In last month’s New York magazine article about Zaharie Ahmad Shah’s flight simulator, I cautioned against treating the recovered data as a smoking gun:
…it’s not entirely clear that the recovered flight-simulator data is conclusive. The differences between the simulated and actual flights are significant, most notably in the final direction in which they were heading. It’s possible that their overall similarities are coincidental — that Zaharie didn’t intend his simulator flight as a practice run but had merely decided to fly someplace unusual.
What I failed to question was the report’s assumption that the six points all belonged to a single flight path. On closer examination that assumption seems ill supported. Rather, it seems more likely that the six points were recorded in the course of two or possibly three separate flights. They were interpreted as comprising a single flight only because together they resembled what investigators were hoping to find.
The first four points do appear to show a snapshots from a continuous flight, one that takes off from Kuala Lumpur and climbing as it heads to the northwest. Between each point the fuel remaining decreases by a plausible amount. Each point is separated from the next by a distance of 70 to 360 nautical miles. At the fourth point, the plane is at cruise speed and altitude, heading southwest in a turn to the left. Its direction of flight is toward southern India.
The fifth and sixth points do not fit into the pattern of the first four. For one thing, they are located more than 3,000 miles away to the southeast. This is six or seven hours’ flying time. Curiously, at both points the fuel tanks are empty. Based on its fuel load during the first four points, the plane could have flown for 10 hours or more from the fourth point before running out of fuel.
The fifth and sixth points are close together—just 3.6 nautical miles apart—but so radically different in altitude that it is questionable whether they were generated by the same flight. To go directly from one to the other would require a dive so steep that it would risk tearing the aircraft apart.
The picture becomes even more curious when we examine the plane’s vertical speed at these two points: in each case, it is climbing, despite having no engine power.
The ATSB has speculated that in real life MH370 ran out of fuel shortly before 0:19 on March 8, and thereafter entered into a series of uncontrolled porpoising dives-and-climbs called phugoids. In essence, a plane that is not held steady by a pilot or autopilot, its nose might dip, causing it to speed up. The added speed willl cause the nose to rise, and the plane to climb, which will bleed off speed; as the plane slows, its nose will fall, and the cycle will continue.
Could a phugoid cause a plane to climb—663 feet per minute at point 5, and 2029 feet per minute at point 6? The answer seems to be yes for the fifth point and no for the sixth. Reader Gysbreght conducted an analysis of 777 flight-simulator data published by Mike Exner, in which an airliner was allowed to descend out of control from cruise altitude in the manner that the ATSB believes MH370 did.
A diagram produced by Gysbreght is shown at top. The pink line shows the plane’s altitude, starting at 35,000 feet; the blue line shows its rate of climb. Worth noting is the fact that the phugoid oscillation does indeed cause the plane to exhibit a small positive rate of climb soon at first. But by the time the plane reaches 4000 feet — the altitude of the sixth point — the oscillation has effectively ceased and the plane is in a very steep dive.
Gysbreght concludes:
As expected for a phugoid, the average rate of descent is about 2500 fpm, and it oscillates around that value by +/- 2500 fpm initially. The phugoid is apparently dampened and the amplitude reduces rapidly. I was slightly surprised that it reaches positive climb values at all. Therefore I think that 2000 fpm climb is not the result of phugoid motion.
Not only is the plane climbing briskly at the sixth point, but it is doing so at a very low airspeed—just above stall speed, in fact. If the pilot were flying level at this speed without engine power and pulled back on the controls, he would not climb at 2000 feet per minute; he would stall and plummet. In order to generate these values, the plane must have been put into a dive to gain speed, then pulled up into a vigorous “zoom climb.” Within seconds after point six, the simulated flight’s speed would have bled off to below stall speed and entered into an uncontrollable plunge.
Perhaps this is why Zaharie chose to record this particular point: it would have been an interesting challenge to try to recover from such a plunge at low altitude.
