The photo above is from an article on a French-language website. It says that the object was found two weeks ago by a French tourist, who gave it to a boat captain, who only gave it to the authorities on Tuesday, May 24. The piece is 80 cm by 40 cm and was discovered on a small island called L’ile aux Bernaches, which lies within the main reef surrounding Mauritius. It is now in the possession of the National Coast Guard, who will pass along photos to the Malaysians and, if they deem it likely to be a part of the missing plane, will send experts to collect it. (According to a second story here.)
The photograph above is the only one that seems to be available so far, and is quite low-res, but it seems to lack any visible barnacles, but has quite a lot of the roughness that barnacles leave behind after they’ve detached, as seen in the Mossel Bay piece. Perhaps worth noting that so far, pieces found on islands (Réunion, Rodrigues) have had substantial goose barnacle populations living on them, while pieces found on the African mainland have been bare. This piece breaks that trend.
Also worth noting, I think, is that all of the objects discovered so far were found by tourists, with the exception of the flaperon, which was found during a beach cleaning of the kind that only happens an tourist destinations. Drift models predict that a lot of the debris should have come ashore on the east coast of Madagascar, but this is not a place that tourists generally frequent. There are also large stretches of the southern African coast that probably see little tourism. All of which is to say that a concerted effort to sweep remote beaches should turn up a lot of MH370 debris.
I haven’t seen any speculation yet as to which part of the plane this latest piece might have come from–any ideas?
UPDATE 5/25/16: In a surprising coincidence, another piece of potential debris has also turned up on Mauritius. According to Ion News, the object was found by a Coast Guard foot patrol along a beach at Gris-Gris, the southernmost point on the island. It was found resting about six meters from the water.
UPDATE 5/26/16: In another surprising turn of events, Australia’s Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Darren Chesterhas issued a media release in which he “confirmed reports that three new pieces of debris—two in Mauritius and one in Mozambique—have been found and are of interest in connection to the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.”
The release goes on:
“The Malaysian Government is yet to take custody of the items, however as with previous items, Malaysian officials are arranging collection and it is expected the items will be brought to Australia for examination,” Mr Chester said. “These items of debris are of interest and will be examined by experts.”
This means of announcing findings related to MH370 marks a departure for the Australian government, which in the past has provided updates from the ATSB (Australia Transport Safety Board) itself. The items are picture below, courtesy of Kathy Mosesian at VeritasMH370:
Meanwhile, a reader has provided an image analysis of the second Mauritius fragment in order to provide a sense of scale:
He observes: “Some rough scaling puts it at around 14 by 26 inches. Those boulders in the other photo look like pebbles; makes it look the size of one cent piece. Note the increasing curvature left to right; ups the bet on a chunk of flap!”
UPDATE 5/27/16: Another piece turned up yesterday, making it four altogether since Wednesday. I think this qualifies as a “debris storm.” At the rate stuff is turning up, there should be a lot more to come. There hasn’t even been an organized search yet!
The BBC reports:
Luca Kuhn von Burgsdorff contacted the BBC on Thursday to say he found the fragment on the Macaneta peninsula.
The authorities have been notified. The piece must be examined by the official investigation team in Australia.
Experts say it is consistent with where previous pieces of debris from the missing plane have been found.
Mr von Burgsdorff took two photographs of the item on 22 May, and sent them to the BBC after reading a story on Thursday about other debris finds in the region.
He said the pieces were “reasonably light, did not have metal on the outside, and looked extremely similar to photos posted on the internet of other pieces of debris from aeroplanes”.
Cay said ” What to me is worrisome is the human factors in this: it doesn’t make sense. Who sits around for 7 hours waiting to die?”
The Khost bombing at the Khost CIA post within the US FOB to name one of thousands of examples. I hope your question was in jest, or that you are innocuously naive. Waiting a mere seven hours when death becomes you, in an efort to exact greater damage to the intended target is as rational/logical as it gets.
@matthew: Exactly. It’s one thing to wait around for seven hours to exact greater damage to the intended target, but here there was no apparent target to be damaged. Seven hours sitting around for nothing. Some may speculate that Zaharie may have intended to do harm to someone, but there is no evidence that anyone was harmed by this mysterious disappearance. Sure, it didn’t do MAS’s bottom line any favors, but its situation was already critical, and worsened as much by MH17 as MH370.
BTW there is simply no evidence that Zaharie was a radical Muslim–to say so is only to try to work backwards from the possible fact of his murder-suicide and try to light on the most plausible motive. That is to say, it’s fine to work backward from a presumption of Zaharie’s guilt to speculate that he was radicalized, but you then can’t work forward again to say that this is evidence of his guilt.
