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…
@victor
”I am not at liberty to same more.”
The public DEMANDS FULL disclosure. No secrecy anymore. This clown show needs to stop.
I join McEwen in demanding full disclosure of ALL DATA.
while this is not my opinion, Ms. Bajc shared on FB this fresh link about 1MDB case; as I still think that Malaysia is good and can’t understand relations of Najib and Obama playing golf together etc, what is diplomacy, what tactics and what strategy …and of whom, its really lot of money and your DoJ seems to be very upset here
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/21/world/asia/1mdb-malaysia-us-assets-seized.html
but there is still lot more things more important than money…
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/08/motorsport/richard-branson-formula-e/index.html
Fascinating discussion going on here. What this story has seem to have done is create this strong polarizing effect of opinions and divide people’s opinions into two basic camps
1- Those that believe US Officials are telling us the truth and most likely it looks like the Captain who did this.
OR
2- Those that believe the US Offiicals are lying and they are responsible for the dissappearance of MH370 and are waging a PR campaign to make us believe the Captain did this.
I consider both schools of thought to be valid veiwpoints but I strongly feel that the latter is the truth.
Perhaps someone knew of flight simulator (unsure evidence) earlier on in surface search times to view the satellites to look in that region of the ocean.45S 104E.
I’m guessing, but I might be wrong the other co-ordinates yet to be revealed will be close to where the other surface searches were. If they are I’m just hoping that so many different shifts of surface search areas weren’t based the flight simulator business.
@All – let’s let Jeff disclose what he can when the source allows it. It’s a bad idea to burn a source, and for all we know the source could be in Malaysia and at risk if more is revealed.
In the meantime, I see a major issue with this data, and that is its precision. These values are to approximately an 1/8 inch or 3mm precision.
That precision basically rules out the possibility that the numbers were hand entered, because it appears that waypoints are only given down to the second, not 1/10,000 of a second.
That suggests two other possibilities: that 1) the values are precise because of some conversion that added decimal places (the way a conversion from degrees/minutes/seconds to decimal degrees does, or via transformation like a rotation), or 2) the points were logged during the simulated flight.
The problem with 2, though, is that the points are then no longer a path. Let’s suppose the points represent points along the flight at which a screen grab was saved. That would mean the points are only points of interest, not a path. The fact that some of the points appear to be co-linear supports this.
@Victor :
Has your “Possible Flight Path for MH370 Ending North of the Current Search Zone”-Study, provided end of June, any correlation to the new informations provided by Jeff ?
http://www.duncansteel.com/archives/2676
The red line path does not make any sense to be applicable to the missing mh370 mystery. I think they are trying to ferret out issues being hidden.
@Warren Platts. From points 4 to 5 he descended from altitude over 150 miles flying about south. I am curious as to what the last undisclosed point is and why the chop off would be at 4000? What did he have in mind after that, if anything?
A related question is with more disclosures to come, how fully informed was the ATSB when considering this?
As to the veracity of the information, the FBI has not disowned it.
@Susie Crowe. Leak despite strictures and just slowed and the more tortuous because of them?
@Warren Platts. Please scrub the 150 miles above. Mixing degrees and minutes.
A great circle route between points 3 and 4 (the long leg going South after the FMT) starts out with true heading 168 and ends with true heading 163. However, travel between points 4 and 5 requires a true heading of 184 – requiring a 21 degree turn to the right. Seems a bit odd.
Finally nice to see some positive evidence for what we suspected all along – it was the pilot – but much is still missing. One would imagine that much more planning and preparation beyond a single run in a simulator would be needed. Finally – what was the motive? In most prior instances, the pilot’s career was threatened – was that the case here as well?
@SK999
I don’t sense any indications of a suicide motive, nor can people who are qualified in the mental health domain. Who knows? Their are no rumors that his job was threatened. There are rumors of some marital strife. I can’t make the suicide motive work at all.
@Eric B.
“Thanks Jeff, I wonder if this report was why the Malaysian Police Chief told the Indonesian Police Chief “I know what happened”?”
That’s a bloody good point, mate! I remember during the first week of the disappearance, there was lots of open speculation about the flight simulator Zaharie had at his home and might there be clues to the routes taken instead of going to Beijing. Did he plan a suicide route. You mentioned something about Zaharie wanting to land on a ice floe, any good links to such a theory? Cheers
@JeffWise
We wait with baited breath.
