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.
@Dennis W.
Touche. I knew I’d get a rise. Even if I don’t have an acute accent on my keyboard.
Now, where is this bomb-proof evidence of the FO phone connect, pray tell. Or is this just Dennis W private intel?
And @Dennis W, since you are clearly a man with some expert knowledge of the field…
– let’s assume FO’s phone is on a GSM network
– what a/c speed and altitude would you make that for a GSM cell-phone tower connect, however transient?
– how does that possibly fit with the “radar data” that you seem to be so confident in?
– and finally, since your service provider metadata would give you a pretty good radial distance from tower, using BTO – this time with added adaptive frame alignment – why was such critical factual information corroborating a Penang fly-by not included in the report.
Just askin’
Dennis,
“The SDU reboot question affects all scenarios equally”.
Of course not. Not talking about the coincidence in question: you need to differentiate between the reboot itself and its timing, perfectly coinciding with the disapperence. Here I agree with Jeff’s “It is something that basically never happens on its own”.
—–
Jeff,
“…so is strongly counterindicative of an accidental cause.”
Exactly opposite is true if you mean a mechanical failure. In fact a number of manuals, including the one I cited yesterday, suggest power restoration, e.g. “Restore unpowered items at the Captain’s discretion” (extract from section 8.7).
@Paul S.
Re: phone connect
Yes, it is private intel.
Unlike Inmarsat, cell towers and the network do not log the equivalent of BFO and BTO. All they log is subscriber identity and time (and possibly sector depending on the base station).
The fact that a “registration” was made was debated here some time ago. I was advocating that the physics supported the possibility. Some others here cited the anecdotal report on the WEB by a couple of farmers in Ohio who went up in one of their private planes, and were unable to call their wives. Of course, registering on a tower and completing a call are two entirely different things. In any case the farmer’s arguments held sway here so can climb on board that wave.
It may seem odd that farmers would have private planes, but the local rice farmers here in Cali are pulling in $600 a year per acre net of costs. Multiply that by a 1000 acres and you can understand why I considered getting in the well drilling business.
@PaulSmithson, DennisW, It’s been claimed that the cellphone connection story is verified in the 1,000-page Royal Malaysian Police report, but given the manipulation carried out by the selective release of information from that document so far, I prefer to remain agnostic as to its credibility.
Re no BTO on GSM do you “know” that or you are merely asserting it? Do a quick google on burst timing control in GSM networks.
With known limits to doppler and range (due to very narrow guard times on the frames), you should be able to work out max range (35-37km?) and relative velocity (haven’t looked this one up and haven’t done the trig for closing speed a/c-tower).
From 10km up (very poor signal strength going up as opposed to sideways) and a/c ground speed ~500kt, you’ll surprise me if you can demonstrate that phone connect on a GSM network is even physically possible, let alone likely.
TBill wrote, “… nobody is taking Boeing to court because MH370 does not appear to be an aircraft issue.”
Do not underestimate the creativity of lawyers.
http://cookcountyrecord.com/stories/510699715-cook-county-lawsuits-boeing-should-be-liable-pay-victims-families-for-malaysian-airlines-flight-370-disappearance
“Boeing has been hit with a flurry of lawsuits in Cook County court from family members and estate representatives for passengers aboard Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, asserting, while no one has yet learned why or even where the aircraft crashed after it disappeared over the Indian Ocean two years ago, the aircraft manufacturer should be held accountable for the presumed deaths of those on board the ill-fated flight.”
“The lawsuits cited a report from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau which, they said, indicated ‘the most likely cause of the disappearance and crash of Flight MH370 was a massive and cascading sequence of electrical failures onboard the Boeing Airplane.'”
Sound like Simon Gunson wrote the complaint.
@Paul S
IMO, the only place for phone connection with tower is when mh370 pass along the beach of Kota Barhu at 3000 feets altitude. Never flight over Penang.
ok, dennis – i’ll concede on brief reflection that on brief that it is just about possible – range sqrt[200km] at an elevation of 45 degrees and velocity in the a/c to tower vector of zero at a tangent.
if your “private intel” is more than hearsay, that makes another person who has seen the 1000p report [or more of it] and isn’t letting on 😉
@Paul S
The question is whether that data (slot timing) is logged, not how the protocol works.