What he was doing at points 5 and 6, evidently, was testing the 777 flight envelope. This might seem like a reckless practice, but I think the opposite is the case. From time to time, airline pilots do find themselves in unexpected and dangerous conditions. For instance, as Gysbreght has noted, “On 7 october 2008 VH-QPA, an A330-303, operating flight QF72 from Singapore to Perth, experienced an In-flight Upset west of Learmonth, West Australia. The upset was caused by a freak combination of an instrumentation failure and an error in the flight control software, which resulted in an uncommanded pitch-down. The vertical acceleration changed in 1.8 seconds from +1 g to -0.8 g.” It would be better to experience a situation like this for the first time in a flight simulator in one’s basement, rather than in midair with a load of passengers and crew.
What Zaharie clearly was not trying to do was to fly to McMurdo Station in Antarctica, as some have speculated.
For one thing, while a 777 is fully capable of flying from Kuala Lumpur to Antarctica, it was not carrying enough at point 1 to make the trip. And if one were trying to reach a distant location, one would not do so by running one’s tanks dry and then performing unpowered zoom climbs.
The misinterpretation of the flight simulator data offers a couple of cautionary lessons. The first is that we have to be careful not to let a favored theory color our interpretation of the data. The investigators believed that MH370 flew up the Malacca Strait and wound up in the southern Indian Ocean, and they believed that Zaharie was most likely the culprit; therefore, when they found data points on his hard drive that could be lumped together to form such a route, that’s what they perceived.
A second lesson is that we cannot uncritically accept the analysis made by officials or by self-described experts. Science operates on openness. If someone offers an analysis, but refuses to share the underlying data, we should instinctively view their claims with suspicion.
@Jeff
That makes perfect sense. ZS goes to the SIO to practice so he does not risk crashing into anything. Why did I not think of that?
Jeff:
Interesting shift in your emphasis. Many would agree with your new interpretation, including some in the IG and some MRP investigators.
regarding…
“The investigators believed that MH370 flew up the Malacca Strait and wound up in the southern Indian Ocean, and they believed that Zaharie was most likely the culprit; therefore, when they found data points on his hard drive that could be lumped together to form such a route, that’s what they perceived.”
…I get a very different impression from the available information. The RMP came to the conclusion there was nothing found linking or implicating Z to a crime, and they never concluded that the 6 points were from one flight. They simply noted that it was a possibility. But they dismissed that as likely evidence of a crime when viewed within the context of all the information available to them. Victor and Richard also made it clear they were merely exploring a plausible hypothesis, and they drew no conclusions implicating Z.
@DennisW, So what do you think would be a more plausible story?
@airlandseaman, You raise an excellent point. The Malaysian police report did say that they found, on balance, no reason to think that Zaharie was the culprit. On the other hand, the report does present a diagram linking the six data points into a single route. Perhaps a more precise way to phrase the idea I was trying to get across was that, with the awareness of the likely route in mind, and the possibility that Zaharie might be the culprit also front of mind (that’s why they were searching his hard drive, after all), it was very tempting to percieve the six data points as forming a whole. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable conjecture–I jumped to that assumption to–but I think that in retrospect it doesn’t hold up.
This turn makes me feel sympathy for the family and friends of Zaharie anew. If, for instance, points 5 and 6 indicate he was practising how to recover from unexpected conditions, he really is a top-notch, passionate pilot who cares deeply for the safety of the people for whose lives he is responsible. I can see how distressing it would be for those who knew and loved him to see his name dragged through the mud in many circles over the past years.
I never thought McMurdo was anything more than one possible heading setting in the direction of flight
@JEFF WISE
Have you remembered to (re)set the allowed URLs in a post
to 4 or greater (instead of default 2???)
@Jeff
Damn! Just as I was beginning to think you had sipped the Kool aid and gone to the dark side joining the lynch Z because his photo had a smirk crowd…you go and post this… 😉
I think that these problems of misinterpretation crop up because one tends to look at the data as it fits a certain notion. I mean one does not stand back away from the data and analyse it dispassionately.
I was guilty of that personally for initially I assumed the sim data pointed to somethin sinister. Fortunately a part of me kicked in and impelled me to look at it another way i.e., looked at from a wider context which by default meant questions like:
1.why would he want to go on a “difficult” northeast flight when he could have easily picked a northwest one and be done with all the hassle.
