Experts from all over the world have converged in Perth, Australia, to meet Seabed Constructor, the exploration vessel tasked with finding the wreckage of MH370, after its first stint in the search area. Technical experts and government officials are having meetings and dinners, touring the ship, and doing photo ops. Everything glitters and spirits are high.
Lost in this excited hubub is the fact that the latest search effort has already invalidated the expert analysis that got it launched in the first place.
In a 2016 document entitled “MH370–First Principles Review,” the ATSB explained that, given the absence of wreckage in the orginal 120,000 sq km search, MH370 most likely wound up somewhere near the 7th arc between 33 degrees and 36 degrees south. A subsequent document by the CSIRO entitled “The search for MH370 and ocean surface drift–Part III” narrowed the target area considerably. “We think it is possible to identify a most-likely location of the aircraft, with unprecedented precision and certainty,” it stated. “This location is 35.6°S, 92.8°E. Other nearby (within about 50km essentially parallel to the 7th arc) locations east of the 7th arc are also certainly possible, as are (with lower likelihood) a range of locations on the western side of the 7th arc, near 34.7°S 92.6°E and 35.3°S 91.8°E.”
The wording is important, because as the original search area was winding down, Australia, China and Malaysia said that it would only be extended if “credible new information” came to light. The CSIRO’s language sounded like an attempt to make the case that this condition had been met. And indeed, the three specified points were all included the “Primary Search Area” that Seabed Constructor recently focused its efforts on.
However, that area has now been searched. And once again, the plane was not where it was supposed to be. The CSIRO’s “unprecedented precision and certainty” was a mirage.
How is that, time and time again, officials heading up the search for MH370 exude great confidence and then come up empty handed? How can we account for four years of relentless failure?
The answer, it seems to me, is quite simple. Investigators have resolutely failed to grapple with the single most salient clue: The fact that the Satellite Data Unit (SDU) was rebooted. This electronic component is the part of the 777’s sat com system that generated the Inmarsat data that has been the basis of the entire search. There is no known way that it could accidentally turn off and back on again.
If one has no idea how the SDU turned on, then one can have no confidence in the integrity of the data that it generated.
The ATSB has never publicly expressed a theory about what could have caused the reboot, except to say that most likely the power had been turned off and back on again. There was always the possibility that, behind the scenes, they had figured out a way that this could plausibly happen other than being deliberately tampered with.
Just today, however, I received confirmation that the ATSB is in fact befuddled. Mike Exner is a stalwart of the Independent Group who is currently visiting Perth, where he has had dinner with employees of Ocean Infinity and Fugro, as well as members of the ATSB and the DSTG. In response to my assertion that investigators “had never stopped to ask how on earth the SDU… came to be turned back on,” Exner tweeted that “Everyone is well aware of the question. We have all asked ourselves and others how it happened.” However, Mike writes, “no one has the answer.”
One might forgive the expenditure of vast wealth and manpower based on data of dubious provenance if there was other evidence that independently supported it. But the contrary is the case: debris collected in the western Indian Ocean shows no signs of having drifted from the search zone, as I wrote in my previous post. It is increasingly clear that the plane did not go where the Inmarsat data suggests it did. The fishiness of the Inmarsat data, and the fishiness of the SDU reboot that created it, are all of a piece.
Soon, Seabed Constructor will return to the search area; some weeks or months after that, it will leave again, empty handed. When it does, people all over the world will ask: How could they have failed yet again?
The answer will be simple. It is this: Investigators never established the provenance of the evidence that they based their search on.
@TBill: My adage is that the probability density function (pdf) of BFO errors has its maximum density at zero error. Therefore a data-driven path filter seeks to minimize BFO errors.
The Bayesian path filter is constrained to autopilot/autothrust modes and all but ignores the BFO data. The contribution of the BFO data is reduced to that of a discriminant between paths to asia and paths to the SIO that both satisfy the BTO data. As stated in the Bayesian Methods book, section 10.1 (p.89):
test
Oddities about the Inmarsat Data
In a discussion about whether the Inmarsat data is valid or not: it is memorable that when initially announcing the presence of the data and discussing it, Inmarsat prefaced every statement with words such as: ‘… assuming the data hasn’t been spoofed …’ or similar.
Something I’ve never heard explained is *why* Inmarsat thought the data might have been spoofed. What gave them that cause for concern – did they find suspicious unauthorised activity in their server logs? Was there something odd in the contents or format of the data they retrieved? Was the whole data set just too ‘pat’ to be true? Did they later find the answer and resolve that suspicion or do they still have that as an ongoing concern? Or did they simply redact the logs and groom the data to remove any obvious oddities?
