A hundred days have passed since MH370 went missing — and while air and sea search operations have been put on hold, hope springs eternal. Today, the BBC is reporting that Inmarsat remains confident that its analysis of the satellite data will lead to the plane, saying that the authorities never searched the area of highest probability because they were distracted by the underwater acoustic pings that turned out not to have come from MH370’s black boxes. Once a new search gets underway, it will explore an area that conforms much better to the likely speed and heading of the missing plane:
By modelling a flight with a constant speed and a constant heading consistent with the plane being flown by autopilot – the team found one flight path that lined up with all its data. “We can identify a path that matches exactly with all those frequency measurements and with the timing measurements and lands on the final arc at a particular location, which then gives us a sort of a hotspot area on the final arc where we believe the most likely area is,” said Mr Ashton.
Unfortunately, it will be several months before such a search of this new area can get underway, since the survey of the ocean floor will be required to figure out how deep it is and what kind of underwater technology should be used. Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Australian organization leading the search described a more complex and ambiguous state of affairs, telling the AFP that experts were still struggling to narrow down the highest-probability search area, taking into consideration not just the satellite data but also “aircraft performance data [and] a range of other information.”
What other information? Your guess is as good as mine. As I wrote last week in Slate, Inmarsat has by now leaked enough clues about MH370’s electronic Inmarsat “handshakes” that outsiders can now understand why, mathematically, the plane must have gone south. Yet we have not the slightest hint of what sequence of events might have taken it there. We don’t even know how it could have navigated southward. An airliner like the 777 doesn’t just wing off in random directions like a paper airplane; its Flight Management System would have been following a series of waypoints or a compass heading. Yet its range of possible courses doesn’t seem to match up with any particular heading or waypoint. (The last search area matched up with a flight route that tracked waypoints between the Cocos Islands and Australia, which is likely one of the reasons it seemed so appealing to authorities, but as we now know, that came up empty.)
MH370 looks to be a unique case not just in aviation history. No machine this big, no group of human beings this large, vanished so completely and so mysteriously since the advent of modern technology. What’s more, MH370 didn’t just disappear once, but three times.
The first disappearance, of course, was when it vanished from air traffic controllers’ screens in the early morning hours of March 8, apparently after someone turned off its transponder and automatic status-reporting equipment, and took a hard left turn. Based on the speed and precision of its navigation, the plane almost certainly was under human control.
The second disappearance occurred about an hour later, as the plane slipped beyond the range of military radar. Minutes later, some kind of unknown event caused the plane to transmit a mysterious triple burst of electronic signals to the Inmarsat satellite. At around the same time, the plane took another radical course change, pivoting from a northwest heading toward mainland Asia to a southwestern course that would take it over western Indonesia and out into the open ocean. Based on the slim evidence of subsequent Inmarsat pings, the plane seems to have flown in a simple straight line, so it may not have been under human control at that point.
Then it disappeared a third and final time, this time leaving not a single clue.
What has made the case so difficult to understand isn’t just the scarcity of information concerning its fate, but the superabundance of false clues. In the months that followed the disappearance, I had a front row seat to the flood of bad data as I covered the story for Slate and CNN. Day by day, new developments would come in from sources all around the world, and the challenge was to figure out which would turn out to be erroneous. What to make of reports that the plane had climbed to 45,000 feet after its initial turn, then precipitously dived (faster, it turned out, than the laws of physics would allow)? How excited should we be about the debris that satellites had spotted floating in the southern Indian Ocean (yet never was to be seen again)? How soon before searchers tracked down the sounds coming from the black box acoustic pingers (which turned out not to have come from the black boxes at all)?
The fog of misinformation was made worse by the Malaysian and Australian authorities. Faced with an ever-rising chorus of demands that they explain the search operation, they dragged their heels in releasing basic information, left simple questions unanswered, were slow to correct mistakes, and left huge gaps in the data that they did ultimately release.
