Here’s a link to the report broadcast today on Australian 60 Minutes about the search for MH370. Part 1:
Part 2:
Discussion after the jump…
The main thrust of the piece is that an independent air-crash expert, Larry Vance, has looked at photographs of the Réunion flaperon and decided that their relatively intact state, and the lack of debris from inside the aircraft, means that the plane must not have impacted the water at high speed, as would be expected if the plane ran out of fuel as a “ghost ship” and spiralled into the water. He interprets the jagged trailing edge of the flaperon as evidence that it was deployed at the moment of impact and was worn away when it struck the water.
I find it discomfiting when people say that the mystery of MH370 is not mystery at all–that they are absolutely confident they know the answer. Vance undercuts his credibility, I feel, by taking this stance. There is indeed a strong argument to be made that the plane must have been under conscious control to the very end; to me the most compelling is simply that the plane has not been found in the current seabed search zone. However it is less clear that someone attempted a ditching. What the show does not mention is that debris from inside the aircraft has indeed been found, suggesting that the fuselage could not have survived the impact and sunk to the bottom of the ocean intact. Indeed, the program doesn’t mention the other debris at all, with the exception of the Pemba flap, which is the other relatively intact large piece. The fact that most of the debris found so far is rather small is to me indicative of a higher-energy impact. But I have no strong opinion one way or the other; I feel that proper experts must look at the debris close up to determine what forces caused it to come apart.
The program cites the recently revealed flight-sim data from Zaharie’s computer as further evidence that the plane was deliberately piloted to fuel exhaustion and beyond. For the first time, the program showed on screen pages from the confidential Malaysian report. The producers of the show reached out to me as they were putting the program together, and asked me to comment on some of the data they had accumulated. Here are the pages of the document that they showed on-screen:
It’s worth noting that these pages offer a summary of the recovered flight-sim data which are described in greater detail and accuracy elsewhere in the confidential Malaysian documents. Here is a table showing a subset of what the documents contain:
Note that the numbering systems for the two data tables do not match. (Please do not ask me to explain this.) I suggest that for the purposes of discussion, the point saved at Kuala Lumpur International Airport be called point 1; the three points recorded as the flight-sim moved up the Malacca Strait to the Andaman Islands be called 2, 3, and 4; and the points over the southern Indian Ocean with fuel at zero be called points 5 and 6.
In order to understand the fuel load numbers in the second table, I made some calculations based on the fuel loads in a real 777-200ER. I don’t know how closely these match those in the flight simulator Zaharie was using. If anyone can shed light I’d be happy to hear it.
Worth noting, I think, is that the fuel difference between point 4 and point 5 is enough for more than 10 hours of flight under normal cruise conditions. The difference between these points is 3,400 nautical miles, for an average groundspeed of less than 340 knots. This is peculiar. Perhaps the flight-sim fuel burn rate is very inaccurate; perhaps the simulated route between the points was not a great circle, as shown in the second page of the report above, but indirect; perhaps Zaharie was fascinated by the idea of flying slowly; or perhaps points 5 & 6 come from a different simulated flight than 1 through 4. Readers’ thoughts welcome.
Also note that neither the locations nor the headings of points 1-4 lie exactly on a straight line from 1 to 4, which suggest perhaps that the route was hand-flown.
@DennisW: “IMO, the book is closed relative to Zaharie taking the aircraft.”
Was it ever opened?
@ROB
“Apologies Jeff for what might be taken as bluster and braggadocio on my part, but you must admit it’s the most promising runner in race”
Rob, you cannot toss out the drift analytics to suit your theory of events. It is truly your personal “albatross”.
A controlled ditch is not something that I have seen asserted by anyone in a position to speak with credibility on the issue. Still an open question relative to professional forensics.
Furthermore, the SIO is one of the last places a knowledgeable person would select to do a ditching with the intention of minimizing debris.
The “siren song” of the sunrise meets the flight path has lured you to a fixation.
@ROB: “The much maligned DSTG Bayesian analysis found that the aircraft most likely maintained as straight course into the SIO, …”
That was not “found”. It would be more correct to say that it was a built-in bias of the methodology via Ornstein-Uhlenbeck, Kalman, Bayes, etc.
