Australian officials have concluded that the $180 million search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has failed. In a report timed to coincide with the wind-down of the two-year-long inspection of the southern Indian Ocean, a panel of experts convened by the Australian Transport Safety Board opined that the plane most likely lies somewhere in a zone of open ocean about the size of New Hampshire to the northeast of the current search area.
This new zone probably won’t be examined. The three countries responsible for the search — Australia, Malaysia, and China — have already stated that no further attempts to find the plane will be undertaken, unless compelling new evidence emerges.
In short, the biggest mystery in the history of modern aviation doesn’t look like it will be solved anytime soon. So it’s a good moment to take stock about what we know and what to expect in the future as we try to make sense of frustrating and tragic irresolution:
The investigators now say they have a pretty good handle on how the plane went down.
Ironically, while admitting failure, the Australian report reflects the experts’ increased confidence that they understand more or less what happened the night of the vanishing.
Based on automatic signals — “pings” — exchanged between the plane and a navigation satellite during the final six hours MH370 was in the air, investigators believe that after the airliner vanished from radar screens over the Malacca Strait it must have taken a final turn to the left and flown south on a magnetic compass heading (one of several possible navigational modes a plane can use). It then flew straight until it ran out of fuel and dived into the ocean at high speed, smashing apart into small fragments.
The scenario would be consistent with pilot suicide, but the report does not mention the secret Malaysian police report leaked earlier this year that revealed that captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah had saved a set of points on his home flight simulator in which he flew with zero fuel in the remote southern Indian Ocean. The simulator data could reasonably be interpreted as evidence he planned a suicide flight, or it could be a freak coincidence. The ATSB has long maintained silence regarding the possible identity of the perpetrator, saying that its job is to figure where MH370 went, not why it went there.
The plane is almost certainly not in the huge patch of ocean investigators spent two years searching.
The investigators long believed that the plane’s impact point lay within a nearly 50,000-square-mile rectangle calculated by Australia’s Defense Science Technology Group. But this high-probability zone has now been searched out using towed side-scan sonar arrays and autonomous underwater vehicles. Apparently, the plane isn’t there.
Some observers have speculated that the wreckage might have been missed by the sonar scan, perhaps falling into the shadow of a seamount or the depths of a ravine. The report, however, throws cold water on this idea, explaining that the technology is capable of searching all but the most rugged 1.2 percent of the search area, and therefore, “There is a high degree of confidence that the previously identified underwater area searched to date does not contain the missing aircraft.”
The new proposed search area probably won’t be examined.
If the plane isn’t in the priority search area, then it must be somewhere else. But the range of possibilities is limited. If it crashed any farther north, the debris field would have been spotted during the massive aerial search conducted just after the disappearance. If it crashed south of the current search area, debris would have been swept to the coast of Australia and likely been discovered by beachcombers. By a process of elimination, then, the endpoint could only be in a fairly tightly constrained area, about one eighth the size of the current search zone and adjacent to its northeastern edge.
“The participants of the First Principles Review were in agreement on the need to search [this] additional area,” the report states. But this extra area is large — about 10,000 square miles — and it would take months and tens of millions of dollars to scan. In its previous agreement with China and Malaysia, Australia stipulated that the search would only continue if “credible new evidence leading to the identification of a specific location of the aircraft” were found. This new analysis will not likely fit that bill.
What if the new area is searched and the plane still isn’t found?
That, the report states, “would exhaust all prospective areas for the presence of MH370.” That is to say, if the plane isn’t there, then the searchers weren’t just unlucky, their analysis was altogether wrong, and something else entirely must have happened to the plane.
But what? One possibility is that they misinterpreted one of the satellite pings. For instance, the ATSB has long puzzled over the value of the final ping but recently became convinced it must indicate that the plane was plummeting in a steep, fatal dive. If this conclusion is wrong, and the plane was instead being held in a long Sullenberger-esque glide by a suicidal pilot, then the plane’s endpoint could lie anywhere in a much larger swath of ocean.
