New York has obtained a confidential document from the Malaysian police investigation into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 that shows that the plane’s captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, conducted a simulated flight deep into the remote southern Indian Ocean less than a month before the plane vanished under uncannily similar circumstances. The revelation, which Malaysia withheld from a lengthy public report on the investigation, is the strongest evidence yet that Zaharie made off with the plane in a premeditated act of mass murder-suicide.
The document presents the findings of the Malaysian police’s investigation into Zaharie. It reveals that after the plane disappeared in March of 2014, Malaysia turned over to the FBI hard drives that Zaharie used to record sessions on an elaborate home-built flight simulator. The FBI was able to recover six deleted data points that had been stored by Microsoft Flight Simulator X program in the weeks before MH370 disappeared, according to the document. Each point records the airplane’s altitude, speed, direction of flight, and other key parameters at a given moment. The document reads, in part:
Based on the Forensics Analysis conducted on the 5 HDDs obtained from the Flight Simulator from MH370 Pilot’s house, we found a flight path, that lead to the Southern Indian Ocean, among the numerous other flight paths charted on the Flight Simulator, that could be of interest, as contained in Table 2.
Taken together, these points show a flight that departs Kuala Lumpur, heads northwest over the Malacca Strait, then turns left and heads south over the Indian Ocean, continuing until fuel exhaustion over an empty stretch of sea.
Search officials believe MH370 followed a similar route, based on signals the plane transmitted to a satellite after ceasing communications and turning off course. The actual and the simulated flights were not identical, though, with the stimulated endpoint some 900 miles from the remote patch of southern ocean area where officials believe the plane went down. Based on the data in the document, here’s a map of the simulated fight compared to the route searchers believe the lost airliner followed (see above).
Rumors have long circulated that the FBI had discovered such evidence, but Malaysian officials made no mention of the find in the otherwise detailed report into the investigation, “Factual Information,” that was released on the first anniversary of the disappearance.
The credibility of the rumors was further undermined by the fact that many media accountsmentioned “a small runway on an unnamed island in the far southern Indian Ocean,” of which there are none.
From the beginning, Zaharie has been a primary suspect, but until now no hard evidence implicating him has emerged. The “Factual Information” report states, “The Captain’s ability to handle stress at work and home was good. There was no known history of apathy, anxiety, or irritability. There were no significant changes in his life style, interpersonal conflict or family stresses.” After his disappearance, friends and family members came forward to described Zaharie as an affable, helpful family man who enjoyed making instructional YouTube videos for home DIY projects — hardly the typical profile of a mass murderer.
The newly unveiled documents, however, suggest Malaysian officials have suppressed at least one key piece of incriminating information. This is not entirely surprising: There is a history in aircraft investigations of national safety boards refusing to believe that their pilots could have intentionally crashed an aircraft full of passengers. After EgyptAir 990 went down near Martha’s Vineyard in 1999, for example, Egyptian officials angrily rejected the U.S. National Transport Safety Board finding that the pilot had deliberately steered the plane into the sea. Indonesian officials likewise rejected the NTSB finding that the 1997 crash of SilkAir 185 was an act of pilot suicide.
Previous press accounts suggest that Australian and U.S. officials involved in the MH370 investigation have long been more suspicious of Zaharie than their Malaysian counterparts. In January, Byron Bailey wrote in The Australian: “Several months after the MH370 disappearance I was told by a government source that the FBI had recovered from Zaharie’s home computer deleted information showing flight plan waypoints … my source … left me with the impression that the FBI were of the opinion that Zaharie was responsible for the crash.”
However, it’s not entirely clear that the recovered flight-simulator data is conclusive. The differences between the simulated and actual flights are significant, most notably in the final direction in which they were heading. It’s possible that their overall similarities are coincidental — that Zaharie didn’t intend his simulator flight as a practice run but had merely decided to fly someplace unusual.
Today, ministers from Malaysia, China, and Australia announced that once the current seabed search for MH370’s wreckage is completed, they will suspend further efforts to find the plane. The search was originally expected to wrap up this month, but stormy weather has pushed back the anticipated completion date to this fall. So far, 42,000 square miles have been covered at a cost of more than $130 million, with another 4,000 square miles to go.
“I must emphasise that this does not mean we are giving up on the search for MH370,” Malaysian Transport minister Liow Tiong Lai said. Officials have previously stated that if they received “credible new information that leads to the identification of a specific location of the aircraft,” the search could be expanded.
