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.
@Victor,
As I have said in several posts, I do not know what happened to the plane.
And yet I can imagine several scenarios in which it fell victim to geopolitical maneuvering, as Korean Air 007 did before, also with much misinformation, misdirection and in that case maritime maneuvering mean to harry the U.S. Navy and other search ships.
That was done, on the one hand, to cover up the true nature of the shoot down and on the other to gain intelligence into the U.S. military capabilities in the area. One result of the entire incident was the revelation of the previously classified DNSS military satellite navigation system—today’s GPS. The tragedy also resulted in the release before the UN Security Council of transcripts of Soviet cockpit conversations that the U.S. had secretly recorded and whose revelation is estimated to have reduced by half the ability of the Americans to gather intelligence on the Soviets in the North Pacific. A useful outcome for the Soviets.
It is something of a thought experiment. One in which I can, in fact, have it both ways as I explore the possibilities. Why would Putin take this plane and by what means? Would maintaining secrecy be the goal? Or would being found out be the desired outcome because it might confirm certain of the West’s intelligence abilities–just like KA007 before it did? Or perhaps it is a case in which the West knows what happened but remains silent because it is unwilling to reveal capabilities (much like Indonesia has done with it’s very specific denial of where it didn’t see MH370) to what has become an increasingly hostile and aggressive adversary?
I don’t know the answer to any of this, but an exploration isn’t necessarily any more of a waste of time than plotting the course of yet another SIO destination with the smallest change of variables. Neither is likely to find the plane but it’s fascinating to do it.
An additional point: in the case of KAL007, the Pentagon claims U.S. radar tapes pertinent to the investigation of the disappearance were recycled within 24 to 30 hours after the plane disappeared. That timing is a point that has been disputed by non-military sources, but it does make one wonder if any northern route radars in fact captured a flight, would those tapes meet a similar rewrite fate as a practical matter of running a radar installation.
@Jeff
I’m curious. In your Putin scenario, is it your belief that western intelligence knows that he is responsible for MH370? Or, rather, that it was such an adroitly executed operation that US intel simply doesn’t know?
And Boeing and the US don’t dare speak out about the planted debris because?
Diplomacy? Fear of Putin? Mistakenly believe the debris is genuine and it’s provenance correct?
It would be interesting to hear you opine as to the behavior of the rest of the world under your Putin scenario.
And how is Russia projecting power and awe if they managed to dupe everyone?
Something from Sy Gunson. For what it is worth.
https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-happened-to-flight-MH370-passengers-during-its-final-hour/answer/Sy-Gunson
@matt, Valid questions. All tie to the related issue: Why did the Russians shoot down another MAS 777? This seems an unequivocal message, but to what end?
Even if it turns out that Russia had nothing to do with MH370, it’s hard to make sense of why they targeted this particular plane over Snizhne.
Given the nature of the war we’re in, it may well be that baffling-ness itself is the point.
@ABN397
Simon has been putting some of these comments in the Washington Post in the comment section of an MH370 article, and I pushed back on some of his claims. The statement he made that I objected to was that (paraphrasing) intentional diversion has now been proven to be false as a cause.
This is the problem with not locating the plane, we are destined to a lifetime of alternate theories.
P.S.- In response to me, SG mentioned his close ties to the family, which to me almost automatically is disclosure of a possible bias.
@VictorI
I am finding PSS 777 will not accept McMurdo region destinations because of “not in data base” error message. If I use FS9 or other route utility with NZPG, PSS just rejects it.
>>Is there some way to update PSS 777 data base? Certainly Z referred a PSS 777 route utility on YouTube comments.
I know how to force a fake “NZPGG” waypoint by hand-edit of PLN files, but it does not seem natural for Z to have to do do it that way. In general not easy to develop MH370 simulator route plans because FS9 is missing N571 flight path and PSS apparently has no McMurdo region waypoints in the database. So it takes me a lot of manual work-arounds by hand. I suppose that’s easy enough.
@TBill: There are third party products for updating the navigation files. Serious simulator enthusiasts subscribe.
