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.
@DrBobbyUlich
Touche! I find it notable as well that FL360 holds both for post-diversion flight direction and (is it holding speed at FL360?) the flight to 00:11.
Would love to know your thoughts as to what scenario would have prevented even the beginnings of a descent for any of the dozen+ possible diversionary fields between IGARI and WITT and yet, somehow, allowed for an FMT some 90 minutes after the onset of the “emergency.”
It’s the aspect of your otherwise wonderfully researched material I simply can’t swallow.
@Keffertje (Your Post of October 11, 2016 at 1:30 AM):
We have the second-hand descriptions of those movements in Factual Information, Bayesian Methods, and ATSB reports. For example, this snippet from Factual Information 1.1.3:
A transport airplane normally climbs or descends at constant airspeed by changing the thrust setting of the engines, normally max climb thrust during climb or idle thrust during descent. It is unusual for a transport airplane to conduct dynamic manoeuvres where it trades airspeed to gain altitude at constant thrust setting. The groundspeed fluctuation between 494 and 525 kt corresponds to an altitude fluctuation of about 1400 ft.
This information means that during those 40 seconds a big B777 was purpoising in the air like some playful dolphins in the sea. It means that the autopilot was off and some inexperienced person was handling the controls of the airplane.
The DSTG “Bayesian Methods” report shows similar speed fluctuations on a larger scale. With high-frequency fluctuations suppressed by filtering and smoothing, the groundspeed fluctuates between 486 and 553 kt, while the track angle changes from 228 to 246 degrees until south of Penang. Between Penang and Pulau Perak speed and track variations are smaller but remain incompatible with autopilot engaged.
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,
I think you know very well what I meant with regard to fuel. What nonsense are you talking about, what runway requirements?
Catastrophic emergency like a cockpit fire? Are you able to read?
Let me know what airlines you are working for, so I will definitely try to avoid it.
Are you, btw, that pilot, who crashed Emirates EK521?
@Billy, I don’t think Clive Irving has the slightest idea what he’s talking about.
CORRECTION:
My post of 5:51 AM accidentally ended with the closing paragraphs of Keffertje’s post. Please ignore those last two paragraphs.
@Matt Moriarty.
I am not a pilot. Questions below in good faith…
1) In case of fire and or major electrical malfunction, is it conceivable that all circuits except those essential to fly the aircraft were either automatically or manually disabled?
2) In case of fire and priority is to land ASAP, do you a) go for nearest runway that can accommodate the aircraft even if that aerodrome is closed and may not meet emergency readiness critera? eg Kota Bharu WMKC or Kuala Terranganu WMKN. Or (b) go for one that is farther but is operational and meets emergency readiness eg Penang WMKP or KLIA WMKK?
3) In case answer to (2) above is the farther one, then do you descend or do you stay at altitude to maintain higher speed on the return?
@Paul Smithson, With regards to #2, I recall the case of the Gimli Glider, in which the only airport the pilots were able to reach was a former airbase that had been converted to a drag-racing strip, with a railing installed down the center of the former runway. It did the job–in fact the railing held up the nose of the plane after the front landing gear collapsed, and helped the plane slow down before it ran off the end.
Any port in a storm… if your plane is on fire, you need to get it on the ground.
@Jeff, @PS:
Surely there is a protocol for that, please. Then, there will always be things on the border of the protocol (a pilot preferring to land on home soil and better for the passengers in different respects, if there is opportunity to choose), but give and take the pilot is expected to know where to go (in his own back yard) and immediately — if the situation is critical.
@Billy
You quoted me in other words. This is what I stated in that post:
“IMO it most probably means the assumption the search was based on was wrong:
the assumption the flight turned into a ghost flight after FMT.
There was and is no logical reason or evidence at all to choose this assumption above the logical/normal assumption the flight was piloted actively from beginning till end.”
I suggested with that post to give more serious attention to the more obvious assumption the flight was actively piloted/controlled by a human from beginning till end.
There seems to be a kind of collective denial of this IMO more obvious/logical possibility and I think this can lead to missed clues and information.