Another oddity with the Inmarsat data announcement was how long they took to ‘discover’ it all – not do the calculations, simply find the data on their servers. At first they announced they had only found part of it, then later they found some more. Yet all the data would have been in the same place (same database), and they would have found it all the very first time they ran the SQL search using the aircraft’s ID as the key. Unless a different ID had been used for some of the transmissions, of course. Or they were making some of it up as they went along?
Then there’s the Inmarsat statement that using the data in this way was a new calculation that had never been done before; that it was not what the data had been designed for. It could be seen as strange that, having been initiated post AF447 in 2009 in case of a similar future event, Inmarsat would make the operational decision to start retaining more data (BTO) from each transmission on their servers without first testing whether the data retained would actually be usable for its intended purpose.
More likely back in 2009 they would have put a small team of engineers on the problem for a few days, gave them some data from some flights and told them to see if they could find a way of analysing the data to accurately locate the aircraft in each case. Proof of concept.
If so then you’d imagine the data analysis methods would have been known, perhaps even coded up once the algorithm had been determined, because that – (accurate) analysis of the data to locate an aircraft that had gone missing – was the whole reason for retaining the extra data in the first place. So why the large delay in supposedly having to work out how to interpret and analyse the data from first principles when MH370 went missing? All of these delays while the acoustic pinger battery was running down.
The whole thing has been handled badly. In the beginning journalists & expert amateurs could go to companies like Boeing, Inmarsat & Rolls Royce to get a true understanding of what might have happened to Mh370. That was quickly stopped & all information was filtered through JACC or Malaysia themselves. This gave the problem of the information being altered to suit. So If there was any concerns by any company involved then it is highly unlikely we would get to hear about it. So it is no wonder the conspiracy stories started & people started wearing the tin foil hats. You have a mixed bunch. The conspirators who can tell when something is off & is making a song & dance about it, the believers who trust everything they are told regardless of whether it is true or not & then you have the people like the IG, the IG types do not appear to have an opinion on whether the information is correct or not but will offer analysis on the basis the information is correct. Although when pushed the IG will become believers. I’m not saying the whole shebang is a cover up but it is far from transparent & that helps no one. The disappearance of Mh370 is a public interest case & should be treated as so. It is an international incident. There is no evidence of any wrong doing by any party so I fail to see why there is a need to censor the flow of information. This was demonstrated again by SeaBed Constructor turning off it’s AIS. The explanation was to stem speculation although it would seem that by cutting AIS all they achieved was the opposite. Personally I think that the only way that conspiracy stories will stop in relation to Mh370 is when Malaysia makes the entire investigation fully transparent. Although I wouldn’t be counting on that happening any time soon.
Just as an after thought….
I wonder if Inmarsat themselves are investing in OI? Considering that the whole search is based on data provided by them it seems that they have a point to prove does it not?
@PS9: Interpreting the BTO is childs play compared to making sense of the BFO data.
@Michael John
“Personally I think that the only way that conspiracy stories will stop in relation to Mh370”
TWA Flight 800 still has military missile cover-up theorists despite the fairly obvious design flaws discovered leading to fuel tank explosion, in that case. So probably there is no end to alternate theories.
I like the simplicity of distilling the cause down to two possibilities: I was either the pilot or spoofing.
@Michael John, You wrote, “I wonder if Inmarsat themselves are investing in OI?” That’s a really interesting idea! Both based in London. Unfortunately no evidence for it at the moment…
@ATG, You wrote, “So if the plane isn’t found by this latest search, it appears that it won’t be found for the following reasons:
a. The data is valid, but due to various factors and unknowns, it is in a location that is unknowable at this time.
b. The data is invalid, which would put the plane anywhere.”
With regards to b., if the data is invalid, then the question becomes: how did it become invalid? The Inmarsat data are physical measurements which arose through some process. The next step is to try to figure what that process is. The list of possibilities must be finite.
In the early days of the investigation, the bottom line was:
there are lots of theories and each one has stuff going for it but also a whole lot contradicting it – so much so that not a single theory emerged without serious flaws (except for Jeff’s Kazakhstan theory maybe, which still to this day seems to be the only theory out there able to explain everything).
I read so much about MH370 in all these months, that I currently feel oversaturated, kinda unable to see the forest for the trees. So let me please ask you this:
Are there any known facts disproving that one of the pilots took the plane and flew away ?
For the purpose of my question please disregard the following points:
• plane hasn’t been found yet (not an argument to me because plane can still be found and/or could have been missed)
• bio-fouling (inconclusive to me)
• psychological arguments, especially re the weird flight path, as killing 100+ people is pretty weird to begin with
So other than the abovementioned points, which have been discussed extensively already, what speaks against the pilot-abduction-theory ?
