UPDATED 12/12/16: Just to underline the extraordinary implausibility of Blaine Alan Gibson’s finds, I’ve taken the extra step of putting in bold the three (3) separate occasions when Gibson hit the jackpot with a one-in-a-million stroke of luck. See if you can spot them below. My personal favorite is the one with the ATV.
On December 8, 2016, the Twitter account voice370 (@cryfortruth) Tweeted the following:
Another piece of potential debris washed up the shore and found by B.A. Gibson on the same beach where NOK Jiang found a piece yesterday. pic.twitter.com/PdXCkYX4oI
— voice370 (@cryfortruth) December 9, 2016
In a Facebook post the same day, Grace Subathirai Nathan (one of the NOK on the current debris-finding expedition to Madagascar) posted about the same find:
Another piece of debris found earlier today. This time by private citizen Blaine Alan Gibson while he was with two French journalists Pierre Chabert and Renaud Fessaguet.
He walked past the spot on the beach where next of kin Jiang Hui found a piece yesterday and nothing was there then 30 mins later on the way back the waves washed the piece on debris to the shore.
This just goes to show that debris can be there one minute and gone the next and vice versa.
She included some of the images that were also in the Tweet, among them this one:
I’ve already written in the comment section of the preceding post that I find it quite extraordinary that a purported piece of MH370 apparently washed up on the shore within half an hour of Blaine’s passing by the spot. The ocean is vast, the number of pieces of MH370 necessarily limited. The odds of finding a piece of the plane on any given stretch of sand is very small; the odds of finding something that washed ashore within the last half hour must be infinitesmal.
One would also would not expect a newly washed-ashore piece of debris to be free of biofouling, as I’ve discussed before. Something that just came out of the ocean, if free of biofouling, must have spent time ashore, gotten picked clean, then washed back out to sea, only to come ashore again within a few days. Truly miraculous.
I’ve voiced suspicions in the past about Gibson’s self-financed investigation. He said that he found his first piece of MH370 debris, so-called “No Step,” 20 minutes after starting his first beach search. Though it was found on a sand bar that is awash at high tide, it, too, was remarkably free of biofouling. Since then, he has found more than half of the pieces of suspected debris. All have have been completely innocent of marine life. His finds have excited remarkably little enthusiasm among the authorities; the Malaysians waited six months to retrieve one batch, and then only made that effort after their inaction was the subject of unflattering news stories.
Gibson is clearly an eccentric; before he found “No Step” he was bouncing around the Indian Ocean littoral, investigating crackpot theories and making himself known to the authorities and next-of-kin. In the past he has, he says, tried to find the Ark of the Covenant. A recent article in the Guardian had this bit:
Blaine Gibson, a lawyer turned investigator who arrived on Madagascar six months ago, said he has seen debris from the plane used to fan a kitchen fire by a nine-year-old girl on the island.
“It was light and it was solid and it was part of the plane,” said Gibson, 59. “When I put the word out around the village, another guy turned up with another piece he had been using as a washing board for clothes.”
Are we to believe that he walked up on a girl fanning a fire and, lo and behold, she happened to be fanning it with a piece of MH370? Instead of any of a billion suitable small, light, flat objects that exist in the world? What’s more, I am troubled by Gibson’s suggestion that the residents of this region are so materially impoverished that they would eagerly size on any scrap of material that comes their way and put it to immediate use—to incorporate into a shelter, to burn for fuel, to fan a fire with, or to use as a washboard. In fact I find this idea rather bonkers.
Some people feel that it is unacceptable to question Blaine Alan Gibson; they say that he has inspired and given hope to the next-of-kin. As I’ve said before, I feel that if we are going to solve this mystery, we have to put every piece of evidence under intense scrutiny, regardless of however someone may or may not feel emotionally about that scrutiny.
Indeed, I find the fact that Gibson and his associates try to aggressively silence questions about his finds even more arousing of suspicion.
UPDATE 12/11/16: A couple of points I’d like to add to the above:
— In September, Gibson enlisted the aid of Australian aviation journalist Geoffrey Thomas in claiming that two pieces of debris that he’d found likely came from the electronics bay, showed evidence of fire damage, and therefore supported the hypothesis that the plane had come to grief due to an accidental fire. This theory, while favored by some, is very much at odds with other evidence in the case. Australian authorities responded by saying that “contrary to speculation there is no evidence the item was exposed to heat or fire.”
