A few things have happened recently in MH370 world that are worth taking note of.
No FMT. The seabed search in the southern Indian Ocean is all over but the shouting, and as a result I see that a consensus is forming that there could have been no “final major turn” into the southern Indian Ocean. Rather, if the plane went south, it must have loitered somewhere beyond the Malacca Strait until after 18.40 before finally flying a straight southerly path from 19:40 onward. This loiter, following a high-speed dash across the Malay Peninsula and up the strait, is quite bizarre, given that no attempt was made by anyone on board the plane to contact the ground, either to ask for help or to negotiate a hostage situation. So the presumption of a loiter doesn’t really shed light on motivation, it does effectively put yet another nail in the coffin of accident/malfunction scenarios.
More of the secret Royal Malaysian Police report released. Mick Rooney, aka @airinvestigate, has released a portion labelled “Folder 6: Audio and Other Records.” The new section contains an expert report analyzing the cockpit/ATC audio up to 17:21, which concludes (with less than 100% confidence) that it was probably Zaharie who uttered the final words “Good night, Malaysia 370.” It also includes ACARS data and the Inmarsat logs which had already been released back in 2014. In perusing the document I was not able to identify anything that would alter our collective understanding of the case, but I hope that others will offer their own assessments. And I applaud Mick for being the only one with the moral backbone to release this information. I am sure that more will follow. UPDATE: The next batch is here: “Folder 5: Aircraft Record and DCA Radar Data.”
Debris trail goes cold. I’ve plotted, above, the number of pieces of debris that have been found each month since MH370 disappeared. After the first piece of debris was found in July, 2015, a smattering of further pieces was found until April, May, and June of this year, when the number spiked and then dropped off again before ceasing altogether. This is a puzzling distribution, since drift models show that the gyres of the southern Indian Ocean act as a great randomizer, taking things around and around and spitting them out after widely varying periods of time. Would expect, therefore, to see the number of pieces found to gradually swell and then fall off again.
There is a complicating factor to this assumption, of course. Even if the pieces do arrive in a certain pattern, overlaid on top of this is the effect of an independent variable: the degree to which people are actively searching for them. It must be noted that a considerable amount of the June spike is attributable to Blaine Alan Gibson’s astonishing haul on the beaches of Madagascar that month. Indeed, Gibson by himself remains responsible for more than half of the 22 pieces of debris found thus far.
Earlier this week, several frustrated family members announced that they would be organizing their own beachcombing expedition, to take place next month. If their efforts prove less fruitful than Blaine Alan Gibson’s, it may raise questions as to what exactly was the secret to Gibson’s success.
@Gysbreght
I understand your irritation, but no need to befriend Google on this occasion ☺
These were both Z’s accounts, why he had two, I can’t really say. Why he decided to post 19 videos in one day, then never use that account ever again – I can’t say.
I also understand Matt’s frustration. If these videos were some kind of digital suicide note, it seems no one is all that bothered about it!
@Sajid UK:
How do you know they were both Z’s accounts? Anyone can open an account in the name of Ahmad Shah.
So did ZS post a bunch of YouTube videos and then delete two or three ???? Maybe the topics of those give the lynch mob more to discuss.
And was it actually ZS who built the Catalina scale model? I vaguely recall many months ago having seen a video (or perhaps a series of photographs) were Shah was talking to some guys on the shore of a stretch of water, where these guys were radio-controlling the Catalina model landing on water.
@Gysbreght
How do you know they were both Z’s accounts?
* Profile header (grey check) matches
* Timeline of posting videos matches
* Account content matches
* Mention of PBY Catalina
* Various forum posters refer to it as Z’s account.
But if you’re right, and its someone masquerading as Z, well that opens up a whole different can of worms…
@Sajid UK: “* Account content matches” ???
Hello,
The key to locating MH370’s wreckage is to determine the actual amount of jet fuel at take-off. The ACARS-transmitted value is the official, but not necessarily factual value. Note that app. 95% of all airliners have no way to measure fuel onboard. ACARS is informed by an external source, namely the fuel truck operator. Upon finishing pumping, he keys in the amount of fuel loaded, using a numeric pad located next to the hose receptacle. He could make a mistake (that’s how Gimli Glider happened) or he could enter intentionally false data. Only about 5% of airliners, which frequent airports with extremely high landing fees, e.g. the London City, have piezo weight sensors built into the landing gear legs, providing factual data on the airplane’s grand total mass, including aluminium structure, crew and pax, luggage, mail/cargo and jet fuel. However, zero % of civilian airliners are equipped with an onboard impeller to actually count the liters / gallons of fuel being pumped into its tanks. Such tech is only found in military tanker-refueller aircraft like the KC-10.
