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…
@Peter
Thank you sharing your knowledge in this area. This is for sure what we need right now. There is plenty of time spent on subject matter that already has the requisite intellect in place but there is also plenty of time wasted where it does not. For a long time, I have thought the data robbed the nuts and bolts of this investigation.
@Erik Nelson
“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…”
Your imaginary Captain Shah is quite the flying buff. He completes a boring monotonous cruise at work and then goes to his room and begins another boring monotonous virtual cruise. It makes him sound like he didn’t have much of a life outside of his paying job. A very one dimensional character, so to speak.
I wonder if he ever switched his simulator to f-16 mode or whatever, …just to liven things up a bit. 🙂
Turning south off of N571 towards the SIO (as well as WITN & WITT IAs) requires crossing three major air-routes:
B466 – low route FL240
P574 – high route > FL260
If the A/C was human-piloted with safety in mind, then the plane must have flown high over the first route, and low under the next two. Inexpertly, I would try to cross P627 & P574 near where they cross & intersect at W/P IGEBO, to give myself plenty of distance to descend under them, after over-flying B466…
Continuing on N571 until c.18:34 approx. 40nm from IGOGU, and then turning onto a SSE heading of 168-deg, for a direct straight-in approach towards WITT Banda Aceh airport, maximizes the distance the A/C has to descend after B466 but before P627 & P574.
Whereas turning off of N571 before 18:30, on a 192-deg heading towards WITN Maimun Saleh airport, requires crossing B466 & P627 in rapid succession near W/P SANOB, and it might be hard to “weave & thread over-under” like that ??
The coordinates are not waypoints for a route. They are points along a path which may or may not be described by great circle “lines” between the coordinates.
The question to ask ourselves is if we can use the coordinates to better refine or redefine the search area. This will be the subject of much debate. I don’t have an answer.
@Ge Rijn,
Downtown Putney, New Island’s largest city is in:
Latitude: 35 degrees 40 minutes (South)
Longitude: 98 degrees 5 minutes (East)
The best map of the island seems to be:
http://static1.squarespace.com/static/55a1cbace4b037baec775abd/55a323e2e4b07c31913c7213/55c3603ee4b0a0eb283ce1ad/1440552437075/New+Island+map+sharp+enough.jpg?format=750w
Putney is on the west side.
The island is big (like Taiwan):
“the island stretches 140 miles north to south and about 90 miles east to west”
Assuming it’s statute miles and using this converter:
http://www.csgnetwork.com/degreelenllavcalc.html
Length of a Degree of longitude in statute miles = 56.72
so the island’s width is about 1.6 degrees of longitude.
@Warren Platts, As I wrote in the story, there are no such airstrips.
@JS, It’s not entirely clear that these points are all on the same path, though they do look like it (and from the Malaysian police report, that’s how they were construed.) They were not hand-entered, but saved by the program as potential restore points.
@Jeff
Now that this story has gone public do you think it will be possible to publish this alleged criminal report in it’s entirety now or at some point in the future? Since the Malaysian have denied the existence of this report publishing it would certainly put pressure on them to come clean on this. Perhaps you can ask your “skittish source” for his permission to publish it?
I’d like to advance the ‘DB Cooper’ theory: after killing everyone, he, perhaps with the help of an accomplice, ransacked the bodies and luggage for light and expensive stuff (gold, diamonds, cash) and then ‘chuted over or near some inhabited place where he could then escape into the unknown.
This is based on whether or not the aircraft, after exhausting its fuel, could maintain or achieve a ditching profile, but also on the condition of the water. If relatively calm, no breakup; if heavy, big time breakup. I suggest that the suspect computer also be searched for maritime sea condition reports.
A handful of data points taken out of context don’t define a route. The missing 6th “data point” could be between #3 and #4 and near Paris CDG.
@Victorl
The answer to our question is easy enough.
Did you knew about this data before you published your flightpath model of June the 25th 2016 or not.
To me now you give the impression you avoid answering this question.
@Gysbreght,
Yes, it seems they found 6 points, ignored one of them (conveniently?) and decided the other 5 constitute a route.
Were the 5 points close in time? Shared some session ID?
There is a partial list of data fields names but it doesn’t include times or IDs.
It seems the threshold for accusing people reached Stalin’s criteria.
@All
I don’t doubt that this alleged Malaysian criminal report document does exists and that it does state that unnamed FBI officials found this possible incriminating flight path on the Captian’s flight sim, but I just think some Government is jerking our chain again with this report and are having a good time watching us speculate on their nonsense..
