Last week, the Joint Investigation Team conducting a criminal investigation into the downing of idH17 issued their preliminary findings. Here’s what I think are the main takeaways.
— The findings strongly endorse the work of “open source intelligence” pioneer Eliot Higgins and his group, Bellingcat. In the immediate aftermath of the shoot-down, it was accepted by nearly every pundit and journalist that the missile had been fired accidentally by poorly trained militiamen who had somehow gotten their hands on an SA-11 Buk launcher and had a acquired a target without bothering to first identify it. But by painstaking work and great resourcefulness, the Bellingcat team was able to piece together an extremely convincing timeline, by which the launcher was brought across the border from a specific Russian military unit, was transported under the direction of the GRU (Russian military intelligence), shot down MH17, and was sent back across the border that night. As I’ve written previously, the timeline described by Bellingcat does not fit with the hapless-militiaman scenario very well. As the New York Times reported, “It is unlikely that anyone not connected with the Russian military would have been able to deploy an SA-11 missile launcher from Russia into a neighboring country.”
— While still admiting the possibility that the Buk crew acted on its own, the report shifts the emphasis to the once-unthinkable: that the missile launch was ordered by higher-ups:
…an investigation is conducted into the chain of command. Who gave the order to bring the BUK-TELAR into Ukraine and who gave the order to shoot down flight MH17? Did the crew decide for themselves or did they execute a command from their superiors? This is important when determining the offences committed by the alleged perpetrators.
As the New York Times put it, the JIT has signaled that it intends “to build an open-and-shut case against individual suspects and to diagram the chain of command behind the order to deploy and launch.”
One can just about imagine a wet-behind-the-ears lieutenant, newly trained and sitting nervously in the cab of his Buk TELAR, messing up and accidentally firing a missile at an unidentified target. But it is harder to imagine an experienced senior officer mistakenly giving the order. Indeed, the higher one goes up the chain of command, the less likely that the decision was made without explicit or implicit endorsement by an immediate superior. The implication, then, is that the order to shoot down MH17, if it did come from anywhere, came from the very top.
— One new piece of information that was revealed in last week’s presentation was that on the day before MH17 was shot down, a rebel commander was recorded making an emotional telephone call to a superior in the regular Russian military, complaining that his troops were vulnerable to Ukrainian air attacks—specifically, by Su-25 ground-attack jets—and that they needed Buks to protect them.
This could be interpreted as evidence that the delivery of the Buk that shot down MH17 was initiated by the militia. Alternatively, it could be a coincidence that a militia commander happened to ask for a missile system the Russian military had already decided to deploy. I think the latter is more likely, for the simple reason that the Buk missile system was not the most appropriate weapon for defending against Su-25s or the other low-altitude planes then in service against the separatists.
The Su-25 is more or less the Russian counterpart of the American A-10: it is designed for low-altitude strafing attacks, with a maximum altitude of 23,000 feet. Another plane used by the Ukrainian military at the time was the An-26 transport, with a maximum altitude of 25,000 feet. A potent defence against these planes would be the Pantsir anti-aircraft system, a mobile rocket launcher that also incorporates self-aiming quad machine guns to automatically blast low-flying attackers out of the sky. Compared to the Buk, which can reach targets above 80,000 feet high, the Pantsir can reach no higher than 26,000 feet. But unlike the Buk it can handle jets flying low under the radar, as the Su-25 can do.
It is known that Pantsirs were present and active in eastern Ukraine at the time of the shootdown. On July 14, an An-26 military transport plane was flying at about 20,000 feet when it was shot down. Ukrainian military assumed that it was downed either by a Pantsir or by an air-to-air missile fired from a Russian fighter jet flying on the other side of the Russian-Ukrainian border. On July 16, a Su-25 flying at nearly the same altitude was also shot down, again either by a Pantsir or an air-to-air missile. The blog Putin@War found satellite imagery of Pantsir units near the Ukraine-Russian border in August of 2016.
The limited reach of the Pantsir is one of the reasons that officials believed that airliners would be perfectly safe traveling higher than 32,000 feet, and so kept the airspace open to airline traffic. Buks were not known to be in the theater—and, indeed, up until the day of the shoot-down, it seems that they weren’t.