@ikr
“Didn’t mean to suggest that debris is hopeless now, just that it’s not [we hope!] a renewable resource,”
No, it certainly is finite. In fact one could question the use of a Poisson statistic on that basis alone. Meaning that every time debris is found the population of remaining debris is reduced. Unlike goals in soccer games which have infinite “elasticity”, and 20 goals scored on a weekend has no influence on how many goals might be scored the following weekend.
I think it is also true, as you say, that there is a decay in findable debris over time. I do think that for the next couple years both effects are small if the original debris population is as large as most people think it is. Perhaps the decay rate is faster than I think.
@Dennis — My view has been that there is a huge population of what I’d call “Gibson particles — random little chunks of composite that just might be identifiable [btw, is there a chemical trail that would identify the particular resins and fibers used in a production run at Boeing or their contractors?].
But precious [and I do mean precious] few big, informative, pieces, particularly control surfaces — that could be useful in conventional reverse-engineering the dynamics of impact.
I’m sure that a good chunk of the orginal population of informative, non-Gibson particles has been lost forever through dawdling and through putting all funds and efforts into the Fugro enterprise.
Perhaps worth a “re-read”, and perhaps worth a “re-think”.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-r3yuaF2p72ZkNWN1U5bklEbTA/view?pli=1
@VictorI
Re:PSS 777
Looks like it is almost trivial in PSS to edit the waypoint data base text files to add NZPG to the *.dat NAV files. I’ll try to add it as an airport later.
Need to test out, but the PSS FMC accepted my new NZPG.
@TBill: Yes, that is how I added NZPG in PSS. You have to be a little careful because MSFS uses different navigational databases than the PSS and PMDG aircraft models, so the native Flight Planner might be out of sync with the FMC.
@ABN397.”Something from Sy Gunson. For what it is worth”
There are various errors in this, the main being that the override valve is designed automatically to both shut off normal equipment cooling air, at the same time venting cabin air which then is put to the cooling in reverse flow, and is heated thereby, overboard.
One reason for this automatic selection could be on detection of smoke, coming from equipment, which otherwise would be recirculated within the aircraft. Also, ‘Override’ can be selected by the flight crew to help clear flight deck or equipment centres’ more generally of smoke.
The override valve is quite separate to the outflow valves, which control pressurisation and which could be expected to maintain that with the override valve open. The ‘vent’ valve (there has been some mixing up of terms) is separate again and normally will divert air heated in normal equipment cooling to the outflow valve vicinity when not needed for cabin heating.
Hence there would not be depressurisation for the reason he attributes.
Still, the notion of an hypoxia that goes unnoticed then being maintained by a cabin pressure height which does not induce unconsciousness for an extended period, might explain extended erratic subsequent piloting. However since among other things there were no warnings evident in the final exchanges with ATC it can be assumed that the cabin altitude warning had not then sounded.
One then could hypothesise that its onset and the loss of various services to be the result of an in-flight emergency shortly after, in the confusion of which the flight crew did not register that cabin altitude had been exceeded and after which cabin altitude did not rise above continuing conscious hypoxia levels, for one pilot at least.
@Gysbreght (also @Matt Moriarty). I posted earlier to you and VictorI, “Further though, there is no elevator offload function in secondary. This of course reads across also to the stabiliser functions in Secondary”.
Does this rule out the possibility of MH 370 similarity to AF 447’s flat descent do you think? With just RAT I assume in the 777 there would be no offload.
The A330 different?
@David: “Does this rule out the possibility of MH 370 similarity to AF 447’s flat descent do you think?”
No, I don’t think it rules out a steep descent in approximately level attitude while the airplane is maintained in a stalled condition.
Without the elevator offload function (it’s called Autotrim in the A330) the angle of attack and rate of descent would be less than in AF447.
@all
@TBill on your remark;
‘This is the problem with not locating the plane, we are destined to a lifetime of alternate theories.’
I’m afraid you are essentialy right.
Given the fact that (among others including me sometimes..) Jeff’s theory, Simon Gunsons believes, Brock McEwen’s thoughts, are still discussed is actualy a good indication how little factualy is known and leaves room for interpretation and speculation after almost 3 years.
All in all I think we have to admitt we’ve probably come a bit closer to a most probable crash area but not close enough with real evidence.
In fact all still existing completely different scenarios that are still discussed underline the decision of the involved official parties to end the search untill convincing evidence points to a new crash area.
