Two men, strangers to one another, go into the cockpit of an airplane and lock the door behind them. They take off and fly into the night. One radios to ATC, “Good night, Malaysia 370.” One minute later, someone puts the plane into a turn. It reverses direction and disappears.
Question: Did one of the men take the plane?
For many, it’s inconceivable that there could be any other answer than “of course.” Moreover, that since the details of the incident suggest a sophisticated knowledge of the aircraft, the perpetrator could obviously only be the man with the vastly greater experience — the captain. As reader @Keffertje has written: “Though I try to keep an open mind to all other scenarios, the circumstantial evidence against ZS simply cannot be ignored.”
For others, blaming the captain without concrete proof is immoral. There are MH370 forums where the suggestion that Zaharie might be considered guilty is considered offensive and hurtful to the feelings of surviving family members. Even if one disregards such niceties, it is a fact that an exhaustive police investigation found that Zaharie had neither psychological problems, family stress, money problems, or any other suggestion that he might be suicidal. (Having broken the story of Zaharie’s flight-simulator save points in the southern Indian Ocean, I no longer think they suggest he practiced a suicide flight, for reasons I explain here.) And far from being an Islamic radical, he enjoyed the writings of noted atheist Richard Dawkins and decried terror violence. And he was looking forward to retiring to Australia. If he was trying to make the Malaysian government look bad, he failed, because in the absence of an explanation there is no blame to allocate. And if he was trying to pull off the greatest disappearing act of all time, he failed at that, too, since the captain would necessarily be the prime suspect.
So did Zaharie do it, or not?
This, in a nutshell, is the paradox of MH370. Zaharie could not have hijacked the plane; only Zaharie could have hijacked the plane.
I’d like to suggest that another way of looking at the conundrum is this: if Zaharie didn’t take the plane, then who did? As has been discussed in this forum at length, the turn around at IGARI was clearly initiated by someone who was familiar with both aircraft operation and air traffic control protocols. The reboot of the SDU tells that whoever was in charge at 18:22 had sophisticated knowledge of 777 electronics. And the fact that the plane’s wreckage was not found where autopilot flight would have terminated tells us that someone was actively flying the plane until the end. But who? And why?
If Zaharie did not do it, then one of the passengers and crew either got through the locked cockpit door in the minute between “Good night, Malaysia 370” and IGARI, or got into the E/E bay and took control of the plane from there.
If we accept that this is what happened, then it is extremely difficult to understand why someone who has gone to such lengths would then fly themselves to a certain demise in the southern Indian Ocean. (Remember, they had the ability to communicate and were apparently in active control of the aircraft; they could have flown somewhere else and called for help if they desired.)
Recall, however, that the BFO values have many problems. We get around the paradox of the suicide destination if we assume that the hijackers were not only sophisticated, but sophisticated enough to conceive of and execute a spoof of the Inmarsat data.
Granted, we are still left with the issue of the MH370 debris that has been collected from the shores of the western Indian Ocean. Many people instinctively recoil from the idea that this debris could have been planted, as a spoof of the BFO data would require. Fortunately, we don’t have to argue the subject from first principles. Detailed physical and biological analysis of the debris is underway, and should be released to the public after the official search is called off in December. As I’ve written previously, several aspects of the Réunion flaperon are problematic; if further analysis bears this out, then we’ll have an answer to our conundrum.
@Rob, folllowing Tom Lindsay. You say “their climate is abobiminal”.
Not just that the people are abdominable at mealtimes, ababbleable across the table and all round abombable.
Too many Poms.
@TBill
If I may just add my four pennyworth on the ELT question.
There has been much discussion about the ELT on this forum. It remains somewhat of an enigma but from what I can gather, it appears it cannot be immobilized from the cockpit. The cockpit switch has two positions: Armed, and On (meaning, it can’t be switched of, but can be switched on manually, if required. The transmitter is powered by a self-contained battery. Another point is that the unit begins transmitting a signal 50 seconds after being activated. Apparently, ELTs are notoriously unreliable in crash situations, but the perpetrator would have considered the ELT when planning this event, in my personal opinion. I venture to suggest, after looking at the state of the debris, that the impact would have been forceful enough to activate the ELT, all of which leads me to conclude the fuselage was under water within 50 seconds of the impact.