— More on Gibson’s background from SeattleMet:
For the next 25 years, Gibson lived a life that could be described as unconventionally adventurous. After a short stint at Seafirst, he moved to Olympia and worked for three years in the office of Washington state senator Ray Moore. Then he joined the U.S. Department of State. But he didn’t last long there either; in the late ’80s he could see that the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse and decided to capitalize on it. For 10 years he lived off and on in the newly capitalist Russia, serving as a consultant to new business owners and fattening a bank account that would later fund his globe-trotting.
When I interviewed him after the “No Step” find, he told me that he speaks fluent Russian.
— Based on the total quantity of debris found in the last year and a half, one observes that the pieces turn up quite infrequently. Yet Gibson has now twice found debris with a camera crew present. In June he found three pieces while accompanied by a crew from the France 2 TV show “Complément d’enquête.” From the same SeattleMet piece:
In the first week of June he did, in fact, go to Madagascar. And on June 6 he led a French television news crew to a thin strip of land off the island’s east coast. They rode quads along the beach, and at the north end he signaled for the party to stop. The camera crew had a good reason to follow him: He is, to this day, still the only person to find a piece of Flight 370 while actually looking for it. And he’d done enough research to have a good idea where he might find more. But come on, it was still a one-in-a-million find. There’s no way he’d actually uncover another.
Right?With the cameras trained on him, Gibson dismounted and started walking. And as he got closer to the object that had caught his eye, he could see that it was gray fiberglass. It was almost a clone of No Step. Later, he found a handful of other pieces, one of which looked exactly like the housing for a seat-back TV monitor. He couldn’t be sure, but he had a pretty good idea they came from Flight 370.
To recap, Blaine and a TV crew rode in ATVs along the beach until he signaled them to stop, got out, and pointed to a piece of MH370 debris. Holy. Shit.
— This is the piece that NOK Jiang Hui found the day before Blaine discovered his on the same beach. Again, pretty clean:
— Note: I’ve take out a paragraph in the original in which I said that the location of the debris in the sand appears to be way too far from the water to have washed up there within the last half hour. Several commenters pointed out that the piece appears to straddle the wet/dry line demarcating the high water mark, and I concede that point.
UPDATE 12/12/16: There’s a story in Der Spiegel today about a tree trunk that washed up in New Zealand. The remarkable size and density of these organisms is so striking that this entirely natural phenomenon struck those who came upon it as something fantastical and alien.
I bring this up to emphasize how extraordinary it is that all the debris recovered by Blaine Alan Gibson, and indeed all of the suspected pieces of MH370 debris save two, have been recovered in a nearly pristine state. Yes, objects which spend some time ashore can become picked clean in time. But many of the pieces of debris recovered so far have been found within hours of being deposited. As I’ve previously written in some detail, such pieces would be expected to be colonized by a variety of marine organisms. If you look at galleries of objects which have washed ashore after having spent a similar amount of time at sea, such as tsunami debris collected in the US Northwest and Hawaii, it collectively looks very, very different from MH370 debris. Don’t take my word for it; there are links to such image galleries at the end of the piece linked above.
@DennisW, Ventus45 – after all the time that has passed, I still cannot wrap my head around noone detecting any debris fields after March 8th, 2014. U nderstanding the 1st week or so was wasted looking in all the wrong places (another one of those MY deceptions), a clear debris field should have been there and it wasn’t. None the less, planting debris takes serious “debris planting” management. And whilst the planting project is going on, you need to be assured everyone involved will keep it under wraps. No easy feat IMO. But the maintenance records being burned (oh dang, another one of those deceptions) and not knowing what parts were replaced or not is something we cannot fully ignore. I am not a scientist Dennis, so I try not to polute the site with a diarrhea of posts because I do appreciate the science you and others bring to the equation. But we know nothing new(thanks to MY government being such liars and manipulators) and we end up rehashing the same data, over and over. Not a bad thing but frustrating for sure. For the NOK, I hope a miracle of sorts does happen and they find the plane because people like you and other smart people knew how to disect the data that you did have. They deserve to know the truth. Their grief and loss is real.
