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.
@Johan, I’m not sure I understand your question, but I think that before MH370 disappeared very few people would have understood that use of the satcom, even for unanswered incomign satphone calls, would generate metadata that could be used for tracking the aircraft.
Also, I’d like to address the comment that a few people have made, to the effect that sophisticated hijackers couldn’t have turned on the SDU in order to generate misleading BFO values, because any incoming satphone call would have generated BFO values that wouldn’t have matched the intended pattern. I don’t agree. Victor Iannello has described a strategy whereby a single value could be changed in the SDU’s log table, such that every frequency adjustment made by the SDU would be off by the correct amount to imply a southern flight when the actual path is to the north.
@Jeff:
In that case I have to retract my hypothesis regarding the reboot. I have no time right now checking on the search for that plane bound to Brazil.
I have thought about the seemingly contradictory notion or a herostratism without a pointed Herostratus, but I have come to the conclusion that it works for me if we accept a blend of more than one rationality and a certain blindness on the part of the perp for how posterity will interpret the event (see through it) that would be disguised as to its intentions. To me, his efforts must most likely be guided first if all by the ambition to save his family (children) from pain and disgrace in all respects. But he would not be satisfied with going down in a way that would be belittleling either. (Like a father who would want acclaim for what is expected of him.) So he misconstrues the rationality behind his ambitions, to fit this idea he has got in his head — that this would be possible to pull through. I would not expect a person who found it legit to murder 238 people to have all his horses home in every aspect. There has to be a blindness on his part to certain aspects of what he was about to pull off, otherwise it would probably have been unbearable. And that would be a weak spot, shining through.
@Jeff Wise
The book reference stated that moving between regional spot beams will trigger a logon.
From the Inmarsat chart IOR appears to have 4 spot beams covering the region.
There is no logoff associated with the move from one spot beam to another.
BTW section 1.3.3.3 gives an explanation of the timing advance we have come to know and love as BTO…
@George Tilton, 9M-MRO was not logged on via spot beams.
I wouldn’t expect that someone as inexpert as the person controlling the airplane after IGARI would be able to pull off a Sully-type ditching. On the other hand, all he needed to do to extend the descent would be to keep the wings approximately level.
@Gysbreght
Yes, interesting thought.
@Gysbreght – only if the ocean was cooperating with waves no higher than than the Hudson’s…
Wonder if ZS’s mFSX had ditching drill exercises with various wave size choices??
I intended to quote from ROB’s post:
“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.”
I would also add that a rooky pilot could be relied on to to pull the nose up as he was about to hit the surface with high vertical speed.
@Gysbreght
“I wouldn’t expect that someone as inexpert as the person controlling the airplane after IGARI would be able to pull off a Sully-type ditching. On the other hand, all he needed to do to extend the descent would be to keep the wings approximately level.”
You state this as a given. That, of course, does not make it so. In fact, I regard it as preposterous.
@DennisW: I didn’t expect otherwise from you.
@all
Please give a bracke to the captain Z. It is not the culprit, IMO. try to take the seat of Z with a gun over you. Your choice was not premeditated but drive by the moment. Z take all under control to flight this big bird safely because it is the most experiment with a 777.
Take the time to look at without suspision over any body
Except a possible hijacker.
With my respect
@Gysbreght
Managing expectations is a good thing.
@DennisW
Come on, cut Gysbreght some slack. He could do with a break right now. 😉
@DennisW: I’m as convinced that ZS didn’t do it as you are that he did. The difference between you and me is that you haven’t offered anything in support of your position for a long time.
@Gysbreght
Nothing new has come up in any regard relative to the MH370 loss. We have been in a static state for about a very long time now.
Additional debris finds are more of a confirming nature than something new. I do regard the groundswell of opinion to move North as positive.
As far as Z in concerned, I think the evidence we have is very compelling. I know you think the sim data points are meaningless. That is our biggest disconnect. I regard them as definitive evidence of Z’s guilt. There is no plausible explanation for how they could have gotten there without premeditation of a diversion. A harmless “joyride” explanation does not work at all for me.
