Yesterday, officials responsible for locating missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 announced that their two-year, $150 million search has come to an end. Having searched an area the size of Pennsylvania and three miles deep, they’ve found no trace of the plane.
The effort’s dismal conclusion stands in marked contrast to the optimism that officials displayed throughout earlier phases of the search. In August, 2015, Australia’s deputy prime minister Warren Truss declared, “The experts are telling us that there is a 97% possibility that it is in [the designated search] area.”
So why did the search come up empty? Did investigators get unlucky, and the plane happened to wind up in the unsearched 3 percent? Or did something more nefarious occur?
To sort it all out, we need to go back to why officials thought they knew where the plane went.
Early on the morning of March 8, 2014, MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing. Forty minutes passed the last navigational waypoint in Malaysian airspace. Six seconds after that it went electronically dark. In the brief gap between air-control zones, when no one was officially keeping an eye on it, the plane pulled a U-turn, crossed back through Malaysian airspace, and then vanished from military radar screens.
At that point the plane was completely invisible. Its hijackers could have flown it anywhere in the world without fear of discovery. But lo and behold, three minutes later a piece of equipment called the Satellite Data Unit, or SDU, rebooted and initiated a log-on with an Inmarsat communications satellite orbiting high overhead. An SDU reboot is not something that can happen accidentally, or that airline captains generally know how to do, or that indeed there would be any logical reason for anyone to carry out. Yet somehow it happened. Over the course of the next six hours, the SDU sent seven automated signals before going silent for good. Later, Inmarsat scientists poring over the data made a remarkable discovery: due to an unusual combination of peculiarities, a signal could be teased from this data that indicated where the plane went.
With much hard work, search officials were able to wring from the data quite a detailed picture of what must have happened. Soon after the SDU reboot, the plane turned south, flew fast and straight until in ran out of fuel, then dived into the sea. Using this information, officials were able to generate a probabilistic “heat map” of where the plane most likely ended up. The subsequent seabed search began under unprecedented circumstances. Never before had a plane been declared lost, and its location subsequently deduced, on the basis of mathematics alone.
Now, obviously, we know that that effort was doomed. The plane is not where the models said it would most likely be. Indeed, I would go further than that. Based on the signal data, aircraft performance parameters, and the available autopilot modes, there is a finite range of places where the plane could plausibly have fetched up. Search vessels have now scanned all of them. If the data is good, and the analysis is good, the plane should have been found.
I am convinced that the analysis is good. And the data? It seems to me that the scientists who defined the search area overlooked a step that even the greenest rookie of a criminal investigator would not have missed. They failed to ascertain whether the data could have been tampered with.
I’ve asked both Inmarsat scientists and the Australian mathematicians who defined the search area how they knew that the satellite communications system hadn’t been tampered with. Both teams told me that they worked with the data they were given. Neither viewed it as their job to question the soundness of their evidence.
This strikes me as a major oversight, since the very same peculiar set of coincidences that made it possible to tease a signal from the Inmarsat data also make it possible that a sophisticated hijacker could have entered the plane’s electronics bay (which lies beneath an unsecured hatch at the front of the business class cabin) and altered the data fed to the Satellite Data Unit.
A vulnerability existed.
The only question is: Was it exploited? If it was, then the plane did not fly south over the ocean, but north toward land. For search officials, this possibility was erased when a piece of aircraft debris washed ashore on Réunion Island in July of 2015. Subsequently, more pieces turned up elsewhere in the western Indian Ocean.
However, as with the satellite data, officials have failed to explore the provenance of the debris. If they did, they would have noticed some striking inconsistencies. Most notably, the Réunion debris was coated completely in goose barnacles, a species that grows only immersed in the water. When officials tested the debris in a flotation tank, they noted that it floated half out of the water. There’s no way barnacles could grow on the exposed areas—a conundrum officials have been unable to reconcile. The only conclusion I can reach is that the piece did not arrive on Réunion by natural means, a suspicion reinforced by a chemical analysis of one of the barnacles by Australian scientist Patrick DeDeckker, who found that the barnacle grew in water temperatures that no naturally drifting piece of debris would have encountered.