What better way to maintain a cover-up than by continuing to mislead the press, and manipulate public opinion on social meadia, with fabricated criminal reports with a smoking gun motive, or with stories of plane wreckage in the Philippines with skeltons.
We are being played here Big Time, folks! Someone definitely knows something!
@Jeff, Victor – that is kind of what I suspected.
One important piece, which you both may have already, is the time. Are these points on a fairy straight line flight? Are they necessarily even the same flight?
Again, you may have more information, but from what you’ve presented so far, just because you have 5 dots doesn’t mean they should be connected.
Also – there seems to be an assumption that the missing point is point 6. Perhaps you could confirm or deny?
@Gysbreght,
The Malaysian response can be understood to mean the report mentioned above isn’t authentic:
—
Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar said
…
“We have never submitted such a report to any authority abroad including the FBI. This report is not true,” he said.
—
The last sentence “This report is not true” may refer to the report incriminating Shah or to the New York Magazine article. The first alternative may be more likely in this context.
Abu Bakar may have responded in Malay and we see a translation?
Again, the red route crosses the yellow route in the center of the X at the exact location where the hydrophone stations detected the pings…
Another interesting fact is that the extention of direct red route more far to the West compared to that of the yellow route compensates for the Kuala Lumpur to Golf of Thailand and return to Malacca Strait “detour” of the yellow route so that the distance for the two routes from KL to the center of the X is the same…
There is nothing at or around 45S 104E.
Just ocean and a gigantic plain ocean floor 3.5km deep without any special features at all.
A 6th point after that 5th is therefore completely useless allready. And even more because those latitudes are completely out of order due to the debris finds and drift studies and the Inmarsat data.
To me it’s starting to get fishy data.
It starts to look like someone found a pattern in the clouds.
To take full responsability for the things stated and suggested the full report must be released by New York Magazine, Jeff Wise or Victorl.
I think otherwise it’s becoming unacceptable to the NOK, participants and bloggers around the world if this will not happen very soon.
@sk999 – Perhaps the right turn near the end was due to flameout of the right engine?
@DennisW – Perhaps Zaharie learned of a terminal illness and had a life insurance policy?
@Ge Rijn – Instead of starting with a different flight to Europe, might it be possible that MH370’s original flight plan to Bejing was along the Maalaca straight and then a right turn to IGARI? It sounds like ATC did cancel something at 12:42:10 when they said, “Malaysian Three Seven Zero selamat pagi identified. Climb flight level one eight zero cancel SID turn right direct to IGARI.” Now the plan had to change and it took him a while to decide to continue to IGARI before the diversion. He knew he could not continue up the Straight without being noticed by ATC and/or the Military.
@all – Has anyone calculated the distance of the red route and compared it to the yellow route?
@Laureb H.:
“It sounds like ATC did cancel something at 12:42:10 when they said, “Malaysian Three Seven Zero selamat pagi identified. Climb flight level one eight zero cancel SID turn right direct to IGARI.”
Then did the ATC knew that Zaharie may be up to something?
SK999 wrote: “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.
Or it could be a 339 degree turn to the left which is plausible if it were in a corkscrew diving pattern.
The interesting thing is that I gather from what I’ve been reading in the comments is that these coordinates represent user inputted “restore points” so the pilot can go back and redo the flight from that point. If that’s the case, then Zaharie didn’t just walk away from the simulation and let it run itself out.
Thus the two restore points: (1) right before fuel exhaustion; and (2) in the middle of an uncontrolled dive. Why save those? Well, as pointed out above, the MSFS has a tendency to crash at the most interesting moments. This indicates that Zaharie was flying the simulator to the bitter end, possibly multiple times. In addition, saving the program in the middle of a dive would directly indicate (IMHO) multiple practice runs of attempts to pull out of a dive with no fuel onboard.
What I would be really curious to know is the time of day in the simulation at the last two restore points. If it happened to be at about dawn, that would be very intriguing….
What’s the significance of the number 45S 104E?
Just add 20+25 and 51+53, as seen below. Interestingly the only two verses of the Qu’ran relating to drowning and salt water.
20:51 And one who is drowned is a martyr
25:53 He is the one who has set free the two kinds of water, one sweet and palatable, and the other salty and bitter. And He has made between them a barrier and a forbidding partition
@Matty-Perth – please come back!
Ok, so these “points” don’t definitively even belong on a “route” and are some sort of coordinate artefacts found on the computer.