We still failed to find any real consensus so how can we blame them not finding the plane…?
@VictorI @Nderland @all
Re:
(1) Oceanic Waypoint system
Just realized we have many possible Oceanic waypoints in SkyVector (PSS-777 does it) using the following system (presumably MH370 FMC could do this):
29S90E = Waypoint ID 2990S
29S105E = Waypoint ID 29S05
http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/8084/yujx.jpg
(2) SkyVector for Sim Flight Plans
SkyVector is nice for flight plans, but it is not intended for simulator flight plans. “Little NavMap” is a new utility can make FS plans from SkyVector (not quite automatically yet).
To do this, for a MH370 SkyVector path, I think you first need to click on each waypoint to convert to lat/long (because MSFS is missing a lot of the named waypoints). Then select “Link” and copy the email paste flight plan. Currently, you have to manually edit the path to recover the text (airports and waypoints) between %20 delimiters. This text can then be entered into Little NavMap and converted to FSX PLN file. Another utility back-converts FSX to FS9 plans. See AVSIM for downloads.
@David
Yes you are right, the flaperon skin panels are carbon. Thanks for correcting me. Memory plays tricks. I imagined I had seen buff coloured substrate on the skin, but it is black. The small component leading edge panels (such as the fractured one you mention, on the outboard side, appear to be GRP. Possibly that’s what gave me the wrong notion). I have a problem with flaperon separation while under RAT power alone. Both flaperon hinges were neatly sheared off at the same point, directly beneath the flaperon body. As you know, with RAT power alone, the inboard actuator is in bypass and can move freely. If only the outboard actuator was functioning, the separation damage would have been different, I believe. Firstly, the outboard hinge would have sheared, and the flaperon would have been twisted off about the inboard hinge. For both hinges to have been sheared in the manner seen, both actuators would need to be operating.
I’ve been trying to visualize how all the pieces got separated on impact. My latest thinking is it was a high speed, nose up ditching, with the APU running. I believe the pilot had closely studied the Hudson River incident, I believe he got the idea of a ditching as a way to minimize surface debris, from what happened on Flight 1549, specifically the breaching of the rear fuselage. He would come in faster than Sully, though. He would need the APU running at least, to ensure adequate hydraulic power in the final moments. Sully had his APU running, and apparently could have applied more flap (at the time, he didn’t think he had enough hydraulic power for full flap extension) Anyway, the point is the RAT extends down from the aft RH wing/belly fairing, and would start to get submerged or be broken off as the aircraft was being ditched. Our pilot planned a higher entry speed than on FL1549, to cause more rear end damage. He kept the nose up for as long as possible, to prevent the engine pods digging in too soon. Things went wrong in the final moments: as he ditched along the swell, either the RH engine pod or wingtip caught the swell, causing the wing to drop, in turn breaking off the flaperon and outboard flap. The aircraft then pivoted or cartwheeled about the RH wing, and the nose slammed down, the forward fuselage was breached on the RH side near door 1R (for those with a long memory, this scenario was originally proposed some time ago by Warren Platts and me. To be honest, the cartwheeling idea was originally Warren’s.)
Consequently, I believe the pilot staged the 2nd SDU logon, to give the impression the aircraft had flamed out before it actually did. Little wonder then that the ATSB failed to find it.
@Jeff Wise @others
All well but an incarnation of Hitler has come into power of the USA.
He doesn’t give a dime on what happened.
Even if Russia was involved, this psychopath would try to set it straight in his psychopatic view of the world and his own selfish paranoia gains.
Sick politics in America, (who could ever believed a Hitler became president there..), are surely not going to help solve the mystery of MH370.
This psychopath doesn’t care no way.
@Jeff Wise,
direct your attention to your own narcissistic government society and system instead of projecting those flaws to Russia and other nations.
You’ve got a new Hitler to deal with in your country (and we too). A much greater threat to global peace than any possible hijacking of MH370 by Russia.
Refraining our MH370 concerns your psycopathic President and your devided sick country, will not be helpfull to solve the MH370 mystery. Fear, paranoia and nationalism is what helped your current President into power.
Your deeply anti-Russian sentiments are just a brain-washed subjective narrative it seems.
No facts and no evidence against all odds and exsisting data. Just indoctrination it seems to me.