With the SIO search in the wind down to the end, perhaps it is time to return to the beginning, and the “sealed evidence”.
Radicalization:
Anwar doesn’t lead a radical movement. His is a relatively patient political movement that has the goal of eventually overtaking the system they are using – democracy. Zaharie was part of that movement with eyes wide open. That Anwar does not cultivate violent Jihad does not mean that he does not ultimately make provision for it – he has to – it’s the highest level in Islam and no Muslim can disavow this part and his faraway mentors make it chillingly clear. Do we have an instance where a modal switch from political to paramilitary has occurred? There would have been widespread anticipation of a verdict at this time.
Zaharie did not have license to go around committing violent acts by any means(like the rest of that crew) but getting shut away in solitary confinement for years at a time is something you will take personally after a while and they are not completely without teeth. This is not a band of Buddhist Monks they are kicking around here: they are folks who plan to implement Sharia. I suspect that Anwar would have been allowed to exile himself if he wanted to. He has chosen to hang around and that says a lot about his goals and his determination.
Is it pertinent that two years later Najib is giving ground to conservative Islam and passing their laws? They will have a lot of dirt on Najib. MH370 was a big shot across his bows.
@Ge Rijn. “The debris will touch the seabed with a relatively very slow speed and then even likely be softened by silt on the botom.”
About silt, please take a look at the depressor weight in the third and fourth photos down at: http://www.atsb.gov.au/media/5770142/mh370-operational-search-update-20-april-2016.pdf
You will notice the mounding around it in the third. “…partly buried in sediment” as they say.
As to whether the depressor weight penetrated more than silt, by itself it might have plummeted at speed but in this case it would have been slowed by dragging the towfish.
But Oleksandr if you are looking for an example of where a hard object has hit the bottom and the extent of noise that makes, here would be one. Surely no aircraft or part would have hit the sea bed harder.
However my main point here is that reflections of the towfish sonic pings might be attenuated a deal in thick silt areas.
That said I would imagine the searchers and quality controllers would see to it that the chosen ping frequency etc would overcome this where silt is thick.
@Richard: thank you for another thoughtful reply. However, I was unclear of a couple of points:
I was trying to answer the following question, with x=85°E:
“If wreckage is ultimately found near the intersection of x and Arc7, how many coincidences will we be left with, in addition to the absence of Australian debris?”
1) The strength of the first coincidence is the first I’ve seen anyone argue that 85°E was reachable by MH370 without coming at least within range of radar installations after Butterworth – most notably, but not limited to, the tip of Sumatra. While I suspect DSTG path ending at 85°E do indeed overfly Sumatra, he coincidence is not dealt with unless the path avoids radar coverage. Can you produce a paths which avoids radar coverage altogether? I suspect you will succeed only in replacing one coincidence with another: that MH370 took the long way around Sumatra, but at a phenomenally high speed, such that the two offset perfectly to set down the same BTO record as would a straight path at cruising speed.
2) For 18 months, the JIT directed the Fugro ships to turn around just shy of 85°E. “Don’t bother going any further”, they told Fugro, “MH370 lacked the fuel to get any further west.” Search strategy 101 has been to ensure the intersection of range limit and Arc7 was covered – so they should have been scanning out to a CONSERVATIVELY western limit. Either they chose not to or, by coincidence, miscalculated so badly that even their conservative calculations allowed critical real estate to go unsearched for eighteen months.
3) I admit that the third coincidence only manifests if wreckage is ultimately FOUND at 85°E, after rescanning at some future date. Your confusion will surely have arisen from your use of a different hypothetical.
You invited me to play Monday morning quarterback, and suggest a better search strategy. The only intelligent strategy would have been to falsify as many theories as possible, as quickly as possible:
– search a very broad swath of Arc7, to a width informed by the known/testable flight dynamics of un-piloted spirals. If uncertainties about range limits (or primary radar veracity..) were significant in the early days, the south-west edge of this zone should have been set far to the south-west: base it on a bee-line from IGARI, with cargo burned, fortuitous winds, optimal speed and altitude, and zero performance degradation. The length of the resulting search zone presents little actual cost, as the more northeasterly points could have been searched “on the way” to and from port. The cost of searching exhaustively SW from day 1 is dwarfed by the cost of searching a wide box out to 88°E, and then making several extra sorties 18 months later to search only a small rectangle at the far end. (It’s not like this is new thinking; as soon as Dr. Ulich published credible analysis suggesting fuel feasibility in August, 2014, I and several other called for the search to be extended to cover his spot.)
– to falsify piloted scenarios, work backwards from plausible motives, and search a much larger width (Arc7+glide distance) for ONLY the narrow Arc7 sub-segments which fit this motive.