As a general principle, you do not want to send equipment into a poorly regulated battlespace that is any more powerful than it needs to be. The potential danger is too great. Retired U.S. military intelligence officer Peter Akins told me that, having had experience with many brushfire wars on its perimeter, the Russians know better than to carelessly hand out strategically powerful weapons like the Buk. “My guess is that they’re pretty carefully controlled,” he says. “We ran into real problems in Afghanistan with giving mujahadeen all those Stingers (MANPADS) that they used to take out Russian helicopters. Stingers have a relatively long shelf life. So once the mujahadeen became Taliban, if they could get to the top of a mountain in Afghanistan they could increase the operational envelope of the missile so that they could target US aircraft. So that’s one of the lessons that we learned, which is don’t give out MANPADS. I don’t know where the idea for ‘Let’s give an SA-11 to a separatist movement in the Donetsk National Sovereignty Front’ would have come from. That’s not the actions of a responsible government.”
— The weight of the JIT’s authority has, I think, severely undermined the army of Kremlin trolls who have been promoting a fog of pro-Russian conspiracy theories almost from day one. As Finnish defense writer Robin Häggblom put it, “the amount of evidence found in both open and non-open source has reached such levels that the question of whether a Russian supplied Buk shot down MH17 can now be considered a litmus test for whether you are under the influence of Russian propaganda or not.”
— The slow, grinding, meticulous building of the case against Russia feels unstoppable—and it could lead to a huge and potentially dangerous political crisis. In the wake of the JIT’s presentation, Moscow responded with such fury that the Dutch foreign minister summoned the Russian ambassador. In response, the Russian foreign minister summoned the Dutch ambassador in Moscow. Meanwhile, Australia’s foreign minister said that whoever was responsible for the shoot-down could face an international tribunal like the one who found Libyan agents guilty for the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie Scotland. Russia has already used its security council powers to block a UN investigation.
As I’ve been saying for a long time now, if it is determined that the Russian leadership deliberately ordered the shoot-down of MH17, the implications for MH370 are obvious—one of the difficulties in trying to understand MH370 is that, though it was clearly a deliberate act, there was no plausible motive. MH17 provides, if not understanding of what the motive was, clear evidence that a motive existed, in mid-2014, for a great power to take down a Malaysia Airlines 777. If an international Lockerbie-style commission is ultimately set up to assign criminal blame for Ukraine tragedy, then it is not too far out to imagine a similar body being established to do the same for MH370.
UPDATE: The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab has published a nice overview of the anti-aircraft weapons systems that Russia has deployed in Eastern Ukraine. It seems that the Buk TELAR deployed from July 16 to 18, 2014, was the only one that threatened civil air traffic over the region.
@Ge Rijn, @Rob, Thank you, I appreciate that.
In Factual Information the Malaysians provide a fragmentary account of the available data from civil and military primary radar. That account states headings, and ranges of groundspeed and altitudes at certain times. They have also provides a continuous set every 10 seconds of those radar data to the Australians.
In their report “Bayesian Methods” the DSTG presents heavily filtered and smoothed data on speeds and headings, but not altitudes, from those radar data in graphical form. Therefore, the ATSB has obviously a much more detailed and accurate picture of the movements of the airplane in the first half hour after the diversion than has been released to the public. Those movements in terms of heading, speed and altude provide valuable clues into what may have occurred inside the aircraft in that first half hour.
The question whether “they are searching in the right place” can only be answered at the end of the search. If the airplane is not found, they have probably been looking in the wrong place, but we then still wouldn’t know the “right place”.
Assuming that “Z did it” would be quite wrong, but the ATSB cannot be accused of making that error.
@Gysbreght
from Wiki below (false premise title):
begin cut-paste//
A false premise is an incorrect proposition that forms the basis of an argument or syllogism. Since the premise (proposition, or assumption) is not correct, the conclusion drawn may be in error. However, the logical validity of an argument is a function of its internal consistency, not the truth value of its premises.
end cut-paste//
A lot of folks recoil in horror when the premise that Shah did it is even suggested. It is a premise. No one knows what really happened. However, its (the Shah did it premise) internal validity is what is important, and right now it is the only premise that satisfies this criterion. To say that assuming Shah did it is “quite wrong”, is just simply a stupid thing to say. It is a premise, that is all it is. You have no idea if it is right or wrong.
@DennisW:
I do not “recoil in horror” at the suggestion that Shah may have done it. Although he is perhaps the least likely person to have done it, there is a remote possibility that he actually did it.
I recoil when someone declares Shah guilty as if that were an established fact, based on so-called circumstantial evidence that is mostly rumours, hearsay and tabloid press reports. The ‘internal consistency’ is constructed by ignoring all evidence that does not fit the agenda.