If there aren’t date/timestamps available to support the loaded supposition that they do, then somebody has just been “joining some retrieved dots” to suggest that this is incriminating. I already said “hogwash” and “piffle” once. That now looks too generous, so now i’ll just call BS.
Intentionally or otherwise, this looks very much like the aiding and abetting of a deliberate misinformation leak. There you have it, @VI, you know which side of the fence I sit on. Your cryptic comments some days back about how the “camps” will evolve make total sense in light of this *ahem* revelation – which is having exactly the desired effect.
Spin again….
@Paul – I think you should cut Jeff and Victor a bit of slack. They’re no doubt pushing hard on their sources, and the world at large, to furnish us with information which will serve to solve this unprecedented mystery and ultimately provide closure to the NOK. Regarding your point date/timestamps, Jeff very clearly said in the update that he’s not at liberty to furnish all of the metadata fields. Just have some patience. I trust him well enough to rest assured that in time he will reveal what he can.
I too am sickened at what the most likely conclusion of this tragedy is. To lighten things up slightly, though it’s impossible given the lives lost in March 2014, here’s a joke:
Q: What were Zaharie’s last words?
A: “Hey Fariq, can you go get me a hot coffee?”
@Warren Platts:
“The interesting thing is that I gather from what I’ve been reading in the comments is that these coordinates represent user inputted “restore points” so the pilot can go back and redo the flight from that point. If that’s the case, then Zaharie didn’t just walk away from the simulation and let it run itself out.”
That’s interesting, and I think that all who play with simulator do this. I did that many years ago when I played with the FS. I practiced a foolish landing on the first platform of the Eiffel tower in Paris, first with the Cessna 182, then with the Learjet, and I did a restore point when the aircraft was stabilized at 1 Kt above the stalling speed, flaps fully extended, about 15 seconds before touching the border of the tower floor, so I didn’t need to waste time each time starting from take off and to stabilize the aircraft. I had also to pause the simulation to have enough time to extend the air brakes, lock the weels brake, put the engines in full reverse mode at the last second before touch down, then continue the sim, using full rudders until stop, to avoid diving at the opposite side of the platform. Crazy no?
@Peter said:
‘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.”
I think Peter has raised an important point here. Flight simulators can have ‘add-ons’ that come from different third-party software companies.
It’s to be expected that not all of these packages had been tested with each other hence some instability would be likely, and as Peter says, the way to determine which add-on is responsible is to run some tests with the variables reduced. And of course, you would delete such test flights.
Say you were running a simulated flight to Europe and some instability occurred in the software part way there. Might you immediately ‘divert’ to the SIO where there are less variables to see if you can track the problem down now it has surfaced again?
Also, remember the interview on 4 Corners with his brother-in-law who said the flight simulator had crashed in 2013 and Z had not used it in 2014 because he was rebuilding it – see 20 mins onwards.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wht8irZHiII
If Windows crashes you reinstall it; if a hard drive goes down you get another and reinstall. That doesn’t take 2 months plus. But instability between add-ons could take longer to track down and eliminate if they occur infrequently.
If Z hadn’t use his flight sim in 2014, how come:
‘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’
Or are ‘weeks’ being stretched into 2+ months in that statement?
It would be helpful to know the dates on those ‘restore’ points?
@Lauren H.
What does ‘cancel SID’ mean exactly?
Will there also be a route to Being that first goes over the Malacca straight then north?
If it could be explained that ‘cancel SID’ meant; ‘cancel the west-north route to Being’, this could be interesting.
-I did not calculate the distance of the routes but from the graphic it’s obvious to me the red route is much longer. I estimate at least ~1200km longer comparing it to the west coast of Australia from Perth to Exmouth which is about 1200km.
@ Jeff Wise: Sorry, I didn’t make my question clear. Your article states that these five (or six) data points represent one simulated flight among many. Is it the case that the only flight simulated into the SIO is the one that leads to nowhere, or were there other simulated flights to places like Diego Garcia, or Christmas Island, Maldives, Comoros, etc.?
@Ge Rijn said:
‘What does ‘cancel SID’ mean exactly?’
It means ‘Cancel Standard Instrument Departure’ – that’s a standard departure route for that runway at that airport that aircraft are expected to fly.
Less traffic at that time of night, so the controller likely cleared him direct to IGARI to save some time and fuel.