If the plane didn’t go south, then where did it go? Not all the Inmarsat data, it turns out, was susceptible to spoofing. From the portion that wasn’t, it’s able to generate a narrow band of possible flight paths; they all terminate in Kazakhstan, a close ally of Russia. Intriguingly, three ethnic Russians were aboard MH370, including one who was sitting mere feet from the electronics bay hatch. Four and a half months later, a mobile launcher from a Russian anti-aircraft unit shot down another Malaysia Airlines 777-200ER, MH17. A year after that, the majority of pieces of debris wind up being discovered by a man who had spent the last three decades intimately involved with Russia.
Whether or not the Russians are responsible for MH370, the failure of the seabed search and the inconsistencies in the aircraft debris should undermine complacency about the official narrative. When MH370 disappeared, it possessed an obscure vulnerability that left its Inmarsat data open to tampering. Having spent $150 million and two years on a fruitless investigation, search officials have an obligation to investigate whether or not that vulnerability was exploited.
I have been reading this blog since the New York article. Can anyone speculate why Russia would be interested in doing such a thing, and where the plane and it’s passengers are now, if it did indeed fly North? Would love to hear any ideas and get the discussion rolling
@John, Welcome to the discussion!
One answer is that the country had just launched a counteroffensive against what it perceived as an invasion of its sphere of influence by the west, in the toppling of pro-Russian Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych by pro-Western protestors. This so-called “hybrid war” is a new kind of conflict that melds old-school military action with public campaigns of deception and distraction. MH370 happened one day after Russia annexed Crimea, and distracted Western audiences for months from its subsequent military invasion of eastern Ukraine. In the months that followed, Russian trolls and hackers attacked Brexit opponents, fought efforts to identify the MH17 culprits, and threw their weight behind Donald Trump’s campaign. All told, their efforts have been remarkably successful in sowing confusion and discord in the West and thereby dismantling the threat to Russia’s “near abroad.”
Means and opportunity yes….what is the motive?
@VictorI
I take your point, but putting ACARS back on would be very risky, an absolute no no in my opinion, because it would release too much data about the aircraft’s whereabouts. Remember, he had gone to great lengths to evade detection, hoping that we wouldn’t know which direction he had taken after switching off the transponder. He seems to have worked out pretty well precisely the point where he would be outside radar range. It just seems rather a coincidence that the SDU logon and offset manoeuvre occur close together.
He was happy to put the SDU on again, which suggests he had no inkling of the handshake (interrogations), so a single indication of a northerly direction might have been appropriate, in his view, to throw people off the scent.
I’m still leaning towards the foreign agents hypothesis.
The 3 suspect passengers mentioned in Jeff’s theory I think were recruited for what they didn’t know at the time was a suicide mission, wherein they would secure the comms bay so that the plane could be controlled remotely, without realising they would be sacrificed along with the other passengers and crew once the plane was depressurised. As an analogy, think of the opening sequence in The Dark Knight, where the string of henchmen hired by the Joker to rob the bank are subsequently killed once they’ve each done their job.
Having dwelled on the Baikonur air field hypothesis for over a year now, I thought it could be possible and might also explain why Malaysian airways was chosen as a target. If a plane was to be buried in Kazakhstan in darkness, then it better have similar livery to an old Aeroflot one, so that it could easily be disguised.
That is except for one thing that has been bothering me till this day. And that is the very clear and detailed sightings of the aircraft flying over the Maldives and bearing south by south east, and before that in Kerala in southern India bearing south. Both accounts accurately describe a plane that sounds very much like MH370 and, both said it was flying extremely low and that there was steam coming out of it. I wonder if a depressurising cabin would cause such an effect?