Later I stated there is no way to prove (yet) what actualy happened on that flight by who and why without the black boxes and other information we don’t have.
IMO a major mechanical failure around IGARI or around 18:22 cann’t be ruled out still.
But those 200kg of lithium-batteries catching fire can be ruled out safely IMO. No plane would survive such an event for even an hour. Probably far less.
Paul,
Matt Moriarty completely missed my point.
If the crew was aware of the problems involving nose landing gear, a landing attempt with >30 tons of fuel during night without emergency services on standby would be nearly equivalent to suicide regardless runway length. If someone needs a proof, EK521 is a bright example. And it was discussed many times.
Also I am very curious how would the crew assess problems and best way to deal with them within 13.5 minutes? Especially if ADIRU was mulfunctioning, which is in line with radar data. In comparison, it took 50 minutes for the crew of QF32 to complete initial assessment. Reasonable time. It took one hour before SDU came back in case of MH370. Similar figures, right? A strategy to fly as fast as possible while oxygen lasts and then descent could be preferable in such circumstances.
@Billy
To add. In case of a fire in the cargo-bay I assume the pilots will be alerted by warnings and have time to declare an emergency.
Also I asumme not all communication systems will shut down at the same time.
Anyway the pilots would like to descent and land ASAP.
The radar data @Gysbreght talks about in previous post indicate no attempt to (emergency) descent or landing was made till 18:22.
@Oleksandr:
I belong to those who think you might have something there. Nose landing gear etc. There will probably be no simple right or wrong in that case. I just wanted to have that said in the light of my other comments above. I am in no specific camp, other than one of reason.
@Ge Rijn, @Oleksandr, Of course everyone is entitled to their views, but for the purposes of my own ongoing line of inquiry I think it is safe to assume that the turnaround at IGARI was the result of a deliberate premeditated action, and that the plane was actively piloted all the way to the end, for reasons that have been discussed here at great length.
@Ge Rijn
Apologies for misrepresenting your quote dude, my mistake. Thank you for clarifying and providing a decent response though, makes sense. Although I am curious as to how you’d know for certain enough that the plane wouldn’t have survived it. Seems like an unpredictable event with a wide range of consequences of varying degrees of disaster and outcomes to me. But I acknowledge your other counter-arguments.
@Jeff, well I guess if I didn’t want to know, I shouldn’t have asked LOL. So thanks for you opinion, I’ll give the article another read and think it over.
@Oleksandr
The possibility you mention I won’t rule out either.
A week before MH370 vanished a left nosewheel rim bolt was found missing and replaced.
How did this bolt came loose? Not torqued properly? And then the other bolts?
Just in case a wheel rim gives way or a tyre exploding suddenly this will be with the explosive force of 6 bar of tyre pressure behind it. Being stowed just in front of the EE-bay this could cause sudden tremendous damage in the EE-bay with possibly resulting explosive decompression and many systems failing at the same time.
Landing possibilities would be severly reduced also I agree.
Big problem with this scenario though is how to explain why the plane flew into the Malacca straight and made that turn towards the SIO to disappear.
Not making contact after the SDU was on line again also.
He could have flown anywhere to attract attention by various means if normal communication was not possible anymore.
As an option he could have flown straight over Indonesia to attrack attention of the military there or to Thailand.
Anywhere in fact.
But of all places not into the SIO.
@Gijsbrecht, Thank you for posting, and well explained. These changes in altitudes and speed, lead you to believe it was an inexperienced person at the controls. Are there reasons/theories why an experienced pilot would fly erratically for that duration?
Ge Rijn,
It should be pretty obvious that lithium batteries and other cargo stuff could unlikely be a source of problems. At least because of the smog detectors and fire extinguishers.
It is the EE-Bay sitting just above the nose landing gear, which should be the prime suspect location of the troubles. Besides electronics, it also hosts the oxygen tanks – a very “nice” combination. And per FCOM (8.20.4): “The nose wheel well does not have a fire detection system”.
Recently an interesting possibly relevant detail was pointed out: according to FI on 28 Feb 2014 it was found that one bolt was missing at nose wheel. Just one week before the disappearance.