…. and in addition to my previous post a few posts back:
Would one have to expect that the damaged wings would carry the plane out of a set direction (Antarctic airfield e.g.; magnetic south etc) or would it just burn more fuel while keeping the course?
Here are a couple of other thoughts on the simulator data:
1) Up until the northern point at 10N latitude, the aircraft was flying with wings level and essentially no bank, indicative of straight flight. At 10N latitude (Point 3), the aircraft has a heading to 255 deg and is completing a turn with a bank of almost exactly 20 deg, presumably to the left. This would be consistent with a turn to the south, and rules out that this data set was part of a flight that continued to the northwest.
2) Other than observing the progression of the fuel level, I would not put a lot of weight on the exact values for these reasons: I doubt the fuel model is extremely accurate in the game; we don’t know how the plane was flown and how much extra fuel was burned; and it is trivial to stop the simulation at any time and change the fuel level, much the way I think the altitude was changed for the last point.
@Gysbreght: You will not acknowledge the existence of the circumstantial evidence linking Zaharie to a crime, yet you create evidence about how he would have flown the plane if had taken it. There is no basis for us to further discuss this rationally, so I won’t try.
@Gysbreght
“Was it ever opened?”
I am collecting your proclamations and “parables” with the intent of publishing them. Of course, the aircraft will never be found, and the Gysbreght “Les Propheties” collection will rival Nostradamus in keeping future generations engaged in trying to figure out the hidden messaging and meanings.
Here is a link to the whole segment in one file: https://goo.gl/4J3cgA
@Gysbreght
“@RetiredF4: “Quicker refers to time, tighter refers to used airspace.”
Perhaps it is time to stop inventing ever more improbable explanations for a highly unusual maneuver. He was authorized to enter that airspace, was expected there, so why would he go to the limits of the airplane’s capability in a desperate attempt to avoid it?”
You are in the mood for attacking the messenger, wich is your choice to do. I hope it at least makes you feel better.
you said:
“@VictorI: He would not have flown the airplane differently from what he was accustomed to, unless there was a reason for.
He, she , or another person on the controls did clearly not fly the aircraft like we would expect. Switching off IFF, ACARS, stopping to communicate, reversing course, changing altitudes without clearance, and ending up somewhere in the drink is far from normal flying operations. Zahire was accustomed to fly his passengers safely to the planned destination, while observing all SOP’s, rules and regulations. Obviously this flight was not operated under those procedures and three of the important questions are “who did it?, why? an where is the final resting place of Mh370 now? “. The notion, that MH 370 was flown like any pilot would have flown it during normal airline operations led to an search area where nothing was found yet. Isn’t it time to consider besides improbable technical problems the intentional act from whoever, also non normal flight parameters and procedures instead of invalidating pointers to such abnormal operations?
@ALSM @airlandseaman
If you post on some other forum/blog, please mention that at some point. Your viewpoints & theories are not ignored in the ‘MH370 webspace’.
@VictorI: I agree, there is no benefit in preaching to deaf ears, so it’s time to shut up on that issue. It is just dismaying to see a forum once devoted to solving a mystery degenerate into a lynch crowd ready to hang someone on the basis of “circumstantial evidence”.
@RetiredF4: ” Isn’t it time to consider besides improbable technical problems the intentional act from whoever, also non normal flight parameters and procedures instead of invalidating pointers to such abnormal operations?”
Agree 100%
Jeff, The suicide with a contolled landing matches the found evidence currently. But what I miss is the suicide motive to do it this way in the middle of a ocean this complicated way. As a controlled landing does not kill you as a pilot what the intend is of a suicide. Sitting there a drown is a very painful death most suicidial people don’t choose for, or he was able to do suicide by other means. Or was there a pickup at this point with another motive?
Has anyone here read the book ‘Lion’s Game’ by Nelson de Mille. It talks about the pilot crashing the plane after killing the passengers by using an “auto landing” mode.
Such a mode doesn’t exist in reality of course as not only reverse thrusters but flaps, landing gear, brakes etc have to be pilot in putted.
But just wondering in this case, the pilot could have manually set those stuff up once he neared fuel exhaustion ( I remember clearly Thai military as commenting on the erratic flight pattern which probably explains speed variations and by default fuel burn) for presumably glide -ditching then changed his mind at the last minute and left the plane to go down nose first high impact style for he know the inevitable outcome of whichever choice. Is that possible? If yes, could that be considered a middle ground alternative to the glide-ditch vs high impact existential battle here.