@Johan, I’m sure you’re familiar with the idea of “hybrid warfare” — the fusion of information war (aka propoganda) with blunt-force military action so that you can achieve your aims without being seen to have done so. The annexation of Crimea by “little green men” accompanied by an astroturf uprising of supposedly disgruntled ethnic Russian Ukrainians would be the textbook example of this.
If MH370 was a spoof hijacking, then the overall objective might have been to say to the West, and especially to the US, “we can hit your soft targets with impunity, because our attacks will be so sophisticated that even if you figure out how we did them, the evidence left behind will be so sparse that the public won’t believe your allegations against us.”
I think that MH370 and MH17 were essentially the Hiroshima and Nagasaki of hybrid warfare — strategically decisive actions important less for the amount of damage inflicted than for demonstrating an awe-inspiring capability. The two acts demonstrated different things, however. MH370 showed the incredible technical sophistication of Russia’s GRU in identifying and exploiting a “zero-day hack.” MH17 was far cruder technically but demonstrated other elements of Russia’s strength, namely its ability to construct a public-discourse narrative out of thin air (until very recently virtually every Western foreign-policy expert accepted unquestioningly the idea that the Buk had been acquired and fired by random rebels) and its ability to prosecute tactics that are unavailable to their Western counterparts due to their unsavory nature.
@David
The climate isn’t that abominable. There are enough “whinging Poms” in the country, already. I was trying to make sure they weren’t joined by one more “whinging Yank”. 🙂
Cheers
Rob
@Jeff Wise: “I think that MH370 and MH17 were essentially the Hiroshima and Nagasaki of hybrid warfare — strategically decisive actions important less for the amount of damage inflicted than for demonstrating an awe-inspiring capability.”
What do they achieve with that “demonstration of capability”?
@Gysbreght, What Russia has gained is a sense among its Western counterparts that is a powerful and dangerous force, not to be tangled with lightly. The renewed sense of Russia’s importance on the global stage is, especially among Russians domestically, is, I think, Putin’s primary objective.
Gysbreght
There was a saying a few years ago iro anti communism paranoia, namely “Reds under the bed”.
Between you an me, I think Jeff’s been on the happy baccy again.
@Hi David
As this is a forum/blog for a very sad event I will keep my response to this out of context posting very short.
Sorry to hear of your disappointment with the Australian people. You must have had some very unpleasant times while you were here.
I don’t know where you were in Australia or under what reasons you were visiting.
I am/was a POM and proud to admit it and have been in Australia since 1950.
Mealtime decorum as you infer is no more widespread as the rest of the world.
Customs are Customs Get used to it.
I do travel overseas twice a year and throw in a couple of cruises. Two dinner suits (White/Blk) ( Blk/Blk) and five assorted shirts. Wherever we go ( my wife we mix in and enjoy).
It is sad though sometimes when we are in some third world country on what they have to do just to survive. We don’t criticise but help where possible.
When you are next in Australia please let Jeff know and he can release my email address to you.
Please accept my retort in the manner I intend it;pleasantly.
Cheers Tom L
@Tom Lindsay
I guess you must have been one of the “ten pound Poms”, then? No disrespect intended.
Unfortunately, people tend to get stereotyped. Aussies are not all like Edna Everage or Les Patterson.
@Jeff Wise
Russia has a few thousand nuclear warheads.
In the wrong hands of power that’s sufficient enough to make the West (and the rest of the World) scary IMO and that’s whats happening right now.
No need for Putin and his government to demonstrate power by bringing down airliners.
And far too risky. If such a complicated act would go wrong and get proven (which it will in the end) it would mean political suicide and international confrontation on Russia.
Putin isn’t as stupid as that. He knows how to play his game and overtly tests the West how far he can go in Ukraine and Syria.
Probably preparing his next step if he can get away with it.
He is playing a very dangerous game in Syria. We can await the first Russian military plane is going to be shot down by a coalition jet or ground-missile or visa versa.
IMO Putin is obviously overtly seeking confrontation for a few years now.
They demonstrated they have no need at all in covertly bringing down airliners to scare the West and the rest of the World.
Stendec, Dennis,
Thanks. What I am trying to understand is whether a consumer-grade device could provide VHF listening capability onboard.