2. What is the likelihood that he got everything like non-military intervention during the trackback, non radar detection , non- operation of other radars etc etc precisely right to pull off a stunt like that.
3. Why would a smart guy like him if he did things as per (2) and cleverly hide the plane in the bargain, didn’t do the simple thing of trashing his sim, the very sim that could plausibly give away all his dreams of ” hiding” a plane
Now those type of questions set me thinking as do many other questions about other things related to this tragedy.
@Jeff Wise
“So what do you think would be a more plausible story?”
To visualize the max range for a given amount of fuel on a map? The altitude representing only an artefact, as the pilot didn’t care about altitude when selecting those points?
Disclaimer: I’m not familiar with stuff you could do in those simulators. In reality I hated sim time, as flying the true thing was more fun compared to sitting in a dead box.
@DennisW: “ZS goes to the SIO to practice so he does not risk crashing into anything.”
ZS didn’t need practicing. The FSX software was not working correctly. The multiple anomalies in the parameters of those points clearly show that. ZS probably was trying to find what was wrong, in order to fix it.
Being the inopportunist at times, I would caution that “keeping an open mind” still works both ways — although your summarizing, Jeff, fits my general sensibility in regard to “the hanging of Z”. I am at the same time cautioning myself.
There is some room between hero and hanging.
It would be valuable to know what was more on that drive/s and when and how it was deleted or not. Noone asking for that?
Practising to avoid crashing is fine, but is not the place still more than a coincidence? And what would trying to avoid crashing a n d doing it in SIO tell us, if anything (if it can be established as factual from the sim data)? There are still questions to be asked.
So the bold assumption Zaharie practised a suicide mission on his simulator leads to the conclusion -after diving in to the facts and discussing those- it makes no sence afterall.
A good and brave thing to make a topic out of this. Should be nice the eager ‘sensation-media’ picked up on this and publish a correcting article. The story has gone world-wide in many ‘sensation-based’ media also in Holland. Leaving all the nuances that Jeff Wise made in his article out offcourse.
My bringing up the (un)usefullness of the Inmarsat-data after Victorl and Godfrey published their new possible flight path based on this simulation was not welcomed at all. But I tryed to make a point and stir up some discussion about the allowance those data seem to provide to massage them into almost anything you wish to see.
IMO this doesn’t make the data better but worse to use. Which in fact is a usefull outcome if it’s true they can be so widely interpretated.
One thing though stood out for me in their paper.
If the plane really approuched Car Nicobar airport it would be the third airport that was approuched.
First there was the approuch to Kota Baru (airport) with sightings of a plane around that time coming in low.
Then there was the approach to Penang (airport) also with signs of a low approuch (co-pilot cell-phone, radar).
After that the heading towards Nicobar where there is another ~8500ft runway.
Then a turn to the south maybe towards Atjeh (airport).
Speculating this all could have been attempts to reach an airport but the plane was not able to land anymore.
Like ElAl-flight 1862 who lost two engines and could not slow down for landing anymore without crashing.
I think it’s about turning every stone still and put the ones back on their place if they prove not to fit. And that’s a good thing IMO.
I have never believed Cpt Z had any intention in flying to McMurdo. I have said so, on Twitter. >smh<
I believe the simulator was not operational immediately before this flight. It seems to have been well documented by family and friends that it wasn't working.
The assumption that all waypoints are not related to a single flight is very interesting. And makes a lot of sense.
I have no technical expertise in this matter. I keep researching, observing, engaging, and going to back to various facts, statements, releases, and correlating what makes sense, from the date of the event.
I have no published theory of my own.
I am fascinated by the drift charts and modelling.
I hope you will allow me to join your conversation from time to time.
@Jeff
I already posted it. A more plausible story.
http://tmex1.blogspot.com/2016/08/re-ianello-and-godfrey-possible-flight.html
Trying to explain SIO data points on ZS’s simulator as simply a part of a random ensemble of points is simply not credible. Someone diverted the aircraft. There were only two pilots on board, and I don’t think it was the FO.
