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.
@GuErin
Yes you are correct. I meant oxygen supply to the cabin. As you wrote they are a charged cylinder.
@nybanker
I’m typing from my phone so I don’t have the link. If you go to YouTube,type MH370 airport security footage click on one the listed. Footage is only about 40 seconds.
@amit,
Thanks for posting the Vance interview link (interview apparently posted yesterday). That puts the apparent omission of the 60 Minutes “doco” into perspective, as well as alsm’s rather rash assessment of Vance’s credibility (no benefit of doubt given, comments bordering on character assassination).
I am leaning towards “bad journalism” (assuming not agenda driven) on behalf of 60 Minutes, rather than Vance deliberately ignoring the internal pieces having been found. He seems steadfast in his assessment of ditching, despite acknowledging the internal pieces being found. Apparently, in his opinion, it is quite likely that doors can be breached during a controlled ditching, allowing for internal pieces washing up without annulling his assessment. Afterall, he has the credibility of a long standing experienced air crash investigator. Compare that to the experience of his critic.
The “flutter theory” never gelled, despite alsm’s protestations. Even the links he posted early on, in defence of that theory, seemed to show failure modes contradictory to what could be observed on the flaperon (and later on the flap).
One common characteristic of “flutter failure” in anyone of those links seemed to be torsional stress limits, exacerbated by having structures with, mechanically speaking, one fixed and one loose end. Symptoms of such failures shown in the linked videos are rugged edges and a generally more diagonal breakage direction. The flaperon has a very neat straight break parallel to its long axis on the underside, which doesn’t gel with torsional failure.
When asked if he still considered flutter as the cause for the flaperon damage after the flap discovery, alsm stated that he never claimed the flap to have failed due to flutter. That is fair enough, he never did. However, it is hard to imagine, how the flaperon with a longer-than-wide aspect ratio and two loose ends (floats after loss of hydraulics), could have failed due to flutter, while the flap with a much wider-than-long aspect ratio with two fixed ends (fixed after hydraulics failure) would not. Both pieces were on the same wing and therefore subject to the same excessive (?) velocities. If a part would fail due to flutter, it had to be the flap, rather than the flaperon.
I am inclined to put more weight onto Vance’s judgement, than alsm’s as of now.
@Ge Rijn
True. Getting scary sitting back here in Aust.
My wife had just taken off from Dubai only 3 Hours ago en-route Syd-Munich. Was tracking on FlightRadar24.
Going to have another Black Lable Scotch .
Cheers Tom L
@Gysbreght: The banked turn to the south at P3, the precise alignment of P3 and P4 with McMurdo Station, and the common shadow volume of the file fragments suggest to me a single flight. I believe fuel exhaustion might have been manually simulated by emptying the tanks at P5, and the altitude manually changed to 4,000 ft at P6. As I discussed, there is evidence for Zaharie changing flight parameters such as altitude as the AGL was not updated between P5 and P6.
You may not agree with my interpretation of the evidence, but I have created no evidence.
@Tom Lindsay
Yes I can imagine. At such moments it’s getting a lot closer.
I guess she has landed by now..
So take another Black Lable on that occasion 😉
Cheers
@Ge Rijn
Yes just followed her in to Munich & Thanks & Cheers
Tom L
Intersting picture of the Emerates B777 that crash landed today.
The left wing flaperon is missing:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jm26m2h3c046mvh/emirates777.jpg?dl=0
By the way there are no casualties or wounded reported. All evacuated in time.
@VictorI: At P3 the airplane was still turning, and nobody knows the heading it was turning to.
The alignment of P3-P4 with McMurdo (and antarctica) is just confirmation bias. If he was simulating a flight to McMurdo, why on earth would he manually empty the fuel tanks at P4 and change the altude to 4000 ft at P5?
I’ve no idea what you mean by “the common shadow volume of the file fragments”.