– time permitting, gradually Fill in around these best guesses
Search leadership did not do these things.
– It searched for several months at a place the data did not support
– then waited for winter to pass
– then spent several months bathy surveying a plateau it would never scan
– then spent 18 months searching a box much wider than their working scenario supported
– then decided to extend its far end. Ever so slightly.
I am auditing search leadership, Richard, not the DSTG. Search leadership owns the entirety of this fiasco – not just the latest endorsed paper.
I will listen to arguments suggesting the observed dysfunction maps back to incompetence, rather than the more likely scenario (execution of a cover up, with a little deep sea prospecting on the side, to defray costs). But I think we are well past the point at which we can accept that all this has been mere bad luck.
The conduct of search leadership should not be lightly excused. Some of us have been paying attention.
(@Richard: apologies for assuming I’d already proofread. Upon review: I see too many errors to address quickly, so I’ll leave it to you to thresh wheat from chaff. I hereby swear off long posts from smartphones.)
@Jeff: re: reverse-engineering radicalism: very well said. I hope you agree a similar logical error is being made with respect to surface debris:
It’s fine to work backwards from a presumption of ISAT data validity to censor the Maldives debris out of frame; but you then can’t work forward again to say the censored debris field is evidence of the ISAT data’s validity.
As many do.
@Brock McEwen
But if you would leave the presumption of ISAT data validity you are left with almost nothing to work with anymore.
It’s the most important data they have now which makes it possible to include or exclude possible debris/crash-areas.
Not for the goal of proving the ISAT data validity offcourse, that would be foolisch.
I think it’s not a case of censoring possible debris areas out of frame but a case of excluding there possibility as long as the presumation of the ISAT data validity is not proven invalid.
So imo as long as you work with the presumption of ISAT data validity it’s permitted and necessary to exclude certain debris/crash areas, one of them being the Maldives among many others.
What is radicalism?
Does it mean a bomb vest, or people being summarily decapitated at the behest of some crusty robed old man?
Shah didn’t carry an AK47, but replacing a democracy with a theocracy is radical isn’t it?
Advocates of Sharia are fundamentalists so why dig a ditch over concepts of radicalism? There are Muslim groups out there trying to achieve this by force(Al-Qaeda/IS etc) and those using stealth(Muslim Brotherhood/Wahabi’s etc). They are all radical and are either predisposed to using force or display a tactical restraint from using force. In the case of the latter they are not precluded from using force. Indeed it is a very short side step into that domain.
“democracy is dead”
Matty,
What is democracy?
This is when a democratic party rules…
@Brock McEwen
Maybe a question you or someone else wants to think about and answer relating to previous posts.
If we had no ISAT data at this moment but only the till now found debris all incorperated in an update reverse drift study also considering all areas around the I.O. where nothing is found till now.
What would turn out to be the most probable area of origin?
@Jeff
You said ” It’s one thing to wait around for seven hours to exact greater damage to the intended target, but here there was no apparent target to be damaged. Seven hours sitting around for nothing.”
Your simplification here is disappointing. Firstly, you apparently dismiss out of hand the possible inner workings and thought processes of a man who just murdered 238 pax. This is a complex matter which cannot simply be wished away or left unaddressed. Secondly, having a 777 flown by one of your pilots go dark, on your watch, on your national carrier, with your radars, in your FIR, traverse your country, only to eventually VANISH (and now I am GREATLY over-simplifying for the general point which seems to be lost on you, respectfully)..the aftermath being an great loss of life, no ‘answers’, misinformation, disinformation, obfuscation etc…
I think the potential for great damage did, AND STILL DOES, exist.
Regardless as to Shah’s culpability or otherwise, your reticence to further give this scenario the weighty and in-depth debate (front and center) it clearly deserves (though nutters on your blog are mostly outliers when it comes to favored via logic and common sense scenarios) personally disturbs me…and at the end of the day feels just a tad bit disingenuous, in every way.
To go back on topic about new debris finds there is something else of crucial importance imo.
All the debris gets handed over directly to governments or directly government related institutions.
There is no independent research.
Research gets all done without independent dubbelcheck or control.
I think it would be great if someone who finds new debris will have the guts to stay anominous and hand the piece over to a independent research group in a not related or involved country.
The pieces just seem too big to be from a high speed catastrophic collision with the surface of the sea. But too small for a breakup upon controlled ditching. What would be required to rip plane parts, tearing them apart like ripping up paper?
@Matty-Perth. The case you have made in your recent comments has been interesting, including your raising of the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood on Anwar Ibrahim.
However my recollection is that according to the press the US was unsupportive of Al-Sisi in his overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood after that had been elected in Egypt, indicating that it was not seen by the US as an Islamist organisation in the militant sense. Is that so?