I know that this has previously been dismissed because the plane should have run out of fuel before reaching the Maldives, but what if the original plan was merely to control the plane as long as it was in the air before finally ditching it in the ocean, and it is not impossible that it could have made it that far. For more on the Maldives sighting: (http://thehuntformh370.info/content/blaines-independent-investigation)
Which leads us to the final resting place of the plane and why (almost) no wreckage has been found. As it continued to travel south in the direction of Diego Garcia, my guess would be that it could have been perceived as a 9/11 style attack and if so, would have been intercepted and/or destroyed. Which suggests a US navy cover-up. It could also have crashed somewhere between the Maldives and Diego Garcia and no extensive searches have occurred there yet.
I have had a weird feeling from the start that the plane did not go down and the people on it were taken purposely to an isolated place. That is why I started following this blog. I have a lot of dreams at night that I remember and have been recording hem for 6 years. I dreamed on April 15, 2014 that someone was using a highly technical gadget that I did not understand and then we saw on the news that a woman received and oil & Gas royalty check from her sister who was on the missing plane. In the dream I say I knew it! I was right about that plane. So that’s my contribution…maybe it has to do with the oil & gas industry and Russia.
@Richard, The point of hybrid warfare is to confuse, distract, and mask. The motive for actions is often unclear, and deliberately so. We have an excellent model in MH17, which was shot down by a Buk missile launcher from Russia’s 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade. Immediately afterward, the GRU began to disseminate misleading information which successfully led Western analysts and journalists to conclude that inept militiamen had somehow gotten their hands on a stolen Buk and fired it off accidentally. Why did Russia do this? We have no idea. But a considerable mass of evidence exists that they did do it.
Apologies if these questions have been addressed before (as I’m sure they likely have), but two thoughts.
1) The crux of the spoof argument is that the SDU could not have been reactivated any other way than by means of sinister intent. This is the key question, and I’ve yet to see a thorough explanation of why other possible reasons for its reactivation should be ruled out (couldn’t it have been reactivated in an attempt by the pilot to, say, reset the entire electrical system, or part of it?).
2) The conundrum about the Reunion debris seems like it could be resolved fairly easily: there has been airliner debris in the sea before, from other incidents; was that debris covered completely as well? Wouldn’t that tell us a bit of what to expect with respect to this MH370 debris? And isn’t this most likely what lead the French researchers not to dwell overly on the issue?
@John, Richard
motive
What has been seemingly overlooked over all the headlines from the Crimea occupation is, that one of the most important muslim nations, Malaysia, was gaining stakes in a former Soviet Union region, in Kazakhstan. This happened by marriage among the leadership families and by economic alliance. It must have been a horror for the russian leadership to see foreign, namely islamic sunni muslim influence on its southern flank.
You find a motive, when you assume, that Putin together with his roll back at the black sea, also wanted to show up against any foreign influence on the other former borders of the SU. Lets say, Putin sent the message twice: Dont meddle with Kzakhstan.
@VictorI
As you were. Second thoughts, the pilot wouldn’t have known that BFO could be used to work out the direction of travel. Woolly thinking on my part.
@JW – Can you set your website not to accept foul language such as f**k, S**T, Maldives, Diego Garcia?
Starting a new search would involve new mobilization/demobilization charges so it is doubtful that anyone would start a new search without some new breakthrough information.
MY declared MH370 as an “accident.” They do not want it to be found for fear of being found negligent. If it stays an accident their payouts are limited.
If ZS is responsible then his intention was to crash in the SIO. Negations are too much of a stretch. If it was hijacker(s) they wanted to find a post 9/11 way to hijack planes to crash into tall landmarks around the globe. Mh370 was just a test. (Not whacko because it had been attempted previously in the Bojinka plot.) Either way, the hijacker(s) didn’t anticipate any tracking via BTO and BFO and the errors were due to a changed bias after each reboot.
Did ZS say good-bye on WeChat just before takeoff?
If the FO’s cell phone was the only one to make contact after IGARI, did the hijacker(s) collect the PAX cell phones or were all the pax already incapacitated by then?
