MH370: All but one of the ‘best guesses’ are empty!
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Close to a year after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared the determined ship chaser Mike Chillit has posted a telling graphic (below) about the search for the wreckage of the 777-200ER on the floor of the southern Indian Ocean.
Where have all the best guesses gone? To ocean graveyards, every one
In case your screen is too small to read the description on the left of the frame, this is what it says:
On this map, red dots are locations where various experts have professed a belief that #MH370 crashed and sank.
Each point is on or very near an imaginary line colloquially known as the 7th Arc (shown as a red arc).
The purple shaded area around each point represents a 10 nm margin-of-error presented as the maximum extent to which each of these areas might be in error.
The green shaded area is most, but not all, of the area that has now been scanned for the missing plane.
As everyone who has followed this tragedy knows, not one shred of debris has turned up in the this search area, or anywhere else in the world. Nothing.
On the upper right hand side of the diagram, which also shows the paths to be followed by the search ships, Mike Chillit (found on Twitter @mikechillit) notes:
The only hypothesized guess not yet statistically excluded appears to have been abandoned. It is the one labelled 93, -37.4 and was recommended by Inmarsat. It was first published on October 7, 2014.
Mr Chillit also links to the Independent Group of (quite sceptical) experts and the detailed post by Duncan Steel last September as to their recommended search priorities and reasons.
Those reasons are not easy for a lay reader to follow and if a better understanding is sought it will only come from doing your own reading and research as to the terminology and methods. There is no simple, pop-up journalistic short hand path to enlightenment. However making such an effort will repay the hours invested by those who are truly engaged by this mystery.
For this reporter, the wider context to this tragic epic is the untruthfulness of the Malaysia Government and its aviation authorities in relation to the wretchedly inconsistent and misleading official narrative that was rolled out about MH370.
The lies about what its military radar saw, in that Cabinet knew what it saw on the morning of the crash, yet the government denied it, while the Prime Minister deliberately and very publicly misled the search nations including Australia into extending the collective effort deeper into the South China Sea, further west into the Andaman Sea and even as far north west as Kazakhstan, are inexplicable.
The non-release of the full inventory of cargo below the passenger deck is mysterious, but clearly highly relevant, otherwise it would have been disclosed.
The denials about any phone calls from passengers, or indeed, any voice contact with the pilots after the flight disappeared from ATC radar screens as a transponder identified object while over the Gulf of Thailand, may be true, but beg further more detailed examination.
The response by any credible airline after a flight suddenly vanishes is to be incredibly persistent in trying to contact the flight by any means, by sat phone, by calls to other airliners that would have been in the vicinity, by persistent inquiries among other adjacent air traffic control areas, to shipping, to police in coastal villages, and on and on and on, until that terrible moment when the fuel on the jet must have run out.
But with MH370? No. Just a few calls according to the official narrative, and some of them remarkably late, and given inconsistent times by officials who were either lying or ignorant. The indifference of Malaysia Airlines to finding out what had happened to 239 souls in the early hours of 8 March 2o14 is utterly callous and unforgiveable. They should have been hitting the ‘phones until their finger tips bled. Their conduct, going on their own disclosures, was unspeakably deficient in every regard.
If they were calling MH370 every minute, calling Vietnam and Thai ATC every minute, and ringing every kampong, town, city, ship, and other plane every minute, as they should have been, why didn’t they say so?
We are left with the most appalling and shameful and inexplicable indifference in the history of modern aviation on the occasion of a sudden loss of contact. (In the case of MH17 the calls were urgent, and comprehensive, and sadly, the terrible reality of a shoot down and crash was discovered within minutes.).
It is the very conduct of Malaysia Airlines, and the Malaysia Government and aviation officials, that may conceal some of the answers abut MH370 that the searchers are attempting to find on the floor of the southern Indian Ocean.
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Obviously there are many people in the know, including military. So there must be severe enforcement of silence.
What sorts of scenarios require silence from so many governments?