Don’t get me wrong. To me, personally, it would be the most disappointing and unwanted outcome. But currently I sadly feel like this appears to be the most “realistic” one, sadly.
and I certainly don’t want it to end this way
TBill said:
“TWA Flight 800 still has military missile cover-up theorists despite the fairly obvious design flaws discovered leading to fuel tank explosion, in that case. So probably there is no end to alternate theories.”
Are you aware that some of those ‘military missile cover-up theorists’ with ‘alternate theories’, as you describe them, include six of the original NTSB investigators that worked on that case who have, in their words, ‘blown the whistle’?
Do you know they have lodged sworn affidavits and petitioned the NTSB to reopen the investigation on the grounds the investigation was taken over by the FBI and the NTSB investigators were not allowed to investigate it thoroughly or base their conclusion on the forensic evidence, and so the conclusion officially given by the NTSB managers in the report is wrong?
He claims, for example: some wreckage was removed by the FBI to another hangar that the NTSB was not allowed access to; traces of explosives were found on seat covers by the ATSB but denied by the FBI; evidence was tainted and altered by the FBI, CIA and senior NTSB managers; none of the 500+ witnesses that had seen a bright light shoot up from the ground to the aircraft were allowed to be interviewed by the NTSB nor allowed to be called to give evidence at the inquiry.
As they say:
“The original investigation into the crash of TWA Flight 800 was seriously undermined and led to a “probable cause” of the crash that is not supported by the forensic evidence.”
Read Henry Hughes’ affidavit – senior NTSB investigator on TWA800:
https://flight800doc.com/affidavit/
In the affidavit:
“This absolute inconsistency of damage or injury pattern from one seat and victim to the next, led us to conclude that the most likely cause of this as well as the high degree of separation of the component parts of the interior early in the crash sequence, was an ordnance explosion caused by high explosives. The localized low order explosion that NTSB officials said resulted from ignited fuel vapors in a fuel tank between the wings would not have been powerful enough nor dispersed enough to create this kind of widespread damage.”
There’s evidence there that if a government wants to, it can undermine an investigation it controls and have any outcome it chooses. And probably there are people who will believe, without question, whatever official story they are given whilst at the same time being happy to attempt to label anyone who does doubt and question that story as a ‘conspiracy theorist’. Perhaps it makes the believers feel more secure to assure themselves the world and their government is as they wish to see it, rather than how it actually is.
@PS9, the affidavits you refer that I have seen do not state there was or is a criminal cover up–and certainly don’t say that a cover up was engaged in by federal law enforcement, as your last paragraph suggests.
The affidavits only affirm that procedures the NTSB had followed previously were not followed in this crash (largely because the FBI treated the accident at first as a criminal investigation), that some in particular disagree with conclusions regarding radar track and that on the whole the do not agree with the conclusions of the broader NTSB.
These affidavits led to a petition to reopen the investigation. And though you attempt to smear the FBI and the CIA as manipulating the outcome of the investigation, it was the NTSB itself that denied the petition to reopen the investigation.
From NTSB.gov: “To consider the petition, the NTSB assembled a team of investigators not previously involved with the original investigation. On July 2, 2014, the NTSB said it would not reconsider its finding that the crash was caused by a fuel tank explosion. In a press release they stated: “After a thorough review of all the information provided by the petitioners, the NTSB denied the petition in its entirety because the evidence and analysis presented did not show the original findings were incorrect.”
Generally “blowing the whistle” means alerting the authorities or public of something they were unaware–not that theories considered and dismissed should be reconsidered.
The opinion of one person does not invalidate the conclusions of a group, and, in fact, the quote you use from Henry Hughes essentially proves the point–Hughes may have had many professional experiences, but forensic explosives expert was not one he listed in his qualifications.
There is a far distance from these actual facts and the salaciousness in what is presented in a cable TV documentary, and that stands whether or not a government is capable (and here, the American government, not the Malaysian government, which is really what we should be discussing) a cover up.
@JeffWise:
What actually happened to your similarly promising announcement back in October claiming you had effectively solved the case of MH370 ?
(see below)
From everything I’ve read, the following seems to be the most plausible MH370 scenario so far, in that it reasonably accounts for much of the available data & there is no hard evidence to date which categorically disproves it.
Shortly into flight MH370 nefarious Pilot convinced copilot to momentarily leave the cockpit using some innocent ploy (like take a break / grab me a coffee / do you smell something burning out there? / etc), then manually locked him out of the cockpit for good.
