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. For the red route to hold any credibility at all, it had to have been planned off a European flight, to have the fuel to get to 45S 104E, with or without the dogleg at 35S 90E to go around JORN.

    The yellow flight path that MH370 supposedly took, from KL to Igari to Penang to Vampi is about 700 nautical miles.
    The red route KL to Vampi direct is only 320 nautical miles.

    So, on a fuel limited flight to Beijing, (for the alleged plan) he has already lost 380 nautical miles off his baseline fuel/range plan, and, on top of that, he is in an aircraft with a lot less fuel to begin with.

    To get from Vampi to Igogu is another 206 nautical miles, and then on to Lagog is another 158 nautical miles.
    So total distance to the Lagog fmt for the red route from KL is 320 + 206 + 158 = 684 nm.
    Total distance to the Igogu fmt for the yellow route via Igari is 700 + 206 = 906 nm.

    So, the difference, ie, the “fuel he has saved” by “turning early” at Igogu, is only 906 – 684 = 222 nm, less than 30 minutes flying time.
    But, he is not as far north.

    Let’s go to the Equator.

    The yellow route crosses the equator at 94 east, 450 nm from Igogu.
    So total distance for the yellow route to the equator is 906 + 450 = 1356 nm.

    The red route crosses the equator at 93 east 517 nm from Lagog.
    So toal distance for the red route to the equator is 684 + 517 = 1201 nm.

    The yellow route is still 155 nm LONGER to the Equator than the red route.
    He is on mission impossible.
    This is absolute proof, that the whole “Mallacca Strait” story, allegedly flown by MH370, is total bullshit.

    What he actually did, was NOT turn NW at Penang, but continued south west to Medan then to near Uprob, then the Equator.
    Lets call it the GREEN route.

    The green route is KL to Igari to Penang and is 505 nm. On to Medan is 145 (total 650 nm), then to 46 nm short of Uprob is 240 nm (total 890 nm), then on to the equator at 95 east is 82 nm (total 972 nm).

    Thus, the total flight distances to the equator, all pretty close together, are:-
    Yellow Route 1356 nm
    Red Route 1201 nm
    Green Route 972 nm

    But, the FBI, would have us believe, that “the official flown route”, ie, the “yellow route”, is 155 miles longer than “the planned route”, and with less fuel than the planned flight !!
    Fantastic plan guys, especially if you want to go to the deep SIO !

    On the other hand, by BEING SNEAKY (and smart), by flying the Green route, he does save 229 miles off the planned route.
    But what is more significant, is that he saves 384 miles off the yellow route.

    Think about that for a moment.
    The DSTG hot spot on the 7th arc for the yellow route may not be fuel exhaustion at all.

    Being a sneaky planner, he may have known a lot more about the workings of the satcom than we have given him credit for.
    He could have deliberately shut down the satcom again, at 00:15, then rebooted it again, just like he did at 18:25, put the aircraft into a rapid descending 360 degree turn, but then immediately shut it down again, and recovered to level flight, and flown on, with a huge smile on his face, knowing that it would confuse everyone, for another 384 miles, south-south-west of the DSTG hotspot on the 7th arc, to a perfect ditching.

  2. @ir1907

    A straight path was not flown prior to the FMT. Why would anyone cling to the notion of a straight path (and in some cases defend that choice vigorously) after the FMT? As far as fuel burn is concerned all models rely on flight dynamic assumptions. One can get enormous variation in distance traveled using different flight dynamics.

  3. @DennisW

    Thank you for confirming to me that I am not an intelligent person. Can you imagine how I’m feeling right now? 🙂

    I am however very interested to see the ATSB at least now admitting to the existence of simulated path(s). The original stance was that the FBI had found nothing of interest, or nothing applicable to MH370. Now, they are forced to admit that simulator runs into the SIO were indeed recovered, but the path(s) don’t reveal any clues as to the actual whereabouts of MH370. Hmmm. A very big hmmm.

    A simulated run deep into the SIO (if confirmed) is extremely incriminating. I mean, if there had been a sim run to Christmas Island, then you might have had something to work with, but you don’t.

    The guy wasn’t satisfied with making off into the night with a planeload of helpless passengers, he set out to taunt the authorities with a trail of deliberately tantalizing but unhelpful clues. Clearly, the sim data shows he had checked out a flight deep into the SIO, but was careful to avoid the path he actually planned to take. Luckily for us, the ISAT data has provided us with that, a gift, indeed.