@Gysbreght
You might be interested to know that of the close to 300 people exonerated by the Innocence Project almost all of them, some 260 or so, were convicted on the basis of eye witness testimony – also known as direct evidence. They were freed on the basis of DNA testing which is circumstantial evidence. People here are generally ignorant of the significance of the term “circumstantial evidence”, and bandy it about like it is some form of a virus.
Furthermore, we are not talking about innocence or guilt. That is whole different level. We are talking about a premise, plain and simple. I am sick and tired of being accused as some sort of pervert when I say I believe Shah did it. Take your misplaced moral judgements elsewhere. You keep talking shit like that, and I will continue to call you out on it until Jeff bans me.
To make my position clear (quoting for example from a recent post), I have no problem with someone writing:
“Well, if this was his intention (I’ve discussed that many times here, too many times) then how would he have gone about it?”
On the other hand, in my opinion, it is not acceptable to write:
“The weight of evidence, observed and circumstantial, (is) that Z planned and carried out something never done before.”
Gysbreght, Dennis,
There is a huge gap between “assume Z did it” and “Z did it”: the former is only a hypothesis, which cannot be ruled out right away, while the later is a silly statement, the right place for which is a garbage bin.
Likewise I found it interesting that a lot of contributors to Jeff’s blog confuse low probability with impossibility, and wrongly use the former to justify the latter.
@Gysbreght
You are allowing a moral judgement to affect your objectivity. If someone were to say the same thing relative to some other theory, I doubt you would feel the same way. My remarks with respect to Shah are purely clinical. They have nothing to do with some implied moral judgement. To say that holding those opinions are wrong just annoys me because I know that the comments are based on morality and not forensics. I might say the mechanical failure scenario is unlikely, but I have never said it is wrong. Wrong is a special word in my vernacular.
@DennisW:
Are you claiming that your judgment is objective? Morality is not the issue.
@Gysbreght
Yes, and morality is absolutely the issue and you know it.
If morality is not the issue, then how can you say that Shah did it is wrong? You simply do not know. Get off of it. You have no place to stand here with your head held high. You are preaching from the pulpit.
@DennisW: Your replies have reached such a low level that I don’t want to continue this discussion.
Keffertje,
“As far as the evidence shows, and the fact that any mechanical failures have pretty much been rules out”
You are obviously mislead. The mechanical failure was never ruled out, and there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that. Rather on contrary, there are many ‘symptoms’ that a mechanical failure took place (this includes deliberate damage).
@Gsybreght
That is a wise decision on your part.
@Gysbreght
All 239 people on 9M-MRO are suspects. Shah was the PIC (pilot in command) so it is very natural to question his authority and role that night.
Why do you need to be sensitive about it? Are you a friend of the Shah’s?
Oleksandr,
I really don’t know why you are clinging to the mechanical failure scenario. The fact that the aircraft flew on till fuel exhaustion tells us the aircraft operated as it should be under normal circumstances.
@ir1907: I think I’ve made my position clear. The radar data is conclusive evidence for me that the accusation that Z planned and executed this is not justified. Unfortunately there is no one on this forum able and willing to understand the significance of those data.
ir1907,
“I really don’t know why you are clinging to the mechanical failure scenario.”
I have explained this many times, didn’t I?
“The fact that the aircraft flew on till fuel exhaustion tells us the aircraft operated as it should be under normal circumstances.”
No, it does not.
@Gysbreght
To me the data makes no sense after IGARI and all of this trying to pin it on ZS. We don’t even have anything definitely showing he was actually flying to the current search area.
@MH
We don’t have anything definitely showing that the plane went to the current search area. So what?
ir1907,
“All 239 people on 9M-MRO are suspects.”
What about people on the ground? Or what about a chain of mechanical failures and wrong actions of the crew, similar to those incidents/accidents, which already happened in the past? Why do you suspect kids, who were among these 239 passengers you mentioned?
@dennisW. The big WHAT is the big waste of money and time as a result of this data interpretation.
@MH
That has nothing to do with trying to “pin it” on Z.
@oleksandr,
” chain of mechanical failures” happening exactly at ATC handover?
Give me a break.
Ai’ya @DennisW. Keep up. You are replying to out of sequence on wrong topic.
@Matt Moriarty,
My estimated weight at 18:29 is 208.4 MT. To see an example run of my fuel model every minute, go to:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzOIIFNlx2aUV05VVUpWbGFsc1k/view?usp=sharing
For constant heading routes, I don’t assume Holding speed. I first find the combination of average speed and heading necessary to match the satellite data. Then I select the speed mode that provides that speed at a reasonable altitude and within the available fuel. The result is that ECON modes don’t work in this true heading case but Holding does work. Thus Holding speed is not an assumption, it is a result of the fitting process.