If MH370 is connected to MH17 then the connection might be from very unhappy investors in 1MDB.
As for the Barnacles on all of the edges of the Flaperon, remember that when it was first found they said it floated “entre deux eaux” or almost completely submerged? Did the Flaperon flotation tests include barnacles? I’ll suggest the barnacles can regulate their overall buoyancy by increasing the length of their low density stalks to keep their colony from sinking to the bottom while keeping as much of the flotsam as possible under water.
Regarding the minimal amount of found debris, someone here once suggested that the a/c might have made a 75 foot deep crater when hitting the water and most of the debris was crushed and sank under the pressure of the collapsing wall of water.
My son tells me that Hello Dolly will be a tough ticket when it opens on Broadway in March. Its first day sales of $9M surpassed even those of Hamilton.
@Jeff
The searchers were neither unlucky nor duped. When I include the SSWG in the “searcher” category, my conclusion is they were simply stupid.
It is hard to fix stupid.
@Jeff I do believe the Russian avenue to be a highly valid course of investigation.
There is no doubt in my mind that the Russians sought to alter the course of the American election. My Google analytics account shows huge traffic spikes around the lead up to the vote. When you look at the traffic in detail it is all saying vote trump etc. When I look at the referral source location… Guess… Yes. Russia all of it.. it’s like the worst kept secret!
In the type of aggression you are suggesting leaving the motive unclear is part of the point of the exercise. It makes the noise surrounding the debate louder and go on longer this achieving the distraction it was aiming for.
The REPORT LACKS POINTING CORRECT SPOT OR DIRECTION MH370 WENT.
MY STUDY CLEARLY POINT BY PSYCHOLOGY ABD WORKING ON PINGS,COULD SAY IT WENT EAST TO KULALAMPUR,THE HOME AIRPORT.ON IT’S WAY IT HIT ON HILL IN NORTH SUMATRA,ONLY TO GENERATE DEBRIS.THIS AREA POINTED AS CORRECT BY FRANCE AS ORIGIN OF FLAPPERAN.
@Jeff Wise,
Jeff,Jeff wise.
I cannot reconcile two of your statements:
• After the loss…“ Inmarsat scientists poring over the data made a remarkable discovery: …… a signal could be teased from this data that indicated where the plane went.”
• “…..the scientists who defined the search area overlooked a step that even the greenest rookie of a criminal investigator would not have missed. They failed to ascertain whether the data could have been tampered with.”
Why would they if at the time of the flight the SDU role in establishing route was unknown, so there was no motive to tamper?
@Jeff Wise. Someone tampered with my first two lines
No one has ever guaranteed the data. They lined up to call it “excellent” and say they have very high confidence in it, but no one would ever guarantee the data. Something wrong with the data or Russia pulled off a blinder?
Swaying foreign elections – or trying to – has been standard fare in intl espionage as long as I know. Obama made trade threats to Britain before the Brexit vote and dealt significant harm to Netanyahu’s re-election prospects. That was in broad daylight, the sneaky stuff is an everyday thing I thought.
@all
Coincidences do happen.
http://tmex1.blogspot.com/2017/01/so-i-take-my-sweetie-to-mex-lunch-today.html
@Jeff
you said:
“there is a finite range of places where the plane could plausibly have fetched up. Search vessels have now scanned all of them. If the data is good, and the analysis is good, the plane should have been found.”
That is simply not true. The reality is that the SSWG made several errors that can readily explain why the plane has not been found.
1> Incorrect assumptions relative to flight dynamics.
2> No or little understanding of oscillator physics.
3> Complete disregard for motive or causality.
@DennisW. Someone nobbled your bottom photo. See its top right. Guarded Don?
@VictorI,
You said: “In fact, in your proposed scenario, since the change in route was made before reaching IGOGU, it would require a change in the fix for the active leg. This would cancel the offset and result in a hold at ANOKO.”
