MH370 criminal inquiry in France seeks candour in KL
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Najib Razak reacts to a question on MH370 in KL yesterday but before announcement in France
More than a wing part has surfaced in the MH370 saga overnight.
French criminal prosecutors put pressure yesterday on Malaysia’s government to tell the full truth about the disappearance of the Boeing 777 and the 239 people on it.
Najib Razak, the Malaysian Prime Minister who misled to the world about the search priorities from day one, and who is under fire over the alleged improper handling of millions of dollars of public investment funds, then made an incongruous promise to do everything to bring out the truth about MH370.
And the deputy public prosecutor in Paris, Serge Mackowiak, slipped into his briefing on the wing flaperon found on La Reunion, a reference to an ASAP forensic examination of a sealed part of a suitcase recovered from the Indian Ocean island which is near Mauritius.
This must be more than troubling in Kuala Lumpur, since in French law the public prosecutors don’t have to be diplomatic to anyone nor follow the protocols of formal air accident investigations.
They may, as the Marseille public prosecutor did in March concerning Germanwings, let it all hang out when it comes to telling the truth as it comes out, in that case revealing that the cockpit sound recorder showed the co-pilot had committed suicide and murdered the other 149 people on board by flying the jet at high speed into the base of a mountain in the southern French alps.
What the Malaysia authorities faced this morning, when PM Najib Razak, spoke to an almost empty room at 1.57 am Kuala Lumpur time, is loss of control over the narrative, and that’s a narrative flawed by outright lies and evasions from the government of Malaysia and its civil aviation authority.
Najib Razak may have been guided by a PR strategy to appear to remain in control of events by being first to announce that the recovered flaperon was not just a part unique to all Boeing 777s, but specifically linkable to the 777 that flew MH370.
As it turned out some 20 minutes later, the deputy public prosecutor in Paris wasn’t absolutely convinced that it was from MH370, quoting extensively from the ultra cautious ‘strong presumptions that it was’ from the investigation team assembled in a laboratory in Toulouse.
M Mackowiak said more tests would be done today, teasing out the existence of part of a suitcase en passant.
Malaysia had insisted that the early search for MH370 be extended further into the South China Sea and even as far as Kazakhstan when according to later revelations by the then acting transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein it knew from day one that the jet had abruptly changed course over the Gulf of Thailand shortly after its identifying transponder fell silent, rendering it invisible to normal air traffic control systems.
That deliberate deceit had the effect of diluting the search effort where it mattered, in the south Indian Ocean.
The flight, Malaysia Airlines’ red eye from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, had 239 people on board. An analysis of signals generated by two unanswered calls to the cockpit sat phone, and standby pings from an automated engine monitoring system, determined that the jet eventually turned south and flew toward the southern Indian Ocean until its fuel ran out about seven hours 39 minutes after it took off.
At that moment, when the Inmarsat satellite heard the 777 sending a ready-to-talk sequence to the Rolls-Royce engine support centre in Derby, it suddenly cut out.
The satellite had to be about 44 degrees above the horizon as seen from MH370 at that point. But that point isn’t identified by the signal, instead it yields an arc of the possible locations of the jet conforming to such an elevation which is a function of the time stamped interval taken by those ‘pings’ to travel between the jet and the satellite.
Wherever the jet is in the pitch black depths of the southern Indian Ocean, the last signal it send while it was flying was to a satellite nearly half way up from the horizon to the zenith.
The Malaysian authorities are going to have to defend, at some stage, possibly at a time chosen for them by the French, Â their conduct on the night and morning of the disappearance of MH370.
No high profile airline in modern times is known to have been as indifferent to the loss of a jet in the middle of the night than Malaysia Airlines. It has never been called to official account for its failure to hit the phones to every kampong, every resort, every police station and every one of the dozens if not hundreds of ships  likely to have been overflown by Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, seeking information, sightings, anything.