The resulting uncertainty created a playground for amateur theorizers of every stripe, from earnest to wackadoodle. MH370 was a supermarket of facts to pick and choose from as one’s pet theory required. And the Internet gave everyone a chance to go viral in an instant. One of the more intriguing scenarios was put forward by Keith Ledgerwood, who posited that the plane had flown north and evaded radar by shadowing a Singapore Airlines flight. (The flight path turned out not to match the Inmarsat data.) Another that got a lot of play was the theory by Christian Goodfellow that the plane’s initial turn had been made because the flight crew was trying to get the burning airplane to an emergency landing in Langkawi, Malaysia. (Burning planes don’t fly for eight hours.)
Vehement passion was, alas, all too common as theories multiplied. I and everyone else who was publicly associated with MH370 was bombarded by emails, tweets, and blog comments offering evidence that solved the mystery once and for all. I soon formed a Pavlovian aversion to the name Tomnod, a crowdsourcing website that parceled out satellite images for the public to pore over. It was remarkable how many clouds, whitecaps, and forest canopies people could mistake for a 777 fuselage, and then proselytize for with deranged fervor. It always baffled me how people could get so attached to their ideas about an incident in which they had no personal stakes.
In time, though, the number of theories circulating has dwindled. With Ledgerwood’s and Goodfellow’s theories debunked, no one has been able to come up with a replacement that fits with what eventually emerged as the canonical set of credible facts. To be sure, there’s still a vast army of believers, waving their Tomnod printouts and furiously typing half-literate emails about ACARS data buses. But each is a lone voice shouting into a sea of skepticism.
Even the small cadre of independent experts who have come together to decipher Inmarsat’s data seem to be at loggerheads. Each has made a tentative stab at interpreting the “raw data” released by the satellite company, but the unanswered questions remain so numerous that the group can’t form a consensus about the plane’s fate. The officials looking for the plane don’t seem to be doing much better; recent reporting by the Wall Street Journal goes even further than the AFP report I cited earlier in portraying a team riven by fundamental differences of opinion as to where it should look.
A hundred days, and counting…
This post was adapted from an earlier version published on Slate.com.
@Luigi – I’d toss the cell phone story altogether. There is no good data explaining which phone/tower/altitude/speed/heading combinations will support a call. “Bars” don’t mean you’re below 10,000 feet.
The disabling of the passengers intentionally with depressurization – that effectively limits the number of accomplices. Low oxygen scuffles over oxygen bottles are a risky proposition, and it would take a lot of coordination and luck to ensure all accomplices were hooked up.
That basically pigeonholes a hijacking into 4 categories:
1. There were few accomplices and decompression was used to disable the passengers.
2. There were many accomplices and decompression was NOT used.
3. There were many accomplices, decompression was used and the accomplices were expendable.
4. There were few accomplices, decompression was not used, but the few were heavily armed with a substantial amount of ammunition.
I am assuming that without weapons, no fewer than 1 “thug” hijacker for every 20 passengers could maintain control. That was about what we saw on 9/11. That’s at least 10 for the plane, which would present some difficulties in a decompression situation.
JS – I reckon you could do it with two people, you just need to have them both on the right side of the cockpit door and keep it closed. You need a nine inch grinder to get through that door.
Matty:
Did you see the recent story about Air NZ? 9-inch grinder not needed.
“Silly as it may have been, the Air NZ incident reminds us that there is a hole in the 777 cockpit security arrangements, and while it was exploited by its own crew on this occasion, it could, might, maybe, have been exploited with evil intent on MH370.”
http://t.co/fQRqVYA2tp
Hmmm. I guess the case for hijack just got a bit easier.
So 52 minutes of unaccounted flight time just enough time to ..suppositions now .a question for all the captain was involved crowd ,what was his motive( anwar was free on bail)? Why has Malaysia photoshopped pictures of Iranians ? Why did Malaysia edit the atc recordings? Looking at the captain while the leaders lie lie lie ..
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/2014/07/15/mh370-suspicions-of-systems-tampering-strengthened-by-study/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CrikeyBlogs+%28Crikey+Blogs%29&wpmp_tp=1
To summarize, there seem to be only two “reveals” of note in the last few weeks: (1) the satcom was rebooted about the time of the pullback from Malaysian airspace, (2) data indicates the plane may have loitered near the homeland after flying out of range of Malaysian military radar. Both are suggestive of an angry pilot waiting for a callback, neither is particularly compatible with someone trying to steal the plane, abduct the passengers, or launch a kamikaze attack on a remote target.