Ge Rijn,
“He could have flown anywhere to attract attention by various means if normal communication was not possible anymore.”
What about Malaysian Butterworth? And when it did not work, conventional 120-deg triangle with 1 or 2 minutes legs, which indicates problems with navigation and/or communication system?
@Keffertje: “Are there reasons/theories why an experienced pilot would fly erratically for that duration?”
I find it very hard to think of any reason or condition that would make an experienced B777 pilot fly so erratically for that duration, instead of simply letting the autopilot do the ‘aviating’. Perhaps you should ask Oleksandr ;-).
If an experienced B777 pilot wanted to diverge from the flight plan route, all he had to do, and would be expected to do, is:
– rotate the Heading/Track Selector on the glareshield panel (MCP) to the desired heading, let’s say 235 degrees, then –
– push the Heading/Track Select (SEL) Switch on that selector.
The autopilot (AFDS) would then control roll to fly the selected heading or track. The pilot can then devote all his attention to managing of systems, entering a new flight plan, etc.
@Jeff Wise @others
As you know it’s what I advocate also from the start as the most probable scenario (deliberate premediated action from beginning till end).
But without conclusive evidence for one or another we cann’t completely rule out an event like @Oleksandr suggests at this time IMO.
As @Gysbreght points out in his previous post the plane must have been flown manualy after IGARI till 18:22 considering the radar data showing those speed and altitude fluctuations. I found this quite interesting and I wonder why manualy flown all that time?
Would a pilot choose to disengage the AP which makes the plane much harder to fly at those speeds and altitudes I assume?
What could be the reason for such a choice if not a mechanical failure?
Didn’t Neil Gordon challenge the accuracy of the 18:22 radar location (i.e. 10 nm past MEKAR)? Or does it not matter because the 18:25 ping ring supports that location?
It seems many here have forgotten one basic assumption: If the flight after the FMT were piloted until the end, the search area would be too large for a reasonable search. (I believe the piloted search area would have been ten times the current search area and would take 20 years to complete.) That’s why a ghost flight after the FMT was used.
@Ge Rijn, Gijsbrecht explains it really well. I am not sure as Jeff stated, whether “actively piloted” equals “manual flying” for the entire duration?
@Ge Rijn: “Would a pilot choose to disengage the AP which makes the plane much harder to fly at those speeds and altitudes I assume?
What could be the reason for such a choice if not a mechanical failure?”
The extreme manoeuvre at the turnback requires inputs on the control wheel and column. Such inputs automatically disengage the autopilot. The question is why such violent and dangerous manoeuvre and why was the autopilot not re-engaged thereafter.
@Keffertje, No, “manual flying” means controlling the plane with your hands on the yoke, which would pretty much never happen at altitude. I think that the curvy path of MH370 after IGARI should not necessarily be taken as proof that the plane was handflown, as it may be an artifact of uncertainties in the radar data. “Actively piloted” means that someone was sitting and monitoring the autopilot, either changing the heading as it flew or holding the plane in a glide after fuel exhaustion.
@JeffW, I deduced as much 🙂 appreciate your clarification!
@Gysbreght
Re: erratic flying after IGARI
First of all we have that ATSB has discounted altitude variations due to un-calibrated radar. Therefore we are not allowed to speculate that MH370 went to 40,000+ feet to depressure cabin, but you are inferring unpublished proof of erratic flight altitude.
More generally, we can put our theories into one of two baskets: (1) foul play or (2) catastrophic system failure. Since Prime Minister Razak essentially said it appears to be foul play, I have no personal reason to question that unless he or NTSB or ATSB announces a revision to his statements. But even in foul play case, that implies probable conflict and violence in the cockpit of some kind, and maybe someone going into the EE bay to pull circuit breakers for flight recorders etc.
@ Paul Smithson
Great questions. Answers in order.
1) Yes. Breakers would be pulled according to whatever specific non-normal checklist applied to that event.
2) Ditto Jeff Wise. You take the action that most effectively meets the emergency at hand. You’d be on the radio asking for “vectors nearest.” ATC would know your type aircraft and would list fields with suitable runways in order.