I am highly sceptical it will ever be found but stranger things have happened. I have, however, struck MH off my “fly” list.
Keating was right, although he was only talking about its then PM, Mahatir. There is indeed something “recalcitrant” about this country.
This mysterious incident, coupled with its determined efforts (probably on questionable evidence) to keep its opposition leader in prison, gives any self-respecting person pause to consider giving Malaysia any assistance at all, far less the tourist dollar.
The jailing of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim on trumped up charges shows that the Malaysian leadership has no problem with telling the most brazen of lies in front of the world, and even rigging its judicial system.
It’s hard to even contemplate possible scenarios that would motivate the Malaysian government to mislead the world over the whereabouts of 200+ people who are missing.
But any reason to mislead rescue parties is evil and reprehensible.
Possibly the only hope for information release is a change of government in Malaysia. It does seem amazing that there must be so many with information that it has not leaked. We can but hope.
Sheer waste of money (search) for no gain though I guess we know the bottom topography of that area in wonderful detail now.
They had to front up on the later disaster, you could hardly avoid a plane being so publicly shot out of the sky in the middle of Europe. As for a change of government, its a case of ‘dream on’ at the moment, as the ruling party continue on their merry way.
Who would want to go there for a holiday anyway?
The search continues to fascinate, thanks for the update.
Inmarsat stated that the arcs which they tracked from satellite could have been north or south. They used a never-before-used interpretation of Doppler Effect on a digital message that has been re-transmitted at least twice (via satellites to the UK) to tell us that the direction it went was south.
Digital signals are zeroes and ones, not audio. Doppler Effect is an audio phenomenon and there is therefore no Doppler Effect on digital signals.
And being re-transmitted at least twice means that any meaningful audio on the messages would have been stripped away by the repeaters taking in and sending out just the zeroes and ones. That is how digital transmission works.
If NO debris whatsoever has been found in close to a year, that strongly suggests that the aircraft did NOT crash into the sea, and that the CORRECT arc was the one to the north.
Since Inmarsat says they received contacts all the way to the end of the fuel endurance, then that aircraft is by now either buried or well hidden near Tashkent in Kazakhstan, and is under either Russian or terrorist control.
About US$150 million has been wasted in the south Indian Ocean… but now they have a partial mapping of the sea floor in that area.
There are a number of other issues that have not been mentioned. First, this type of Boeing was fitted with an anti-hijacking mechanism which meant that external control could have been exercised when it “disappeared” from contact. Secondly, Rolls royce had real time monitoring of the plane’s engines. Why no evidence from them? Thirdly, we live in an age when satellites can read your book over your shoulder. Nothing moves on this planet without being tracked by the Americans among others. Why the silence on this point? Fourthly, Australian over the horizon radar should have tracked MH370 if in fact it turned south into the Indian Ocean. Again, silence as to this capability.
The conclusion one is led to is that there is an active cover up going on and all the puffery about sea searches of the southern ocean are just window dressing.
Flown MH once on the maiden flight of a new 747. Never again.
James O’Neill,
You raise some very good points however they have been exhaustively (and exhaustingly for that matter) dealt with in the numerous archived posts under the red MH370 button on the right of the landing page and in other generally more technical forums, including the somewhat daunting IG website to which I have linked.
It’s not that there has been total media silence on these matters, although the popular media has generally not gone to those points or questions.
I think the part of the media I work in would agree there is a cover up of various types in progress. To recap very quickly, part of the covering up involves heavily invested in military systems or resources that failed to perform as expected, notably the huge embarrassment that befell the RAN Underwater Acoustic facility at Jervis Bay. See reports that cluster around the early April pings, and the humiliating press conferences given by our PM, and worse, his ill advised comments and promises to China on that occasion.
The satellites read-over-your-shoulder claim is incidentally untrue. We do better on the moon or Mars, with zero or lesser atmospheric issues, but even there, we can’t yet resolve 12 point type in black on a white surface.