@all
I feel its high time to finaly bury all scenarios, that have the smell of a Troll-Factory-Production_Line of a a very distinct provenenace.
Most of the scenarios presented by the Trolls here have the trademark of a more or less sophisticated systematic desinformation campaign. You can identify those theories by the pure intention , to use any means, any lies, any fantasies if it leads to some believings , the hope of those trolls that something might remain stuck in the memory of whoever reads it.
This is typical desinformation. You can write a te4achi9ng bok from the experience with desinformation around MH370.
So lets get back to reason:
The Inmarsat data are one of the most extreme outliers in the human history. They are just virtual. People forget about how to treat virtual sciences. You canot and would not trust a hollywood movie for real. Scientists like the IG should have known how to cope with data outliers
The suicide scenario is so extremely bizarre, that everybody must be frightened to the bone by the prospect of all ‘normal’ human beings capability to activate one of the worst and most professional mass murder instincts out of nowhere. If it was ‘Zaharie, i would urge protection before any of my neighbours, because they might be killers ???
We should now finaly start to talk about, how exactly a capture could have been done. But excuse me Victor,even though i have a high esteem for you, you would not be the right person to know about commando action and how those people execute a task.
See the Mene Tekel of Aleppo and what Russia is doing there. This is a dark cloud above our heads. Dont be so naive and silly to think that Russia would not fight hard for its interest.
A possible involvement by Russia is the only reasonable Scenario left to talk about, in spite of the Kremlin Troll factories doing a superb job here …
@Johan
When looking at the insurance angle, it is worth noting that in 2014, there were 3 major commercial airline disasters which took 682 lives.
MH 370 – (March 8, 2014) Boeing 777 9M-MRO – •239 killed
MH 17 – (July 17, 2014) Boeing 777 9M-MRD – •283 killed
Air Asia QZ8501 – (Dec. 28, 2014) Airbus A320-216 PK-AXC – •163 killed
•682 killed in 10 months
It is also worth noting, this deadly year of 2014 was surrounded by the 2 safest years in aviation in 2013 and 2015.
Not since 1998 had there been that many deaths and in 2014, 3 flights with massive casualties.
Air Asia QZ8501 – rudder malfunction/crew, pilot error
Malaysian Airlines MH17 – shot down
Malaysian Airlines MH370 – ?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/Was-2014-the-deadliest-year-in-aviation-history/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/2015-was-the-safest-year-in-aviation-history/
@Gysbreght @David
Many weather settings. General choice is user-defined vs. simulated real world vs. clear(none). Also you can set turbulence and rate of change of weather (gradual vs. immediate change). User-defined allows setting wind direction and speed at various layers of altitude. Like most settings, these settings can also be changed by the user at any time during the flight.
I would ask what direction the wind is coming from at 45S? As high as 160 kts would seem to be user-defined.
Implication is that Victor might have extracted more info about the sim studies if he had derived the calculated quantities, wind speed, ground speed etc. Or maybe he did? I have to go back and read the paper to clarify derived calcs vs. raw vector velocities in the FLT files.
@cosmic
“A possible involvement by Russia is the only reasonable Scenario left to talk about, in spite of the Kremlin Troll factories doing a superb job here …”
Exactly!! They sure have come out of the woodwork now
@Cosmic Academy
So let’s get back to reason..
‘The Inmarsat data.. they are just virtual’ and so on.
Come with some prove please.
And also about the rest of your conspiracy statements.
Talking about desinformation and trolling. What you’re doing now is just that.
Bashing out statements and suggesting connections between events not based on any factual information at all.
I suggest stay preaching nonsens in your ‘Cosmic Academy’ if you cann’t provide any factual information on your blatant statements. We’re on Earth here.
Jeff, do you think you would have taken less heat if you titled this post “Is Blaine Alan Gibson Finding Planted MH370 Debris?”
Many comments above, including some of your own, have raised the possibility that if there are shenanigans connected with these finds, Blaine might not the only bad faith actor.