What this means for MH370 is that Captain Z could have used a roll of 100USD bills or other valuables, sourced from his private wealth, to buy extra fuel at the originating airport, off-record. Thus the mystery B777 took of with much more Jet-A onboard, but C. Z. asked the pump-head operator not to enter the extra amount of fuel on the keypad for ACARS. He could have invented a story that Malaysia Airlines has temporary credit problems in Beijing, so his flight must make the outbound and return trip legs solely on fuel carried onboard. He could have asked the pump guy to keep the extra topping off the record, in order to avoid others learning about the airline’s embarrassing problem. There is no way a mere blue collar pumping guy would have questioned the senior captain’s wish, especially if he was given a banknote or two for his confidence. Remember that Malaysia is a somewhat (medium grade) corrupt country, so people are not suprised to receiving unofficial solicitation or accept favours.
Considering the above thesis, suddenly we are looking at a more generous fuel situation where the McMurdo research base is now within practicable reach. Alternatively the flight path terminating at the 7th arc could have been flown via a more complicated route than assumed thus far, e.g. the Anadaman islands and ship-borne sighting reports could be reconciled with the satellite data points, provided more Jet-A was available.
Thanks for your kind attention, Faithfully:
Tamas Feher, Budapest, Hungary.
@Gysbreght
Yep, as in both accounts contain lighthearted videos, flight sim vids, back flips, PBY Catalina etc etc… the difference of course being the slightly more serious tone in zaharie shah.
I’ve no reason to believe those who think ahmad shah is also Z’s account are wrong.
But if they are, well then it gets very, very interesting…
@Jeff @matt
In a previous post, Jeff stated: Are you saying that Zaharie created videos by which he would claim credit for the deed, via subtle cryptic clues? Human beings simply don’t behave that way…
Another possibility – what if these videos were not a suicide note but a form of dead drop – passing ‘encrypted’ messages to a group of co-conspirators subtly letting them know how things were proceeding…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_drop
@Tamas Feher: You are posting rubbish.
@matt @Sajid UK
Okay guys, are we really going to do this? Matt, per your suggestion and Sajid UK’s suggestive title teasers, I watched all videos from “Ahmad Shah”. The “Call Girls” was a girl dancing around (poorly I might add) in an orange dress for 60 seconds and the “school kiss” looked to be 2 elementary or middle school kids trying to smash there lips together and hold it for 25 seconds. Very weird but nowhere close to provocative. You did forget to mention the octopus escaping into a 1 inch hole…maybe that is how he made the plane disappear. We should all be wide open to information with substance, the fact that no one has commented about the representation of these videos should give you an idea of their actual value in this regard. It may even be a consensus
@Sajid UK: “as in both accounts contain lighthearted videos, flight sim vids, back flips, PBY Catalina etc etc…”
Are you serious? I suggest someone searched on “catalinapby” and stumbled on the account of Ahmad Shah, a common name in Iran, Afganistan and Pakistan, totally unrelated, not ‘masquerading as Z’.
Just the familiar lynch mob hysteria that sees secret messages in wastepaper newspapers.
@Gysbreght
The Hishammuddin payroll is filled with all types. Pretty plumb spot you have trolling the various 370 forums with your pseudo technical bs. Well done sir.
@Sajid UK
>what if these videos were not a suicide note but a form of dead drop – passing ‘encrypted’ messages to a group of co-conspirators subtly letting them know how things were proceeding…
I believe Z acted alone, but would not dismiss this categorically. I find the initial denial by Anwar in regards to knowing Zaharie to be troubling. It’s long been my opinion that he denied knowing Z because he knew it likely that Z had committed the atrocity. Better to keep some distance early on.
Of course, it is possible he and others aided and abetted.
@Gysbrecht
You’re making no sense. The ‘PBY Catalina’ account is Zaharie’s.
You’re making an ass out of yourself.
@Susie Crowe
The point that is lost on you is that ANYTHING Zaharie posted, did, said etc. is of great interest IF he was culpable for the deaths of 238 souls.
I guess this is too high-minded a concept for you? What other conclusion can I arrive at?
It’s investigation 101. Sorry you don’t care for it.
@Sajid UK
“Another possibility – what if these videos were not a suicide note but a form of dead drop – passing ‘encrypted’ messages to a group of co-conspirators subtly letting them know how things were proceeding…”
Another possible explanation is that these videos would receive much more consideration after the event, and potentially more to follow. In that case it wasn’t premeditated suicide.
Those believing in the suicide theory, on the other hand, might want to study the context of the “sealed with a kiss” quotation, accompanying the window seal video posting on facebook, in Shakespeare.
@All. It is best to keep an open mind, simply because tunnel vision has never done anyone any good. Let us atleast spar in a friendly fashion on theories and take the time to think them through properly and hear what other have to say. Dennis replied to my post most cordially. There is so much we do not know, and I think we can all agree that MY government are liars. So what can we really trust? What is their true agenda? We do not know. The ATSB let themselves be strung along on a string like silly puppets. It is still very plausible that others are responsible for a hijacking, simply because it is plausible and because there is much we do not know. Such as, why would an 18 year old Iranian travel on a stolen passport when his mother already lived in Germany? Those are the inconsistencies that we need to address as well. I will not deny that ZS is a contender to this event, but my issue is : there was not an evil streak in him (or his videos) that would make him a likely candidate. If he did do it, it had to have had a political angle and that as Dennis said, it was not his intention. We have seen no other proper background checks on many of the passengers, and I doubt any proper checks have ever been made.