However satellites can and do intercept massive amounts of digital and voice communications. The problem appears to be mining and analysing that data, which leads to the popular political hoax about the need for meta data retention and how it solves crimes. Which is a load of tosh, but I digress.
Much of what might be seen as a cover up could be explained as a screw up, to use a less impolite word.
As reported here and elsewhere, the ACARS engine data uploads to RR had been unsubscribed by MH to save money. However, whoever disabled the ACARS server which is on board the flight (which continued to send basic here-we-are, engines-on-off signals) didn’t appear to understand that the computer would continue to attempt regular stand-by exchanges with the satellite, or in the event of a power failure, which triggers the pre-programmed deployment of the ram air turbine on the total failure of the engines to restore electricity to vital instruments, immediately try to tell RR what had happened and where.
The IG site link is useful in getting a handle on this.
Whoever was trying to make MH370 disappear without trace didn’t seem to understand that even attempted sat phone calls to the cockpit would produce evidence of the general direction of the flight, even though the phone rang and wasn’t answered.
Which raises the other point that I think is troubling, which is whether or not at least one other plane in the same area did make brief contact with MH370 after the flight went dark.
There are vigorous discussions of the points you raise, but not in the popular media, which I think is rather sad, since the essential role of today’s general media appears to be to uncritically publish whatever press releases are churned out by vested interests.
James Lynch, there are no digital signals once they’re actually transmitted. They are an interpretation of the analogue signals only.
But we still don’t “know” that the airplane headed south.
Inmarsat say it did but they had to “massage” the data to be able to say it.
What if they got the sign wrong and the airplane actually headed off to the Northwest and is somewhere near Kazakhstan?
I am curious about the neglect of Curtin University’s hydrophone data.
Ben
Your last paragraph at #10 is, sadly, so true. Take the Minister’s press release, put your name on it and, voila, you have a story. I’m afraid journalism in its true investigative sense (with some honourable exceptions) is almost as dead as the dodo.
The owners of News Ltd and Fairfax should hang their collective heads in shame, except they have diversified so much that the only time they hang their heads is to look down at their bank balances. The original Murdoch’s and Fairfax’s would be horrified.
Hamish on James Lynch: And ping ring 7 was located by “burst timing offset”, which is a signal travel time measure, not a Doppler shift.
Chris Randal: Yes we do know that it headed south. That is from the signal Doppler shift, which incidentally is a general feature of propagating waves, not just of the audio and radio types.
Re: MetaData
There is one ‘crime’ that retaining metadata is designed to solve… whistleblowing.
The Australian government (plus both Liberal and Labour parties) want to jail whistleblowers. Metadata can reveal which whistleblower contacted which journalist.
But maybe the only way to solve the MH370 mystery is for a whistleblower to come forth and spill the beans.
@james there are no truly digital signals, all of the ‘ones’ and ‘zeros’ are in fact interpretations of rising and falling edge, or median-point values in otherwise analog signalling. Its at best a digital approximation. This is why we use things like ‘manchester encoding’ to define a bit pattern of rising and falling edges which are FASTER than the apparent one or zero signal, but enough of them happen inside a time interval to (a) ensure there is a clock and (b) ensure there is enough repeats, to reliably send a one or zero. This is also why the bandwidth of a digital signal is not the same as its baud rate.
So yes, the underlying RF is in fact, subject to doppler shift, and if it corrupted the one/zero encoded data or not, its doppler shift informs us as to its radial location based on the physics of RF propagation, delay, and transformation down the frequency domain as it decays.
I think the Inmarsat location (“Hotspot #3”? I’ve lost count) is just as “searched out” as the rest of them, for 2 reasons:
1) Inmarsat only gave this coordinate to one decimal degree – which Mike Chillit then dutifully plotted. Rounding error alone could be worth over 4.5nmi. In their Oct.6 paper (from which this point was taken), Inmarsat themselves describe this coordinate as being ON the 7th arc; if it were moved accordingly, considerably more of Mr. Chillit’s “probability circle” would already be covered.
