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.
@Keffertje
I apologize if I appeared rude. I didn’t mean it that way. Its my fault, if I did. We all have different ways of judging events. I need to respect other peoples’ opinions more. I admit it’s a potential weakness of mine. You have every right to be cautious over aportioning blame.
Dennis,
I am wondering if there cellphone brands, which have embedded FM radios capable of receiving in the range beyond the standard 108 MHz, covering 121.5 MHz?
@Rob, LOL, none taken. My toes are not easily stepped on. I am trying to juggle the theories and throw some questions out there. If it was intentional, whoever did this is a cold and heartless monster, no matter the reason behind it.
Sim: for what its worth.
It follows from my attempts at “theorizing” around Igari and reboot that Z (in this case) not necessarily had decided from the start a one-only option of how it (his suicide stunt) would be carried out. He may have developed several alternatives dependant on how well the first legs came through. He may have had both ditching and crash with or without fuel as options. Reasons for this might be objectives of different priority dependning on what he could or felt was necessary to achieve at the final moments, depending on local and other factors he would have no influence over: Avoid discovery at any cost (reach underwater trench, submerge hull intact, annihilate the hull as much as possible, stay away from currents or possible thoroughfares (whale-catchers, what do I know), expand expected reach through gliding after loss of fuel.) Imitate ghost flight to loss of fuel to appear innocent. Reach symbolic point or lat or pos. If waves and wind won’t allow for an intact landing, try to reach calmer waters or chose to crash etc.
My point is that the sim-data may be telling of an alternative that wasn’t executed, but could have been just as well.
It would indeed be very interesting to see if a totally different group of experts would come to the same conclusions … or different ones.
After such a long time without results and – what is more – with so many times something they said they were SURE of was contradicted by the plane not being where they expected, it doesn’t make sense to stick with the same team, which has nothing to show for but errors, failures and dead-ends.
@WonkyW, A fresh set of eyes (or brains I should say), would be a good thing. However, a new independent group will be sent on the same wild goose chase if Malaysia doesn’t open up on vital data and/or pass the entire investigation to another nation as well. Otherwise it would be pointless.
@Oleksandr said;
“My confidence that it was a mechanical failure is persistently growing –
some new aspects popped up” {and later}”But I have another version of what
could have happened.”…”A “classic” mechanical failure”.
I’m already there. P100?
@DennisW, I’m not willing to entirely discount Zaharie as the culprit, and I think that if he did do it, then the flight sim data obviously takes on great significance. However, that being the case it would seem to imply that he intended to fly into the SIO to the point of fuel exhaustion and then fly quasi-aerobatic maneuvers. Which is really, really bizarre. It might well explain those 0:19 BFO values, though.
@Oleksandr @others
I’m curious about your ‘classic mechanical failure’ that will push the other options into the garbage bin.
Are you ready to share it here?
@others
IMO Jeff’s current topic invites others to look into other possibilities again besides Zaharie commiting a deliberate act.
Excluding the possibility of a mechanical/elecric failure around IGARI or somewhere else on the route from the discussion could imply missing valuable information.
It’s still about turning every, even slightly, possible stone isn’t it?
To evaluate them all critically will only lead to saving the maybe possible versus eliminating the surely impossible.
All papers and books (IG, Dennisw, Duncan Steel, BrockMcEwen, Jeff Wise, VictorI, Godfrey, Gilbert etc..) show to me in fact how little we no for sure still.
And how much is based on speculation.
The IG going from ~45S to ~23S in two years is illustrating this.
It would be quite important to know who was responsible or what a mechanical/electric failure could have been that caused the plane to vanish.
It could provide further information to find the plane.
But as long none of this can be proven it won’t be of much help in this regard IMO.
Regardless of ‘who did it’ or what kind of ‘mechanical/electrical failure’, the now known facts and data is all we have.
IMO the debris, Inmarsat and drift-data now show a probable crash area between ~35S and ~25S.
The broken and seperated trailing edges of both left and right outboard flaps and the right wing flaperon show a more or less level entry in the water. At high speed but not at dive-speed.
Also considering all the other wing related parts that seperated.
Route-discontinuity after FMT seems to lead only to magnetic headings compensated for wind variation. And without further pilot-input would lead outside the current search area.
With pilot inputs after FMT the plane could have gone everywhere between ~20S and 35S according to the debris found and the drifter based drift analysis IMO.
Altough above ~25S becomes problematic IMO due to drifting time-frames and no debris found on Indonesian or other Eastern/Northern shores.
That’s where we stand now.