@Warrent Platts, There were many other flight plans, but I don’t know where they went. All of the destinations you mention woud be quite unsurprising places for a Kuala Lumpur pilot to make simulated flights to so wouldn’t have any special significance. Also, of course, we know from the Inmarsat data that MH370 didn’t go to any of these places.
If, (and it is a huge if) Zaharie had planned to go to 45S 104E, (from a European flight with plenty of fuel), there is only one logical conclusion.
He “knew” there would be floating debris.
He wanted to ensure that it would never get washed up on any inhabited shore.
So he had to get down to the area of the circumpolar current, as far east as he dared, to ensure it never got swept north towards the WA coast, OR anywhere else bordering the Indian Ocean.
The problem with that is, the direct path from the FMT to 45S 104E goes smack through JORN’s coverage.
So, he had to “go around JORN”, by heading virtually due south to about 35S 90E, and only then could he turn SE and head for 45S 104E.
Consequently, “the SIO TURN” around 35S 90E is “the missing data point” the real “point 4”, and Jeff’s points 4 and 5 become 5 and 6 respectively.
The total path length, now with the SIO dogleg from 35S 90E to 45S 104E, now matches the European flight fuel load pretty well.
So, is it possible, that the “mysterious” two tons of cargo unaccounted for on the manifest was in fact extra fuel that Zaharie got the re-fueler to put on, and then he fudged the FMC ?
Re: the total length of the simulated flight, on Google Earth, just connecting the dots with great circle tracks, I get approximately 4,055 nm, well within the maximum range of a B777-200ER of ~7,000 nm.
@ Marc, so you were able to land a Learjet on the Eiffel Tower! You terrorist! 😉 But that’s pretty good. You demonstrate that the restore points are used for multiple practice runs of simulated extreme circumstances.
@Middleton
Thank you. So it would not mean a major diversion from a planned route to the west-north into a route to the east-north.
Seemed a bit unlikely to me to only announce something like that with only ‘cancel SID go to IGARI’.
But I don’t know those procedures.
A more intriguing aspect to this alleged Malaysian criminal report is that if it should turn out to be another fabricated fake report, which it might be, then what does this tells us about the people who are behind this and who are trying to frame the Captain?
Who are these unnamed unoffical US Officials?????
@Ventus45
Your hypothesis seems plausible for all parts you mention except one.
Debris did land on shores and even only on African shores. With drift studies ruling out a crash area south of 36S.
So he might have planned to fly that leg between 35S and 45S in the first place but never flew it IMO.
@Ge Rijn
According to the FI, the ‘direct’ clearance meant the aircraft arrived at IGARI one minute earlier than with a SID, so not a big change to the flight plan – perhaps removed a minor waypoint in between.
@Middelton: I didn’t know there are minor waypoints and major waypoints 😉
@Jeff: “we know from the Inmarsat data that MH370 didn’t go to any of these places.”
Correction: “if the Inmarsat data is both accurate and authentic, then MH370 didn’t go to any of these places.”
We do not know that the Inmarsat data is both accurate and authentic. I seem to recall considerable concern regarding its indicated path back in August, 2014; as Duncan Steel shut down his open forum – and effectively passed the torch to you – his closing post pointed to the myriad of radar installations which, per the ISAT data, should have detected MH370, but didn’t. Many rationalizations were offered, and so search leadership was allowed to continue its work, without having to answer any hard questions.
What has happened since then?
– acoustic listening stations semi-circling the ISAT data-indicated path all took a zero. Many rationalizations were offered – and some hyper-intelligent individuals managed – inadvertently, I’m sure – to help “sex up” Antarctic ice-cracking to look like a corroborating sound of impact – but the cold hard science actually counter-indicated the ISAT data.
– the debris record – regardless of which subset you consider, and even if wind/Stokes-aided – strongly counter-indicates the ISAT data-indicated path. Rationalizations have been offered, but the only way anyone has ever been able to get the drift models to “corroborate” the ISAT data is by snipping every other possible impact point out of frame to begin with! Absent complex and arbitrary tinkering with the path taken, the cold hard drift science counter-indicates any 7th Arc impact point within a country mile of BFO compliance.
– the impact zone hyper-intelligent people recommended searching – plus a bizarrely wide margin around it – was searched carefully, without success.
– you published a book in which you openly questioned SOME of the ISAT data, arguing it may have been spoofed.
– The DQA149 cover story put out by the Maldives CAA to push the Kuda Huvadhoo mass sighting out of frame crumbled to dust under basic scrutiny (you dispute this, but haven’t, to my knowledge, articulated why.)