    Then there is the 00:19 logon event, obviously engineered to let the world he did indeed fly until fuel exhaustion. And we now know he must have been in control right up to the end, otherwise the plane would have fallen out of the sky relatively close to the 7th arc, IG style.

    But no shredded airframe, no personal effects or lifejackets etc, only a few pieces, the majority from the RH trailing edge. They point persuasively to a “controlled ditching”.

    Hardly surprising that the ATSB are now in panic/damage limitation mode, is it?

  4. @ROB

    I said “most”. I had you in mind with that qualifier.

    I simply cannot assign to Shah the atrocity of suicide much less suicide coupled with mass murder. I still cling to the belief that his actions were coupled to a political negotiation that went wrong. I truly believe he never meant to harm anyone, including himself. Had this event ended differently he may well have gone into history as a folk hero (like I imagine he had planned).

    Relative to the simulator path, I think it was likely the artifact of a diversion from a flight to Europe that he simply let run after the turn South. His interest in the path ended around the Cocos (complete speculation on my part). Diverting on a flight to Beijing was not his preferred choice. It just worked out that way due to scheduling.

  5. @LouVilla&ir1907

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

    yeah but what exactly would he achieve?! If he wanted to see how programmers have visualised 777 landing/crashing on water he could’ve done it on any patch of the ocean

    also what with those reports that he practiced landings on islands in SIO (which would be Cocos & CI), are those claims true or not?!

    Now using FS would make the sense in that case.

  6. ”yeah but what exactly would he achieve?! If he wanted to see how programmers have visualised 777 landing/crashing on water he could’ve done it on any patch of the ocean”

    Why did the plane turn south into the southern indian ocean ?

    Why did Zaharie have SIO end point(s) stored in his sim data?

    Flying to the SIO doesnt make sense. And Zaharie is dead, cant ask him.

  7. but what are those end points? Do they end up in the current search area? We haven’t been given coordinates.

    It could turn south into SIO to land on australian islands or even australian mainland.

  8. @Dennis, and Brock,

    Just because ISAT has integrity and competence does not rule out rogues within the organization nor errors. Smart people have made stupid errors before.

    I share Brock’s request for raw data, even though we’ll never get it. I’ve always been bothered by the claim that ISAT derived the 495,679us constant, but their code had been subtracting it for years prior. That just doesn’t make any sense to me, and I maintain that one of those conflicting statements is BS.

    I have never gotten a response to that question – only repeated suggestions that it has been answered or that it is a stupid question to begin with or that there is no conflict. But those are also cop outs. The fact remains that data was being logged, but ISAT did not understand its own math until after MH370.

    I also never understood why the very early ping rings were defined by elevation from a level plane’s perspective. Those were not values that were recorded, and they weren’t particularly helpful. Why were these strange derived angles presented, instead of just distances? Why did we go from time to distance to angle to distance instead of directly from time to distance, and how can we say that doesn’t corrupt the data, if only by rounding errors?

    Brock – along those lines, I’d be curious to see if there are any discrepancies between those elevation angles and the later published BTO values. That is probably the only thing that can be validated at the moment, but if errors were baked in, it might reveal them.

  9. @Gysbreght re: need for understanding of Microsoft Flight Simulator X: very good point.

    It has been suggested to me in another forum that the assessment of a coder would be of particular value.

  10. @JS

    There are fixed delays in the AES and other places in the data chain. The constant simply addresses that. I was never particularly bothered by it. I had no idea what it was, but I knew it had to be there.

    Likewise with angles and distances. I never noticed any inconsistencies that troubled me. Plotting the ping rings using the actual sub-satellite point rather than the nominal satellite position over the equator is important as is the use of oblate spheroid earth model. All of these things certainly need to be done carefully.

  11. @Ken S

    Sorry I wrote this before you had been banned.

    Fascinating discussion both here and in previous postings, though I agree with you that we are being fed misinformation to alter our thinking/reasoning. As discussed the authenticity of all of this information needs to be verified though I believe Jeff is posting in good faith.

    It is possible that Malaysian Authorities are being honest and these are indeed Zaharie Shah’s HDDs with his own flight plans on his Microsoft X simulator.