I believe you’re being straight up.
What do we have here? US officials sent to Malaysia, join the investigation using political pressure, push towards the pilot suicide theory and leak info denied by the Malaysian government while in parallel western media bash Malaysia.
On the other hand we have good solid info coming from several open sources that is telling us quite a different story. The FI is lying on a crucial point. MH370 sent on a dangerous mission with the best pilot. It’s going ok until it enters a sensitive area. It disappears. An SOS received by airline pilots is ignored. Geopolitical intrigue.
Who is covering-up and who is leaking the truth? The NTSB who covered-up in the past for Boeing and US military or the inexperienced Malaysians? Reuters? Chinese media?
The US motive is noble, that’s why all the countries in the region cooperate with this but why smear a dead man who did his best to save his passengers?
@LouVilla: The BEDAX-180M track passes close to the SIO coordinates from the simulator.
@Ron
Your posts are as incomprehensible and silly as ever.
If you want to make a point then make it. Don’t ramble in parables. This is not the Bible. Just get to a clear statement of what you are trying to say.
@ir1907: we need more than just the full report; we need the evidence and tools necessary to determine beyond reasonable doubt that the full report is both authentic AND incriminating.
Until both aspects are proven, we are irresponsibly lobbing accusations at someone who not only deserves the presumption of innocence, but is unable to defend himself.
Ken (and Victor before him) summed up the camps quite nicely; however, I will stay firmly uncommitted until someone can convince me beyond reasonable doubt that this report either is or isn’t another case of “MH370 misinformation”. The full report may provide this, but if it is designed to implicate the pilot, even the full report is likely to omit exculpatory context – leaving us all to see in it whatever we WANT to see.
As usual…
@Victor :
Yes. The question is : Did you had knowledge about the virtual flightpath from the simulator before you began your flightpath study ?
@Jeff
When did the pilot fly this simulation ino the SIO? Thanks.
@JW
This is starting to sound a bit like “Red Route One” out of “Hunt for Red October”.
If you want to make “your Red Route One” fly, we need the information I (and others) have asked for, before we can “seriously” consider it.
Granted that you may have your hands tied behind your back some what, re what you can release and what you can not, but it is not enough, yet.
Wow! Now it’s he said she said time:
http://m.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/igp-dismisses-mh370-mass-murder-suicide-report?google_editors_picks=true
Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar said police had never handed over information to any quarters in New York.
“We have never submitted such a report to any authority abroad including the FBI. This report is not true,” he said.
– See more at: http://m.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/igp-dismisses-mh370-mass-murder-suicide-report?google_editors_picks=true#sthash.37lFX2j2.dpuf
What else is new or old regarding this flight?
@Rob
Susie Crowe
Posted July 23, 2016 at 2:24 PM
My comment was directed to you, I mistakenly used @Ron
Thanks Jeff and Victor too for bringing us this information. I think we should cut Jeff some slack and no doubt he will bring us more if and when it becomes available.
In many ways I’m quite underwhelmed. Even if that new flight path is partly (or wholly) the one flown on that day I don’t think it provides enough detail to justify a new search. If the pilot had it on his hard drive but didn’t fly it or never had it on his hard drive then its no use either.
As has been said many times, we need a whistleblower to come forward with very specific information about what happened on that day which can inform a new (or extended) search. Sorry, but I’m pessimistic about the chance of that happening.
Assuming that this info is correct and with due respect to relatives and all, let me speculate:
Suicide = political suicide not personal . Implication :potential jihadi hence first ISIS sleeper cell activation in civil aviation sector.
Explains possible delay in info leak to avoid mass panic amongst civilian travellers. Reason enough for FBI circumspection.
Problem with speculation : two years on, only now is Malaysia considering Apss system but still probably not enough if it’s pilot centres as this leak suggests
Just purely speculation folks based on unverified data
As I suspected if this story was true we would have heard about it directly from the FBI, and not NY Magazine, a long time ago. No surprise that the Malaysians are now denying this report.