I do know that pet theories can die hard sometimes for I came in from left field anyway. Just wondering aloud, that’s all
@David, cross checked about the corrosion thingy at FAA and research studies on 7075 T6 corrosion. Seems that while seawater accelerates corrosion it is more of the pitting corrosion variety or intragranular type. None of the stuff I have looked suggest perforation or holing and marine life forms have very little impact as the corrosion is more galvanic induced. Will post links up soonest here. So we may agree to disagree?
The FBI is a top notch agency when it comes to electronic forensics despite what some others here say as many articles like this one clearly imply:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/fbis-digitial-detectives-recover-deleted/story?id=15470999
so I have no doubt they played a huge part in that FS thingy. I suspect their expertise was tapped into only for that and not other related forensics which leaves the RMP sufficient room to fudge if push comes to shove for some reason or other. Since the FBI has not made any comments thus far, I am assuming they did hack that FS and provided assistance as requested with the understanding that it would be acknowledged but if the other party does not latch on for some reason, I reckon the FBI will probably let it pass on grounds of diplomatic niceties. So Sandilands aside, the central premise of the whole disclosure stands as I have stressed in the previous post.
I further suspect non disclosure of this line of inquiry could have been due to domestic political permutations at that time whence an essentially ‘personal’ act could have been misconstrued as a political act, given vague associations, capable of effecting copy cat outbursts in a “volatile” situation hence the authorities decided to tamp that down at the expense of transparency……who knows?
I need to stress that all the above is personal conjecture, flights of fancy stuff which is in no way anything more sinister than is plainly obvious. Just throwing a curve ball to see where it lands …..
@RetiredF4,
You said in reference to the ATSB radar track:
“If that would be the case then we would have an either intentionall mislead or we would look at the raw radar data. Radar presentations with ground or airspace structure overlay have to be range corrected to the overlay, otherwise the presented information would not only be useless, but dangerous.”
I don’t think the radar track in Figure 2 was designed to mislead anyone. In my view the portion of the track after 17:21 plot is simply a connection of radar range measurements, with measured (slant) range being plotted in a horizontal plane (and therefore leading to a slight amount of erroneous curvature). What else can you do if you do not have reliable altitude information along the track? You are correct that if we had the “raw” radar data we would know how the plot was generated and whether or not any corrections had been applied for aircraft altitude. The error in the aircraft location due to ignoring altitude is quite small except for short ranges. At the 31 NM suggested by sk999 for a possible radar station location, it is only 0.5 NM at 35,000 feet. At 10 NM separation, the error is 1.5 NM. So this effect, if present in the radar track map, is only significant for passes very close to the radar stations.
@Wazir
Those types of investigations are done by RCFL’s (Regional Computer Forensics Laboratories). They are not a part of the FBI, but work with law enforcement from all jurisdictions on a case by case basis.
The FBI, like all government agencies, is staffed by underpaid civil servants looking for job security, to “put in their 30 years”, skate by with low stress, and retire.
Not a bad way to go, and it avoids having to compete in the stressful meritocracy of the private sector.
@Wazir
Give this a read. Hardly the work of a “top notch” agency you claim the FBI is. My personal opinion based on actual experience is quite different.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/fbi-overstated-forensic-hair-matches-in-nearly-all-criminal-trials-for-decades/2015/04/18/39c8d8c6-e515-11e4-b510-962fcfabc310_story.html
@Victor: what is your direct evidence to support your theory that the fuel mismatch between points 1-4 and 5-6 can be explained by “game error”? Until such direct evidence (e.g. statistical fluctuation of a random sample of 1000 independent trials of this software) is presented, is this not also “created evidence”?
@Jeff: apologies if this is either asked and answered, or an artefact of my own specific set-up, but the right-hand side of the rightmost column of the above data table appears cut off to me. Would you be so kind as to de-crop the image sufficiently to permit a full view of all values in that column? Thanks in advance.
One question :
What virtual aircraft were used in the flightsim, or, how can we say for sure it was a B777-200ER that was used for this virtual flight to the SIO ?