    The biggest problem with the suicide scenario is Zaharie Shah’s mental state is an unknown entity and correlates poorly or is cognitively dissonant with Malaysian Authorities subsequent behaviour to the loss of MH370. From taking 7 hours to declare an emergency (vs 15 mins with recent EgyptAir 804), dishonesty with subsequent announcements about MH370 being in the SCS when cabinet meetings on the night of the disappearance knew MH370 had crossed the Malay Peninsula. Also press conferences at the Lido Hotel Beijing presented flight paths which were knowingly erroneous.

    Loss of a large aircraft such as this has a major impact on international brand image and you would think the relevant authorities would be straight onto it but the exact opposite seems to have happened. Why?

    And don’t forget Sir Tim Clarke’s early comments that pilot suicide = SCS and we know it’s not there. However it’s conceivable he killed himself with the passengers with the SIO flight plan programed.

    The much more difficult logistics of killing all passengers and crew successfully apart from himself (is this possible?) and then flying MH370 into the SIO conscious for 7 hours from a human behavioural point of view is a bit far fetched.

    Also and as discussed extensively here the sequence of events on board MH370, if maliciously planned, is beyond the skill set of any of the Emirates crew that Sir Tim Clarke has spoken to. I am referring to the ACARS/SDU/left main AC bus inactivation re-activation which is quite difficult to achieve from the flight deck but relatively easy from the avionics bay. This is beyond my technical understanding.

    Finally the French Prosecutor’s Office consider MH370 a terrorist investigation. Whilst Captain suicide (with the passengers and crew) is a criminal matter it is not terrorism.

    There are still a lot of questions to answer.

  12. Looking at m FS-X .. One would need a third party addon for B777-300. There seems to be a number of choices so do we know which one was used for the simulated and how accurate this addon is to representing data of a true b777 flight path ??

  13. @JS

    …more

    Back in the day when I was “gainfully” employed, GPS timing receivers were a component of my revenue. When we completed a receiver, and it went into pre-production, I would fly a tech out to NIST in Boulder to log the unit output against the NIST master cesium which which linked to an ensemble of such clocks around the world. A few days of data logging using five or so units (to estimate variations introduced by manufacturing and component tolerances) we arrived at a “fudge factor” to put in the SW to make our outputs agree with NIST. Of course, this result was dependent on antenna cable delays which we pointed out in the user manual. Using anything but the supplied cable it was up to the user to make his own software adjustment to ensure the outputs were “on time”.

  14. @Stevebarrett re Malaysia taking “7 hours to declare an emergency”.

    It may be that the a/c was declared as “missing” around the time of the FMT. According to ‘Fact Sheet Jindalee Operational Radar Network’ http://WWW.airforce.gov.au JORN FAQS
    MH370 was “classified as missing at 0240h on 08Mar14…” (no time zone)

    The FI Report skips this, stating that the KLRCC was launched at 06:32 MYT.

    Is it reasonable to power JORN up if there is a missing 777 in the Region (loosely defined)? I know us Aussies need a lot of beauty sleep. (If it was a wooden boat carrying 20 asylum seekers it would be on in a flash). Seriously, I am wondering what should’ve happened when a jet (carry a number of our citizens amongst hundreds more) is declared “missing”.

  15. KUALA LUMPUR: The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), leading the hunt by three nations for Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370, has come back strongly to debunk various media reports on the search, said International Business Times (IBT) in a report.

    For starters, it does not accept criticisms that the search was in the wrong place, as reported in the media.

    It has also rejected a theory that the plane was downed as a result of deliberate actions by MH370’s Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah.

    The ATSB has pointed out that it has not needed to determine — and has made no claims — about what might have caused the disappearance of the aircraft.

    For search purposes, said ATSB in a statement, the relevant facts and analysis most closely match a scenario in which there was no pilot intervening in the latter stages of the flight. “We have never stated that hypoxia (or any other factor) was the cause of this circumstance,” said the Agency.

    The ATSB, in the statement on Monday, said that it wants to correct “the inaccurate information and false assertions”.

    It cited in particular an article in The Australian by Byron Bailey, a former pilot. “MH370’s disappearance is not the result of one person taking control of the aircraft.”

    The Dutch company Fugro, carrying out the underwater search, has also denied reports attributed to it on the search zone, said the ATSB statement. “The company has denied saying that it may have been looking in the wrong place the last two years for the plane.

    ”http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2016/07/26/aussies-dismiss-reports-on-futile-search-for-mh370/

    Looks like more contradictions and shooting in the foot. Having said that,can one realistically hope to do any better given insider knowledge as to the actual circumstances.