Another possibility is that the ATSB misinterpreted all the satellite data. After MH370 disappeared from radar over the Malacca Strait, it was electronically invisible, flying over empty ocean in the dark of a moonless night. It could have gone anywhere in the world and no one would have been the wiser. Then, mysteriously, just three minutes later, its satellite communication system switched back on. This is not something that happens accidentally, or that most pilots know how to do. And yet, it is this baffling event that provided everything investigators know about the plane’s final hours. Could this strange satcom behavior have been the result of tampering by sophisticated hijackers, in order to feed investigators misleading clues? Twice I’ve asked teams within the investigation whether the satcom data could have been altered; both times they told me that they assumed that it was good.
Now that the ATSB has thrown in the towel, such questions will remain in limbo. The search will not be officially ended, only suspended. This means that according to international aviation treaties search officials will not have to issue a comprehensive final report. And so potentially vital clues about the fate of the airplane will remain hidden away indefinitely.
The mystery will endure.
(This article originally ran on December 21, 2016, in New York magazine.)
@All
Triparty-meeting announced:
http://www.thesundaily.my/news/2102396?utm_content=buffer17a73&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
@All, Regarding Jeff’s question, would it have been possible to jettison fuel to fix a preferred terminus north of the current search zone?
@JeffW
I also envision a possible visit to the EE Bay, if before IGARI, I am thinking before take off, but only if it is possible to do that discretely without the FO or ACARS realizing the systems are off for the pre flight checklist.
@Rob @Brian A
Brian’s error message concern (re: waypoints outside fuel range) actually suggests a possible flight path, whereas FS2004 or SkyVector could be used to plan ahead and pick off a list of manual latitude/longitude waypoints on the McMurdo waypoint path, but within fuel limits. So let’s say the simulator study was used, maybe it was not necessary for MH370 to actually start at the same point as the simulator study, but maybe it could have merged onto that same FS2004 McMurdo vector, and we know that vector ends at about 29S and Arc7.
We can possibly add that to Victor’s set of discrete Arc7 crossing point candidates.
The pings 1 to 7from satellite were the only clue on which Searchers are working to find the MH470PLANE.BUT NOBODY HAS CHECKED the AUTHENTICITY OF THE PINGS IN TOTAL!There are differences in the 1to7 pings.Specially 6&7 PINGS are not genuine as the reached Satellite by way of reflection and not DIRECT,from plane. FAILURE TO UNDERSTAND THIS PHENOMENON IS THE ROOT CAUSE OF PLANE COULD NOT BE FOUND AT ALL!I am doing my investigation on MH 370 from July 2014,and it took one year to isolate 6&7 as images.PLANE IS ON LAND AND NOT IN SEA IS MY FINDING!
@Keffertje
AS I remember it well the jettison pumps are also powered via the left AC bus.
If a pilot-hijacker would want to jettison fuel before arriving at a preferred area/waypoint he at least had to repower the left AC bus again.
@DennisW, @SusieC:
Seems unnecessary difficult to set up a car accident with four people in it. Of which two survives. So if there weren’t any special circumstances (non-ordinary traffic situation; car standing still when hit; car hit by falling objects from vehicle in front of it etc. ) which the news article forgot to tell of, and the survivors are still alive, then it is probably less likely.
The Inmarsat guy I couldn’t say, but working yourself to death is not completely uncommon. And hereditary or congenital heart conditions are a factor. Though you hear of it mostly in young becoming professional athletes (and somewhat older men). And then there’s squash and floorball. But it does sound a bit too much, dying just days after. Perhaps he realised he had a load of overtime sailing in?
@TBill
Firstly, it may generate an error message, but my opinion is (for what it’s worth) that the FMC would still allow the waypoint to be entered, even if beyond the estimated fuel range.
Then despite what Gysbreght said previously to my suggestion about the pilot being able to insert a manual along/track waypoint to extend the IGOGU/ISBIX great circle (he says it cannot be done, I still say it can, I think the pilot could insert a manual, along track waypoint beyond ISBIX, for any distance of his choice, to coincide with the estimated point of fuel exhaustion, after finding this estimated exhaustion point from the FMC. The pilot has to input the manual waypoint before reaching ISBIX, the FMC then replaces ISBIX with the new waypoint, and the aircraft just continues on along the same great circle, until flameout.
The pilot could have chosen the IGOGU/ISBIX alignment in advance, and projected the path extension, using the online Vincenty Calculator, just as I did, to make sure the plane ended up where he wanted. Where did he want the plane to end up? I hear you say. Do I really need to bore and antagonize everyone with my predictable reply? Alright then, for good order, he wanted to synchronize flameout with sun angle.
