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.
@matt
I have looked at a few of the videos. It is easy to see how the “true believers” derive their good guy interpretation. Z is so obviously guilty that I have great difficulty dealing with his supporters.
There has to be a “generational component” going on here that I cannot relate to.
@Matt Moriarty,
Re your scenario of 500kn winds inside the airplane.
Assuming the aircraft structurally survives an imploding windshield, i don’t see how there could be such wind inside the airplane, maybe apart from an initial shock wave and jump in pressure.
Once the windshield is gone, the airplane essentially becomes a giant flying pitot tube, or rather the static pressure portion of one. There is no wind inside, since there is no escape route for any air flow out the back. Sure there will obviously be some violent turbulence near the opening, but nowhere near 500 kn.
In my view, much of what you state in your criticism of the Gilbert scenario, i.e. refutation based on the 500 kn wind, does not hold.
@Dennisw
But Zaharie’s family say he is innocent.!
Ehmm…
There’s another excellent paper by Richard Godfrey:
http://www.duncansteel.com/archives/2839
“The long hunt for a diversion airport”
He concludes that the crash nay have been near 23°S 102°E. Many good points made but I struggle with the overall concept of passing up on so many opportunities to make an emergency landing.
@dennisW – it’s unfortunately true
“There has to be a “generational component” going on here that I cannot relate to.”. But even at that people’s of your gen are disagreeing with you.
In a life-or-death emergency situation, pilots land anywhere … on a river, a highway, you name it.
But we should assume that this pilot made 7 diversions to, amongst other things, respect the official airport opening hours … ?? Lol. I call BS on that.
@Dennis
Z had a very nice way about him. Quite likable. Very easy-mannered with a certain softness (although this is betrayed when one looks at his Facebook posts) and genuineness that is most attractive, even alluring.
A lovely, gentle, kind man by all accounts…but MH370 was an event of extreme violence for the 238 souls who had their lives snuffed out.
Without getting too deep into psychopathies (as the armchair psychs will then come out and spin their drivel), I will simply submit that Z harbored an immense amount of resentment and anger…and that those closest to Zaharie HAD to know this all to well.
Which brings one to ask what life was really like for a staunch opposition supporter working at the govt. owned airline?
It’s hard to believe his political activism went unpunished…it certainly didn’t go unnoticed.
And what a curious denial by Mr. Anwar when asked if had known Zaharie, when in fact they had met several times and were even related through the marriage of kin.
Digressing, to your credit you give the Godfrey’s, Gilbert’s et al. (and pedestal, wheel well fires etc.) even more attention than they deserve, which truly happens to be none.
Yet the silliness persists. Anyone (I’ll exclude Jeff from this criticism) pushing mechanical causes is either living in their own fantasy world or pushing an agenda…and it’s without doubt mostly the latter. Shame.
@Jeff
I know you have NEVER pushed a mechanical theory/explanation. But terrorists? Still? Really? Come on, man.
*Not an Obama supporter
@wonky won –
They made up that story of overflying the airports to cover the real situation.
@MH
Some folks just like to take a safe contrarian view. It is not about finding the plane. It is about the asymmetrical loss/gain. If wrong they get credit for being open minded in the face of ambiguity. If right they are a genius. I have seen this movie many many times. It always has a happy ending for the contrarian.
Even modern society is biased toward contrarian thinking. If you are correct the rewards can be significant. If you are wrong their is a fabric of societal safeguards to bail you out. The tax system in all civilized countries places a heavier burden (both in absolute terms and percentage terms) on the more consistently successful people.
So it goes. It is fashionable to be contrarian. It is boring to mitigate risk, and attempt to follow an objectively correct and reasonable path.
Who wants to pay to go to a movie depicting people taking a correct and reasonable path through life? We are conditioned to regard that as boring and uncool.
Shah did it. There is virtually no doubt about that.
@dennisW – why even discuss this “contrarian” ideology? This ain’t no movie. The only way I can accept he did it is with a gun was being held to his head.
@DennisW, That’s an interesting critique, one I hadn’t heard before. It raises the question: what is the non-contrarian view? The ATSB’s position has been, consistently, a) the plane wound up in the search area, b) we’re agnostic as to how it got there. Very few people who comment on this blog seem to agree with a), so we’re all contrarian in that regard, and correctly so, as it has turned out.