An angry pilot waiting for a callback( motive)? .the problem I read is Malaysia has boxed themselves in stating two calls were placed to mh370 flight deck and were unanswered . if this was occurring( a negotiation for some unknown) I can not imagine a govt. not scrambling a defensive position ie fighter jets to intercept, can you?
Matty I think you might be slightly overestimating the ability to keep 239 people out of the cockpit, including 8-10 crew. For an hour, sure. But the minute anybody caught wind of a hijacking, there would action – through, around, or under the door. Remember that US pilots were seeking the right to carry guns.
@Tdm it would be very disturbing if a call had gone through and we were still searching for the plane at its 17:07 location.
My guess is that Zaharie just wanted a private chat with Hishammuddin as a precondition for landing the plane, and Hishammuddin either blew him off or slept through the whole thing.
I don’t believe there was any communication from the plane. It was never the plan. We realize, that the loitering essentially took place right where the Indon radar apparently wasn’t working? Hmm.
All this loitering must have been invisible to Indon/Malaysian radar as well??
Holy smokes, mas air has lost contact with another 777,.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/17/world/europe/ukraine-malaysia-airlines-crash/index.html
Shot down over Ukraine.
Check out the flight path of MH17!!
http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/grim-coincidence-malaysia-airlines-hit-by-second-disaster-just-months-after-mh370-vanished/story-fnizu68q-1226992900778#itm=taus%7Chome%7Caus_homepage_content5_most-popular%7C5%7CMP_NewsComAu%7Chomepage%7Chomepage&itmt=1405671745202
JS An internal attempt to regain control of the flight deck directed by the passengers would be a possible scenario. If a gun was discharged in the melee, the cabin could have perhaps depressurized. The SDU could have been activated by an ad hoc pilot attempting to use the sat phone to issue a distress call (the VHF radio had perhaps been left at the KL ATC frequency and was thus useless to an untrained pilot), yet he was unable to operate the sat phone before hypoxia set in.
In the Helios 552 accident, the crew member who had attempted to regain control of the aircraft after the captain and first officer had succumbed to hypoxia had already logged 250+ hours in commercial flight training. Yet, unfamiliar as he was with a 737, he had proved unable to switch the VHF radio to the Athens ATC before the crash. This is illustrative of the fact that flipping a switch and rebooting the SDU does not necessarily enable communication.
The MH17 shoot down is quite creepy, if you ask me, presenting yet another uncanny dimension to the already unfathomable tragedy of MH370. I love how the media has been quick to assure everyone that the two incidents are “not linked,” as if the world is flat and there isn’t anything connecting the two losses. In reality, all sorts of shite is sure to the hit the fan in Malaysia. Returning to earth once again, let’s see how the Malaysian government behaves in the instance of MH17; the differences of approach to each of the two investigations will be telling.
Luigi is generally correct in stating that the loitering period in the flight path could perhaps be indicative of ‘waiting’ for new developments to resolve themselves. Or perhaps a bit of circling followed failed attempts at regaining control of the flight deck before it turned south. Regardless, we can now dovetail the activation of the SDU with the supposed loitering period, dropping another piece into the puzzle.
are there any connections in two mas airlines planes being lost ?i say yes mh370 disappeared in part because the airline did not ” purchace ” the long term engine monitoring program ,due to cost savings which doesn’t make sense since optimized systems (subsidiary of rolls royce ) claims cost savings with there real time ems system.
Now mh17 was flying over a active war zone where other planes had been shot down at altitude in recent days.why ? To cut costs! it simply would cost more to fly around the conflict zone as pointed out to me by miles obrien .so it may not be a stretch to conclude these were both driven by the bottom line .saving money…
Something just jumped out at me in reporting on cnn Mary schiavo mentioned kal 007 and mh 370 she stated the Russians had dropped ” false pingers” to mislead location in the 007 incident .seems she was implying this happened in mh370 search..I did not know this had happened in past.