Did I leave out anything? Which of these above developments caused you to stop treating the ISAT data as something to be tested, and instead as something to be accepted on blind faith?
And thus now to “helpfully” cut out of frame – and ask your readers to disregard utterly – every other path found on the sim?
This is precisely the same circular logic embedded in the “ISAT-corroborating” drift analyses: if you ignore every possible flight terminus not on Arc 7, then, “voila! The pilot’s sim corroborates Arc 7!”…
Nonsense. Those of us who’ve worked hard to TEST the ISAT data are getting a little sick and tired of potential evidence being willfully ignored strictly because it counter-indicates the ISAT data. Such myopia could well be the acoustic ping fiasco all over again, and could well explain the empty search result to date. It remains possible – more possible than ever, in fact – that it is the ISAT data which is the outlier, not all the data with which it conflicts.
So can I beg you please to publish EVERY path found on the HDD (or at least, every path that survived the 28-month “drift” of this data from the pilot’s hard drive to your sandy shores…). We’ll judge for ourselves the relevance of each, thank you very much.
@Gysbreght said:
‘@Middelton: I didn’t know there are minor waypoints and major waypoints ‘
Of course … they’re the smaller ones in between the bigger ones – every waypoint has to start somewhere
(Ge Rijn: please don’t take the above seriously, otherwise the conversation around here could start to become quite confusing for a while … )
@Middleton
Don’t worry. This one I can follow. I had a laugh about it 😉
How do you get smilies on here?
I copied/pasted Gysbreght’s on my last post but they all disasppeared … 🙁
Ahh! 🙂 🙂
@Brock
you said:
“Absent complex and arbitrary tinkering with the path taken, the cold hard drift science counter-indicates any 7th Arc impact point within a country mile of BFO compliance.”
You keep saying this over and over, however, the statement has a significant negative attribute. It is not true. I’m not even sure what “arbitrary” means in this context when the flight path is not known to begin with?
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/its-time-for-senate-probe-into-whats-known-on-flight-mh370/news-story/5162f543ef81b06f3c898f5c4c739318
I don’t know if the attached is an active link but I agree with its premise – people in the affected governments knew more than they shared with the public and wasted a lot of money on a wild goose chase. My personal opinion is that Malaysia has a reason for a coverup and that China and Australia went along with it. What and why lead to all sorts of conspiracy theories, but this was not a ghost flight like many tried to hope it into – it had to be pilot controlled, whether by the original pilots or some other terrorists who gained access to the cockpit. Not an accident.
@Brock McEwen
I just wonder which cold hard drift science you referre to that counter indicate any 7th arc impact point within a country mile.
I know your own drift science does but f.i. the GEOMAR drift study based on reverse drift from the flaperon does include a wide range of possible impact points along the 7th arc.
Is this drift study then not based on cold hard drift science?
And then; what do you think should be the goal of drift studies?
To calculate an enormous amount of possible impact points and areas as your latest drift studies do?
Or to focus on narrowing the area of possible impact points where ever that may be?
As far as I can see your latest very scientific drift studies may exclude the 7th arc but generate an enormous amount of possible impact points and areas and are therefore not able to narrow down a certain search area.
So I still wonder what’s the use of drift science like this in contributing to pin point a most probable search area.
I still don’t get that. Maybe you want to take the effort to explain this.
The chart for SID Pibos Alpha can be found in the following document, pdf page 11.
http://www.fly-sea.com/charts/WMKK.pdf
If these data points are random, where is number 6? Seattle? Lol!
@Dennis, @Ge Rijn:
Do you accept that a) the absence of debris on Oz shores and b) the presence of “Roy” at the mouth of the Klein Brak by December, 2015 each by itself – per IPRC- and Adrift-based analyses, respectively – assign all Arc 7 impact points SW of 25°S roughly zero probability?
There’s no point in arguing unless we can first agree on the fundamental indications of the drift data.
@Jerry M
The article is for subscribers only.
Someone was in control, but it wasn’t any of the 239 people. Clues have been left behind. In my opinion there are only 2 search places left. The ping area and the spot to the east of the current search area. I am pleased with the thoroughly search of the 7th arc. I’m not sure why that dead end was calculated. To make us exhausted and give up?
The clues are in how Malaysia replied to the article instead of the flight simulator waypoint data providing anything new for further analysis.
@Brock
Absolutely agree with your last statement. In fact, I lean toward impact points at 20S and above.
Anything below 30S is a non-starter for anyone with a brain, IMO.