Guest Post: Why Did MH370 Log Back on with Inmarsat?

[Editor’s note: One of the most intriguing clues in the MH370 mystery is the fact that the airplane’s satcom system logged back on to the Inmarsat network at 18:25. By understanding how such an event could take place, we can significantly narrow the range of possible narratives. In the interest of getting everyone on the same page in understanding this event, I’ve asked Mike Exner for permission to post the content of a detailed comment he recently provided.  One piece of background: a lot of us have been referring to the satellite communications system aboard the aircraft as the “SDU,” but as Mike recently pointed out in another comment, it technically should be called the “AES.” — JW.]

Until we have more evidence to support the theory that the loss of AES communications was due to the loss of primary power to the AES, we must keep an open mind. Loss of power may be the most likely cause (simplest explanation), but the fact is we do not know why the sat link was down between 17:37 and 18:25. My reluctance to jump to the conclusion that it must have been due to the loss of primary AES power is based on decades of experience in the MSS (mobile satellite service) industry. It’s not just another opinion based on convenience to support a theory. Let me elaborate on a few possible alternative explanations.

The potential for loss of the pilot carrier, due to the orientation of the aircraft in relation to the satellite, was increased as soon as the airplane turned WNW. Between the time of this turn (circa 17:50) and the time of the FMT (final major turn circa 18:25-18:40), the aircraft was flying more or less toward the satellite where the antenna pattern was near a null. Don and I have both looked at the antenna pattern in some detail and concluded that the antenna pattern and coincidental direction of flight were unlikely to be so bad that the pilot carrier would be lost due to this geometry. Moreover, according to a MAS Press Conference on March 20, 2014, there should have been an ACARS message transmitted at 17:37, but none was received. ( bit.ly/QFbF6C ) At 17:37, the aircraft was still over Malaysia SW bound, so the HGA pattern would not have been an issue at that point. Taken together, loss of the pilot carrier due to antenna orientation appears to be a possible, but unlikely explanation for the outage.

Ionospheric scintillation has also been suggested as a possible explanation for the loss of service during this period, but there have been no reports of other aircraft in the vicinity suffering a loss of service, so this explanation is also unlikely. (Note: Ionospheric scintillation in the equatorial regions can be a big problem for VHF and UHF communications, but it does not affect communications in the L band as much.)

The MCS6000 AES, located in the back of the airplane, requires a continuous feed of INS data (position, speed, etc.) via an ARINC 429 link from the computers in the front of the plane. If the AES stopped receiving INS data for any reason, then it would not have been able to steer the HGA, or compute the required Doppler corrected transmitter frequency. Thus, it is very likely that the AES would be out of service if there was any loss of this 429 data link, or the information carried over the link. Given that there was no VHF voice communications after 17:19:24 and the Transponder Mode S data was lost after 17:21:13, it is certainly possible that the INS data flowing to the AES was disrupted due to a common failure in some piece of equipment in the E-Bay. This explanation for the loss of service cannot be dismissed as easily as the two previous theories.

However, there is one additional observation that tends to favor the loss of primary power theory over the loss of INS data theory (or the other two theories above). We note that when the AES logged on at 18:25:26, the BFO values for the first few minutes thereafter appear to have been drifting in a way that is more consistent with a restoration of primary power event than a restoration of INS data event. If the AES power had been on during the outage, the oven controlled reference oscillator would have maintained a stable frequency and there should not have been any significant BFO transients following the 18:25:26 logon.

In summary, there are multiple alternative explanations for the AES outage, but loss of primary power is the most likely explanation. Like so many other necessary assumptions, like the mode of navigation after the FMT, we have no choice. We must base the search on the most likely assumptions while maintaining an awareness that few of the assumptions have probabilities of .999.

637 thoughts on “Guest Post: Why Did MH370 Log Back on with Inmarsat?”

  1. @Nihonmama

    “… unless someone knew that 370 had diverted???”