Another helpful post above by Exner once again taking pains to establish the IG position of not drawing any implications relative to motive or causality. You guys should develop a standard disclaimer and simply post a link to it to save typing
@ Ge rijn
Good point. 3 approaches to 3 different airports and probably Langkawi too,given vicinity to last data track at Pulau Perak, are indicative of attempted landing due to onboard emergency. Probably Atjeh was also in the equation but pilot and co passed out due to hypoxia and ghost flight commences
So in all 5 actually but whatever the number, interesting insight you provided there.
@Ge rijn; @Wazir:
Agreed.
@Ge Rijn, @Wazir Roslan
Coincidentially airports are the cause for the ATC structure. Flying through any civilized country with a descent air transport system will pass many airports enroute.
There is no evidence that those airports have been approached with the intention to land. Those would be initiating gradual descent up to 100 miles from the airport, reducing speed from cruising speed, intercepting standard arrival routes and communicating this intention by all means. those would be radios, IFF, landing light, and neither was operable two ELT’s could have been activated.
We have discussed this before, and nothing has changed since.
if there was a plan to divert the aircraft then negotiate why not fly out to the area around the Car Nicobar establish the negotiations for hijack and surrender; instead of flying off to IGARI and back over Malaysia then start negotiations; far too risk of failure..
@RF4
Totally agree. There was no indication whatever of a landing attempt or an attempt to communicate. The closest airport from IGARI with a very long runway is at Kuala Terrengganu which has a 15,000′ asphalt runway and serves international flights.
And yes, all of this has been discussed many times.
Well said, JW (eventually). I find it somewhat disturbing that even knowledgeable MH370 commentators take this sort of narrative hook-line-and-sinker. It has all the hallmarks of well-timed media spin (as indeed does the re-surfacing of the circling near MY as negotiations are carried on) – which is massively implausible on so many grounds I will not bother to enumerate them. The more interesting question, perhaps, is who is planting the stories with intent to spin a particular narrative and why. Having run this blog for 2+ years I’d have thought you might be in a particularly good position to do this. Has nobody done a “spin” analysis yet??
it sounds like to me, they want to close up the investigation and rush to judgement to blame ZS on it all just before funding dries up.
@Paul
Or you talking about the same JW who thinks Putin took the aircraft, and suspects Russian agents are running around planting debris?
@DW Yes, the very same. If I was being less polite I should simply have asked him why he published such bollocks knowing full well that it will be lapped up the media, (unlike this half-assed retraction).
@Retired F4 and @DennisW
Agreed. But just wondering whether circling those particular airports could have been attempt to establish visual contact etc and attempt landing without instruments. Additionally, if avoidance was the intent why circumnavigate airports which have civilian radar installations near them.
@Retired F4
Sure ain’t a pilot by a long shot but wish I had your skills piloting cool stuff like the ones you did 😀
@MH
Rush to judgement? What are you talking about? It has been over two years, and Z has been a prime suspect from the get-go.
Who planted?
Why not let the facts speak for themselves – wait until the proper area is searched by Australia at Australia’s cost rather than look for a positive ‘spin’. No-one Had explained the turns and missing flight systems not working satisfactorily or at all to my mind.
One someone calculates the total distance the plane could have travelled and drawn a circle around the area with pilot intervention being taken into account I won’t be satisfied we know what occurred.
If everyone is so keen to see their version proved then put up some government or private money and let’s discover the facts.
I have written to Atsa and put my thoughts. Has anyone else? I prefer the idea that several turns make no sense with the plane flying for several more hours outside s tracked area.
Sorry if this hurts genuine pilots and aviation experts feelings
@Gysbreght,
You said : “The 7 hz standard deviation is the BFO “noise” only.
The DSTG considers in addition the BFO “bias” error and writes in 5.3:
“The potential variations were incorporated by modeling the BFO bias as an unknown constant with a prior mean given by the tarmac value and a standard deviation of 25 Hz.”
“The ‘in-flight only’ statistics show the combined effects of noise and bias variation without the influence of ‘on-tarmac’ outliers (potentially due to taxiing).” ”
Your interpretation of bias error is incorrect. The first error is assuming the 7 Hz is a standard deviation. It is not. It is a peak error determined by the people who built and operate the system that measures BFOs (Inmarsat, not the DSTG).