Please look at the evidence available now.
Just the facts. Inmarsat data, radar data, drift data, debris data etc.
Impssible there was a Northern route.
What are you trying to sell?
Firefox warned me two days ago your site has no legitamed adress anymore.
What does this mean?
American politics have become more worrying to me lately with trying to add resolving the drama of MH370 using an American blog-site.
And your continious hammering on involvement by the Russians strenghtens me into believing your objectivety has lost you as an American.
I’m just sad and angry almost half of the American population chose another Hitler out of fear and paranoïa.
The same state you seem to have been stuck in with your American conservative ingrained simple Russian explanation.
Take an American stand Jeff Wise if you dare to. F@@king up only the Russians is not going to fool moderate intelligence people.
@Ge Rijn, I completely agree with your psychological assessment of Donald Trump. He presents an existential crisis to democracy in the United States, and perhaps the world. It’s utterly terrifying.
You wrote, “I’m just sad and angry almost half of the American population chose another Hitler out of fear and paranoïa.” Me too.
What you’re skipping over is the role that Russia has played in Trump’s ascension. Did you somehow miss the #goldenshower dossier? Much has been made of the fact that it is unverified, but what’s undeniable is that Trump has been acting like a puppet since long before the election.
Indeed, I would see Russian backing for Trump, BREXIT, and the various “populist” factions in Europe as being of a piece with the MH370, MH17, Crimea, eastern Ukraine, and Syria. Putin wants to undermine Western liberal democracy and replace it with a fascistic cabal of Berlusconi clones. And an alarming number of Americans, many of whom spends years tub-thumping about their diehard allegience to the Constitution, are happy to march right off along with them.
PS I don’t know what it means that Firefox told you the site has no legitimate address. Is anyone else having a problem?
People still use Firefox? Perhaps check to see if there is a compatibility issue with Windows 98? 😉
@Jeff
I use Firefox. No problem. Except with rants.
@Ge Rijn
geopolitics and MH370
Dear Sir, i think you are right, when you compare Mr. Trump to a messenger from the dark side of the universe. He desperately wants the change of the change Obama promised and he will leave nothing but scorched earth including the use of nuclear weapons. We will not recognize this planet again, after he will be gone.
As i laid out in a discussion with victor, his emergence is just a confirmation of new realities. The interests of Russia and US is best served when they work together against Europe and China. I dont blame Putin for doing a good job for his interest in building a new russian empire, but i think we can succeed in building a defence for a human planet worth living on it. Europe and China are much better prepared for this contingency, than anybody expects.
(At least where does Firefox come from?)
Jeff Wise never insisted of his Kazakhstan route like otheres insisted on the SIO. But at least Mr. Wise has recognized the big writing on the wall:
A Jumbo Jet disappears over a critical hotspot region of the world, amidst military activity in the South China Sea (China building Air force bases) and the Straits (Navy maneuvres of Thai, US forces as a deterrent?). At the same time Russia decided to cross a red line by bluntly taking Crimea, a former muslim dominated territory of the Ukraine, while the muslim fighters from the north caucasian russian republics build the foundation to the miracle like rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraque (at the same time), which led to critical waves of millions of syrian refugees destabilizing central europe.
These are undeniable facts. It is also a fact, that the Kazakhstan connection is crucial to Putin for getting along with sunni muslim activity on his borders. That is the reason, that peace talks over Syria are taking place in Astana, Kazakhstan now.
This serves the interests of Putin and Russia, and if he wants to project influence in one of the most important muslim regions (archipelago MY and Indonesia), this would be done from Kazakhstan.
Therefore you can make your decision between a bizarre suicide with very low probability or a capture by means of a spoof, which would lead to Kazakhstan with a qualified probability.
Since now, after the fact, we can identify the disappearance as having taken place at the beginning of geopolitical controversies , we might just identify it as part of one of those troubles.
This even more, as after the disappearance a very strange secrecy was predominant for all official sources and a gigantic effort was made to dominate the blogs and the internet with counter propaganda in a cannibalistic soviet style. Including the employment of a subsidy of KETCHUM as spin doctor for the MY gov.