FWIW, “loitering” is also consistent with the old “ledgerwood” shadowing theory (I know it is kind of silly to keep such things alive) – if hypothetically you were waiting for KLM flight to shadow through Indian airspace you might circle/loiter for a little while. Far fetched, but given that we’re entertaining the idea of spoofed data or suppressed negotiations on a satellite phone, I thought I’d go to bat for my favorite long-shot explanation.
Matty:
Something else worth noting: MH17 deviated from its normal path yesterday.
https://twitter.com/nihonmama/status/489914176010063872
Nihonmama/jjinjupiter –
What struck me about the flight path is that it basically represents the northern arc in reverse, even taking in the fmr Soviet Union. There are a few of us here who feel the BFO values in particular are wobbly so a trip down a busy route cuddled up to another plane is plausible still.
It would introduce the question though; why was that SDU turned on at all??
When MH370 first went missing Putin swooped on Ukraine and my head went off in a direction I wasn’t keen to articulate. What if you had to accommodate the idea of another MAS 777 getting shot down there a few months later there with a Russian missile? Putin is evil I’m sure, and the link theories will flow in another day or two.
Whether they dropped fake pingers in the MH370 search or not, they are that sort of crowd, it’s in the DNA.
@Tdm that is an awesome catch. I believe I had speculated here early on about the possibility of somebody throwing pingers in the water to 1) keep everybody busy, and 2) to get a “fish eye” view of everybody’s SAR and underwater military equipment. At the time I noticed that the Russians were conspicuously absent. Though the Chinese seemed to be sending everybody on a lot more wild goose chases – they were the ones detecting the pings, and they were also providing the “debris” images, and the Malaysians were contradicting themselves every hour. Sometimes you need a scorecard to keep track of the players.
Nevertheless, it’s very interesting to hear that the decoy pinger theory, which had been derided as a conspiracy theory at the time, was standard operating procedure 30 years earlier. Of course, if the USSR of 1983 could throw pingers in the water, the Russia, China, or India of 2014 could send handshakes up to a satellite if a plane was accidentally shot down over water.
Putin would not want to draw further attention to the presence of his missiles in the Ukraine but there is a view that this hardware requires a fair bit of technical know how to operate. A 777 was mistaken for a four engined Antonov in broad daylight? Too much vodka or am I being naive? And the crash scene has been looted. Just wonderful.
Russian SAM crews were commonly stationed in Libya and other places during the 80’s and 90’s and looks like a bit the same here. The firers were looking at a radar screen with state of the art detection ability. The 777 would have been emitting lots of signals consistent with a civilian aircraft. Takes me back to 1983 when the Russian pilot is heard on the radio – “the strobe light is clearly flashing.”
Matty:
“What struck me about the flight path is that it basically represents the northern arc in reverse, even taking in the fmr Soviet Union.”
Very interesting point. And FWIW, have also never doubted the possibility of a shadow, although in the dark with no transponder on, it wouldn’t be easy. But not impossible with a highly-skilled pilot. Like these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSp9ssHO9jk
@Matty/nihonmama: I wonder if that is why to SDU. Was turned back on, to allow them to receive the pings from kLM. They would have know where it was supposed to be based on the schedule, but may have wanted to see the ping data to confirm precise location/speed & heading to execute meeting up to shadow.
Can BFO’s react at all to flying in very close proxomity? Two sat links operating next to each other? Someone??
My vote is no, Matty, but I’m a layman. I can see the SDU picking up other flight’s satellite to plane signals, but not plane to satellite signals. Even if it could, the plane wouldn’t know what to do with the other plane’s messages, and they are not frequent enough to assist in tracking another plane.
One thing we’ve learned since Ledgerwood posted his Shadow theory – the existing radar couldn’t keep track of the plane when it was where it most certainly didn’t belong.
It would be hard to believe that anyone would notice an extra plane on a normal route, then, right? So realistically, MH370 didn’t need to shadow anybody – it probably would have been enough to stick to normal routes.