2) Inmarsat described this coordinate as the “last contact location” (i.e. 7th arc cross-point), NOT their best-guess point of IMPACT. Nearly all estimators allow for at least a modest amount of expected forward momentum between the 7th arc crossing and actual impact. (This is likely why ATSB is searching primarily (just) BEYOND the 7th arc.) Accordingly, Inmarsat’s best-guess IMPACT point is likely a further few nmi south of the 7th arc, and thus already “covered ground”.
All that remains to be determined is the value of the IG’s previously recommended search width of +/-10nmi. An independent model I’ve built (and calibrated to the IG’s published simulator and BTO error results) suggests that – if a) the signal data is authentic, b) no pilot intervened after fuel exhaustion, and c) the ATSB is searching the optimal lateral range (all big “if”s) – then a search width of 20nmi covers about 97% of the probability density.
To be fair: the IG’s Mike Exner has increased his recommended zone in recent few weeks – from 20, to 32, and now to 50nmi. But I worry that this asks us to adopt a “let’s be patient” attitude towards a search already under deep suspicion of foot-dragging.
It is NOT, in my opinion, a good idea to waste several more months widening the existing zone.
A MUCH better plan, at this point, would be to investigate the investigators themselves.
@ James Lynch.
“Digital signals are zeroes and ones, not audio. Doppler Effect is an audio phenomenon and there is therefore no Doppler Effect on digital signals.”
Incorrect James. Doppler is observed in radio frequency signals and light, not just an audio phenomenon.Edwin Hubble used doppler (red shift) to discover an expanding universe.
@ James O’Neil,
I’ve been working on Boeings now for over 35 years, some brand new. I have tested hundreds of auto pilots and yet to find some mystery circuitry that would allow external control of the auto- pilot or to stop the pilots from disconnecting it.Yes, there are patents but I do not believe it is incorporated.
Yes, to paraphrase Rumsfeld’s infamous non-sequitur. It all comes down to the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns etc etc ad infinitum. Certainly one of the strangest incidents in my long lifetime. Murky politics at the bottom of it all? Highly likely I’d say.
Ben
Your analysis of all the inconsistencies of MH370 is very compelling. In particular your observations of what Malaysian Airline and the Malaysian government didn’t do is very damning.
However, based on evidence available have you formed a view as to where the plane and the bodies of the crew and passengers lie?
Ben –
Can you expand on your comment about the following:
“Which raises the other point that I think is troubling, which is whether or not at least one other plane in the same area did make brief contact with MH370 after the flight went dark.”
Are you suggesting contact did take place, and if so, with whom?
Debris: there is a common misperception that a crash will leave floating debris. there are a couple of problems with this.
Unlike most of the commenters, I harken back to the 50s when air travel over oceans after the war became common place (i.e. no flying boat)
There were a number of “dispeared ” aircraft (DC6 and the like) that nothing was ever found despite the fact they were not hi jacked and on a known route.
What has been found is after a short time, what debris there is scatters and then either sinks or winds up lodged in odd places no one finds (and then rusts away).
In the case of MH370, it was weeks before they even looked in the region (the size of half the earth) let alone no location that has been pinned down. Huge winds, major currents all breaks up and moves in different direction.
While I do believe they are right in the general direction, with all the variables and assumption they have to make with signals that in no way are intended as tracking, they can easily be off by hundreds of miles on either side of an arch let alone up and down the arch.
It took 3 days to find the AirAsia crash on a known route in confined waters. Think about that.
Needle in a haystack is easy, there is no magnet here.
Unlike Ben I don’t think there is anything more to this than people who habitually lie and a nut pilot.
I also do not think there is anting to be gained form finding the wreck let alone recovering any of it.
If it was indeed a nut pilot, we have yet to come up with a nut pilot detector. Until we do these things will happen occasionally.
You just hope its not to you and as its rare not likely.
Gazumped,
In the early days (see the archive for rolling coverage) it was reported by the Malaysian media that the airline had contacted a flight that was a few minutes ahead of the MH370and it had in turn been able to raise the missing flight and a brief conversatio ensued before communication was lost and that there was a garbled voice in the background.