The name “Ahmad Shah” could well belong to thousands of persons residing in various countries (mainly in West Asia and South Asia, also South East Asia and smaller numbers in Western countries. Try looking up the phone directories of any large city (even in Britain) and you will find plenty of Ahmad Shahs. Maybe not as common as John Smith, but you get the idea.
Further on the Ahmad Shah videos-he seemed to have rather eclectic tastes, with clips from different corners of the world with not much in common. Incidentally the one on “call girls” appears to show people from Pakistan or Northern India.
Dennis you are still not making any sense from the ‘motivation’ perspective which is apparently so important to you.
The contradiction that you have to deal with is that if you believe he pre planned a flight to fuel exhaustion in SIO (sim data), this does not match a Mr Nice Guy intention not to harm any passengers.
I think many of us share difficulty in reconciling these 2 elements. Fuel exhausted SIO points are worrying enough, Matt Moriarty’s linking by parameter comparison to a third point around FMT doubly so. And yet Z appears so clean on all fronts. A lifetime devoted to the safety of his passengers so abruptly overturned? Suicide aside, the killing of so many would surely indicate deep psychosis, or extreme radicalisation. There seems no evidence of either.
If you really believe the sim points are the smoking gun, then I think you need to drop all the Cocos/Landing scenarios, and assume SIO was the intention. If motivation was to end there, we are still looking for simple paths that adhere to the various constraints that apply (ISAT data with appropriate tolerances, fuel endurance to match 7th arc, etc etc).
@DennisW virtual reality
Thanks for your kind answer, Sir, but may i suggest, that you evaded the crucial question?
The first thing scientists learn nowadays is, how to use the means of virtual reality to produce data, that fit their intended results. One could mention, that the mass of scientific publications depends on free fantasy due to fictitious data. In our world you can produce data at random.
For a head of a high tech company its very poor judgement to so naive as you pretend you are.
You are merely medling with words and turning the truth around until it fits your fixed and biased approach: Its not an outlier that the spof of a Sat unit is easy and reasonable to presume in the case of this exceptional disappearance, but the true outlier is a freaky data trail, that tells us that a Beijing bound 777 was lost ten thousand kilometers away in the opposite direction. If you cannot understand, that you have to prove this data outlier before you even think of using it, you know nothing about the world how it is working today. The very first remarks of Inmarsat themselves always included the caveat “if not spoofed” !!!
And for the remarks about your private life, i would just say that you need someone who tells you how to behave in public. This is basically a mourning forum. We share the grief of 239 families here. Its totaly unwarranted to bully around here about Glocks and waterboarding.
Some people grow up to become wise in their old age, and some people become childish , which would be a diferent sort of wisdom.
Even though your contribution here is quite voluminous, its not so valuable, as you think it is.
@M Pat
“If you really believe the sim points are the smoking gun, then I think you need to drop all the Cocos/Landing scenarios, and assume SIO was the intention.”
I have some time ago. At this moment, the Cocos postulate was as an LNAV waypoint which served the same theoretical purpose as the Iannello and Godrey McMurdo waypoint.
As far as the rest of your post is concerned, I really have no qualifications to comment. Diagnosing a person’s mental state is whole different discipline. Not my bag.
@Cosmic
“Even though your contribution here is quite voluminous, its not so valuable, as you think it is.”
I don’t really think about that except to recognize that I am standing on the shoulders of giants. All the heavy lifting has been done by the IG, Inmarsat, and others relative to the analytical templates. Once you are given the basic template it is easy to spin the crank.
I think the recent work I was made aware of by sk999 relative to 3F1 orbital parameters is another good example. That is an impressive piece of work. To use it was relatively trivial, and much better than the interpolation methods I used earlier.
There are some really capable people around here who have done some very impressive work. I don’t number myself among them.
@DennisW
You said “ROB,Thank you. The bleeding hearts around here are truly pathetic. We are trying to solve a crime not play nicey nice at some cocktail party. Good grief. Pointing a finger at someone can only be done one way – point the stinking finger. If it bothers some folks around here who cares? I certainly don’t.”
I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that was the Jack Daniels talking, and not an opinion actually worthy of consideration. Your contributions are becoming more and more erratic.
@Susie Crowe, there have, and will be, mass murderers who didn’t fit the profile of a mass murderer.
@ALL: Interesting article from Ean Higgins in the “Australian”. It’s entitled “Pilot hijacked MH370, aviation expert panel agrees”
@Nederland:
Ha ha. You sealed that one!
