The discovery last week of what appeared to be a piece of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on the shores of Réunion Island seemed at first blush a giant leap toward solving the famously perplexing mystery. Officials declared that, based on photos, the part could only have come from a Boeing 777. And since only one 777 has ever been lost at sea, physical evidence of the vanished plane seemed at last to be irrefutably in hand.
This marked a huge break in the case, since before now not a single piece of wreckage had ever been spotted. The only evidence that the plane had gone into the ocean was a series of difficult-to-decipher signals received by the satellite company Inmarsat. The incongruity led some, including me, to question whether the plane had really wound up in the Indian Ocean at all. Back in February, I explained in New York how sophisticated hijackers might have infiltrated the plane’s electronic bay in order to spoof the satellite signals and take the plane north to Kazakhstan. MH370 wreckage on the shores of Réunion makes such explanations unnecessary.
Investigators hope to glean from the six-foot-long chunk important clues about where and how the plane went down. The piece, called a flaperon, forms part of the trailing edge of the wing, and was located just behind the right engine. The front part of it looks dinged up but more or less intact, but pieces on the side and much of the rear part have been ripped away. That damage might have taken place in the ocean, but if on inspection it appears to have been caused by high-speed airflow (as a plane might experience in a steep dive) or impact with the water, it could shed light on the flight’s final moments.
The fact that the debris was found on Réunion itself provides a hint as to where the plane went down. The island lies on the far side of the Indian Ocean from the suspected crash area, a distance of some 2,500 miles. The ocean’s strongest east-to-west current, the South Equatorial Current, runs about a thousand miles north of where searchers are currently looking. Should the search area be moved up? In the coming weeks oceanographers will be refining their models in order to figure that out. To lend a hand, biologists will examine the barnacles and other sea life found living on the debris in order to determine how long it was in the water and what part of the ocean it passed through.
But, as if steeped in the weirdness of all things MH370, the Réunion flaperon came wrapped in an unexpected layer of ambiguity.
All airline parts carry identifying labels, much as cars carry Vehicle Identification Numbers etched on the engine block. In the normal course of things, this plate should have been attached to the rib end of the flaperon and allowed investigators to make an instantaneous identification. As fate would have it, the plate is missing.
It’s going to be a tricky job, and the stakes are high: MH370 has unnerved the aviation community like no crash before. Until we can figure out what took it down, the danger is ever-present that it could happen again.
While the world’s attention is on the flaperon, however, the sonar-scanning of the seabed on the other side of the Indian Ocean promises to tell us even more about MH370’s fate. If the small flotilla of search ships can locate the plane’s primary debris field on the ocean floor, they’ll likely find the black boxes that can tell us exactly what happened to the flight. But even if they don’t, they’ll reveal something important about what happened.
The area they’re scouring was defined through analysis of the Inmarsat satellite data. Part of the data tells investigators that the plane must have wound up somewhere along a broad arc 3,000 miles in radius. Another part, subjected to a new and complex form of analysis, showed that the plane headed in a generally southern direction. Where, exactly, depends on how it flew. If the plane flew slowly it would have taken a curving path and wound up north of a subsea feature called Broken Ridge. If it flew fast, its path would have been straighter and taken it south of Broken Ridge.
Among the attractions of the latter option was that it fit with an easy-to-imagine scenario: that, after flying up the Malacca Strait, whoever had been in control became incapacitated and the plane flew straight south on autopilot as a “ghost ship” until it ran out of fuel. Once that happened, the plane would have quickly spiraled into the ocean within a few miles of the final arc, meaning that the debris would have to be located within a fairly small area of seabed.
Last October, after months of internal debate, Australian officials decided that the straight-and-fast scenario was more likely. They laid out a 60,000-square-kilometer search grid and hired contractors to begin scanning. Their confidence in their analysis was so great that they reportedly kept a bottle of Champagne in the fridge, ready to be popped at any time. The longer they searched without finding the plane, officials said, the more their confidence grew, because they knew the plane had to be inside that box.
As time went by, however, a problem emerged: The plane wasn’t there. After six months, there was a 99 percent probability that the search had covered the calculated end point, and that number only kept climbing toward 100. Authorities stopped talking about how sure they were that it was in the 60,000-square-kilometer area, and announced that they would expand the search zone to twice that size.