I think you got way more flack than you deserved here. Thank goodness you’re questioning things critically; you’d be doing a disservice to the NoK if you WEREN’T doing this.
@Jeff Wise
On the biofouling we had extensive discussion before on your blog.
Quite some credible explanations where brought forward about disappearing of biofouling in a short time. The Mosselbay engine cowling piece was the most telling in this regard.
Many pieces show remnants of possible calcite circels of barnacle attachments (Liam Lotter piece f.i but a lot more IMO).
Gibson’s pieces though show no clear biofouling or remnants of them in most of the cases.
In fact only his ‘No Step’ piece shows some tiny barnacles.
Also the flaperon biofouling we discussed before.
This piece, like the Mosselbay-piece spend undisputable (IMO) at least many months in the ocean regarding their biofouling.
They could not have been planted on those beaches like that IMO (like also the pieces with calcite remnants).
The strange temperature analyzis on the flaperon barnacles where very interesting.
I still hope to hear more on them.
And like you say; I hope too the final report (and the French) will shed more light on this all.
@all
Anyone interested in a refresher on airline insurance payouts, this article is most informative.
http://fortune.com/2014/05/01/the-big-money-surprise-about-malaysia-airlines-flight-370/
@TBill: Thank you for explaining the weather setting options.
As to your question: “I would ask what direction the wind is coming from at 45S? As high as 160 kts would seem to be user-defined.” I don’t see glaring anomalies in the values of 45S1, except that the calculated AoA is close to zero. VictorI has explained that when any parameter is changed on the MAP page, the longitudinal body axis is aligned with the flight path of the airplane by setting XVelBodyAxis=YVelBodyAxis=0. Although VictorI hasn’t that explicitly, he means flight path defined by the speed of the airplane relative to earth, not taking wind into account.
On the other hand 45S2 has two major anomalies: The AGL of 37654 ft vs altitude of 3999.99 ft, and the high value of dynamic pressure DynPres=379.545360 lb/sq.ft. I have explained how that high value of DynPres calculated by FS2004 could have resulted from the user changing the altitude on the MAP page from approx. 38000 ft to approx. 4000 ft during a pause in a simulated flight. The windspeed that corresponds to the anomalous dynamic pressure is just as anomalous as the pressure it is calculated from.
@Gysbreght @TBill
LOL you just ignore this storm in glass of water.. (Dutch saying)
@Sunken Deal, I appreciate your kind words. You may be right in suggesting that I could have used a more diplomatic headline.
@Ge Rijn, The Mossel Bay piece is itself a curious tale. What are the odds that a piece would be discovered twice? In nearly the same spot? While it does show the process by which a fouled piece can become clean, the particularities of the process — washed upstream, picked clean, washed back downstream again, rebeached, and quickly discovered — itself raises the question: what percentage of pieces would we expect this to have happened to? Some, perhaps, but not above 90 percent.
@Jeff
“Studies have shown the accurate numbers are not any more useful than numbers you make up”
-Dilbert
@all
More insurance information:
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/07/22/business/air-insurers-worry-after-malaysia-airlines-latest-crash.html
@Ge Rijn
Thank you for telling me that my nick is at your dislike. Didnt know that until you were so polite . But, cosmology, or better said, astronomy seems not to be your favourite science either. And if you send a human being to the moon and you get data, that it really goes direction to mars, you would look for it on mars until to the end of your life?
Any beginner in the subject of methodology would know that it is an outlier. This is absolut basic science, no further exsplanation needed. Look up your first grade teching boks. Fullstop!
Two years ago i asked Mike Exner on this Blog to ask his friends at Inmarsat, to look for posible trials of inflight-satellite-logons in their data dump. They never came up with an answer. If there was no such data, they could just have informed the public. So i think they might haver found it, and they know who did such trials, which would have been essential to the training of any commando to hijack 9M MRO
Maybe they try again?
Meanwhile i follow your advise to go into the higher spheres (of my fitness studio) and pray for the enlightenment of mr Putin, while i get my deserved torture on the crosstrainer and some waterboarding in the pool afterward. Dennis would sure like it
Good night until later
@Jeff
Could it be possible that the size of an item has some influence on its exposure and atractivity to lepas and other fouling specimen? The bigger pieces found so far had been exposed to bio fouling, the smaller less or not at all. Concerning lepas there seems to be an obvious reason. Ones some lepas would settle on a small piece, the bouyancy would change and the item might sink.