So if anyone tries to deflect the view from the elepant in the room , i would tell him: There is a writing on the wall that reads MENE MENE TEKEL KAZAKHSTAN 🙂
@gecina
I do not use Firefox, but like you the rants are difficult to get through at times.
@Ge Rijn
I would rather you phrase your “almost half of the American population chose another Hitler out of fear and paranoia” as the more accurate “less than half of those Americans who voted chose another Hitler out of fear and paranoia.”
It’s no small distinction, as Donald Trump was not America’s choice for president nor was he even the choice of the majority of American voters, which is why he enters office with the lowest approval rating of any president in history. In fact, his ascendency to the White House came down to fewer people choosing him than attend a professional football game, thanks to an antiquated Constitutional procedure.
Nonetheless, I concur with you and Jeff that his Administration is terrifying on many levels. I have relatives whose livelihoods will evaporate if he does away with women’s health spending. I have friends who fear their marriages will be invalidated by an active congress and his disinterest in human rights. I have other friends in Eastern Europe who wonder if they have been abandoned (to Russian tanks, by the way) thanks to his careless statements. I have a five-year-old son whose teacher’s family was prohibited from visiting her because of their country of origin and his recent Executive Order. I live just three meters above high tide in a coastal town that was 80 percent flooded after its last great storm and so know well the consequence of bad climate policy. I fear the advancing of the Doomsday Clock to two minutes to midnight because of his presidency in a way I haven’t feared the Clock since I was a ten- or twelve-year-old with an imagination tilted toward the catastrophic. I awake each day thinking maybe, hoping actually, yesterday was just a bad dream.
But please—this aberration (or, if you prefer, abomination; I’d certainly call it that) does not erase a 100-year history of Soviet and post-Soviet Russian governmental brutality at home and abroad. When hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens march against the sitting government without reprisal as American citizens just have, you can draw an equivalency. When journalists are free to publish unpalatable truths about the Kremlin rather than face assassination you can hold up Moscow as a shining city on the hill. When Russian federal judges can turn aside the president’s orders and have the bureaucracy follow suit to allow free passage to innocents you can hail the rule of law. When same party politicians can write an open critique about who the president telephones (http://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=C9F10A81-5E01-4937-9395-64533976169F), you are free to say the Kremlin is lit by the torch of freedom and liberty.
But until then, painting the presumptive behavior of one leader as worse than the documented behavior of another (and in fact as equivalent to one of the most horrifying leaders in history)—well, that is just disingenuous and not only distracts from some of the horrors that you’ll find outlined in John McCain’s link above but prevents the effective countermeasures right thinking people need to embrace to keep Trump on notice.
As for “deeply anti Russian sentiments,” I can’t speak for our host, Jeff Wise. But as someone with both Russian and Ukrainian relatives I can confidently say I have no bad feelings toward the Russian people. Their warmth and sentimentality is lovely. It’s the government of an unfettered strongman with KGB training and a paranoid world view that’s the problem.
And that stands whether the cause of the disappearance of MH370 was mechanical, suicidal or geoplitical.
[post deleted] DennisW, I don’t want to hear about it. Go to Breitbart if you want to vent that stuff.
@Jeff
The artilcle did not appear in Breitbart. Sticking your head in the sand is not a solution.
@ScottO, Powerful words. Thank you.
@Jeff
I insist that you restore my post that you so capriciously deleted. There was no reason to do so other than your own world views. If you are going to allow political commentary, it would should be symmetrical. The alternatives are not flattering.
@DennisW, There is a coup d’etat underway in this country and I will do everything in my power to stand up against those who would subvert the Constitution of the United States.
From now on I will manually review all of your postings before allowing them to appear.
@Jeff
In that case, there will be no more postings. Good luck with your blog and your endeavors.
@Jeff May I suggest either no political talk or free political talk? Anything in between leaves a bad taste.
Better yet, MH370 talk. I enjoy the blog and if I had the expertise, I’d be trying to steer the conversation back myself.
@Gecina. Here goes.
@Rob. Thanks for that. It would be hard to both prove or disprove your piloted ditching, including feigning of fuel exhaustion and APU use. I take it you see it as unflapped, to keep the nose up.
However it and other theories will remain conjectural without hard evidence.
