Australia Confirms Zaharie Flight-Sim Route to Southern Ocean

In a posting to a section of its website called “Correcting the record,” the Australian Transport Safety Board today confirmed that the FBI found data on MH370 captain Zaharie Shah’s flight simulator hard drives indicating that Zaharie had practiced a one-way flight into the southern Indian Ocean, as I wrote in a story for New York magazine on Friday. Entitled “False and inaccurate media report on the search for MH370,” the post concerns several claims by Australian pilot Byron Bailey in The Australian, including Bailey’s interpretation of the flight-sim data:

Mr Bailey also claims that FBI data from MH370 captain’s home simulator shows that the captain plotted a course to the southern Indian Ocean and that it was a deliberate planned murder/suicide. There is no evidence to support this claim. As Infrastructure and Transport Minister Darren Chester said in a statement, the simulator information shows only the possibility of planning. It does not reveal what happened on the night of its disappearance nor where the aircraft is located. While the FBI data provides a piece of information, the best available evidence of the aircraft’s location is based on what we know from the last satellite communications with the aircraft. This is indeed the consensus of international satellite and aircraft specialists.

While ostensibly rebutting Bailey’s claims, the ATSB tacitly acknowledges the fact that the flight-sim data was in fact found by the FBI.

524 thoughts on “Australia Confirms Zaharie Flight-Sim Route to Southern Ocean”

  1. Interestingly, the ATSB also rebuts the persisting erroneous notion of high speed spiral dive:

    “Mr Bailey also states that during his experience with a B777 simulator, if the crew were unresponsive, then on second-engine flame-out due to fuel exhaustion the autopilots would disconnect and the aircraft would enter a terminal dive at 1200 km/hr. In fact, extensive testing on Boeing’s (the manufacturer of the missing Boeing 777) simulator shows that after running out of fuel, the aircraft actually stays airborne for several minutes and descends at various rates in a “fugoid”(or wave-like) motion.”

  2. @Gysbreght, As always, we need to read between the lines. What the ATSB seems to be refuting isn’t the manner in which the plane would hit the water with no pilot at the controls, but the manner in which the dive developed after the second engine ran out of fuel. The ATSB emphasizes that rather than monotonically falling into an ever steeper bank and dive, the plane enter a phugoid in which speed and pitch (but probably not bank angle — I’m not sure) would oscillate. This would still degenerate into an ever-steeper, ever-faster dive and likely result in a very high speed impact. The key part of this statement, however is that “the aircraft actually stays airborne for several minutes.” Several minutes is not enough time to get very far from the 7th arc, especially when the plane is traveling in circles. The point being, the area close to the 7th arc already having been searched without result, the plane must not have been unpiloted after fuel exhaustion.

  3. If this is a suicide mission then why haven’t they found MH370? It should be on the 7th arc as predicted by the BTO/BFO data?

    I note of course the FBI did not have direct access to Zaharie Shah’s Flight Simulator, Malaysian Authorities acted as a go between.

  4. @LouVilla

    Yes, I think we must assume the answer is ‘yes’. The similarities and coördinates between his flightpath model of 25 june 2016 and the ‘red route’ are IMO too obvious and precise to be co-incidental. Especialy the 180M TRACK path which also ends at 45S ~104S in his model and the 31.5S 96.7E 7th arc point which is also crossed by the ‘red route’ there. And offcourse the far north west FMT which is almost on a similar location as in the ‘red route’.
    But it could be co-incidential.
    It would be nice he would clearify.

    I can imagine he and Jeff Wise had to wait maybe a considerable time for the right moment to disclose this information.

    Most important is that those cards are on the table now and confirmed by the ATSB.

  5. @Jeff Wise: “This would still degenerate into an ever-steeper, ever-faster dive and likely result in a very high speed impact.”

    That is not correct. In a phugoid motion the rate of descent exhibits cyclic variations with a period that is a function of the initial true airspeed, but the average rate of descent does not differ from a steady descent.