@Ge Rijn, Again, the idea is not to imagine what might have happened based on presumptions of other people’s motives, but to identify what happened and who did it, and then to try to figure out why they acted as they did.
buyerninety, Ge Rijn, Dennis,
The bolt.
Jeff Wise,
“I think that MH370 and MH17 were essentially the Hiroshima and Nagasaki of hybrid warfare”
Nonsense.
@TomLindsay. I was slinging off at Rob’s “abobiminal” Tom and the too many Poms was tongue in cheek, intended to imply the Poms had brought a spelling infection with them, he being one. The word Pom is one of affection, derogatory or mock derogatory as you will know having lived here for so long, depending on the tone and context.
Hard to impart the flavour via the written word.
Sorry to have conveyed something other than jocular and self-deprecatory in my attempted levity.
I find this to be untrue. With regard to your first sentence: Yes, just as there are irrational fears (e.g. paranoia, phobias), there are irrational acts. Irrationality can be defined as “an action or opinion given through inadequate use of reason, or through emotional distress or cognitive deficiency” (e.g. induced by hypoxia or hypothermia).
With regard to your second sentence: That is not necessarily the case. In fact, most forms of compulsory behaviour are irrational and don’t necessarily make sense to the person affected. (You can ask people who suffer from e.g. compulsive counting or hoarding, and they would tell you that they don’t know why they are doing it, it doesn’t make sense to them, but they just feel like having to do it.) I have also seen TV-interviews with psychologically disturbed murderers, who said they don’t know why they killed their victim, they just felt the compulsion to kill.
But even if – as you say – an “action makes sense within the worldview of the person who commits it”, this action doesn’t necessarily make sense to us. What makes sense within the world view of someone who kills 239 people, may very well not make sense at all to us in the outside world.
Therefore it doesn’t make sense to exclude or even neglect scenarios which don’t make much sense to us when we picture ourselves in the cockpit, but which could very well make sense to a mass murderer intent on killing 239 passengers and inflicting unbearable pain on all bereaved for years to come.
Hence I’d say anything less bizarre than mass murder is fair game when it comes to conjecturing the behaviour of a mass murderer.
… so pretty much everything, including, as you say: “fly into the SIO to the point of fuel exhaustion and then fly quasi-aerobatic maneuvers. Which is really, really bizarre.”
Or what would you actually consider to be inconceivably bizarre, even from the standpoint of a 239-fold mass murderer ?
I wouldn’t say preferable. Everybody would prefer happiness to suicide. It’s just that not everybody finds happiness. It doesn’t make sense (neither to the person affected nor to people on the outside) to continue an unhappy life full of suffering. Nobody wants to suffer. When you have exhausted all other options to stop the suffering and the suffering doesn’t stop, this is the only option left. If based on all you have endured, the duration (often years) of suffering, and all you have tried without success, you come to the well informed conclusion that your prospects for the future are years – possibly a lifetime – of suffering, you may relinquish what you do not find bearable (or simply worth) pursuing. And at that point, it can be a calculated and completely rational decision. (Albeit not necessarily if you take 239 poor souls with you).
@David
Apologies if I got you into trouble. Entirely my fault. I’m always doing it, inadvertently. Perhaps I should keep my trap shut on any subject barring , except the Z suicide one.
@Rob. Thanks but mea culpa.
@oleksandr, “Thanks. What I am trying to understand is whether a consumer-grade device could provide VHF listening capability onboard.”
maybe some thing like this:
http://03a965b.netsolhost.com/comwestradio/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Amateur_IC-92AD-Brochure.pdf
@Perfect Storm,
Hi, you are the first here, except me, to talk about suffering. This is what’s happen with the Uighurs. They make action with this hijack. Near a perfect hijack!
Nobody considere suffering in the equation. Nobody considere also all the witness on Kota Barhu. All prefered to believe a computer instead of human witness.
The most comic is the mas gov give honor and reconnaissance to the four policeman have take the deposit of the witness. After that, mas reject this information.
Don’t forget, all westerner we are think like a westerner. Asian world think really different. Suffering and compassion are take in consideration in this parts of the world.
Also Martyre is well see on this side, especially with muslin in China.