This report was denied by the Malaysia authorities at one of their nightly media conferences in KL, parallel to their lying point blank about the flight having been seen on military radar as flying across the Malaysia Peninsula.
Therefore, the report may have been true.
The inquisitive media was curious about attempts by passengers to use their mobile phones to make calls. There is no evidence that this happened. Which to some extent is surprising, notwithstanding the location of ground telecom towers and stations. I’ve often wondered if there was a determined effort by persons in the cabin to collect personal phones (or else) but then again, there wouldsn’t have much time in which to do this, and at that time in the morning many of the passengers may have dozed off instead.
However I’m not suggesting anything other than reporting what was said and asking unanswered questions, or questions for which the answers are now of dubious value.
I think it was our Brock who addressed the question of mobile phones — contact is not likely at altitude was the conclusion, IIRC. Ever wondered why all those phones people surely have forgotten to turn off never seem to ring? (Presumably those ghastly 9-11 calls were from low-level flight. Also those would have been on one of the older phone systems … perhaps even analogue, which persisted for an absurdly long time in the US.)
“Doppler Effect is an audio phenomenon and there is therefore no Doppler Effect on digital signals.”
Incorrect, the Doppler effect can be applied across the visual, audio and electromagnetic spectrums.
“What if they got the sign wrong and the airplane actually headed off to the Northwest and is somewhere near Kazakhstan?”
If it landed or crashed on land, we would surely know about it by now. A 777 is difficult to hide.
Also not covered that I remember is the ability of a pilot to de-pressurize the cabin.
If that could be done and was, then even if the oxygen mask deployed in the pax cabin, there would not be enough time to do anything as they only operate for a few minutes required to get down to 15,000 (10k supposedly but anything under 15 is good enough for sitting people.
After the shakup of the weird flight gyrations no one would have been asleep, ergo were they dead already?
Easy enough to find out, run the same route at the altitude MH370 did and see if cell phones, satellite would work and a review of who had what com devices amongst the pax.
Same thing with the ping archs, if you want to know how good the data is put an aircraft on that same patch and see how the calcs work out vs actual.
that’s not been done either. Nope, lets throw some ships out in the far southern ocean and look for a needle on a planet.
Not likely complete but close ehough
A couple of observations:
1. Nut pilots, like nut fundamentalists, will always be with us. We need a scanner to detect what evil lurks in the hearts of men. In the meantime, there are some basic defences employed for both.
2. Mobile phones generally do not work at altitude. I leave mine on more often than not. In one very small specific location in Australia you can get a signal at altitude. Its a circle of about 10-20 miles in diameter. Everywhere else there are no signals above a couple thousand feet. Including the parts of Asia in question.
3. You can easily depressurise the cabin. On the Boeings I have flown you can also disable the cabin oxygen systems, although they only last for 12 minutes (optionally, 22) anyway.
4. Floating debris…depending on the impact severity, (and no one I have heard thinks anything but a violent end,) there would not be large surviving pieces, and not much stuff is buoyant. The stuff that is isn’t for long. In those latitudes you look down from 41,000′ and its mostly white caps.
5. The biggest remaining pieces may be the two engine cores…about the size of a car.
6. Even if the impact site was known with precision you still cannot predict how large the cone of falling debris is given the speed of impact. The engines may be a mile or more from the other wreckage.
7. Even complete discovery will not change what we already know about the Malaysian government. The overwhelming industry expectation is that this was caused and compounded by deliberate human action.
The comment by Tango above is fascinating – why has there not been a plane on the same supposed flight path with engine pings set the same as MH370 to see if the predicted path matches the actual path? It should be relatively straightforward to fly the route, adjust calculations, fly again etc until paths match the pings received and the route will be obtained.
Am I missing something?
I would have thought having matching fuel levels might be a bit of a problem in achieving the same paths. No one wants to be the bunny on board at the fuel exhaustion point.