A zealous cultural reference hunter shouldn’t miss the link below (but don’t go through the ceiling) — that might have set its mark also in Malaysia. It’s in the “unhappy love” department. (And the “kiss” is the “passage through water”, isn’t it? We’re really reaching down here).
@Neddrland:
The link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=
ROBs link was behind paywall. Would be interested in reading that: Pilot hijacked MH370, aviation expert panel agrees: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/pilot-hijacked-mh370-aviation-expert-panel-agrees/news-story/b881371fc1237c2cff7087c1ccc934dd
@Nederland:
Sorry for broken link. Hope this works: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jcS8CJwHfqI
Dear Mr. Wise,
Please forgive me but this
is all getting a wee bit more
convoluted than I had predicted
when the SIO search failed.
So the narrative now is that
a questionable account had some
suicide related videos posted
“before” Captain Z departed
from KL whereafter MH370 went
dark whereafter multiple cell
calls were logged whereafter
MH370 exchanged SATCOM with
Inmarsat that pointed to the
SIO based on experimental
math equations whereafter
the Australian Government
now has 180 million dollars
worth of oceanic topography
the RMP introduces the idea
that MH370 was in a holding
pattern of some kind and
never actually flew towards
the SIO as aggressively
claimed by Inmarsat and
the members of the IG.?
Waiting with baited breath
at what is proposed next is
an understatement at best.
Kind regards and
happy Thanksgiving.
Andre Milne
Unicorn Aerospace
Military Technology Development
unicornaerospace.com
@aeromilitarytec
@Gysbreght
Email with FS2004 FLT files making a left turn at IGARI coming your way via Jeff.
@Johan
Re The Australian article: Hopefully, someone will post the text or a paywall-free link. If not, then I will do it on Monday, when I have access to a PC. With my mobile, the site allows me one freebie look, thereafter, it requests payment. From memory, they polled a group of about 7 people, including air accident investigators, airline pilots and airline executives. Most came out in favour of “the pilot” deliberately diverting the plane into the SIO, after having killed the passengers by depressurizing it.
The Australian article:
For most of the airline pilots and professional air crash investigators who form the close-knit international community of MH370 addicts, captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah has been the sole and absolute villain of the piece.
It might have been because he was outraged by the Malaysian government’s persecution of his relative and political idol, opposition figure Anwar Ibrahim. Anwar had his acquittal on sodomy charges overturned by a court the day before the fateful scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014.
Or it might have been what a married woman who was not his wife, revealed by The Australian to be Fatima Pardi, with whom he had a close but she insists not sexual relationship, had told him in a secret message exchange two days before the flight.
Either way, the dominant view has been that Zaharie hijacked his own aircraft when co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid was locked out of the cockpit, turned off the radar transponder and ceased radio contact.
Zaharie then flew himself and the other 238 souls on the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 on a zigzag route over the Malaysian-Thai air border to confuse authorities, over Penang and then northwest, finally turning on to a long track south and a watery, deep grave in a lonely part of the southern Indian Ocean.
.
Pilot hijacked MH370: expertsOMore: Pilot hijacked MH370: experts
Search leaves no path for truthOMore: Search leaves no path for truth
.
There are a few sub-variations.
Zaharie might have depressurised the aircraft early and allowed himself and everyone else on board to die from lack of oxygen, or hypoxia, once the limited supply from drop-down masks and portable bottles ran out. He could have pre-programmed the death flight route into the autopilot.
Or he could have put on his oxygen mask with its several hours’ supply, outlasted all others on board and, when they were dead, re-pressurised the aircraft and flown it to the end in comfort, ditching it under power or gliding it after fuel exhaustion to try to make it disappear in as few bits as possible. Either way, Zaharie would be a mass murderer.
But according to a theory developed by former RAAF supply officer, retired logistics manager with Ansett, private pilot and amateur aviation sleuth Mick Gilbert, Zaharie was in fact the hero who tried to save his passengers and crew against overwhelming odds during an on-board fire.
Then, when all was lost, he turned the aircraft towards where it could do no harm to anyone on the surface.
In US aviation journalist Christine Negroni’s scenario, Zaharie was also a hero, struggling to get back to the cockpit after a rapid decompression but succumbing to hypoxia along the way.
This left young first officer Fariq trying to work out what to do, with his brain befuddled by partial hypoxia because of a faulty oxygen supply.
And, in another theory, Zaharie was a bit silly in inviting a pretty girl to the cockpit for a photo op, since she was, in fact, part of a terrorist hijack gang. Later on in the flight, when the chance arose, he and Fariq valiantly tried to retake control of the aircraft from the hijackers but died fighting.