Another important clue is that the true heading route passes very close to BEDAX, the first waypoint in the
BEDAX TWO CHARLIE standard arrival into WITT (Banda Aceh). For a description of the arrival plan from BEDAX to TENOM (49 NM), TENOM to DARUS (50 NM), DARUS to WITT (16 NM), see page 14 in :
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzOIIFNlx2aUOU1xYkdXdU9WVXc/view?usp=sharing
If I am reading these charts correctly, the altitude should be 11,000 feet at TENOM, 5,000 feet at DARUS, and 68 feet at WITT. If this is correct, then a descent should be made between BEDAX and TENOM from cruising altitude to 11,000 feet. This seems reasonable to do in 49 NM from FL350+, so there is no need to descend before reaching BEDAX.
I can think of two possible reasons for selecting Holding speed while traveling NW parallel to N571. First, there is no advantage to going in that direction any farther than you have to if changes are being made to the electrical power distribution. You have already passed the first available point for the WITT standard arrival through ANSAX. So just changing from ECON to Holding might be a quick and easy way to reduce speed without the need to change altitude. After the route turns to the WSW toward BEDAX, being in Holding speed may be advantageous in executing the BEDAX TWO CHARLIE standard arrival into WITT for an emergency landing. I am suggesting that the last entered waypoint was BEDAX and that true heading was the default mode after passing BEDAX with no additional waypoints being entered.
@Gysbreght,
”The radar data is conclusive evidence ”
You are going on about this ”radar evidence” for a while. Please explain in detail what you have seen in the radar data that forces you to accept the mechanical failure theory. Please dont redirect to the FI. Just in your own words.
@MH
“Ai’ya @DennisW. Keep up. You are replying to out of sequence on wrong topic.”
Don’t think so.
The behavior and the tone of the comments here remind me of some debate thing I (unfortunately) watched on TV last nite for 90 minutes.
@Oleksandr,
Perhaps we are intermingling two aspects of the effect of altitude. As I said, I fit the altitude as a free parameter, and I search for the optimum altitude in fitting the route, but I do not (yet) interpolate the effect of altitude on the wind. You have not said explicitly if you do this or not, but perhaps you do. If so, kudos to you. I agree it is a lot of work to put in the 4-D wind model. When I get this done, I will run my route fitter on your magnetic heading route coordinates and report on the results.
Regarding the BFO bias, you are using 152.5 Hz according to your September 6, 2016 post at 6:39 PM. You said this was based on the June 2014 ATSB report. However, on page 23 of that report it says 150 Hz. To my knowlege, no other value has ever been recommended by ATSB or Inmarsat. I don’t know where you get 152.5 Hz from, but it will yield BFOs ~2.5 Hz higher than ATSB’s (and my) values.
@Matt Moriarty
Yes your right re Dr. Stone. I should have not relied on one source for info. A very esteemed gentle man. He could certainly be used on this job.
I did not want to infer that you were wrong in any way, but its odd he doesn’t get a mention in the other sources, only the company Metron. Your criticism is received ok, but was not that I was challenging you.
Cheers Tom Lindsay
@DrBobbyUllich
As always, I’m impressed by your thoroughness. Some comments:
1) You did read the chart correctly, though I would personally refer to an MDA of 600′ as opposed to “WITT at 68′ ” but that’s nitpicking. IRW, your clearance – delivered prior to BEDAX – would sound like this: “Descend via the (BEDAX TWO C) arrival, (possibly “report leaving FL350″), cross TENOM at 11 thousand, expect the VOR/DME 17 approach, altimeter 29.xx”
2) BEDAX does seem an odd entry for an aircraft approaching from the Strait. I’m left to infer that in your mind, some events precluded a struggling pilot from making an entry at either DUAMO or GILAT and that BEDAX was a “save” attempt after having inadvertently overflown a more normal entry.
3) It is perfectly reasonable to assume that a pilot would slow the aircraft if he had the intention to descend in the near future. I gather that your notion is that the FMT occurred as a final “save” attempt – perhaps as BEDAX was passing behind the right wing – just before incapacitation and that that would explain your position on the remaining hours being flown at holding speed and FL350.
4) However, I do have trouble understanding why, in an emergency, a descent wasn’t begun earlier. Way earlier. Like shortly after the turn back near IGARI. In addition, a pilot with even the remotest cognitive capacity would have chosen a return altitude that was correct for direction of flight, which 35 is not.