@Jeff: re: cut-off data: sorry, scratch that. Double-clicking was my friend. Has anyone explained “AGL”, and in particular reconciled its disparate value at point 6? It effectively tracks the “Altitude” row for all other columns.
@All: re: “Bank Angle”: what do positive and negative numbers typically represent? Right and left, respectively? (Again: apologies if asked & answered.)
@Brock McEwen: Did you even read what I wrote? I gave three possible explanations for the fuel discrepancy. And here’s a fourth:
@LouVilla: I believe the plane was a B777-200LR in the simulation.
@Brock McEwen: Regarding the AGL value, I proposed above that it looks like the simulation was paused between the last two points and the altitude manually changed to 4,000 ft. The AGL is an internal value that hadn’t had a chance to update to reflect the new altitude.
@David,
You said:
“You were short of fuel in some instances (LRC and ECON 52 and the MRC True Track). Can I take it that your modelling takes earth shape into account? I remember George Tilson’s comment about that. With the closer distance to earth’s centre of about 20, 000 ft at around the search latitude the energy saved is equivalent to about 550 lbs fuel, net, so rather more gross; that is once divided by engine and propulsion efficiencies. The “descent” gradient is around 0.1% and an alternative way of calculating is to suppose an L/D up there of about 10, in which case by proportioning to normal consumption the fuel saved is about 800 lbs (my sketch calcs). But I do assume your model will account for this.”
My fuel model does not account for any change in gravity. The additional fuel consumption required to match expected PDAs in Holding LRC speed mode is about 1300 kg. In addition, your 800 lb fuel saving estimate is too small by a factor of 3 to make even the ECON 0 (MRC) case work, and the LRC and ECON 52 results are even farther off.
“As to going under budget on fuel, is there a reason why a lower altitude cruise would not fix this while alternatively accommodating fuselage (say) damage?”
The altitude is fitted along with other parameters. The fuel consumption is lower at lower altitude (as well as speed) assuming the Holding LRC mode is used. I cannot accurately model fuel flow for arbitrary speed settings, such as setting both the altitude and the IAS using the Mode Control Panel. One can imagine an inefficient combination being used by a non-professional pilot (such as a cabin crew member), such that the fuel consumption is higher than optimal, and leading to fuel exhaustion at the 7th Arc with typical engine PDAs without invoking a significant descent/ascent.
“How about continuous APU operation after around say, the 18:25 logon?”
At 2 lb fuel consumption in 55 seconds (per ATSB), running the APU from 18:25 to 00:17 would only affect the PDA by 0.7%. This is too small an effect to bring the ~7% PDA results down to 3-4% with Holding Long-Range Cruise. I’m not sure of the exact sequence of events if the APU was already running up to 00:17. I suppose that would imply the main engines quit before then and the RAT came on line shortly thereafter. But doesn’t the RAT deploy when the main engines quit whether or not the APU is running? And I seem to recall that the SDU would not be powered by the RAT. If this is correct, then there would not have been a reboot of the SDU and no 00:19 log-on, right? Perhaps someone who is knowledgeable in this area will comment on this. I think the simplest explanation for the extra fuel consumption is a descent down to relatively low altitude, either during the radar track or during the FMT maneuvers.
That´s likely but where is the evidence ? Is it just because there was a professional modelled B777-200LR available from PMDG ?
I think it´s a very important question what type of aircraft were used. It makes no sense to fly virtually to the SIO with a B747 or an Airbus when he wanted to fly his suicide mission on an B777-200ER in reality.
@LouVilla asked, “Is it just because there was a professional modelled B777-200LR available from PMDG ?”
No.
@airlandseaman despite some efforts I could not find a single source stating Zaharie uninstalled his simulator prior to his flight. Neither could I find confirmation he seeker the Web on how to fix a malfunction in his simulator. Do you have a link?
@Ron good question I was about to ask too, why would someone do a ditch landing and then wait to drown? But to assume it was a preplanned pickup maneuver seems quite farfetched to me, as it would take days to get to that meeting point from the mainland and nobody would know if the water landing would work out.
@Victorl :
No what ? What let you to believe it was a virtual B777-200LR ? If it should just a “believe” it´s okay but it would be nice to be precise on your answer to my question. Thank you.