The reality is that there were only two people on the aircraft known to be capable of piloting it, and one of them is simply a non-starter from any perspective.
@DennisW:
How do you reconcile that with your ‘last straw’, ZS’s sim?
ow do you reconcile that with the ‘groundswell’?
@PhilD
The comment I noticed was MAS’s Hugh Dunleavy said the MAS execs assumed the plane diverted in the early hours prior to the scheduled landing time (hmm…why? but excellent assumption). At the same time, MAS was clueless about the military radar tracks until it came out on the news later in the week.
Decades to find plane possibly in the sea mountains, but he believes SIO is the resting place.
@Gysbreght
The Z sim cases all go North, right? from about 20-24S (for the Iannello/Godfrey McMurdo path) down to about 28-29S for some of the Z home cases. But depending on the north/south waypoints he might have used BYRRD/NOBEY etc. you can probably project up to 20S if you wanted to. Furthermore, the Iannello/Godfrey path matches the orig flight data recorder locator pings, which Mike Chillit thinks might have been real pings.
Many have calculated a GW of 210 MT at the 18:22 last radar (MattM’s GW/Fuel at a nearby location is comparable.). That gives 35.6 MT fuel at this checkpoint to be used over the next 5h 55m. The table on page PI.21.5 of the FCOM shows 2800 air miles over 6h 02m using 32.6 MT fuel at LRC for all pressure altitudes 37000 feet and higher. However, these values need to be adjusted somewhat for off conditions. Below are my SWAG at the adjustments. Please input your own values if my guesses are off and/or I omitted any factor:
+1.0 MT fuel because the table is based on GW of 220 MT instead of 210MT
due to net loss due to headwinds
+0.5 MT due to excessive PDA
since calculated range includes descent at descent flow rate vs cruise flow rate (even for just one engine)
for flight of 5h55m vs. 6h02m
for flight of 5h55m vs. 6h02m (or add 38 NM for going faster than LRC?)
+1.0MT fuel due to higher than standard temp’s.
0.0MT for extra fuel burned during the FMT versus straight flight
+0.? MT for FL below 370
This gives a range of 2642 NM that uses 34.5MT fuel. The 1.1MT of fuel remaining might be due to increased PDA or increased distance because it flew faster than LRC.
Now take a map where 1cm = 100 nm and put a pin at 10 NM past MEKAR and also show the 7th arc. Now take a piece of string 26.5 cm long and place one end on the first pin. Place another pin at your position of the FMT (or use a few pins for a gradual turn and/or wrap a few turns around 2 pins for a loiter). The impact point should be at the point where the end of the string crosses the 7th Arc.
PS: I have not yet checcked where this is.
@Paul Smithson (@Oleksandr), (Mick Gilbert, if he ever reads this)
I agree that implosion of the windscreen in a 777 at circa Mach 0.84
indicated would likely lead to structural failure of the airframe.
As to critisim of Gilberts calculated numerical headings, it appears
Matt Moriarty misread that part of the document, and failed to see
or understand the accompanying graphic on page 2.
Some other points regarding statements in the MH370 Research V3.2.pdf;
“As detailed in the Factual Information Report, page 7,
point 9, MH370 flew about 16 kilometres to the north of MEKAR”
Point 9 actually states 10Nm (nautical miles), which equates to about
18.5 km.
Gilbert states that “MH370 almost certainly did not join airway RNAV
Route N571; if it had of, it would have tracked directly to MEKAR to
VAMPI”. He seems to make this conclusion based upon the aircraft not
flying to those waypoints (although they are fly-by waypoints, not
fly-through waypoints) and the previously noted distance to the ‘north
of MEKAR’.