The posturing of PM Najib Razak will be on trial in France, and the lies, evasions and inconsistencies in the official narrative will be under arguably as much pressure as is the integrity of its government over the public investment funds scandal that has concurrently broken out in Kuala Lumpur.
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Shades of what happened with the Air New Zealand Erebus crash. The primary difference was the location was known ( still a remote area) but the government and the airline made strenuous efforts to reverse an official enquiry finding of an ‘orchestrated litany of lies’ by the airline. Air NZ had a similar position in national life as a ‘trophy’ business which the ruling elite did very well out of.
Y’know Ben, God works in mysterious ways. Not just the Malaysian Govt have been economical with the truth but Abbott’s bunch have some questions to answer too about why they abandoned the search for floating debris seen by satellite.
I hope the ghosts of 239 souls will have a little chuckle that this flaperon was placed ever so gently on French soil where prosecutors will now have a field day with all the liars?
RIP MH370 and my condolences to the families.
About those lies you referred to:
Whilst there was never any ACARS signal at 17:21 UTC because we know where MH370 was at the time, the signal path length from IGARI back through the satellite to Perth can also be reverse calculated and when you do that it proves Malaysia lied about the alleged Straits detour around Sumatra.
For example the signal path distance to IGARI is 41,407nm.
If you then calculate the signal path length to MH370 at 18:25 UTC, the signal path distance is 41,132nm, just 275nm difference.
At 18:22 UTC Malaysia claims their military radar placed MH370 over MEKAR which is 410nm distant from IGARI. Clear proof that Malaysia faked their radar sightings to mislead the investigation.
My personal suspicion is that Hishamuddin Hussein in an attempt to cover for RMAF incompetence began the lie and once his Government could not back out of it kept telling more lies to prevent embarassment.
Ultimately it was the Malaysians who demanded the ATSB abandon searching for debris spotted by satellite 425nm south of the seabed search area. the shame for Australia is that Martin Dolan did not stand up to them and allowed $127m to be wasted on a search in the wrong place.
French criminal prosecutors need to beat a path to the door of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) in Malaysia who in my view persistently misdirected the search effort.
The JIT committee is comprised of representatives from Boeing, INMARSAT, MAS airline and the Malaysian Government’s DCA. This team demanded the abandonment of efforts to recover floating debris seen by satellite between 16-25 March 2014 south of the current seabed search area.
It is the JIT committee who still insist that the ATSB are looking in the right place and of course, Martin kow tows to their every wish without an original thought of his own.
But forgetting the Malaysian Government and ATSB for a moment what is Boeing’s silent role in the background?
The one scenario out of all the hundreds of bizarre theories which the media have studiously avoided mentioning is the possibility of cockpit fire &/or decompression. Given that the ATSB report of 26 June 2014 specifically mentioned MH370 had the characteristics of a hypoxic / unresponsive crew, this lack of media attention is all the more conspicuous for its absence. A deliberate aversion perhaps?
To me cockpit fire is the only scenario which manages to explain all the characteristics which is capable of creating a hypoxic flight. It implies an out of control fire in the avionics.
Whilst aircraft manufacturers have been obliged to fit class C cargo compartments with fire detection, fireproof insulation, airtight containment and 60 minutes worth of fire extinguishing (more if ETOPS), no provision was ever made to cope with fire in the avionics bay at 35,000ft.
Faced with a fire in his cockpit what choices did Captain Zaharie Shah have?
Are they avoiding locating MH370 to prevent the FDR revealing this dirty truth?
@ Simon Gunson 10.44am – the cockpit fire theory does not explain the diversion away from KL and any other major airport nor does it fit in with existing evidence from witnesses close to Shah that he was psychologically stressed to the point of not being fit to fly. The plane was also flown past Penang, Shah’s home-town where one can imagine an affectionate hand wave was probably made before being diverted south to its final watery grave. The long good-bye.