Leaving that aside, what I question is your extrapolation. You say the loss of the MH370 “was a big shot across (Najib’s) bows” yet there has been no attribution of cause to date which has been harmful to him and neither was there a public anti-government message disclosed in the loss. The Malaysian Government has withstood the loss of both this aircraft and MH17 and I do not see why spread of some elements of Sharia Law in some Muslim areas should be the result of either, as distinct from it occurring anyway.
If a pilot did indeed plan harm to Najib there seem to be two possibilities: either the harm is in the nature of blackmail and being kept secret or the plan failed.
If the former how could that have been deduced already? If the plan failed how likewise could that be known yet?
@Matty I was about to do a bit of background research on one of our commenters…a classic case of a disinformation troll, perhaps. Heh, J2? 🙂
@Matt Zaharie as the perp for violent action and/or suicide has been debated here ad nauseam, while Jeff has raised a valid point. Enough said. Personally, I don’t see it in him, but then I also don’t have access to a full profile of Zaharie. As for the scenario of a suicide in the SIO after seven hours specifically, it runs into serious headwinds in terms of precedent, the risk of being foiled over a period of seven hours, etc. A long-haul suicide is perhaps unlikely. And what is the continuing ‘threat’ to which you refer?
@matthew. The question was not in jest, so its probably naive. Thank you for your response though – and to a certain extent I agree. In “ideological wars” people can wait years or generations to get even. That I don’t dispute.
What I was specifically refering to that was not clear, and I apologize, is that: is it NORMAL for a plane load of passengers to sit around and wait 7 hours? For what? You can subdue them with threats of force or death- kind of throws in someone with a gun. (Maybe.) But post 9/11, with a possible bomb on board and the threat of crashing into things -where you know you are already dead – is it possible that not one passenger went crazy and fought back? Everyone was compliant and without suspicion for 7 hours?
Depresurization and oxygen bottles can’t give you 7 hours and then a controlled ditching/crash. Maybe it wasn’t a controlled crash, I don’t know.
So what I am trying to reconcile is a suicide pilot who killed everyone by depressurization – but can not fly for 7 hours onwards with live passengers who sit around for 7 hours waiting to die.
I can only assume the crash must have happened sooner. I asked the question because there must be someone with alternate ideas. Not so much to explain the actions of a suicidal pilot (because that could easily fit 7 hours) but the passengers: no oxygen \ depressurization doesn’t fit a time line of controlled final flight. If they were alive or concious why do nothing? If they were dead and there was controlled flight it points to more sophisticated planning: more oxygen sources or another gunmen. Its not the most simple explanation and I doubt its the right one.
I don’t have any answers Matthew, and I appreciate the logic of others to counter my musings.
David – Al-Sisi wants to reform Islam, the Brotherhood wants specifically to spread Islam. Seriously there is no real daylight between the Brotherhood and Hamas ideologically. They are the same people with different means. If the Obama administration had a preference for the Brotherhood then I’d say it’s a preference that will end with the Obama administration.
The Najib govt is hanging in just and being eroded all the time. Opposition alliances like Anwar’s are still ostensibly law abiding devotees to democracy remember? Their agenda is anti-democratic but that is not how they will travel. The MB is the extensive arm of political Islam dedicated to being as discreet as possible. Sharia is already practiced in some areas of Malaysia and allies of Anwar intend to extend that(so does Anwar). It’s a process they are involved with.
I doubt there needs to be an attribution of cause(MH370) if Najib knows who his enemies are. His enemy here is the guy he keeps locking up on doctored charges. His return to a solitary cell coincides neatly enough to the disappearance – to me at least.
I believe the power is shifting in Malaysia and it’s denoted by the plane’s disappearance. If Najib was stronger he might have gone after them but he’s weak. The laws passed recently(Hudud) point to Anwar’s influence. There Najib was promising that the beatings won’t draw blood!! Please. No leader of a secular state would be cornered like that unless he was getting screwed. He’s on borrowed time.
Rand – misinforming troll indeed. I beat you to it. You should see his posts over there. Unbelievable. Threats to bash people etc etc. Vitriolic racism, pure poison but oh so eloquent. I believe he’s an engineer so if he resurfaces I would be keen to know who paid for his studies and where as it’s common for the MB to sponsor those kind of degrees. Very suspicious character.
@David
There might be a simpleler solution to your oxygen/depressurization problem.
A pilot can shut the other pilot(s) out of the cockpit, put on his oxygen mask, depressurize the cabin at high altitude, stay there for an hour or so leaving everyone else incaptivated, descent to a lower altitude for sufficiant free oxygen, pressurize the cabin again and fly on.