None of us agree with b), either–we all have strong opinions as to what might have happened. But almost all think that either Zaharie did it, or some hijackers did. (I acknowledged that both are possible but prefer the latter.) But this bimodal consensus, if you will, puts us in the contrarian camp when it comes to “mainstream aviation journalists” like Richard Quest, David Soucie, Les Abend, and Christine Negroni, as well as IG stalwarts Richard Godfrey and Mike Exner, who believe that MH370 diverted and disappeared due to malfunction.
You may criticize my motives, personality, or whatever, but no matter how you slice it I am happy about company I keep.
@MH
A vain attempt to enlighten you. Contrarianism is not about movies. It has become the norm.
BTW, what you accept or do not accept is totally irrelevant.
@DennisW – the only enlightenment you gave was about your tax evasion plan which also was totally irrelevant.
@Jeff
Thoughtful reply on your part. Thanks.
The contrarian view is underscored by a very simple theme – ignore causality. The IG did exactly that, the SSWG did exactly that, the Malays have done exactly that, and lastly you can add the DSTG to that list. You will not find one person in the above mentioned groups who has ventured a public opinion on why the plane diverted from its scheduled course to Beijing. Instead they are focussing on the arcane analytics of the electronic data we have all come to know and love.
I think most of us agree that a crime has been committed relative to MH370. Sure there are still holdouts for a mechanical failure scenario, but very simple probabilities render that extremely unlikely. So continue with the crime theme.
The non-contrarian view is that crimes are characterized by means, motive, and opportunity – the three M’s. That is where the focus should lie. Do not confuse what the players involved with the search are doing as being non-contrarian. They are, in fact, the contrarians. They are the people ignoring two centuries of crime solving history by not paying any attention whatever to the three M’s.
If you ask the ATSB, IG, SSWG, DSTG, and the Malays why they think the plane diverted you will get a deer in the headlights look from all of them. They have deliberately and consistently avoided any consideration of what is probably the only way this problem will be solved.
I have, from the getgo, called the ISAT data under constrained, and warned about spending millions of dollars on a search based on the spreadsheets of a bunch of geeks. Hey, I did that shit for a living. It is not like I am blowing smoke out my butt here. It was stupidity plain and simple, and reality has come home to roost.
Simply put, the non-contrarian view is the traditional feet on the street approach to crime solving. All the players involved in this search are the contrarians. Somebody knows what happened and why it happened. That can be said for a hijacker pointing a gun at Shah, and it can be said for Shah acting without being coerced. More time, effort, and professionalism needs to be expended in that domain. Unfortunately the Malays have zero credibility in performing activities of that type. They are more interested in covering their ass than finding out what happened.
@TBill
“……. 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.”
You mention the position of my pin, thanks for the reference, it gives me a chance to explain.
Earlier this month I mentioned a dogleg at Cocos Islands waypoint to maintain a constant groundspeed between BTO’s going either NE or SE.
The target waypoint of IPKON via YPXM gives a possible final location around 8S to 9S and the target waypoint of UXORA via IKASA gives a possible final location around 20S to 21S, both near the 7th arc.
The fascinating thing with these two paths is that they are designated flight paths and at a constant 370 knots since 19:41 they accurately hit the BTO’s through to 22:41.
The IPKON target maintains 370 knots all the way to 00:11 and the UXORA target needs to reduce speed slightly just near the end to hit the BTO at 00:11.
I consider it more likely the plane was trying for a landing on Java.
@MH
You need to move out of your parents house.
@DennisW
Well said. Agreed completely that 9M-MRO was not a Boeing failure
@Jeff
The French Judiciary (the flaperon – remember that!) have said all along its terrorism, so you have support there.
That Captain Z has a motive I don’t dispute but at best it can only be regarded as ‘soft’. Experts in criminology would best comment on that.
@matt
I am hoping that you will be able to provide further analysis of the home fix-up YouTube videos. I am cramming for exams and have no time to be wadding around on Facebook!! Seriously, if you claim this, make your case with evidence. It is going to be a cracker-jack effort, because you promised cryptic content and latent messages, hinting at what was to come. Further, you think that this telegraphing was the only reason he did the videos for. A justified position or not? Please, produce a succinct summary, or please refer to another source who does. This is a genuine request.