Your aversion of Doppler is once again manifesting itself. A plane passing by a base station has virtually zero Doppler shift when the velocity vector of the aircraft is orthogonal to the unit vector in the direction of the base station.
The only issues are the vertical antenna pattern of the base station and the range to the base station.
@sk999, LOL.
@Jeff et al.:
I can hardly connect my cellphone to the internet in my own bathroom, so the FO’s longshot sounds like embedded marketing to me. Was any Asian brand cellphone company an official sponsor of the MVP report by any chance?
Don’t answer that…
@Jeff
SK999 did not mention that I am about to file a class action lawsuit on behalf of all the bloggers who have been driven to the brink of insanity wading through the thousands of posts about how an autopilot works.
@sk999
You got me there, re: MH370 law suits…what I really feel is that there seems to be tacit agreement among the international community that we are not searching for some unknown mechanical weakness in a B777 due to this incident. Rather intentional diversion is apparent cause, not proven, but suspected.
@TBill
it is not a matter of fact. It is about deep pockets, and how the legal system works. Glock was sued recently by some Los Angeles cop when his three year son old shot him with his service semi-auto. The suit claimed Glock was negligent by not having a manual safety or a grip safety. Glock settles these cases (usually brought by LEO’s who shoot themselves in the leg – commonly known as Glock leg) out of court for $10k or $20k frivolous as they are.
My annoyance is with the ATSB for throwing Boeing under the bus while ignoring the (active) negligence and complicity of their Malay buddies.
BTW, I do love my Glocks.
@TBill and @Jeff:
That should perhaps not necessarily be frowned upon since international insurance covenants make formal judicial behaviour very instrumentalised. There are, if I remember correctly, time limits for certain claims, and they need to be filed in the (U.S.) state of the manufacturer, in this case. Otherwise pax complaints will automatically (or so) fall under the “Montréal convention” (and you can all hear how that sounds), with peanuts to be paid in decades time. So these will be generalized “as if”-filings waiting to be activated if the plane is eventually found and Boeing actually found to be responsible. One of the bottom principles behind this is of course that if Boeing actually was guilty, and knew that perfectly well, and even where the plane was to be found, it might just be that they wouldn’t exactly rush to tell anyone about that before the time-limits expired. And they would probably have better means than most world states to actively slow up or disturb the process of ever finding the plane. And there will be other companies less “self-preserving” (professionally) than Boeing in the world.
@Tbill, @sk999:
I apologize for mixing you guys up. You noticed that.
@sk999:
Your nick is the last slot that Scandinavian Airlines uses for flights to China. I am not sure it is in use but I noticed a SK998 between Shanghai and Copenhagen. A coincidence?
Johan,
Regarding my “nick” and Scandinavian, pure coincidence. Just remember, when you pronounce it, the 9’s are silent.
@sk999:
That would be the next guess. There’s a lot of S.K.’s out there?
I hope you don’t need to retire that nick….:-)
I tried for a “strategic” interpretation of the SDU reboot not too long ago that I will hereby update in accordance with my recent efforts concerning the point of going dark. It is under conditions as before and limited to a “psychological-strategic” dimension: the reboot is obviously not conducted to camouflage the change of direction (for post-event analysts), since an incoming call thus made possible would destroy that aspiration. Instead the logic is apparently the opposite: the reboot is made when out of reach of radar and more importantly, pursuing fighter jets (my hypothesis) in real-time. When the reboot is made but no one picks up an incoming call the plane might be designated “rogue” and countries in the extension of the path the plane follows might have to be alerted (which effectively is camouflage of the turn in real-time after all). The reboot is also made for the perp to be able to ascertain if ground believes (in real-time) him to have perished already at Igari (no incoming calls) or if they have seen him on the way across the peninsula but believed him to be a known aircraft in distress — i.e. if HCM reported back that he didn’t sign on (few incoming calls), or if they have seen him and regarded him/ switched to regarding him as hostile/rogue (many incoming calls, perhaps through different channels?). He may thus adapt his choice of path/ position / time for FMT in accordance to his estimate of how they perceive him during a stretch of time. The FMT and the end of the Journey might thus be conditioned by if he believed ground to be “on to him” at that moment (keep off India, go further away from Australia, turn sooner or later etc.). Last but not least the reboot is thus also made to signal to ground that he is still in the air (but out of reach, one step ahead), and make it possible for post-event analytics to see, step by step, how far he managed to go, for how long he stayed in the air and roughly the direction he chose. The reboot signals in a sense that he is out of reach and that he “got away with it” at the same time as it allowes him to plan for his own demise. What was it, two incoming calls? I would continue until loss of fuel, as if it were a ghost flight.