  16. @Wazir

    Funny shit. The ATSB has definitely been assigned to the douche bag category. Of course, that has been a working hypothesis for some time. Not a good time to be an Aussie for sure.

  17. @DennisW

    Looks like the ATSB is adamant on sticking with the pilotless narrative in its reading of the ISAT data (my reservations of ISAT authenticity notwithstanding).

    I guess this trenchant stance is designed to facilitate quick closure more than anything else. But then again the ATSB has had a chequered past,so no surprises there.

  18. @all

    The SSWG allegedly comprised of employees from Boeing, Thales, NTSB (inept at all levels), and so on. I have seen this movie dozens of times. Are you going to assign employees who could contribute to a revenue stream to an activity like this? Of course not. It would be idiotic to do so. You find someone who is breathing with nothing better to do for these sorts of activities. My guess is the SSWG probably had to Wiki Doppler compensation.

  19. Or alternatively the ATSB has been arm twisted for whatever reason into this narrative so as to be seen to singing from the hymn sheet.

    Anyway I have stressed here before that IF ISAT and flyby are true, it plausibly points to human intervention simply due to the way the craft was flown.

    And my terminus would be the Western portion of the Arafura sea between Java and Australia, reason being no radar detection by either Exmouth or JORN plus no debris in Australia. But that’s purely my second conjecture.

    Arm twisting as in above? :

    MH370 pilot’s home simulator data not evidence of murder–suicide, says Australian Government
    PM By Peter Lloyd
    Updated about 2 hours ago

    An apparent clue to the involvement of the chief pilot in the mass murder and suicide theory of MH370’s disappearance, which helped shape the vastly expensive search for the wreckage, has been downgraded to merely “the possibility of planning”.

    Infrastructure Minister Darren Chester declined to explain the apparent contradiction on Monday night, despite repeated calls to his parliamentary staffers over four days and a direct appeal to the Minister on Twitter.

    A statement issued by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) seems to upend the faith former prime minister Tony Abbott held in an unreported Malaysian Government belief there was evidence of suspicious conduct by the chief pilot.

    At issue is the hotly contested report that the FBI gathered data from the MH370 captain’s home simulator that shows he plotted a course to the southern Indian Ocean, as planning for a murder-suicide.

    According to a source, the ATSB took the murder–suicide theory so seriously that expert mapping of possible crash locations took it into account.

    This would put the bureau squarely at odds with the Minister now in charge……..

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-26/mh370-simulator-data-not-evidence-of-murder-suicide-chester-says/7660378

  20. @Dennis,

    You wrote:

    “There are fixed delays in the AES and other places in the data chain. The constant simply addresses that.”

    if I understand your comment correctly, you are suggesting that there was a generic constant applied by the logging routine, and then an AES-specific constant derived from observation of 9M-MRO at known locations.

    For example, the log was subtracting 500,000us. The particular AES was slightly faster, so 495,679us was determined to be the offset between the logged values and the full values. Does that sound right?

    It makes perfect sense, except that we are either missing a constant and/or the published log is not the real log but one adjusted to fit the derived constant.

    If that’s what you are suggesting, that is the best explanation I’ve heard. But it is also problematic. If that’s not what you are suggesting, then I’m not clear on why you aren’t bothered by the derivation of the actual constant.

  21. @JS

    The data logging on the ground at KL was sufficient to derive the time delay offset. My assumption is that this is what was done.

    Nothing suspicious in IMO.

  22. Well its looks as though this case wants to be closed ASAP….time to blame the pilot, insult NOK and whatever else needs to be done to end this search and make it all go away. How convenient I must say??? Something is very wrong with this picture IMO. Time to move along folks nothing to see here….where have we HEARD that before???????

  23. @Cofee

    Thank you. 7 hours was a bit of exaggeration. It was closer to a 5 hour delay (from time of last contact).

    The comments you make a about JORN are interesting. It seems it wasn’t switched on.

  24. @MH and others.

    In regards to which add on Captain Shah used.
    I can tell you he used the PMDG 777 software which is pretty accurate to the actual 777 from programming a route, fuel calculation, take off, cruise in the FMC. Along complete procedure from cold start up to take off into cruise altitude using MCP. What is not very accurate is Microsoft FSX. For example full there’s inconsistent time vs distance calculations on flight performance itself. So in other words. The flight path found on Shahs home simulator to the end point would not entirely be accurate. For more info on PMDG software http://www.precisionmanuals.com/ProductCart/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=99

  25. It also seems that there are some on this forum that view the Inmarsat data as infallible. I’m not sure we can come to that conclusion. Any peer reviewed scientific article would publish the raw data so that the conclusions can be thoroughly evaluated by the scientific community.