What went unremarked upon in the general press was that there was no theoretical justification for the authorities to continue the search in this way. To get so far from the final arc, the plane would have to have been actively piloted, because only a conscious pilot could have kept the plane out of a death spiral. So the ghost-ship scenario was out the window. A plane held in a glide by a conscious pilot could travel for a hundred miles or more, far too huge an area of ocean to scan. The only reason to search the extra 60,000 square miles was that, for the authorities, it was better than admitting they had no idea what they were doing.
It also kept them from having to contemplate other unattractive alternative scenarios. Perhaps the plane didn’t fly straight and fast, but slow and curvy, and wound up north of Broken Ridge. It’s hard to imagine why someone would fly like this, but then again it’s hard to imagine why someone would sit patiently on a six-hour death flight to nowhere. If a slow, curvy flight was what happened, then again a terminal death spiral could by no means be assumed, and the required search area would be impossibly large.
To be sure, none of these scenarios make a lot of sense. But then, so much of what we know about MH370 is baffling. If the perps flew into the southern Indian Ocean because they wanted to disappear, why didn’t they just fly to the east instead of turning back over the Malay peninsula? If the aim was suicide, why not just put the nose down and crash right away, like every other suicide pilot we know of? And why did the perps turn off the satellite communication, and then turn it back on again, a procedure that — by the way — few airline pilots know how to do?
Though it has earned much less attention from the world press, the failure of the seabed search actually tells us a lot about what did or did not happen to MH370. And what it tells us is that this case is as weird as ever.
This piece originally ran on the New York magazine website on August 4, 2015.
@Jeff
I regard the finding of the flaperon to be an extremely fortuitous event. Of all the pieces of the plane that could have been found, this is the one I would have picked.
When the analysis is completed over the next several days it will lead to a bifurcation in the theories surrounding this flight. If it was damaged in a manner consistent with Exner’s explanation, it will virtually cement the validity of the zombie hypothesis which is the single underlying assumption leading to the IG/ATSB terminus. If the damage is consistent with a controlled ditch it will invalidate the zombie hypothesis, and we can confidently expand the degrees of analytical freedom to include alternative flight paths.
I can’t wait.
Jeff thanks for your work on this. I’ve lurked on this site since your March article. If there’s never another piece of this plane found and we never know what happened, I still learned more about aviation, good journalism and fine writing than most of the other websites I’ve visited. That’s all – thanks to you and your many thoughtful comment contributors.
@B Hartwig, Thank you so much, you’ve made my day. I guess this would be a good time to me to second your motion and thank all the folks who take the time to check in regularly and add their insight and wisdom. Your efforts are very much appreciated.
@DennisW, I hope you’re right; of course this being MH370 there’s always the possibility that things will go a third way–investigators will be unable to agree on what to conclude, and the issues you cite will remain fuzzy. But hey, let’s stay optimistic!
>But then, so much of what we know about MH370 is baffling. If the perps flew into the southern Indian Ocean because they wanted to disappear, why didn’t they just fly to the east instead of turning back over the Malay peninsula?
Um, at risk of stating the obvious, because the perp wanted to make the govt. look like bumbling, incompetent idiots.
Job well done.
I have no idea why this concept is so difficult to understand.
17 months later and you still seem oblivious to the political motive that drove Zaharie to take action.
Or you just choose not to mention it. Bizarre.
@jeffwise: great article. Thanks for keeping attention fixed on the gaps between what officials are doing, and what the data supports.
@Dennis: we disagree on the probability the ISAT data is itself (somehow) wrong, but I certainly share your suspicion re: the flaperon. To my eye, it seemed tailor-made for TV visuals, and same-day “smoking-gun” pronouncements.
@IG: if s34 is (per Henrik) the local maximum indicated by the drift analysis, then [s34, e94.1] is the “backdrift-optimized” search epicentre. This location is significantly NE of any of your original papers – and even materially NE of the cranny into which your penultimate paper attempted to stretch the ISAT data. Furthermore, under the pilotless exhaustion theory, it has been thoroughly searched out by Go Phoenix. Have any of you been able to articulate a single complete path which explains all five of:
1) BTOs
2) BFOs
3) zero sea-bottom debris (compare R.Cole’s maps to my “arc7 probability distribution” sim)
4) zero W Australia debris (for 17 months, now)
5) flaperon found on Reunion Island
…? Thanks in advance.