Once alone & secure in the cockpit, Pilot immediately donned his Emergency Oxygen Mask & depressurized the cabin in order to kill all passengers & other crew via hypoxia.
Pilot then disabled ACARS & turned the plane around & headed back across Malaysia.
Once MH370 crossed Malaysia & was last seen heading Northwest, Pilot decreased altitude to drop below radar horizon & went around the north end of Indonesia, then turned South & headed down into SIO with the intention of crashing the plane via high speed suicide dive into the ocean directly above Broken Ridge.
Sometime after all passengers & crew were dead via hypoxia, but prior to exhausting his own Cockpit Emergency Oxygen supply, Pilot repressurized cabin & removed his Emergency Oxygen mask.
Pilot then continued heading south into SIO. Pilot assumed, or at least hoped that his final turn south was undetected, but even so decided to crash the plane somewhere the sunken wreckage would be the most difficult to locate with sonar, such as in the abyssal depths & extremely rough seafloor bathymetry at Broken Ridge.
Pilot flew MH370 to predetermined coordinates along Broken Ridge using either a handheld GPS or onboard navigation equipment, then manually switched off engines or dumped remaining fuel causing both engines to flame out.
Once both engines were shut down, the suicidal Pilot nosedived the plane from high altitude straight down to a catastrophic high speed impact with the ocean surface. Some exterior components like the flaperon may have detached from the plane during the high speed nosedive prior to impact, but most of the plane was destroyed in the crash & a large percentage of it sank immediately to the seafloor where hopefully it will soon be discovered by Seabed Constructor at the intersection of 7th Arc & Broken Ridge ( 32.48 S / 95.77 E ).
Some wreckage from the plane did remain afloat, but drifted away & was dispersed across the SIO by violent storms & strong currents in the long weeks before searchers arrived anywhere near the actual crash site.
It was discovered later that Pilot had mysterious trips into the SIO on his home flight simulator and was photographed wearing a t-shirt with the image of a submarine on it. If he expressed such an interest in submarines, this also infers an interest in the ocean depths & seafloor bathymetry like the extremes found around Broken Ridge, which just coincidentally would be the optimal location in the SIO to hide MH370 wreckage from sonar detection & to prevent the recovery of any incriminating evidence which may be left on the FDR / CVR.
Feel free to poke holes in this theory, but please provide some evidence to support your arguments. Thanks.
@Joe Nemo, You do a great job of summarizing what I’d call the default scenario for MH370. This would widely be considered the most (and by some, only) plausible explanation for what happened to the plane. It has some serious shortcomings however, which I won’t rehash here, except to say that if the current seabed search turns up nothing then there will serious grounds to doubt the integrity of the Inmarsat data upon which this scenario is based.
@Scott Carvil, Good question! When I wrote “we can effectively consider the case solved. I’ll be explaining more in the weeks to come,” I was planning to address the Zaharie flight sim and Australia’s final report into MH370, which had a great deal of eye-opening material about biofouling that the media had ignored. I finally published that review here:
http://jeffwise.net/2018/02/08/mh370-debris-fouling-supports-spoof-scenario/
To make a long story short, I felt that the biofouling counts as one more “smoking gun” that tells us that the plane did not wind up in the southern Indian Ocean.
As for the background info on the people on the plane, I don’t really know when I’m going to be able to come forward with it but I hope it will be by the middle of the year.
@Joe Nemo, rather than poke holes, I’d ask you one crucial question regarding your scenario:
WHY?
Or what is the motive?
What would the motive be to murder hundreds of people brfore an hours long ride? Why depressurize if everyone is locked on the other side of a secured door. Why commit suicide in a manner so complicated. Why engage in a terrorist action—if that’s what it was—that removes all trace of terror, thereby removing the thing, the threat of fear, that makes terrorism effective.
I feel like an otherwise plausible scenario is utterly questionable until someone can assert an affective motive, the WHY.
@Joe Nemo: Why did the airplane’s SDU log-on to the Inmarsat satellite network at 18:25 and at 00:19?
@Scott
Yes, my thoughts exactly.
@Gysbreght
Yes. Especially 18:25?
@Scott
“Why” is the least important question and has nothing to do with what ultimately transpired. People do crazy things every minute of everyday for their own motivations. I would guess in this case his motivation was to get people talking about the mystery of what happened. He succeeded as this blog illustrates. Again though, it doesn’t matter “why.” Joe Nemo’s description is by far the most probable. They haven’t found the plane because the ocean is huge and very deep. It is as simple as that. All the other conspiracy stuff is frankly ridiculous.