As the ongoing search for MH370 draws to a close in coming weeks without a trace of the aircraft apart from two small pieces of debris from the fuselage, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau and its group of international experts have been conducting a “first principles” review of everything known about the flight and will soon produce a report. The ATSB has always been eager to say it is running the underwater search for MH370 on behalf of the Malaysian government, which under international law is responsible for the investigation. In fact, the ATSB considered three possible scenarios and selected as its working proposition what has become known as the “ghost flight” or “death dive” theory: that at the end of the flight the crew was “unresponsive”, having possibly been overcome by hypoxia, and the aircraft went down unpiloted and fast after running out of fuel.
The problem the ATSB faces now is that it defined its 120,000sq km search zone based on that theory, and the search hasn’t found the plane, suggesting the ATSB’s theory may be wrong, and it has blown about $200 million of Australian, Malaysia and Chinese taxpayers’ money.
Two vessels, one from the Dutch Fugro survey group hired to lead the search plus the Chinese government vessel Dong Hai Jiu 101, are still out in the southern Indian Ocean scouring the last corners of the target zone.
But they are due to finish that task in January or February, and the three governments funding the search have said it would be resumed only “should credible new information emerge”.
Aviation sources have told Inquirer some in the ATSB would be keen to continue the search in a northerly direction along what is known as the “seventh arc” of automatic electronic handshakes between MH370 and the Inmarsat satellite, which shows the track, but not the precise position, where the aircraft went down.
China is thought to be ambivalent but, as revealed by The Australian, security experts believe Beijing authorities see a fringe benefit in having the Dong Hai Jiu 101 spy on Australian military bases and activities in Western Australia, a claim a Chinese embassy spokesman has described as “wild speculation”.
The sources say, however, that Malaysia, which has been trying to shut down the story domestically, has vetoed any continuation of the search.
Prominent US airline pilot turned air crash investigator John Cox thinks the ATSB may be hoping in commissioning the expert review that “if this group finds reason to, and recommends searching in a different area, it will be much easier to persuade the involved countries”.
Cox, who has served on several major air crash investigations with the US National Transportation Safety Board, has changed his thinking somewhat in recent months about what might have happened on MH370.
Cox used to be absolutely in the “rogue pilot” camp. But he thinks the theory Gilbert has developed is so well-researched and thought-through that he now has a more open mind.
“His work and efforts have caused me to back off my thinking that a deliberate act by the captain was the most likely scenario,” Cox told Inquirer this week.
While the on-board fire theory was one of the early ones to do the rounds, it was generally regarded as having been comprehensively shot down.
There was no distress call, it would not explain the route, and a fire would thoroughly destroy the aircraft quickly, or at least its capacity for straight and level flight, meaning it could not have kept flying for another seven hours.
Based on extensive research of the mechanics of the Boeing 777 and aviation crises that have happened in the past, Gilbert has come up with a scenario that purports to plug these gaps.
The starting point in Gilbert’s theory is a fire in the left, pilot-side windshield heater, something known to have happened from time to time, including on Boeing 777s, which burns out some circuits, including that of the radar transponder.
Both pilots don their oxygen masks immediately and turn off the left electrical AC bus to cut power to the short-circuiting heater, but in the process they inadvertently turn off the satellite data unit that makes the electronic handshake “pings” with Inmarsat.
Zaharie fights the fire with an extinguisher, and in the confusion neither pilot immediately makes a radio distress call.
In any event, pilots are trained that radio communication is the third priority in a crisis, after flying the aircraft and setting a heading to the nearest airport: the drill is “aviate, navigate, communicate”, and whoever was flying MH370 did just that by quickly turning back towards Malaysia.
Then, disaster. While reaching for an extinguisher, Zaharie accidentally pulls the tube from the oxygen mask out of its socket.
“That now dumps oxygen at an incredible rate into the cockpit,” Gilbert says, creating a violent fire which is “almost impossible to control”.
He adds: “I think one pilot has made it out of the cockpit alive, but injured.”
Then something else intervenes. The fire weakens the bottom of the windshield and it dislodges, leading to the air rushing out of the cockpit and a sharp fall in temperature, putting out the fire. The decompression of the aircraft, still at high altitude, would cause the oxygen masks to drop, providing about 12 minutes of breathing for the passengers.
There are, however, several portable oxygen bottles and masks available to the crew.
Gilbert’s theory is that the fire partly, but not completely, burned out the cockpit, just like an oxygen fire that melted some control features but not others of an EgyptAir Boeing 777 in an accident on the ground in 2011.
The scenario is then one of gruesome desperation and bravery, with a badly injured Zaharie returning for brief times to the freezing, wind-blasted cockpit to try to regain control, possibly instructing a flight attendant.
The radio knobs have melted, so that “just selecting a radio and tuning it would have been almost impossible”, Gilbert suggests.
But the autopilot, or flight management system, is sufficiently intact to set new headings, although the fire has knocked out the auto-throttle so Zaharie can’t set it to descend.
On a dark night, with a smoky windscreen and some non-functioning instruments, taking over manual control would be problematic and risky.