  6. Furthermore, the ATSB has stated earlier that the bank angles observed were low.

  7. @SteveBarratt

    Steve, yes it was a suicide mission, but it was also a “disappearing plane” mission. For this to succeed, the pilot had glide (or fly) well downrange of the place where he wanted us to think he had run out of fuel, what we call the 7th arc, and ditch it with the minimum of fuss. A few teltale bits got knocked off in the process.

  8. @ROB

    But the reverse and forward drift analysis of the debris suggests a more northerly impact point in the Indian Ocean. Also if Zaharie Shah had glided further South than the 7th arc then 10-20% of the debris should be on Australian shores (according to well referenced discussion on this site). So far nothing has been found.

    I accept this still doesn’t exclude pilot suicide. Just that it’s difficult to explain all the data in a coherent manner.

  9. “I can imagine he and Jeff Wise had to wait maybe a considerable time for the right moment to disclose this information.”

    Relative to recent events, I disclosed nothing. And even with the recent disclosure, it is unclear we can use the additional data to refine the search area.

    As for paths, I have been studying BEDAX-180 deg paths (magnetic, true, heading, track), some with descents, since July 2014.

  10. @VictorI

    Thank you. It´s interesting to know that you had worked for 2 years on this study. Good work that your endpointlocation in your study matched nearly perfectly the intersection of the virtual flightpath on the 7th arc.

    It must be a hard time working all this years on this study and finished your work shortly before the virtual flightpath was released.I´m looking forward to further conclusions if you should have any.

    Question : Did you know about the virtual flightpath documents Jeff had released last Friday before you finished your work on your BEDAX-180 deg flightpath study ? Sorry in advance when i bother you with this question but i think it´s interesting to know. Why ? One word : Transparency

  11. I think it is a huge leap in conclusions to believe that if such a flight path existed on the pilot’s simulator he is somehow responsible for the dissapppearance of MH370. He may , as some have suggested, may have been playing around, testing his flight simulator over open oceans or practicing emergency diversion plans .

    The mere existence or non-existence of such data on his flight simulator is in no way proof of guilt of the pilot
    My belief is that this is just another chapter in a delibrate smear campaign by unnamed US Officials to frame the pilot, nothing more than another smear job.

  12. I wonder if an actual 777 or anything approaching that size has ever, actually, run out of fuel. And if it has, what happened next. It’s probably never happened. I guess therefore we’re stuck with exploits from the sim.

  13. @SteveBarratt

    Simply put, the drift predictions are obviously wide of the mark.

    I have absolutely no faith in the various drift predictions except of course, the one that predicts debris from Lat S39, Long E88.5 fetching up in Reunion, Mozambique, Mauritius, Madagascar, South Africa.

    It’s precisely because I have total faith in the DSTG Bayesian analysis result, and my theory that the pilot ditched the plane shortly after local sunrise, in order to minimize wreckage. That’s what the evidence says to me.

  14. @Victorl

    You disclosed one thing. You confirmed you have seen the document and you did not get it from or via Jeff Wise. Then I conclude you’ve probably seen it before Jeff Wise did.

    The question is; have you used the information of this document to construct your flightpath model of 25th of June.
    This would be quite interesting IMO for the interpretation of those data to others.

  15. If the Captain was praticing this premeditated suicide route on his flight sim then why didn’t we find the exact flight path on his computer that matches the radar data and ISAT data? After all if you are planning on doing such a suicide route like this on flight to Beijing you would think he would have practice this exact flight path on his simulator first before doing it on an actual plane.

    I think believing this flight data proves Zaherie’s guilt is IMO a real stretch of the imagination and the fact that this info is coming 2 years after the fact based on a report by unnamed US officials representing the FBI who have not made any public statement on this is a real red flag for me.

    This whole story STINKS!

  16. @ROB

    Picking and choosing what you regard as evidence to reinforce your narrative undermines your credulity.

  17. @Jeff: the “camp” which has chosen to use this alleged track to “validate” the pilot suicide theory seems to be ignoring a fatal flaw: this report could be both authentic OR part of a campaign (which excludes you and Victor, to be sure) to falsely IMPLICATE the pilot.