Think to that
With all my compassion
@Oleksandr
Not just VHF, Oleksandr. In 2014, an unobtrusive $20 TV/DAB USB dongle and antenna connected to a laptop (or Android device, using an OTG cable) running the requisite software could have received and demodulated AM, FM broadcast, FM narrowband, SSB, CW, PSK etc. transmitted between 24 Mhz and up to c. 1600 Mhz – a useful thing to own during a power outage…
With regard to the ‘China Martyr’s Brigades” maildrop: it was released to (pre?) selected Chinese journalists as a .pdf file via hushmail. I’ve checked Github, and yes, there were scripts available in March 2014 that would have made automated dissemination of the material trivial using the scenario I described earlier in this thread. By the time of its release, it would have been too late for the PIC to turn back or back down, and had the mission failed in some way, or the PIC had had a change of heart and continued to Beijing turning at IGARI, it would probably have been counted as nothing more than noise amongst the daily signal harvest.
Regarding Captain Shah, it is pretty evident that the man was a hacker, in the old, true sense of the word – someone with a driving interest in technology, and a burning fascination with how things work beneath the hood. That was, technically, no mean self-built home flight-sim.
And whoever disappeared MH370 into that moonless night understood the three golden rules of hacking – the Seven ‘P’s, KISS and CYA.
@ROB
You say ‘Sir Leslie Colin Patterson’ like it’s a bad thing 🙂
P.S. Are VHF and UHF RX antenna feeds easily accessible from a 777s cockpit? Is this what you’re getting at, Olekandr?
@Jeff Wise
Bringing those two planes down would be completely unnecessary to Putin in demonstrating his power.
He allready demonstrated it sufficiently by anexating Crimenia á la Hitler did anexate Sudetenland.
Now he is helping dictator Assad á la Hitler helped Franco. Creating another Guernica by bombing Aleppo.
I just cann’t imagine Putin/Russia has been ordening specificcaly the downing of MH17, MH370 or any commercial airliner just to demonstrate some kind of power.
They demonstrated that allready on a far higher level as stated.
It would be a very foolish thing to do IMO.
But I agree that’s no reason not to look at this slightest possibility that Russians/Ukrainians where involved in the disappearing of MH370.
@Stendec
On the contrary, Sir Les Patterson is one of my heroes. The cultural attaché to top all cultural attachés 🙂
@Stendec
I am focus on the China Martyr Brigade email and wondering, strictly as a hypothetical, if Z/hijacker could have sent that from MH370 just before the FMT, at that point knowing the apparent plot (to disappear into SIO) was working. Perhaps this explains why the SDU was rebooted to get email access.
Of course yes the email could have been pre-scheduled before the flight, in that case, perhaps a signal from the plane or accomplice could have stopped the email if the plot failed.
@ROB
Thank you re: ELB…I am assuming it can be turned off at the ELB unit itself before the flight, from listening to CNN during the incident. Thus if true all theories about mechanical issues, etc. make the assumption the ELB was armed but failed as part of their explanation.
@Broken Ridge Pin Position
Courtesy Mike Chillit, looks like Dong has set anchor close to the Broken Ridge Trench at about 32S and Arc7 perhaps planning to send the underwater search machine down to check out debris previously seen
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CvgT9zmUAAA2vAa.jpg:large
”@Gysbreght, What Russia has gained is a sense among its Western counterparts that is a powerful and dangerous force, not to be tangled with lightly.”’
Russia was (is) always considered as the second most powerful army in the world after the US.
@ir1907, Noone has ever won a war against Russia, ever. Europe’s savior was Germany attacking Russia and thinking they would get away with t. The 2 Ukranians on the flight are the only 2 PAX that are fishy if you ask me. Lumberjack and his mate the furniture maker. Pro Russian Ukranians. Food for thought.
@Stendec @TBill
The first ones that knew MH370 was on a roque-flight and had disappeared in the early hours of March 8 where the Malaysian military and government.
If they had something to cover-up (which there are indications of) they are the ones IMO who were able and had a motive to send a statement like that into the world this soon.
In an effort to put the blame on others or at least create confusion.
By the way interesting Dong has set anchor at 32S. Hope they are searching there.