What do I think of the arguments for a more northerly terminus? Not much.
Add to my previous post; ‘IF’ the left AC bus was isolated before the SDU re-boot (i.e. IGARI).
@Susie
Coincidences
I would not speak of coincidences here, but of singularities. That is, when events happen, which you usually see only once in a lifetime. Lets look at the lon list of extreme singular events on this one flight:
1) The disappearance is far outstanding from any other lost planes and the mysterious nature of it is truly unprecedented.
2) The secrecy around an investigation of a civilian airliner incident is unprecedented as well.
3) The absence of leaks is quite odd.
4) The marriage ring of one australian passenger left home “in case something happens” in this of all flights.
5) The missing SMS of Mr. Wright in this of al flights.
6) The special flight maneuvre to turn the plane at Bitod
7) The military style of flying at FIR borders at world record speed across the peninsula.
8) The unforgivable reaction of KL ATC to the HCM ATC where professional people who know their job very well, out of nowhere make an infant mistake (?) by giving an information based on a flight projection, which delays the search & rescue by hours.
9) A rogue civilian airliner, that is posing an imminent threat, flies in direction of the major air force base of a country and is not (!) intercepted.
10) A cell phone of a first officer of the flight logs in to the network oiver Penang, where the crew has to keep their cell phones off as an obligation.
11) A dead Sat Unit reappears with an inflight logon , which usually never happens.
12) The logon starts exactly , when the radar coverage ceases
13) a trace of satellite pings appear that are for the first time in history, used to try to locate the point of impact of the plane.
14) An unprecedented and very expensive hight tech seabed search of a vast area is undertaken after the SAT provider undertakes enormous efforts to persuade the malaysian government to believe their data.
15) One of the key members of the satellite control team, responsible for the data dies unforeseen during church service
16) Unprecedented numbers of Trolls flood the public forums with a pilot suicide narative, that would usually be conmpared to the story made up by drug finds. Its unclear whether the pilot was under heavy drugs, for 9 months at least to plan and execute such a bizarre suicide or whether the storytellers who post that story are drug addicts. Usually you find this kind of story only in drug infested environments.
17) A world leading PR Agency is employed right after the disappearance whose spin doctors systematically misinform the public and try to direct the focus of the investigation.
18) A world famous Scientist like Duncan Steel makes a childish mistake by neglecting the wobble of the satellite and , because of his neglect, starts a dramatic scientific controversy in public, threatening even with legal action
19) One of the biggest volunteer campaigns in history starts to look into the facts up to the very day today
There might be more singularities that happened around this flight, but you see just from this very long list of things that never happen, they all happened in this of al flights. You would automatically say, this fits very well to such a mysterious and unprecedented disapearance. it seems all these singularities are a concatenation of events with a mastermind behind it. And that sure was not Zaharie.
@Johan
Yes, I agree with your comments about the heart attack and car accident. I am not attaching any significance to them at this time. Just bookmarks at the moment.
@TBill
Motivated by Victor’s and Richard’s work on McMurdo, I took a quick look at a Cocos waypoint (which is in fuel range and which would be overflown using a magnetic heading). You get very close to the same point on the 7th arc with this model. I actually continued past the Cocos on the same great circle trajectory since magnetic and great circle tracks are insignificantly (for this purpose) different on a heading almost straight South.
http://tmex1.blogspot.com/2016/11/path-to-cocos.html
@Johan
“The Inmarsat guy I couldn’t say, but working yourself to death is not completely uncommon. And hereditary or congenital heart conditions are a factor. Though you hear of it mostly in young becoming professional athletes (and somewhat older men). And then there’s squash and floorball. But it does sound a bit too much, dying just days after. Perhaps he realised he had a load of overtime sailing in?”
Actually my first thought was that dedicated geeks living a a diet of coke and pizza are prime candidates for health issues. Poor guy was most likely going at it 24×7 in the days before his heart attack working on the flight path analytics.
@SusieC, @DennisW:
When pondering why on earth someone would assasinate an egineer of thirty, and making it look like a heart attack, without any world wars breaking out or similar in the period thereafter — when a trip to Bahamas or a golf set would convince most people to look the other way — I can’t for my life imagine. And possibly having to give the golf set to the coroner and some other people instead.