The following Malaysian Air Supplement;
http://aip.dca.gov.my/aip pdf new/AIP SUPP/AIPSUPP 200836.pdf
specifies that aircraft travelling along N571 between GUNIP and IGOGU
may be expected to adopt a separation of up to 20 nautical miles from
the centre line of that air corridor. (I believe, in practice, a much
lesser separation is usually adopted.) Also, aircraft flying westward
along N571, if they adopt a lateral separation, do so to the RIGHT of
the direction of travel, as stated in paragraph 1.9.7.9.3 here;
http://aip.dca.gov.my/aip/AIP2016/html/eAIP/WM-ENR-1.9-en-MS.html#ENR-1.9
“The offset shall be established at a distance of one or two nautical
miles to the right of the centre line relative to the direction of
flight.”
Allowing for a minimum as stated above, and the maximum of 20Nm as
allowed also above, we can reason that Gilberts conclusion of MH370
not joining N571 is not supported by the procedures as specified in
the Malaysian Aeronautical Information Packages (AIP), because 10Nm
is actually within those limits.
(An additional comment could be made here, that a pilot or autopilot
that is aware that the aircraft TCAS is non-functional, may well act
to offset the aircraft from the centre line of an air corridor it is
flying along…)
Gilbert mentions the Golong River, which may be a typo or perhaps it
is the name used in a particular country for that river. I think the
river he is refering to is known in english as the Golok River;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia-Thailand_border
“The Golok River forms the easternmost 95 km stretch of the land
border.”
I had some other points, but I must leave now.
(@OXY – I was just too tired to comment on your document last night,
but you should not think your efforts go un-noticed. Perhaps later..)
@Jeff:
With the risk of appearing silly, I may, I hope, have retracted a little too much a couple of posts ago (being a Saturday and all). Even if a perp thus sketched may not have changed his path after incoming calls, I don’t think it would be completely unlikely for him to have rebooted the SDU to see if and to what extent someone would try to reach him. He could have made someadjustments (as described) based on that. I was of course hoping for a matrix for a new angle of attack, but hopefully something of what I came up with will have some value for further reflection.
It is of course possible that the reboot was nothing but a reboot. But when trying to get under the skin of a possible pilot perp, it is natural to see the reboot reflecting the going dark at the beginning, and that the perp, if a perp, is sending a message to everyone by saying, I will yet again take incoming calls… not. And he is also saying, is he not, that I am here, this is willed? And then turns south.
@Gysbreght
The points on the simulator are merely the terminal points when fuel exhaustion occurred. They were NOT destination points. Iannello and Godrey have a perfectly logical explanation which I am sure you have read. My own version is similar except that the Cocos was the waypoint, and the points on the simulator were merely the result of “overflying” that location rather than “underflying” McMurdo. It is pretty obvious North is the consensus search direction for a number of very good reasons.
I have no idea what you are asking relative to your groundswell query.
TBill: “The Z sim cases all go North, right?”
Perhaps there is some misunderstanding. Jeff’s North is somewhere near Kazakhstan.
@buyerninety
When the Malaysian “investigators” (my italics) say in FI that it flew 16kms to the north of MEKAR, I think they really mean it flew 16kms past MEKAR, before contact was lost. They equated West-northwest, with North. Bless them.
@GeRijn
Yes, vastly different. Half the altitude and with an immediate slowdown/descent by FO. On the ground in 25 mins.
Gilbert’s theory is 25 mins to Penang! Then 45 mins to FMT! Then another 5 hrs? And somehow, with the missing windshield and throttles firewalled to maintain a mach #, the plane still manages the book endurance of a plane with a pristine nose?
@Matt Moriarty
Yes it’s quite different. Still I think you where a bit too harsh on his paper.
Although the unfolding scenario really becomes a candidate for a fantasy film-script the idea of a windshield overheating/starting fire on with the scenario started isn’t totally bullocks IMO to take a closer look at.
And he didn’t do a bad job coming with examples of other 777’s with those problems and giving an interpretation of how the flight after IGARI could have went (.
Forgetting about the imploded windshield, out of control fire and melting circuit breakers etc. a overheating windshield or starting fire there could possibly have lead to the captain isolating the left main bus directly after the pilots put their masks on.
Leading to simultaniously disabling the VHF-radios, transponder and SATCOM.
They could have put a starting windshield fire out with a fire extinguisher (as in examples mentioned).