@Joe Nemo
I agree exactly and I think it fits the math of the BTO/BFO
Approx. total path in SkyVector is:
MEKAR NILAM 0796E 0894E 3194S 3295S
and envision that last southeast leg is right overtop Broken Ridge to say 32.5S
@Bob K, You seem to be someone who does not have much familiarity with this case and is comfortable with going with whatever your gut tells you. That is not a useful approach in as technically demanding a case as this one (or, I would argue, in life in general). I can assure that nothing about this case is simple.
@Jeff Wise:
Actually Jeff, I have been following your blog from the beginning and enjoy it immensely. Thank you for having it. That said, the most likely scenario is the one that Joe Nemo laid out. I am not alone in this conclusion as it is the most probable. Of course we won’t know for sure where the plane ended up unless it is found some day. But the most likely reason it has not been found is because it is thousands of pieces on the floor of the incredibly deep and vast Indian Ocean. If you want to imagine airplane hangers in whereeverstan and spoofing of data by Russian spys, have at it. And Jeff, for all of your insights and TV appearances you have no greater understanding of where the plane is at the moment than I do, or anyone else for that matter. Other people who are much smarter than I am apparently agree with my opinion that the plane is in the ocean, since these smart people are currently looking there and others have previously done the same. The fact that they haven’t found it yet does NOT mean it isn’t there. It just means they haven’t found it. And given the vastness of the Ocean it is entirely possible they never will. That STILL does not mean it isn’t there.
@Scott O
Once a person becomes desperate enough to seriously consider suicide, how can anything else beyond that point be surprising. If Pilot didn’t even care about his own life, why would he care about the lives of a bunch of strangers?
Perhaps the only remaining thing he did care about was not being remembered by everyone including his family as a suicidal mass murderer. The entire subterfuge may have been designed to make MH370 look like some accident or a hijack gone wrong or to simply render it into some ever unsolvable mystery, thus entitling his family to considerable financial benefits & compensation & sparing them considerable stigma otherwise.
If you’re asking why he would consider suicide in the first place, then I don’t know, but the usual reasons are failed relationships / financial troubles / radical ideology / clinical depression…and so on down that extremely long list.
As for depressurizing the cabin, that would be to prevent anyone from eventually gaining access to the cockpit. I know the door is reinforced, but I imagine that hours of concerted effort by a plane load of passengers might be sufficient to breach it. Or perhaps the Pilot wanted to prevent anyone from making any kind of calls with their cell phones, personal sat phones, or any other onboard communication devices like the Emergency Locator Satellite Radio Beacon. Or maybe the Pilot just wanted some peace & quiet for the remainder of his long flight to oblivion.
@Gysbreght
Not sure why the SDU logged on then. Maybe the Pilot needed to power up certain equipment at those times for navigational purposes or to dump fuel upon reaching destination at end of flight. Having a live Pilot at the controls throughout the flight eliminates the requirement for some purely automated function to explain the reboots and means anything is possible via Pilot action.
@Joe Nemo: “Once both engines were shut down, the suicidal Pilot nosedived the plane from high altitude straight down to a catastrophic high speed impact with the ocean surface.”
After shutting down both engines, why did the pilot wait two minutes before initiating his catastrophic nosedive?
@Gysbreght
You do know I wasn’t actually there, right?
But I imagine that’s precisely the time required to down one last shot from the drink cart & then kiss your own ass goodbye.
@Joe Nemo: “Not sure why the SDU logged on then. Maybe the Pilot needed to power up certain equipment at those times for navigational purposes or to dump fuel upon reaching destination at end of flight.”
Why did he have to do that? Having disabled ACARS, why did he have to “power up certain equipment”?
@Bob K, We’re seeing an evolution in the message that’s coming out of the IG. First it was, “We’ve analyzed the Inmarsat data, the plane has to be in this area, if you search you will find it.” The plane wasn’t there. Now the message is, “The plane might not be in the search area, but that’s okay, the plane still definitely went south.” The fact is that it becomes very difficult to come up with a narrative that explains all the observed evidence, and also results in the plane being outside both the original and the new search area. To suggest otherwise is mere hand-waving.
As I have said before, there are a number of people for whom the main objective seems to be to draw attention away from the 18:25 reboot, and to lodge ad-hominem attacks against anyone who tries to shine a light on it.
BTW your assertion that some people are “smarter” and that therefore their view is more valid is a form of ad-hominemism of the worst kind. As we’ve seen time and time again in this case, the official experts (and self-described ones) have time and again assured the public that various things would come to pass, and they have not. Forget personalities and focus on facts and logic.