@Freddie
I agree that a Java landing makes a lot of sense, and that something went horribly wrong in the process. Once again, the failure to communicate position when it was clear that the aircraft was not going to make Java is a major problem. You are walking around with a rock in your shoe. It is very uncomfortable, and you need to come up with a way to remove it.
If you want to be taken seriously you need to come up with a plausible fix.
@ DennisW
“ …….. the failure to communicate position when it was clear that the aircraft was not going to make Java is a major problem…… “
I agree but I do not have an answer for the lack of communication.
I also agree it is very uncomfortable having a rock in my shoe.
I was aware of what had been planned but not aware of what actually happened.
The intention was to land the plane safely.
Coming round below Sumatra was discussed as was Cocos Islands.
If the 7th arc is correct the plane must have gone to the East of Cocos.
The aim was to be on a northerly path before daylight to emulate a late approach to Beijing to keep passenger suspicion to a minimum.
This would be consistent with trying for a landing on Java.
If passenger disruption had taken place it is possible the plane had headed SE after Cocos.
@Freddie
I have been on board with your scenario before I was aware of your scenario. You know that. It requires some tweaking. That is where your focus should lie. Without that it is going nowhere.
I have nothing to offer in that regard or I would put it out there.
A failure to communicate is devastating to anything but a suicide scenario, and I have not been able to find a way to fix that.
@DennisW – both ISAT data and the radar info are under constrained. It seems done to throw off the investigators. The fault can be placed on the Malaysian govt who seem to be hidding the true means and motive. They even have opportunity.
@Cofee
You think Z suddenly got the feels and decided to make a bunch of videos in the hope that Malaysians could better fix their ice makers? LOL.
You’re a funny guy, but you’re gonna have to have a peek for yourself. No cracker-jacking from this cat, but I like your shtick.
Cheers
@DennisW
” I have been on board with your scenario before I was aware of your scenario. You know that. It requires some tweaking. That is where your focus should lie. Without that it is going nowhere……..”
I can not help. I do not know the answer and I am no good at speculating on these sort of things. I am sorry.
@sk999. You suggest, “the diversion was already in progress before the plane reached IGARI.”
You have the a/c turning towards BITOD completing 35 secs after passing IGARI, therefore at 17:21:06.
FI has the a/c at 17:21:13, by military radar, “..turning right but almost immediately making a constant left turn..”
What I get from this is that he completed the BITOD turn before diverting whereas the assumption elsewhere has been that he only turned part way before. Have I missed something?
@Gysbreght. Sim points. “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.”
Jeff mentions the zoom climb. Clearly in doing that, at zero angle of attack he is not in danger of stalling irrespective of airspeed. He is poling forward. This we discussed earlier in the context of drawing together the final BFOs near the 7th arc with what the ATSB/Boeing were claiming for them….
But why go to the SIO to practise that we might both well ask, though I cannot think of whom.
Jeff Wise,
“But this bimodal consensus, if you will, puts us in the contrarian camp when it comes to “mainstream aviation journalists”
You fail to recognise that this “bimodal consensus” is nothing but your imagination.
Dennis,
Perhaps you should consider Malaysia, Thailand or Indonesia as a place for your retirement? I know quite some Dutch and German guys, who moved there, and they seem to be happy. Low taxes, excellent environment, friendly people…
My confidence that it was a mechanical failure is persistently growing – some new aspects popped up. I think you can throw the simulator’s data, hijack etc into the garbage bin.
@Matt Moriarty, MuOne, Buyerninety, Ge Rijn. The Gilbert paper.
Matt. You misquote him. 500km/hr not knots.
Also, further to Buyerninety, he said the course to Penang was 240. The 290 reference was a page later; that was a slip many would forgive.
Matt and MuOne. Dynamic pressure at that aircraft speed, Mach and altitude will be about 1.75psi. This is what a pitot tube would feel.
