proven pilot suicide, which results in the murder of 238 innocent people and is therefore a criminal matter, the liability may be unlimited.
An article recently in The Australian described Malaysia as being one of the 10 most corrupt countries. Perhaps the ¬Malaysian Prime Minister could donate some of the $US681 million ($884m) mysteriously ¬deposited into his personal bank accounts to the cost of the search for which the Australian taxpayer is funding an excessive amount?
I strongly believe, as do my airline colleagues, that MH370 captain Zaharie Shah deliberately planned and executed this mission to hijack the aircraft and attempted to cover this up by ditching in as ¬remote a location as possible, in the most unsurveyed, inaccessible place on Earth 6km deep so it would not be found and his crime of murder would remain unsolved.
It is time the heavy hitters of the media demanded an explanation from the government and the ATSB about why they ignored professional aviation advice and wasted two years of time and taxpayers’ money by pushing the -illogical pilot unresponsive theory that has absolutely no evidence to support it.
Byron Bailey, a veteran commercial pilot with more than 45 years’ experience and 26,000 flying hours, is a former RAAF fighter pilot and trainer, and was a senior captain with Emirates for 15 years, during which he flew the same model Boeing 777 passenger jet as Malaysia Airlines MH370.
@Rob. I read it this morning. Its just about the subject I questioned some posts earlier which you replyed on.
Swear I didn’t read it before.
A case of telepathic synchronicity I guess..;-)
@ROB, thanks a lot for helping us out.
@Littlefoot. I just tried pasting it, but it didn’t appear. I tried again and it said i’d already sent it. Could it be that i’m not supposed to copy this as it’s subscription only? Anyway, here is a gist of what Byron Bailey had to say. It’s nothing much new btw.
Bailey begins by saying that the relatives are disillusioned with the Malaysian gov and the ATSB.
Tony Abbott was cosying up to the Malaysian gov so to avoid any difficult questions.
He goes on to say that the A in ATSB possibly stands for amateur and that they have some armchair experts working there.
He criticises Richard Guest for following the technical fault theory, and says he has an interesting persona and a big ego, but that he knows little about aviation.
Bailey emphasises how difficult it would have been for a hijacker to take control of the aircraft in the 3 minutes after radio sign-off.
Suicide would open the floodgates to unlimited compensation claims by the relatives, which is why the Malaysian gov are pursuing the technical fault theory.
Says that Zaharie hid the plane where no one would find it so to make his crime of murder unsolvable.
Lastly he says that it is time for the media to demand an explanation form the government [Malaysian?] and the ATSB as to why they have wasted two years searching in the wrong place, and wasting tax payers money while pursuing the illogical unresponsive pilot theory.
@Ge Rijn
I believe you. Telepathic synchronicity, and the application of logic.
But what will the ATSB do/say in response? The ATSB and Byron Bailey have a long standing love-hate relationship; they love to hate each other. Probably it won’t have any effect.
@Rob. Nice you put the tekst on. I see now also my link switches to the payed version.
If you search type: ‘MH370 money wasted for no logical reason’, it normaly appears in the screen.
But you allready (and others) figured that one offcourse.
Interesting article.
A week ago or so I read a news article about a Fugro ship testing new equipment above the Dordrecht Hole.
It was a dutch article and cann’t find it anymore. Anyway it won’t be of much use here for it was in dutch. But maybe someone read it in Englisch?
Could be interesting for the Dordrecht Hole is a 7km deep bassin not far north east of the current search zone under Broken Ridge.
In the case of a roque pilot trying to hide it could well be a place of choice imo.
It would be inaccesible deep for any dis- or recovery I think.
@Ge Rijn
Maybe usa, israel, saudi-arabia and malaysia tried to start a war by blaming iran.
@Ge Rijn
I don’t think words will ever fully describe the horror of what happened that night. We must all be agreed on that.
The Australian authorities have been saddled with a very difficult job, and they have managed to handle it in a grossly incompetent manner.
It will non reflect well on them.
The only way they can possibly redeem themselves now is to listen to their collaborators ( they cannot all be as inept as the ATSB, surely?) and extend the search downrange of the Bayesian hotspot area.
If they don’t, then it will be left to people like the WHOI to complete the job for them.
MuOne – well said. I’ve noticed the temperature go up over the lat week. Maybe it’s time to remember that there are no goldmines on the line, that the world isn’t even watching what we say, and that no medals are going to be handed out. Jeff might be in a position to write an interesting book but everyone else should take a cold shower as the hotspots are empty and it looks like a lot of folks were most likely dead wrong. Get used to it and liven up.
@Ed, as you might’ve noticed, ROB put up a transcript. But thank you for paraphrasing the article anyway. 🙂
@Matty, you’re right: the temparature sure has risen lately…
@Trond.
That appears on topic..
But what do you actualy mean?
@Ge Rijn
I read a few lines from your pdf, and combined my hypothesis about the cargo and the money transfer.
@MuOne, I didn’t mean “bulldog” as an insult but as a compliment. Brock is dogged in an admirable way–I think I have been dogged too!