But some, including relatives of the missing passengers, believe that that evidentiary threshold has already been past. Recent months have seen the discovery of more than a dozen pieces of suspected aircraft debris, which analyzed collectively could narrow down where the plane went down. (The surprising absence of such wreckage for more than a year left me exploring alternative explanations that ultimately proved unnecessary.) The fact that Zaharie apparently practiced flying until he ran out of fuel over the remote southern Indian Ocean suggests the current search is on the right track — and that another year of hunting might be a worthwhile investment.
UPDATE 7/23/16: Here is some data on some of the points recovered from Zaharie’s flight simulator. Note that one of the points is missing. There are also additional fields that I am not yet at liberty to disclose. Watch this space…
If this revelation is true, then it represents one of the most significant releases of information to the public to date.
Jeff, does the simulator track follow any obvious waypoints? Or does it appear to be based on manually entered coordinates?
“The FBI was able to recover six deleted data points that had been stored by Microsoft Flight Simulator X program in the weeks before MH370 disappeared, according to the document.”
Why would captain Zaharie enter six waypoints to define a route that needs only two?
What is the format used by the Microsoft Flight Simulator X program to store a flight of that length?
So, while next of kin suffered, and many millions were being wasted searching…
– 1,000km NE of 30°s for 2 months, citing acoustic pings KNOWN to be inconsistent with MH370’s FDR
– 1,000km SW of 30°s for 2 years, risking the lives of Fugro and Go employees searching the “Roaring 40’s”
…the FBI was sitting on this 30°s point of intersection with the 7th Arc – and it didn’t occur to them to tell search leadership about it?!
Or, worse yet – they told search leadership, and the search proceeded as it did anyway?!?
Furthermore: there is not a point on that flight path at or beyond the 7th arc which isn’t counter-indicated by the lack of debris found on Australian shorelines.
The magnitude of evidence we must now cheerfully ignore in order to make this new narrative fit is monumental. To me, this shady “revelation” is far more likely to be a desperate reaction to the noose of cold science slowly but inexorably tightening around the necks of those trying in vain to HIDE the plane’s fate from the general public.
I’ve tried to keep my mind as open as possible, and base my assessments on hard data. The hard data says very little – because it has largely been suppressed, delayed, distorted, and accompanied by a whirlwind of irrelevant distractions – but one broad conclusion simply cannot be denied:
Something smells.
@Victor
Well, your prognostications relative to the SIO route on the simulator turned out to be true. If the cell site registration turns out to be true you batting for a high average. Get a good night’s rest, and get back in the ring.
Way to go.
@DennisW: You can count on the cell phone registration being true. You can also count on the camps being formed between those blaming the pilot and those blaming the FBI. It’s already begun.
@Gysbreght posted “Why would captain Zaharie enter six waypoints to define a route that needs only two?”
Interesting observation, an experience pilot would only have used 2 waypoints for that flight path, not 6 ,which leads me to believe whoever dreamt up this flight path wasn’t a pilot.
@Gysbreght
Perhaps they are also counting waypoints in the Malacca Strait, plus a final manual along track waypoint coinciding with estimated position at fuel exhaustion, to allow the FMC to keep flying a great circle path, rather than a constant track?
The suggestion that the hard disk data for the simulated “six way-point flight” was “Less than a month before” the date of MH370’s flight, conflicts heavily with previous assertions by close associates, that the simulator had “crashed” late in 2013, and Zaharie had not been able to repair it.
@Gysbreght
And do you think that path crossover point just south of the equator on the Google Earth map is actually our old friend ISBIX?
If it takes only two waypoints to define a path, why do so many waypoints exist? For example, why does MEKAR exist on a path that could be defined as VAMPI>NILAM? The offset to MEKAR adds a slight turn and adds a small distance but why is it there?
The story is ridiculous. Imagine captain Zaharie sitting in front of his computer a whole day, doing nothing, just waiting until the fuel quantity indicator reads zero. The information he obtained in that exercise could have been obtained in a fraction of that time from the FCOM, with pencil and paper, and a Casio pocket calculator.
@Jeff: wow, what a scoop!
Can you please give us…
1. …this report in full, and
2. …to the best of your knowledge, the full chain of custody of either the FBI’s “Forensics Analysis” or the report summarizing it? You’ve already mentioned one intermediary (“the Malaysian police investigation into MH370’s disappearance”) – were there any others? Please also include precise dates at which any info passed from A to B, and include the custody all the way from the FBI to you. It will be interesting to see who sat on what, and for how long.
The timing of this information passing to you on the very same day as the search suspension is announced is quite a coincidence.
