It’s been a lot of fun working with the multi-talented Andy Tarnoff putting together our new podcast “Deep Dive: MH370,” which breaks down step by step the technical clues behind aviation’s greatest mystery. Here’s a peek behind the scenes:
It’s been a lot of fun working with the multi-talented Andy Tarnoff putting together our new podcast “Deep Dive: MH370,” which breaks down step by step the technical clues behind aviation’s greatest mystery. Here’s a peek behind the scenes:
Just finished second episode. Excellent! Very entertaining and also well put together. You guys seem to have a great rapport.
You mentioned questions from listeners, and one has occurred to me whilst tuning in.
It’s interesting to hear you compare MH370 with Air France. (I read your stuff on Air France before MH370 had happened.)
My question comes from the fact you say Air France was “missing”, without anybody being aware, for hours. This due to it being over the mid-Atlantic when disaster struck. MH370, by contrast, was known to be missing within minutes (about 15?) of whatever befell it. It was in a relatively busy part of the world I’m guessing.
If the goal wasn’t to take MH370 specifically (or the people and/or cargo onboard), are there not better places to hijack an aeroplane?
The choice the pilot has is limited, to a degree, by the airline he/she flies for and the routes he/she is assigned. I presume.
But Russia, as you theorise are the most likely protagonists, don’t have the same limitations.
So yeh, if you just wanted to take any plane and make it vanish, are there not better places to do it? (Granted if you want to also land it somewhere “friendly” you’ll have to take that into account.)
Keep up the good work Jeff! Will be recommending the show.
@Craig, That’s a great question, thanks. If someone took MH370, why did they do it there? In short, my best guess is that this particular flight had a number of unusual features that, taken together, created a vulnerability that allowed it to be taken in the way that it was. To understand what I mean, it will be first necessary to explain the technical details behind the disappearance and the clues that led to the subsequent search, which I’ll be explaining over the course of the next few episodes.
Just caught up with the 4th Episode, Jeff. Great job with podcast and format so far! Really happy you will be spending more time to break down and expand on the critical details of the SDU. I’m guessing you’ll spend a good amount of time on the discussions with experts and pilots intimately familiar with the system on the 777. I’m curious if you have learned any new recent details on the subject you have shared in your blog yet. I’ll be on a trip but look forward to catching up with the podcast when I can.
@Dave W, Thanks, so glad you like it so far! We’ve been discussing doing interviews with experts doing the show but so far haven’t, as we’re trying to keep the show right at 30 minutes and bringing in other voices would force us to cover less ground in that time. But we’re also looking to get listener input so if you think it would help then maybe we will.
Jeff- I though episode #3 was better than #2.
Re: radar, some media reports reference Thailand seeing MH370 heading for Andaman sea, thus I am not so sure Thailand missed it. I put that in the category of non-public information that the Joint Investigation Team (Malaysia AAIB NTSB FAA Boeing etc) may have been aware, but there is secrecy as far as public disclosure. It does appear that Indonesia may not have seen MH370 due to shut down of primary radar in the evening; apparently Indonesia had several secondary-only radar installations that monitor commercial traffic at night.
I liked the background about Duncan Steel (IG cofounder) banning discussion of deliberate flight out of respect for ???. That was before my involvement. But to me, many are still coming from that tradition/background/logic trajectory (illogical for me now).
@TBill, Thanks, I think we’re getting better as we go! Regarding the Thai radar data, not long after we shot the episode I came across an old blog post I wrote back in the day referencing the same thing. Undoubtedly I’m going to make slip-ups like that, hopefully nothing sets things too badly askew. Meanwhile, I hadn’t heard about the Indonesian secondary radar, thanks for that.
Regarding Duncan Steel, I hope we can get a new dynamic going — where we can openly talk about what the data may or may not mean, without people getting too caught up in whether it bolsters the right narrative.
Jeff– am enjoying the podcast. Would it be possible for you to ask the filmmakers of the Netflix doc for more info on the bit about the phone call that came in from a passenger’s phone? Maybe it’s nothing or just a rumor, but would be so significant if true seems like some follow up would be worth it beyond the anecdote briefly mentioned in the doc. Thank you for all your interest in all this over the years.