From prior thread:
@Victor, @littlefoot: I hope the BEA starts their investigation from square ONE.
@Dave Reed: I agree the “drifted to Indonesia” paragraph – though clearly INTENDED to downplay the value of searching W Oz shores – was indeed worded VERY cleverly (I’ll do you one better: they never specify WHICH Oz shoreline it drifted away FROM – nor, for that matter, which of the many and varied Indonesian shores it drifted TO). At the time, I lamented that it might be used by lawyers one day to claim they never MEANT to guide us to Indonesia.
But our shared concern appears unfounded: I’ve spoken directly to both ATSB and AMSA, who confirmed that the models did in fact suggest Indonesia as first landfall. I believe Peter Foley was even more emphatic (Sumatra, after only 123 days adrift) in a November, 2014 interview.
The only thing we haven’t yet been able to secure is any detail on the GEMS study that underpinned that claim. However, I am confident we’ll get it eventually.
If the aim was suicide, why not just put the nose down and crash right away, like every other suicide pilot we know of?
@Jeff – I’ve seen you write this in one form or another a few times. Does what Andreas Lubitz did in France not go against this blanket statement? It wasn’t seven hours, but nine minutes is a long time to contemplate.
@Brock
The ISAT data was certainly well vetted on other flights by Inmarsat. While the test flights did not yield the accuracy assumed by the IG, they were certainly “in the hunt”. I am pretty confident the data is valid, but it is certainly not designed to be a navigation system nor can it yield a terminus without making other assumptions relative to the flight dynamics. The latter being the very large elephant in the room.
What do we know about the parts from the plane shot down over Crimea? Where did they end up? Was there a flaperon missing? To continue the storyline from your book, if Russia wanted to place false evidence they needed another plane. MH17 would have given them the parts they needed to plant in the ocean and let the currents take their course.
@spencer
it seems some people think Zaharie was present in the court that same morning because he likes to observe court processions…
@Brock, thanks for summing up things from time to time in your eloquent manner and keeping us on our toes.
May I asked why you addressed me in connection with the hope thar the BEA will do their homework and start from square one? Not, that I disagree with you. I hope so, too. But I made so many comments that I can’t remember which one was connected with the investigation which starts tomorrow. Was it, that I expressed my hope that they would also take a close look at the authenticity of the piece’s drift?
@StevanG
His presence is disputed, but your point is spot on.
The notion that Z didn’t have proper motive is beyond tiresome, and shows a complete disregard for due diligence in respect to the man.
It just baffles me that anyone truly interested in the truth would somehow overlook the only ‘sensical’ motive we have.
I’d like to be generous to the oversight/omission but it’s completely inexplicable.
Jeff’s a VERY intelligent guy, which makes this all the more perplexing.
I surely thought this most recent article would at least touch on the subject.
@ Trip Barthel- That would be up to the Danish Investigation to verify as all of the known wreckage was collected and shipped back via train for inspecation/reconstruction-
Here is a good link of photos of wreckage- i combed through for a bit- only able to see a wing fragment marked 545BB which appears to be toward the tip
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeroenakkermans/15083315846/in/album-72157647103776802/
@littlefoot:
Post=”Reboot 3″, Date=Aug 4 8:11am:
…”do we also have to consider other stories that were reported and later dismissed?”
My reply above was simply an attempt to answer Victor’s question in the emphatic affirmative. All reports – from ALL nations – dating back to March 8, 2014.
The question was in a reply to you, so I “cc’d” you.
@Brock, thanks. And I agree with you. I’m trying to go back to square one myself. The problem is that the actual location of square one is obscured by layers of obfuscations – some of them of our own making: we might’ve created them inadvertently when we were trying to make sense of the whole thing.
Good article Jeff.