Huge thanks in advance.
This story also contradicts previously reported statements by the FBI that stated that “nothing sinister” was found on the Captain’s hard drive and he was cleared of any wrong doing.
I honestly don’t know what to believe from US Oficiials anymore at this point.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/nehttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2592215/Nothing-sinister-say-FBI-investigators-examining-home-built-flight-simulator-MH370-captain.htmlws/article-2592215/Nothing-sinister-say-FBI-investigators-examining-home-built-flight-simulator-MH370-captain.html
@ALL
Another thought, I’m sure Zaharie was smart enough to realize that deleted files could be recovered. If he wanted to destroy the evidence, he would have broken up the hard drive. I think he left that flight path as a decoy, to lead searchers away from the intended path. Remember, he had no notion that the ISAT data could be used to reconstruct the actual flight path.
I don’t know, guys. Why would an experience pilot need to practice a straight line course to fuel exhaustion?
If his goal was to practice a fuel-exhaustion ditching, he could have done that over and over again on a short route.
If his goal was to practice 6 hours of autopilot, he could have just taken a nap.
This sounds like a timed release to get the heat off for the search end announcement. Of all the possible announcements, this one leaves the least amount of mystery.
@Gysbreght: What information could be gained by running a simulation into the SIO is a big question. I can’t think of any, especially since FSX is a game with questionable accuracy relative to performance parameters like fuel consumption. As you say, any pilot has access to real performance data he or she needs for flight planning. But, the deleted coordinates (which may not be route waypoints) were found by the FBI. I also don’t understand why a pilot would intentionally fly into the SIO. That’s not to say it didn’t happen.
@Jeffwise
Yes, nice work. This story is going to run a while longer, methinks.
@Ken S: If you construct the chronology of leaks surrounding the simulator, you will see that early reports said nothing sinister was found. That changed in June 2014, when reports surfaced about deleted coordinates that were recovered. The early reports were probably premature.
@VictorI
You said can’t think why a pilot would fly intentionally into the SIO. That’s not to say it didn’t happen. Gosh, hedging your bets, or what!
@Gysbreght
Please clarify for me, as I’m trying to follow this fascinating development and understand it.
The article mentions “six deleted data points” and defines them as, “airplane’s altitude, speed, direction of flight, and other key parameters at a given moment.”
But in your comment you changed the word from ‘data point’ to ‘way point’. These are different, are they not, and a data point doesn’t necessarily mean a change in direction? So would the assertion that only two are needed, and not six, would be an improper conclusion?
I’m not trying to be argumentative, but just trying to understand if there is a difference, thanks.
@VictorI
But still why didn’t the FBI at that time, or the Malaysians, come forth with this info to the public if they knew about it then? Why are we finding out about this now just as the search is coming to an end and they have wasted millions of dollars searching for this plane based on the wrong assumption it was an hypoxic flight?
Something really smells here.
@Rob: Hedging my bets? No, it’s called being honest. I still have no earthly idea why somebody would intentionally fly into the SIO. Yet, the evidence points in that direction.
@Ken S: I assure you that the Malaysians will not be happy about the release of information. Byron Bailey claims that the ATSB has had the information. Probably, the ATSB didn’t know how to use the coordinates to refine the path. After all, the straight-line path between the coordinates doesn’t hit the ping arcs at the right times.
@Lauren H
Re choice of waypoints in the Malacca Strait:
I have often wondered about that. Honestly, at one stage I thought he went from Vampi to Anoko, a path which passes very close to Mekar, so close you could be forgiven for assuming the plane flew to Mekar. He may not have been on N571 to Nilam, at all. The DSTG didn’t think he went to Nilam. Their Bayesian projection points directly at Anoko.
A tad confusing, isn’t it.
I’d like to add another possibility to the “coincidence” theory – that a trip like this could have been used for legitimate purposes such as calibration. Does the simulator run out of fuel when expected? Does it handle true/magnetic as expected? Does it handle changes in weight as expected? It’s conceivable that a “builder” of a simulator would let it run to see if over a long trip there were inaccuracies in the model.
Also, there IS an island only a few miles from the path – Cocos (Keeling) Island. It’s not at the end of the path, but if you wanted to practice some emergency proceedure, that might not matter that the programmed path overshoots your planned runway.