“Someone could dramatically inch their way out onto the wing with a gallon-can of fuel…….?”
“Just how much does a B777 burn per minute.?”
“Looks like we’re gonna need a lot more cans of fuel…..”
T: Same thing with the ping arcs, if you want to know how good the data is put an aircraft on that same patch and see how the calcs work out vs actual.
^^ What he said. Chillit is currently blathering on Twitter about location accuracy, a matter he knows little about, based on his recent suggestion of search grid of 1000 nm rectangles covering about half the Indian ocean.
As I’ve repeatedly argued here, re-enactment has the potential to greatly increase confidence in the Inmarsat location model, despite that Inmarsat have calibrated it against the large database of flight information they presumably hold. Multiple re-enactments — at least 10, preferably more — would be affordable in the context and could provide solid, real world, statistical guidance on satcom location accuracy. To proceed with a $100M search without such ground truthing is negligent, IMO.
BTW, designing a suitable re-enactment program would be no trivial matter. One would need to consider at least aircraft performance, satellite ephemeris, satcom behavior, optimal statistical design, and of course safety. There is no absolute requirement that every aspect of the flight (or even every flight leg) be reproduced. For fuel load, that would obviously not be possible anyway.
In any complex situation or issue, if you have a choice between conspiracy or incompetence, go with incompetence!
@glen The FBI concluded that none of the 9-11 cell phones calls ever lasted for more than a second ie the only calls that connected immediately disconnected. How or why family members say they received calls from on board the planes is a mystery.
Another weird aspect of 9-11 is that the FAA air traffic database did not record two of the 9-11 flights departing let alone being scheduled… never mind, i’m sure someone just forgot to type the data in. The all-purpose coincidence theory explains everything i find.
Interestingly Inmarsat 3F1 eclipsed briefly during the flight of MH370, as all geostationary satellites do most days around the equinoxes. When the satellite goes into eclipse it operates on battery power and it rapidly cools, altering the behavior of its electronics. If satellite eclipse were thought important to re-enactment, opportunities to incorporate it only arise twice per year. The next is now very close indeed — next month.
If a reenactment flight was desired they could load it up with twice the fuel and maybe sandbags to match the actual take off weight. But 777s cross that arc a dozen times a day. Surely it would be a trivial matter to get many data points for free by now?
Truth is RMAF chief Rodzali Daud was telling the truth for the first few days when he insisted against prodding from INMARSAT that MH370 had not been seen flying west on military radar.
Then under political pressure from Malaysian Police and from INMARSAT who recruited AAIB in the UK to beat up Daud’s denials, Malaysia caved in and accepted INMARSAT’s theory.
On 11 March 2014, General Daud issued a press release (since removed from official websites) which stated a mystery aircraft was seen by radar at Butterworth flying from IGARI to VAMPI-GIVAL-IGREX passing near Pelau Perak at 18:40 UTC.
Quite how MH370 could be near Pelau Perak at 18:40 UTC then miraculously appear at MEKAR at 18:22 UTC has never been explained?
Then on 21 March 2014, we got an alleged radar image shown to Chinese relatives at the Lido Hotel Beijing which appears to show an aircraft flying from Pelau Perak to Vampi, then Mekar passing over Pelau Perak at exactly 18:02 UTC. Problem is that the radar screen image has been photo-shopped from a civilian SSR radar and is not the Thales Raytheon GM400 screen used by RMAF military radar.
We were told that a cell tower allegedly detected the co-pilot’s cell phone over Penang. Given that a cell tower has a lateral range of just 30nm and can only connect with a cell phone in an aircraft flying below 5,000ft then that invalidates the claim it was MH370.
For a Boeing 777 flying at 5,000ft, airspeed would be limited to 350kts, yet to cover the distance from IGARI to Pelau Perak via Penang by 18:02 UTC, the alleged aircraft had to be flying at least 430 knots. In fact MH370 could not have covered that distance in the time available flying below 18,000ft therefore the cell phone connection claim was a hoax. Had MH370 really flown across Malaysia at 18,000ft the minimum possible altitude, then it would have been seen by multiple primary radars.