Second, the “standard deviation of the bias” within the time period of the MH370 flight path is certainly not 25 Hz. It is essentially zero. The BFO bias does not fluctuate so as to allow BFO errors outside the+/- 7 Hz error boundary established by Inmarsat for the MH370 flight on 7-8 March 2014. As demonstrated explicitly by Inmarsat in their Figures 15 and 16, with correct flight information (or with an accurate model of it), all BFO data within a given flight should fall within a +/- 7 Hz envelope. That is a peak error of 7 Hz. There is no correction for long-term bias drift applied in the SDU within a given flight period, and there was none for MH370 on that night. The value of the bias for that particular flight (150 Hz) was determined by Inmarsat and presented by them and ATSB. It gives excellent agreement with the known aircraft positions, speeds, and tracks early in the flight, as demonstrated by Inmarsat/ATSB and by others, including me. The determination of the BFO bias as a constant equal to 150 Hz for the relevant flight is not in dispute.
Any route model using 150 Hz bias and having BFO errors outside of +/- 7 Hz is immediately suspect. The only exceptions to this rule are the times specifically called out by Inmarsat in their paper, including 18:25:34 to 18:28:15 and 00:19:37. The 18:28 BFOs seem to match the 18:22 course and speed rather well, so it is still somewhat tempting to use them and see what errors result. The same cannot be said for the 18:25:34 BFO – the infamous 273 Hz. The 18:27 BFOs are interesting and may hold clues about an initial turn North. However, when one tries to fit them with a northward turn, the best agreement is still an error of 8.5 Hz, which is outside the 7 Hz peak error criterion. Of course, Rate of Climb affects BFO, and it must also be included in the BFO calculation for all times when it occurred. It is possible a climb was also underway at 18:27, but the ROC would be low, so this seems unlikely. It appears the Inmarsat caution about these particular BFOs is well founded, and certainly one should not require a model route to fall within +/- 7 Hz for those particular times only.
@Wazir Roslan
“…….whether circling those particular airports could have been attempt to establish visual contact etc and attempt landing without instruments.”
There is no circling of airports known, and not at all at an altitude where anything usefull for landing could be identified.
If I would intend to give this overflying of airports any thought, than it would be that it served the intention to mislead any vigilant radar operator. This operator could have thought that the aircraft was proceeding for a landing due to some kind of emergency.
@dennisW- in the sim discussion it was you who bought a noose for ZS …. Now this whole sim data has been disproven can you get a refund??
How can a pilot make a plane disappear without external help…
@DrB
You might try looking at figure 5.4, page 30, of the DSTG book which illustrates BFO errors on the order of 20Hz logged on previous flights before spouting nonsense.
This number also agrees quite well with estimates made by people, me for example, who have actually used TCOCXO’s similar to the unit in the AES. Low parts in 10E8 typically could be expected. 20Hz at L1 is about 1.5 parts in 10E8.
Bobby:
If you asked me in 2014, I would have agreed with all you write about the BFO Bias and STDEV. However, I subsequently came across some AES OCXO information in an FCC type certification application from Thales/Honeywell. There was also new information about bias drift in the “Bayesian Methods in the Search for MH370”. See: Fig. 5.4 Results for the 2-Mar-2014 flight from Mumbai to Kuala Lumpur.
The new information does not change the estimated STDEV, but it does raise questions about how much the OCXO may have drifted during the flight. This drift is additive and looks like a “random walk”, not white noise. Thgere is also a question about the ambient temperature over the flight. See short summary here:
http://goo.gl/NmNFOH
Sorry. Wrong link. Try this one:
http://goo.gl/2CJ2UW
@ALSM
The DTSG suggests the oscillator drift, clearly apparent in figure 5.4, has a geographic dependence which they were unable to model. I am glad they were not able to model oscillator drift. It would have a profound negative effect on the sale of products sold by a company I still have a lot of stock in. Comical actually.
