Via alert reader @Susie, photos have emerged on Tanzanian social media of an object that looks very much like a control surface from an airliner. Here’s what Bing Translator makes of the original Kiswahili:
Wing of the plane have been conflict and civilians today in the Indian Ocean on the island of Kojani. Made known is what airlines.
A place where it is believed to the remains of the plane have been caught in the Indian Ocean Island beach in Kojani.
Wing of the plane was found in the island of Kojani, is eliciting a great debate among the inhabitants of the island with many believing it is the wing flight of malaysia which was lost without a known future. Airlines of Malaysia Airlines with type MH370, it had disappeared March 8 in 2014 has never been visible until today.
Though still no certainty is what bird fossils, experts of air travel have started initial stages of the investigation of the wreckage of the plane.
Reports say security officials already have started to investigate the wing and probably not long we get enough information from entities involved
Kojani is a small inhabited island near Pemba, about 50 nautical miles north of Zanzibar and 500 miles north of the beaches in Mozambique where MH370 debris has previously been found. It has been described as “one of the least accessible villages [of Pemba], located on an islet off the eastern coast of the main island. At the last count Kojani was home to more than nine thousand people.” While still south of the equator, it is by far the northernmost debris from MH370 identified so far, if that is indeed what it is.
Its appearance is strongly reminiscent of the flaperon found on Réunion island, although there seems to be none of the broken-off hinge attachments and so forth that were visible on the ends and underside of the flaperon. Also, there is a very visible waterline, which the flaperon lacked. It would be interesting to know if this waterline corresponds with that observed by the French investigators when they put the flaperon in their test tank in Toulouse.
So what is it, exactly? Commenter @Rob suggests it “Might be a piece of inboard flap.” @Ken Goodwin writes “Though the part has the shape of a wing part. It does not jog the memory. Closed large end with no fittings. Surface with no fittings. ???” Of course it might not be from MH370 at all. But if it is, it breaks from the recent trend of debris items being small enough to hold with one hand.
I hope that somehow this object finds its way into the hands of independent investigators who can examine it before it disappears into the black hole that is the Malaysian investigation.
UPDATE 6/24/16: New photos from Jamilforums below.
For references, here’s a shot of the outboard end of the right flaperon found on Réunion:
In both pieces it seems that the main structure is aluminum, with the curved leading edge made of composite material.
Can anyone pass me the email address of Blaine Alan Gibson, please
@Rob
I agree. The flaperon alone could maybe still have been seperated due to flutter in a retracted state but not the outboard flap.
They show both clear damage where you would expect it if the plane ditched with those flaps down; broken off trailing edges.
Consequently the probability the plane was under human controle during that time increases dramaticaly.
The highly unlikely occasion that three pieces are found from the same wing directly relating to eachother; the flaperon, the flap fairing and this outboard flap section (assumed confirmed) and possibly one or two panels from above this flaperon, the smaller 1FB panel from the underside at an outboard flap location(if confirmed), the engine cowling piece and the NO STEP panel of the right horizontal stabilizer being ~90% of the pieces found till now suggest to me there might be not a lot (relatively spoken) debris have been floating around in the first place.
A mid air brake up would have lead to an enormous amount of debris and not lead to such selective and related finds.
To me also evidence builds substantialy to a more or less controlled ditching event with human input leaving this selective and related pieces whith the expected damage done on the flaperon and the outboard flap section and other pieces.
@ Jeff Wise
Sir, just a thought . Can we consider that the plane might end up on the very first Inmarsat ping ring at 18:29 Hrs and somehow kept sending signals for few hours while the plan was floating until submerged. I mean even if partially damaged condition would it be possible to send signals ? Hope you understand what I am trying to explain
@shareef
I thought this at one point but if you look at one of the many ping ring maps out there you will see that even following the shortest possible distance that meets all ring circles is an incredible distance to drift.
Land also gets in the way.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ping+ring.circles&client=ms-android-h3g-gb&prmd=sivn&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiJ0paGrcXNAhWMKcAKHYBiB-8Q_AUICCgC&biw=360&bih=560#imgrc=k_0z9fxiYZU8_M%3A
@Shareef, No, this could not happen.
@Crobbie, There is no point at which the ping-rings interset.
@Ge Rijn
Re: disinterest in personal items.
I fear that there are a couple of possible explanations for this. None are good.