The airflow will be about parallel to a sloping unbroken window so that will be subject to a deal less, if not a negative pressure. When broken it will scoop and there will be flight deck turbulence but with the flight deck air pressure at window failure being 7.5psi above ambient at that point, air inflow and glass ingress will be resisted and most probably reversed. Ge Rijn’s example illustrates that. After breaking, cockpit depressurisation will be slowed by cabin air flow through the blowout panels you mention and engine bleed air ingress, outlet valves closing automatically. Quite possibly the cockpit door will open inwards also.
Buyerninety. As to whether there might have been cockpit structural damage, the hull has pressure relief valves operating at over 8psi and obviously would withstand more than that. In any case any dynamic flow contribution (it could even be negative, as with the top of a wing) will be minor and soon overtaken by net depressurisation. The cockpit structure is designed to withstand birdstrikes as you will know.
Matt again. Thus it will be very cold and turbulent and the aircraft will decompress but why necessarily would these disable both pilots initially, particularly either or both if strapped in?
I agree with MuOne and Ge Rijn that the Gilbert paper, with some well researched points, should be not be taken too lightly and find it disquieting that his efforts should be mocked and disparaged by you when you have no experience which relates to this. (If you had and lived, that would contradict what you say).
However I agree that the timing of loss of the transponder and the cause of that need to be addressed.
To me the weakest aspect of the paper is whether conditions in the cockpit really would have prevented an emergency descent, et seq.
Even if not, the paper has useful points. It is a weakness of aircraft investigations* that they do not report on incidental issues discovered which are irrelevant to the accident. Even if a window fire had nothing to do with it, the history now disclosed of its failures and apparent inaction by the FAA, particularly the identification of a vulnerable aircraft batch, should receive the attention of both FAA and other national safety regulators. It is surprising that Boeing has not been more pro-active.
*If I were the Malaysian DCA I would want to know whether that nose wheel tie bolt was replaced without checking it had not failed because it had being tightened too much, that is the others might also be on the point of failure if overtightened likewise. However, unlikely to have caused this crash.
@matt re ZS YouTube videos
Brother I have looked! And looked! The t-shirt is a bad look granted, but the rest,, no other big firecrackers, or is there?. Look, the stage is yours if you ever feel like explaining.
The Gilbert paper.
Apparently now updated.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8d9m4c5mwpdxp3p/MH370%20Research%20V3.4.pdf?dl=0
@Dennis So Zaharie accidentally runs out of fuel in the SIO on his sim (your post 4.53 on 22nd), then does the exact same thing in real life a few months later? That’s a stretch. If you think the sim points are significant then surely you have to accept that he pre-planned to end up in the SIO at least as an option?
We seemingly may not have a complete sim route to the SIO but we do have 2 points on zero fuel in the general area where we believe the aircraft hit fuel exhaustion and crashed. This is on the face of it beyond coincidence.
However for me at least there remains a degree of discomfort with those ephemeral bytes of data. How many other points on the various discs had zero fuel in flight? Are there particular circumstances that lead the software to write data with these characteristics and others noted by Gysbrecht?
There must be people out there with MS FSX with the B777 add-on. What happens if we duplicate the MH370 route? What gets written to disc at the end?
Perhaps the 2 reports on Zaharie and his simulator provide enough technical detail and context to be sure that these 2 points are valid and indicative of his guilt. I’m just surprised that in this case more has not been made of them by the authorities or those third parties that have read them.
We can surmise that in their detailed deconstruction of his personal life there were no incriminating documents in his study, or files on his computers or phones, or records of calls or meetings with people of concern, or even search terms of interest in his browsing history like ‘hypoxia’ or ‘diamantina’, or evidence of behavioural changes or depression. If he is guilty he must have been supremely careful.
Ben Sandilands on recent reports the ATSB and the press
https://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/2016/10/23/61270/
@David
Re-read what I wrote and you’ll find I didn’t misquote him at all. MuOne actually misquoted me above you in this thread when he compared it to a “giant flying pitot tube.” The figure I mention is 290 knots. Repeatedly. (although in one instance I exaggerated to 300 knots in my “multiply that by 6” phrase).