@Brian, Thanks for the feedback! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked that question. It was such a provocative piece of information, and it was really kind of deceptive for them to put it in there and let it seem like it might really be true. Unfortunately I’ve seen no evidence whatsoever that it is. To put it in context, in the early days after the plane disappeared, there were all kinds of wild rumors circulating that later turned out to be wrong. This was just one of them.
@Jeff- Laid up with covid soon after my oversees flight, so had time to view episode 5- Great episode and enjoyed it! One of the most important questions regarding the re-boot I have: what answers have you received from 777 experts on the odds of this occurring without human intervention? I seem to remember you asking and receiving a less than detailed answer that an isolated
electrical failure could explain that event. I think that answer is pretty hard to square with the pings steadily received hours beyond that point. Have you dug deeper or collected more expert opinion on this critical anomaly?
@Dave W, Thanks! Hope you feel better. That’s a great question, we’re planning to tackle how the reboot could have happened in the next episode. To be honest I hadn’t even contemplated the possibility that the reboot could have happened accidentally, I haven’t seen much speculation on that. As you say, the fact that the plane flew for so long, with apparently a fully functioning electrical system (at least insofar as the telephone system appears to have been working normally) might suggest that no major malfunctions were at play.
Jeff-
Episode 4-
at the 10:15 mark, Andy Tarnoff states (that unlike UFO claims) this is not a conspiracy theory podcast, it is using science. Hope so!
Episode 5-
I started Episode 5 with the idea to see how many times to the acronym “SDU” was used to describe what the pilots normally call “SATCOM”. Congrats as I think I only heard one reference and it was called SATCOM.
Reasonable discussion of BTO.
Your statement that caught my attention was at 6:45 you mentioned basically that journalists like yourself and the online experts essentially took charge of the investigation and , things being like they are today, assumed that what the authorities told us could be wrong.
I am not blaming you personally, but this to me is where things got off on the wrong foot. Najib Razak disclosed on 15-March-2014 that Malaysia, with assistance of NTSB, FAA, Boeing, AAIB, and Inmarsat have determined the most likely explanation was deliberate diversion. The basic response of the Media (CNN etc) and online community was that we should distrust this announcement. That’s when I first started realizing denial was such a strong element of the MH370 story.
Refresh my memory- did Malaysia have a chance to keep NTSB and FBI involved? Why did media and online groups become the self-appointed truth seekers?
@TBill, Really appreciate your input. With regards to calling is “satcom” versus “SDU,” I try to use the former as much as possible because I think it will have meaning for more people. I try to use “SDU” only when discussing that particularly piece of equipment.
You raise a good point about suspicion of the authorities. The knee-jerk assumption that everything any government says is a lie is of course toxic and animates a lot (maybe all?) conspiracy theories. In this case, we had good reason to doubt the veracity of Malaysian statements; they’d lied right off the bat about what their radar had seen. And then proceeded from there in a generally shady and opaque way. To be clear, I think that there are non-nefarious explanations for this, but I think the “trust but verify” approach is the correct one. By the way I think the Australians consistently projected confidence that they didn’t really have, or shouldn’t have had; back when I was on CNN I was up against a lot of talking heads who absolutely went with the official line that the acoustic pings definitely came from MH370. Later of course there was equal certainty that they were going to find the wreckage where the Inmarsat data indicated it would be. That’s why I started the first episode off with an interview Peter Waring–a smart and decent guy who, for thoroughly honorable reasons, believed along with the rest of his team that they were destined to find the wreck. But then eventually realized otherwise.
As for your last question: these kinds of investigations are by nature, and intention, not transparent. I presume that multiple US government agencies are still involved, though probably at this stage in a quiescent way.
@Jeff Wise
I see the denial as more pervasive than just distrust of government, there is cultural aversion in Malaysian culture, but also I think aviation community is defensive, and many other justifications for denial.
By the way, I understand distrust of Malaysia, but when Razak made his 15-March-2014, that was under pressure from the U.S. Obama admin/Jay Carney to pressure Malaysia to disclose what was actually known about the lost flight. As an American observer, I felt Razak was reluctantly telling the world the truth. The passage of time, as more data became public, has only strengthened Razak’s initial press conference statement.
PS- I believe Dave W is quite correct above there was initially quite strong doubt in the online community that the SATCOM was restarted intentionally. If you go back in your blog, I am thinking it was as late as November-2014 some that the major online participants recognized that the SATCOM could be switched off from the cockpit (via LEFT BUS isolation).