There might be also another influence, the way the piece swims in the water. The small pieces have a flat shape and drift flat in the water. The only habitable place would be the bottom side. Once flipped by some wave the lepas would be on the wrong side. That does not sound good for building a lepas colony.
Maybe it would be a good idea to contact a marine life expert and ask him that question.
Planted debris would imply incompatible ISAT data. Throwing the ISAT data overboard we would be left with the radar data and some eyewitness reports, which have been dumped until now because of their non conformity with the ISAT data. On the other hand if we dump the ISAT data alone, we could still go with the debris data.
There is no scienttific approach yet to prove or disprove the debris data. To the opposite, the ISAT data rely completely on scientific math and physics. Experts should be able to walk over them again with great scrutinity in an attempt to find holes and inconsistencies. Main point would be wether the interpretation of the BFO values does exclusivly point to a southern path.
Southern path and planted debris would make no sense.
Northern path and planted debris could make sense.
@Jeff Wise
If we talk of the Gibson finds we talk about ~40%. The ‘No Step’ piece has small barnacles on it. The rest is fairly clean and not identifiable to be linked to MH370 or B777 (till now) except the LCD mounting piece. Which is obviously from a MAS B777.
Only this piece was the reason why I asked you if Gibson visited the MH17 crash-area.
If you think of bad intend he could have collected one of these in that (clean, fairly undamaged) shape there and maybe also some shattered interior panels. Easy to travel around or to send to places undetected.
The other ~60% show IMO clear signs of biofouling (remnants or at least corrosion of long times being in the ocean).
I think it’s reasonable to believe that dissapearing of the barnacles happened the same way as the Mosselbay piece in ~60% of the cases. They show the signs IMO.
Most of the Gibson finds do not.
And this is only one problem with his finds among others surfacing now and already also with the ‘burned piece’.
@Ge Rijn
It would not be necessary Blaine visited/ collected himself. The handlers probably arranged it all.
@MH
Who, how. At least explain yourself with arguments. This kind of vague insinuations say nothing to me.
@RetiredF4, Even very small pieces will become fouled; one study of pumice rafts found pieces a half-inch across with various organisms growing on them.
I have talked to numerous marine life experts about this topic.
Planted debris would be incompatible with the BFO data, which as I’ve shown is vulnerable to spoofing in this type of aircraft, with this type of SDU, flying this type of route, under a satellite with this kind of hydrazine shortage. It is not incompatible with the BTO data, which is harder to spoof, and which by itself indicates where the plane went.
You wrote, “There is no scientific approach yet to prove or disprove the debris data.” I disagree. By studying the marine life we can tell all sorts of things about how the debris got where it was, and this may or may not fit with the official narrative. More to come.
You also wrote, “To the opposite, the ISAT data rely completely on scientific math and physics.” There is a consideration here which has gone overlooked: the scientists have done a great job of making sense of the Inmarsat data, but does that mean that the data is accurate? If you buy a bottle of Tylenol, and the seal is missing, then you cannot really be sure that the pills in the bottle are really Tylenol. All the BFO data come from an SDU that looks for all the world like it has been tampered with. So why should be assume that its values are squeaky clean? I rather think the whiff of tampering should lead us to suspect the opposite.
@Gysbreght, I think your work with @TBill to elucidate what’s going on at 45S2 is some of the most important MH370 work going on right now. Very keen to hear more.
Quick question: what’s the stall speed of a 777 at 40,000 feet? The speed at 45S1 seems pretty slow.
[Comment deleted] I no longer have a particularly large tolerance for Russian trolls.
@keffertje said:
‘But the maintenance records being burned (oh dang, another one of those deceptions) and not knowing what parts were replaced or not is something we cannot fully ignore.’
This keeps being repeated from time to time as fact by people who haven’t taken the time to look into it, but is actually not true.
The (extremely small) ‘fire’ was in the AVIONICS workshop – that was a small, internal office room where avionics equipment was tested and repaired.