First, PM lied (not mislead) and the quirky French system will dig into that one (Bless the French, in this case its to the good)
Keep in mind, no one had the sat signal data to start with so once it exited out of Radar Coverage going N.W. there was no way to know where it went (other than for sure not between Malaysia and Vietnam)
Further, few satellites can pick up a 6 foot long object, i.e. the flaperon (other than a US spy satellite and those are tasked elsewhere)
So, even if the orbit took in the South Indian Ocean accidentally, said satellite looks through a Soda straw. Where do you look? By the time any accurate data was calculated the wreckage had scattered figuratively and literally to the 4 winds (and currents)
We can’t even track entire ships via satellite let alone small pieces of a hard plane wreck.
It will be interesting to see what washes up and also why those areas were not alerted previously on drift predictions. An amazing lucky find in that its clearly a 777 part and no ambiguity there (unlike napkins etc) let alone the id tag on it.
Sure wish I had 100+ million to throw away on a search that will find nothing (right area, wrong spot and the spot not to be found as the calcs have too many assumptions to get you other than the South Indian Ocean.
OK, I’ll bite. I’ve been reading this blog for a few years now, and while I respect Ben’s style and opinion on a lot of topics, I have to disagree with Ben’s portrayal of what happened. Now I’m happy to be corrected on all of this, this is just my opinion and I’m throwing it out there.
Firstly, on Malaysia knowing about the turnback on day 1. Is it possible that they had some data indicating that this might be possible (i.e. the radar track), but in the mayhem of a very confusing and unfolding event, it was rightly treated as one of many possibilities? Perhaps it took the time it did for Malaysia to be fully confident that the radar track showed the plane turning back and wasn’t a spoof signal or whatever. Perhaps they were covering all their bases as the best information at the time indicated South China Sea?
Secondly, do we know exactly what Malaysia Airlines did or didn’t do to contact the plane while it was in the air? Just because Ben says they only called twice and didn’t call anyone along the way doesn’t make it so. Perhaps they just haven’t told us, or perhaps no one thought of it until too late and were embarrased to let on – again, a confusing and unfolding situation.
Thirdly, on the implication that the South China Sea search diverted precious resources from the Indian Ocean search – did it? Would that many of the assets assigned to search SCS have been sent to the IO if that was the only search area? From memory, the RAAF sent a single P3 to search SCS, which promptly returned to Australia when the IO search area was made public, but other than that? Again, on the weight of a possibly spoofed and confusing radar track, it might have been premature to send the search assets of however many nations on a potential goose chase in the middle of the IO where an air search was next to impossible to conduct. Satellites of nations in the know were probably searching both areas anyway.
Ben has been using these points to hammer the Malaysian Government and the airline non stop since then, to the point where it can drown out the otherwise solid journalistic content of his posts. It has also fed into an echo chamber of theories that begin to sound more and more likey conspiracies as time goes on and no new information is found.
Personally, I don’t think the Malaysian Government was purposely misleading anyone, and I don’t think the airline was indifferent. I honestly believe that it was just a very confusing, scary and embarassing situation that unfolded very quickly, and drawing conclusions based on what we’ve seen on the outside of those bodies doesn’t help much.
I am sure there’s a simple explanation that fits all the known data and shows that responses to information at hand at the time were reasonable.
David,
Please bite, that’s what discussions are for.
In saying the things I have reported (and for some time) I have relied very much on a number of things. They include Malaysia’s own interim report on the loss, published on 1 May last year, and even in its redacted form, it is actually damning in that it documents and gives a timeline for what the airline and authorities did after the disappearance, which was, for the loss of a jet with 239 people on board, sod all.
The blow back on this indifference on their part from other airlines (in other places) has varied from horror to disbelief.
H2O’s Facebook entry on the night was a shocker. I also took in via TV almost all of the televised media briefings, and putting Hishammuddin Hussein’s comments as to what cabinet knew, and what he and the PM said in the aftermath of the crash, that is prima facie calculated and deliberate misleading of the search partners.