@Gysbreght
I mentioned ‘circumstantial evidence’ pointing at Zaharie ‘at the controles’ as the most obvious one. Not to lynch him as responsable for the loss of plane and lives I explained in a post later.
I agree with you there is still zero hard evidence to that conclusion.
@LouVilla: I have it on good authority it was a B777-200LR in the simulation.
@ circumstantial evidence whiners
Besides spending too much time watching TV, you have a fundamental misconception of the power of circumstantial evidence and why it is often better than direct evidence i.e eyewitness testimony.
From wiki below:
A popular misconception is that circumstantial evidence is less valid or less important than direct evidence. This is only partly true: direct evidence is popularly, but mistakenly, considered more powerful. Many successful criminal prosecutions rely largely or entirely on circumstantial evidence, and civil charges are frequently based on circumstantial or indirect evidence. Much of the evidence against convicted American bomber Timothy McVeigh was circumstantial, for example. Speaking about McVeigh’s trial, University of Michigan law professor Robert Precht said, “Circumstantial evidence can be, and often is much more powerful than direct evidence.The 2004 murder trial of Scott Peterson was another high-profile conviction based heavily on circumstantial evidence.
end of wiki//
You might be surprised to know that fingerprints, DNA, hair samples, and the like are considered circumstantial evidence.
I was directly involved (one of my people served as an expert witness) in the Scott Peterson murder trial since we built the GPS tracker that the car rental agencies placed on his rented vehicles. It was the first time that GPS was admitted as evidence in a criminal case. His high powered defense team was not able to get it excluded.
Shah did it. Get a rope. I’ve heard enough.
And what about Appendix M-1 ?
What about all the other Appendix A to M, one or more for each ?
How about Appendix N, O P Q etc ?
How about Attachments and Enclosures ?
A mountain of data was gathered from FIVE hard disks.
There is much more the Malaysians are sitting on.
This is just a snippet of a snippet of a snippet of a …………..
Forensic evidence is not a new science and it is baffling to me that until the 60 minutes piece there were few who claimed the flaperon and the other large flap piece were in the down position when the plane hit the water. (does the damage say yes, no, or maybe?) Seems like this is something worth the independent group’s time. They have beat the BFO and BTO data to endless ends, Australia searched dutifully and spent enormous money where they said the plane should be but if the flaps were down it is a strong indication of a live pilot wanting to increase the lift as the plane’s speed slows down.
I realize the plane probably never will be found, at least in my lifetime, but there is evidence from the bits of plane that have been found but it doesn’t seem anyone is looking very hard. Aren’t there still suspected plane debris in Madagascar that Malaysia won’t go get?
Finally I felt bad for the Australian official trying to answer why France won’t give them the flaperon. Whatever happened to the analysis of the barnacles? Seems the governments involved just want this to go away.
@Jerry M
I agree with everything you said above except feeling bad for Foley. The ASTB has been and is a contributing factor to the search debacle. Foley, and his well rehearsed “dear in the headlights” expression is a movie I have seen more than a few times. He might as well have had “dumb shit” tattooed on his forehead.
@Victorl
you said:
“I don’t think the radar track in Figure 2 was designed to mislead anyone.”
Excellent, we are on the same page. so we agree itbis authentic, right?
“In my view the portion of the track after 17:21 plot is simply a connection of radar range measurements, with measured (slant) range being plotted in a horizontal plane (and therefore leading to a slight amount of erroneous curvature). ”
That’s not how it was done 25 years ago, and the Malayans have better equipment now than we did.
“What else can you do if you do not have reliable altitude information along the track? ”
Where do you have that from, and what would you consider as reliable? Air defence systems are able to compute the altitude pretty close by different means. Modern 3D systems can do this to within 50 feet, and older 2D systems are good for an altitude close to +/ – 1.000 feet. Not on one sweep, the longer the target gets plotted the sharper the height info gets, and not on an heavy maneuvering target. The conversion to the correct ground range is simple math done by computer. In the link I provided (5 parts if you change the number in the link as suggested) about radar systems you find enough information how they are designed and how they operate. What is not in there is how data link connections with other overlapping systems improve the accuracy and the computing power of those systems. The times are over where the radar information was displayed in a building below the radar antenna. The end product of rhe radar and computing power is displayed in command and control centers on modern digitalized displays with multiple informations concerning range (slant and ground), altitude, vertical speed, groundspeed and heading and georef location. How on earth could they otherwise handle the different ground-, air- and sea- based air defence systems in wartime, when IFF, ADSB and other nice peacetime gadgets are off, not used or jammed?