So I approach this bottom up, looking for evidence which might be near enough unambiguous as distinct from looking for such to meet an hypothesis. There remains a prospect I think that flaperon damage might disclose more than the coincident damage with the outer flap already has.
The similarity of fractures of the two flaperon hinges indicates they suffered like stresses at failure, which might have been from two actuators being operative as you say, though the flaperon is asymmetrical. Then again they might have failed together in sideways bending for example, independent of the actuator number operative. The Kenyon analysis, which continues to prove most useful, mentioned inboard and outboard forces on the flaperon in this context though did not specify from what source.
Besides those possibilities, with the outer actuator alone operative that could well lead as you describe to its adjacent hinge failing followed by the inner in bending/torsion. Thence the inner actuator could extend freely, all very quickly; the flaperon finally rotating about that in two planes and hitting the inner flap. I do not think therefore that the outer hinge failing first would affect the outcome necessarily.
To me the least ambiguous evidence currently in the offing is the outer leading edge crushing, which was from underneath. I cannot see how hitting the sea after falling would cause that or what else it would hit. Earlier I had the second thought that this crushing was caused by hitting a bar and cove door hinge some distance in front of it. Having looked at this again I think that no longer, for the crushing is outboard of where it could hit these objects even had the flaperon been forced that far forward. I have no drawing of what is forward and further outboard but notice at Figure 22 of https://www.atsb.gov.au/media/5771939/ae-2014-054_mh370-search-and-debris-update_2nov-2016_v2.pdf that there is a fixed panel there at least; you will see it immediately forward of the outer leading edge.
I have no idea how robust that piece is but assuming that it could be the culprit, that would restore a horizontal turn around the outboard actuator as being a likely cause, that is while the flaperon rear was rotating up and outwards, striking the outer flap.
(This might have been when the flaperon rear detached?)
That would mean there is no evidence here of a high speed crash as previously I thought. It would make it more likely as earlier that the flaperon was down a little and exposed to greater lift forces on hitting water in a flapless ditching than the adjacent flap would be, leaving a ditching as possible still.
It is deplorable to me that the Malaysians have not insisted on the flaperon being made available for failure sequence reconstruction, given that assessment of its impact with the outer flap has already been fruitful. Whether this recontruction would be able to use more of the damage evidence is a known unknown.
I see on the inboard side the flaperon is adjacent to the inboard flap fairing.
@Rob, a bit less than half way down, for “..the flaperon finally rotating about that in two planes and hitting the inner flap.” For “..that..” please read, “…the outer actuator…”
@David; @ROB:
How about the following sequence of failures when the right wing hits the water and the flaperon is pushed upwards:
1. trailing edge
2. attachment of outboard actuator to flaperon
3. attachment of inboard actuator to flaperon
4. inboard and outboard hinge brackets
@Gysbreght. You are seeing the actuator attachments failing in compression? Presumably at the wing end.
A diagram has the inboard attached directly to the wing though the Kenyon analysis exhibit 2 shows it on a stub. No pics I have seen on the equivalent at the outer.
Whay would the hinge brackets then fail if the flaperon is free to rotate? The hinges will be opposite the centre of lift?
@David: I would think that the flaperon has limited freedom to rotate upwards (nose-down), at the hinge brackets in particular.
@Gecina
Here in Germany we learnt it the hard way by a horrible nightmare, what it means to let fascists have their way. It is NOT recommendable
@Gysbreght. There will be stops surely, though not evident. They may fail under major dynamic load, in which case the fixed panel I mentioned would be struck, the outer leading edge damage resulting. Consequently the flaperon could be torn off the outer hinge, that side flying up and the other hinge then breaking.
Were the stops just on the inboard side and strong that would yield a sequence which fitted better, the inboard hinge failing on hitting the stops and the outer remaining intact until hitting the fixed panel, causing that to break, the flaperon then flying up and outwards.
The tensile failure of the actuator flaperon attachment points would need explanation though.
@Gysbreght. I assume the failure at the outboard flaperon actuator attachment was akin to the other though this has not been disclosed by the French to my knowledge.
@David
Definitely flaps-up on impact, as you say to keep the nose up. There was no need in this instance to maintain lift with reducing speed as for a normal landing/ditching. In all events, it would have been a tricky manoeuvre to pull off successfully, to match the sink rate with the forward speed in order to get the desired result (and avoid the risk of bouncing back into the air)
If the flaps had been extended, there would have been some very large inboard flap sections washed up along with the flaperon and outboard flap.