For anyone interested in drift modelling, ATSB released this yesterday (4 Aug):
http://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/2015/mh370-drift-analysis.aspx
…”Figure 1 shows the indicative drift as at 30 July 2015, produced from the latest CSIRO modelling (released with permission of CSIRO). It shows the final image from a computer simulation of the movement of potential debris resulting from the crash of MH370 somewhere along the 7th arc between latitude 39°S and 32°S. The simulation was run from 8 March 2014 to 30 July 2015, to see if the flaperon found on La Réunion (21.2°S 57°E) could have drifted there from the MH370 search zone in the intervening time.”…
I think I’ll reserve my comments until we get the report on the flaperon.
@AM2
Gracias. The graphic would not lend much support to Reunion relative to this apriori model. The statement “could have drifted as far West” does not disguise the fact that Reunion is to the NorthWest where there is virtually no debris density.
MH17 is not the only possible source for 777 parts. Besides the BA fuel icing short landing at LHR and the Asiana flight hitting the sea wall at SFO (where did both those sets of parts go?), there seem to be some number of 200ERs and 300ERs in storage in Arizona (and probably California).
Plus I believe that there is a company at Marana that does refurbs and brings planes back into service (and maybe tears them down for parts too). And maybe similar companies at other storage airports.
That makes the lack of an id plate on the part from Reunion rather unfortunate. Another mystery to
solve instead of an immediate answer.
@Frederick, That’s a great question. True, Lubitz didn’t jam the nose toward the ground as aggressively as he might have, but the time frame was a result of the method he chose: he set the autopilot to a desired altitude of essentially zero and let the plane fly itself into the ground. It was all over in a matter of minutes, rather than the long hours that MH370 endured.
@Jeff@Frederick
The suicide scenario also seems implausible from an examination of Shah himself. There is nothing I can find that would lend support to him being a candidate for suicide in contrast to the German Wings copilot who was a walking time bomb. In the later case it is amazing that his therapists did not strongly advise him not to fly. I believe the German Wings case provides a strong argument for medical professionals to breach patient confidentiality for individuals in certain professional categories.
Oh well, it will be an interesting week or two after fumbling around for the last several months. As Jeff said earlier, the worst thing that could happen is ambiguity. I might contemplate suicide myself if that materializes.
@Cheryl
Some food for thought.
Would it be nefarious in your opinion if ‘they’ (Hishammuddin) knew that it was Zaharie and Mh370 either before IGARI or hours after?
What do you believe will happen (domestically) when/IF they officially accuse Zaharie? Do you think China et al will find this acceptable after 17 months?
I think I know. It will be the end of UMNO/BN. Accusing him has never been in their best interest. It’s 100% risk and a big fat zero in reward (contrary to what some here seem to believe), and always has been. Such is the political climate there.
The fallacy that they would have benefited by pointing the finger at him initially (with OR without conclusive proof) is just that, a fallacy.
Let’s also remember that they did NOTHING to prevent the loss of life of 238 people, and that these people literally VANISHED after flying over, through and around the country.
Unacceptable.
@Dennis
I guess homicide bombers/mass murderer’s all have histories and recent psychopathies that support ‘suicide’? And that pilots aren’t capable of such violence?
You’re conflating to very fundamentally different actions, as is Jeff.
Furthermore, aside from the FI (which is provably disingenuous), and ‘friends’ and ‘family’, perhaps you would care to share the information gleaned from your examination of Zaharie—specifically as it would relate to his RECENT history. This would be useful information, to some extent.
His social media profile went from hyperactive to nearly obsolete in the 8 months prior to the event.
I have no idea as to how you could possibly intimate to know his state of mind that evening (oh, the Anwar trial, probably a bit peeved), and therefore conclude suicide ‘implausible’?
The zeal with which some posters reflexively “ruled out” whole families of possible scenarios upon discovery of a flaperon on Réunion Island suggests a distinction is required between two beliefs:
1) the Inmarsat data was deliberately tampered with (either before, during, or after Inmarsat’s processing of it)
2) that MH370 wreckage is nowhere near the bottom of the sea directly underneath Arc7
Considering those two question SEPARATELY – rather than lumping them together – opens up a remarkably vibrant Venn diagram:
1=Y, 2=Y: the official search is (now?) authentic, and the official search area is (now!) right on track.
1=N, 2=Y: the official search is being made in good faith, but, due to honest errors (including inappropriate assumptions) in either the data or its interpretation, it has inadvertently blown off course.