I translated 290KIAS at that altitude to 250 lb/sq/ft of dynamic pressure (it’s actually 245, but I spotted the poor guy compressibility so it’s a wash in his favor) which you then subsequently convert to 1.75 PSI, which is exactly equal to what I said just using a different measurement.
My contention is that once the blowout panels give way and the ambient pressure in both cabin and cockpit drops to 3.5psi (which is FL350), you still have 290kt worth of potential ram pressure plowing in through the gap in the windshield which, against an inward-opening cockpit door of roughly, say, 15 sq ft, translates in my mind to a longitudinal force of nearly two tons bearing down on that door/bulkhead combo.
Do you have a point that some degree of angular flow would prevent the full 290 knots from entering the cockpit? Sure. I mean the BAC pilot did get sucked halfway OUT the window for 25 minutes at 17,000′. So the possibility of a brief moment of negative pressure is not only real, it’s been proven.
But comparing a windshieldless 777 to a pitot tube is wrong. Pitot tubes have a drain hole which is specifically sized to accommodate the tolerances of the diaphragm. If you’re going to stay with the pitot tube metaphor, the only diaphragm I see is the cockpit door and the bulkhead it’s attached to. Not exactly the metaphor you want to push, eh?
Is it turbulence rather than ram pressure? Ok, sure. But the loads imposed by that turbulence on that door/bulkhead combo will by definition fluctuate in and around that 250lb/sq/ft figure I gave you. Meaning there’s a helluva chance of it failing and taking a rib with it. Meaning, also, that no mortal man is going to push it open and grab the yoke.
Especially if he’s already a human popsicle.
With a broken window first thing you would do is slow down to reduce the airloads and the asociated turbulence and initiate a descent.
Neither did happen as we all know. Can you mechanical failure guys give a sound explanation for that?
This scenario is a non starter.
@David
I should say that I only picked a few points to knock in Gilbert’s paper. There are plenty more. Next up is his complete ignorance of the concept of endurance.
If it is Gilbert’s contention that MH370 reached ANY portion of the 7th arc – which is, by definition, timestamped as being 7.5 hours aloft – he doesn’t seem to understand that he’s making a proclamation about the plane’s ENDURANCE.
Nowhere in his paper does he say that the pilots throttled back to holding speed. In fact, he doesn’t address speed at all, which strikes me as very odd considering that in the unlikely event that I’d survived such a thing, the first thing I’d want to do is slow down right to the stick shaker. Gilbert thus leaves any pilot to assume that during the switch to the MCP and rolling over of a track to Penang, the speed window flashed open to M0.84 and held that thereafter.
Please tell me you understand that engines being commanded to hold Mach 0.84 under the increased drag of a gaping windshield will burn much more fuel and thereby result in less endurance.
It is known far and wide that the endurance shown by the timing of the 7th arc coincides perfectly with the book endurance of a normal LRC flight of an intact 777 that weight and fuel load. Many smart arguments have been made by Ulich, Ianello and others that 7.5 hrs endurance could have been achieved in many other ways covering less distance than a LRC profile would have.
What cannot ever happen is to firewall the throttles to maintain Mach 0.84 in a sick, draggy aircraft and somehow still remain aloft for 7.5 hours. It’s just simple math.
I give Gilbert credit only for the amount of Googling he’s done on airworthiness issues with the 777 and the diligence of the auto-didactitude he’s engaged in to try and sound like someone who knows something. So please keep defending this guy. I have another half dozen gripes with his piece and I’ll just keep rolling them out.
@David: RE YR post of 1:46 AM. Sim points.
In all points except one the AoA was zero.
The rate of climb at 37651 ft was 663 fpm, and at 4000 ft it was 2029 fpm.
The question is not whether a zoom climb is theoretically possible. It is what these conditions could have contributed to the alleged plan.
@IR1907
You said “But Zaharie’s family say he is innocent! Ehmm.
But they would say that that, wouldn’t they. Ehmm. Families always close ranks. One can always say (with hindsight) that they should have noticed something, and done something before he killed 238 innocent people, but in the real world, this never happens.
Others were forced to be more realistic -“sometimes, people do terrible things” a quote from a representative of the Malaysian government.
@Dennis. You may call the US a “shit hole” but you’ve been able to live the “American Dream” haven’t you? Now, be honest.