Obviously to me what is going on here is these clever PR firms are reaching out to respected journalists to use as unwitting puppets to communicate their misinformation by circulating false criminal reports that allegedly are from investigators which attributes incriminating information about Captain Zaharie to US Officials to help frame the him.
Who are paying these unnamed PR firms and their “skittish sources” to go around and do this?
to help frame the pilot*
Question: Is there any attempt to build a nuclear powered submersible that can scan the ocean floor for an extended time autonomously?
Jeff Wise I am calling BS on this story of yours. Where is this FBI report? What of your FBI FOIA where the FBI provided you nothing? Where is your evidence? waiting……
The obvious question to ask now is, why are the Malaysians denying this report? Is it becuase this alleged criminal report makes them look bad or is it because this criminal report is a complete fabrication?
If it’s a complete fabrication then who is behind this?
@Ken S
An “eastern” variation on your “decoy” theme.
http://auntypru.com/forum/-MH370-time-to-think-of-it-as-a-criminal-act?pid=4768#pid4768
@Ken S:
“If it’s a complete fabrication then who is behind this?”
Maybe somebody trying to convince people that the search has to be continued in a more South-Eastern area instead of a more Northern area where the wreckage can be found?
Flaperon investigation.
Malaysian Minister for Transport Liow says the Malaysian investigators are still trying to get “details” and “information”, from the French Government, withheld under judicial request(?). He mentioned problems getting information from Boeing and the US Government in passing. Start at 2:40 in the video:
http://iframe.malaysiakini.com/en/http://www.kinitv.com/video/36545O8
Thus it would seem the constraint is not the Malaysian criminal investigation.
Maybe it was an explosion of the center fuselage fuel tank?
@Victorl
@LouVilla asked you an interesting question I like to get answered also.
Were you aware of the coördinates in this report when you did your june 2016 flightpath study?
The far north west FMT in this study has obvious similarity with the FMT in the red simulator route.
Your overall result in this study seems a possible combination of the yellow and red route.
An answer ‘yes or no’ will be fine with me for the moment.
Was it possible for Boeing to track their engine when they registered the MH370 landed?
Of course he didn’t hand over the report to Jeff Wise. But he doesn’t deny the report nor the FBI information.
@Victorl
And not only the FMT in your study has obvious similarity with the red simulator route.
Also your ‘crash area point’ at 31.5S 96.7E is ~where the red simulator route crosses the 7th arc.
And more; also the end point of the 180M TRACK route in the graphic of your study is the same: 45S 104E.
Is this pure co-incidence?
@Brian Anderson
Exactly ! The only sensible explanation so far. Perfectly innocuous.
I wonder how the [conveniently discovered] flight sim data matches B777 real life characteristics, e.g. speed, altitude, fuel burn etc etc
============
The fictitious island nation manufactured a headline around the time that Shah simulated the suspicious SIO flight-path, derived from tropical cyclone Guito (17-25 Feb. 2014) in the western IO. The website claimed that the CNI was already experiencing high surf against light-houses along its SW coast. One of the posted pictures appears particularly realistic.
http://www.newisland.net/2014_02_01_archive.html
https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/15s-southern-indian-ocean/#.V5RzV7h9600
Perhaps Shah was web-surfing his computer on the side, investigating weather conditions ahead of his planned route over the NW IO… and stumbled across the CNI website whilst searching for articles about the storm ?
Of course this hypothesis is pure speculation & conjecture, yet the storm persisted for one entire week (~25% of the month prior to the actual flight?), and surely ’tis highly likely that a competent pilot would examine weather reports and turn an inquisitive eye towards major meteorological developments ?
This report is certainly valuable information, meaningful & relevant to the case. Including such finer details as the red-flagged route being one of many (1 of ~30 ?) which Captain Shah deleted — without trying very hard to cover his cyber tracks ? — during the previous month. So, one could argue, that had the plane reached anywhere else on the 7th ping-ring, very likely some other simulated journey ventured somewhere nearby. The article gives the impression, that Shah was basically “exploring his own back yard”, flying hither & thither, so how surprised should we be, that “one of numerous” sim’d paths happened to cross one particular part of the 7th arc ?
The red route is very striking, significantly so, yet hard to claim it suffices as 99% proof beyond doubt required in criminal trials. Ambiguous interpretation.