Broken Ridge is still my No.1 location fitting the motive of vanishing without leaving the least evidence of who was responsible.
The Dordrecht Hole would be ideal for this sake but it’s probably too far east.
Unless it was a great-circle route to McMurdo which would pass straight over the Dordrecht Hole.
@TBill
email/remote device disabling is merely adding a whole new layer of complexity and possible detection into the mix – one more stream of packets to analyse, one more thing that could go wrong. I *theorise* that the maildrop may have been used more as a diversion than a genuine statement of motive. I believe whoever did this was totally committed to a single-minded plan from the moment the wheels left the ground, never to return.
I’d just like to quote this excerpt from the CMB mailshot:
“Here I would like to declare that Malaysia Airlines takes no responsibility in this incident. The airplane has no technical problems and pilots made no fault operation.”
Insurance? Face?
@ROB
Indeed. Sir Les was the very epitome of Antipodean Arête. A great shame he wasn’t bought out of retirement to head the investigative negotiations – he’d have got the truth out of the bludgers!
@Stendec,
Who is the author of this email? Is it a certain Mr. B?
@TBill
To add. Also the drifter based drift analysis would fit this latitude very good and the flaperon barnacle growth variation also IMO.
Still await more conclusive information on those barnacles and also on the outboard flap(s).
There is still no conclusive anwser by Boeing (or the ATSB) if it was deployed or retracted.
@Ge Rijn
My guess is that if the flap were retracted we would have heard about it. A deployed flap does not play well with the ATSB narrative.
Likewise the bioforensics are not something the Aussies are keen to talk about.
@Normand
It is from the March 9th Chinese Martyr’s Brigade press release claiming responsibility for the disappearance of MH370.
As to who the actual author may be, I now suspect the PIC.
@Ge Rijn
I can see your point, but the way it was disseminated to selected Chinese journalists, remains eerily prescient over two years later, and wrapped up in a nice .pdf sent via hushmail makes me think it may have been pre-written before the event by somebody competent rather than reactive.
@Stendec,
Thank’s for the info.
Do you know the region of china the mail come from?
@Stendec,
PIC mean?
Not familar for me.
wow, just experienced redis cache err here propagated to downloaded message: failed to authenticate to redis ERR max number of clients reached; interesting
dalajlama mentions 7bln people and compasion, FYI Jeff
@Normand
PIC stands for (P)ilot (I)n (C)ommand.
@Normand
Greetings. PIC is pilot in command.
Google Captain Zaharie Armad Shah, images, select the selfie closeup of his face, and look into his eyes. You are looking into the eyes of the PIC.
Regarding the “massive coincidence” that incident commences at hand-off. Can we pause to consider what else might be occurring around that time?
a) top of climb ~15 mins prior
b) first turn at altitude
c) galley activity [what was the typical refreshments/meal routine on MAS red-eye flight?]
d) changing frequency
e) other changes?
Could any of these conceivably be the trigger for a cascading event?
Somewhere I read about the business class galley being situated directly above E/E bay and there being no protection from spills above. Possible that our e/e bay incident commenced with short-circuits arising from a spill?
@Rob,
I’m photograph and a pic for me related to picture….not so far.
If you want the real culprit of this event, look on the eyes of each crew member, only one is suspicious and this is not the Captain or Fariq. This is the one entering in cockpit at 1:05 with the hijacker.
@JeffWise
–“….he intended to fly into the SIO to the point of fuel exhaustion and then fly quasi-aerobatic maneuvers. Which is really, really bizarre. It might well explain those 0:19 BFO values, though.”
Sure it’s bizarre. Taking 238 others with you on a death trip is beyond bizarre. What is not bizarre is the notion of a high speed dive at the point of fuel exhaustion.
The 7.5 hour suicide trip is long enough. At the end, I find it illogical to think a human being would choose a death that is anything other than quick and painless. The way to achieve this is to hit the water has hard and as vertical as possible. The shrapnel-sized debris support this theory, especially the torn-up section of vertical tail found in Mozambique. As does the Reunion flaperon, which I believe detached in an over-G/flutter dive, along with the other exclusively-trailing-edge pieces that have been recovered.
I don’t find it coincidental at all that the reasonably intact pieces have been trailing-edge-related, while the shrapnel-sized piece is clearly from the leading edge of a surface that would have impacted the water with a force of 130-150Gs.