If the Russians smuggled a dirty bomb on the plane to blow up over China, making it look like U.S., and Fairbairns found out and told his boss, who is a spy paid by the Russians who are holding his wife hostage, then perhaps. I can’t see other good enough reasons. I think it is more probable that his boss killed him for career reasons or his wife for whatever reason. Or Boeing did it (no I hope not). But the Russians would then be more busy trying to start a war again than wading around in shorts trying to get the damn barnacles to stick on fake debris. If you ask me.
@Johan
Fairbairn
Mr. Fairbairn was a key witness in a criminal investigation of some major dimensions. I dont understand why you tell this funny story about this personal and also public tragedy?
By the way, according to Brock findings in October 2015, Mr Fairbairn was in his early 50ties and he did not die from a heart attack but from a brain condition. Either way that could be indicative for the widespread metabolic syndrome , which is indeed very common in that age group.
But when a key witness deceases in a sudden, you are obliged to produce a good explanation. You see, al the time people here demand for facts. SIC! the death of the key witness is a fact as a fact can be.
@DennisW
yes…also POLUM on L894 is almost directly on the VOCX to COCOS path as the next leg south past COCOS…call it the Victor Vector? I am warming up to magnetic 180 south, but I need to do more sim runs, after the holidays.
FS2004 has 2,4,8,16x run speed options, but faster often gives different results, so I need some slow 1x speed work.
@all
Seasons greetings and thoughts remain with all MH370 families, and hoping 2017 leads to findings.
@TBill: If you want to use FS as a modeling tool, I would suggest using the PMDG 777 model running on FSX. I only use FS9/PSS to replicate the simulation found on ZS’s computer, which has been done for all data sets.
@TBill, I truly do not understand the ongoing discussion about flight sim autopilot routes, since it has been established that the location of the final waypoints were arrived at by dragging with a mouse. Meanwhile, the ATSB has made a strong case that if the plane did fly south into the Indian Ocean, it could only have done so on a magnetic heading. Therefore, I feel that this discussion of flight sim paths is built upon several layers of flawed assumptions.
Meanwhile, there is a truly urgent question regarding the flight sim that has yet to be cleared up: have you been able to recreate the conditions that lead to the stored values observed at 45S1 and 45S2?
@jeffwise said, “Meanwhile, the ATSB has made a strong case that if the plane did fly south into the Indian Ocean, it could only have done so on a magnetic heading.”
It has been pointed out numerous times that the DSTG analysis assumed no descent at 18:40. A descent and loiter would allow LNAV paths terminating north of the current search area. At this point, the ATSB/DSTG is very unlikely to change these assumptions.
“Meanwhile, there is a truly urgent question regarding the flight sim that has yet to be cleared up: have you been able to recreate the conditions that lead to the stored values observed at 45S1 and 45S2?”
There is no mystery here. Between 45S1 and 45S2, the user was manually flying at 37600 ft with decreasing airspeed. It is possible to start at the conditions of 45S1, provide pilot input for the yoke, and recreate nearly the exact same values of coordinates, heading, pitch, and bank as 45S2. At 45S2, the altitude was manually changed to 4000 ft. The value of dynamic pressure is not yet calculated correctly for the 4000 ft conditions, which is characteristic for an altitude change in the MAP window. The winds are light. This is all repeatable.
Whether or not the user continued after 45S2 flying with or without pilot inputs is unknown, and really doesn’t matter.
(@VictorI
You have repeated this ‘4000 feet’ figure so many times now (although I
realize you apparently don’t consider the following as relevant), but the
actual figure in the sim data is ‘3999.99’ . Agreed? )
@VictorI, Could you provide us with the parameters of the recreated 45S2 .flt file before and after the altitude is changed?
Please permit a quick comment after a brief review of user discussion…
Plausibly, Shah was manning the radios prior to the emergency situation at IGARI BITOD @ 1:22am…
Whilst Fariq was the one communicating after that…
1:30am to MH88
1:52am attempt during “Ayers Rock” turn at Penang
2:43am faint distress call about “cabin disintegrating”
Thus, “after the turn-back near IGARI, when the airplane was flown manually with the autopilot disengaged” per Gysbreght, the more senior pilot resumed the now difficult direct control of the aircraft, charging Fariq with communications…
According to this speculative picture, both Shah and Fariq remained in the cockpit for the entire duration of 80 minutes from emergency to last conceivable contact. The pair of pilots maintained a single unwaivering posture and hierarchical organization in an apparently singular response to some seemingly singular crisis. They survived as far as (the ballpark of) IGOGU ANOKO and completed a final turn towards NW Indonesian airports before all communications and all control inputs ceased.