As far as Brock’s complaints about Victor’s explanation, I don’t know what to say–Victor’s explanation seems lucid to me. Unfortunately the French have not yet released their findings, and until they do we have promised to protect our source. I think it’s better than nothing but I also understand why some people would feel dissatisfied.
@Ge Rijn, About the link you sent me–the “Uninterruptable Autopilot” is a mythical creature like the unicorn, but received a fair bit of attention in the early days.
I wonder if there might have been certain females on board that Hamid invited to the flight deck?
@DennisW – I generally enjoy reading your posts as they provide an interesting perspective on what might have happened but your dig at the IG was uncalled for.
@Jeff Wise.
I thought so. It summarises a lot of information about this early subject.
I thought it could be of use for people regarding your new topic.
But isn’t then a spoof induced from anywhere outside the plane not also a mythical creature?
Hi @all as I feel in the environment some negative feedback in relation to deeper disclosures, and I am also quite a lot tired by 2 years of holding it all activelly in head, its quite obvious too, that we here cant help a much to the victims or to find the plane. I trust the authorities, which have almost unlimited resources and expertise to solve it all, while huge coherent effort of public is crucial too. But its matter of mass and not any single individual, who can be easily consumed by the case up to unhealthy extent. My previous oppinion was maybe a fiction plot, and to extend it little bit to science fiction, there can be mentioned large complex systems with inertial behavior, PID regulators and feedback control, huge combined forces required to turn by them in right direction, broadcasting communication systems, probably using spread spectrum modulation, where keys can be detected in time even by listening the traffic, need of redundancy and decentralization of public cloud services, working together and locally with physical actuators etc. With mind set free is possible anything, but its question if debates as this one here are really anymore usefull. I dont know, really,… but you know, its addictive too, or not? Thats the problem… Cheers
@Lauren
I’ve been interacting with the IG since the early days of the Duncan blog. They know exactly how I feel about their methodology relative to the posing of this problem. What I said is absolutely nothing new.
The ATSB has always said that the initial diversion was probably due to “human intervention”, effectively ruling out a technical failure scenario.
The theory of deliberate suicide and controlled flight until the end is far less conclusive, however. For example, what would 238 passengers/crew do in that situation? Sure, there is the cockpit door, but during a seven hour flight it is difficult to anticipate that there would be no attempt by any means to regain access to the cockpit. A suicidal pilot would normally crash the aircraft as soon as they are in sole control. Overflying military bases and rebooting the SDU also does not strongly indicate suicide cover up.
@Trond – possibly a mini-war over who (i.e.: which state) actually recovered those “spying” mangosteens… aka freescale cpu’s?
@jeff Wiise
Iwhere are you suggesting plane may have been shot down? Perhaps there was a plane in the jungle as some people said a few months ago?
RE: Byron Bailey – I wonder what ATSB’s Correcting the Record will have to say. Any idea’s?
@ ROB – just read your 6:45 AM thread…about as interesting, intriguing, and well composed piece I’ve read on this site….I for one like the cut of your jib….re: Richard Quest….who the heck would find him interesting…or, buy his darn book, if he came out namby pamby,…so “controversial” would be his middle name, = $ in da bank… The one thing I think Z had in mind as far as his intended “landing spot” was to head off into the most remotest location in the whole world….but to have a symbolic target to maybe not be found out about until after the A/C is found…OR to discover his terminus, and then go and find it there on the bottom…( 10,200 ft. ? ? )….more west and a little more south….I will say more at the appropriate time….just not right now….G.C.
I think this topic is leading to nowhere regarding the topic.
And thats not strange, for the statement made there can not be proven or even remotely underlined with any credible information. Only with fantasy. And thats sometimes nice to do but not a very usefull way to spent a lot of time with on a blog which pretends to be serious on the matter.
It will invite only more unnecessary and unusefull conspiracy-thinking and confusion.
I guess we all just have to wait at the outcome of the currant search and than speculate and fantasies further.
@falken
It will probably be impossible to ever really know the impact of this hallowed place.
For some of us it has become as much a part of our daily lives as brushing our teeth.
Once again I stand with Jeff, I too feel we are close to finding out what happened to the plane and it’s passengers.
Nothing of this nature is relevant unless someone cares. These pages continue to keep the disappearance of a plane and it’s passengers on March 8, 2014 very “relevant”.
all of this is a cover up the plane is intact somewhere in the ground and all passengers have for surely died or been killed , in fact there were 2 similar malyasian airline boeing 777 one with the debris and there is strongly a possibility that that plane was seen over the Maldives now coming to the reality 2 years of search in the 3 largest ocean would be enough to find a jet if it was underwater #conspiracy someone needs to speak the truth
For now I like to end with another fantasy..
This afternoon I went to a fortune-teller.
I asked her; ‘Please can you tell me the resting place of this doomed plane MH370’.
She looked deeply into her cristel bowl, deeper and deeper..
And then she reached a bottom and made a sigh.. ‘7000 meters I see.. and a set of numbers and letters.. 33.42S and 101.48E’.
‘The picture becomes blurred, it fades away, hope I could help you..’.
Thank you all.