The radar plot, when we believe in its authentity like we both agreed to, is a computer generated plot over the given time frame not some manual handy work of an artist. That they didn’t use the best overlay and probably removed a lot of other available information is obvious and understandable from a military point of view. The information they tried to get across is there, it is on us to use it or to discard it.
Simple put, if you need to show that the theater was open and an orchestra was playing, you need no high tech player. Replaying the recording on an old black and white TV in mono will suffice.
Interesting bit of information – FSX ‘Rewards’ ..
Flight Simulator X apparently has 6 built-in ‘Rewards’ or ‘Badges’ you can obtain. For example, by landing on the:
– Most remote airport (Mataveri International Airport, Easter Island)
– Lowest airport (Bar Yehuda Airfield, Dead Sea)
– Highest airport (San Rafael)
– Shortest runway (North Cape, Wisconsin)
– Northernmost airport (Alert, Northern Canada)
And ..
– Southernmost airport (McMurdo Sound…)
For example (but there are other links too):
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=363018708
Coincidental?
@Ron this was exactly what went through my hwad as I watched the segment… in a controlled ditch, what kills the pilot? Its a truely horrid drowning scenario.
Watching the two people sat in the simulator it was obviously going to be a slow and uncontrollable death. How does this add up with a meticulously planned act?
Most of the simulation parameters seem self-explanatory. The XVelWorld, etc, coords seem to be local to the location of the aircraft (i.e., not ECEF or anything like that). +ZVel is North, +XVel is East. +YVel is -sin(pitch)*Vtot. Not sure why the negative sign.
It is not clear what constitutes an “airport”, but the South Pole has the furthest South maintained airstrip. Apparently enough people pass through that there is a gift shop.
@Wazir Roslan
“Such a mode doesn’t exist in reality of course as not only reverse thrusters but flaps, landing gear, brakes etc have to be pilot in putted.”
I take that as a part of an answer to my question, thanks.
And yes, everything inbetween might ought to be possible, I guess. Also a flaperon and flap stuck in extended mode much earlier?
@Wazir: “I further suspect non disclosure of this line of inquiry could have been due to domestic political permutations at that time whence an essentially ‘personal’ act could have been misconstrued as a political act,”
Well, I reckon it stopped being “political” when it became “personal” in this case, if this was the case; the personal act is an act of raving terrorism and who could have stood behind that? (There might still be political repercussions, of course, but the act would not be any less criminal and personal, and it is not for us to say.)
Still, it does not really add up for me as a kind of historico-political self-sacrifice, not with the individuals concerned (and the innocent victims). And even less as a “private protest” for that. There really ought to be much more to it, a more personal(/mental) substance, national concern, or an external, hitherto unknown, intervention. But this is really over our heads, isn’t it? Not for us to say.
Inasfar as one may need to be able to visualize who the perpetrator is before proving he did it, I have had a hard time with this one. And it will in effect continue to be hard.
@DennisW: (something smiling)
Wicki: “On its own, circumstantial evidence allows for more than one explanation”.
It is not about the evidence, you will not get a witness here (likely), and the rope is wasted (very very likely).
Outside the Law (say that to (the) Shah), it is publically risky to publically announce a truth, when it is not. The full public risk might have to be carried by others than yourself (in one circle after the other). Some bloke might do something unpremeditated, or something that he might had better slept just another night over, or announce the truth to a public servant or a Court of Appeals-judge who slept poorly that night.
While the insurances companies keep stalling for decades to avoid paying “the Nokes” before they are written off anyway. And the X… , and the Y…, and the NN…
Inside the Law it is too dark anyway…
@jeffwise – The fuel values from the FS data do not appear to reflect the accident aircraft. I have no idea what they mean.
@Brian – I suppose he could have used SkyVector instead of FS to see how to avoid certain airspace(s) but using FS was more realistic.
@all – in my 7/24 post I said the 7th arc goes far enough east (after S40°) for debris to avoid WA. I meant west.