    >Your understanding is not faltering Spencer. You just woke up.

    Not quite the slumber I had so very much desired…but thanks for the alarm.

    Okay, the link you provided IS interesting, though I’m unsure what to make of it. IF this can be proven it certainly would give me pause…and I’d be more willing to take a closer look at some of the more outlandish (IMO) theories.

    My point about Hishammuddin telling 4corners that it was IDENTIFIED ( IN REAL TIME) as being friendly: This is unimpeachable evidence that takes the ‘accident’ scenario off the table (hello Oleksandr).

    Of course, I have known this for some time (as have you and others).

    What I am asking is how it is that Hishammuddin walked out of this interview with ANY question remaining as to whether this was accidental or deliberate (for many others this remains a question until today)???

    Just looking for an explanation.

    Cheers

    Spencer

  2. @Spencer

    Hishammuddin is a spooky dude. Wonder who he kept eyeing to his left?

    Either they’er lying or complete dumb a**’s looking to cover their tracks. How could they tell if it was commercial with no transponder on. And if so, they wouldn’t concern themselves that the transponder WASN’T on??

    Whole thing sinks.

  3. @spencer – can you explain why “friendly” and “accident” are mutually exclusive?

    It seems to be to be the reverse – that one excuse for a diversion and a dead transponder would be a technical issue. A plane with known issues would be considered friendly.

    Now, being that the plane had foreigners on it, I’m not convinced that even if it was a known hijacking that it would get a “hostile” label. It might still be considered friendly until its intentions were known.

    My point is that without knowing what would constitute “hostile” or “unfriendly” we can’t really speculate on what this statement means.

  4. @JS

    >@spencer – can you explain why “friendly” and “accident” are mutually exclusive?

    I’ll give it a go. It’s not that it was designated as either friendly or hostile, it’s that it was DESIGNATED at all. To do so, in REAL TIME (as Hishammuddin claims was done), one must be privy to information that allows for a determination to be made. What was the information in hand that made such a determination possible?

    It seems clear that ‘they’ knew MH370 had diverted and that it CLEARLY had not fallen into the SCS…which effectively takes ‘accident’ off the table.

    KlATCC supposedly was first alerted that MH370 missing and had never checked in with HCM. This notification came from HCM. YET, Hishammuddin states that ‘they didn’t scramble fighters because the a/c was friendly’. This intimates that ‘they’ knew much more about the situation than we have been led to believe, to put it mildly.

    The only evidence that Malaysia knew about MH370 is the 18:22 RETROACTIVE radar image they produced. This is simply impossible to reconcile with the statement that Hishammuddin made.

  5. Doesn’t that merely take a crash in the SCS off the table, assuming of course they had identified the right plane?

    Or is that what you’re saying – that the fact that they made a determination means the flight continued beyond the SCS?

  6. In regard to the ACARS resuming operation after a time of no operation, are there any overload components in the system, CB’s or integral to the electronics, that would auto reset after overheating and given sufficient time to cool?

  7. @spencer

    It seems that the radar data was not even being evaluated in real time. The track of MH370 was probably identified after the Malay military was informed of the missing aircraft. Malayasia was not and is not in a state of high anxiety relative to incursions from a foreign power. Hard to imagine why someone would even be interested in going there except Chinese tourists who want to shop. My guess is the radar track was dredged up from recorded data long after the aircraft had passed.

  8. Maybe Malaysia “knew of the tflight track” is because ithe misinformation was being planned that way…..
    Not saying they had any radar tracks on the matter.

  9. @JS

    >Doesn’t that merely take a crash in the SCS off the table, assuming of course they had identified the right plane?

    Well, if you take a crash in the SCS off the table, then one is left to wonder how Malaysia deemed it appropriate to search the SCS? It seems beyond any shadow of a doubt that they knew otherwise.