In datapoint #3 of the ‘subset’ table above, the simulated airplane is at FL400, Mach 0.82, with 64,373 kg fuel on board. After covering the 3400 NM to the next datapoint at LRC speed, it still has 20,000 kg of fuel onboard, sufficient for another 1800 NM and 3 hours 45 minutes of flight.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ak2puwalb08d9pe/Z_Sim_FoB.png?dl=0
@AW:
You flatter me, thanks. You perhaps saw my last little note on the subject. It is not wrong of us to reflect over the grounds of thought and logic and knowledge production when confronted with this matter. And trying to keep the “spirits” up…
@ir1907:
I believe DennisW in his post might have alluded to AW’s allusion in his post to our discourse on paradox. That is probably how much of scholastic history plays out, btw. The dead cat is possibly conjured up again in posts thereafter. Or it is me seeing things?
@Dennis/@Gloria
I don’t know how to say this, but I think DennisW’s makes a very good point about the patents. This may be unfair but I have noted that many times people tend to borrow, sometimes unknowingly, their ideas from movies, or from a reflection of one. In the world of tv and movies planes get hijacked once every five minutes by ugly and beautiful people of many shades climbing around on wings with snakes between their teeth, some actually landing on their feet; and the death rate in Causton, England is, what?, 950 per 1000 inhabitants, with a worrying peak among parish priests, which when you think of it otherwise come one per parish and stay for some thirty years (and not for 45 minutes). Don’t take this wrong, it’s a good thing taking ideas from fiction, but one should not mix the two up. I haven’t explored any hijacking scenarios, so I am not the one to say for sure that you are wrong here, but even if it is one (and I haven’t completely ruled out myself a technical remote control possibility), the historic record seems to say that it is going to be sold to the public as something else anyway. (And you run a reasonable risk to be sought out by Will Smith and Javier Bardem for what you know.) Because how many hijacking scenarios have we had, really?
@Susie Crowe:
I think you say some things there that are important to take in. I think it safe to say that whatever the final outcome actually turns out to be, very many things point back to Shah as the centre of attention.
@Gysbreght: The fragments of all the .FLT files were found in the same shadow volume on the MK25 drive dated Feb 3, 2014. The only other coordinates in that volume corresponded to a B777 parked at KLIA.
I don’t ever think he intended to simulate a landing at McMurdo Station. It was just a distant waypoint he used for the flight plan, knowing he would run out of fuel before getting there somewhere in the SIO. The turn towards the south at 10N latitude and the alignment of the last coordinates would be quite remarkable if McMurdo Station was not a waypoint in the flight plan. (Contrary to claims I’ve heard, there are no other aerodromes along this GC path.)
At some point in the middle of the SIO, I think he manually changed the fuel level to zero, much the way he changed the altitude to 4,000 ft.
You ask why somebody would choose McMurdo as a destination in a simulation if there was no intention of landing there. It is the same reason why somebody would choose to fly a B777 in real life into the SIO. I can’t explain either, but they do seem consistent.
@VictorI and @Gysbreght:
You fellows will need to reach an understanding eventually. It looks less than ideal if you can’t decide whether you are looking for a jet in the ocean or for a track on someone’s drive.
Or please spell out the underlaying conditions once again. WADR
As I’ve posted very many times I’ve always believed that the plane was Piloted to the end ,What I contended three days after the plane went missing and told authorities then was that it ended the flight “At or close to Madagascar, “Yes there was a cover- up by the Malaysians and any avoidance of trying to find the aircraft must be expected under the circumstances ,IIts up to anyone seeking truth and justice now to alter the search area and recover the still – intact fusilage ,
@VictorI:
There it came, you were quicker than me.
Anything more on the FSIM software that would point out McMurdo as a privileged choice by the game, or Sumatra/ Aceh as disprivileged territory?
Then I will leave you to it.
The oxygen masks in the cabin would have lasted for 27 mins, the 15 portable oxygen bottles in the cabin for around 2 1/2 hours each.
The person in the cabin would arguably die from hypothermia before all others die from oxygen starvation.
@VictorI; Thank you for lifting a tip of the mystery that a “shadow volume” has for me. Page 23 of the Confidential document says:
“This particular flight path was found in windows restore point file, deleted files and unallocated cluster files of hard disk labeled as MK22 and MK25.”