I’m working behind the scenes to ascertain what Metron/Larry Stone have been doing the last two years. Regardless, I do reiterate my call to mimic the AF447 investigation where, after months of fruitless searching, their help was sought, leading to a successful outcome.
@Normand
PIC = Person In Control (of Aircraft). Either by stick, or coercion.
The Chinese Martyr’s Brigade’s (only?) press release was posted to Chinese journalists via a service called hushmail: rather like an encrypted version of hotmail. To the journalists, the message would have come from hushmail’s servers.
Professional travellers in South-East Asia are very good at using tools called VPN’s and Tor, amongst other things – they have to be, because, when connected to an hotel’s wifi, their credit card details could be cloned or otherwise stolen when they order a pizza, and an unflattering Facebook post about a nation’s government or royal family could land them in jail.
Using these tools and certain techniques – which can be automated – as far as hushmail is concerned, you could be a smartphone hidden inside a shoebox in Penang, while the email actually appears to be coming from Albania – or Kuala Lumpur. So it would be very hard to tell where the email originally came from.
The PIC could have, quite easily if they were skilled at using computers in countries with governments that were always oppressive and often brutal against political dissidents, set a timer on this press release on a smartphone or other computer. If they had had years of flying experience on the 777 and extensive private training on a pretty advanced flight simulator, they would, having looked at the weather, had a reasonable chance of guessing where the plane would be at that given time, bar unexpected delays at the airport or getting bumped by interceptors.
@Oleksandr
I never knew until today that the onboard EPI was on the same freq as the Aircraft Emergency Frequency… Left bus off, radios off, correct? having 121.5 available on a laptop would certainly be a useful early warning system whilst bombing down the straights…
@Matt Moriarty, You wrote, “At the end, I find it illogical to think a human being would choose a death that is anything other than quick and painless.” That’s exactly right. Yet what the Zaharie’s flight sim hard drive recorded was not a steep fatal dive but two separate climbs — apparently executed by a person who was experimenting with sharp aerodynamic stalls.
Stendec,
My primary interest is whether it was possible to monitor incoming attempts to communicate at 121.5 MHz using some consumer-grade device such as a cellphone.
B777 has 3 VHF antennas, visible as “protruding fins” in any B777 picture you can find in the inet: 2 on the top centerline (VHF-L and VHF-C) and 1 on the belly (VHF-R). It also has 1 HF antenna embedded into the tail. In my understanding these antennas are connected by independent coaxial cables to the electronics in the EE-Bay.
If the left bus is off, then only VHF-R and SDU are off.
@Jeff
It is possible, and in my view likely, that Shah was not even watching the simulator at the time the last two data points were logged.
If no one was actively controlling the sim how do these points get saved or for that matter how are any points saved ?
@Jeff:
I recognise there is a huge coincidence factor between mh370 and mh17 — I have stated that myself earlier. To me that gives indication in the direction of a kind of showdown between agents onboard mh370, although I am blushing some while suggesting that. There is eleven flying hours between Kiev/Crimea and Kuala Lumpur, and the plane was going to Beijing, so the connection will require a couple of sequences of “one thing leads to another”, although not unimaginable to me. Perhaps one should ask pretty staightforwardly: why were the two Ukrainian (citizen) passengers going to Beijing, and who wanted to stop them from going there (I don’t know who they were, but think I heard they fitted the model of spec.ops. guys of some kind)?
Hybrid warfare is in one sense simply a name for how (global) conflict and international exchange is working today, or is regarded as working. Nothing much has necessarily changed regarding geopolitics in the main. Sometimes secrecy doesn’t hide an aggression but something being forsaken or forgone. Pulling out or losing out will also require “hybrid warfare”, i.e. propaganda, and also astroturfing will work both ways: pretending you are coming to their defence while you are really pulling back. “Hybrid warfare” is after all to a large extent about not actually having to (wanting to, or being able to) go to war yourself. That might be something to keep in mind. Anyone who cares to look more than once will see that the Russian annexation of Crimea is not “expansionist” but first of all comes as result of contraction. But you still have to sell everything in, to all camps and tastes and interests and opinions. You will have to make a virtue of a necessity. So a follow-up question might be: how do the Russians in (remaining) Ukraine feel about being abandoned by Russia, as they seem to be?