This is example of the problem with doubting Razak’s 15-March statement, it took the online community a long long time to come up on the learning curve already known to NTSB/Boeing/FBI etc. in the the first week. This plays in the hands of those that favor blocking the apparent truth from the public, for decades if possible. I think the SIR report now says “likely” intentional on the comm outages.
@TBill, I’m not sure I understand where you’re coming down on this. My impression that there has long been a consensus that the satcom was intentionally shut off and restarted, do you disagree with that?
Thanks to Victor’s feedback on the issue we’re going to devote the next episode, to be be released on Thursday, to this topic.
Jeff-
I probably mostly agree with Victor on the SATCOM reboot. What I was trying to say, in the early days (2014) that was less clear. Some thought it might be a spontaneous SATCOM power restoration (eg; due to load shedding artifact or landing attempt).
If you have a episode on pilot actively flying to end with goal to hide crash, let me advise you on that. In other words, do not let advocates of straight/ghost flight give you their possibly-wrong assumptions. We have too much straight flight advocacy already.
@TBill, I sense that we’re not fully understanding each other. My main point of disagreement with Victor about the SDU reboot isn’t whether it was intentional or inadvertant/accidental; it’s a) how unusual would it be for a 777 captain to know how to do it b) what would be the motivation to do it. These two points are what we’ll be discussing in detail on Thursday.
@Jeff- Episode 6 was the one I’ve been waiting for. I thought you and Andy did a great job in the short 30mins available. I’m probably not the only listener who following this episode still doesn’t understand where exactly Victor finds fault with your analysis into the requirements for a cockpit initiated SDU reboot to occur. Does Victor just ignore the whole multistep process that is required? I really hope you can spend as much time as possible going over this and really look forward to the next episode.
@Dave W, Thanks so much, I’m delighted to hear that!
@JeffWise
Very short YouTube video how to turn off SATCOM. Includes view of EICAS messages that come up.
https://youtu.be/SmP1t2cOTJk
In Episode 6 you suggest a lot of buttons to push to prevent B777 load management system from turning SATCOM back on. That is not true.
@TBill, Thanks very much for this. The procedure shown is very much simpler than what I describe in the podcast, and what I’d been led to believe. I’m going to look further into this and see if I can come up with a definitive answer. I’m not sure if the Flight Simulator is accurate in this regard but if it is I’ll say so.
@Jeff
Possibly what was done was more complicated to cut black boxes power etc. but this would be the minimum Step-1 before IGARI to cut ACARS and SATphone comms etc.
@TBill, This is very much worth digging into, I’m going to reach out to some people. I probably won’t have anything ready for the next episode but hopefully soon after that.
Jeff quick question about the series. Is it exclusively on Apple podcasts? Didn’t find it on other podcast platforms.
@DG, Great question, thanks. It’s currently only on Apple, we’re in the process of rolling it out to others. Is there one you like in particular?
Re podcasts, personally I much prefer Overcast to Apple or Spotify. Meanwhile I’ll be watching episodes on Youtube! So glad you’re continuing the investigation.
@DG, Thanks so much, really appreciate it!
@Jeff
Alaska Airlines 2059 attempted downing shows that, in cases like SilkAir, MH370, China Eastern, denial of pijacking allows further plane loads full of passengers lives to be in danger.
The Alaska Airlines incident shows even USA is not immune to this human behavior phenomenon. Aviation industry will not seriously address this unless public grasps the issue is real.
@Jeff
Ep 7 was fine. Interesting history for me because I did not get involved until after Blaine found NO_STEP.
So Jeff, in your mea culpa in Slate, you confess to having a very early theory about MH370, why it went North and who took it. I believe that was before “spoofing” was a thing. What was your early theory, if you can say?
BFO for me is more practical: here are the measured BFO numbers, now trial and error to solve for paths that match, Unfort there are many solutions.
@TBill, Thanks. My idea, published a week after the disappearance, was that MH370 had flown to Western China. This seems pretty daffy now but at the time the Malaysians had just released a chart based on the ping rings which showed that the plane either went into the ocean or north to what looked like, in that chart, western China. There had also just been some ethnic violence in that part of the country involving separatists. In the show page for the episode at deepdivemh370.com you will find links to two Slate pieces making the case, if you’re interested.