I have read the Honeywell FMS Pilot’s Guide carefully, and I don’t think that is always the case. There might be a difference between (1) entering a Holding Pattern at ANOKO to replace IGOGU, and (2) entering a “Direct-To” ANOKO replacing IGOGU followed by a second entry of a Holding pattern with ANOKO as the fix for the next leg after reaching ANOKO.
In the first case I think there would be an immediate message to remove the offset, but in the second case the error message would not appear then, only later.
I didn’t find anything in the Honeywell FMS Pilot’s Guide indicating a change in the active route using a “Direct-To” waypoint edit would automatically zero a lateral offset. If you have such a reference for this case, would you please provide it. Thanks.
After thinking about it a while, I would put forth this straw-man list of pilot actions using case #2 above (because that delays the warning message for some minutes until just before ANOKO is reached, and it may not have been acted upon then):
1. The starting point is LRC SPD at FL350, and the current ACT RTE 1 LEG is IGOGU (NILAM was the last waypoint passed). There may be additional legs in Route 1 to other waypoints along N571 after IGOGU, such as LAGOG, etc.
2. An R10 lateral offset is entered. We know that a lateral offset can only be entered on the active leg. The book says “The offset entry propagates through the remaining flight plan up any of the following:
• The end–of–route waypoint
• A discontinuity
• The start of a published STAR transition or STAR or approach transition or approach procedure
• A DME arc
• A heading leg
• A holding pattern
• A course change of 135 (deg) or greater.”
Thus the offset may go past IGOGU and is applied to all subsequent legs (if they exist) to other waypoints along N571 (although this is not necessary for me to make my case).
3. The aircraft immediately moves to a track 10 NM to the right of N571. This happens at about 18:25:35.
4. At about 18:38:25 the current ACT RTE leg to IGOGU is edited using a “Direct-To” by changing Line 1L (the current active leg) from IGOGU to ANOKO, and this change is executed. The aircraft immediately begins turning to the left (by ~111 degrees, which is less than a 135 degree turn). The existing offset is not set to zero, either by the FMS or by the PF. Now the aircraft is turning to intercept a point 10 NM to the right of ANOKO. I believe this is correct based on my reading of the manual (that in this case the offset is not set to zero by the FMS, although I could not find any directly relevant rule dealing with this situation one way or the other).
5. The other residual waypoints from N571 (if present) are then deleted from the ACT RTE 1 LEGS page (i.e., LAGOG, etc.).
6. Now there is a single leg on the ACT RTE 1 LEGS page to the (ANOKO + R10) fix.
7. Next a holding pattern is set up with ANOKO as the fix. This is done on the ACT RTE 1 LEGS page using the “HOLD AT” function in Line 6L. That takes you to the RTE 1 HOLD page. There the BEST SPEED is displayed (CAS = 257 knots) in Line 5R. The PF enters “257/” in Line 1R. At the appropriate future time, the FMS will automatically decelerate (from LRC) to 257 KIAS before reaching the holding pattern fix at ANOKO. The other parameters defining the holding pattern are also entered on this RTE 1 HOLD page, and it is executed. The airspeed entry is propagated to the HOLD AT waypoint (ANOKO) on the RTE LEGS page.
8. Now we have two legs on the ACT RTE 1 LEGS page. The first one is to ANOKO + R10. The second one is to perform a HOLD AT ANOKO.
9. Two minutes before ANOKO + R10 is reached an “End of Offset” warning message is displayed, but no action is taken by the PF to zero the offset before the HOLD begins.
10. When the (ANOKO + R10) fix is reached, the next leg (the holding pattern) is enabled but immediately cancelled because of the non-zero offset [ “NOTE: The aircraft does not enter a pre-planned holding pattern if it is on an offset path.“ ]. This causes the LNAV to try to navigate to the next waypoint after the HOLD, but there are no more waypoints. It is the End of Route.