Russia to me is struggling to “normalise”, and downing airliners is not a kind of war you want to escalate (Russians have been good at doing that to themselves for decades, btw), and their growing middle class won’t like to hear of things like that. I mean, if they did it, they did it for someone to know about it, right? And then there is nothing stopping Russian domestic or international flights from falling out of the sky, and everyone would blame the same drunken pilots. Nah, I am in that case more into someone trying to throw Russia into war over parts of eastern Ukraine (having them at least occupying the crash area in their own best interest) or some fight between opposed Crimean interests (some people will necessarily have lost a lot of money and property there (without being given much warning) and been trying to take some of it abroad).
Spoofing (as it happened) has no proportions to it. I believe generally it is hard to get people (outside the jihadist lot) to go to their daily work (as their livelihood) planning for the killing of 239 people (of course their will be exceptions). People kill while trying desperately to stay alive themselves, otherwise they prefer football or discussions groups.
I have nothing against patriotism…
@Jeff
Maybe testing the envelope for various exit manoeuvres, or just practising stunts he might need earlier in the flight if pursued? Sure seemed to have an affinity with the deep SIO.
I remember the CMBs claim hitting the news briefly just after the disappearance, yesterday was the first time (I’m pretty sure) I’d read the whole piece. Wow.
Whoever wrote it sounded pretty damn sure what was about to go down, I’ll give them that. Will never be found… A big claim, so early on in the search. And nothing was, for over a year.
Making claims right after the terrorist event has gone out of fashion; they like to leave it longer, these days, or say nothing at all until the operatives have been busted. Causes more fear and uncertainty.
It didn’t read as particularly Islamist – more as a political tract laced with recent news, gloating and Sinophobia, almost as if it was saying > this way. Didn’t seem as formal as you’d expect. I don’t think there were any direct quotations from the Koran, though I could be wrong. I also noticed the writer divided passengers and in/out groups by nationality rather than religion: I’d say the writer had a fairly secular mentality.
As for the bit absolving the airline, and especially the pilots from blame or responsibility, well… Google Christine Keeler for her most famous quote. It all seemed directed against the *State*.
Someone earlier on this thread said that, to their eye, it looked like an English speaker trying to sound Chinese.
It’s either one of the most prescient hoaxes since Gulliver’s Travels (any Astronomer can tell you why), or the person who wrote it flew it. I’m actually leaning towards the latter.
Ge Rijn,
“But I agree that’s no reason not to look at this slightest possibility that Russians/Ukrainians where involved in the disappearing of MH370.”
The most funny thing about the absurd theory proposed by Jeff is that you can substitute Russians/Ukrainians with any other nation you wish: US, Chinese, Malaysian, French, Iranians, Indian, etc. – whatever you like. You will not lose any credibility if you propose French->Syria->ISIS link on the basis of the presence of French passport-holders onboard: France is very low-ranked in terms of the security. The USA is a lot better candidate than Russia: Diego Garcia (hijackers would need to spoof BTO, which is relatively easy because DG is almost exactly ‘under’ Inmarsat satellite, and it is restricted area); the plane parts were primarily manufactured in the States; cool relationship between China and the USA; geopolitical interest in promoting “democracy” in Malaysia; etc. You can also propose India – relatives of Indian politicians, who coincidently died in the aircrash, were onboard, and proximity to Car Nicobar with its prison next to the Port Blair runway… Whatever your phantasy is able to offer.
Just blah after a glass of wine…
@Jeff Wise: “Yet what the Zaharie’s flight sim hard drive recorded was not a steep fatal dive but two separate climbs — apparently executed by a person who was experimenting with sharp aerodynamic stalls.”
As I see it, he simply wanted to know what happens when you have a dual flame-out during climb. That condition doesn’t necessarily result in a stall, particularly if the pilot responds correctly to the autopilot disconnecting. He investigated that methodically, once near top of climb, and once near minimum altitude. 4000 ft is really quite low for testing anything close to stall, so he naturally didn’t do that over land. It’s difficult to see any relation between that testing and MH370’s End-of-Flight scenario.