Firstly malaysian authorities may know that there is no chance the items are from the flight. Second they might not like the undermining of their supremacy over this investigation. Thirdly they too may know about the stock dump and may have additional info to confirm it is definitely that.
Im sure there are other possibilities
No exactly @jeff. Thats what i was saying. Which means to meet the ping rings it would have to drift an impossible distance at a consistent speed, through land!!! An absolute impossibility.
@ Jeff Wise
Thanks . My point is that the plane might be on the first ping just outside west of Indonesia. As ping range may not be so accurate I still belive what I suggested might have some weight . If the transmission of signal was going in vain, it might not be just as what many believes.. I am saying this studying the information so far and considering the debris seen to date .
@Shareef, The investigation of physical phenomenon is not a matter of belief. MH370 is not a fairy tale, and unlike Never-Never Land merely wishing does not make something so.
@Crobbie, Please identify the location where you believe these concentric rings intersect.
@ Jeff Wise
Thanks again. Actually the arc of pings will not be accurate plus I mean to say is that the other pings might be ghost signals. I am saying that th plane may not travel after the first ping
@Shareef, I understand that this idea occurred to you, but it is not correct. Please do not perseverate.
Why are the pings still being considered when in fact it has been admitted that the math/physics of the equation is not ACCURATE! Duncan Steel and a others have pointed out the Flaws in the Immarsat data.. Personally I think it’s been a disgrace and a waste of Australian tax payers money that the ATSB have not considered any alternatives.. They’ve just taken the Immarsat data as the most plausible when in fact in my opinion it has not been.. If this latest piece of wreckage is from MH370..Once again it points out the ATSB is looking in the wrong place!
@Aaron, You wrote, “the math/physics of the equation is not ACCURATE! Duncan Steel and a others have pointed out the Flaws in the Immarsat data.” You are misinformed.
@Jeff Wise ok then why did Duncan steel, Exnena say and I quote “When the plane is moving away from the satellite, the radio signal gets stretched out, so the frequency decreases. This means that the frequency shifts should be negative over most of the flight. Although there was an approximately one-hour period starting 40 minutes after takeoff when radar showed the plane moving westward, toward the satellite, the graph shows that”and “the satellite’s motion is almost entirely north-south, and the plane’s takeoff location in Kuala Lumpur is almost due east of the satellite. This means that the satellite was only barely moving relative to Kuala Lumpur, so the frequency shift for a plane nearly stationary on the ground at the”
@Jeff Wise point I’m making is the calculations based on a stationary satellite.When in fact the satellite itself was in motion.. If you or someone else can provide with the facts that it was not so therefore disprove the negative BFO values I’m happy to be proven wrong. Also I’m not saying the plane did not fly south. Pointing out it maybe didn’t fly that far south. But further north.
@ Jeff Wise
Thanks
@Aaron: The true satellite orbit was used in the calculations. The BFO is related to the Doppler effect, but has other components that you are neglecting. There are many papers that explain the intricacies of the BFO, including the ATSB report from June 2014, Inmarsat’s paper in the Journal of Navigation in October 2014, and the DSTG Bayesian analysis from December 2015.
Mike Exner, Duncan Steel, and other members of the IG do not dispute the interpretation of the BTO and the BFO as presented in these works. You might be referring to some of the statements made in the early months following the disappearance when the details of the BFO were not yet disclosed.
That said, there are many paths ending outside of the current search zone that satisfy the satellite data. Rather than questioning the interpretation of the satellite data, it is more productive to question the assumptions that led to the definition of the current search zone.
@Ge Rijn
@Susie
@buyerninety
GE Rijn I agree with you. The Pemba Island item appears to be the inboard section of a B777 RH outboard flap, Boeing Ref 667. The trailing edge damage and lack of leading edge damage is consistent with it having been broken away on impact with water during a controlled ditching. Same as happened to the flaperon.
@Susie, tempting to think this piece could have been the object an Air France pilot reported seeing, floating in the sea some miles to the north of Reunion, a week or so after the flaperon was discovered.
[Redated by JW] @falken, random links without description wind up wasting a lot of people’s time. Let’s get out of the habit of posting them.
I remember something about that, Rob. Wasn’t it more recently though? I thought something like that happened in the past couple of months. I will have a search online.
You’re right, Rob –
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-air-france-pilot-spots-object-off-reunion-coast-1519903
I’m not sure which direction the currents would go in that small region of the sea, whether it’s possible it could have drifted from that location to where it was discovered.