Bobby,
You wrote: “The 18:27 BFOs are interesting and may hold clues about an initial turn North. However, when one tries to fit them with a northward turn, the best agreement is still an error of 8.5 Hz, which is outside the 7 Hz peak error criterion.”
The first part is true, but the second part is not. CW holding pattern or a CW emergency descent in accordance to the standard procedure comply with BFO errors (residuals) <7 Hz. A total of 6 combinations appear to comply with BFO data: {IAS,MACH} mode x {1,2,3} loops. Two of them comply with 5 Hz criteria, and nearly correspond to the standard bank angle of 25 deg. But for some other reason(s) I think 2 loops could be better candidates despite larger BFO errors.
See, for example, the plot I prepared a while ago:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3eais38phjo9h0j/descent_1822_1841.jpg?dl=0
Note that it perfectly explains radar data, or more exactly its absence after 18:22.
@ALSM
When looking at factory test data from thousands of GPS disciplined CMDA base station clocks shipped to Nortel, Samsung, and others, the cycling of the air conditioner in the test room was quite obvious. These clocks used double oven oscillators of much higher quality than the oscillator in the AES.
Dennis:
Re: “The DTSG suggests the oscillator drift, clearly apparent in figure 5.4, has a geographic dependence which they were unable to model. ”
There is no physical basis for any assumption that the OCXO frequency has a “geographic dependence”. It is certainly possible (likely in fact) that there is some very small (<1 Hz?) systematic BFO bias dependence on geographic position relative to the satellite, but is would be due to some residual unmodeled effect in other parts of the whole BFO measurement system, not a SDU OCXO dependence.
@ALSM
Yes, I laughed when I read that in the DSTG report/book.
There are a number of relativistic corrections that GPS receivers must make as well. All insignificant in the context of this problem.
DennisW:
Minor correction…As I’m sure you know, the relativistic effects are on the GPS satellite clocks, not the GPS receivers. The corrections are made by the USAF on the satellite payloads, not GPS receivers.
@ALSM
The satellite clocks are corrected for some, but not all relativistic influences by the GPS Ground Segment located in some horrible place in Colorado. I think I flew over it a few times.
Additional relativistic corrections are performed in the receivers themselves. The Sagnac effect is an example. There are several relativistic effects (see Deines) that are not compensated at all.
At this point the only new data are pieces of debris, everything else is old news, which can be reinterpreted but still is old news that has been discussed over and over.
I used to work in one of the largest car companies and the structural engineers knew everything about what they designed and tested it thoroughly in crash conditions. I’m not sure about Boeing but I believe it has to be the similar. So the way the latest piece of the vertical rudder was dislodged has to look like something they would immediately understand – particularly since the painted exterior looks relatively unscathed but the backside looks heavily damaged and beat up. Why?
I’d chip in for a couple of pints to get some analysis from a knowledgeable Boeing engineer. There are opinions we are not hearing that won’t necessarily pinpoint where the main wreckage is but still would be interesting. Maybe Jeff has the contacts to get some educated guesses.
Dennis:
Thanks for the correction to the correction. I was not aware of the receiver corrections, but it makes perfect sense given a framework that puts the GPS clock standard at the center of the Earth.
TNX…Mike
The DSTG’s “geographic dependency” remains unexplained, no one has come up with an answer or explanation yet.
Perhaps the reason for that may be that the modelling (until now) has “assumed”, that the post FMT flight was at virtually constant high cruise altitude(s).
But, “what if”, the post FMT flight south actually started at a low altitude (having initially descended from cruise altitude, perhaps to FL100) with an intention to land, but then gave up on that idea (for whatever reason) and then decided to head to the SIO ?
If the post FMT intention was to go as far as possible with “remaining fuel”, and still avoid radar detection, the last thing you would do, initially, is climb.
If you flew south at FL100 for a short time, (say 20 to 30 minutes) to remain under the radar horizon of Ache Radar) you would then be in a bit of a spot, at low altitude, and with “limited fuel remaining”.
If you wanted to go as far as possible with “fuel remaining”, from this position, the optimum strategy would be the commencement of a very long, very slow (very low ROC) “cruise climb” or “drift climb” from that point, which, coincidently, is from a start latitude very nearly the same as the SSP.