I could go on, but its all in the archives, and some of the media that also kept a close on proceedings, including WSJ and Le Monde and NYT, also zeroed in on the unreliability of the untrustworthy and highly erratic narrative from the authorities in KL. Now the public prosecutor’s office in Paris has starting going on the record about its dissatisfaction with the Malaysia narrative, joining the briefings given to selected DC reporters by the US authorities when they found the Malaysians uncooperative and secretive.
It is really important that we know what the authorities knew on that night, which might explain why Malaysia Airlines went back to bed, seemingly resigned for some set of reasons to the loss of a jet with 239 people on board.
These are really serious matters and I don’t at this stage find any of those inexplicable responses or statements in any way excusable.
David,
I will take the opposite view. I gut belief is that Malaysia knew what was likely to happen before the plane even took off from KL.
There is a fair chance the pilot was stressed because he had been given a task that was putting himself in grave danger. He was left sitting at home for a month or so, waiting until the call up came for this specific flight.
I’m glad this blog isn’t on a .my domain
Paul Endavour,
What always bothered me is that the pilot was switched last minute.
I think it is an established fact now. Malaysia has denied, but that is no reason to believe it. The wife (Noor Olya Dollah) of the pilot (Anas Mazlin) that Zaharie replaced testified on Facebook. Her account was deleted shortly after (= before March 17, 2014).
Politicians, lawyers, and common criminals who have been apprehended often gamble that a policy of obfuscation – obstructing justice, if you will – will suffice to prevent their or their clients’ less honorable behaviors from ever becoming publicly known. From what Ben and others have written, it’s clear that the Malaysian government very quickly assumed primary responsibility for covering something up, and that the boldness and/or ineptness of the coverup has been remarkable. Thanks largely to luck (as both Simon #2 and Tango #6 point out) it’s now looking like the Malaysian government and their co-conspirators (if any) may have lost their bet.
I know almost nothing about international law, but if all this were occurring inside one country prosecutors could, if they chose, try to “get to the bottom of it” by identifying low-ranking individuals in the coverup and using the threat of intensive, merciless prosecution to coerce them into snitching on those higher-up in the conspiracy.
David Marshal:
It is a fair question to ask. While Ben has answered it these are my main points.
Even if you can assume the first night was rife with confusion.
By daylight they had the radar tracks of it going up Straights of Malacca to the N.W. They lied about it.
No it did not affect that part of the search but it started a trail of more lies.
However, Imarasat (who is also hiding) reported the ping data shortly after. They will not say to who, I assume it was to Malaysia as it was in their bailiwick (govt and or the airline)
The search direction was still in areas it was not at that point so assuming that Imrastat did report it to them, the Malaysian government continue to like and that did impact getting assets into the right area where wreckage debris might have been spotted.
I think it was 10 days before it came out.
Imraasat also did not notify anyone else (or they are not talking either) once they realized the Malaysian were covering up.
That makes them culpable not to mention they knew it was in the Australian zone of responsibility and should have reported directly to the Australians.
Ben, Tango, you both raise fair points.
However, my interpretation is the following: Night/Day 1, you get told you have a possible radar track heading back across the peninsula, but no transponder or visual ID. Whilst this is a lead, it needs to be verified and pinned down first. Given that everyone assumes that the plane crashed in the SCS, up you don’t want to divert resources until you’re sure.
Ditto Inmarsat information, which has been widely reported as the first time this sort of info has been analysed in this sort of way, so again you would want to verify and be sure of it’s accuracy before assigning search assets.
Now while Malaysia has quite obviously bungled a lot of this, I don’t think their motives were sinister. I don’t think there’s been a cover up, merely an information vacuum that coincides with a bumbling narrative from the authorities in charge. I agree that this can LOOK LIKE a cover up, it doesn’t necessarily make it so. Occam’s razor and all that.
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