That was remarked at the time by a bunch of pilots I read in one article. As long as you stayed on the steady heading and altitude in a busy lane, at 3.00 am as a civilian craft most countries won’t care, India being one such country. MH370’s last plot have it heading northwest and towards a known route, the other arc equals oblivion.
They might not care, but if you were really trying to disappear with a plane you would want to pass through direct radar not only unnoticed, but undetected. I assume that some direct radar data around national borders is archived (hence the direct radar data that we have of the initial deviation from the route). And even if it is periodically/routinely turned off, would you take that chance if you were trying this audacious a plot. Going back you would find an unidentified 777 if it were not shadowing another plane. This might be after you got where you were going, but you couldn’t disappear the way MH370 did without hiding behind another plane.
Amazing! I confirmed this online and soon after saw Mary at CNN and thanked her for bringing it to light.
Does this Seem rather close to fly to a war zone.although instructed by ukraine atc what pilot and what airline would put there passengers in such harms way ?
——————-
http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Nation/2014/07/19/mh17-ukraine-traffic-control-dictate-plane-flight-path/
According to Malaysian Transport Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai, the direction given by the ATC needed to be obeyed since the route was under the ATC’s jurisdiction.
Izham said the route which MH17 flew was located about 100km from the restricted area, adding the ATC was actually the one which ensured whether any aircraft could use the route.
“The distance between the MH17 path and the restricted area was 100km away.
“The restricted area is located in the southern part while the MH17 path was 100km north from the restricted area,” he told a press conference at the Sama-Sama Hotel here.
http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Nation/2014/07/19/mh17-ukraine-traffic-control-dictate-plane-flight-path/
@Tdm – there were reports of it being the result of a weather diversion.
In any event, nobody was expecting the rebels to be in possession of SAMs of that capability. Even with Russian backing, there wouldn’t seem to be any need, since at the moment there isn’t really an air conflict going on in Ukraine.
Hi guys,
I’m back. After having had a great time in Princeton and NY, and after Germany took collectively some weeks off for World Cup Appreciation and celebration, grim reality has set in, and we are stuck with TWO mystery 777s from Malaysia Airlines. Has MAS just run into a patch of very bad karma, or are we looking at something truly evil here? More evil than rebels shooting down a commercial airliner by mistake? Sounds melodramatic, but there were only 15 commercial 777s in use in March. Now there are only 13 left 4 month later. And both lost planes belonged to MAS… Ockam’s Razor, anyone?
@Tdm, that bit about the decoy pingers is truly amazing, but since it seems so easy, it’s probably to be expected if we are dealing with foul play. Maybe, they were even off frequency a bit for a reason:if nothing is found, one can always say, ‘oh, it was something else, we were listening to’.
Has Mary Schiavo changed her mind about the plane?
If there were really decoy pingers thrown into the water, there’s no reason to believe, the plane truly ended up in the newly designated search zone.
And now everybody is VERY quick to state that MH 17 is absolutely not connected to MH 370 – but behind closed doors the talk might be very different.
@JS, here in Europe they say it was pretty much known that the rebels had the so called BUK-System, since they had downed an Antonov-26 transport plane, which is quite big and flew at a high altitude. I actually said a couple of days ago to someone, that it only was a matter of time until they shot down an airliner by mistake. A lot of companies had their planes flying around the crisis zone for a while already. So, yes, it was known that the rebels had the right equipment to shoot down high flying large planes.
I’m afraid it’s all in the very hard basket.
Welcome back Littlefoot
Littlefoot: Welcome back! I’ve noticed that the Malaysian parliament has scheduled an immediate inquiry into the loss of MH17; in the case of MH370 how bitterly ironic. Not losing heart, however, hopefully the inquiry into MH17 will give way to a broader enquiry into MAS, as well as civil aviation operations and military air defense protocols in Malaysia. We may learn more about MH370 yet. Now packing for our move to Tokyo, but will try to find time to contact my friends at parliament to learn more about how things are progressing.