As Zaharie flies over Penang he decides to turn northwest up the Strait of Malacca, away from built-up areas, to continue the troubleshooting process during which he turns the left electrical AC bus back on, repowering the satellite data unit.
But then, with his own and his assistant’s portable oxygen tanks running out, and all the passengers and the rest of the cabin crew dead, Zaharie accepts the game is up.
He realises, in Gilbert’s words: “It’s two of us versus the danger of killing a whole lot of people in a busy shipping channel.” Zaharie turns the autopilot to a southerly heading to nowhere and soon MH370 becomes a ghost flight.
There are a lot of attractions in Gilbert’s theory, including that it deals with the sub-mystery of why the satellite data unit was turned off for a time, then came back on.
Negroni’s rapid decompression scenario is another that would ostensibly explain the flight route without assuming pilot hijack.
Fariq, on his own in the cockpit while Zaharie is on a “biological break”, tries to deal with the crisis but gets only a partial supply of oxygen from a defective mask, tube or bottle.
In its early phase hypoxia has some of the same symptoms as drunkenness.
Fariq makes a rational decision at first to turn back towards Malaysia but then, light-headed with hypoxia, makes a couple of irrational course changes before his oxygen runs out altogether, leaving the aircraft flying south on autopilot.
Geoffrey Dell, a transport accident investigator who is now an associate professor at Central Queensland University, prefers yet another scenario, which he describes as the only one that “doesn’t require a string of implausible simultaneous unrelated failures and errors”.
As Dell observes, Zaharie had published a video of him allowing young women on to the flight deck.
“The would-be hijackers wouldn’t have to threaten a flight attendant … just simply include a young woman in the hijack team and just ask for a photo opportunity with the captain on the flight deck,” Dell says.
A smart hijacking crew could have thus taken the crew by surprise, before they could issue a distress call, and ordered the pilots to turn off the radar transponder.
They then might command the crew to head towards Afghanistan, for example, where the Taliban might hold runways long enough to land such an aircraft and to kidnap its human cargo for terrorist statement or ransom.
“If the crew did then find an opportunity to try to regain control of the flight and a fight ensued, it’s plausible that it could easily have resulted in the death or incapacitation of everyone who can fly the aircraft,” Dell says.
“Then the (flight management system) would have continued to fly the aircraft.”
Most of the commercial airline pilots and air crash investigators approached by Inquirer stick to the rogue pilot theory as the likeliest scenario, and most assume Zaharie flew the aircraft to the end.
With Gilbert’s on-board fire theory, they say, the lack of a distress call would be unprecedented, as would the catastrophic failure of the windshield because of a heater fire.
Negroni’s rapid decompression theory is the least popular. Most of the panel say the idea Fariq would be just conscious enough to fly the aircraft for a couple of hours, but sufficiently hypoxic to do so erratically, is highly improbable: he would have got his reliable oxygen mask on and taken the flight to safety or he would have passed out quickly.
As for the hijack theory, it has been widely reported that while two Iranian passengers carried stolen passports, authorities believe their motive was illegal immigration to Europe. Background checks showed they and the rest of the passengers and crew had nothing hinting at a terrorist past, and there was no claim of responsibility by any terrorist group.
Without the discovery of the aircraft and its black box flight data and cockpit voice recorders, none of the five theories can be conclusively proved or disproved, and that’s why most aviation professionals believe the search should be continued.
“The idea that they are not going to search for the aeroplane to finality is a serious precedent in all aviation,” David Booth, president of the Australian Federation of Air Pilots, tells this newspaper.
Plenty of theories, and no one has looked at the radar data.
@Ghysbregkt
No, noone has. It is most erratic. And most revealing. You only have to look, it is right there.
@Tbill
Would love to see the flt file showing the turn at IGARI. How can I see it?
The Australian article. Should the final paragraph should be the ICAO view, it will need to be taking action now.
@vladsingapore – maybe the erratic from AWACS radar chasing after mh370.
@Matt Moriarty
So far I just set up a very simple flight plan from KLIA to IGARI to WMKC to Penang to Car Nicobar to Perth. My turn at IGARI is inaccurate in the sense that the actual turn really happened between IGARI and BITOD. However, the bank curve generated by FS2004 777 does look a little like the IGARI turn. Keep in mind I am not yet using the more sophisticated Phoenix 777 Professional plug-in.
But you are welcome to see it. Right now accuracy is not the goal so much as understanding how the Moon looks, sun rise, terrain, water, and how the FLT files are saved etc.
@TBill
Any autopilot LEFT turn at a 20 degree bank (a rate of roughly 1 deg/sec) in level flight should do. Just click the save button once you’re established in the turn and it should work for just about any left turn in subsonic level flight. If you want something closer to the theoretical FMT, approach IGOGU from the east and make a turn to 180 mag.
Dropbox it?