@Gysbreght
Sorry, I’m just not familiar enough with that electrical system to know exactly what functions are lost when the Left AC Bus is isolated via the cockpit panel, which is presumably how the Pilot initially disabled ACARS.
Perhaps the Pilot needed to restore power temporarily in order to repressurize the cabin after all the passengers & crew finally expired.
@Joe Nemo: Disabling ACARS does not require the Left AC Bus to be isolated. The obvious way to to it is via the ACARS Manager and the VHF Manager on the MCDU.
@Joe Nemo, This question is an absolutely essential one, and one that we have discussed in this space at great length. The long and short of it is that no one has been able to come up with a plausible, unintentional explanation for how this could occur. This is a major problem for the theory you present, as Gysbreght has been trying to tell you.
@Jeff Wise
I fully admit the 18:25 aircraft initiated logon is a mystery to me, but it’s hardly a death knell for this theory in that it’s really only half a problem. The ‘How’ portion of the occurrence can simply be attributed to Pilot action, while the ‘Why’ component remains as yet inexplicable.
@Joe Nemo. Many have wrestled with the reason for the first log-on. How it could happen is clear enough. The most likely candidate would be restoration of power to the left AC bus.
It is the why that remains the hang up. Most recently I have been addressing this on the VI site, posing a solution but one in which the scenario is unlikely if the aircraft was under the control of a competent pilot.
You say, “Perhaps the pilot needed to restore power temporarily in order to repressurize the cabin after all the passengers & crew finally expired.” To depressurise quickly, engine bleed air including trim air would be selected off and the outflow valves put to manual and opened. To re-pressurise bleed air would be restored and the outflow valves closed or returned to auto. Restoration of the left AC bus would not do it.
I hope you continue working on that theme but bear in mind that it would result in no change to the search width so long as the pilot remained to hold the nose down as speed and Mach No rose.
A point about his frame of mind. Corruption in the purchase of 2 submarines by Malaysia from the French may have contributed to Zaharie’s apparent exasperation with Malaysian government corruption – and hence the T shirt.
There are numerous articles on the web about this of which here are two. They make for disquieting reading.
https://sites.tufts.edu/corruptarmsdeals/2017/05/05/the-malaysia-scorpene-submarine-affair/
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/business/associate-of-malaysian-pm-charged-over-french-submarine-deal-9083744
@David
The sub deal and the IMBD embezzlement were well known by Malaysians. My suspicion is that the diversion was related to some sort of demand relative to government corruption.
I have often made calls that have quite often turned out to be the right 1s & I am not an Expert in any at shape or form. I made my assumptions based on Satellite Imagery. Controversial I know. But it just goes to prove that in the case of Mh370 we are still a long way off knowing the truth. Whilst nobody disputes the credentials of those searching for the plane from OI to the Malaysian government these people are examining facts as they are presented. People like Jeff, myself & authors feel that this is a short sighted approach. Whilst I doubt any of us feels the search of the 7th ARC shouldn’t be continued it seems madness that despite the failure of the ISAT Data to narrow down the location of the wreckage then surely other ideas should be considered with seriousness. Let’s face it. Any alternative theory wasn’t ruled out on it’s own merit but because it didn’t fit the ISAT guidelines. I’m already seeing the IG discussing potential search failure due to the aircraft being “just outside” the current search remit. Therefore it would seem that the ISAT Data in it’s current guise will be the penultimate pendulum on solving the mystery. Is that the right way to go?
@Jeff
You responded with this comment early in the week.
I suppose it’s possible that someone within Inmarsat tampered with the data, but based on what they’ve said about the process of deciphering the meaning of the BFO values, they didn’t seem to realize that BFO values could be used to try to track a plane until quite a while after the plane’s disappearance…
I’m a little confused about it. If Inmarsat themselves weren’t aware of what their own system could/does track, how then would someone outside of Inmarsat know?
Sorry if this has been covered before.
@Laura
I’m a little confused about it. If Inmarsat themselves weren’t aware of what their own system could/does track, how then would someone outside of Inmarsat know?
The Doppler shift from rocket telemetry data has been used for a very long time for the tracking of foreign launches. It is in the SOP category for people in the intelligence communities. No surprise that a pilot would not have familiarity with it. Not even surprised by the Inmarsat situation – tracking was not their bag.
Bottom line is that any sophisticated government would have this stuff dialed relative to a diversion of MH370.
@DennisW. “My suspicion is that the diversion was related to some sort of demand relative to government corruption.”
One would think though that demand would have been made public.