Beyond yet another tragic loss of life and the implications for MAS and air travel in general, Putin’s lack of any real response to the tragedy of MH17 and its general portrayal in the russian media (it’s the fault of the West), has me concerned. The stage is now set for a further polarization between the EU/NATO and Russia, with Ukraine having emerged as a very real flashpoint. Russia has suffered numerous invasions routed through Ukraine, and it yet fears european, rightist fascism. They have very good reason to be concerned, yet Putin and his neo-Soviet behavior and disregard for the West’s rules of engagement are not helping matters all that much. Indeed, his behavior threatens the emerging power bloc of the BRIC nations, where China is already viewed as something of a pariah in terms of its nascent dabblings in force projection. America and the West at large have stretched their moral positions, levels of resolve and military resources to the breaking point, and a ‘power shortage’ is now emerging. Witness ISIS, and any number of lesser and greater clvil wars now burning in the Levant and across northern Africa. More resources are needed to fill the emerging gaps, and Putin just poked himself in the face in terms of being able to work within the dominant paradigm and exploiting an opportunity while filling a very real need for additional global security assets. This does not bode well for global security at large, no matter ones view of Putin or Russia.
@Littlefoot – yes, welcome back. I wonder if MAS knew about the SAMs, but even if they did, up until a few days ago it wasn’t clear they had any use for them. It’s still not even clear how either the rebels or Russia are served by shooting down planes, but that’s another story.
@Rand – “power shortage” is an apt description. All of the discretionary “adventures” over the last few decades have left quite a mess, and here we are.
In my opinion, MAS is probably on it’s way into the history books. Major accidents have wreaked havoc on airlines and to a lesser extent manufacturers – TWA, PanAm, and ValuJet come to mind, and of course nobody wanted to fly DC-10s after a few big accidents. To my knowledge, US Airways has yet to buy another Boeing since, and because of, the 1994 Pittsburgh 737 crash. It is highly unlikely that MAS will escape any liability for either accident, let alone both. For that matter, I suspect the Malaysian government will take a bigger hit nationally for this accident than Putin will internationally.
JS and Tdm: there apparently is an air exclusion zone over eastern Ukraine and the aircraft apparently steered clear of it. Local ATC, in any case, would have responsibility for the the demarcation of the exclusion zone and any routing. The pilots, then, were likely flying within what was thought to be a safe zone. You have to wonder who it was that made this particular choice; they must feel terrible.
The pro-Russian Ukrainian rebels would have reason for taking down a large aircraft: Kiev is using transport planes in the fight against the rebels.
I would imagine that poorly trained rebel operators at the controls of the SAM system led to the inadvertent taking down of MH17. Things could, of course, be quite more nefarious than this, but if there is one thing that I have learned from the MAS Twin Tragedies, it is that one cannot overestimate incompetence on the part of whomever is swaggering through a crime scene, whether they be drunk or sober, a perpetrator or an investigator.
You guys are still going strong with quality remarks.
Rand,I completely share your view about the overall political implications of this new tragedy.
We should be careful, though, and not reflexively always blame Putin for everything bad happening in this conflict.(Rand, you didn’t do this in your comment – I’m talking about all of us). There are factions of pretty bad guys on the Ukrainian side as well. The Western press just doesn’t talk much about their special brand of very problematic political persuations. It’s a little like in the first Sowjet-Afghan war, where the West sided (in principle rightfully) with the Afghan people – who in the end got from the frying pan into the fire. I’m not a fan of Putin at all and he is ruthless. Russia probably supplied the rebels with weapons and is thus responsible for many atrocities.But Putin is cold and calculating He and the pro-Russian rebels have no interest whatsoever to down a commercial airliner. It hurts their cause very much.So, from their point of view it probably was a terrible mistake. The big question is of course what led to this mistake. It could’ve been sheer incompetence and not being familiar with the BUK-system. But these rebels are no Afghan village people downing some helis with hand held artillary as portraid in the Tom Hanks/Julia Roberts movie. Many of them have been in the Ukrainian or Russian army and are well trained. So, if an indipendant investigation team gets the chance to actually do some investigation, one has to look very carefully into the chain of events which led to this tragic event.