Does that mean that Windows rather than FSX created those restore points, and put it in a shadow volume dated Feb 3, 2014 ? If that shadow volume contained “restore points” saved by FSX, does that mean that FSX created all those restore points on Feb 3, 2014?
@Victorl @Gysbreght
It’s an interesting discussion between the both of you that I don’t want to disturb but it also raises questions by me (and others I suppose).
If one of you has the willing to answer those I would be pleased.
Why should he save a data point in an unfinished turn?
If McMurdo-station must have been an end waypoint why isn’t that saved in this file?
Get waypoints and coördinates entered, automatically saved by the programm or should the operator do this by choice?
Could it be possible he had other end-coördinates in his mind on the route to McMurdo that he chose not to save (or to enter)?
The same maybe as the final heading after that turn at 10N?
If it is a windows generated restore point file, the FX flight file with the waypoints already existed, in the FX directory, otherwise it could not have been saved by the windows restore function.
In other words, it could have been created days, weeks, months, or indeed years ago.
@Gysbreght: I have been told by somebody much more knowledgeable than me that has reviewed the data that it appears the .FLT files were created/last modified on Feb 3 and deleted later. FSX was uninstalled from MK25 on Feb 20, and the drive was found disconnected. (FSX was installed on multiple drives.) Perhaps the deletion of the .FLT files on MK25 occurred during the uninstall of FSX from this drive.
@Victor. Along the same lines as Ventus45… If he created a windows restore for that HDD before “putting it to bed”, could it be that the dates relate to the restore point rather than the creation of the .FLT file. And would this not be verifiable by a computer forensics expert?
Some comments before I take a necessary break:
The Malaysian Police investigation will make a separate statement about these findings, won’t they? They will probably deem that there is still cause for suspicion, don’t you think? I would be more surprised if not in a sense. Esp. if the wingparts investigations point towards piloted landing.
And it is hard to say it is not cause for suspicion, albeit formally slight.
Admittedly, there is difference between what could be necessary to investigate in trying to find the plane, and what would hold up in a formal prosecution.
Might it be that the Malayans need to prosecute someone (even if he is dead, is that how it is done?), or something, to keep the search alive, financially guaranteed and meaningful? (Or will manufacturers and insurance companies jump in as I guess they otherwise do?) Something must have caused the crash, from a formal/legal point of view, and that is what the Malayans and of course the rest of the World demands an answer to. The next of kin are furious with MAS, understandedly, and care less for who did it in that respect.)
I would not really have anything to say against a prosecution against the captain per se, if that is the only way to go. He is the captain of the ship and whatever faults have been made by others around him will likely come to the surface. There will be suffering, but I assume his next of kin could be compensated if there is no verdict against him. And as it is right now, it is hard for me to see that he could be pinned even with involuntary manslaughter, even if that could be the truth legally and morally. (But I have no clue, of course)
But there are international protocols for this, obviously, and I have no doubt it will work out properly. Eventually.
@Nederland
The duration time for the cabin portable oxygen cylinders are probably valid only for a person at rest. For a person moving around the cabin, or in a stressful situation, the time would be significantly less. Probably under an hour.
@Nederland
And they would have been sharing them (the portable oxygen bottles) once the drop-down masks had been exhausted, after 15 minutes or so.
@Ge Rijn – just curious if it was known the flaperon was still attached just before that SA B777 crash? Also wondering what forces removed it once the airframe was on the ground.
@ROB
The portable oxygen masks are for the cabin crew. There were more bottles than crew members. The figure 2 1/2 hrs is based on the accident report on Helios 522. The specifications are the same. In this case, at least one crew member survived that long on a portable bottle. Stress rate was probably similar, given that both pilots were dead.
I find it difficult to match point 4 with point 5. And point 5 with point 6.
From point 3 at ~-45degrees heading, point 4 gives a turn of allready ~60degrees to the south at -104.5.
But with a bank angle of 20.9degrees it seems still in full turn to the south heading somewhere. But to where?
IMO there’s no way of knowing if there are no other related data.
Point 5 and 6 seem unrelated to me to eachother by the great altitude differance in 26sec.