@AM2
You say; ‘I don’t think it provides enough detail to justify a new search’.
Consider the ‘red simulator route’ as a ‘route of thirst choice’ that the pilot had no opportunity to take, for the flight necessary to perform this route he could not get.
Still the red route shows a clear track to a possible destination on that track.
The red route crosses the 7th arc at ~31/32S ~97E.
Now assuming the pilot could not fly the red route (for he could not get a flight to Europe f.i.) but wanted to reach the same ‘destination’.
He then had to adjust his plan more or less for that flight to Being resulting in a possible flight path after FMT that the Inmarsat data show after 19:41.
The crossing point of both routes is at ~31/32S ~97E.
I mean in a scenario like this, this crossing point could well be the ‘X mark area’ required for an extention of the search.
@Ken S
why such simplex and polarizing options, world is fuzzy and there are not easy solutions of anything nor easy targets, everythings needs analysis and be well done rather asap with lot of mistakes
imagine captain did it (something, nobody knows what) but countries working together (usa, russia, china, australia, malaysia, uk, then france and others…), at least now
@Erik Nelson
The ‘fictional New Island’ scenario I think is intriguing. But if he was only curious to do this flight on his simulator wouldn’t he just fly straight to it?
Why take a complicated route like the red route with a sharp diversion for that purpose?
Malaysia dismisses MH370 mass murder suicide report…..
Police yesterday dismissed reports MH370 was steered into the sea intentionally by the pilot.
A New York magazine report had in its exclusive said a document from Malaysian police showed Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah had “conducted a simulated flight deep into the remote southern Indian Ocean less than a month before the plane vanished” and that “the vanishing plane was a pre-planned mass murder suicide”.
Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar said police had never handed over information to any quarters in New York.
“We have never submitted such a report to any authority abroad including the FBI. This report is not true,” he said.
http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/igp-dismisses-mh370-mass-murder-suicide-report
It´s your turn, Jeff
I think the pilot was just testing his flight simulator.
I have Microsoft Flight SimX. I have set up flights from KBOS (Boston) to CDG (Paris) and NRT (Tokyo) and let the autopilot fly most of the way while I slept, to check the sim’s stability on my computer. They’re 7 & 14 hour flights. On setting up for final approach and getting ready to land … poof … crash to desktop, which means you’re no longer looking out the window of a jet, but looking at your computer desktop screen. And if you haven’t saved a waypoint state, which marks your position and aircraft attributes, the flight sim reverts to where you started hours earlier. You can’t pick up where the software crashed.
One gets rather pissed when the simulator does this. So, in trying to debug the simulator crash instability, one sets up various flights to see if certain scenery graphics, when they load into RAM may cause this. It could be 3D models, scenery terrain art tiles, seascape, land, or shoreline tiles, even sound files. It could also be navigation points like, various enroute VOR and NDB radio frequencies that load into the simulator along with GPS data.
Since I used to work for a company that built a competitive simulator product to Flight Sim, I’m rather familiar with how to debug flight simulators. One way to test if there’s some sort of instability, where the program quits is to fly over open ocean and avoid any instrument data or whatever. So, you set up a flight like what this pilot did on his simulator.
To jump to the conclusion that the FBI found a flight plan that was a suicide plan, with the pilot having no other problems is a bit of a stretch. Every pilot knows how to calculate fuel burn at different altitudes. They know when and where they’ll be out of fuel. They don’t have to run it through a simulator to figure it out.
From descriptions of the pilot and his simulator, he loved to fly. And if you really want to test yourself on a long haul flight, you do real-time, instead of MSFlight SimX’s option of up to 32 times realtime. So, when you CTD as it’s called in the software biz (crash to desktop) after sitting in your cockpit for 8 hours, you get really pissed at your computer and Microsoft, since Microsoft is known for letting lots of bugs remain in their game software. And MS Flight SimX is loaded with bugs.
@VictorI
>With the simulator coordinates in hand, it would have been appropriate to include paths with a descent at 18:40 and a later FMT.
Figure 10.3 of the DSTG report does not suggest any change in the northern extent of the search area if the 18:40 BFO data (indeed all the BFO data) is suppressed, which is the effect if a descent is included to match the phone call BFOs. The predicted SIO search area cuts off at 35S in both cases.