Regardless of ‘who did it’ or ‘what was the mechanical/electrical’ cause.
But IMO all slightly credible information is welcome for it could hold some clues to solve the mystery and find the plane.
@Oleksandr
“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.”
I anxiously await your narrative.
I am still thinking about your FM radio question. I just got up and into my first coffee.
@Jeff
I make no claims to know much about aeronautics and even less about flight simulators. To me it appears that the sim data shows an airplane falling out of the sky. The climb to 40k feet over a long interval seems reasonable as the plane becomes lighter. The plunge to 4k feet also seems reasonable as gravity does its thing.
In any case, my interest lies purely in the coordinates.
@all
The 9-March claim of responsibility for MH370 by The Leader of the China Martyrs Brigade is increasingly interesting, because it claimed MH370 was crashed with no survivors in an non-findable location. Some observers feel that the untraceable email claim was contrived by someone who does not actually speak Chinese. Thus, this claim could have been made either by Martyrs Brigade, or someone trying to implicate the Martyrs Brigade as a diversion…such as Z? or his accomplices? or other HiJackers? In hindsight, the note is just so accurate. Mike Chillit says perhaps the email was written before the actual loss of the plane, which is scary.
Who knew on 9-March the flight was unfindable? Not me certainly, I had it going down due to fuel tank explosion/fire (my usual staring theory).
@Wonky Won
this is the sentance from christinenegroni.com/independent-investigators-malaysia-370/ article I find an interesting “The specialists are knowledgeable in their specific areas which is good but closed-minded to the point of dismissive of the contributions of outsiders, which is not good”.
There has been a lot of close-mindedness up-until the point where as time goes by, with no-find in the current search area that “Narrow mindedness” diminishes and other possibilities of who, where, what and how come into play.
The search in the current area is still not finished for this bit “it’s not over till it’s over”. Planning is needed now for who, what, where and how to go forward, before and if not found in the current search area.
@Broken Ridge Pin Locations
The search vessel Dong is currently at the 32S location (small blue triangle) for those of us with pins sticking the map there.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CvdnYyhUsAExRP7.jpg
true, point taken
@Johann
Total speculation- but OK re: the 9-March Terror Claim- After clearing radar, MH370 pilot turns on SDU and delays to assess success, and sunrise timing and waypoint route to SIO. Somehow sends email attributed to Martyr’s Brigade for delayed time next day. Enters waypoints for start and finish (either CoCos or McMurdo). Now we have accounted for SDU reboot and possible delay prior to heading south.
it was noted for the end of flight a proper sequence of data was collected for how this type of aircraft concludes at terminus gate.
@all,
Maybe you can considere this quote.
“But instinct is something which transcends knowledge. We have, undoubtedly, certain finer fibers that enable us to perceive truths when logical deduction, or any other willful effort of the brain, is futile.”
― Nikola Tesla,
@Jeff Wise
Thanks…
I checked the “Channel Name” field in the Inmarsat logs and part of the name is the beam id, 0 being global. You are right that MH370 did not logon via a spot beam. Thanks again 😉
@Normand:
Tesla was a sociopath.
@Johan
Take care. Read his history. Tesla wasn’t a sociopath. No traits whatsoever to find in his biografy or anywhere else. I read quite a lot about him.
He more probably was Asperger/autistic.
But what the heck. He did the most amazing inventions. Lived alone all his live. Feeding the pigions in the end. Died alone and relatively poor in a hotel room.
Calling him a sociopath… Think it over please.
@Ge Rijn
Tesla was indeed a very rare individual. Anyone who can visualize how an AC motor or generator works in his head is not a normal human being. I am guessing he was autistic like most savants. The entire electric power infrastructure of the world can be traced directly to Tesla.
Sociopath – no. Weird – yes
@Ge Rijn:
I have thought it over. I don’t hold it against him particularly much, but I wouldn’t use him as an example to follow either. Some inventions were not that pleasant btw, and consistency is at the minimum level mark for me when it comes to philantropy.
@TBill:
Why not. Indeed.
Long time reader, first time contributor…
Apologies first for not reading all of the, at this time 408, comments.
I feel like the arguments about whether Zaharie did, or did not, do the deed miss out an option that feels to me quite likely.
Equally the presumption of ‘if not him then hijackers’ also misses the same point…
Let’s say that ONE of the flight crew was involved. I won’t make a determination as to which.
There’s nothing to indicate (or not indicate) that they acted alone. Perhaps the guilty member of flight crew was working in league with other people on board the plane.