    Victor predicted this alternative “camp” would form – and for good reason: search leadership seems to have spent 28 months not using this alleged track to inform ANY of the key search-driving assumptions:

    1) FMT (none of their assumptions have ever matched the alleged sim track)
    2) Southbound track (seabed scans have never come within a time zone of the alleged sim track’s Arc 7 intersection)
    3) End-flight scenario (seabed scans seem never to have searched far enough beyond Arc 7 to falsify a piloted glide scenario)

    Are you and Victor actually arguing – confidently – that it makes perfect sense for the search never to have taken ANY of this alleged track’s indications onboard?

    At the very least, you must admit that search leadership itself strongly disagrees with you on the degree to which this alleged track implicates the pilot, or its search box width would have been set very differently from the outset. Perhaps they have access to additional context which explains how such a track is actually innocuous – a conclusion I’d though was publicly CONFIRMED in March, 2014?

    Efforts to spin this into Malaysian deception/evidence suppression make no sense whatsoever: the FBI has access to telephones, and thus to the SSWG. Or the JIT. Or the JACC. Or the ATSB. Heck, the FBI even seems to have leaked versions of this story to the press on multiple occasions, starting in June, 2014. So while precise coordinates may be new to the general public, the FBI seems not to have any qualms about accusing the pilot – is your contention that the FBI considers its duty to the truth fulfilled if it tells the world that “the pilot did it!”, but not search leaders about the precise track upon which this conclusion was reached?! Please.

    It is the disconnect between search strategy and this nominal evidence – a distressingly common disconnect, I’m afraid – which makes this information very hard to view with anything but skepticism. I do remain open to being convinced otherwise; but I’d need more than just the FBI’s word (or “data”) on the matter, I’m afraid. I’m just not getting the vibe that its primary goal is to get the full truth out to the world.

    Until such time as we can definitively rule OUT the possibility this is misinformation, sexed up to frame the pilot, I strongly recommend you consider softening the language of your incendiary story titles and thesis statements, in consideration of the pilot’s family. Thanks in advance.

  18. @all

    In the news this morning:

    “Everyone is entitled to an opinion but I won’t be second guessing the experts,” said Mr Chester of speculation about the final resting place of MH370.

    The reality is that most of these so-called experts have a difficult time finding their way out of their house in the morning. I am so tired of hearing the term “expert” used in relation to this incident, and offered as the reason for the behavior of the people conducting the search. A variation of the Nuremberg defense – “I was only following the advice of experts”.

    The metaphor is “too many clowns, and not enough circuses”.

  19. @Brock McEwen – one can separate the captain’s involvement from the suspicion that someone with flying ability was at the controls. The transponder did not turn itself off and the flight path on the Malay-Thai border and then up the middle of the Malacca strait did not happen by accident. LOGIC SAYS SOMEONE WAS AT THE CONTROLS, despite the ATSB’s argument for a ghost flight. Whether he/she did a controlled ditching or whatever never will be known unless the plane is actually discovered.

    I choose to not claim the captain did it but I DO BELIEVE THAT SOME HUMAN BEING DID IT; however, the data being shared by Jeff et al that the captain had a simulator flight to nowhere in the SIO within a month of the disaster is news, and certainly a datapoint in this tragic mystery.

  20. @Brock

    People keep using the word suicide when in fact it is suicide AND mass murder. Most people commit suicide without taking 238 other people with them. Huge difference. There is no evidence whatever to support a suicide and mass murder scenario. There was ample evidence to support such a scenario in the case of German Wings.

  21. @Rob said :

    “””It’s precisely because I have total faith in the DSTG Bayesian analysis result, and my theory that the pilot ditched the plane shortly after local sunrise, in order to minimize wreckage. That’s what the evidence says to me.”””

    I´m totally agree. If this documents should be authentic, and i´m still sceptical, i think the virtual route from the simulator might be a red herring because the Cpt. had no knowledge about the “pings” and he tried to find a different way to allow a hint where the investigators should to search for this aircraft but he knows they wouldn´t find anything along this red route.