I don’t think you would like Australia very much, after the novelty wore off. They have a laid back, colonial backwoods culture, their climate is abobiminal. Their economy is based almost entirely on selling cheap iron ore to China and others, their inflation rate is going through the roof, and the way they treat the Indigenous inhabitants, is a scandal.
You wouldn’t be able to go around with your Glock tucked into your belt. Well not in town, anyway.
@Matt M, Your posts aare fantastic! You should write a book. Question for you: If the aircraft was hijacked, by others than ZS, what skill would be needed to commandeer a 777 in combination with what we do know data wise? You are a pilot, could you have slid into the captains chair and know what to do? Would a few lessons here and there do the trick (as we have seen with 9/11)?
@Gysbreght. I was addressing the bunt and its meaning.
@Matt Moriarty,
Apologies. Not sure where I got the 500kn from. No offence intended… (and I think that David meant to state that I, not you, misquoted)
Though my base assertion still stands. If the fuselage stays intact, there won’t be any iPad flying and embedding itself in the aft lavatory wall.
Considering David’s and Ge Rijn’s posts, I’d now say that on failing, the windshield would pop out, rather than implode, due to the positive pressure inside. The inside pressure would then rapidly drop until it reaches equilibrium with the dynamic/ram pressure. There won’t be a significant pressure differential between the front and rear of the door and bulk head.
No 290kn wind inside, me thinks.
@MuOne. Thanks.
@Matt Moriarty. Please delete my 500 knots attribution.
@Rob, All theories being thrown around are like swiss cheese, They got holes :). A hijacking is not unrealistic, yet I do not grasp why anyone would go through such lenghts to plan and execute and for what purpose? A ZS hijacking (Dennis, Freddie) is also plausible but why would ZS even think it would work? Using PAX as leverage? And then land on Java, for what? To get his ass thrown in jail? Spend his days counting roaches in a jail cell? And then he ran out of fuel, thats pretty silly. But ZS committed suicide, is also weak to a point given the lack of real motive. Yet, the latter is where my mind is at because the SIM data points have to be more than mere coincidence. Killing off 238 PAX is not something anyone could do on a whim, including other hijackers. There has to be more to this that we do not yet know…..
@Matt Moriarty. Thanks.
I had not seen your earlier. One point is, “But comparing a windshieldless 777 to a pitot tube is wrong.” I did not intend that. I was pointing out that that was the dynamic pressure, the 1.75psi, from which the penetration of the cockpit cannot be deduced.
“So please keep defending this guy. I have another half dozen gripes with his piece and I’ll just keep rolling them out.” I am not intent on defending him, more seeing what his work has to offer, detached.
@Keffertje
I knew there must be a reason why I never liked Swiss cheese! But seriously, you can search for a motive you can live with, until you are blue in the face, and never find o e you are comfortable with.
However, this is what he did. And it is actually irrelevant if you cannot rationalize it, because the deed was done. We have to accept it. Human nature is complex. People are always making errors of judgement when considering what others may or may not do. In Britain, people are being murdered almost every day by sychopaths released into the community my doctors who judged them to be no risk to the public. It is an unwritten rule of nature that we can never second guess what someone is going to do, with complete certainty. It will always be this way.
The guy had his reasons for doing this. Some of this has gone to the grave with him, and we will never be able to fully unravel the train of events that led up to it, any more than we can with the 9/11 perpertrators, or any perpetrators of atrocities. It happened. Get over it.
@DennisW:
This might be better dealt with in a dissertation but international terrorism is structurally (and often financially) dependent on a divided world or at least nations that stand outside an international community of trade and obligations. Terrorist are thus always (whether they know it or not) in the service of a foreign (hostile or at least morose) power, or will be very soon. Being a terrorist without a merchandise to sell is btw poor entrepreneuring. Or in not so many words: when you hijack a plane, 98,5% of the deed turns out to be where you gonna spend the rest of your days. (A little like your own preoccupation btw…) “Asylum”.
Would Australia give Z asylum? No. Why not? It is not allowed to take hostage, blackmail, or put an aircraft with its passengers at lethal risk according to the laws of the Queen’s hunting grounds of Australia. Okay. Would Indonesia? No.