11. An End of Route error then occurs, causing LNAV to revert to a constant heading mode.
12. VNAV maintains current SPD mode (CAS = 257 knots).
13. LNAV and VNAV are unchanged through fuel exhaustion.
@DennisW:
You’d only need an Amstel to that!
@David
Thx. I noticed it as well. I was too lazy to fix it, but I just did.
Yes, Johan, not shown is a Modelo Especial I used for the occasion. Hard to find Amstel in redneck country.
@all, I had to update WordPress and in the process my backend turned to gobbledygook. So I’m a bit hobbled at the moment.
@Matty – Perth, I can’t get backstage to approve your comment but will do so ASAP.
Thanks for your patience.
They were paid the same whether or not they found anything. They got paid. Why should they care?
@DrBobbyUlich: In FSX, when the fix for the active leg is changed, the lateral offset is removed, regardless of the change in heading, as I explained.
The public is who were duped. There was never any intention to ‘find’ the plane. Just a show of searching.
@VictorI
“We also have the statement from the ATSB to Niels Tas disclosing that the “NW Point” used for path reconstructions was 8.5953,92.5858 based on Singapore radar captures.”
I notice that is about 15 nM lateral offset from N571 and nearly out to LAGOG. If we had a time and altitude, we’d have something to go on.
Seems questionable that data point was over-ruled, as if the goal was to simplify the search zone. That was the key decision, to delete that LAGOG data point and assume 18:40 telcon showed southbound flight BFO.
@DennisW, That is so funny! The food looks mouth watering. A lot of beans 🙂
@TBill
“Seems questionable that data point was over-ruled, as if the goal was to simplify the search zone.”
There were other decisions of that nature. It is almost like the drunk who lost his keys in the alley, but decided to search by the streetlamp because the light was better.
A telling point in my view is that the information we (the collective we) have now is much better than the information on which the ATSB decided to initiate searching the area they just completed. If the ATSB thought the information was sufficient to start the original search, why do they think the information we have now is insufficient to continue the search? I don’t support doing that, just like I did not support the original search. Just pointing out the logical inconsistency.
@Dennis, could you please identify everything that is on that plate, it looks so tasty 🙂
Then why on Earth did you say “If the MH370 investigation has taught us anything, is that restricting the discussion to acceptable explanations is a fatal trap.” ???
And why did you criticize Duncan Steel for “forbidden to discuss [certain] scenarios” if you now say that you are in favour of exactly that (forbidding to discuss certain scenarios). ??
That seems utterly contradictory to me.
But you are applying your own subjective assessment in deciding what to discard, and subjective assessment is by definition error-prone.
There is no objective, scientific way to do so.
(Especially if the evidence, the science should be based upon, is itself in question.)
Here is a good explanation for why closing the investigation off to alternative theories is a recipe for disaster:
http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display_arch&article_id=1922&issue_id=102009
To that you might say:
But what if in 30 years the plane is found and one of the pebbles (theories) you had discarded/banned turns out to be exactly the right one !?
We even have a good example here in the DennisW’s Christmas Island theory, which you banned from discussion (I can search the posting if you want), but then – if I understand correctly – this once wrongfully discarded/banned theory later got “back in the saddle”.
In criminal law, you would say that it was a wrongful conviction:
Sigh.
Bird said;
“the very clear and detailed sightings of the aircraft flying over the
Maldives and bearing south by south east, and before that in Kerala in
southern India bearing south. Both accounts accurately describe a plane that
sounds very much like MH370 ”
About the most detailed account of Maldivian sightings was this;
http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1830548/could-plane-spotted-maldivian-islanders-really-be-mh370
…
“He was standing in the sea, fishing, when he heard the aircraft. He
recalls that a strong wind was blowing, an oddity on the equator. And
because it was blowing towards the plane, he wasn’t aware of the aircraft
until it was directly above him. When the plane banked to head south-
outheast, he says, he saw “some red under the portholes, some red around
the door“.