An indicative sequence. Government informed, “We, (undisclosed who) warn you that because of………if you do not …….and………we will take an action which will cost many innocent lives, including foreigners. You have twenty two hours to prepare your compliance. It will then be made apparent to you why you must comply. You will be given 2 hours to do so and allow proof of that”.
Twenty two hours later, an hour say after MH370 has taken off, the Government is informed by a plot participant that Malaysian flight MH370 has been hijacked and the Government has two hours to comply or none will survive. It is informed also that the reasons behind all this, together with the availability of this option, denied, will be made public via international media, but also that if it does comply there will be no reason for disclosure. (Without the last there will be no incentive).
Thence, after non-compliance, the threat is realised leading to disclosure. The reasons etc are forwarded to the international media, opening up the whole matter, bringing the Government down and the guilty to justice.
What is missing in this scenario is the disclosure.
@David
I agree. Disclosure is a big missing element. There may well be a reason for that, but I cannot speculate what it might be.
Was the order to take down an airliner (MH370) issued by former Ukrainian president while he was still technically ‘president’: plausible deniability for the Kremlin?
According to Reuters, the 2 Ukrainian passport holders were considered suspects by the FBI immediately after the disappearance of MH370. By serving as a distraction, and as a signal of Russia’s resolve against the West, the disappearance of MH370 aided Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
But clearly the 2 Ukrainians didn’t take MH370 of their own initiative, they had to have been instructed to do so by those higher up the chain of command. But were those direct orders issued by Russia or pro-Russian Ukrainians working on Russia’s behalf?
Russia was the beneficiary of the action, but who actually initiated the action?
https://www.rferl.org/a/was-yanukovychs-ouster-constitutional/25274346.html
Yanukovich was officially deprived of the title President 18 June 2015, but Alexander Turchynov was interim president from Feb 21-Jun 7 2014, until Poroshenko was sworn in.
Consider the following statement by Russian President Putin Mar 4 2014, describing the overthrow of the pro-Russian President Yanukovich:
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/fragment/russia-can-use-all-means-ukraine
The words clearly meant to imply that an illegal action by the West against Russia’s interests will be paid back with another illegal action by Russia.
Conclusion
Although Yanukovich escaped to Crimea Feb 22, then to Russia a few days later, he may have considered himself president still. Yanukovich may have authorized the use of action by Ukrainian passport holders to please his benefactors in Moscow, thus giving the Kremlin plausible deniability for any actions taken by Ukrainian passport holders on board MH370.
It would be interesting to see if a similar argument could be made for MH17 was also shot down over Ukraine.
@Gysbreght
Are the Main Passenger Cabin Lights supplied by the Left AC Bus? Because I think a nefarious Pilot would likely want to disable those in conjunction with depressurizing the cabin.
Plunging the cabin into total darkness would help disorient & confuse passengers / crew to prevent any kind of effective response to the depressurization until it was too late.
Once all the passengers & crew were dead, the Pilot would repressurize the cabin so he could breathe normally & walk about the plane without his Emergency Oxygen Mask.
Assuming Left AC Bus power is not required to control Bleed Air / Outflow Valves for cabin repressurization, then Pilot might also temporarily restore power to the Left AC Bus in order to turn the cabin lights back on so he could access the cabin or the E/E Bay for some other unknown purpose.
@Jeff Wise
My apologies if you feel I’m just rehashing old discussions, but who isn’t at this point?
@Joe Nemo: Possible but unlikely.
@Joe Nemo: Perhaps more likely for a person as unfamiliar with the electrical system as I am.
@Joe Nemo
Interesting theory re: nefarious pilot taking 9M-MRO. However cockpit backup oxygen as I understand it is not pressurised and won’t ‘cut the cake’ as it were at FL350. The pilot would need to descend at IGARI which didn’t happen. Of course there is a window of consciousness/life which will be greater with an FiO2 ~ 80-100% vs. room air at FL350. But ideally the nefarious pilot would need a pressurised suit and there was no evidence Zaharie took one on board. Also it gets intensely cold and Zaharie was wearing short sleeves in the security photos prior to departure.
So as you correctly say “Once all the passengers & crew were dead the pilot would repressurise the cabin so he could breathe normally & walk about the plane without his Emergency Oxygen Mask”. However for the plan to work he would need to check all the other 238 passengers and crew were actually dead. This would take four hours allowing one minute per subject. This is possible I guess but bizarre, almost Pythonesque. And also out of character for what we know about the Captain (assuming he is the nefarious pilot).
Of course other issues apart from the salient points by @Gysbreght are the chandelle turn at IGARI which Zaharie could have done but wasn’t on his simulator (apparently).