Continued:
The calls were made very late weren’t they? I would make FMT as early as possible outside Indonesian radar / fighter jet capabilities, and sit by the controls and make a turn away from inhabitated areas after each incoming call. Does that make sense?
@DennisW, @Paul S, On cell phone coverage 🙂 I can confirm that whilst flying over Iceland at +FL350 (sans glocks), I have received text messages from my cell phone provider, welcoming me to Reykjavik. I would see these messages as I deplaned at JFK and realised I forgot to switch my cell phone off. So it is possible, even at very high altitudes.Thanks for the heads up on farmers. Will tell need to trade in my old model husband for a newer model with an aircraft:).
@Jeff Wise
Jeff take a look and tell me what you think…
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0BOkIyn7Fd_emtxMFlLa2xVVU0
@Johan
Your last several posts are excellent in my view. Believe it lays down a possible good explanation for how and why things happened from IGARI all the way out to SDU reboot.
@Johan, @TBill, Would a rogue pilot have needed to reboot the SDU? For what purpose? If what Dennis says is correct that Fariq’s cellphone tried to connect over Penang, we still don’t really know if it was Fariq making that attempt. Could have been anyone using his phone, especially if he left it on the flight deck. Perhaps rebooting the SDU was necessary to try and make a a call or receive one? But then Inmarsat would have reported this, I am assuming. It is a critical piece in this enigma, IMO.
@Kefferje
Re: Cell Phone- Assuming it happened, my understanding is it could simply mean Fariq’s phone was powered on. Was he making call? Had he tried to make a call earlier, so the phone was on at that point? Had he simply never turned off his phone at start of the flight? In any case if true it is an interesting clue to suggest MH370 went close to Penang.
@Keffertje
A phone will register just by virtue of being in the “on” state. It does not require someone to initiate a call attempt. However, given the environment, my assumption is that it was being used near a window, but perhaps not.
@DennisW, If it helps, I always sit by the window :). I left my cell on that 1 time. Thought it was amazing though, getting that message at over FL350.
@TBill, Yes, there is a lot we don’t know. The 1 attempt is all there is to go by (if it is correct) and we don’t even have a time stamp on it either. For all we know, Fariq had been trying feverishly as of the turn at Igari and had just that 1 brief connection over Penang.
I think MAS boss Hugh Dunleavy’s interview with the Evening Standard in June 2014 is still one on the most interesting pieces extant regarding the night MH370 disappeared:
“My first thought was that the pilot had fallen asleep, or something had gone wrong with the communication system,” he says. “We had five other aircraft in the sky nearby, so our senior pilots started contacting them, asking if they’d seen MH370, getting them to ping it. But we got no response.”
Three months since that plane and its 239 passengers and crew went missing, there’s still no trace. “Something untoward happened to that plane. I think it made a turn to come back, then a sequence of events overtook it, and it was unable to return to base. I believe it’s somewhere in the south Indian Ocean. But when [a plane] hits the ocean it’s like hitting concrete. The wreckage could be spread over a big area. And there are mountains and canyons in that ocean. I think it could take a really long time to find. We’re talking decades.”
Dunleavy replays the early hours of response, wondering what could have been different. “People say, ‘Why didn’t you work quicker?’ But you’re calling pilots, explaining the situation, waiting for them to send out pings, doing the same to the next plane, then the next, and it’s four in the morning, you don’t have 50 people in the office, only a couple. An hour goes by frighteningly quickly — you realise that the missing plane is now another 600 miles somewhere else.”
Then there was the “frightening speed at which false information was coming in — after only an hour in the control room, rumours were coming in on social media. ‘Your plane has landed in Nanning, China’. ‘It’s in the airport of an island near Borneo’. You’ve got to follow up, calling your local people, getting them out of bed to find up someone who worked at the airports — mostly remote places, not 24-hour operations — to check if the plane was there. We lost an hour just on that Nanning rumour.”