Please recall, that a standard emergency response to a wing electrical fire is to turn sharply (to drive the flames outboard) and fly high and fast (to starve the flames of oxygen and keep them blown out and extinguished) and depower the plane (to quench the arcing electrical current) and repower circuits individually (to isolate the faulty wiring), which would plausibly be a time consuming and protracted process.
So a relatively banal scenario, with both pilots remaining in their seats, responding with composure to an electrical emergency, which sparked a complete depowering of the plane, followed by a gradual but only partial restoration of systems, could account for the various behaviors of the aircraft.
Can you explain what caused the groundspeed to change from 364 kt to 195 kt when the altitude was manually changed from AGL 37654
ft to 4000 ft? You say it is ‘repeatable’, so that shouldn’t be difficult for you.
@Erik Nelson sstated;
“Please recall, that a standard emergency response to a wing electrical
fire is to turn sharply (to drive the flames outboard” ..
I am happy to be educated if you have found this in any 777, or any
Boeing, non-normal checklist. Otherwise, this part of your paragraph
is purely your speculation (and you owe RetiredF4 an ‘if‘.)
(That said, always happy to read your ponderings.)
Cheers
@Erik Nelson
P.S.
Given that the Left AC bus is generally agreed to have been the bus
that ceased being powered (if I understand your reasoning, you are
implying that a fire on the left wing resulted in an electrical fault),
then wouldn’t the left turn after IGARI tend to make any such
fire on the left wing move inwards (along the wing) ??
Cheers
@VictorI: You also say “the winds are light”. How do you know the windspeed at 45S? At 10N the windspeed was 55 kt.
@DennisW
Please could you help clarify something for me? You said recently that at a heading of 180deg, a great circle and a constant magnetic heading were essentially the same? My understanding was a constant magnetic heading would gradually deviate from 180deg as it proceeded south, due to the magnetic deviation.
@DennisW
Or am I confusing magnetic track with magnetic heading? I know this is contentious territory (a lot of time was given over to the subject a while back). I understand constant true track well enough, also constant magnetic heading. But I’m still hazy iro constant magnetic track, for example, does constant magnetic track use a magnetic deviation lookup table to compensate for the changing direction of the magnetic pole?
@Ge Rijn, I would have to go back to Jeff’s article on the SDU and AC bus as the list included many aspects, such as cockpit door, flight entertainment system, CVR etc. I am not sure the AC was rebooted.
@jeffwise & @gysbreght: Yves and I did these experiments regarding 45S1 and 45S2 some weeks ago. His results matched mine using the “Fair Weather” setting. In the coming days if I have time I will provide more information. More likely, it won’t be for a while.
Better yet, you should install FS9 and do the experiments and see for yourself, which I have been recommending for some time. I commend @TBill for doing this.
At 5N, the winds were 270/25, which is the default value at high altitudes for the “Fair Weather” settings under FSX. At other points, it is not possible to extract the wind due to the distorted velocity vector.
@Eric Nelson
“So a relatively banal scenario, with both pilots remaining in their seats, responding with composure to an electrical emergency, which sparked a complete depowering of the plane, followed by a gradual but only partial restoration of systems, could account for the various behaviors of the aircraft.”
All proposed mechanical failure scenarios lacked the rational, how an aircraft killed its crew and then continued to fly for another 5 hours after it did so. Yors makes no difference, although you tried to avoid this micetrap.
@Erik
The rumor of distress call(s), one received by US sources, is not confirmed to my knowledge.
ROB
Without any wind, a 180 degree true heading would follow a longitude line (which is a great circle). With any east or west winds aloft component the aircraft course would drift across longitude lines.
A 180 degree magnetic heading would vary from true heading with magnetic variation in the region. This would not track any line of longitude.
A 180 degree true track would hold the longitude line at the time the mode was engaged. This would be equivalent to a LNAV that had a single way-point near the south pole for the same longitude. The aircraft heading changes to compensate for winds aloft
If the longitude of the distant way-point was offset from the longitude at engagement, the LNAV would follow a great circle with true heading changing to compensate for winds and crossing longitude lines from engagement to final waypoint.