1=N, 2=N: the official search has been set up to fail – either by the perps (which would mean the searchers remain duped, to this day) OR by the searchers (to cover up their ignorance as to what actually happened).
1=N, 2=Y: the official search has been set up to SUCCEED – or, at least, to APPEAR to. Here, the perps essentially ARE the searchers – with both electronic AND physical evidence planted, to the extent required to successfully obscure MH370’s true fate.
I commented earlier that the flaperon’s discovery would “corroborate” everyone’s theory. Here’s the proof:
YY: by focusing on the POSSIBILITY of debris reaching Réunion, folks in this camp feel it indicates the narrow strip of sea-bottom being searched is CORRECT
NY: by focusing on the a priori PROBABILITY of debris reaching Réunion, folks in this camp feel this discovery indicates the narrow strip of sea-bottom being searched is WRONG
YN: by focusing on the event’s thoroughly bizarre CIRCUMSTANCES – not only in isolation, but as part of a PATTERN of thoroughly bizarre events – folks in this camp feel this discovery represents merely a shift in TACTICS re: execution of a cover-up: perhaps Plan A (run out the clock on the public’s attention span) was faltering, and we are seeing the beginnings of Plan B.
NN: while hard to argue this discovery in any way STRENGTHENS this case, I have already seen it attempted: perhaps the perp planted this evidence for reasons similar to the case in YN (above).
I’m not asking anyone to change camps – just to respect that each has value (I can name some VERY smart people in EACH camp), and to concede that emerging evidence may not always be what it seems to be in real time.
And to point out that we ALL benefit from demanding searchers turn their analyses (fuel, signal, acoustic, seismic, drift) inside out, so that the general public can definitively rule a couple of these OUT.
@Spencer
I have no credentials in the mental health domain. I won’t bore you or insult your intelligence with a bunch of what amount to anecdotal observations. I see Shah as dissatisfied and even angry relative to the political situation in Malaysia, but I don’t see anything that raises any flags (to my untrained eye) relative to him being at all suicidal.
But, as you say, you cannot know his state of mind that evening or at any other time for that matter. Even trained professionals in this domain, don’t make black and white statements. Could have been a suicide, but I don’t think so.
@Frederick Flannery
@Jeff
“If the aim was suicide, why not just put the nose down and crash right away, like every other suicide pilot we know of?”
Very simple explained. Who want to dissapear don´t put the nose down and crash right away.
Please don´t compare GermanWings with MH370. Two totally different cases. Andreas Lubitz was mentally ill. The perp of MH370 was highly likely an ideologist.
Ideologists must not be necessarily mentally ill, they are fighting for a goal in rare cases until to death. The only person on board who was fighting for goal (politcal change) was the Cpt.
This makes him the prime suspect in this case.
Brock,
Pardon my straight-to-it-ness, but what are you ever talking about? You are treading dangerously close to John Nash territory (Obsessive Compulsive with Paranoid Features)
Spencer,
I answered you at the end of the last thread, the Reboot Part 3. Please see my comment there, thanks.
And that goes to you too, Spencer. After reading close to 1,000 of your posts, I’d say you show strong features of Obsessive Compulsive with Psychotic Features–Elements of delusional thinking and a thought disorder.
>“If the aim was suicide, why not just put the nose down and crash right away, like every other suicide pilot we know of?”
Let me be direct. The AIM was NOT SUICIDE. The AIM was to destroy the regime political establishment and bring ‘reform’ and/or revolt to the shores of Malaysia.
This continuous frame of ‘suicide’ is misleading in every manner. Yet it persists.
How is this not understood? It’s blindingly obvious that IF it was Z, it was just a tad bit more complex than a ‘simple’ suicide.
Look at how and where the freaking a/c was piloted. It was done this way FOR A REASON, deliberately and purposely.
@Jay
And I hope to god I never have the misfortune of you diagnosing me.
Still waiting on your paper.
@Brock
I am definitely in the NN camp, but my conclusion differs from yours. I think analysts simply fell in love with a restricted model that happened to fit ISAT data. Older and more experienced engineers often refer to this diversion as the “talking dog effect” – you are so amazed by the fact that the dog is talking, that you don’t bother to consider whether the dog is saying anything intelligent.