Perhaps if there may have been an indication of certain co-ordinates and/or paths to the SIO from the flight simulator, it still doesn’t mean that it may have been deliberate for the intention of suicide or to disappear. Perhaps previously just messing about on a simulator as people do on games/program’s. If something happened onboard ie. couldn’t land or hijacked under duress and was turned to 180 approx for whatever reason (quick thinking) to keep plane out of harms way or to bide time to resolve problems aboard either hijack under duress or couldn’t land for whatever reason.
@Billy;
Yes, of course there may be a difference between entered waypoints and recorded datapoints. That’s why I asked about the format of FSX flight recordings on a HDD. That program has been sold in hundreds of thousands, if not millions of copies all over the world, and countless enthusiasts are still using it for fun. A related question is of course why captain Zaharie would save a record of that flight simulation on a HDD before erasing it.
Three remarks:
It’s strange that Malaysian police would leak a doc endangering Malaysian Airlines getting the insurance money.
The new alleged route approximately overflies a well-known fictional island:
http://jeffwise.net/2016/06/09/blaine-alan-gibson-finds-3-possible-mh370-debris-pieces-in-madagascar/comment-page-3/#comment-170487
There is an interesting theory about this fictional island and MH370:
https://timeglassjournal.wordpress.com/2015/07/30/mh370-went-missing-because-ben-linus-moved-the-island-but-seriously-commonwealth-of-new-island-and-where-mh370-vanished/
@JS
Good point. The path shown in Jeff’s graphic above is much too far past the 7th arc to be reconciled with fuel range and a glide. It would be interesting to see the details of how that path was created.
The very late FMT shown is certainly in harmony with my own conclusions, and a path up to Cocos along that heading can be made to fit the ISAT data. Not sure how the fit degrades beyond that point. I have not modeled it.
@all
I am still “reeling” from this news. This is huge in so many ways, and raises so many questions regarding the integrity of the Malay government and the ATSB. I would wonder who else used the “windage” provided by this data. SSWG? DSTG? How far does the deception go?
Even the announcement yesterday alluding to following expert analysis was a blatant lie.
Victor said : ”I also don’t understand why a pilot would intentionally fly into the SIO. That’s not to say it didn’t happen.”
Because it is exactly the opposite direction of the original destination, (Bejing).
Zaharie thought they would never find out he stole the plane and flew it the opposite direction.But he did not knew Inmarsat would track his ass down.
@ir1907 – your statement doesn’t answer Victor’s question, and as of yet, Inmarsat hasn’t “track[ed] his ass down.”
Victor was looking for a “why,” which you haven’t offered. I don’t have one either, but let’s not oversimplify everything and say that the plane is missing because somebody knew where to hide it.
@ir1907
Surely he knew they would find out it flew the opposite direction: primary radar would see to that.
@Victor
“The straight-line path between the coordinates doesn’t hit the ping arcs at the right times”… assuming constant speed/altitude. If altitude was varying however (as postulated on the peninsular transit), couldn’t a fit be made with enough iteration?
@Dennis
The path shown goes well beyond the 7th arc, however it is for a direct NW flight out of KUL (i.e. the fuel range is much different).
@Phil,
No one, including Zaharie, was aware of Inmarsat’s aircraft tracking capability.
@ir1907
I didn’t dispute that… I said primary radar (would be sufficient to know it went the opposite direction of the original destination).
@ir1907 – is it a fact that Zaharie was unaware of Inmarsat’s tracking abilities? Has he been interviewed? Has he actually been tracked? (Rhetorical questions.)
He probably didn’t know that the plane could be tracked, but you can’t present it as fact. You don’t know how closely he followed the AF447 search or who he knows in various aircraft-related industries. Do you think if he has a friend at Inmarsat that the friend will speak up and say, oh, yeah, I actually told Zaharie we could track him?
If Zaharie knew about Inmarsat’s tracking, that itself is a fact we will probably never hear of because nobody has any interest whatsoever in that fact seeing the light of day.
@JS,
It is logical to assume the most reasonable way of thinking.
Zaharie, just like everyone outside AF447 S&R operation and Inmarsat, was unaware of the hourly pings.
We can safely assume he did not know. From here we can investigate further.
It’s worth remembering that the flight simulator data, by itself, is only weakly incriminating. It’s the equivalent of finding that someone who may be guilty of a gun crime has visited a firing range in the previous month.
IMO, once the FBI found the FS data, it did increase the likelihood of suicide/murder, but I think only marginally. Assuming it was disclosed to the Malaysians and ATSB, it didn’t remove their burden to eliminate the possibility that this was an equipment failure/ghost flight. If the FS data did’nt fit anything that corresponded to the IMARSAT rings and flight capabilities, the prudent approach was always to search based on the latter. Better than sitting on hands by keeping the whole SIO in play. And keeping in mind that the ghost flight might turn out to be mechanical from the beginning, or the end game of a suicidal pilot or hijacker.