It appears to me that both the FS and accident flight pass almost directly over MEKAR, so other than the 18:40 phone-call is there a reason why the FMT could not have been near N10° E90°? Note the percentage throttle was 98% on both engines in FS. Couldn’t that mean he was trying to get away as fast as he could? Also, Jeff’s point 4 is at FL400. Why would we think the actual FMT is different?
The FCOM notes maximum conditions to avoid flutter so it is possible for flutter to damage control surfaces as seen in this photo:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Airlines_Flight_006
@Middleton
Qute! That was a good one. Congratulations on that one.
It is possible that the plane was piloted, remotely, and that all on board were dead, including the pilot. The recent disclosure that the FBI and Malaysian Government knew about a deleted simulation is a bit too conveniently supporting one of the early theories of what happened to the plane, suicidal pilot. Suicidal pilots have been blamed in far too many plane crashes, when compared to general population suicides. The report fails to explore that the plane may have been taken over remotely because like other planes it was fitted with the capacity to be flown remotely and if that is the case they know exactly where the plane is. Malaysia is covering up what they know but were they threatened, which was reinforced by shooting down of MH17. Their transport minister alluded to the plane having been shot down (by America), during an early interview, prior to the second plane being shot down. What are the probabilities that two planes belonging to the same airline were in these two events so close together?
One more reason to question the ditching theory: It turns out that the flaps cannot be moved after fuel exhaustion. Unless 370 was already low and slow with flaps deployed at the time of FE, the flaps could not have been deployed and broken off due to water impact, like Larry Vance claimed on 60 Minutes today.
The BTO data tells us that the speed was high, not low. The plane was still at a relatively high altitude when FE occurred, at a speed well above the maximum flap deployment speed. Thus, the flaps would have been “locked in” at FE in the up position, and remained there until impact (assuming a controlled ditching).
@DennisW
State your case then, or take a long rest.
@Jerry M
Ask them if they still have the flaperon.
@RetiredF4. I think you are confusing @sk999’s comment with mine.
However, it was me that said the curvature of the radar captures near the civil radar station at Kota Bharu is consistent with distortion due to slant. It would be remarkable if the plane turned in the vicinity of the radar installation in a way that matches the distortion due to slant.
@Trond
Ah, the Aussies are waking up. I have stated my case over and over and over again. I don’t know how to be more clear.
I can’t help it if you are not paying attention.
Foley was clearly not enjoying being in the 60 Minutes segment. The interviewer had to literally paint him into a corner to get an answer. He was determined not to say anything unless it was pried out of him. Pathetic really. If I were an Australian taxpayer I would be shaking my head.
The ATSB would have been well advised to decline to be interviewed for this segment.
Likewise the Malay officials. A lady had to come out and rescue Liow before he wet his pants and started to cry in the face of what I thought were very polite and legitimate questions. Is it any wonder the NOK are going nuts?
@DennisW
State your case for the NOK in a court.
As for Foley he knows something he cannot tell. Maybe he knows the flaperon is missing. The Malay officials knows something is wrong that they cannot admit to the public. Why do you think everyone is holding back?
@Gloria,
You cannot make unsubstantiated claims if you intend to be a meaningful contributor of this group. You make quite an extraordinary claim, that “like other planes it was fitted with the capacity to be flown remotely.” Please provide evidence for this claim if you are meant to be taken seriously.
@Trond
Now you are being ridiculous. I have no standing in any court or jurisdiction relative to this incident.
As for Foley, why can’t he tell? He is in a taxpayer funded position of public trust. You don’t keep secrets from your citizens unless it relates to national security. There was absolutely no reason to withhold the simulator data. The Aussies and Malays did exactly that. That does not inspire confidence.
The reason everyone is holding back is that something very embarrassing took place. That is just my opinion, BTW.
@Jerry M ‘Seems like this is something worth the independent group’s time’ Please see http://www.duncansteel.com/archives/2209
@all: Another reason to question the ditching theory is the discovery of the In-Flight Entertainment Screen Inner Bezel. (The authorities need to identify this as from B777 and likely from MH370 and provide a final moment scenario that supports extraction.) It would take high speed, high external energy, to free this part from the interior passenger seat.