It would likely have contained technical manuals for the avionics equipment being worked on, small hand tools (like soldering irons, test meters, screwdrivers) computer terminals and … job cards.
The job cards would have related to the job (the equipment model number, what the fault was, which aircraft it was from, serial number of the equipment etc)
That room would not have contained every single maintenance record for every job done on every plane in the entire MAS fleet – it was an AVIONICS workshop.
The fire was extremely small – there are photos on the web (if you take a moment to look) showing office workers in shirts & ties walking around with fire extinguishers, a little smoke in the air and a few pieces of burnt paper on the floor.
As MAS said, ‘a small fire which caused little or no damage’. Perhaps caused by a hot soldering iron touching a piece of paper and igniting it?
So no massive fire, no deception (on this occasion) and no loss of ‘maintenance’ records – in an airline as big as MAS they would all be entered and stored on MAS’s central computer maintenance system in any case.
Was there any mention in the FI that maintenance records weren’t available for MH370 due to that fire, or any other cause? I did not see any.
@Dennis
Setting aside your erroneous, entrenched POV that Z was incapable (my word, not your POV exactly) of mass murder/suicide, I would like to pay you a genuine compliment.
Along with Rob, you have been the most consistent and logical in refuting and dismissing the nonsense we are inundated with here.
Hopefully our host will not ban me for simply expressing my opinion of the entire ‘planting’ of debris to be absolutely ridiculous.
Like someone planted a freaking FLAPERON!!! Lordy, lordy, lordy.
@Jeff Wise:
I’m not doeing more work on 45S2 because I can’t think of anything more elucidating. Do you have any ideas?
Then you ask: “Quick question: what’s the stall speed of a 777 at 40,000 feet? The speed at 45S1 seems pretty slow.”
Thats a good question but not easy to answer. I suppose you mean what stall speed model is implemented in the MSFS B777 Aero data. The impression I get from reading Yves Guillaume’s description is that stall speed is modelled rather simplistic and therefore not very accurately, in particular with respect to the effect of Mach number.
On the real airplane the FCOM gives the “Minimum Maneuver Speed” for Flaps0 as VREF30+80 kts, which is 246 kts at a weight of 300 tons. Assuming that the minimum maneuver speed is at least 23% higher than the 1-g stall speed, the stall speed can be estimated as 200 kIAS at 300t, or 155 kt at 180t (the weight at 45S1&2). However, that is probably only valid at altitudes encountered during takeoff and landing. At 40,000 ft the Mach number is higher, stall occurs at a lower angle of attack and hence at higher speed, but I can’t tell you how much higher.
[Oleksandr is banned]
@all
In case anyone cares.
http://tmex1.blogspot.com/2016/12/debris-statistics.html
How can the pieces be confirmed when MH370 did not crash?
@Gysbreght, My general understanding is that the stall speed is more or less always the same IAS value. If that’s around 200 KIAS, then perhaps he was messing around with high-altitude stalls, then from the same save paused it again and switched the altitude to 4000 so he could try the same thing down low. But he changed the parameters in such a way that he got the weird dynamic pressure anomaly?
My sense is that in order to figure all this out, we need to get that PSS add-on up and running, am I right?
I had another idea, if the headwind turns out to be real: he might have been trying to see if he could dynamic soaring in a 777. This is when you use windshear to generate sustainable lift. It would require setting different wind speeds at different altitudes. For instance, dive from still air into a headwind, use the lift to climb, then turn, dive, go back down into the lift… here’s a YouTube video of a model airplane getting over 500 mph using this technique:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFPJ6DUAY10
How is that stat model of any use to describe an event that didn’t happen nor has any similar predecessors events ?
@Susie Crowe:
Thanks for the articles. One I saw before.
The rudder failure on the AA QZ8501 wasn’t discussed as anything but a technical failure I hope? (Russian parts?)
Reminds me of the 1947 KLM Douglas DC-3 Schiphol to Kastrup, Copenhagen, accident, when Gustavus Adolphus was out flying. Hopefully unrelated.
@MH, The idea is to discern the intention of Zaharie when he created these save-points.