Possibly leaving some fire damage.
No windshield imploding and so on but possibly not reconnecting the left main bus again to risk another short-cut. Maybe they dared to try this only until 18:25?
Overall I agree it’s all very unlikely. But to put his paper in the garbage-bin as totally not worth any consideration at all is a step too far IMO.
DennisW: “The points on the simulator are merely the terminal points when fuel exhaustion occurred.”
Yes, that much is obvious. Who or what created those points, and for what purpose?
In both cases the airplane was climbing at a rate corresponding to both engines operating at maximum climb thrust, at zero angle of attack, at an airspeed of 200 kt CAS (the minimum safe flight speed), once at 37651 ft and once at 4000 ft altitude.
What relation could there possibly be between those points and a plan to let a B777 intentionally crash with 200+ pax & crew?
@Gysbreght, @DennisW
Lost in translation? I assume when DennisW says north that he means in the SIO, more northerly than the current search area. So Dennis I assume is putting his pin 10S to 25S or so. Somewhere between Freddie’s pin in Java and my pin Broken Ridge @32S.
@Gysbreght
I never believed Z intended to crash, commit suicide, or murder anyone. I think the Cocos (or McMurdo) way point was used after the FMT or even to initiate the FMT as a flight path while awaiting developments. I believe Z intended to land somewhere in Indonesia or Sumatra/Java, but something went wrong. The simulator points were simply the result of walking away to get a beer after he saw how the aircraft responded to the way point. The simulator continued to run until fuel exhaustion and Z was not paying attention to it shortly after the turn South. I believe the intention was to turn Northwest near or before the Cocos for a landing on CI or preferably Sumatra/Java.
@TBill
Yes, my guess best pin is somewhere between 15S and 17S on the 7th arc.
@DennisW- if he wasn’t paying much attention to the sim path to fuel exhaustion, then why were they deleted if he wasn’t so serious about it anyways i.e.: walkaway for a beer.
@DennisW:
That makes sense. But he has seen in 18,000 hrs of operation how the real aircraft ‘responds’ to a waypoint. What did he need to play a computer game for?
As an experienced pilot he would always kept an eye on the fuel remaining, the fuel needed to reach a destination and the required reserves. The FMC would monitor that also and notify a shortage of fuel when he entered a destination. So how could he ignore the “Low Fuel” warning and continue to fuel exhaustion?
@MH
Simply because the points were incriminating. Why leave them there? Think about it. The points telegraphed the direction of the flight path after the Malay peninsula.
correct- why even use a sim for these two points anyways as
he would know very well how the real aircraft ‘responds’ to a waypoint as @Gysbreght puts it. The argument of those waypoints are weak.
@DennisW, Hate to jump on a pig pile, but another problem with your walked-away-and-got-a-beer theory is that the points recorded the aircraft climbing steeply at zero fuel and low speed, which implied that that at the moment of recording someone was practicing a zoom to a sharp stall–at any rate, it didn’t look like something the plane would do by itself as part of a post fuel-exhaustion phugoid.
@DennisW: He not only continued to fuel exhaustion but, as ROB concluded from the debris, let the airplane crash, not even attempting to ditch.
@DennisW
One weakness with the Z/Negotiation theory is the lack of locator beacon upon water impact? Or not? Unless we invoke crash landing without a trace was one tactical option.
@Jeff
It is a toy. Who knows what it does and why it does it relative to detailed flight dynamics. Look, you tossed the sim data in the toilet without any valid logic for doing so, and you are not going to get off the hook for that (nor is Gysbreght). What we know is that the simulator flew to the SIO for no reason that anyone has been able to provide.
@MH
The sim points are real. They are documented. There is no way you can dismiss them. Don’t even try.
There are two statements made during this investigation that will live in infamy:
1> That is the way pilots like to fly airplanes.
2> The simulator data points are among thousands of such points, and are meaningless.
@DennisW: Z is not a likely hijacker.
Just a few days before the disappearance he returned Back from vacationing in Australia that likely take the edge off any premeditated plans especially if that was his retirement destination.