Finding an AWOL plane wasn’t a priority for international air traffic controllers. “We were calling, but they’ve got other planes in the air; they’re saying, ‘Your plane never entered my air space, so technically I don’t have to worry about it at the moment’. They’re not dropping everything to answer us.”
http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/the-plane-truth-malaysia-airlines-boss-hugh-dunleavy-on-what-really-happened-the-night-flight-mh370-9556444.html
@PhilD, Thank you for posting that! His 1st thought was that the pilot had fallen asleep. That is hilarious. Imagine how often that must happen for him to actually say that. I need to seriously find myself a new means of transportation 🙂
If he did fall asleep perhaps he was given a sleeping drug… maybe both pilots were asleep from this consumption.
@PhilD, When KL ATC said goodnight MH370, he must have literally meant it. I think the ghostflight scenario is back on the table 🙂
@Crobbie
Most ANNUNCIATED non-normal checklists contain no ATC items because they’re there to help you deal with the airplane and its equipment. Within the trio-of-survival, “Aviate, Navigate, Communicate,” ATC is the last priority. I’m looking, for example, at the one for “LOW HYD PRES L,C,R” and there’s no ATC item. Ditto “DUAL ENGINE FAILURE” which I’ve never experienced myself but it sounds pretty bad and there’s no ATC item.
Non-normal FLIGHT PHASE checklists do tend to have ATC items. DITCHING, for example, has “send distress signal” as item number 1 because by the time you’ve gotten to the point of ditching, you’ve exhausted all your “fix the problem” options.
Mick Gilbert relying on that to explain the lack of a distress call is both weak and amateurish. He kind of reminds me of Chris Goodfellow, only he’s spent more time on Google and has a better grasp of the language. Regardless, Gilbert’s “windshield” theory is an utterly preposterous waste of time. Beyond preposterous. Is absurd worse than preposterous? Whatever word is more grossly ridiculous than preposterous.
1) Let’s start with the halfway forgivable stuff. He’s got the order of events exactly backwards. To wit: At the onset of a “windshield heater fire,” “…the Captain would have…ordered a diversion to…290 [which is wrong, it’s 240]…to Penang.” THEN…he writes “The oxygenation of the flight deck would cause the fire to flare, tripping the transponder circuit breaker…”
The XPDR went dark PRIOR to the turn. So it doesn’t fit what we know to say that a “smell or smoke or fire” caused an immediate turn and the “flaring up” of the fire popped the XPDR breaker. The XPDR went off a full minute before any turn was recorded.
This paints a scenario in which a fire raged hot enough to pop breakers in the overhead panel through heat alone (??) – and, hmmm, somehow focused itself first on the XPDR breaker when it is surrounded by dozens of others – for a full minute (plus whatever period of smoke/odor existed prior to the actual fire) before a turn/desent was initiated.
Not only does it defy logic and defy the known timeline of events, he doesn’t appear to grasp that he’s confounded his own scenario before it even left the gate.
2) Failed windshield? A fully failed (meaning shattered) windshield in high altitude cruise is instantaneous death to anyone on the flight deck and, most likely, impending doom to the structure of the fuselage itself. Not exactly conducive to flying another 6 hours.
There are blowout panels with aneroid latching mechanisms either in or surrounding the cockpit doors in the event of a cockpit-only depressurization, but they’re designed to vent pressure INTO the cockpit. When you add the notion of a sustained pressure of 250lb/sq/ft (which is roughly the dynamic pressure at that altitude at that speed on a standard day and I’m being charitable – at M0.84 I could quote compressible pressure, which is 300b/sq/ft) against the door itself (which opens inward toward the pilots for the depressurization reasons I just mentioned), I don’t see how the fuselage doesn’t rupture somewhere near that bulkhead. If it didn’t rupture, it’s probably because the bulkhead caved and the door got blown backwards into the cabin, but even then I put the chance of it doing so without further damaging the fuselage (either at the cockpit ribs or anywhere aft of that where the door might have impacted at 300 knots) at something pretty near zero.
Even if I’m wrong about the structural thing (which I could be) you still have to account for multiple turns made after the windshield blew, which brings me to…
3) They’d have to “brave the cold and the noise” to get back into the cockpit?