Like this maybe?;
https://i0.wp.com/airlinersgallery.smugmug.com/Airplanes/Hot-New/i-2LgLTdQ/0/S/Maldivian-A320-200-8Q-IAN-S.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Bombardier_Dash_8_in_Maldivian_livery.jpg
@Jeff Wise
I still think the major problem with a Northern route and also an Eastern or Western route is within your topic-statement:
“..crossed back through Malaysian airspace, and then vanished from military radar screens.
At that point the plane was completely invisible. Its hijackers could have flown it anywhere in the world without fear of discovery.”
On a Northern route multiple primary radar covered areas had to be crossed from different countries. Enough reason to fear discovery (and interception) I would say.
A hijacker could not have thought seriously to take this route without fear of discovery.
The same goes for an Eastern route passing densily populated countries with numerous primary radar stations towards the Pacific.
A Western route to a lesser degree but still it would have to pass or come in the range of Sri Lanka, India or at least Diego Garcia radar stations undetected.
All very unlikely IMO.
The only route that stood a reasonable chance without fear of discovery (after passing Indonesian airspace/radar range) was the route to the SIO.
A route to the North (and to the West or East) needs an explanation how the plane stayed undetected by all those primary radar stations on the way and how a hijacker could have taken such a route without fear of discovery.
@Jeff I don’t agree. The events indicate that something drastic happened, the crew tried to turn back, co pilot was inexperienced. So they had a very difficult job trying to save the plane. The SDU rebooted as backup power was restored systematically. Dr. Bobby Ulich and others are working hard to refine the end point. The flaperon could have been attached to the wing for a long time and been submerged, this could explain the barnacle growth.
A very wise summary Jeff.
Thanks again for directing us through the noise.
Will we ever find the ultimate proof?
@ron @David
I understand you’re questioning of the logic behind taking ideas off the table however I don’t agree.
All ideas exist along a continuum of evidence with highly support by evidence lying at one end and not supported lying at the other. At one end lies the ideas that by and large fit with a good number of the data points and at the other lie the crackpot ideas that fit absolutely none of them.
What’s more, you can put a y axis on this as well and put high likelihood at one end and low likelihood at the other.
What Jeff has been trying to do is to keep us towards the high evidence end of this line at all times. This I applaud him for.
As new evidence has come to light it has changed the position of some ideas on the evidence line and so Jeff has changed the status of the idea within the group.
This approach is not a weakness it is a strength.
If he had not done this all the way through we would have drowned under crackpot discussions involving alien abductions a long time ago, or we would have constrained ourselves to a narrow range of one or two theories neither of which would have been healthy.
@Crobbie
I think I follow your line of reasoning but I don quite understand what you’re at when you’re talking of new evidence has come to light that caused Jeff to change the status of idea within the group.
You’re talking about Jeff’s idea of a Northern route hijacked by Russians on board who spoofed the SDU and BFO’s?
Which new evidence has come to light to highly support this scenario?
Which evidence at all supports this scenario?
I would like to know. Not speculations but evidence.
As far as I can see the only fysical ‘evidence’ Jeff’s scenario is based on is the biofauling of the flaperon. Which is not properly understood. Based on one barnacle and a yet unexplained spreading of barnacles.
This is only one piece out of 22 likely or confirmed pieces of debris. And it’s the only one not in possesion of the ATSB and the test results are still mainly kept secret by the French. No one has been able to repeat the tests the French did on the flaperon or DeDecker did on the barnacle. Therefore there is no scientific significance in this data yet that would stand the test of scientific proof.
So IMO this can not serve at all yet to build a scenario on with such far reaching conclusions. It even cannot serve to prove any scenario yet IMO.
Then there is positive and negative evidence that can be used pro- or contra a certain scenario.
The positive evidence we have are the Inmarsat data and the BTO/BFO’s as we know them, the radar data, the confirmed and likely pieces of debris, their shape, their position on the plane, their kind of damage etc, the places this debris was found, the drift data, the SIM-data, pilot profiles, passenger profiles etc.