Susie Crowe:
The NYT article was a treat really. Thanks again.
@Jeff
I should have expressed myself different. There sure is science available to check the debris on micro organism and derive some pattern of origin, travel routing and time exposed to the elements. I question the necessary precission of such a results, and when we ask 5 experts we will get five different results. In that area that might be called a scientific result, but not comparable to a mathematical precision like the computations done by ISAT and some experts here, none of those differ by a lot.
It is legit to question the ISAT data to the reasons you mentioned, the debris data have the same problem. Did we have any example of the lepas available for own forensics? Are the results of the ATSB forensic examination of the flaperon published in detail?
That is the problem with all data we have, they are all second hand and the integrity of all those data is not confirmed.
You havn’t adressed a main point of my last two posts. If the ISAT data are spoofed or falsified, then the planting of some debris like the flaperon on time for the drift models ro fit could make sense. But what sense would a person like Blaine Gibson, distributing and collecting debris after two years, make? There is no development at all to shift the attention out of the SIO to search on the northern arc or anywhere else. But even planting the flaperon at that time didn’t make sense from the pov of a perp, who had covered his tracks very well by spoofing the ISAT data.
Planted debris is tied to spoofed ISAT data. Then we should search for ways to manipulate those data and find the level at which such altering was posiible and probable. Speculating about the role of Blaine Gibson might be entertaining, but it leads nowhere.
@RetiredF4, The flaperon turned up just when people were starting to take northern routes seriously. This recent spate comes as it’s becoming clear to the public that the seabed search has failed. To be plausible, there has to be a certain quantity of stuff found. That would be my scenario.
You wrote, “we should search for ways to manipulate those data and find the level at which such altering was posiible and probable.” Agreed, I’ve put out my proposed version of events, and Victor Iannello and Gerry S tweaked and improved it. Would love to hear further ideas.
@RetF4
Just to be clear. There has never been a time when people ever took or were starting to take a Northern route seriously. You will find no mention of it by the ATSB or any of their subcontractors.
Jeff I don’t have any intentions to influence your decision however Oleksandr is here from the beginning and I have the feeling he genuinely wants to help although I don’t agree with him on many things (like – a lot) and sometimes he comes across as a bit rude. Mind that some of his contributions were quite valuable so I’m not sure that disagreements about world politics should go all the way to banning someone.
Your blog your rules though.
@RetiredF4
You said:-
“Planted debris is tied to spoofed ISAT data. Then we should search for ways to manipulate those data and find the level at which such altering was possible and probable.”
Many of us would love to, but we can’t, because we don’t have it “ALL.
Everyone seems to have forgotten, that we only ever got (from MY, months in, and only after a lot of pressure was applied) a highly “redacted” log, amended (officially) months later. It is highly questionable as to why we never did get the “full ISAT Log”, (if it is so “snow white” pure, you have to ask: what have they got to hide) and “they” still refuse to give it to us.
Not only is the provenience and provenance of the debris in doubt, so is the provenience and provenance of the ISAT data in doubt, but amazingly, everyone seems to accept it “as is”.
@Dennis
“@RetF4
Just to be clear. There has never been a time when people ever took or were starting to take a Northern route seriously. You will find no mention of it by the ATSB or any of their subcontractors.”
You know, I did, although not to Kazachstan. And thanks for the ISAT data and a assumed FMT position together with a ghost scenario nobody considered a northern routing.
Before you ask, not the ISAT data, but the debris finds changed my mind. So Jeff has a point there.
@Jeff
Following your arguments, what would be the reason that a possible perp would still be concerned where a possible search party will look? If MH 370 has been flown to a safe place north it will be long gone by now.
@Ventus
You might recall that the ATSB started the underwater search in October 2014. The flaperon was not found until July 2015. The flaperon finding had no influence on the decision to start the search in the SIO at the approximate location derived by the IG, Inmarsat (who had all the data), and the SSWG (who also had all the data). The redactions are a red herring. The DSTG also had all the data, and came to basically the same conclusion derived previously. If the redactions were of any importance besides manageability of the data volume, it certainly has not impacted the analytics in any discernible way.