So short into the flight, I’d be inclined to return to WMKK. But only if the emergency allowed for it, and I would do everything in my power to advice ATC of my intention. Some, like a cockpit fire, would not allow for staying aloft any longer than necessary.
3) Depends on the nature of the emergency. In a decompression, descent is item two or three on the checklist. Even if I was planning an attempt back at WMKK, I’d get a descent going in the event the situation got away from me and I needed a prior option along the way. Under no circumstances would I benefit from overflying the entire Malaysian peninsula at 35-36000′, then making turns up the Malacca Strait at cruise altitude.
@LaurenH
I know what you mean with this basic assumption which favoured the ghost flight scenario. But if the reason to choose an assumption only because another more obvious/logic assumption is much harder to investigate and for that reason reject it, would be plain stupid don’t you think.
Unless the ATSB has very good reasons we don’t know of, such an approach would be ridiculous IMO.
Thats’s why I suggest taking the ‘all actively piloted flight’ a lot more serious and look at the most logical possibilities how such a flight could have been conducted.
Starting with the most simple, logical actions a B777 pilot would take to conduct such a flight.
Presumming the goal was not to be detected and intercepted and to let the plane disappear without leaving conclusive evidence of the culprit(s).
Perhaps after 18:25 with the SDU re-log-on the AP was brought back on line also.
Perhaps he isolated both left and right main busses and switched the APU to ‘off’ at IGARI and flew only on one back-up generator till ~18:22.
If so. What after that? What would be the most logical things to do as a pilot in those circumstances and with such an objective?
Which AP-mode would he choose? Which altitude? Which speed? Which end-destination? What kind of end-flight? Dive or ditch?
An approach based on a ‘all actively piloted flight’ would open up very interesting questions and anwsers IMO.
Just discard this possibility for it leaves too many options is no argument ofcourse.
Well, I forgot that the Butterfield radar can only see a 777 passing by if it has it navigations lights on.
Ge Rijn
There was really no indication that the plane was being flown erratically at any stage after the turn back. The primary radar antennas were (are) not calibrated accurately enough to allow an accurate read-off of altitude. the primary radar is receiving a reflection from the aircraft’s skin only. It is not receiving an altitude readout from a transponder. The altitude has to be inferred from the elevation angle of the antenna, if I’m understanding things correctly.
The only time the pilot might have been flying manually, with the aid of the autopilot, would be when he skirted round the southern end of Penang Island. To do that, he could have been in HDG Select, while entering regular heading adjustments on the MCP. All other times, he was allowing the autopilot to fly the plane between waypoints or if necessary, navigate on ground based beacons, such as when approaching Penang Island.
He covered a distance of some 500Nm in the hour between the turn around and the last radar return. Even when you factor in the tailwing, there was no leeway allowed for erratic flying, or speculative altitude excursions. He hightailed it outta there on a pre-calculated flight path, and being as radar-savvy (my invented word) as possible.
You (not you personally Ge Rijn) can try and square the flight path as much as you like with mechanical failure, nosewheel blowout, passenger hijacking, pilot collusion etc, and you will fail.
@TBill
In all honesty, would be the reason for disabling the flight recorders from the EE bay? (even if that was possible)
The only reason the pilot could have had to enter the EE bay was for a vain attempt to put out Oleksandr’s nosewheel fire! He was overcome by the fumes, they closed the hatch, and left it to “George” to take them whither he chose.
Apologies, for not taking it seriously. Ha Ha, He He.
Thanks @Matt. Although radio is obviously normally a priority item, is it not conceivable that this (these) too could have been shut down as part of an effort to isolate a major/widespread electrical problem?
BTW, my speculative hypothesis is exactly what you suggest – a diversion direct from LKP to WMKK, without the westerly diversion and multiple turns described in the FI….
@ROB
I think you better explain to @Gysbreght. I’m not radar-savvy, I put some trust in @Gysbreght’s posts on this.
I assume those sophisticated primary radar systems are capable of messuring 1400ft of altitude fluctuations and ~40kt of speed variations.
But don’t expect me to reply with any authority on this post.
I would also welcome RetiredF4 on this subject by the way..