These are the kind of lies which MH370’s alleged flight through the Straits are based upon. The truth is simple. The evidence for a flight through the Straits of Malacca was manufactured by Malaysia to conform to INMARSAT’s signal handshake data.
What if INMARSAT wrongly interpreted their data?
What if decompression at 35,000ft so severely chilled the AFC oscillator that the signal path delay was altered by reduced electrical resistance in super cooled metal?
What if the BTO values were contracted nearer towards the satellite?
That would mean the real 7th arc would be some hundreds of miles further away from INMARSAT 3F-1. Sure MH370 may have crashed on the 7th Arc, but they have wrongly calculated the true radius of the 7th Arc.
Gazumped asked about brief contact with MH370 by both flight MH88 and JAL750. MH88 was much further north over Vietnam at FL390. JAL750 had taken off from Ho chi minh at 17:24 UTC bound for Narita and was flying over the radio beacon at Buon Ma Thuot (VVBM) at 32,000ft in Vietnam. The JAL captain said that he had spoken with co-pilot Fariq Hamid on emergency VHF frequency 121.5 MHz. He said the co-pilot seemed calm and professional, but communication was unclear and mumbled.
Of course for Fariq Hamid to be speaking calmly with JAL750 after 17:30 UTC means that Captain Zahari Shah did not take over the plane nor incapacitate his co-pilot at 17:21 UTC.
Another point is that VHF radio is line of sight and the earth’s curvature would prevent VHF contact between JAL750 and MH370 if the latter had turned west and descended to low altitude.
In fact JAL750 could not have spoken with MH370 if the Malaysian plane was at 5,000ft unless MH370 was already over Vietnam. If MH370 was at 35,000ft VHF contact by JAL750 would have been impossible with another aircraft south of BITOD. Malaysia has done its best to downplay this radio contact because it actually disproves the alleged flight through the Straits of Malacca.
Simon, I am sceptical of any flight going anywhere near Perth at all. I am also in no doubt about a massive cover up going on. I believe a trail is being laid to send the public in one direction to distract from whatever the truth is.
However, when I read your posts, I get a bit confused. You seem to be able to disprove many parts of the official story. It seems, though, that with all your evidence that it is hard to believe the plane ever took off at all. Do you have an opinion of which way the plane did go and where to?
@ Simon Gunson,
just referring back to a question posed by Dan Dair at http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/2015/01/29/malaysia-declares-all-officially-presumed-dead-on-mh370/#comment-31176
Reading through your many posts, you seem to be very ready to debunk what others are claiming – yet without actually making a clear, simple statement about your own claims.
In your view – in a few succinct sentences – what exactly did happen to MH370, and where is the plane?
“He said the co-pilot seemed calm and professional, but communication was unclear and mumbled.
How can one be judged “calm and professional” when comm’s were “unclear and mumbled”.
As to the promoters of the re-enactment, I disagree that it would be useful.
Inmarsat have more ping data than they will ever need from hundreds of flights by now.
All aircraft fly slightly differently.
Not all engines are in the same condition and fuel burn does differ.
We do not know how the aircraft was trimmed.For all we know all the pax were crammed in the aft cabin with a ship load of stab trim wound in.
Weather conditions are not able to be reproduced.
We end up with more assumptions on top of the assumptions that already must be made to reach any estimates with the limited info we have.
The best reproduction would be to use the trend monitoring numbers that MAS / Rolls Royce would have for that aircraft and those particular engines. I daresay they are smart enough to have worked that out already.
@endeavour.paul…(asks) “Do you have an opinion of which way the plane did go and where to?”
Yes I do Paul. I accept the sighting by oil rig worker Mike McKay was genuine, but not his interpretation that it went down off Vietnam because in his email he did not himself say he saw it go down but rather appear to remain in flight, that he saw flames which lasted just 10-15 seconds.