I find the ISAT data to be self-consistent and free from obvious errors except for values that were obviously the result of equipment glitches of some kind. There is no reason to question the integrity of the ISAT data.
@RetF4
My recollection of your thoughts on a Northern route had to do with possibilities within the ISAT constraints. I never had the impression that you were ready to dismiss the data.
Duncan Steel initially had thought of a northern route
Per the Poisson distribution model —
How is that stat model of any use to describe an event that didn’t happen nor has any similar predecessors events ?
As there is no K value for mh370
@DennisW
I have no quarrel with your analsysis (or anyone else’s) of the ISAT dat as we have it.
The ISAT BTO/BFO data set “as is” seems to be “consistent” (with your equipment reservations) as presented.
The kicker, is in the:- “as presented”.
Consider a hypothetical (Geofrey Robinson).
( For fun:- https://www.abccommercial.com/librarysales/program/geoffrey-robertsons-hypotheticals )
Assume that the ISAT data is / was faked deliberately, and specifically, to hide a ‘taking” of the aircraft.
If that was the plan, the intent, i.e. you specifically wanted to leave a “false trail of electronic breadcrumbs”, and assuming you had “state level resources and capabilities, ask the question, how yould you go about it, how would you do it, what would be “the best way” to do it.
There are a number of possible “sites” and “ways” I can think of (there may be others).
1. In Flight – On board 9M_MRO – basically – JW’s scenario, or a variant of it.
2. In Flight – Aboard a decoy air vehicle (Global Hawk ?) – KenS’s scenario.
3. In Flight – Aboard a manned ELINT aircraft by RAVENS (RC135 or equivalent).
4. On Ground – at a fixed site within the I3F-1 footprint, with ELINT equipment (DG ?).
5. On Ocean – on a ship with ELINT equipment (any state actor – perhaps even sophisticated non state organisation).
6. Within Inmarsat itself (there was the “mysterious, untimely death” of an engineer “well placed” who may have possibly “detected data tampering”).
Method 1. Not an ideal choice, since it is way too risky, if something went wrong with the plan on the flight, no one on the ground would know what had gone wrong, nor how to cover it up.
Status:- “Too Risky – Dismiss.”
Method 2. Doable and safe, and adaptable, the plan could change in real time, and the decoy air vehicle could change flight path as required.
Status:- “On the table, in the middle.”
Method 3. Doable and safe, and even more adaptable than Method 2.
Status:- “At the head of the table”.
Method 4. Doable and safe, but, with a big but, with all the handshakes coming from “one geolocation”, there is the danger that SIGINT analysis, “might” give the game away.
Status:- “At the foot of the table.”
Method 5. As per Method 4.
Status:- “At the foot of the table.”
Method 6. Doable and safe, but, IFF (if and ONLY if) “the right people are in place”, AND no one goes “ferreting around within the system – afterwards”.
Status:- “On the table, in the lower middle position.”
Dennis, the “SIGINT” details, are in the “redacted signal strenght data”.
You listed all the “experts” whom you assume have ALL the data, and have said nothing untoward.
It seems to me, that they are all state actor related.
I would not expect any of them to “blow the whistle”, even if there was a whistle to be blown.
Dennis, do you still want to swallow the ISAT data, “as is”, hook line and sinker ?
At the beginning I was for the northern route too, shadowing SIA 777 looked like a perfect way to sneak the plane through several countries however later I saw nice explanation why it wasn’t really feasible. (flight times didn’t match well as the first one)
@Ventus45
Many variations on the spoof theme are possible. There is also the possibility of a flight path on a mirror image path to the West of 3F1 timed to take over when the SDU was restored at 18:25 or so (my personal favorite). My reluctance to embrace a spoof has nothing to do with feasibility, but rather with motive. It would be one of the most difficult ways to obtain something on the aircraft or the aircraft itself.
@Johan
If it is true in The NY Times article,
about the policy not having the standard “sublimit for search and rescue costs” (and only caps out at $2.25 billion), it could certainly be a factor in the ATSB’s brazen $180 million expenditure of taxpayer’s money, as they can request reimbursement.
Motive could be Russia proving they can and will make western airliners disappear — Putin may have a new Cold War type of propaganda happening.