    Why may he do that ? Because he wanted to enable the possibility to search for this aircraft and the search should to be a long one. Enough time to force the malaysian government to stay in the national and international spotlight with no answers to highly important questions to his created mystery. A government who has no answers to highly important questions (and hopefully lying) should not govern this country anymore. If this were his intentions he half reached that goal. This government he hated is still there but the search was, and still is, a long one, and we learn a lot about this government all this years, and so even the FBI and the US Justice Department (1MDB fraud, immigration scandal). The malaysian citizens on the streets also ? We will see it in 2018 when the national elections come into place.

    But one question remains to this speculation : Why should a pilot fly a virtual route on his simulator 4 weeks before MH370 with the intention to produce a red herring for the investigators when he wanted to disappear his aircraft to hide his responsibilty for this crime ? This makes no sense.

    Really ? I think not. To meet the truth who is responsible we must still find the aircraft but we can´t. The ATSB makes it clear today : The virtual flightpath found on the simulator produced no evidence that leads to the conclusion that the Cpt. is responsible for this criminal act, and the ATSB is right on this one. The Cpt. knows about it. It would needs hard evidence to convict him but a red herring on a hard drive disk is not hard evidence to convict him because we must first answering to the question whether this red herring is such a one or not.

    From my standpoint of view, the Cpt. glided south beyond the borders of the current search area and crashed or landed MH370 into or onto the water. They will never find the aircraft. Ewan Wilson and Geoff Taylor were right in their book, released 2 years ago. He beat us all by a wide margin. This is unacceptable but still the reality.

  22. Jeff, thanks for your dedication and publicity of new facts and multiple scanarios of what could have happened en publically questioning of data made available. Suïcide by the pilot is a valid option eventhough it is a very complicated way with all his “turn offs and resets” by the pilot doing so, but explains the flight route along the place where the pilot was born before getting to his turning point that seems to be a one way automatic pilot route to the middle of the ocean.. this scenario still leaves a crime scene with illegal gold cargo theft open too and provides and aliby for the pilot. This question can only be answered when the plane is found and cargo can be realocated, but will likely stay a mistery… I will continue to follow the story..

  23. @Brock, As usual your speculation is based on wild surmise and a willful determination to avoid grappling with the facts in hand. You are living in a fantasy world of your own devising.

  24. I’m sorry, but what part of this statement “confirms” or “tacitly acknowledges” this planned route.

    I see “there is no evidence to support this claim” and “the simulator information shows only the possibility of planning”. One of those is a flat out refutation, and the other is a long way from confirmation.

    The FBI sat on this information for two years, are lying about it now all while allowing a multi-million dollar search to proceed the entire time.

    There are absolutely ZERO facts that support a pilot-suicide and it’s one thing to slander the man on a small corner of the internet’s discussion section, but to do so with the platform you have Wise is shameful.

  25. @Jeff: with respect: I believe I AM grappling with the claims at hand. Strenuously. I am asking for additional info, to better understand context and credibility.

    You, by contrast, appear to be broadcasting these claims to the world, ascribing to them both authority and meaning far beyond what has been demonstrated. (I’m not saying these claims have no authority or meaning; simply that neither has yet been DEMONSTRATED.) You seem to be letting this path – which is really only a precise version of the vague info we already had “in hand” by June, 2014 – trump your research into the pilot’s psychological profile (which I thought you’d concluded was squeaky clean).

    And your demeanor has changed: where you were once impressively diplomatic, and impressively careful not to let your statements get out ahead of the evidence, you are now confidently pronouncing as fact things which are, by a consensus which crosses all analytical and political divides, decidedly uncertain.

    I will let readers draw their own conclusions regarding which of us is taking the more balanced and clear-eyed approach.

    You now think we should TRUST the Inmarsat data. That’s fine. I’ve always felt we should VERIFY it – and all other MH370 “evidence” – by dispassionately, independently, and rigorously auditing it, stem to stern. If that bothers you, so be it. There is no need to resort to ad hominem attacks.

  26. So Shah was suddenly a master of ocean understanding better than anyone else?

    It’s not him that hid the plane.