My other theory is that trying to extrapolate a logical series of events for the final fate of the aircraft may be impossible. Why? Well I suspect that the aims of the guilty party or parties were hampered by the actions of someone trying to wrest control of the aircraft back.
Like the passengers of the United Airlines plane during the Sept 11th hijackings, someone fought back, either physically if they were cabin crew or passengers, or via the E/E bay if they were the innocent member of flight crew.
@Jeff: on sending up Sputniks.
I dare not follow you all the way down that prospekt… Let me say as a neighbour for a 1000 years that there is a kind of predictability index that can be at least a help when judging what will and what will not take place with our great neighbour. (There were times when the roles were reversed, although long ago, so that makes humility easier.) Not just anything might happen (well, yes, but not at any scale or in any place). Big R has some issues, one of them is what is usually referred to as access to open water, another is demographic or population structure relative to geographic scope, a third is, to simplify, present latitude (and Russians living outside present-day borders), and then there is political history, natural resources, culture, neighbours and pride etc. As a rule, any Russian would prefer sitting in his datja and whittle on his boots, but once in a while you got to get up to hammer the rust or the ice off the traktor, or get someone to do it. I can imagine no reason whatsoever for “Russia” to have had anything to do with mh370 in a premeditated offensive sense, if it weren’t some kind of movie-style spec. op.-skirmish that brought her down. It is not like they started a world war, and occupying Crimea didn’t need a pretext and was done in an afternoon or two.
@MLeader
Yes that is Flt93 scenario, and somewhat similar to DennisW theory.
Logic is a little hard. Let’s say passengers broke into cockpit. So pilot, rather than diving like like Flt 93, entered SIO into waypoints, and depressures plane to quell opposition. Pilot allows himself to lose air supply, going helpless.
“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.”
Alternatively, hijacker(s) entered the cockpit at some point before final communication (and perhaps after reaching cruising altitude), having planned to wait until IGARI to go dark. In that case Zaharie was forced to answer the radio call and he deliberately refrained from acknowledging the frequency or forgot about it in that situation.
@Johan
Putin’s vision is to make Mother Russia great again. To make her a major player on the world stage.
More bizarre than say killing 239 people ?
By which logic do you expect rationality within an immanently irrational act ?
That’s something I am wondering each day, when reading the postings here.
Re- hijackers,
Maybe they hijackers didn’t need force to gain entry to cockpit as the FO might have dropped his guard if tricked thru his weakness with attractiveness of the female.
@wonky won, There is no such thing as an irrational act. Every action makes sense within the worldview of the person who commits it. To a suicidal person, self-extinction is preferable in the moment to any other option.
At any rate, if you’ve been reading this blog careful, you’ll understand that I don’t believe suicide is the only possible motive.
But I agree, it’s hard to imagine what sort of game plan would involve experimenting with sharp stall breaks in a real, live 777 before killing yourself and 238 other people. Seems a bit… exuberant.
@Nederland
“Alternatively, hijacker(s) entered the cockpit at some point before final communication (and perhaps after reaching cruising altitude), having planned to wait until IGARI to go dark. In that case Zaharie was forced to answer the radio call and he deliberately refrained from acknowledging the frequency or forgot about it in that situation.”
And Z was smart enough to anticipate a breach of the cockpit sooner or later on one of his flights, assumed the hijackers would want to go to the SIO, and rehearsed the route on his simulator.
Knowing that such a potential scenario would lead to his untimely death, he made an effort to launder some of his money to his daughter in Australia, and made a point of saying goodbye to his Malay GF before he took off. The man is clairvoyant.
The high jacking theory hangs together perfectly, unless of course a nose wheel bolt loosened on takeoff and disabled the entire aircraft – comms, navigation systems,…and the airplane somehow managed to stay in the air for another six hours.
@DennisW
Lack of motive is a difficult one.
I am only aware of reports that Zaharie sent money to his daughter to build a retirement home and had some sort of chat with a friend, the content of which is unknown to the public but probably enclosed in the investigation file.
Not incredible that Zaharie intended to divert the plane, embarrass air control, civil and military, and land the plane somewhere remote to convey some political message, but not proven either imo.
@ROB:
If that is your pleasure, sir.
@DennisW,
Considere the hijacker enter the cockpit at 1:05 with the coffeeman. He order Z to go to Bangkok. Z shut off the autopilot, open a bigger circle to the left and turn at right pointing KLIA. Under 5000 ´ under all radar, he turn right to Kota Barhu and than north to Bangkok.
Hijacker want to make a claim to the China gov about Uighurs. But at 2:37 a gun shot broke hydraulic system and more. Dive from 3000′.