I can see the small fixed panel you mention, in Fig22 of the ATSB Search/Debris Update. If this panel was forced up on impact, it could be responsible for the outboard leading edge damage, but not if the flaperon were fully deflected down at the time, is my thinking.
So flaperon and outboard flap were probably roughly aligned with each other on impact? It suggests to me a very heavy impact force from below, breaking the two flaperon hinges simultaneously, then pushing the flaperon upwards and separating it from the actuator arms when the brackets sheared. I don’t see any evidence of the sideways force suggested by Kenyon.
The force could be a landing on an uneven road with rocky upcroppings to impact the wing from underneath.
@David@
Posted January 31, 2017 at 7:35 AM
“…failure at the outboard flaperon actuator attachment was akin to the other though this has not been disclosed by the French to my knowledge.”
I find the way the French have dealt with the whole thing very strange. They handled the NOK with little regard for their feelings, then produced a report on the bio-fouling which beggars belief. I wonder just what they are hiding or perhaps they are just as incompetent as all the other players in the MH370 fiasco appear to be?
This from the Telegraph…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/mh370/11786693/MH370-families-voice-anger-as-Malaysia-and-France-disagree-over-investigation.html
@ROB
I can accept your theory of keeping nose up; the tail piece seems to suggest that. Not sure about faking SDU logon. What are you thinking is final distance from Arc7? What is your current guess of location?
With all of the PIC planning for such a landing, don’t you think a specific landing zone in a hard-to-search location 20000-ft deep would be the objective? Has anybody indicated on Google Earth the areas along Arc7 where ditching wreckage would be hard to find? How deep is too deep to find the plane?
@TBill
News item (caution may not relate to MH370):
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/malaysia-arrests-3-for-suspected-links-to-islamic-state/3480570.html
Apparently one of the suspects worked at MAS. I seem to recall back in about March 2014, the Al Qaeda operative in court statements while on trial in the UK had commented they had an operative inside MAS.
@Rob, “ If this panel was forced up on impact, it could be responsible for the outboard leading edge damage,” I was thinking more of the flaperon nose rotating onto the panel.
“So flaperon and outboard flap were probably roughly aligned with each other on impact?” Aligned at flaperon separation I think, as the ATSB has put it. The flaperon could have rotated there on impact.
@Gysbreght. If you imagine the flaperon actuators extended at impact, the flaperon down some as as an aileron, then the compressive force on the thinner fescolised arm might cause buckling of the whole. Consequently the flaperon would rotate forward, the hinges separating when it was stopped. The bending at the flaperon end might snap the attachments. A long shot and complicated by whether the inner actuator was in bypass or not and whther it could buckle even if so.
I suspect that all this is unresolvable without a reconstruction and, most probably, testing. With the ATSB of the firm opinion this was a high speed unpiloted dive there is little incentive.
One other point that Kenyon noted was there was some flaperon leading edge denting immediately outboard of the inner actuator attachment, which again might have resulted from rotation forward.
@Boris Tabaksplatt. Quite a muddle as to what parts the Malaysians and French are talking about.
Is this an American domestic politics blog? I thought it was about a missing airliner and the souls aboard it. Any thoughts on this new piece of debris?
Hello David, the Flaperon Failure Analysis has been updated to Rev 3.0. It includes new, but sparse, outboard connection information captured from the recent France 2 TV program and (in addition to Rev 2.0 analysis on Asiana 214 left Flaperon damage) some research on failure of MH17 primary structural connections. (I don’t know how to inert a real link on this blog so may not work…)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B461FEILFXxaaXl1bjBuOE1FeDA/view?usp=sharing
All constructive feedback welcomed.
P.S. Just to note I appreciate your previous challenges on the PCU status and its potential impact on Flaperon Failure mode. It still occasionally rattles in my thoughts.
@Kenyon. Irrespective of our different perspectives Tom, your Analysis is a very useful source thanks.
Here are some instant comments, scratched together.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/up5a9vg7r9loslo/Suggestions%20for%20a%20next%20review%20or%20finalisation%20from%20draft.docx?dl=0