Seriously?
Brave the cold and the noise?
For real?
Ever seen a human being in a 50knot wind? You can’t even stand up. Multiply that by 6. Anyone not belted in would be splattered against the aft lavatory door. And what about the food carts? The coffee carafe? Some dude’s iPad? The 15lb fire extinguisher our heroic pilot had just been using? Not one of those items damaged the fuselage in a way that would prevent 6 more hours of flying? Please.
The PBE Gilbert loves to talk about? It would become a permanent part of your skull if it wasn’t ripped off (which of course it would have been) and when it is ripped off it becomes a permanent part of the guy in 12C. And then you can’t breathe, so the particular efficacy of “this type” or “that type” of mask is pretty much irrelevant.
And the cold? It’s -45C at FL350 on 08 Mar 2014. I tried finding a calculator for the wind chill at that temp and none of them went above 95 knots. Imagine the wind chill at -45C and 290 knots. Exposed flesh is frozen solid in a second or two.
And the noise? Is that a joke? How do you hear anything when your eardrums are frozen solid?
4) “Steering clear of populated areas?” Please stop. A frozen pilot pulls a giant North Face parka out of an overhead bin, claws himself into the cockpit against a 300 knot wind, holding his breath the whole time because his PBE got blown into the aft lavatory (and by the way if he opened his mouth, his cheeks would rip apart) and points his frozen eyeballs down into the darkness and says “Let’s not crash into a populated area!” So he makes a right turn up the Strait with the…what…the yoke? The melted HDG knob? Identifying VPG on a melted nav screen? With frozen hands? With nothing more than his will to live?
We’ll never know until the Tom Cruise version hits the big screen, huh?
5) It crashed 695km north of the current search area?
Right! Because Gilbert has range charts somewhere that allow for highly accurate range calculations with a missing windshield.
Now I’m truly impressed.
@Matt Moriarty
It happened before on lower altitude (no fire but windshield blow-out) but reading it again you must be right. The whole unfolding scenario with a cockpit-fire on that altitude and those speeds can make no sence.
But in this case everyone survived. Even the pilot who was sucked out of the plane:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_5390
@Matt M, You are truly hilarious 🙂 Tears are streaming down my face. Gilbert goes to the wacko category! Sorry, Jeff, I must have mistyped again.
@Matt Moriarty
Absolutely agree 100%, the windscreen theory is totally bonkers. Gilbert is so off the scale, he wouldn’t fit anywhere inside Dennis’ whacko box.
If the windshield has gone, no one is going to be able to fight their way back into the cockpit, unless they were on a set, filming a scene for “Airplane”!
The major, load carrying circuit breakers are located in the EE bay. Only the controlling switches are located in the overhead panel.
It’s still open season in looney land.
@TBill:
Thanks a lot. I noticed some flaws in the presentation but I think the general ideas stands. He used incoming calls (or no calls) as an indication of how he was perceived for the planning the FMT and the final leg and as possible points for additional turns on the way — to make it more difficult to find the plane. I have thus assumed that he knew he could be traced by way of the calls but not (necessarily?) by the handshakes as such. With this logic, he would have assumed he would not have to turn much to end up far from anyone searching (or am I wrong?). A point in this respect: as some herostratic people before him, he may have underrstimated the worldwide interest in the accident and the pace with which all data would be processed, the efforts with which vast masses of seafloor would be searched. His (if it was him) plans were perhaps to remain largelly unfound and thus to attract comparatively little notice, but (partly thanks to the handshakes) his meticulous planning shines through, and what may have attracted himself to the stunt attracts also others, many more than he perhaps counted with. So he may have drawn the wrong conclusion if he assumed the plane’s disappearance (out of reach) would also limit the interest of the observing world. But the pains he took to get there, and the countours of gesture — which attracted him and probably was necessary also for other reasons — were too grand not to draw the world’s full attention.
@PhilD:
Thanks for that article. I think I read it but some are worthy of going back to since you tend to forget the details you’re not interested in at the first encounter.