Who would then? Iran? Doubt it. Wouldn’t look good among Shia believers. Kazakhstan or any other -stan? No. Too civilized. The Interim Government of Tents in Central Montinuous Afghanistan? Probably. And Notth Korea, but unwillingly. And Isis, but unwillingly, and he would have to be content with living in a trailer and expect to see frontline action. But That’s it. No one else would even consider it.
And if you don’t have anywhere to go, the blackmailed govt. will say: “You won’t get a raise this time either, Shah. This is really not the way to do it. We’ll expect to see you back on work Monday.”
This was perhaps meant to come as a surprise, but it is not about the hostage, it is about if you have anywhere to go afterwards. If not, feel free to fly around until you drop down. We don’t give in to coercion. There is not much likelihood in a militant, stupid-dictatorial, middle-class-revolutionary liberal-democratic rebel alliance in Malaysia, with Shah as the get-go guy.
This is a suicide thing, a goverment-stupid mission thing, a heartfailure-windshieldinyourface-papercut-Monday-fumble-fall-a-sleep-knock-your-head-in-the-overhead-panel-plus electrical fire and lost nosewheel-thing, a drunken-Chinese or scared-shitless-out-of-passport-under-age-passenger-thing, or an attempt to start up a small mountain country with a little airline in Mid-Central Asia called Glockoshztan, with a mountain slope airport. New nationals are welcome to apply for citizenship; the houses of parliament and city council are temporarily housed in our shiny airliner. Mind your step.
RE the sim points.
The last two sim points are snapshots of the airplane state taken just after fuel exhaustion in a normal all-engines operating climb, apparently. When the snapshots were taken the airplane had already decelerated to the minimum flight speed at which the autopilot can operate. If the climb had continued like that it would have turned into a stall quite quickly.
Suppose someone had asked the question: can a stall be avoided when a double flame-out occurs during a normal climb?
At high altitude the flight path angle is about 1° up. To avoid stalling the flight path angle must be reduced to about 3° down. At a speed of 364 kt TAS the kinetic energy of the airplane is probably sufficient to cover the speed loss that occurs while pitching down over an angle of 4°.
At 4000 ft altitude that is not so certain. The initial flight path angle is 6° up, requiring the airplane to pitch down through 9°. At 196 kt TAS the kinetic enenergy is less than 30% of that at 37651 ft altitude.
Suppose ZS had wanted to answer that question by doing some trials on his home simulator. Where would he have gone to do those tests?
@Johan, I believe that the spoofers would have to be on the plane. Others have proposed spoofing from the ground, but I don’t see how such a thing could be carried out without active participation from someone on the plane.
There are certainly many easier ways to get hold of a plane; if MH370 was hijacked and spoofed, obtaining a 777-200ER was clearly not the object. The undertaking would have required a scale of investment, and engineering prowess and risk factor, on par with the launch of Sputnik; and its successful completion would have been a similarly awe-inducing demonstration of superiority.
Other notable recent feats of misdirection:
— Invading a neighboring country and annexing part of its territory under pretext that the entire military action is being staged spontaneously by militia of disgruntled citizens
— Ordering the shootdown of an identical 777-200ER and making it look like a mistake by same disgruntled militia
— Foment chaos in Syria with armed intervention, ostensibly to fight ISIS but really targeting anti-ISIS, anti-Assad forces and generating waves of refugees that destabilize Western Europe
— Engaged in an Olympic doping scandal so elaborate and sophisticated that even with the help of defector who was prominently involved in the scheme Western officials still can’t completely figure out how they pulled it off.
— Hack servers of Democratic National Committee and feed opposition research to destabilizing, anti-NATO, pro-Putin candidate
Etc. Many people instinctively pooh-pooh “conspiracy theories” but it so happens that we have a very active conspiracy factory on our hands.
RetiredF4,
Yes, Gilbert’s scenario is a non starter for me. I was considering it long time ago, and I ruled it out because of many reasons, including your point and some points made by Matt Moriarty.
But I have another version of what could have happened. If my understanding of a few B777 layouts is correct, it dramatically blows hijacking, suicide etc. off the table into the garbage bin. A “classic” mechanical failure.