@DrBobbyUllich
Here is the link to my GE90 777 manual: https://www.dropbox.com/s/l9rwsdy9zw9dajf/COA%20FCOM.pdf?dl=0
My GE figures differ a little from yours. Mine is older. What is important for you is that they both show time/fuel/dist to climb figures from brake release to flight level. Look at page 124 out of 216 from your manual (Enroute Climb) and page 852 of 1913 in my manual (Time,Fuel,Dist to Climb) and you’ll see fuel/time/dist to climb for ISA +10.
I have NOT been able to find that chart for the 892, but, as a ballpark, you can compare cruise perf to see that RR burns 1.04307563 x the GE amount. GE has lower src (at altitude, maybe at sea level, that’s not the case).
If I average our two GE figures for the climb to FL350 (covering 168nm in the case of MH370) I get a figure of 10,283b to reach FL350. Multiplied by the conversion from GE to RR, I call it 10,726lbs burned by the RRs to reach FL350. Then, assuming based on ATC transcripts that FL350 was reached at 17:01Z (meaning 0.1 hr at cruise at FL350 prior to the 17:07Z ACARS report) you add an amount for the brief cruise portion: 1,487 lb (from the RR LRC table here – at ISA, meaning even LOWER than your temp addition figure would be.) That RR LRC table is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/elunotjpyfa7lwf/777-200ER%20Trent%20QRH%20PI.pdf?dl=0
10,725
+1,487 = 12,212 lbs burned from TO to 01:07.
MH370 is said to have burned only 11,685 lb.
MH370 TO Fuel: 108,247 lbs
MH370 17:07 ACARS: 96,562 lbs
If I go with your GE manual only (fuel to climb of 9965 lb) and add the conversion, you get:
10,394
+1,487 = 11,881. Still less than MH370 actually burned.
I could be very charitable to your PDA/temp theory and simply apply your GE climb number of 9,965lb with no conversion for a total of 11,452 (2.0% better than MH370). But remember, I have not adjusted the RR cruise portion by the 3% you claim for ISA+10. If I did, the cruise portion would be 1,532 and you’d get 11,497 lbs (only 1.6% better than MH370).
Please go through these tables and see what you think but I cannot get your PDA+temp theory to pencil out, even using numbers from the GE engine which has a lower sfc (although, maybe at sea level, the Trent outperforms [??]).
If someone had the Trent fuel-to-climb table for ISA+10, that would certainly help with the accuracy of this stuff.
@DrBobbyUllich
Correction: 11,881 is still *more* than MH370 burned.
@TBill: Thank you for sending your MSFS2004 files. Jeff’s email arrived during the night and after morning coffee I just had a look at them.
The bank angle in the IGARI turn is indicated as (+)25°, confirming the sign convention that most readers had assumed.
The Flight Path Angle is close to zero and the pitch attitude is indicated as -3.634°, so pitch is positive nose-down.
The vector sum of “World” speeds (relative to ground) is equal to that of the “BodyAxis” (air)-speeds, so there is no wind.
YVelBodyAxis indicates an Angle of Attack of 3.04°. The loadfactor at 25° bank is 1.1. With wings level in the approach to IGARI the AoA is 2.53° which is reasonable. That confirms that the pitch values found in points 1, 2, 4 and 5 in Victor’s table are erroneous, and Victor’s ‘explanation’ of that anomaly can definitely be sent to the recycle bin. Could you perhaps provide the Weight at IGARI that you have used in the simulation? Then I can provide an estimate of the correct AoA. The pitch of -3.634° seems a bit too high, which is perhaps due to the sideslip. I’ll have to think about that. Perhaps a screenshot of the PFD would help to understand pitch and sideslip better.
XVelBodyAxis indicates a sideslip angle of 2.08°, which is odd. With wings level in the approach to IGARI the sideslip angle is 0.15°.
David Posted November 26, 2016 at 6:39 PM: “The Australian article. Should the final paragraph should be the ICAO view, it will need to be taking action now.”
As far as I know, ICAO has no expertise, competence or authority in accident investigations. Annex 13 defines the rights and obligations of member states. ICAO may wish to consider whether Annex 13 adequately covers situations like MH370, where the location of the accident is unknown.
@Gysbreght
OK keep in mind I am not controlling pitch or anything so just taking what I get right now.
@Tamas Feher @Gysbreght
The jet fuel quality is an area where I have a some expertise. I note that the FI seems to say nothing about jet fuel except it is Jet A1. I was expecting some quality checks. I know that seems not be a problem here. I heard the first thing they do in an accident is check the fuel quality.
@TBill: “OK keep in mind I am not controlling pitch or anything so just taking what I get right now.”
Yes, I understand that you enter a flight plan and let the FMS/autopilot/autothrust do the flying. But I thought you might be able to see what’s happening on the artificial horizon in the center of the PFD (Primary Flight Display), that shows pitch, bank, and sideslip.
Thanks again for allowing me to participate in your valuable research.
No debris for 3 months now.