@Johan
“I am back since a couple of months and haven’t seen your contributions. Could you give a short update on what you know?”
“Were you in KL prior to this event?” – NO
Unfortunately I upset Jeff each time I refer to what I was told by my Malaysian friend in the early days after MH370 went missing.
While the motive gave me a direction in which to proceed the actual flightpath I plotted using ISAT data stands on its own and could have been plotted by anybody without knowing anything about the meetings.
In the interests of peace and goodwill I will refrain from mentioning the meetings and motive from now on.
@Freddie
“I feel I have a major advantage with the “scenario” I outlined in that I was aware early on of details of meetings Shah had in the days before the flight.”
This is what you have not followed through.
Excellent point @Matt Moriarty!!
”
4) However, I do have trouble understanding why, in an emergency, a descent wasn’t begun earlier. Way earlier. Like shortly after the turn back near IGARI.
“
@Oleksandr, “You are obviously mislead. The mechanical failure was never ruled out, and there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that. Rather on contrary, there are many ‘symptoms’ that a mechanical failure took place (this includes deliberate damage).
@Oleksandr, The B777 literally has multiple back-ups and then back-ups of back-ups. Even SwissAir111 was able to communicate to 2 different ATC’s throughout rampant fires and a smoke filling the cockpit. When the SDU came back on, there were no emergency calls. The ELT was not used. The pilots made no effort to descend to a much lower altitude to try and land the aircraft and save all 239 PAX. The B777-200ER MLW (208k) would have allowed the pilots to land the aircraft after burning a limited amount of fuel. Given the preceding, technical malfunction seems highly unlikely, IMO.
@Freddie:
What could your friend possibly have heard in what kind of meetings? Do you have friends among hijackers?
And he was told where they were going to fly?
@TomLindsay
No sweat. I knew you’d find the goods with a little more digging.
Btw: here’s the link to my friend’s documentary about the SS Central America gold search, with Larry Stone, his bona fides, and his methods featured quite heavily.
https://vimeo.com/126835368
I welcome everyone on this thread to view the piece and decide for themselves if he’d do better than what we’ve seen thus far with MH370.
Bobby,
Re: “You have not said explicitly if you do this or not, but perhaps you do.”
There were preceding discussions at Duncan’s blog, though I agree it is difficult to follow details more than 2 years later. My major point is that one would need to look at many possibilities before jumping to any conclusion.
Re: “I don’t know where you get 152.5 Hz from, but it will yield BFOs ~2.5 Hz higher than ATSB’s (and my) values.”
This value was presented by ATSB in Table 5 and Table 6 with the note that this bias component was derived from calibration. On p.23 ATSB also suggests the range of BFO bias from 145 to 155 Hz.
ir1907,
“chain of mechanical failures” happening exactly at ATC handover?”
Why not? Compare with MS804 – also just after ATC handover. Or imaging a bomb placed in the EE-Bay or in the nose landing gear bay, which caused damage similar to Daallo D3159. If you judge based on coincidences only, note that ARL NOAA does not provide GDAS meteorological data with resolution of 0.5 deg on the date of disappearance, the only missing file during the whole 2014. Would you suspect NOAA’s involvement because of this?
“Give me a break.”
Sure. Enjoy it.
@Gijsbrecht, “Therefore, the ATSB has obviously a much more detailed and accurate picture of the movements of the airplane in the first half hour after the diversion than has been released to the public. Those movements in terms of heading, speed and altitude provide valuable clues into what may have occurred inside the aircraft in that first half hour”.
Since the general public is not privy to a more accurate picture of the movements, we will have to hold our breath until we do. However, M9-MRO travelled from just passed IGARI 17.23UTC – MEKAR at 18.22UTC, in under an hour. It was at south of Penang at 17.52UTC, 39 minutes. So doesn’t that mean it was going at a good pace? You are no doubt more knowledgeable but how would movements in the 1st half hour provide more clues when we know where it was at 18.22 UTC and still flying? I am reading the DSTB report so that I can better understand the BFO posts.
PS: Given the limited theories available relative to the facts we know today, it isn’t “wrong” IMO (agreeing with DennisW here) to contemplate and consider that ZS could have done it. This isn’t being irrational or immoral, because there is precedence – albeit in different settings. This is no different than contemplating, considering and exploring other theories some of which may pass muster, others may not. If we are presented with evidence that 20 other PAX used flight simulators with data points in the SIO that were deleted after the fact, we would have a different dialogue on the subject.