@Dorothy, If the debris was planted, I would take that as indication that the Inmarsat data was spoofed, and the plane flew not south but north. I think the most likely endpoint is in Kazakhstan, but others say China.
@Ge Rijn, Is your psychic’s last name Godfrey?
@Jeff Wise.
No, that’s my mothers name;-)
Good luck!
@George Connelly
Dear George
I must tell you that was Byron Bailey talking there. I cannot take credit when it’s not due.
I’m glad you like the cut of my jib, though.
Byron has fired a shot across the ATSB bow’s. They could now be expected to return a broadside in the form of “correcting the record” as Gysbreght has just mentioned.
Though they will need to be a bit careful with this one, as Byron is uncomfortably close to the truth (imho). Any attempt to
sink him may end up biting them in the stern.
From The Australian 16/04/16
Actually, nobody knows when ACARS was diabled, except that it was not operating after the SATCOM reboot at 18:25Z.
17:19:30 – 17:20:36, Goodnight MH370 to Mode S dropping from radar, 1 min 6 sec is plenty of time for Captain Zahari to unbuckle his seatbelt, get up, leave the cockpit, and close the door behind him.
@DennisW:
“There is no possibility Hamid could be a part of anything more complex than having a drink after work.”
Perhaps it wasn’t anything complex.
@Gysbreght
taking the plane from its intended route, turning off the transponder and going around Indonesia is fairly complex thing to even many professional pilots, quite sure most of them wouldn’t dare to undertake something like that even when offered a 7-digit number
@Oleksandr
“Mike Extner,
Re: “You deliberately take words out of context to create false impressions. You do this for the sole purpose of creating controversy where there is none.”
Nonsense. I asked you why you thought it was impossible to insert delay programmatically, because initially you stated it was impossible. Then you changed you formulation to improbable. This is your problem, not mine.
Anyhow, I am not going to waste my time to respond your silly accusations.”
you are again being very “pedantic”, not to say nitpicking much 😉 it happens not only towards alsm here but also DennisW, me and some other people
I find you to be useful member here often asking very valid questions but try changing your attitude a little bit, I guarantee you’ll feel better 🙂
@Brock McEwen
“We are now achingly close to being in agreement. We both seem to feel that the evidence – upon careful scrutiny – suggests an SIO impact is actually more likely to have been a narrative sold to us than the plane’s actual fate.”
I think you are overestimating authorities quite a bit here, they are obviously unable to even properly analyse Inmarsat data let alone organise planting debris, faking data spoofing etc.
@DennisW
“Hamid is in the “wonder what happened” category. No way is he a part of any of this.”
well maybe the captain has forced him to cooperate and he agreed…to a point
the problems and complications started when he realised they were going to the open ocean..then we got the struggle around Banda Aceh (maybe Hamid forcing captain to divert there instead of going to SIO? Could explain the lost time and wandering around, also the testimony from Kate the sailoress would fit in this case)
How does a pilot manage to get to the remotest place with flying manually? There is no navigation route in the computer.
@Trond
compass and stars, if nothing else
To get the facts right:
@Warren Platts
@Lauren H.
Floatation or buoyancy is a function of specific gravity difference. Not influenced by pressure.
If you would expect that the honeycomb would collapse under this ~70 PSI pressure, it needs to be sealed from pressure getting inside the piece of the aircraft (trapping atmospheric pressure i.e. 0 PSI), otherwise pressure cannot collapse it. I would opine that to be impossibly, since the reverse would happen if the aircraft would be at height and it would explode. The inside and outside must be balanced to prevent this.
In my industry working at great depth inside oil&gas wells this is of great concern or is used to create a force if not balanced.
On keeping luggage, seat cushions etc down with pressure:
A gas bubble (lower SG as the fluid) would move to surface from depth of over 5000 mtr. Although the bubble being small as the gas is compressed, would ALWAYS float to the top, expanding as it move higher-up, but never be kept “downhole” by pressure (simplified agreed, as higher pressure would not allow gas to enter the well, but that is well control territory).
I would not think that floating debris would be trapped in the sketched case of a water crater catching luggage, floating seats etc, preventing it with the pressure at that depth from floating to surface. Anything with a lower SG will float to surface. Seat cushions and life jackets will be compressed, but are still of lower SG then the water is. For the rest I do enjoy your postings! Great stuff.
Rein
@StevanG:
You think doing a 180 and finding the route towards MEKAR is “fairly complex”???
@Gysbreght
technically not, but psychologically if you know you are risking getting intercepted then very much yes
also you have to organise it in a way that it happens exactly at IGARI, and that you have your FO cooperating (or out of the cockpit)
StevanG:
What do you know about the “psychological” stability of the person in question?
@ ROB – scuse me ….I missed that credit to Mr. Bailey, my bad, but the fact that you went to the trouble to post it….thanx….I guess its safe to assume you endorse his thoughts….maybe…. P.S. in defense of the inimitable Mr. Quest, I would have to give credit to his intellect….a little odd….but he is ” interesting “…for a limited amount of time….then I’ve just got to switch channels….
“MH370 debris was planted ineptly”
“AAL77 debris was planted ineptly”
If one is open to ponder the former,
one should be open to ponder the latter.