Where is Blaine Gibson? Is it because he was not searching this time?
Nothing on his site on this. Only another updated link 3 weeks ago.
I think it hasn’t got anything to do with Blaine Gibson.
He cann’t search ~20.000km of coast line on his own.
It’s just that nothing significant has been found since.
Which points to me to a small debris field.
Like the MPat drift study with 177 drifters.
Of which 31 arrived on African coasts and islands. We are stuck now on 22. So probably the debris field was even smaller than 177 pieces.
A small debris field with large objects surviving (flaperon, flap section, and mostly ~80cm wing, engine cowling and control surface pieces) indicate a relatively low speed impact.
Also the Rodrigues piece and the LCD mounting show this could not have been a very high speed/energy impact.
They are too clean and ‘undamaged’ for such an event.
You can turn it left or right but this facts tell there was no high speed dive.
The plane maybe broke up in 2 or 3 pieces during a ditch or entered the surface on the bottom of a phugoid.
But IMO most probably a pilot tried to ditch the plane to leave as less debris as possible. In which he succeeded.
The dedris tell the story better then the latest BFO’s.
I’m still awaiting Boeing confirmation on the outboard flap-section and other debris on their part.
Their and others silence in this regard is telling IMO.
@Ge Rijn: I agree that the state of the flaperon and outboard flap segment do not support the uncontrolled high-speed dive theory of the ATSB.
If Boeing has any analysis or finding to contribute to the investigation, they will do that through the NTSB, the U.S. accredited representative who represents Boeing’s interests in the Malaysian safety investigation on MH370. It would be foolish and irresponsible for Boeing to act otherwise.
It is not the first accident investigation Boeing have been involved in, and they know what they have to do and what they must not do.
@TBill
CLARIFICATION: Your “turn at IGARI” that Gysbreght is talking about, was it to the left?
@TBill: I noted that the Max/Min GForce levels in the *.FLT files are 2.265 and 0.432, respectively. Did that maneuvering occur in this flight prior to the approach to IGARI, while the airplane was controlled by the automatics according to a flight plan?
@Gysbreght. ICAO. This is more a matter of policy than expertise I think. “…not going to search for the aeroplane to finality is a serious precedent in all aviation” (the Australian Pilots’ Federation).
That puts it more under policy than expertise I think and the issues are clear enough now.
Which is not to say what ICAO’s (and its members’) views might be.
While the likely gain to airworthiness from finding the wreckage is not the same as that say of finding the second Comet which crashed, there are social, political and funding considerations.
About the last, the context might be how to fund and organise distant, extensive and expensive searches more generally. Some countries might not have been able to afford the costs to date or had access to the expertise and equipment needed.
But in this instance, precedent or not, the only justification for continuing searching is that there is a reasonable prospect of success and the gain to be had is sufficient.
They found it appropriate to comment on the MH17 investigation. If they have a view that the MH370 search should go on they really should say so now while the search is active, publicly or otherwise. Silence can be taken as consent and might well be.
I’m kind of embarrassed the US hasn’t done more to help.
@Matt Moriarty
Left turn-
Here is domumentation of this simple case
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ldmi5byrvUAW6zMBRJ5oPo8ED6k8N6RfuWX0mYTHxLM/edit?usp=sharing
@Gysbreght
I do not recall this flight history, but I am not a good sim pilot. You should disregard that info, and if it is important to you, I would have to try a smooth take-off, which might be beyond my skill level.
Also I am thinking there can be some instability in the FS2004 when you switch off/on various auto-pilot features. Also if you bump up simulation rate to 16x sometimes it seems to act funny. So I don’t recall if I hit a wrong button or anything, or if I had a bad take off or other upset. Mostly it was stable flight from my perspective but you found some “INMARSAT data” on me that I had no idea you could find.
I will try to document model instability when I see it, as Jeff was asking me about rapid altitude climbs.
@Cordtx
There have been many offers by American experts throughout the past 2-1/2 years. The top US players all submitted bids that were rejected in favor of Fugro, which had no experience and whose methods and equipment have consistently been under fire from the heavy-hitters.
Only US-based Phoenix Int’l got a contract. Probably because their synth-aperture sonar is the best in the world. But for reasons unexplained by either the ATSB or them, they took a 7 month hiatus from the search in 2015, only to be asked back in January of this yr. It’s their 6000m SAS that is now being towed by the Dong Hai Jiu.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-malaysia-airlines-crash-search-insigh-idUSKBN0OC2QE20150528
http://www.phnx-international.com/phnx/2016/01/29/phoenix-international-returns-to-search-for-malaysia-airlines-flight-370-mh370/
If ATSB/Fugro turn up empty-handed, a new search needs to start – from scratch – run by real experts and paid for exclusively by, and with the full cooperation of, Malaysia (since it was their air force that allowed their airplane to violate their airspace unmolested) under the threat of sanctions from whatever international coalition or body cares enough to seek the truth.