@Ge Rijn. You said
“The crossing point of both routes is at ~31/32S ~97E.
I mean in a scenario like this, this crossing point could well be the ‘X mark area’ required for an extention of the search.”
Well, it is possible but the other possibilities are endless. There are too many unknowns here, ifs of various sizes and whys; e.g. if this was in fact on his hard disk, if he actually flew this or similar route, if the radar data are correct, if the ISAT data are correct, if the fuel loaded was as stated, why would he do this and why go in that direction or to that place….. I was in favour of the current search but IMO we do not have anything like enough corroborated data to start a new search, let alone any motive. Sorry, but I think you are “clutching at straws” and the answer to the mystery may be something completely different. Just guessing, but not prepared to speculate.
@Ge Rijn
“The ‘fictional New Island’ scenario I think is intriguing. But if he was only curious to do this flight on his simulator wouldn’t he just fly straight to it?
Why take a complicated route like the red route with a sharp diversion for that purpose?”
I’m picturing Captain Shah powering up his flight simulator, choosing a route NW to Europe…
departing from virtual KLIA, gradually rising to cruise altitude…
And then, after settling into the “boring monotonous” Cruise phase of the virtual flight…
Shah starts trying to find more stimulating & interesting things to occupy his mind…
So he starts looking ahead along the virtual flight-path… starts surfing the web for live weather reports… notices the giant spiraling clouds of tropical cyclone Guito just south of the equator…
Tries to look Guito up on the web, to find its direction of travel, will it pose a threat to his virtual route just to the north…
and becomes intrigued by a link to articles about a SIO island he had never heard about previously…
“Seriously??” he asks himself… and so decides to divert away from tropical cyclone Guito towards the mysterious island, only to find out it’s fake and not part of the MS FS X software package…
After overflying the island’s alleged location near 35S,100E he excuses himself to attend other matters, leaving the virtual aircraft to eventually meet its virtual fuel exhaustion fate…
That’s the general idea
@Victorl
The co-ordinates named in this topic; 10’59N and 90’13E are very close to waypoint DOTEN which is the next waypoint after your FMT waypoint LAGOG in your latest flightpath model.
Is there a connection?
And I hope you’ll anwser the question me and @LouVilla asked previously.
If you cann’t answer this question with yes or no, I think we must assume this means; yes.
@AM2
The things published here by Jeff are claimed to be authentic (by Victorl). Conclusions drawn by Jeff are stated with such confidence we -IMO- can not assume the simulator flightpath published is based on random found co-ordinates in Zaharie’s simulator that were put together by choice to construct this flight path. Or to assume it’s a fraude- document.
As long as Jeff Wise (or Victorl) not come up with other data and information I take the data published and the ‘red route’ as facts.
And then I feel also free to speculate on them. You can call that ‘clutching at straws’ and maybe you’re right.
But isn’t that what everybody has been doing the past 2 years?
And what should be wrong with that?
@Erik Nelson
At least you are a great story teller 😉
I never heard of this virtual New Island and it’s intriguing it was placed in that part of the SIO.
But if he was conducting a route to that virtual New Island he did not aim well.
The ‘red route’ is passing well north of 35S around ~31/32S.
To reach the SIO from N571 requires crossing
B466 – low altitude air-route, maximum flight altitude FL270
P574 – high altitude air-route, minimum FL260 up to FL410, high traffic frequency of 4 flights per hour
Plausibly, MH370 turned off of N571 at high-altitude, to fly OVER B466 safely above FL270 — possibly employing a “zoom climb” at NILAM accounting for the super-high 273Hz BFO…
and then flew UNDER P574 safely below FL260 — possibly employing a “maximum rate descent” at Vmo/Mmo so self-inflicting structural damage to account for “cabin disintegrating” MayDay distress call…
References:
———–
http://www.aai.aero/public_notices/aaisite_test/eAIP/PUB/2012-04-01/html/eAIP/EC-ENR-1.9-en-GB.html
http://www.icao.int/mid/documents/rvsm-tf7/rvsm-tf7report.pdf
http://aip.dca.gov.my/aip%20pdf%20new/AIP%20SUPP/AIPSUPP%20201013.pdf