  27. @Brock

    How would you “audit” the Inmarsat Data? It is what it is.

    I think falls in take or leave it category.

  28. Forgive my impudence should anyone take offence, but I’ve been a reader here for a while and it saddens me a little to see in recent posts – especially this one – to see a lot of people who I consider to be especially intelligent resort to obviously heated exchanges over the polarising nature of this new post.

    We’ve all been following this for a long time, and I get that we all have our favoured theories and opinions on this new revelation, and that patience is strained; but Jeff obviously is and has worked hard investigating this issue and maintaining the blog – he’s asked us to be patient while the release of further information is negotiated… to use a common idiom, “Where’s the fire?”

  29. ”I think it is a huge leap in conclusions to believe that if such a flight path existed on the pilot’s simulator he is somehow responsible for the dissapppearance of MH370”

    Zaharie plays around with a computer game flying planes into the SIO near Australia.

    Weeks later same thing happens in real life.

    !

  30. @Will

    I think the publishing of this info is investigative journalism at its best. It sets a bar for other journalist to follow rather than simply attending press conferences and publishing what they think they heard. It also exposes what we have been thinking for some time – the authorities involved in this search are a bunch of douche bags.

    As far as the data being useful for locating the aircraft is concerned, I don’t think that any of the “heavy lifters” here have been influenced by it.

  31. @Jeff Wise: “This would still degenerate into an ever-steeper, ever-faster dive and likely result in a very high speed impact.”

    For most transport airplanes, and certainly for fly-by-wire airplanes like the B777 and the Airbus family, the phugoid motion is heavily dampened. Therefore the amplitude of the phugoid cycle would be expected to become less and less, rather than “degenerate into an ever-steeper, ever-faster dive”.

  32. @Dennis,

    If I’ve understood your perspective correctly, I agree – the publishing of this data is book bad thing, and I find every post here fascinating. It just feels that these last few have started to instill an unnecessary sense of urgency in some people (and certainly not all) who, IMHO, could do with taking a deep breath before their next post. It’s feels like it’s getting personal…

    I, for one, am very eager to see how this plays out, regardless of which way the chips fall… 🙂

  33. @Gysbreght, Okay, I’ll bite. How does a dampted phugoid cycle, along with a gentle bank, take a 777 from cruise altitude to the ocean in a few minutes?

  34. @ir1907

    I really really doubt an experienced pilot would sit for hours in front of his PC looking at the endless blue ocean patch until fuel runs out.

    Maybe he used it to find the best route around Indonesia, that’s what I would actually believe.

  35. Brock McEwen: “@Scott: thanks, but I was actually requesting the report Jeff cited in his NYMag article. My first action would be to forward it to next of kin, who deserve to read it much more than do either Jeff or I.”

    @Brock: My apologies for having misunderstood you. (With regards to the secret report, I obviously don’t have any information, sorry.)

  36. Brock McEwen: “Jeff, your demeanor has changed: (…) you are now confidently pronouncing as fact things which are, by a consensus which crosses all analytical and political divides, decidedly uncertain.

    There is no need to resort to ad-hominem attacks.”

    Brock, I completely agree.

    Jeff Wise: “You are living in a fantasy world of your own devising.”

    Jeff, please refrain from ad-hominem attacks. Thank you.

  37. Peter posted July 24, 2016 at 5:02 AM: “I think the pilot was just testing his flight simulator. ”

    Why does everyone, except Susie Crowe, ignore the only contributor to this blog who has some understanding of Microsoft Flight Simulator X ?

  38. I for one do feel the FBI or USA is just trying to get the known facts out. I feel the U.S. steps in to offer facts informally when it feels the need (e.g.; if the U.S. feels the facts are being hidden to push other agendas).

    By my recollection, this is not the first time we have received helpful guidance on this accident from undisclosed US gov’t sources.

    I don’t think we hear FBI saying it was pilot suicide…that’s the press inferring that. FBI is saying here’s one key fact that seems to be falling through the cracks.