It do not know DSTG have any basis for assuming any autopilot mode. If this were a crew suicide and wanted the final crash to be along a specific longitude, a true track would follow the longitude at engagement. LNAV could produce a similar result. The magnetic heading hold would be subject to wind drift and magnetic variation.
If the crew did this to avoid crashing the aircraft over land as a final entry, maybe magnetic heading is close enough to just take the plane to the SIO.
I do not know that DSTG has any rationale for assuming any mode. Maybe the velocity vectors from BFO data indicates whether the aircraft is following longitude or crossing longitude at the arc crossings.
The Inmarsat approach for the surface search was very different than the DSTG particle filter which was used by ATSB for the undersea search. I think the Inmarsat model would have considered courses between arcs which are not explicitly part of the Bayesian filter used by DSTG.
@Cosmic:
After 2.75 years his family and Inmarsat, CIA and the police and whoever would be an interested party have had a fairly good chance to question his demise. Or are they in on the assasination all or most of them? If my family member died from a brain condition, and had any kind of sensitive employment, I would ask to see the x-rays. I think his employer and the police would at least call the coroner and ask for his view. The police/state prosecutor and the coroner would be the same investigative authority. What should he have witnessed and who would want to hide that from whom? If you have a state-level covert operation you necessarily involve several dozens of people — and you normally have very good reasons for a covert operation of that kind (or else it was not a very good idea from the outset), and you can’t kill off everyone that would disagree and won’t be comforted by a golf set. Those are issues treated in the planning stages of a project.
The “facts” that he was fifty and died from a brain condition (stroke?, tumour?) and not 30 and died from heart failure is much less suspiscious. People do die from that. I know a few myself. I expect people would have tried to get answers, especially in the case of a person in a assumedly well-paid position. His life insurer would call the coroner too.
Induced stroke is possible.
@JW
“@all, A question for general consideration: As I write in this post, the ATSB’s latest report says that the plane must have ended up at around 33 degrees south.”
ATSB spent $180M with literally zero success and something tells me they are wrong again. Luckily they aren’t running the world economy.
@Hank
Thank you for responding to my questions. The ATSB could not make any any assumptions iro possible preferred autopilot modes, which is quite understandable. Only the FDR currently has that information. The DSTG had to include all possible autopilot modes when they ran their Bayesian calcs.
As we know, there are always winds aloft, so a 180deg constant heading is never going to keep to the initial longitude line.
@Gysbreght: One other thing about the value of dynamic pressure in the 45S2 data set. After careful experimenting, Yves found that after making changes in altitude in the MAP window and hitting “OK”, the dynamic pressure is gradually readjusted, often to a higher, incorrect value. The value that is recorded in the flight file seems to depend on the amount of time that that elapses before the flight file is saved, all while the simulation is paused! (I verified this qualitatively, but Yves did the exact checking.)
The upshot is that the value of dynamic pressure should be used with caution at 45S2. Trying to use the dynamic pressure to back out the IAS and TAS will certainly result in errors.
@all
Re: general airline safety
I had to put FS2004 on “pause” to listen to this interview this week. Due to fear of flying, this celebrity goes into the cockpit before each flight to conduct an informal performance assessment of the pilots.
http://www.tvguide.com/tvshows/late-night-with-seth-meyers/video/620019/sarah-paulson-got-freaked-out-by-a-pilot-whispering-her-name-26842163/
@Hank, @Rob, if you refer to the bottom of page 15 and the top of page 16 in the recently issued ATSB report, you will see the reasons given for the assumption that the plane was flying in constant magnetic heading mode. Essentially, it’s a way to generate a somewhat slower, more curved route and thereby reach an area northeast of the 120 sq km search box.
@JeffWise
Thank you Jeff. I gave the report a quick scan when it came out. I need to go through it again, more thoroughly.
I want to revisit something that’s been mentioned here in the past about the Ukrainian passengers. One in particular, Oleg Chustrak, was a 45 year old telecommunications expert who aroused enough interest to spur discussion between Jeff and Aaron (possibly Aaron Klein, prominent investigative journalist?). If I recall, they ruled this avenue a dead end, but I don’t remember the specifics. Specifically, was this ever discussed in possible connection with the attempted hijacking that took place a month before on a Turkish plane? A passenger in early February on that plane named “Artem Hozlem” was the attempted hijacker, who wanted to divert the flight to Sochi for the Olympics.