@Susie
It could have been languishing in coastal waters for some time. It’s collected an awful lot if scratches, as if it’s been bobbing too and fro among the rocks.
Below is a link to a short paper that describes a flight path ending north of the current search zone. By assuming automated flight after 19:41 with a constant heading of 180M, a vertical speed of -100 fpm, and a speed schedule of M0.84/310 KIAS, a match to the satellite data is found. The end point is around 31.5S latitude.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zynbvxyv22r49ny/2016-06-25%20Possible%20MH370%20End%20Point%20North%20of%20Search%20Zone.pdf?dl=0
@Crobbie said; “Thirdly they too may know about the stock dump”
I can’t stay long, but I’ll just note – the only ‘stock dump’ I
remember being mentioned was about Rivers Footwear by another
poster, and that originated from an off the cuff remark, made in
JEST (non-serious), from (for instance) this webpage;
http://www.smh.com.au/business/retail/what-specialty-fashion-found-when-it-bought-rivers-20151116-gl0lck.html
2nd time it’s been mentioned, so I would not want anyone to
think that there ever actually was a ‘stock dump’ at sea…
Tanzania debris identified: https://goo.gl/LjSpD0
@alsm et. al.
Nice. I don’t suppose any feedback from Boeing via the ATSB has been forthcoming? Rhetorical question, of course.
@VictorI
Do you really need to invoke the -100fpm ROC? That is not much above the average human walking speed with a Doppler contribution of around -2Hz. When you are accepting a BFO tolerance of 20Hz I find myself wondering why you would even bother with it. Personally, I don’t think your terminus is far enough North, but it is certainly better than 38S. Again the absence of motive or causality is missing, but that has been a consistent feature of all previous IG and ATSB sourced flight paths.
@airlandseaman
Great Job
@ALSM
Nice work you guys, but we just pipped you to the post, but what’s a couple of hours between friends!
The convex/concave/convex of the inboard upper edge of the flap, I was prattling on about earlier, is even mirrored by the outboard upper edge of the flaperon!
One more piece of evidence showing he ditched the aircraft, flaps down! If he deliberately ditched, then he must have planned it that way, and hw would have wanted daylight to do it in. An IGOGU, ISBIX, 7th arc geodesic, crossing the 7th arc at S37.7, E89.1 meets all the requirements, (constant airspeed Mach 0.81 at 35,000ft, adjusting for winds and upper air temps along the route winds, and what’s more, is backed up by the much denigrated DSTG’s Bayesian analysis. Bottom line, aircraft is well downrange of 7th arc, as much as 100Nm downrange. This is where the ATSB will need to look if they are to find the plane.
ATSB and Malaysian MOT take note!
@DennisW: The slow descent is required so that the true airspeed varies without further pilot inputs. The falling airspeed is required to match the BTO, not the BFO, for the trajectory of constant magnetic heading. During the descent, after passing through the cross-over altitude of FL316, the indicated air speed remains constant at 310 kt, which means that the true airspeed falls with altitude as the air density increases. This is shown in Table 1 of the paper.
@airlandseaman
Thanks for the thorough and nice presentation of the evidence on this piece.
And thanks for mentioning my name.
Although it’s not exactly ‘Ge Rijm’..
Doesn’t matter. It has been a difficult name for more people around here allready 😉
@ Ge Rijn
Congratulations on the namecheck. I know you spent hours looking for that machined rib, and you found it.
@Susie
Thanks.
Yes I spent quite some time investigating this.
I was quite shure allready 23-6 but then to put it all together present it here and explain it to the sometimes very sceptical contributors here (which is oke in it’s own right) has been a challenge as you probably noticed.
The attention of @airlandseaman and his posting of the combined picture helped a lot though and I’m gratefull he made things clear this way.
It’s a combined effort which brings results.
That’s what matters.
You were (as usual..;) very fast with posting the newest pictures and news which made it possible to work on it for me (and others).
Susie:
Actually, I think it was @Ge Rijn that first put me on to the machined rib. Once we started looking into that one, it quickly became clear that we were looking at a piece of an outboard flap, not the aft part of an inboard flap as first suspected. But it took more time to confirm which piece of the flap, and which wing. It is fairly obvious now, but it was not so obvious in the first 24 hrs. Don, Victor and Barry dug up the confirming info. Good to see others concurring. Hope it helps ATSB & Boeing if they were not already there.
@VictorI – I found your paper to be very interesting. If the assumptions are close to what happened it’s a shame that they have spent so much time and money looking in the wrong place.