But maybe related by two different flight paths to the same location and only those 2 points were saved?
One to end on ~37.000ft altitude and the other on 4000ft?
Maybe the latter altitude chosen to prepare for a ditching?
In my view now the change of heading from -104.5 to 178.2 can only be assumed.
I’m obviously no expert on this just share my thoughts to raise questions maybe (and anwsers..).
@MH
Yes I’m curious too if that flaperon seperated before crashing. Would be quite interesting to know in relation to MH370.
But I assume the flaperon was knocked out by engine cowling parts (the engine didn’t seperate on that wing).
Which would be quite interesting too in relation to MH370.
Than it would rest somewhere on that runway.
I’m keen to watch the kind of damage that flaperon suffered.
I’ll keep an eye on it..
@ventus45,victorl others.
I use fsx10 expansion pack along with pmdg 737 add on. I believe Zaharie used that same add on but used 777 as his preference of choice.
Now when you input the waypoints it is the exact same procedure I,e via FMC in pmdg software using a third party external route data. For example I use V route. Basically you select your departure and destination point.Then you’ll be given a number of flight paths with waypoints to choose from.Now this is where it get a bit conflicting as when you launch fsx10 you select free flight input your departure point for example Kuala Lumpur/ sepang airport, then your destination.so whatever destination Zaharie choose, fsx10 will give you the option to find a route and will generate its own waypoints. But if Zaharie used pmdg 777 he would have used the waypoint from a third party vendor. So can explain why some of the data might not be matching up.
Also you can’t install fsx10 on multiple drives. When you install t g e first time you have to register online. Once registered Microsoft won’t allow that same one to be registered again. unless you do a complete uninstall. Then you can still havevproblem with fsx.cfg file still in the program (86) file root directory.believe this come from someone who has had a lot of trouble trying to at one trying to do a reinstall.
Maybe Zaharie had a similar problem.
Restore points in Windows just take the operating system’s current parameters and saves them so it can be recovered. It doesn’t save add on application file states. A Windows shadow is a snap copy at a predetermined time taken of files stored on the HDD but in no way can individually recover an application to a previous state unless all related files are recovered at same time if the shadow files were done right at the proper moment. In other words to recover data for mFSX, it would be best to save a backup from while it’s running to be properly data consistent.
@MH
I hope the ATSB takes notice too and at least asks photos of that flaperon.
Something seems unexpected about that Emerates B777 crash wrt the Flaperon. The right side engine broke free but it was the left side Flaperon that was missing. Well it sounds like it wasn’t a crash but a skidding off runway event.
@MH
In the video you see the right wing tank exploding shooting half of the right upper wing high in the air.
There seems to have been smoke in the cabin which forced an emergancy landing.
It seems it was belly landed.
Just a mirakel they all survived.
How that left flaperon seperated is still a very interesting question for me.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/03/dubai-airport-emergency-emirates-plane-on-fire/
One fire fighter was killed.. so sad..
It seems they were warned by ATC to put their landing gear down, then they tried to make a go around but were too late and belly landed stopping at the end of the runway.
@Ge Rijn
48 degrees centigrade, 118 F, plane could not get any lift to climb out…belly flop probably resulted from a stall…
The black boxes will tell the tale.
@Johan O
Without doubt, there is information regarding Captain Shaw’s culpability (or lack of) that we are not privy.
We do not know why information that will or will not “point back” to him, is being held, which may or may not have accountability issues.
It is very difficult for me to accept the responsibility of this crash being Captain Shah’s as opposed to how he led his life. For me, any alleged change of behavior shortly before (within a couple months), is only an indication that someone or something extraordinary, was heavily influencing him, rather than him going off the deep end.
To be as consistent as he appeared to be in life, for as many years as he did, speaks volumes of the man he was.
On the other side, based on public information with facts regarding Malaysia’s history of conduct and malfeasance, it is difficult to accept the investigation handled in a manner which would be anything less than unethical.
@Ge Rijn said:
‘The passengers masks all have their chemical oxigen generator can.
Those can not be switch off by a pilot in the cockpit.’