@Keffertje:
I think I answered some of what you wondered about in my follow-up (need for reboot). This in that case not your ordinary rogue pilot but a pilot playing with the fact that he may be perceived as rogue and will try to conceal that for the afterworld. I liked your idea about the reboot being an attempt at kickstarting the systems in question (by someone sincere in trying to make comm work; could be both a rogue (as above) or non-rogue pilot/person), and will keep a door open for that. The cellphone connect over Penang: I think DennisW is reliable here above, I have nothing to add there.
You are a treasure, by the way.
Meanwhile in troll-land:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-inside-russian-troll-house?CMP=share_btn_fb
@Keffertje:
“Will Tell”, wasn’t he Swiss? :–)
@George Tilton, Are you proposing that the SDU logon/logoff occurred because 9M-MRO was at the edge of the satellite’s coverage area? If so, some problems with that scenario would be that a) apparently this sort of thing doesn’t happen in normal operation, and b) the plane wasn’t at the edge of the satellite’s coverage area, and c) if such were the case, you’d expect the logon attempt to come right after the logoff, not 40 minutes later.
@Matt Moriarty, Classic. Hilarious. Thank you.
@Johan, You wrote, “I have thus assumed that he knew he could be traced by way of the calls but not (necessarily?) by the handshakes as such.” It’s hard to remember how surprised we all were when reports of the Inmarsat pings surfaced in March, 2014. The vast majority of humanity that is not employed as satcomm engineers had never heard of SDUs, BTO, BFO, or hourly pings–and that includes airline pilots. And even satcomm engineers were surprised that such things could be used to locate an aircraft. Thus I don’t think it’s really reasonable to imagine that an airline captain could have rebooted the SDU in order to send some kind of signal.
@Johan, Thank you:). Likewise. The SDU logoff and relogon will remain a question mark, for now. I do not know enough about aircraft to determine how and why that could happen, unless its linked to the onboard IFE system in some way, going off and back on (just 3 minutes). But its doubtful since IFE went off again and SDU stayed up. In the end it could just be a derivative occurrence of other actions taking place.
@Johan, Thank you for using the word “herostratic.”
It would indeed be a subtle criminal, who would seek to become famous by committing the perfect unsolvable crime, which no one would be able to pin on him, but which everyone would assume he committed…
@Jeff:
I am wrong in discriminating between (incoming) satcalls and satellite pings? It is my assumption that the at least appriximate tracing of these was/could have been known by the pilot.
I admit to letting the latter door be parenthically open, but I can close that one any time. Because If he had known about the pings but been unable to control when they appeared (even less likely) all his efforts would be at risk of having been in vain, according to my presented interpretation.
@All
I have taken another look at the debris while my old friend “confirmation bias” was locked in the cellar.
For me, the unavoidable conclusion is that damage is too severe for a controlled ditching. The trailing edge of the right wing, and the right engine pod suffered too heavily in the impact, for the aircraft to have entered the water under pilot control.
The aircraft must have been flying right wing down, nose up, and with a relatively high descent rate, too high for a controlled ditching. The flaps were probably NOT extended, and the RH flaperon was probably in its neutral position. We can tell the fuselage must have been breached close to the door R1 location – there is extensive damage to internal partitions (Items 5 and 16 on the Malaysian MOT list of debris items*)
When the aircraft hit the water, the RH engine cowling was shattered into pieces, the outboard flap was broken off, underside closing panels and flap fairings were shattered: Item 12, provisionally identified as closing panel FB661 is indicative of the kind of damage suffered by wing underside trailing edge components.
The RH flaperon was subjected to a predominately upward force that shattered it’s trailing edge aft of it’s rear spar, and then sheared it off completely and neatly at the two underside hinge points. Most tellingly, as the flaperon was broken away and pushed bodily upwards, it took the 3 flaperon closing/seal panels with it. Two of these panels are among the recovered debris (Items 9 and 15, on the list) If you examine these panels, you notice that the sides having the seals are significantly less damaged than the other sides. These are the sides that would have been abutting (or resting on) the flaperon upper leading edge when the flaperon was pushed upwards and consequently, to an extent, protected.
If the B777 has a basic inherent, built-in stability due to the FBW design, possibly it could have entered the water at this attitude, or perhaps it was beginning to round out from a phugoid?
The bottom line, however, is there appears to have been no one alive at the controls when this happened. Perhaps, the ATSB are right to have assumed this, all along.
*Summary of Possible MH370 Debris Recovered (Updated 14th October 2013)