We don’t actually know what the plane really did for seven hours apart from conform to the rings(assuming they are accurate). If it’s further north in line with the drift modeling then it’s already a bit more complicated?
@Jim, You raise an excellent point. Enough pieces have turned up now to give us a rough idea of the kind of impact that must have occurred. The largest, the flaperon, was about 2m long, with the rest considerably smaller. We can argue about the filtering effect presented by the fact that in order to be discovered any piece needs to float across an ocean–smaller pieces, for instance, might become sufficiently encumbered by lepas that they would sink to the bottom–but to me these sizes call to mind one description of the Germanwings debris, that no piece was bigger than a car door. Thus my starting point would be around 345 knots.
@Ge Rijn, I actually contacted Liam Lotter and urged him not to turn his piece over to the authorities, but to give it to one of South Africa’s excellent marine biologists for examination. Unfortunately the authorities were already on the case and were more persuasive than me.
@Matt, You’ve been going on for a while now about an imagined connection between Zaharie and the Muslim Brotherhood, despite having no evidence. (Your intense gut feelings do not count as evidence.) If you had something concrete to point in this direction, you could have presented it once and it would have had a lot more impact on the discussion than countless breathless assertions of dire danger. You are not really adding anything by continuing to make the same assertion over and over again.
It may well be the case that Zaharie absconded with the plane to commit murder-suicide. At this point, speculating about his motive doesn’t do anything to finding the plane or furthering our quest to solve the mystery.
The ultimate folly is to let your curiosity get in the way of a competent investigation.
@Brock McEwen: Do you categorize the timing and circumstances of Mr. Blaine Gibson’s extraordinary find one the many coincidences you are gathering?
@Matty Point of clarification: recent commenter or someone who was previously banned?
Rand – he was here the other day.
Jeff – Shah is an avid supporter of a long term Islamist(Anwar – from his teen years) who has proudly displayed his closeness to the MB until he took the photo’s down from his own website in 2005, there is plenty of evidence of that. They have common aims and a long term association. I think it’s cutting the spam pretty thin to insist there is no actual connection between Shah and the MB? It changes things for me and I was stunned the media never went there but I shouldn’t be. They were happy to talk about his political activities and his allegiance to Anwar but not mention the make-up of that alliance. All they were interested in was the fact that he had done time on dodgy charges and therefore must be some Nelson Mandela figure. I’d say the press nowadays are more interested in not being called a homophobe or an Islamophobe than they are about digging facts. Irony though, they are happy to critique other belief systems but go weak at the knees when it’s Islam.
The PAS, who administer Kelantan and are one of Anwar’s political allies have regularly sent delegations and presented to the MB. It’s the same organism. It’s one tree now, they went global. You want evidence….sheesh.
@Jeff Wise
That’s a pitty your effort to Liam Lotter didn’t work out. But hopefully this message rings through and you or others will have more luck next time.
It would be wonderfull if some indepent experts could get their hands on an original piece.
Not only on the biology but also on structural damage and analizing materials.
Estimated impact speeds and circumstances would then get an independent scientific foundation.
It’s a kind of cynical in this regard to assume with a high degree of certainty a lot of this information allready exists but is not shared with the public or independent specialists.
@Matty Found at least one blog. Gee whiz. Did you happen to notice Ol Lightning in the mix of the comments?
@Ge Rijn, I think a question that’s received far too little attention, even in this forum, is the failure of the authorities to mention any kind of structural microanalysis to determine how exactly these pieces came apart. If I here in charge that would be one of the first things I would do. And of course, this omission is just one facet of the larger withholding of information that has dogged the debris collection process.
@Matty, You wrote, “proudly displayed his closeness to the MB until he took the photo’s down from his own website in 2005, there is plenty of evidence of that.” Okay, let’s see that evidence.
As for the relevance of other parties in Anwar’s coalition, the fact that someone associates with someone who associates with someone of questionable character is by no means an indictment, let alone grounds to accuse them of mass murder. Back when Obama was first running for president the right tried to smear him by playing up the fact that he associated with a Chicago professor who in his youth had been a leader of a radical student organization. Of course this sort of thing goes on all the time in politics but it’s very weak tea in my estimation.
perhaps it’s been discussed somewhere in the site, but would like to see if there’s any possibility that uninterruptible Autopilot took place within that 7hs? if SIO was the resting place, the intention could be a diversion from the intended destination done by uninterruptible autopilot (by government agencies)? Interested to know the capacity of the system, and whether or not restriction on the flight path achievable?