In fact back in the Duncan days, it was not allowed to even consider anything besides the ISAT data and the fuel range. It was not even allowed to postulate solutions that did not use a fixed speed and heading. Those were indeed the “dark ages” where you either “believed” or were banished. I believe the plane is definitely near the 7th arc, but nowhere near where the official search is taking place.
Sorry for the length. I found this blog from Kurt Seldensticker at this address.
http://www.flight-mh370.us/
I would like to present my theory of what happened to Flight MH370, using more sound judgement and scientific reasoning. I received my degree in Aerospace Engineering from Iowa State University, where I specialized in Flight Mechanics and Structural Failure and Fatigue. I began my career working at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston where I worked in the Flight Design and Dynamics Department for the Mission Operations Directorate. There, I specialized in crew flight procedures, radar, and navigation systems. After NASA, I worked for Boeing on the V-22 flight control system, then later for Motorola specializing in radio frequency communications and how RF signals propagated.
What most likely happened to Flight MH370, was that fatigue cracking occurred on the Boeing 777-200 series aircraft. On July 23, 2012, The FAA published an Airworthiness Directive (AD) (FAA-2012-0149-0004) for Boeing Company Model 777-200, which was prompted by reports of fatigue cracks in the lap joints, and an Airworthiness Directive to detect and correct such fatigue cracking, which could grow large and cause sudden decompression and the inability to sustain limit flight and pressure loads. This AD was updated on April 15, 2013 to include scribe lines where external decals have been applied or removed across lap joints and large cargo door hinges. In addition, on April 2, 2009 the FAA issued an airworthiness directive (AD 2009-02-05) regarding the airplane information management system (AMS) to prevent an unannunciated loss of cabin pressure, which if an undetected loss of pressure event were to cause an unsafe pressure in the cabin, the flight crew could become incapacitated.
The last known position of MH370 was at 1:21 AM at 35,000 feet, roughly 90 miles off the east coast of Malaysia. At around 1:30 a.m., the aircraft’s transponder stopped responding. Under the theory that a sudden decompression occurred at that time due to fatigue cracks, the pilot and copilot would have had 15 – 30 seconds of consciousness to quickly address the problem. If they were aware of the decompression through an annunciation loss of cabin pressure, they would have put on their oxygen masks, turned off the autopilot, begin their descent to below 10,000 feet, and head for the nearest landing spot. If they did not place their oxygen masks on first before they began their descent, or if they attempted to troubleshoot the issue before putting on their oxygen masks, they would have lost consciousness before they reached 10,000 feet.
With the plane not on auto-pilot, in a descent with unconscious pilots, one may think the plane would crash, but this is where flight mechanics, aircraft stability and flight controls play a role in what happened to flight MH370. As the plane descended on its own, (without auto-pilot and unconscious pilots) it would continue to pick up speed to a point where the increasing speed creates more and more lift over the wings. When more and more lift is created, this force causes the plane to pitch up. The plane may have descended to 23,000 feet before it began the pitch up maneuver. At that point, the aircraft is pitched up and begins a climb. It will continue to climb until the atmosphere becomes thinner and thinner and less and less lift is produced over the wings. This would typically occur at 45,000 feet. This roller coaster ride would continue between those two altitudes until the aircraft no longer has fuel to power the engines.
While the transponder was shut down at 1:21 AM, this could have been caused by the rapid decompression and an electrical failure, or by the pilot, in a hypoxia state attempting to set the transponder code to 7500 to indicate an emergency, and accidentally turning it off in confusion.
With regards to the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), most commercial pilots would have no idea how to disable all of the communications systems. More than likely additional structural failures occurred during the 5 – 7 hour flight while the plane was experiencing high stresses as a result of the phugoid mode that the aircraft was experiencing.
@Jay
I know you fancy yourself as the JW resident psychiatrist, but your from time-to-time quips and pedantic, unnecessary slights are just lame.
And a shrink to be would hopefully be capable of demonstrating more restraint. It’s immature and unprofessional.
And please provide ONE, just one example of where I exhibit ‘delusional/ thinking. LMAO.