Negative evidence would be where no debris was found (Australia, Indonesia, Maldives, India etc.), where the plane was not detected by primary radar (all the countries mentioned before), areas that cann’t fit the drift data etc.
Everyone is ofcourse free to doubt this positive and negative evidence or reject it but you cannot deny it’s just there and it’s all we have now.
To prove this evidence is wrong you need other evidence at least equaly strong to undermine it. Not well designed speculations but evidence.
In Jeff’s scenario there isn’t any evidence still that can stand this test. Nore positive or negative. If someone can provide one I’d be glad to hear.
@Jeff:
Thanks for the new text. I had to read it twice (but got caught by a piece on squirrels in WP in between). You are certainly putting some thumbs in some eyes. The overall outcome and end result of it all is not satisfactory as things stand right now.
@DennisW:
You are sure right about coincindences. (And what you said abouy search engines profiling!) I have a slight toothache and needed to look up the nearest dentist:
http://www.gijsbrechtvanamstel.nl/
“The NW point at 1912 was an assumed theoretical location at 8° 35.719’N, 92° 35.145’E”
The distance between the last radar blip and that NW point is just 255 nm, too short for a direct flight in 50 mins. However, I think it is possible to come up with a starting point of ca. 8N at the time of interesection of the 19:41 ping ring, then a flight path on the edge of Sabang radar range (waypoints AKINO/TOPIN) and back to the 20:41 ping ring.
@TBill said, “Seems questionable that [NW] data point was over-ruled, as if the goal was to simplify the search zone.”
I don’t think the ATSB was ever able to get sufficient information regarding this radar data to use it in a definitive manner, so ultimately it was ignored.
Hi Jeff,
I stumbled upon your website and your extensive research on MH370 only today. I must say it has opened up such floodgates of thoughts in my head again.
I am no where related to this tragedy but not even once I forget about that. What pains me more is what those people on board must have been thinking, what were their last thoughts and how do their families reconcile with this lack of empathy shown by all the parties involved in following the evidences more logically and finding some clue to where their loves ones now are.
There were even news that some of them tried calling their people on board many days after the tragedy and the phones did ring, though no one picked up. What about those? Why no comprehensive research done and made public on the whatever little debris was found?
How can the airline involved, the governments, the experts rest knowing fully well that an aircraft that size cannot just vanish from the face of the earth without leaving any trail?
I with all my heart wish this search will be resurrected some day with all the intel and evidence that was ignored so far. Not today but some day we will know. I sincerely hope.
@Gi Rjin
“A route to the North (and to the West or East) needs an explanation how the plane stayed undetected by all those primary radar stations on the way and how a hijacker could have taken such a route without fear of discovery.”
While I see the possible motive of the case Jeff makes, I share your concern about the further routing to the north.
Replace Russia by China and Kaszachstan by Tibet and the routing would only have to deal with the military of Myanmar, a close friend to China.
Should’t China be the one to complain most about the end of the search?
@RetiredF4: Neither China nor Malaysia pursue all means to find the plane. We should ask ourselves why.
Putin would like to be so powerful to be able to rig US elections and steal planes around the world.
Luckily he isn’t so try to be a bit more rational.
@VictorI:
China isn’t known to put too strong efforts into finding missing things. Not the way we have become used to. Perhaps they have too many people to be able to care equally much for each and everyone of them?
China was relatively proactive when it came to searching the northern part of the ping ring (alleged detection of black box signals and the Zhu Khezen – spelled correctly? – bathymetric survey). They didn’t seem to be very happy to shift the area further south, and maybe they had a reason to believe it wasn’t the right one.
@Johan: China’s actions could be explained by a lower level of concern about the pain felt by the families. Or, perhaps there was something about that plane better left undiscovered.
Last year, I put together a document summarizing what I believe is a pattern of Chinese deception regarding MH370.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qdg1jcnc7nfxahp/2016-05-18%20China%20and%20MH370.pdf?dl=0