  39. @Dennis: re: “how would you audit…”:

    – you compare its predictions to actual observation – as we’ve all been doing in this forum. Whether my pet theories matched those of other researchers has never mattered to me: I was among critical thinkers, and thus among kindred spirits.

    – you also refrain from making the ASSUMPTION it is both accurate and authentic while performing these comparisons, to avoid confirmation bias – as some of us have been doing. Confirmation bias is insidious, and can manifest in innocent and seemingly reasonable decisions to disregard subsets of results – or entire models/experts – or entire branches of research/expertise. A good way of auditing a result is to start by presupposing a plausible reason for it being wrong, and to check whether observations fit any better than they do under the presumption it is right.

    – you ensure the data we’ve all been given to work with ties back to source data, via independent confirmation – which none of us has done. I recommend we get Inmarsat to publish its MH370 data – in full, and in the raw – along with a signed certification that it is accurate, complete, and unaltered since MH370 first sent the signals of its fateful flight. This should include details sufficient to replicate from first-principles all constants used to convert BTOs and BFOs into indicated distances and speed relatives.

    – finally, you “follow your nose”. If it doesn’t smell right, there’s usually a reason. The 80-day delay in this data’s release has never smelled right to me. Nor did the decision in Month 1 to move the search from 40s to 21s over the space of a week, citing nothing but “flew faster” hand-waving, with a half-dozen half-reasons sprayed out at us months later, like CYA backfill.

    I hope my nose is wrong. I really do.

  40. @StevanG

    “”””really really doubt an experienced pilot would sit for hours in front of his PC looking at the endless blue ocean patch until fuel runs out.””””

    Activating 32x fast motion on the flightsim ? An 6 hours flight in real time would be done in just 11 minutes.

    The real question is : Why should a highly experienced pilot virtually fly to the Southern Indian Ocean on a flightsim like Flightsimulator X ? For technical reasons ? I doubt it. This software is just a toy compared to a real B777-200ER. So, why should he do that ? I have no other idea as what i had assumed earlier – Intentionally flying a route that he didn´t wanted to fly on MH370, a red herring.

  41. ”I really really doubt an experienced pilot would sit for hours in front of his PC looking at the endless blue ocean patch until fuel runs out.”

    There is a acceleration option in the game. X2,X4,X8 etc.

    It can be done in minutes or even seconds.

  42. @Brock

    My own dealings with Inmarsat, while not extensive, have never given me pause relative to their integrity. My working assumption is that Inmarsat endorses the data that has been released or they would have made some noises about it.

    As far as altering of the Inmarsat Data, that would be extremely difficult to do without leaving fingerprints. A lot of us have looked at it, as you point out, and have never stumbled across anything suspicious.

    Not saying you are not justified in exercising diligence and caution relative to data integrity and interpretation. I just regard the Inmarsat data as about the most solid information we have. It allows us to rule out a number of possibilities including Diego Garcia, Maldives, Bay of Bengal, South China Sea, and many other terminal locations that have been suggested.

  43. Jeff Wise Posted July 25, 2016 at 1:04 PM: “How does a dampted phugoid cycle, along with a gentle bank, take a 777 from cruise altitude to the ocean in a few minutes? ”

    It all depends on how you choose to interpret “a few minutes” and on the “cruise altitude”. For obvious reasons, the ATSB does not want to support those who “believe” that the airplane flew beyond the priority search area in an extended glide on a constant heading. If the second flame-out occurred at FL200, and the airplane descended at 2000 fpm on average, it would enter the ocean in about 10 minutes.

  44. @Gysbreght

    Most intelligent people consider the ATSB “bonkers” for considering the plane to have ever gotten to the priority search area much less flew past it.

    My own view on the nature of events around 00:19 is to ignore them (except to challenge ALSM’s rants) since the search is being conducted thousands of kilometers away from where the plane entered the water it just makes no difference to the search “strategy”.

  45. ”the search is being conducted thousands of kilometers away from where the plane entered the water it just makes no difference to the search “strategy”.”

    What about the fuel ? And the deduction of a ”straight” path after the FMT?

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