^This theory just flat out ignores some of the most important and perplexing features of the flight. It does not even touch upon the numerous turns which were precise and seemed to be purposeful
Spencer,
Although I was not being serious, and instead was my attempt at humor, I do think you display an obsessive type of behavior towards your theory of what happened to MH370. It seems to deeply upset you when people do not outright agree with your points, more-so than would be a reasonable response, and you cannot seem to fathom how people would rather wait for more facts to arise. You have, in a way, personified your theory, to the point where you defend it like it were a family member–signalling to me that you may be filling some personal void in your life with strong convictions towards a theory. It seems apparent to me that the overall situation and your involvement in it has clouded your judgement in logic, rationality, and reason, and thus it would not be too off the mark to consider it a thought disorder.
Trip Barthel,
OMG. I just posted last week about an old movie on late one night with Jimmy Stewart about basically the same principle of stress fractures and structural failure. In the movie, Stewart, an eccentric aeronautical engineer, was off in his calculations by temperature.
The maintenance records of the plane, something we asked for on Duncan Steel, would really be interesting now.
And wasn’t 9M-MR0 involved in a minor accident prior to MH370 and did it or did it not involve some wing damage, I forget the particulars but I do remember it is in the archives as someone posted it on Duncan Steel.
How does the mysterious reboot get explained in this theory though, would their oxygen masks have given them enough oxygen to make it to 18:25 or shortly thereafter?
@Brock
Had a quick look at your venn diagram. Tricky with 2) being phrased in the negative. Did you mean:
1=N, 2=N authentic
1=N, 2=Y good faith
1=Y, 2=Y …fail
1=Y, 2=N …succeed
I haven’t checked the rest. Aren’t you in danger of over-thinking this?
BTW, Any chance of more data from NW or N Aus from Dr Duncan please?
One more observation: 1) if flaperon is from MH370 and French convinced it drifted there then time to halt the search, it is winter there anyway, re-evaluate search all over again as it may have come from further N. 2) If French find it is from MH370 AND it couldn’t have drifted there – time to halt search, go back to drawing board. 3) If flaperon isn’t from MH370 then action as 2) as its so sus.
@Jay
I won’t quibble with parts of this. Particularly the ‘personal void’ aspect. Fair enough.
However, aside from my being admittedly rigid vis a vis my theory, I fail to see where it is precisely that I have exhibited clouded judgement, rationality and reason??
If you think this to be the case with me, what say you to the minions theorizing spoofs, Russians, gold, Somalia and all manner of rubbish that has no actual or even theoretical support?
LOL.
cheers
I just read this…..
““It is MAS procedure to switch ACARS, VHF, and High Frequency selection off but this is only for flights to China as the service provider for MAS does not cover China. Some if not all pilots switch them all off for a while and then later switch SATCOMM back on to force the system into SATCOMM mode.”
http://www2.nst.com.my/business/todayspaper/font-color-red-missing-mh370-font-acars-cannot-be-disabled-1.521314
Is this true ? When yes, what could this mean in this case ? Was it absolutely normal to switch off ACARS and SATCOM for a while and the Login-Request from the AES @18:25 UTC was also an normal procedure ?
Just wondering.
Spencer,
My take on those theories are that they are extremely unlikely. But when it comes to evaluating those who put forth those theories, it’s more important to look at the motivation for doing so. Merely putting forth a theory doesn’t label one as crazy. Rather, how strong his/her conviction about the theory is, whether or not they can admit limitations to the theory, and evidence of assigning a rational and reasonable likelihood to the theory all factor in.
@Jay
And my take on those theories is that they are impossible from my POV.
Thus, grounds for my unwavering conviction. We’ll just agree to disagree, in the case of MH370. It so glaringly clear who committed the crime.
Cheers
Ok, guys, stop it! This is getting below cheap: diagnosing each other of suffering from various psychiatric disorders by looking at our comments. And, Spencer, I was just about to jump into the ring for your decisive defense. But after reading your last comment I thought better of it 😉
Let me just say this: we ALL display compulsive elements to a certain degree. That’s why we come back here again and again. But as a fellow sufferer from mh370-related delusions let me say this: someone displaying these symptoms isn’t necessarily wrong about everything. The argumentative content of his/her message has to be separated from the way the message is delivered.
