Surprise! Concrete slabs found in Maldives not from MH370
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An observer checks the seas near La Reunion this week from a French CASA turbo-prop
Multiple news reports from Malaysia are quoting its transport minister Liow Tiong Lai as saying debris found in the Maldives did not come from missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.The reports are however a bit untidy in that Mr Liow dismissed any connection with the Boeing 777-200ER with enough looseness in expression to no doubt make some people believe that some of it might still have come from the plane, or a plane, and might or might not be brought back to Malaysia for further testing.
All of the English language reports quote Mr Liow using the terms found in this Canadian report, but his intent is clear. The Malaysian minister is saying that it wasn’t wreckage from MH370.
Mr Liow earlier left the media in confusion when he claimed that portions of an aircraft window and other material that might have come from the flight, which disappeared on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board on 8 March 2014, had been recovered on the French island of La Reunion.
Those claims were rejected by French authorities despite Mr Liow’s continued insistence that they were true.
The only potential wreckage that has been acknowledged by the French to date comprises a section of wing called a flaperon and a ‘fragment’ of a suitcase. Both have been undergoing tests in a laboratory in Toulouse for almost two weeks after being found on the shores of west Indian Ocean island between Mauritius and Madagascar.
However it has been confirmed by the Toulouse investigators that the ‘flaperon’ is from a Boeing 777, and the only missing 777 is the one that was operating MH370 and it now believed to have eventually flown until fuel exhaustion over the south Indian Ocean for reasons undetermined.
Earlier this week France began a more intensive search of the shores and adjacent seas of La Reunion, which according to a revised oceanic drift study by the Australian research organisation the CSIRO, could have seen the wreckage reach its shores in recent months from a crash site SW of Perth.
Malaysia is currently directing an Australian managed search of a priority zone comprising 120,000 square kilometres of the deep and complex sea floor which began last September, using sonar side scanning ‘towfish’ after a bathymetric survey mapped its natural obstacles in a previously little studied part of the southern Indian Ocean.
The photos which caused all of the excitement about possible MH370 debris in the Maldives included slabs of broken reinforced concrete similar to material lost when a barge overturned in the area several months before MH370 vanished.
However in the quest for the truth about MH370 it seems that no slab will go unturned.
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I know it’s a serious matter, and we shouldn’t laugh Ben.
But that header sort of summed up the Malaysian Govt’s utterly contemptuous response to this tragedy.
Sod them!
“However, in the quest for the truth about MH370 it seems that no slab will go unturned.”
It took a fair amount of effort for the French to find Flight 447. On the face of it, Australians are no less persevering than the French.
Your remark is interesting in light of ATSB announcing from time to time terminal dates for the search. I haven’t seen any recently which, if so, supports your assertion, Ben.
Besides the Australians are doing the searching not the Malaysians. I don’t think we would trust them to find the headline on the front page of newspaper.
Hi Ben – great piece, as always.
You mentioned CSIRO’s drift study, which you (correctly) describe as suggesting Réunion as a POSSIBLE first shoreline for MH370 debris. Here is my latest paper, aimed at trying to flesh out the (a priori) PROBABILITY that this would be so:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-r3yuaF2p72dk9ualY1bzNLVHc/view?usp=sharing
This means that, just like the radar non-detection of the southern leg of its flight path, the acoustic non-detection of its impact, search leadership’s inconsistency between decisions taken and what their own data supported, and the side-scan non-detection of its sunken debris, we must add non-detection of its floating debris on WA shores to the long list of coincidences proponents of the current search area must willfully ignore.
We may have to expand that to no island or continent unturned in the Malaysian unremitting search to create nonsense. (worse actually but I will leave it at that)
The other element is no one has taken a 777 with that weight and turned the engines off and seen what it does (terminal dive theory). Computers (simulators) are only as good as the input.
As they are not intended to work that way, the only way to see what a real aircraft would do is test it and then feed that info back into the algorithms.
Ergo, while I firmly believe they have the right area I also believe that any small mis-calculation in the ping data and assumptions as well as how the aircraft went down could put it far enough out of the arch that they will not find it.
No ones fault, they did their best with something that was never envisioned and its hodge podge at best.
And not to be outdone the Russian released a recording of the CIA plotting MH17 shoot down.
http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-russia-us-mh17-propaganda-tape-20150813-story.html
The dictatorship beat goes on.
For Gods sake, just how long does it take the French to take the Flaperon apart and look up a bunch of serial numbers off the parts??????
malcolmbmunro,
Have made just that point about AF447 many times. It took 22 months to locate the wreckage of a jet with an impact point known to within 10 kilometres and with a fully functional ACARS system (and a tragically dysfunctional trio of pilots in the cockpit).
The wreckage did not hide itself in the comlexities of the underwater terrain. It came down on an almost level and obstacle free abyssal plain
Brock,
I think everything we learned from AF447’s discovery explains why nothing has been found in the south Indian Ocean so far. Similarly I agree with a widely held view in Australia that the coast line of Western Australia is so empty, and so remote, and very intricate in some areas, that it may well hold the skeletons of hundreds of shipwreck victims, a few dating back centuries, and some more recently from those seeking to arrive by boat. Over 1000 people are known to have drowned unobserved attempting to sail to Australia from Indonesia this century. Not a single piece of wreckage nor personal items have been recovered from some vessels that departed from that country with over 300 people on board.