Still remember there are 2 passengers with forged passport (Iranians) who wish to transit in China. I doubted this piece of information from the very beginning as I had personal experience transit in China. China is very strict in border control and the transit passengers need to go through custom even they transit (unlike other countries) If the two Iranians were to arrive China it’s just impossible for them to pass immigration control.
I also remember the Malaysian government was posting PS photos of the 2 Iranians – why bother PS the photo if there was no problem.
@Ge Rijn: we can’t lean toward trusting the ISAT data merely because it’s “all we have”. Even if it were, we must test its validity against the physical record. If it consistently fails – or passes only faked physical evidence, such as the co-pilot cell phone connect – we must discard. If we discard, we actually get much CLOSER to solving the mystery, because a) we can now ask pointed questions of the folks who provided us invalid data and faked “corroborations”, and b) we can revisit evidence previously discarded due to incompatibility with it. Like the Maldives debris, and the Curtin Boom – both discussed in the attached hypothetical scenario (which I hope addresses your second post to me):
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-r3yuaF2p72YldDY3NrZlo3MGs/edit?usp=docslist_api&filetype=mspresentation
@Cheri, The “uninteruptible autopilot” is a legendary creature like the Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster. Some swear it exists…
As for the Iranians, I think that’s just one of the many aspects of this case that smells vaguely fishy but no one has yet been able to turn over that rock.
@Gysbreght
As promised, extract from Helios Airways A522 final report published Nov 2006. I found this on the Wikipedia entry for Helios.
Boeing estimated the final cabin altitude to be between 20,500ft and 28,200ft. The simulation came out 26,600ft. Maximum aircraft altitude was 34,000.
1.16.4 Cabin Altitude Calculation
According to the NVM data, the cabin altitude of flight HCY 522 during the climb was as
follows:
a) At flight level 12 500 ft, the cabin altitude was 10 000 ft;
b) At flight level 16 650 ft, the cabin altitude was 13 500 ft; and
c) At flight level 18 200 ft, the cabin altitude was 14 700 ft;
According to the FDR data, the cabin altitude warning horn sounded 2 – 3 seconds before
the NVM data recorded a cabin altitude of 10 000 ft. Similarly, the FDR recorded a
MASTER CAUTION at an aircraft altitude of 17 000 ft (the cabin altitude was
approximately 13 800 ft). The MASTER CAUTION was probably triggered by either
the passenger oxygen masks deployment or illumination of the equipment cooling light.
68
The average aircraft rate of climb was 3 030 ft / min and the average cabin rate of climb
was 2 300 ft / min. The outflow valve angle was constant at 14.54 degrees open (about
12% open) as counted from the fully closed position, and the cabin differential pressure
(p) was 1.034 psi.
The NVM recorded a number of parameters when a specific event or condition triggered
such a recording. On the accident flight, there was no other specific event or condition
that would have triggered a recording, and therefore the NVM did not contain any
additional aircraft and cabin altitudes. Therefore, when the aircraft had reached FL340,
the cabin altitude was not recorded on the NVM.
Based on calculations by Nord-Micro, the final cabin altitude was estimated by
extrapolation to have reached approximately 24 000 ft. Based on similar calculations, the
Boeing Company estimated the final cabin altitude to have been between from 20 500 ft
to 28 200 ft. The calculations took into account that:
a) The aft OFV was open (14.54 degrees);
b) The forward OFV remained open because the aft OFV remained more than 2 ±1.5
degrees from the fully closed position and, therefore, never signaled to the
forward OFV to close; and
c) The automatic flow control valve was assumed open because the differential
pressure never reached the FCV upper limit of 1.1 psi (p).
Finally, any other leakages from vents, galleys, toilets, seals only served to further
increase the loss of air from the cabin. The aft OFV never modulated to compensate the
outflow of air because the cabin pressure controller mode selector was in the MAN
(manual) position.
1.16.8 Accident Flight Simulation
On 30 September 2005, members of the Board and the Team, along with a representative
of the Cypriot Air Accident and Incident Investigation Board (AAIIB) and a
representative of the aircraft manufacturer participated in a simulation.
71
The simulator was owned by Olympic Airways and operated by Olympic Airlines. The
latest design performance data of the simulator were the B737-300 aerodynamic data
Boeing Doc-D6-58123-1 ADV. FLT.
The purpose of the simulation was to replicate the data downloaded from the NVM chip
of the cabin pressure controller (aircraft altitude, cabin altitude, differential pressure,
combined with various warnings concerned), and the data downloaded from the FDR.
The pressurization system of the simulator was not identical to that of the accident
aircraft. The simulator’s pressurization system was an analog type Cabin Pressure
Control System (CPCS) and had five pressurization mode selector positions (CHECK,
AUTO, STBY, MAN AC, and MAN DC). The accident aircraft had a digital type CPCS
system with three mode selector positions (AUTO, ALTN, and MAN).