Refraining from personal insults heightens the chance of being taken seriously.
Having been lurking since the Putin piece got published on NY, I think having a real lead now is the time to stop the distraction of talking about Z’s motivations
His political ideology is shared by 51% of us Malaysians. Yes, the majority of us, the middle class, the professionals, the educated, basically anyone who tried to vote out our got.
We also understand Anwars conviction that day haven’t reached final appeal, and any incident will be exploited by the govt to distract from them jailing a political opponent.
Anwars was acquited the first time and there was no reason an opposition inclined, educated individual will jump to the need of a drastic action on that day to show the incompetency of the govt.
And if the government have any evidence to imply Z have a political motive to commit mass murder they will have milked it dry.
Basically, for anyone with insight on the Malaysians political psyche would understand that any action like diverting a flight will backfire and ended up hurting Anwars and our own cause
Arthur Sorkin – I did see reports of site pilfering at the time MH17 went down. No idea why apart from morbid souvenir hunting or an initial attempt at hiding evidence? I suppose if the flaperon shows signs of the ID plate having been actively removed you would be very concerned. Why glue for heaven sake? Is that to avoid drilling?
@littlefoot: thank you.
@AM2: drat. Thanks for spotting.
Anyone wishing to take a run at my preceding post, please simply reword the two “beliefs” such that Y=”good data / plane IS near search zone, and N=”tampered data / plane is NOT near search zone”. (Turns out I was UNDER-thinking it…)
Anyone preferring the Coles Notes: the flaperon could have been planted. So could debris “found” in the future on the sea bottom. Neither is any more outlandish than the faking of ISAT data, and belief in one essentially PREDICTS the others. When a plane vanishes without a trace, it is not unreasonable to venture outside our comfort zone in the search for answers.
I assign a LOW probability to planted evidence of all types, and will set it to near ZERO as soon as search leaders actually address the concerns I’ve raised in my report.
I’ll read – with as open a mind as I can muster – cogent, supported, polite arguments assigning probabilities to any or all of these possibilities. As always, I’ll cheerfully ignore the rest.
@Dennis: “I think if I had reviewed Henrik’s paper before publication, I would have suggested he remove that inference”.
And I would have concurred, thanks for the proof reading. I have updated the wording.
@All:
Thanks for your comments. I am afraid it would be too much to expand on everyone here. Regarding trajectories versus probability distributions: all simulations used are based on time-dependent distributions, which are idealized measures of the result of an infinite amount of trajectories. The reason why anyone would think ocean currents to be “predictable” would in that sense; the distribution shows non-uniform features based on currents, winds and geometry.
@spencer
you still haven’t explained two things
1) why would CI theory be impossible or not plausible?
2) why would he choose current search area for suicide (zombie or ditching no matter)?
It’s a very bad part of the IO to hide anything and as you can see, debris is a must when landing an airliner into water.
IMO if the turn SE after entering IO was deliberate (and it most likely was), his only goal could be CI.
Thanks, MH. Great to have a reality check from someone on the scene.
“Anwars was acquited the first time and there was no reason an opposition inclined, educated individual will jump to the need of a drastic action on that day to show the incompetency of the govt.”
Hah, Snowden did similar for a lot less(a worker of spy agency discovered they actually really spy on people, blimey) and risked his life, at the end getting asylum in Russia.
Don’t forget he was in the cockpit with a young guy who was government supporter and they could easily engage in a brawl over the court decision, it’s not like conflicts in the cockpit didn’t happen before.
@jay @littlefoot
I feel its established, that the laymen ideas of one individual trying to dominate this blog with endless series of entries like a broken record and keeping repeating “Z did it” are too far away from any serious science, to even mention it. Its just this home-made melange of semi-nazi ideas about psychology that are prevalent in so many conspiracy forums. I would tend to advise not to get into personal confrontation with that individual, because that would be destructive to the blog. Also one of the first lessons in life consulting is, that it is insane in itself, if you try to expect rational or reasonable behaviour or input from a mentally handicapped person.
From the shown aggressive patterns displayed here like trials at intimidation of others instead of open discussion and even threatening language, its up to the admin to act acordingly.