@Gysbreght:
“The story is ridiculous. Imagine captain Zaharie sitting in front of his computer a whole day, doing nothing, just waiting until the fuel quantity indicator reads zero”
No need to wait for a whole day. I remember when I played with the older versions of flight simulators, for long navigations I just accelerated the simulation 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x 32x… And even with actual simulation speed, nobody is forced to wait all the time sitting in front of the computer screen… Also the CVR only records sound, not video, so if a pilot leave the cockpit silently, nobody will know it just from listening to the CVR recording…
X marks the spot.
Strange coincidence, this confidential document arrive just timely, now that the search in the current area is about to be finished. Somebody needs the search to be extended for another one or two years elsewhere to buy more time?
If Zaharie wanted to delete the file properly, sure he knew how to do it so no traces remain. I use Advanced System Care from iobit, there is a tool that erase files by overwriting all the data with zeros in 7 passes (or more), or even more secure methods like Gutrr.
@ventus45
“Less than a month before” the date of MH370’s flight, conflicts heavily with previous assertions by close associates, that the simulator had “crashed” late in 2013, and Zaharie had not been able to repair it.”
Had Shaw’s associates been given access to his FS in the past? If he had been using it to simulate flights to the SIO while it was “broken” — something I imagine is possible to establish — I would see that as further circumstantial evidence that he was contemplating suicide/murder. And I do say “IF” here!
If the aircraft went as far as 45ºS as indicated on the map, then the debris will follow the Antartic Circumpolar current…
Interesting article, but we cannot draw any definitive conclusions without more information. What about other routes on the simulator? Which of them, if any, went to one or more of the following locations?
South China Sea
Xian, China
Nanning, China
Island near Borneo
Cambodia
Kota Bharu
Diego Garcia
Maldives (Thimarafushi Airport)
Bay of Bengal
South China Sea
Philippines
South Africa
Pulau Perak (on the island itself)
Yubileyniy Aerodrome, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan
Beshtash Valley, Kyrgyzstan
Kay Tee’s Yacht
Oil Platform Offshore of Vietnam
Off Beach in Southern Mozambique
South of Bali
@ir1907 – if it’s an assumption, state it as such, rather than stating it as a fact.
But I don’t agree that it’s logical at all. You have no idea what industry or technical connections he had. You have no idea how diligent he was in making preparations if he intended to disappear.
The idea of triangulating cell phone signals, even for phones not actively being used, arrived years ago. It’s not a stretch to think that similar capabilities could be used on a satellite network.
Pilots, in my understanding, are process oriented, perhaps more than any other professional. They follow checklists of things that have to be done before putting a plane in the air.
It’s logical that a pilot, intent on making a plane disappear, also built a checklist of things that would prevent a disappearance – i.e. things that would help locate the plane.
That doesn’t mean he hit every step, but you are assuming that either 1) he did not consider the possibility of satellite communication at all, or 2) he was thoughtful enough to consider it, but he didn’t consider it thoroughly enough to prevent the pings. That’s not logical to me. There’s a non-zero probability that he knew about the pings.
This is getting ridiculous.
The red path:
(a) is out of KL – NW (to Europe), so much more fuel than to Peking, so longer, well past the arc
(b) the FMT is up near the boundary of the MY FIR
(c) but, it goes smack through JORN coverage, which he knew about for sure.
The red path is a red herring.
That said, perhaps the FBI will be so good as to provide the following information (through an approved and authorised “leak channel” of course:
(a) what was the “date of the simulated flight”
(b) what was the “time of departure from KL” of the simulated flight
(c) what was the “aircraft type” of the simulated flight
(d) and the full six “data points”.
There is an obvious explanation for the red track.
Basic calibration of “options” from a “mission planning perspective”.
(Q) Objective “test point” ?
&
(A) To ditch at dawn on the 22nd June.
(It is obvious)
@JS
”You have no idea what industry or technical connections he had.”
Thats in the direction of getting paranoid and making many many unfounded assumptions.
It is widely accepted no one knew about the hourly pings before MH370 happened.
Enough said.
How convenient, that this information appears at a moment, where the raw “Shah did it” model started to fall apart and a lot of money has been burnt to come only up with emty hands on the search.
I believe not a word from it.
But somehow the search has to end, and everybody is tending loose ends, a culprit has been found, case closed.