The plane was flying within the limits of what was considered to be a so called safe zone at the time. But it was dangerously skirting the red lines. It was only just at a height, which was declared safe and it had drifted about 300 km westwards in it’s corridor compared to the days before, thus being smack over the rebels’ territory. Investigators might want to question if this was just a tragic coincidence – or not. The next question is, why the guys operating the BUK-system apparently mistook the plane for a transport Antonov 26, as their phone conversations seem to indicate. The BUK-system has primary and secondary radar in order to prevent those mistakes. Were the operators simply incompent or/and drunk or was something else going on there? That might be very hard to answer because so far no one has owned up to have pulled the trigger and no one can be questioned. It’s not even clear, where the black/orange boxes are, and the crime scene has been tampered with extensively. What a mess!
I just did some more catch up reading of your comments and discovered some heated discussions going on at the previous page.
I was an ardent supporter of the ‘Zaharie did it theory’ for a long time, as many facts and arguments seem to support this theory. I deveoped some doubts, when the discussions on sonic booms at the wrong location or missing sonic booms at the right locations and the possibilty spoof pings started. I’m not saying, they happened for sure, but this distinc possibility unsettled me. Now we’ve progressed to decoy pingers possibly thrown into the first search area, and another MAS Triple7 has been downed under unclear circumstances. All this doesn’t fit with ‘Captain Zaharie was the sole perpetrator – case closed’. But there are still many solid arguments in favour of him having been involved, even if some so called facts about his personal life are iffy. But there is still the distinct possibility, that he was involved, but wasn’t acting alone. Highjackers or factions with a different agenda might’ve used him and his publically well documented (rightful) anger against the government. It wouldn’t be the first time people with a weak spot become instrumental to other people’s agendas.
I’m not saying that it happened this way, but I try to argue here, that some theories are not mutually exlusive.
I read that this rebel commander had claimed that a third of his fighters were Russian and there is nothing really stopping Putin from feeding people into the fray. Ordinarily you wouldn’t sneak in those SAMs without a few safeguards like ensuring skilled operators as well or you are asking for trouble. Combat is a hell of a lot about target identification but it went totally missing here, or did it? Putin’s lads would/might have opportunity/authority to shoot at whatever and retreat into the tangle that is Ukraine. The rebel commander is a Russian stooge anyway. It’s possible the rebels were under the impression it was an Antonov while the firers knew otherwise. In any case there would have been conditions placed on that deployment – like no stuff ups!!! So was it a stuff up?
And as an ex Army man I have to say that some of these so called rebels look like Russian regulars to me. The body language, demeanour etc. Standing at the site looking the part – not all but some.
Withdrawing/hiding the launcher across the border confirms it was Russian so the crew would have been too. They either did what they were told or they made an astonishing error. Putin has a lot of 70’s-80’s baggage and he generally wants war.An Antonov is a sitting duck, there was no need to rush the shot.
Hi Rand:
“Local ATC, in any case, would have responsibility for the the demarcation of the exclusion zone and any routing. The pilots, then, were likely flying within what was thought to be a safe zone.”
Have you seen this?
Zerohedge: Was Flight MH17 Diverted Over Restricted Airspace?
http://t.co/yPtEnwzk12
And Rand and Littlefoot: your responses/analyses right on the money.
@Nihonmama, this bit of info, that MH17 was ‘diverted’ from it’s usual flight route was all over the European media as well and it was extensively discussed, that these statements aren’t accurate. The plane doesn’t have a fixed flight route, but it has been assigned to a flight corridor. Within this corridor it has a certain freedom of movement. MH17 didn’t leave it’s corridor. But compared to earlier flights a couple of days ago it apparently ‘drifted’ within this corridor about 300 km westwards for some reason, which meant, it was now flying directly over rebel territory. It’s not clear, why the plane flew a bit differently than on other days, but it doesn’t follow necessarily that Ukraine flight control was responsible for this and diverted the plane. There can be other reasons like flying around a bad weather zone. But it’s interesting nonetheless and important to find out why the plane’s captain choose a route within the corridor, which differed from the previous days.