The pressurization mode selector on the pressurization panel was set, before the
simulated flight, in the manual DC position. This position was used because the DCPCS
system used a DC motor.
The toggle switch was used to place the OFV approximately 14.54º open from the fully
closed position, as indicated by the OFV position indicator on the overhead panel. After
takeoff no further actions were taken on the pressurization panel during the climb to
FL340.
The observations/findings of the simulated flight are summarized in the following table:
Aircraft pressure
altitude
Cabin pressure
altitude
Differential
Pressure
Outflow Valve
Angle
Aircraft Rate
of Climb
12 100 ft 10 000 ft 1.0 psi 14.54º 2 500 ft/min
18 200 ft 14 600 ft 1.0 psi 14.54º 2 500 ft/min
34 000 ft 26 600 ft 1.0 psi 14.54º 2 500 ft/min
All aural and visual warnings concerning cabin altitude, master caution, passenger
oxygen masks, equipment cooling, were verified. The average rate of climb of the cabin
altitude was approximately 2 000 ft/min.
@Brock McEwen
That’s a nice piece of work! I did a fast read allready and will give it more thought to give you a reaction later.
One small ‘cosmectic’ flaw needs correction though: Liam Lotter’s piece was not the engine cowling but the flap fairing (several times mentioned in your pictures).
And if you understood my later posts well you’ll know I agree fully with you on your statement about the ISAT data above.
That’s why I suggested to undertake a drift study leaving the ISAT data out only using the now know debris finds and lack of debris finds further on shores in the I.O.
I also suggested the Curtin boom event could fit the Maldives and Diego Garcia area but only if the ISAT data prove to be invalid (or useless) and with more circumstancial evidence added.
Still with a frequence of thens of thousands random events like this in the I.O. per month it seems a too random event to me worth to build a sound hypothesis on.
But I admit I never payed that much attention to it.
I’ll read your paper with great interest and come back on it.
@Victor:
NW = Maldives area, SW = Africa/offshore, SE = Australia
With NW looking (to me) full of potential MH370 debris, and SE looking empty, the entire SIO along Arc7 impact theory is on thin ice before even considering the plantedness of SW debris. So either the plane didn’t impact anywhere in the IO – which requires ALL debris to be either planted or misidentified – or it impacted at an embarrassing location in the IO – in which case the only deception might be in how the SW debris story is being spun.
But since you ask: within the set of SW debris coincidences, Blaine’s discovery – though indeed fortuitous – doesn’t even crack my “top five” concerns re: provenance of SW debris:
– shadiness of official forensic analyses (delay, deny, confuse)
– missing data plate on flaperon
– barnacled “Roy” photo appearing amid controversy over “too clean” authenticity concerns – not coverage of Neels’ discovery 2 months prior
– lack of high-rez side views of dark red Nomex with white potting compound in Rodrigues & Bernache items (for comparison to Vabbinfaru item)
– spectacularly fast and “unambiguous” identifications accompanying each of first 5 pieces found: e.g. within a day, Oz officials were claiming flaperon existed “only on a 777”, and within a week had “confirmed” consistency with the search area via revised drift analysis
Do we have evidence that this was the first shore Blaine visited? If so, that might bump the coincidence factor up a bit. Otherwise, I lean toward the view that his discovery was either authentic, or the product of planting before he arrived.
@ROB:
Thanks for providing the extract from Helios Airways A522 final report. Very illuminating, I didn’t know this.
However, when the flight crew was apparently incapacitated in less than 10 minutes after the cabin altitude warning, before the airplane reached the FL340 cruise altitude, how relevant is it that a small pressure differential is maintained by the operating AC packs?
EgyptAir Flight MS804 – What The Media Won’t Tell You:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/egyptair-flight-ms804-what-the-media-wont-tell-you/5527677
@AM2: you’d asked about “recent” Curtin refinements – there have been none.
I did recently give this forum the coordinates Dr. Duncan gave me nearly 2 years ago, representing the statistical centre of the original June, 2014 distribution – but on the same condition I promised Alec: that we not make a big deal about it, since the distribution was very long and thin, with nothing particularly special about its centre (think “least unlikely”, not “most likely”).
Here’s a revised version of the Nature graphic, with key regions (hopefully) more clearly annotated:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-r3yuaF2p72cVE2dXBfRU1yUHc/view?usp=sharing
Debris seems to be arriving later than predicted. I’m wondering if any inferences can be drawn about the remoteness of the likely crash site? In particular whether it is more supportive of the current search area than other possible locations like zenith?