Also the co pilot could have entered the E/E bay and unlocked the electronic lock on the cockpit door and donned oxygen. The co pilot could also have turned off cockpit oxygen from the E/E bay which would make things difficult for the nefarious pilot. In defence of your theory the co pilot was quite junior.
Finally a high speed impact with the SIO and a lack of a debris field is difficult to understand. In fact there is a lot about the debris and bio-fouling which doesn’t make sense.
@SteveBarrat
Oxygen use at FL350
Due to the physical condition of human bodies, they cannot – repeat NOT -consume oxygen in the lungs at FL350 without additional pressure. Even if there is ample supply of oxygen it would not help from dying, because the oxygen cannot reach the blod vesels in a depresurized environment. The passengers and crew might have oxygen masks, which are completely useless at that altitude. Also the portable crew oxygen bottles with suply of 90 minutes each are not pressurized and are of no help at FL350. All people in the cabin become unconscious within 20 to 40 seconds and die successively. Only the pilots do have pressurized oygen supply. Tht is for about 6 hours for each pilot. This does not allow for walking round and controling, whether anyone is dead or not in the cabin. The pressure is only in the flight deck masks, but not if some perpetrator in the E/Bay cut the oxygen supply.
There is only one effective measure to avoid too many casualties here, which is reaching flight level 90 in an awkward dive of 1 minute. Dive for your live.
Since we know that there was no dive, it would have been over in the cabin after 1 minute.
Maybe some Scuba divers among the passengers had pressurized oxygen supply in their bags?
@Cosmic Academy
Surely Kuala Lumpur ground checks don’t allow for pressurised oxygen bottles to be taken on board.
I find the idea that the perp(s) might have checked that everyone was dead eery and macabre. This also surely is unrealistic. Should this scenario have happened, whoever did it would have just assumed and hoped that everything had ‘worked’ and that everyone was dead, which would have been a safe assumption as long as they had given it at least 10 minutes at high flight level. As CA rightly points out, without pressurised oxygen at this level it’s game over in a few minutes, and assuming that no pressurised supply is allowed to be taken on board (at least for hand luggage), there would have been no risk. Repressurise after > 10 minutes, and the perps should have been safe.
Another question, and one that has to my knowledge not been covered so far, is how to deal with the cold for the required about 10 minutes – it would have been in the region of minus 35 degrees C, and the perps would have wanted to go sure that everyone was dead. It would be a good question how someone should survive that in piloting condition without at the very least very protective clothing.
Frankly, as an aside, when you picture the real-world circumstances of this affair, I find it really hard to believe that this is the kind of thing that a relatively normal person like Shah should have been able to pull off, both physically and mentally – I know that psych analyses have a bad rep, but this all requires mental stamina as well . We assume here that after this start (depressurise, minus dozens degrees cold, etc), someone continued to pilot the plane for hours, with hundreds of dead bodies in cargo. I can see a ‘normal’ person having a severe mental illness killing people like Lufthansa pilot Lubitz, but this scenario here requires sangfroid, mental acuity and physical stamina that I find hard to square with a ‘simply’ mentally ill person. If this scenario was true, I would find it easier to believe if it was perpetrated by persons with farirly extensive military-style training.
So how about this scenario:
The copilot is alone in the cockpit, maybe bc Shah is on the toilet. For an unknown reason, a depressurisation event occurs, due to catastrophic accident. The copilot is too inexperienced to realize that he has to immediately ‘dive for his life’ and funbles around in the cockpit, trying to repressurise. Shah and everyone else die of lack of oxygen before being able to rescue the situation. The copilot suffers mental and physical damage from lack of oxygen and cold before being able to repressurise. After, he realises his mistake to his horror, and doesn’t know what to do. He gets a mental breakdown with hundreds of dead bodies in cargo. Starts ‘flying around’ and eventually decides to commit suicide and trying to hide his shame by burying himself and his unintentional victims in the SIO. Glides out at the end so that search efforts so far unsuccessful. What do you think? Can trained pilots comment on whether a junior pilot would have known with 100% certainty to ‘dive for your live’?
@Joe Nemo
…fyi while I am near total agreement with your proposed scenario (based on current knowledge), this concept including cabin depressurization was originally presented around Aug_2014 in the book Goodnight Malaysian 370 by pilots Ewan Wilson and Geoff Thomas.
When you read the book, you realize how little new we know since then, the main new info is the debris findings which confirmed their general SIO flight path.
Correction: Geoff Taylor was co-author
Jeff,
On the subject of Pax what’s your feelings on:
Mohd Khairul Amri Selamat
As a footnote, I’m not trying to tar the guys name but if there was an emergency on board would he have tried to help? (Although he was clearly not qualified)