Like Tesla work, this is my vision!
I sm not sociopat just an old photograph.
@Oleksandr
No, built-in smartphone FM receiver chips only cover the Japanese 76 – 95Mhz and ITU 88 – 108 MHz bands. Accessing the international distress frequency at 121.5 MHz is not possible.
I’m not quite sure what possible theory you have in mind, but it is trivial to receive and monitor 121.5 using a laptop, some software, and a thumbdrive sized USB dongle and unobtrusive antenna. Google rtl_sdr for further interesting details…
@Normand:
Forgive me for my bad manners previously. I was a bit ill-tempered at that moment. I have nothing against you and you need not excuse yourself or explain yourself.
@Jeff:
To bark some up that tree again, what would be the grapevine theory about Russian involvement in MH370? Aside from “diverging interest from Crimea”, as I once heard. (I am getting the feeling that I am missing out on a lot because I don’t understand the contrarianisms of things.)
You emphasised for instance yourself that the motive wouldn’t be to get hold of the plane.
@Johan,
Don’t worry about that. Suffering drive the mind something in the wrong direction.
@Jeff:
“Diverting”.
@Normand:
It sure does!
@Johan, To be clear, in my opinion we have to impute motive after the facts have been established, rather than trying to work forward from what we think someone’s motives might be. The reason I suspect Russia is that a) the BTO values quite narrowly specify a route that bypasses Indian and Chinese radar and ends up in central Kazakhstan b) Russia is one of the few nations to possess the technical expertise necessary for a zero-day spoofing attack c) Russia is one of the few countries that right now is aggressively using special forces to achieve foreign policy goals d) Three Russian nationals were aboard the plane, all of whom would fit the demographic of an experienced GRU operative e) when another airliner was shot down four months later — in what I think the evidence will show was an act of mass murder ordered by the Kremlin — it, too, was a MAS 777, a coincidence which has a less than 1-in-1000 odds of occurring by chance.
And, as it happens, Russia did have two potential motives that I can discern: one, to distract the world media from the annexation of Crimea, which had occurred the day before, and two, to demonstrate to Western governments that it possessed a weapon that the West could not defend against.
@Ge Rijn, @Normand
I am concerned about the emergency locator beacon upon hitting the water. Why did that not send a signal? In the pilot suicide scenario, I assume Z turned it off. In the HiJack scenario, the Martyr’s Brigade email claim also inferred they were trying to hide the crash location.
@JeffW
I suppose Russia would be capable of making up the Martyr’s Brigade email claim.
@Stendec
Would it be possible (eg; for Z or someone else) to send an undetected email (for deferred delivery time on 9-March) let’s say they wanted to send a “fake” Martyr’s Brigade email after the SDU reboot around location of Car Nicobar? I know at my former workplace email system used to allow automated emails at a certain future time.
@Oleksandr
“I am wondering if there cellphone brands, which have embedded FM radios capable of receiving in the range beyond the standard 108 MHz, covering 121.5 MHz?”
I agree with Stendec’s answer after looking at the question in some detail.
@Rob
I don’t no which figures you are using but ‘Australian Inflation through the roof’!
Australia Inflation Rate at 17-Year Low in Q2
Consumer prices in Australia rose 1.0 percent through the year to the June quarter of 2016 from 1.3 percent in the previous quarter and slightly below market consensus. It was the lowest inflation rate since the second quarter 1999.
Cheers Tom L
@Jeff:
Thanks. What would that weapon be?
@sk999. I was interested in your remarks and observations (from FA/FR24 – not sure what sample?) regarding typical rate of turn at cruise. Your ~0.5 degrees per second corresponds with a bank angle of <15 degrees at 484kts. 10 degree bank would give you 0.4 degrees per second. Could pilots on this forum comment on this? What typical bank angle would be employed at cruise speed?
@TBill
In a word, yes. On a Unix box, a simple cron job and Bash script could drop the email (via a VPN or proxy for origin obfuscation) at a given time, overwrite the evidence, zero the OS off the computer’s hard drive if thought necessary, then shut itself down cleanly. A rooted, MAC-spoofed Android burner in an attic or cupboard would do the job, but I’d trust a Raspberry Pi better on the evidence destruction side of things…
I’m wondering where all this is leading…
@Tom Lindsay
Thanks for that, Tom. A relief to know you’ve got inflation under control. I was attempting to convey to Dennis that the grass is nor always greener, to use a hackneyed old phrase.
Actually, I think Australia is a great country. The climate isn’t that bad, and the people are like their wine; warm and friendly.