As to radar, don’t believe the claims made about the brilliance of a national made system. It has never worked as intended. If I was unkind I’d compare it to the Maginot Line in France, except that it is pointed in the right direction, but functionally blind or unreliable, or even, according to some sources, so useless it is largely unmanned and switched off.
I have my suspicions about criminal activity on MH370 but no proof. My expectation is that more identifiable debris will be found somewhere and that the sunk wreckage will indeed be found more or less within the expected area, which is a bit like saying I expect something the size of a few shipping contains with specific contents will eventually be located somewhere in Texas, or the Sahara.
The more ‘far out’ scenarios about MH370 will end up being embarrassments, like fields southern Siberia that just happen to be the same size as the breadth and length of a 777-200.
As to how or why it happened, we just don’t have the crucial details we need to come up with anything compelling.
We need to tell the people of the Maldives (and any other coastal lands) to not contact Malaysia if they find anything.
Of all the people to have come look at a discovery, the Malaysians are the last that should know. There is so obviously a major cover up going on in Malaysia.
Thankfully, the French are now involved. Lets hope that the next time something washes up in the Maldives, they call the french instead.
Endevour.Paul time to have organised a coastwatch was 12 months ago. Read the tea leaves. This is an orchestrated attempt by Malaysia to distract the public, promote & propagate false leads & generally sabotage the search effort to prevent MH370 being found within the 2 year window to lodge claims against the airline.
The Maldives conspiracy theory in my opinion is being driven by PR consultants like Ketchum paid by Malaysia and Media outlets who prostitute news stories for kickbacks.
The real MH370 debris were spotted by satellites 425nm south of the seabed search area from 16-25 March 2014, but deliberately ignored by the ATSB at Malaysia’s request.
We know and so too does Malaysia that MH370 flew south across the equator. We know that from satellite data.
When Malaysia sent investigators to the Maldives it was a disingenuous act of deception because no debris from the SIO could have crossed the equator in that time frame.
We know because there was a timing signal sent via INMARSAT to MH370 from Barum in the Netherlands but directed by the satellite to the nearest ground station at Perth. The Perth GES could not process northern hemisphere timing signals without applying a timing signal correction logarithm. The presence of that logarithm proves MH370 crossed the equator south.
A point missed about the flaperon is that it was likely the most buoyant of all debris, with least displacement and therefore affected more by wind patterns than ocean currents.
Drifting debris are scattered to varying degrees by their displacement, affected by wind, waves & current. It is quite likely therefore that other less buoyant debris drifted elsewhere and the flaperon is not representative of other MH370 debris.
It is time to demand that ATSB shift the search to the impact area suggested by actual debris sighted by satellite, not some mythical 7th Arc postulated by satellite data theory.
Each country that gets debris has its own jurisdiction of said debris. Ergo Reunion, and France has zero obligation to turn over to Malaysia (any facts yes, but not the materials).
The countries of ownership can turn that part over to whoever they want to if they do not have the resources.
Madagascar case in point as a likely area (Maldives not so much)
Hopefully turned over to whoever they had past historical association with as Malaysia is the last entity you want involved.
Simon: Said satellite either are two large area scans to pick up debris or too soda straw in viewing area that they have to know EXACLTY where to look.
Ergo, any satellite pictures were just general junk.
Enough with the conspiracy stuff, yes Malaysians lied but that has nothing to do with where it went down and what occurred out there with the Aussies (other than looking in wrong areas).
If after all the data refinement and they cannot find the wreck, then any satellite that could see debris that small did not stand a chance (and please note that AF447 debris was NOT seen by a satellite either and they knew almost exactly where it went down (not to mention a much more satellite covered part of the world that the southern Indian ocean which has no intentional passes as there is nothing there of interest to a satellite with that kind of fine detail capability.
Tango,
‘there is nothing there of interest to a satellite with that kind of fine detail capability’
This is purely speculation, but,
Diego Garcia is in that vicinity & due to it’s remoteness, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find that the US military (& other associated organisations) had stuff going there which they’d like to stay discreet about.?
If that were to be the case,
it would make a lot of sense to ensure that satellite imaging enabled them to keep a close eye on the vast ocean waters surrounding that remote place.?
No-one likes nasty surprises, especially the military.!
Tango you are remarkably ignorant of the facts about a topic you offer so much opinion about:
AF447 did not require a satellite search because ACARS updated minute by minute telling searchers where to find the debris for AF447.
In case you were living in a cave during 2014 and did not know what was going on let me run some names past you, see if it jerks some memory cells?
Try Tomnod, crowd search, DigiGlobe any of these ring a bell?
And you seem to believe that two objects 24m & 22.5m long were too small for satellite resolution?
I really don’t think you know enough to venture any opinion on what satellites spotted between 16-25 March 2014.
https://sites.google.com/site/mh370debris/home/debris-images
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