If you look at pictures of MH370 passenger Chustrak and would-be February hijacker Hozlov, there is some resemblance. And both are Ukrainian 45 year olds. Are they the same person?
Pics:
http://content.foto.my.mail.ru/mail/chustrak/_myphoto/i-7.jpg
https://d.ibtimes.co.uk/en/full/1361834/artem-hozlov-who-attempted-hijack-pegasus-boeing-flight.jpg
Chustrak was seated next to Sergii Deineka, another figure in this whole saga (like Russian Nikolaii Brodskii) whose name I recall thrown around, but it just seemed to me that there were many questions about them that were unanswered.
When the search is over in a matter of months and there’s nothing new to analyze, I predict that we are going to resume the exercise of looking really closely at the 238 people on the plane other than Zaharie.
@Sunken Deal, You’ve got the wrong Oleg Chustrak. The one on the plane was not a telecommunications expert but worked at an online-only, cash-on-demand, no address, no landline furniture company with Deineka. (Apparently this is not as dubious a way of doing business in the Ukraine as it is here.) I have spent a good deal of time looking into him, Deineka, and Brodsky, and no, I wouldn’t say I hit a dead end, just ran out of resources to pursue it further. The Ukrainians, in particular, are very murky characters. I’ve got a chapter about them in my book.
@VictorI: “More likely, it won’t be for a while”.
Here a few problems to address:
– A groundspeed of 196 kt at an altitude of 37650 ft implies an airspeed that is well below the stall speed of the real airplane.
– The groundspeeds are 364 kt at 45S1 and 196 kt at 45S2. The distance between these points is about 2.6 NM. At an average speed of 280 kt that distance would be covered in about 33 seconds. At a typical deceleration of 1.15 kt/second the deceleration from 364 kt to 196 kt would require 142 seconds and 11.3 NM.
@CosmicAcademy,
re: 18) A world famous Scientist. . .
You have that point entirely wrong. In fact it was because of the incorrect reporting of 3F1 being a “geo-stationary” satellite that got Duncan Steel interested in M370 in the first place. His very first comments were an effort to correct that misinterpretation, and to show that 3F1 was actually geo-synchronous. He went on to explain the roughly elliptical orbit of 3F1 around its nominal sub satellite location, and put in a deal of effort to accurately describe its orbit. The orbital parameters could then be used to more accurately determine the “ping ring” locations from the BTO data. He deserves a debt of gratitude, not condemnation.
@Gysbreght: The groundspeed at 45S2 before the change of altitude and save was not 196 kt. The IAS was close to this value, if I recall.
@Johan
Mr Fairbairn
I am in agreement with you, that he might have suffered a very common disease, and that he passed in a natural way, but as an investigator i have to caveat and note the unbelievable singularity of the event, and cannot ignore the awful timing of it, which lines up to so many other singularities in a chain
@VictorI: The groundspeed saved in the .flt file (X, Z VelWorld) is 329.22 fps, 195 kt.
@Gysbreght: Please read what I wrote. The values in the 45S2 data set reflect the groundspeed AFTER the change in altitude. The IAS is held approximately constant before and after the change in altitude, but even that is distorted.
@Brian
wobble and Duncan Steel
Duncan Steel is indeed in fact a very excellent scientist and i thank you for clearifying that bit, but you should at least admit, that it is one of the incredible developments happening in this very singular event that a world famous scientist speaks out in public on a dedicated blog against the satellite expertise of a reknown Sat provider
@all
i forgot to mention one other singularity:
since i contribute on this blog starting september 2014, i get spider robots from the British Indian Ocean Territory (Diego Garcia) downloading the content of my website every three month. Things like that just don t happen. I am a very good citizen and taxpayer and my person is of no special interest, also i am a holder of a unlimited lifelong entry visum to the United States. Maybe someone of the NSA guys who watch this blog can explain those fruitless visits to me (the content is static since 9 years)
any assistance on this matter is welcome
Merry christmas to all of you including those people from PR Agencies, Spin doctors and Troll factories. I had a lot of fun with the latter and i hope we will all enjoy a good 2017.