  26. If JORN was shut down, and even if the RAAF Officer on duty in the Malaysian IADS (with direct link to Edinburgh) had wanted to get JORN “up and running”, it may not have been possible, to get the three transmitting sites, and the three receiving sites (six in all) going, if they were not manned at the time.

    Remember that these 6 sites are all out “in the middle of no-where” and have small staffs, only a few people.

    It was the early hours of Saturday morning.

    If the stations were “shut down for the weekend”, no one would have been on duty to answer the phone.

  27. There are only 6 data points. Why is one those ‘missing’? The only reson I can think of is that it doesn’t fit, that it spoils the story. We are being footled.

  28. Thank you Aaron for your reply. It may also depend on the MFSX version as well. And if mFSX application crashed along this simulation so if we are seeing elements of partially valid data as side effect.

  29. @Susie Crowe

    Thanks for the links, which makes interesting reading in view of what is being revealed now.

  30. Why JORN again and again?

    From Fact Sheet on JORN

    Based on the time of day that MH370 disappeared, and in the context of peacetime tasking, JORN was not operational at the time of the aircraft’s disappearance. Given range from individual OTHRs, the ionospheric conditions and a lack of information on MH370’s possible flight path towards Australia, it is unlikely that MH370 would have been detected if the system had been operational.

    OTHRs do not continually ‘sweep’ an area like a conventional radar but rather ‘dwell’ by focusing discrete radar energy on a particular area – referred to as a ‘tile’. The transmitted HF energy can be electronically steered to illuminate other ‘tiles’ within the OTHRs coverage as required to satisfy operational tasking or in response to intelligence cueing. When an OTHR dwells on an area, it is configured to either detect maritime vessels or aircraft.

    OTHRs do not continually ‘sweep’ an area like conventional radars but rather ‘dwell’ by focusing the radar’s energy on a particular area – referred to as a ‘tile’.. The transmitted HF energy can be electronically steered to illuminate other ‘tiles’ within the OTHR’s coverage as required to satisfy operational tasking or in response to intelligence cueing.

  31. How do we reconcile this FBI finding now off the shelf with the brother-in-law stating on the 4 Corners piece that Zaharie’s simulator was broken for a year and the wife wanted it put away as it was taking up space?

    Still something fishy here to me. Where did the final terminus in the SIO end up on the FBI findings? Middle of SIO or actually on land somewhere?

    I’ve had to step out of this for a few months, in my own hell, but trying to come back to you guys and the families.

  32. @RetiredF4 @ventus45 – JORN Fact Sheet
    Thank you both for your comments. I follow entirely.
    I was also trying to bring to your attention that this Australian government agency thought MH370 was declared “missing” at 02:40. I am not presently sure if the term “missing” would set a train of events in motion, or require a certain response.

    This is perhaps a JORN misprint, but could be a detail not included in the FI report. This may be an indication of the Malaysian process behind the scene, which I think is very interesting.
    What’s going on at that time? I am a novice, so forgive the foolish string of errors, but is it possible that the a/c was watched out of military radar range, given a single 1 minute buzz on the satellite phone, then declared “missing”?
    Please disregard, as this point may likely be immaterial. Thank you.

  33. @SteveBarrett

    “Also press conferences at the Lido Hotel Beijing presented flight paths which were knowingly erroneous.”

    That was not made up. That was an actual reading. There were multiple readings. The only time “MH370” was one after Igari was when it was sending pings go Inmarsat. After the half-ping it was a guessing game once again.

    @Wazir Roslan

    “pilotless narrative”

    They don’t know how right they are.

    “plausibly points to human intervention simply due to the way the craft was flown.”

    It was done better than any human could have done.

    @Bugsy

    “Time to move along folks nothing to see here….where have we HEARD that before?”

    Men in Black. That is how bizarre this is.