Matt Moriarty,
Re: “However, I do have trouble understanding why, in an emergency, a descent wasn’t begun earlier. Way earlier. Like shortly after the turn back near IGARI.”
Many explanations do exist. Flying low means flying slow. In case of fire and necessity to shut down the power buses, the intent could be to bring aircraft back to the shore ASAP. It could save valuable time. The other explanation is to minimize oxygen supply to the hypothetical fire.
Re “In addition, a pilot with even the remotest cognitive capacity would have chosen a return altitude that was correct for direction of flight, which 35 is not.”
Google on the “Children of magenta”.
@MattM, I think if the ATSB asked the Dutch they may actually jump at the opportunity. Always eager beavers the Dutch. And they love their water, so the SIO would be right up our alley. And funding should not be an issue. We pay so much tax here that many Dutch people would support the funding to continue the search :)much more exciting than many of the “on life support” EU projects we typically throw our money at!
Keffertje,
“The B777 literally has multiple back-ups and then back-ups of back-ups”.
This already shows that you are misled, including by the myth about multiple redundancy.
“The pilots made no effort to descend to a much lower altitude to try and land the aircraft and save all 239 PAX.”
How do you know this? I already mentioned many times that BFO data 18:25 to 18:41 are consistent with the standard emergency descent maneuver. And preceding landing was impossible (note I use the term “impossible”, not “impobable”) if the problem was localised around nose landing gear. Finally the radar data also indicate descent.
@ir1907:
Although the handover is suspect and definitely pointing towards Z, I wouldn’t say it definitely rules out a mechanical or similar failure at that exact moment. Stranger things have happened. But I it is bordering on the probable.
@Oleksandr
Re: emergency descent / Children of Magenta
You just absolutely embarrassed yourself, child.
“Many explanations do exist…The intent could be to bring aircraft back to shore ASAP?”
How do you do that, exactly? By remaining at FL350 all the way to the nearest airport (which was Khota Baru at 89nm/13.5min/2550fpm descent) and then doing a 15 minute hold over the field?
You so obviously are not a pilot that you’re at the top of the “tune out” list. Do yourself a favor and stick to what you know. Whatever the hell that might be.
@Ge Rijn and others,
I’ve agreed with you in the past, sometimes respectfully disagree on other things. while my most favored (and unfortunate) camp is Z trying to dump in a deep hole, I certainly wouldn’t go so far as mechanical is just not possible and that “There was/is no evidence at all to justify the assumption of a partial ghost-flight after FMT that we know of.”
too absolute for me.
Who knows if this blog debunked this theory over the last year or not, or what you all think of Clive Irving, I can’t keep up sorry. anyway here’s a link to this story for those who didn’t read it:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/15/the-deadly-cargo-inside-mh370-how-exploding-batteries-explain-the-mystery.html
Is there a reason I shouldn’t respect this article? I liked it. TIA
@Keffertje
I’ll chip in my share to help the Dutch solve this thing. I guarantee if 370 was a KLM flight, none of us would have ever met each other.
Matt Moriarty,
You must be an idiot if you don’t understand what would 30+ tons of kerosene do should the crew have attempted landing at Khota Baru. Also it would be silly for the crew to immediately descent for landing at Khota Baru without some assessment of the damage and situation. Also, if their original intent was to return to KLIA they would need to account for the mountainous terrain – apparently you forgot about this aspect.
Finally, may I suggest you to refrain from personal attacks? Your approach to attack people will lead you to nowhere.
@Matt Moriarty,
I don’t use FL350 for the post-diversion altitude. I have been using FL360 because it is even for westward travel and because it matches the observed speed from 17:21 to 18:22 at LRC. I found it notable that the true heading route with a first turn at 18:39 and a FMT at 18:55 seems to fit at FL360 all the way to 00:11.
@Oleksandr
The guy using the word “idiot” complains about personal attacks? You’ve been watching too much Donald Trump.
But since we are using the word idiot…
MH370 was within 9500kg of MLW at the 17:07 ACARS report. It was even closer at IGARI. RWY requirement at MLW is 5,250′ at sea level in zero wind, even less in a headwind. RWY 28 at WMKC (a nice STRAIGHT IN from IGARI) is almost 7900′. In a catastrophic emergency like a cockpit fire? I’d take that field anytime, kid. So who do you think you’re fooling talking about kerosene?
I’m an actual pilot inviting you to stay away from me for your own good. Please accept.