Also the debris, so far, seems to be mostly well fragmented into small pieces. I’m wondering if that offers any clues about the final moments of MH370?
Well, if you think that the Independent Group’s analysis of the structural damage to the flaperon is free of bias …
@Brock McEwen
I read it closer and to be honest I see no solutions to same old- and new problems with this old hypothesis in a updated jacket.
I mean this realy as positive critisism.
One of the functions of a new hypothesis is not only try to prove it but also try to disprove it. That’s what I want to challenge now with all respect to you.
To start with; the ISAT data are still not proved to be invalid. Besides the debris it’s still the most objectif data there is to work with.
The proposed area can not possibly made compatable with this ISAT data.
-The Maldives debris is highly problematic for the fire bottle seems to be proven not to come from a B777, the ‘flap’ piece not available for investigation for it was reportedly burned after it was found and never postively determent as being a part of an aircraft. The other piece is too small to make any possitive identification possible to link it with MH370. And still no other debris is found on the Maldives.
-A crash area around Maldives/Diego Garcia would imply that debris should be found (early) on Sri Lanka shores, Indonesian shores etc. and (later) on North African shores.
Non of this is confirmed to have happened till now in contrast with the confirmed and other debris found till now.
-If a hypothesis uses/needs another hypothesis (planting-theory) that still is purely hypothetical and widely considered not likely by now, this does not add to the firmness of your hypothesis but weakens it imo.
-The fact mentioned that the Scott reef data gave a rather precise location but did not fit time as well as the Leeuwin data (and visa versa). Both times were too different and the Leeuwin data gave far to much room to point to a certain position of the event. This indicates to me the problem of the high frecuency and randomness of those events which make them very problematic imo.
-As I understood it well the amplitude of the event data was called (by A. Duncan) better fitting with a geological event.
I would wonder what his opinion is two years later.
-The discrepancy between, if it was a seabed impact (Oleksandr) or a high speed surface impact (your headline) and with it the difference in sound waves and their reach and detectability becomes not clear in your paper. I would be curious to read something about it.
Hope you take this all positive for I admire the work you are doing a lot.
@Gysbrecht
I don’t know. They also never got their hands on an original piece.
I tend to trust them more with one them than those government institutions.
If I found a piece I’d rather send it to one of them instead of handing it over to government authorities.
But agree it would probably be better to send it to specialist not allready too deeply ‘involved’ in this matter with a fresh and unprejudiced mind.
@Gysbreght
Thank you. The report was not the easiest to read through. I know the cause was the pressurization being set to manual instead of automatic. I find it interesting that a flight attendant entered the cockpit in the later stages of the flight. Possibly he had been using a portable oxygen unit. When the aircraft began to descend (when following the flight plan) prior to maintaining a holding pattern, cabin pressure increased enough to revive the flight attendant. The F16 crew saw the flight attendant enter the cockpit.
Does anyone have a link for the Scott reef event analysis?
The May 11 & 12, 2016 thread on DS’s site states than an impact location at 34S 94E is, “the least-likely to result in debris reaching the WA coast.” I am not challenging this or the conclusions of any of the other drift models but, FWIW, a track from waypoint NIXUL to waypoint OLPUS is within 36 nm of 34S 94E. Thus the input of waypoint OLPUS after the FMT could result in fuel exhaustion near the 7th Arc but prior to reaching OLPUS.
Jeff – the photo’s of Anwar with Al-Qaradawi it’s claimed around the traps were originally obtained from Anwar’s website years ago until he removed them. I see not much reason to doubt that.
You describe him(Qaradawi)as questionable in character – this guy isn’t allowed to enter your country or mine and is on watch lists everywhere. Association with him is no more ambiguous than hanging with Bin Laden. Sunni Islamism is truly global – it behaves as a network and Anwar doesn’t exactly live around the corner. Something brought them together.
Shah is a long way away from the benign secular democrat that media have made him out to be and in Malaysia I see all the ingredients necessary for the Plane’s disappearance.
The govt is a multi-generational crime syndicate that is being stalked by an Islamist movement via the channels of democracy. Anwar heads that movement which is why he has been jailed on and off since 1998. And they are making big inroads into Najib who is looking over his shoulder.
Like most Islamic countries there are a lot of things Malaysians don’t advertise so looking in, the western press rarely gauge it properly. It’s clear cut to us but in Islamist circles Shah(hypothetically or otherwise) would not be seen as a mass murderer – and we don’t know what he set out to do or what finally happened up there.
As someone who has belonged to a political party before it’s not something you do lightly or casually. Shah was an Islamist, and how typical for the gutless western media to gloss over it. If it’s Najib versus Anwar it was always going to get ugly.