In other words, is it possible, that re-modelling the post FMT flight south as a long “cruise climb at gradually increasing Mach – TAS” from low altitude, instead of the standard (up until now) “constant Mach – high altitude cruise” could resolve this “geographical dependence”, ie, what it really is, a “latitudinal dependence” of the BFO’s ?
@Ventus
The DSTG was just incorrect in the geographic dependency assumption. There is none (of any significance), in the context of interpreting the BFO or BTO data. The BFO error they were encountering is easily accounted for by oscillator drift.
@ALSM
I am actually very fond of Colorado Springs and Boulder. Spent a lot of time in both places, and a bit of rock climbing in the Flatirons near Boulder. Would gladly live in either place. Of course, being old, I think they were better a couple of decades ago (I say that about every place).
Why pin the rose on Z? Occam’s Razor, simplifies the finding.
Too many questions, too little logic to Z’s death flight.
The ratio of suicides to murder/ suicides is skewed heavily to murder/suicides being carried out within a household, domestic. Comparatively, individual suicides are much more common. As a muslim Zaharie devoutly (but not radically) aware that it is a sin for him to take his life and that of others. This drive to blame him just does not fit.
Z was a dedicated pilot and a nerd, why would he not simulate various, much more difficult, scenarios to refine his flying skills. Makes no sense to simulate easy flight situations. The family say that the simulator had been broken for over a year so the simulations, if they exist, are not likely to be relevant. Except for blaming the pilot an easy, dead, scapegoat.
Jeff Wise did propose that Russian agents, Putin were the real hijackers in an article for NY Magazine, at a time when the US was saber rattling in the direction of Russia. Makes me speculate JW is an intel agent, on a whole other level to the usual trolls, sock puppets that populate forums trying to shame truthers asking questions, putting theories that run counter to the authorized version. This website is ideal research, to trawl amongst the educated populace. I would say it brilliant intelligence gathering where theory and alternate mindset coalesce for ease of collection.
4. If it was not the Russians and not Zaharie then the ends are not tied up, the passengers and plane could be anywhere. I don’t accept the interpretation of data points leading south when those data might have been manufactured or that the plane may have flown north.
First, i would like to say hello to all here and thank you for the learning experience. I am no Pilot. Not even close. I have however been fascinated with Planes ever since i can remember. I still to this day go to my local viewing area whenever i need to clear my head. I find remembering all the intelligent people and that they still exist, helps. I have been following MH370 from day 1. After hours and years and months, i still have only one question. Why would a veteran Pilot need to practice a suicide flight? Maybe for the very reason i am still asking this question all this time later?
@MH
“@dennisW- in the sim discussion it was you who bought a noose for ZS …. Now this whole sim data has been disproven can you get a refund??”
Sim data disproven? I have no idea what you are talking about.
The maximum BFO at 18:27 with no climb is very close to 166 Hz on a due North course at LRC (using my BFO model which matches the Inmarsat tables within 1 Hz). That 166 Hz is about 8 Hz below the average of the BFO data then, and 10 Hz below the highest data point (at 176 Hz). No turns, circles, spirals, or any other maneuver than a climb (which increases the BFO) can more closely match the BFO data then. Similarly, no descent can do this either, because this reduces the BFO, as does any heading away from North. I don’t see the 8-10 Hz difference as a problem because of Inmarsat’s caution that these data don’t appear to be reliable. That said, the increase in BFO from 18:25:27 to 18:27 followed by the drop at 18:28 is consistent with an S-turn, as are the 18:27 and 18:28 BTOs. The S-turn could be the lateral offset maneuver suggested by Victor Iannello.
@Dennis W,
You said : “Yes, I laughed when I read that in the DSTG report/book.”
I agree with that. I had the same reaction in several places. It demonstrates the level of (in)competence in the DTSG in interpreting BFO data. That’s why one should not have confidence in any error statistics they came up with that are totally inconsistent with Inmarsat’s analysis. Inmarsat has the expertise in this area. It is clear to me the DTSG does not.