@Johan
What you think is likely is of no relevance to me without elaboration. There is absolutely nothing actionable in your statement. Why even make a statement like that?
@MH
The Australia retirement plan is nothing more than a money laundering exercise.
@Jeff:
A short spoofing follow-up question: would the spoofers in the scenario you sketched above have to be on the plane or could they sit on the ground spoofing?
Wouldn’t there be easier and cheaper and less work-related-injury-prone, and less incriminating ways to get hold of an airplane? Leasing? And who tidied away 235 bodies and whatever they left behind?
Because Z does not fit any hijack profile.
The investigators have been through this thoroughly many times.
@DennisW : re “The Australia retirement plan is nothing more than a money laundering exercise.”
What proof do you have ??
@MH
I have thought about it myself and investigated it thoroughly relative to paying outrageous taxes in the US. Turns out Chile, Argentina, New Zealand, and Australia are absolutely prime candidates. If I did not have a daughter and grandchildren that I love in the US, I would have been out of this shit hole a decade ago.
Chile was my first choice, BTW.
It won’t get any better under Hillary.
@Trond
Investigators? Are you serious?
What would a normal “flyover” look like at IGARI? Rather than speculate on possible tracks and bank angles, I instead searched through the Flightaware logs for the past two weeks for flights of MH360 (the current MAS flight number flying Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.) The route of the flight on October 16 matches the planned route of MH370 quite closely. It approached IGARI on a ground track of 25 degrees, then turned right, missing IGARI by about 1.2 nm before heading off to BITOD on a ground track of 59 degrees. It took roughly 2 minutes to make the turn – a leisurely rate of 0.32 degrees per second. It should be noted that the flight was performed by an Airbus A330.
Would a Boeing 777 make the same leisurely turn? I don’t know, but just to check, I used Flightaware to locate a B777-200 flight at cruise altitude (35,000 feet) in the process of making a turn. It turned at a more spritely rate of 0.48 deg/sec. I will use this higher rate in the analysis that follows – the exact value does not matter.
At 0.48 deg/sec, it would take MH370 ~71 seconds to turn from 25 to 59 degrees. Thus it would commence the turn 35 seconds before passing IGARI. Taking the time of IGARI passage as 17:20:31, the turn would have started at 17:19:56.
The last pre-IGARI FR24 data point – taken from Paul Sladen’s “pinned” dataset at https://github.com/sladen/inmarsat-9m-mro/tree/master/ads-b – was at 17:20:18 – 13 seconds before reaching IGARI. The plane should have been on a heading of 36 degrees at that time. Instead, the heading was 28 degrees. It is off by 8 degrees.
How accurate is the 17:20:31 crossing time? I have tried estimating the crossing time independently using both the ACARS and the ADS-B data. I get a range 17:20:29 to 17:20:33, in good agreement with FI.
The above suggests (once again) that the diversion was already in progress before the plane reached IGARI.
Addendum: Gysbreght’s digitization of the ATSB radar track from last January showed no apparent deviation in the track of MH370 as it passed IGARI, whereas the ADS-B data suggest otherwise. It is unclear if the discrepancy is significant or is due to errors in the creation or digitization of the ATSB figure. The radar track is clearly displaced of order 0.5 nm East of the ADS-B track.
Argh – for “flyover”, read “flyby”.
@dennisw – maybe take the whole family to start all over again… if there are serious benefits for everyone.
Heck you can have a ranch next door potentially to ZS’s
@All
I find it dismaying that posters here have by and large overlooked Z’s home made fixer upper videos (one his youtube homepage).
They are replete with latent messaging and cryptic content all hinting at what was to come. This is the only reason Zaharie made these tapes.
But I love the ‘what a great guy, so altruistic’ interpretation most have ascribed to them.
They were all posted on youtube betweenJanuary and September of 2013…6-14 months prior to the incident.
An investigators dream.
@sk999
Very fine observation and conclusion. The best to date.
IMO, Before Igari, Z start to turn right to open a bigger circle before to turn back by the left. A fine pilot! Under pressure of a hijacker!