@TBill: “you are inferring unpublished proof of erratic flight altitude. ”
I was quoting the official “Factual Information” report by “The Malaysian ICAO Annex 13 Safety Investigation Team for MH370”. Here is the relevant part:
I also quoted the DSTG report published by the ATSB for speeds and headings. Altitudes can be inferred from those speeds, as I did in earlier posts, but not in the post you’re referring to.
@ROB:
Are you saying that a military primary radar cannot determine range and direction to the target it is tracking, and therefore all speeds and headings determined from the radar data are artifacts?
@Gysbreght
OK sorry…you are correct about the report. There is also the reported witness siting of the low plane by the fishermen on the shore.
But I would need to hear Malaysia, ATSB or some of the book author/experts such as Ewan Wilson or JeffW say that the new reported info you cite has changed their interpretation of events.
To my ears, every time the narrative shifts to mechanical failure, US gov’t or ATSB or someone steps in to tactfully put the narrative back on the “apparently correct” course of foul play as the leading theory. Latest example was when ATSB kindly and promptly debunked the recent burned debris finds.
@PaulSmithson
Radio failures, even dual radio failure, has happened many times. But the “catastrophic” or “cascading” failure(s) scenario utterly falls apart with the FMC turns up the Strait, the lack of any descent whatsoever, the lack of any distress call (at least half of the Part 121 pilot I know carry a handheld for ship to ship 121.5 calls) and the knowledge of both the FMT and the several hours flown thereafter at profiles which are clearly designed to extract the book endurance for the fuel it had.
@Gysbreght
Nope. Not artifacts, but liable to errors introduced by antenna callibration uncertainties in the vertical plane. A radar return and the corresponding groundspeed, heading, and altitude would only be an artifact if the target was a foo fighter (UFO)
@Ge Rijn
What you mean to say is you just don’t believe me?
All I can say is it’s just as well we’re friends, then 🙂
@ROB
I am inferring from SilkAir 185 where the pilot is thought to have turned off the CVR and flight data recorder. I am not too hopeful the flight recorders will be useful if found. Part of the reason for ending search could be difficulty finding pieces if it is more northerly in bad terrain and even if found the recorders may not have been recording. I am concerned that every tracking/recording device that could be turned off, was turned off, except INMARSAT “saved the day”.
@ROB:
It is not obvious to me that groundspeed and heading are subject to “errors introduced by antenna callibration uncertainties in the vertical plane”. Can you please elaborate on that? How large are those errors, considering the distance between antenna and target?
Sure, @Matt. I get that I am swimming against the tide on those latter considerations. If I believed that the diversion west, NW, FMT happened then I’d be in the “deliberate diversion camp”. As it is, my scenario goes – LKP, single turn, bust. You need a good enough reason to believe that radar *ahem* track should be disregarded and that BTO could have been distorted.
@Paul
Even if you forget the radar entirely, I have yet to see a reason to doubt, at the very least, the CHRONOLGY of the BTO rings. One could doubt their plotting due to the possibility of some add’l offset applied by a malfunctioning aircraft, but not their order. But It is impossible to approach from the S China Sea and satisfy the order of the rings without a major turn either north or south between 18:28 and 21:41.
Period.
@Matt For those who may have missed it, here is my paper (ppt) on the peculiar correlation between the BTO predicted by direct diversion to KLIA compared to BTO observed. https://www.dropbox.com/s/i5b9uz1sbrp0leu/The%20riddle%20of%20the%20distorted%20BTO.pptx?dl=0
ROB,
Re: “There was really no indication that the plane was being flown erratically at any stage after the turn back.”
Really? I would suggest you to refresh yourself: Inmarsat data, FI, ATSB, and Lido image – all indicate some irregularities at some stages.
Re “The altitude has to be inferred from the elevation angle of the antenna, if I’m understanding things correctly.”
No, you don’t understand things correctly. For example, do you know that a typical military radar complex is not a single ‘dish’?
Matt Moriarty,
“…which are clearly designed to extract the book endurance for the fuel it had”.
Or it was a ghost flight, where the “book endurance” was achieved by the automation, which worked as it was supposed to.