I believe They suffered a failure of the CMU unit which controls VHF radio, ACARS and Transponder on a Boeing 777. I believe erratic ACARS signals from MH370 before take off point to imminent CPU failure and that loss of transponder and ACARS was not a deliberate action by pilots. I believe they had garbled voice communication with JAL750 as they approached the southern tip of Vietnam (Ca Mau Peninsula) where pilots elected to turn back for Malaysia and commanded a turn back into their autopilot. At this point they had a problem which they perceived was serious but not life threatening. I believe they turned back from Vietnam about 1:35am MYT (17:35 UTC)
I believe about 1:43-1:45am MYT a blaze broke out beneath the forward galley/cockpit area and very quickly incapacitated pilots before melting an escape path through the aluminium skin. I believe what McKay saw was the flames venting outside at 35,000ft until cabin pressure reduced to match outside air pressure at which point it extinguished from oxygen deprivation, leaving most of the systems still able to function with MH370 flying back pilotless on autopilot over Kuala Lumpur at about 18:25 UTC.
I entirely dismiss the alleged turn back at IGARI and I dismiss alleged radar sightings in the Straits as manufactured evidence intended to conform to INMARSAT’s claim that MH370 “must have” flown west. I believe the intense cold made satellite handshakes appear to come from the area above Sumatra because the extreme cold shortened signal path delay and contracted all the BTO rings closer to INMARSAT.
I do believe MH370 generally flew south and that the BFO (Doppler Shift) data needs to be interpreted as a flight south from Vietnam, not from Aceh area. I believe although pointed at Kuala Lumpur by pilots the autopilot would have continued to follow a magnetic heading south after reaching the last waypoint it was given. In the Southern Indian Ocean the Agonic magnetic variation would have curved the flight path eastwards the further south it flew thus explaining how MH370 crossed several BTO rings. I believe all BTO rings in reality were about 200-300nm further from INMARSAT.
For that reason I believe MH370 impacted the Southern Indian Ocean but at latitude 45 much further south and east of the seabed search area around 45 South, 85 East.
@discus The Captain of JAL750 could hear the tone of the co-pilot’s voice even if he could not fully understand his words. He drew a conclusion that the co-pilot did not sound in distress and was calmly trying to discuss their situation.
I accept that as a valid interpretation that about 17:30+ UTC, co-pilot Fariq Hamid was not in distress.
@discus…. comments: “We do not know how the aircraft was trimmed.For all we know all the pax were crammed in the aft cabin with a ship load of stab trim wound in.”
At 35,000ft flying in “coffin corner” all airliners fly on autopilot because the speed margin between stall buffet and mach buffet is so thin that it requires the precision of a robot. Pilots do not hand fly airliners at 35,000ft.
You talk about assumptions piled on assumptions. This fact is behind why investigators ASSUMED deliberate pilot action since to turn back they had to have done so at 35,000ft unless the plane was dived to low altitude.
The problem with accepting a claim that MH370 dived to lower altitude is that this would have knocked about 20-30% off the fuel endurance and it would have ceased flying about three hours earlier if it ever dropped below 35,000ft.
Thus by a process of logic you can safely assume it flew the entire flight until fuel exhausted at high altitude. If MH370 flew through the north Straits of Malacca at 35,000ft it would have done so much faster and would have lit up every radar screen for hundreds of miles.
Assumptions can also be a useful tool for eliminating what could not have happened.
Simon, nobody mentioned autopilot being off until you did.
Presumably an aircraft such as a 777 on auto pilot will trim out variations if a load shifted in flight.
My comment regarding the trim was a throwaway example of one way in which an aircraft would fly inefficiently and make any reproduction less then useful as we have no idea what was turned on or off how it was trimmed or ‘exactly’ how fast or how high.
Your scenario may have occurred but the chances of an aircraft flying for hours after a fire severe enough to immediately incapacitate the crew and burn a hole through the fuselage to me seems the most unlikely to have occurred.
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