  34. @Gysbreght. Phugoids and the rapid descent. Your earlier remarks.
    Page 13-15 of https://www.atsb.gov.au/media/5747317/ae2014054_mh370-definition_of_underwater_search_areas_3dec2015_update.pdf
    This makes clear that while the SATCOM data are considered reliable the estimations of distance from the 7th arc to crash site are just that: a composite of simulation and analysis, with weightings. Putting aside a manned glide the question is what distance the aircraft could cover unmanned. In the Summary, the analysis indicated the….”aircraft entering a banked (often increasing) turn until impacting the ocean”. According to p13 the analysis, “did not include variations in speed or pitch angle”. This leaves a distinct possibility the aircraft would not bank much. In that event, as to pitch, phugoids might well expand into swoops, with high speed at the bottom. This aircraft is not subject to Mach tuck according to manuals. To me more likely with moderately swept back wings it would pitch up as speed increased, this overlaying the phugoids.
    Perhaps multiple wings-about-level swoops were assessed as improbable but only the data and assessments would indicate whether probabilities were derived and with what confidence.
    One press release quoted Fugro as saying the probability of finding wreckage, if there, was 95%. The implied probability of missing it at 5% approaches significant. Without more data one can speculate that the probability of the aircraft flying unmanned beyond the search width might be more significant than that.

  35. @Cofee
    Don’t feel attacked, you arein,y one in the row who bring up the radar matter in a regular basis.

    Radars just do not operate 24/7 in peace time and they do not always operate on the max sales brochure operating range. Even during normal peace time operating hours the manpower behind the console might be legally absent. Not everything painted by a radar raises the attention of the guy in front of the scope, and not everything observed by the operator is considered a threat and worth for further evaluation.

  36. ”How do we reconcile this FBI finding now off the shelf with the brother-in-law stating on the 4 Corners piece that Zaharie’s simulator was broken for a year and the wife wanted it put away as it was taking up space?”

    Yes, because the families of possible culprits are so reliable.

  37. @Aaron

    Hi Aaron, I think you must mean RON, rather than Rob.
    What I know about flight simulator programs can be written on the back of a postage stamp, in Caps.

  38. @Trond

    I agree that the flight path into the SIO is purely speculative and subject to legitimate error. However I was referring to the image presented at the Lido Hotel Beijing earlier in the flight;

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MH370_radar.jpeg

    And an article on the IG group by News Limited;

    http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/incidents/mh370-eight-questions-on-missing-malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-that-need-answers/news-story/c72cfb2b0ff57c96483ae6028bc954f5

    I quote “The military radar data shown to MH370 next of kin (pictured above) is vastly different from the data provided by Malaysia and used in a recent report by Australia’s Defence Science and Technology GroupSource:Supplied”

    Victor Iannello expressed it better as “full of inconsistencies”. Others have used the word faked which is a bit strong.

    @Trond in multiple postings ago you included Singapore and 9M-MRO in the same sentence. Interesting. Are you referring to the events of 8th March 2014 or something else?

  39. @David: “@Gysbreght. Phugoids and the rapid descent.”

    If Jeff Wise had written “could” instead of “would”, I wouldn’t have objected.

  40. @David, Perhaps worth reviewing what a phugoid is. Any aircraft at any given moment will be trimmed to fly at a certain speed; if it is going faster than that (e.g. because engine power has increased) the nose will pitch up, and speed will bleed off. Conversely if it is going slower than that, the nose will pitch down, the aircraft will lose altitude and gain speed. If a plane is left to its own devices, and its nose drops, it will gain speed, then pitch up; lose speed, and pitch down; gain speed, and pitch up; etc. This is a phugoid. Of course, if the plane has no engine power, this will all be taking place in the context of gradually losing altitude.

    @Gysbreght, Although a low-bank-angle gentle descent doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, it is clearly what the ATSB believes happened. The bottom line, however, is that according to the analysis upon which the seabed search was conducted, they expected the plane to have impacted the sea no more than 40 n.m. from the 7th arc.

  41. Google could find the plane – they have the engineers and the money to develop some sort of unmanned submarine that could be programmed to follow a grid based search in all the hot spots. Since they are a monopoly they really don’t have to worry about shareholders. Once they found it they probably could monetize the submarine and make billions. Just search for metal, may find gold deposits instead but someone is eventually going to find this plane, hopefully in my lifetime — and I have no doubt Google could do it.

  42. @Cofee

    With respect to the time: 02:40h.
    It is actually 02:40H, where H = Hotel time zone, which is UTC +8 Hours.
    In other words, 02:40H = 18:40UTC.
    So, the JORN “Fact Sheet” is, in effect saying, the aircraft was declared “missing”, 8 minutes after the final radar hit at 02:22H = 18:22UTC, and 5 minutes after the SDU Log-On at 18:25UTC.

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