Do your altitude and speed combinations support the approx 5.95h fuel endurance?
@VictorI
Got it. Thx.
@ROB
The terminus you have been evangelizing is incompatible with the debris finds. As far as daylight is concerned, there was daylight along the entire 7th arc North of your proposed terminus. The debris evidence has motivated just about everyone to give more weight to a more Northern terminus. Get with the program or reconcile the debris found (and lack of debris found in SW Australia) with your theory.
As far as Dolan reading a transcript of the JW blog at breakfast, it seems unlikely. He is probably focussed on trying to find his way out of the house in the morning.
Geat work Ge Rijn, buyerninety and ALSM!
In the third photo jeff posted above, and even more clearly in the fourth, it is apparent that all fastener heads are clean without paint, just as the single fastener that remained attached to the flaperon. Does anyone have an explanation for that?
@Victorl
Have you any idea how this -100ft descent rate could have occured (after FMT)?
Is it necessary to be set/programmed by a pilot?
Or are there also other ways this could have happened to happen?
@ALSM?
So when are we going to be hearing from you the following: “Well it seems now that our ‘analysis’ was erroneous in regard to flutter being responsible for the Reunion flaperon separation”.
Or perhaps you will choose to remain faithful to your ‘ghost flight’ (we can’t blame the crew after all) farce (doing quite a disservice to the NOK, by the way), and devise some other ‘scientific’ explanation for your agenda driven confirmation bias.
Probably the latter nice you’ve not retracted your absurd flutter explanation to date. It’s beyond pathetic.
@DennisW
I’m no more encouraged to get with the program than you are to take a rifle to that elephant (motive) Your program is based on erroneous conclusions. Nothing reached Australia, simply because the current took the debris north and then west, just as you would expect with the SIO Gyre.
Your inability to come to terms with the obvious, ie pilot suicide, is the only reason for you resorting to a more northern terminus.
@Gysbreght
Thank you.
IMO it’s getting even more interesting now for we can work on the consequences this piece will have on other important aspects of the puzzle.
It might well be the ATSB will (have to) wait with publishing there confirmation for a considerable time.
It’s a good thing IMO we don’t have to wait for that now to try and make further progress.
@ROB
Pilot suicide falls into the valid motive category as far as I am concerned.
Drift analytics all show debris should have been deposited in SW Australia from your proposed terminus. These same studies also show that there was not enough elapsed time to explain the debris which has been found to have originated near 38S. Either you are not reading the drift analytics or you are choosing to ignore them.
I prefer to see better photos of the flap before offering any opinion on the possibility of flutter induced separation. However, from what we know already, there is a large missing piece of the trailing edge, broken at the rear spar, and virtually no visible compression damage on the leading edge. These same observations were present on the flaperon, which probably did separate prior to fuselage impact, whether due to flutter or similar oscillatory motion, leading to fatigue failure.
@Gysbreght
On the clean fastener heads:
It seems the other side (under side) has a lot less wear and tear on the paint and on the fasteners (first ‘Pemba’ photo where it’s lying on the ground).
I assume it has been lying for a considerable time rubbing on sand and stones (coral?) with its upper side down on it.
@VictorI:
Taking the suggested path in your latest paper, what altitude would have been lost at -100fpm from BEDAX to the point of intersection on the 7th arc?
Great job @ all of you!
Please stay on to find MH370 at last!
Best regards and greetings from Germany
Aileron
@jeff of course they dont intersect!!!! Never said they do!! Theyre concentric!!!!!!!!! I even linked the image of the TIMED CONCENTRIC circles. What im saying is that in order to be a valid proposition any path must cross each of the rings at the right point in time. There is no way this can be the case for a floating object. Simple.
Please dont twist my words.
@Crobbie:
Since jeff’s very clear replies apparently are not convincing enough, maybe the following helps. When the airplane hits the water surface, engines, APU and RAT stop generating electrical power. The battery doesn’t power the SATCOM system. When the SATCOM system is without power, the airplane doesn’t respond to messages from the INMARSAT ground station – no pings after ditching or crash.
@Lauren H: Let me think about the fuel implications of the proposed flight path. Certainly the distance the plane flew is less than the straight, level cruise path, but I have not come to a firm conclusion on whether the descending flight would have comparable endurance to a stepped cruise at M0.84, for example.
@Middleton: Please see Table 1 of the paper for the information you seek.