There isn’t a switch in the cockpit to stop the cabin oxygen masks falling, but they could be disabled if a bus was disabled that cut power to the cabin altitude sensor?
Since we have no Flaperon Failure Analysis from the French or MH370 Investigation Team any photo’s of Flaperon damage (L or R)from EK521 would be most useful in assisting with MH370 Flaperon Failure Analysis!
Unfortunately table scrap photos, redacted data, leaks, and political/media misdirections may be all we get to work with on MH370.
@Kenyon
Why is that one wonders. Do they have the flaperon?
@Kenyon, An excellent point. As long as unknown persons are leaking certain data, and withholding other day, it is not unreasonable to suspect that one is being spun. I am thinking in particular of the flight-sim data. It is quite possible that if and when the full data set is made public, it will lead us to a very different (perhaps opposite) perspective.
French family members of passengers on MH370 were told that the state of the flaperon indicates a controlled ditching:
“Il a en revanche estimé que la manière dont la pièce était « tordue » laissait penser à un amerrissage plutôt qu’à un crash, ce qui indiquerait que l’avion est resté sous contrôle jusqu’au bout.”
http://www.lemonde.fr/asie-pacifique/article/2015/09/04/le-flaperon-retrouve-a-la-reunion-appartient-bien-au-boeing-777-du-vol-mh370_4746144_3216.html
But others members of the BEA say that it is not possible to come to a firm conclusion.
@Middleton
I don’t know for sure but I assume those can deployments must be totally independent of any circuit braker or whatever.
They have to react in an instant without any intervention possible (explosive decompression f.i.).
It would be a serious design flaw if it was possible to disable this from the cockpit.
@Jeff
North heading!? (nudge, nudge)
@Kenyon
I’m positive better photos will come soon from the flaperon of EK521.
The ATSB will probable also be very keen to see those.
The link posted by @Nederland dating from august 2015 allready(!) states the French opinion very clearly.
Strange we (I) never heard this in any report since.
@Nederland, I think that this conversation has gotten muddled up over terminology. A ditch is basically a landing made on water, in which case its possible for a plane to wind up more or less intact. A crash is when a plane impacts in a more or less uncontrolled way, generally resulting in lots of small pieces. But these two things are not mututally exclusive. We could well expect that if someone tried to ditch a 777, especially without engine power or flaps in sizable waves, they might not be successful, and what you wind up with would be something not to dissimilar from the low-speed crash experienced by AF447. (Low speed in this case being something on the order of 150 knots, so not a walk in the park by any stretch.) The key point that 60 Minutes was trying to make, which was lost amid the controversy of whether the flaperon indicates a ditching or not, is that the plane was under conscious control until the end, which at any rate indicated rather more clearly by the fact that the plane was not found in the seabed search area. So, we can finally move beyond speculation that the disappearance might have resulted from accident, fire, or mechanical failure. Whatever happened, happened because someone wanted it to, right until the end.
@Ge Rijn
Especially since I understand “tordue” as referring to the flaperon hinge rather than the trailing edge. Vance based his judgment on the latter.
I’d tranlate:
“By contrast, [the expert] estimated that the way in which that piece was ‘distorted’ makes one think that it was a controlled ditching rather than a crash and that means the aircraft was under control until the end.”
Some French media reported on this presidential reception of family members (in September rather than August 2014), but the English language media didn’t.
@Jeff
What I don’t understand is how to combine the prolonged glide scenario with Vance’s statement that the flaperon (and possibly the outboard flap) were extended by the time of impact.
The ATSB clearly ruled out the possibility that any person in control of the aircraft could extend the flaps long after engine flame out because the RAT does not provide power to the flaps.
As far as I’m aware, Vance didn’t claim this was possible. The 60Minutes report does seem to give just that impression, but the various statements have obviously been edited to that end.
@Jeff:
I’ll be damn*d. You sound very certain?
It is any case a better working hypothesis?
@Johan O
All it takes is a brain to come to Jeff’s conclusion. Let’s stop beating around the bush here and being politically correct.
@DennisW
Ha ha. If you say so. It takes much less time, too.