To move your ‘clear’ hypothesis from the “garbage bin” to the “plausible” category, you would need to explain at least the following:
1. Motive to bring the aircraft to the SIO as far as possible;
2. SDU reboot 18:25;
3. Coincidental disappearance from the military radars 18:22 and the ‘famous’ gap near VAMPI;
4. Absence of any communication by e-mail/sms from the cabin after 18:27;
5. Absence of any signal from the portable ELT;
6. Preference of the SIO over the Pacific;
7. ‘Deviation’ to Penang instead of a direct flight from IGARI towards the presumed FMT location.
8. Irregularities in the BTO and BFO data around 18:27.
9. No detection by Thai RTADS-III, Indonesian Lhokseumawe and Sabang radars.
Let’s see what explanations you can offer.
I thought I read it did log into POR initially but then no explanation as to why IOR.
Maybe it flew south and then east after IGARI since the gaps and data irregularities and missing radar captures.
@PaulS
Thank you for sharing.
@Matt Moriarty,
I was hoping pilots like you might provide some insight into the conditions under which no immediate descent would be made for an emergency landing. An obvious reason would be that the pilot never had any intention of doing so, and yet he/they first navigated to two major airfields – Kota Bharu and Penang. That at least supports the notion that landing options were intentionally made available. Some of the potential factors that have been discussed include excess landing weight, lack of communications, inoperative nose wheel/gear, and fire suppression. Then there is the question of why fly out the Strait instead of holding near an airport. In the aircraft systems failures scenario, perhaps it was a case of avoiding ground casualties in the event of loss of control. Then it seems a second, and possibly more dire, event occurred after the SDU reboot that precipitated the last few turns. Perhaps this was immediately life threatening and the FMTs were an unsuccessful attempt to reach WITT. If the oxygen system were compromised, hypoxia could play a role, too, in the apparent illogic of the radar/FMT track. Smoke and toxic fumes may also have been present.
It would be reassuring to have a logical theory of motive and events that was consistent with the observed route, but I don’t think this is the case for any of the proposed scenarios. Therefore I can’t accept any causation theory as currently being proven or disproven. At this point I am just searching for post-FMT autopiloted routes that are consistent with the satellite data and that end outside the current search area. There is a general agreement between my results and the drift models in that they both indicate a terminus to the NW of the search area. Despite what some people claim, there are very few possibilities, especially when you accurately account for fuel consumption in matching the known endurance. That is, with the autopilot assumption, there appears to be only a relatively small length (or lengths) of the 7th Arc that is possible outside the search area. Without the autopilot assumption, the additional search area becomes very large. In my view the best chance for success in finding 9M-MRO in the relatively near term lies in searching those few unsearched areas indicated by autopiloted routes.
@Matt, @Jeff/others:
Having pilots and several other weathered contributors here, I was struck by the option of turning the IGARI issue upside down — in relation to how it has been discussed in the last posts. Please correct me if this has been done before.
If we isolate IGARI from the rest of the flight, and perhaps add Jeff’s “forceful turn”, would there, to a pilot, be anything telling in that turn (the turning back, the fact of a turning back, the force of the turn (if such)) in itself? I don’t mean rogue pilot’s joyride or typical advanced hijacker as allowed options here, primarily, but anything of a more commonplace character that could be the reason for a turning back (to KLIA, or any field closer to home): something serious but non-critical, standard or expected procedure? Sudden illness or heart troubles? Something missing in terms of passenger service? A disturbance or a crime committed among passengers? A technical but not imminently catastrophic failure that you would prefer to solve at home rather than in China (like a landing gear issue, which might make you want to chose your airport with great care). Do you understand what I am getting at? What does that turn (let’s suppose back to KLIA) tell a pilot about what was going on, if we pretend we don’t know much more?
I don’t have the timings before me, but could it be enough that the pilot experienced troubles with the entertainment system, Acars, a flap or a landing gear to decide to go back, or to decide to try to shake the gear loose with a turn, and if that did not work, continue home? Is it possible the turn could be telling in itself?
This is a long-shot, but I thought it Worth while airing.