    So, continuing on, I cannot imagine a scenario that was purely ‘accidental’ and non-nefarious in which Malaysia would engage in such manner of deception. It makes no sense. It is apparent to me that they knew from the earliest hours just EXACTLY what they were dealing with.

    >Or is that what you’re saying – that the fact that they made a determination means the flight continued beyond the SCS?

    Yes.

    @Dennis

    I hear you. However, quite a few details suggest that Malaysia was not as asleep at the wheel as one might be inclined to believe. The ‘incompetence’ angle has some fairly pronounced holes in it:

    1) KLATCC NEVER even attempted to contact MH370 as far as we know…I will go so far as to say that they absolutely did not.

    IMO, the only reason that can be ascribed to such dereliction would be direction from higher ups. This is beyond incompetence.

    2) MAS ops ONLY tries to contact MH370 two times over a period of many hours…despite having NO CLUE as to where the airplane was?

    IMO, the only conceivable reason for such few attempts would be an intimate knowledge of just what was going on, and, once again, orders from above.

    3) Hishammuddin affirms that the military DID track ‘an aircraft’ in real time, AND that a determination was made by ‘the officer in charge’ that it was not hostile. So, just how was this determination made? Apparently,because it was determined to be ‘commercial’, from their airspace (how could THIS have been determined IF they did not know it WAS INDEED MH370???), and not a threat.

    Is he just covering up for gross incompetence here? I tend to think otherwise. It seems like very calculated decisions were being made during the wee hours of the morning.

    4) He received word ‘early in the morning’ from DCA, Air force and ‘many phone calls’. Clearly, according to him, quite a few entities were wide awake.

    5) He personalizes the decision to not scramble fighters. This again suggests that he was making real time decisions and was fully engaged in whatever was going on.

    Then, most remarkably of all, he says this (more or less): “If I shot down a plane with 12 nationals, half of them Chinese, I’d be in a WORSE position probably”.

    One could argue that he is saying this with the benefit of hindsight, BUT, notice the use of the word PROBABLY.

    This is a striking example of unwittingly letting the cat out of the bag.

    By degree, he implies that he is at present in a very compromised position. Much more compromised than if this was still just an unexplained accident in his mind. If that was truly case, he would NEVER say that PROBABLY he would be in a worse position if he shot down the aircraft!!! Huh???

    No, here he has let us know without any doubt that he is hiding a very inconvenient truth…that he knows exactly what happened to MH370…there is no doubt.

    Spencer

  10. For people who claim that lack of debris so far is evidence against the plane being in the SIO, couldn’t you also say the fact we haven’t heard any other additional info is evidence against the plane being anywhere but the SIO? In other words, if this plane landed somewhere, the chances of us having heard something about it by now through an intelligence leak is far greater than it having been found in the SIO if it crashed there, solely based on how large the search area is.

    @nihonmoma: I noticed you said you did not believe this was Shah’s doing. I’m just curious as to what your proposed scenario is.

  11. @Jay

    FWIW, couldn’t agree more on this point. It’s been close to a year now and not a peep from anyone, anywhere. Truly remarkable that Malaysia has managed to orchestrate a cover-up of such magnitude.

    What most upsets me is the deference given to Malaysia and ‘diplomacy’ by govts. around the world, at the expense of the truth. Surely lots of quid pro quo and wrangling going on, while the NOK continue to suffer.

  12. *Long Post*

    @matty, Spencer, @ChrisButler, JS:

    “the one that got away.”

    Or, if it didn’t get away, perhaps one that was thwarted in the process.

    “it doesn’t look right.”

    Consider the following — by no means a comprehensive list of ‘happenings’, but in totality, it does suggest that something is amiss.

    1. May/13 – The US transport (we now know it was a “Wolfhound”) that supposedly ran out of fuel over Banda Aceh and was forced to land. But plug Male (Maldives) to Singapore into a great circle mapper and you’ll see that the most expedient route is a right across Indonesia, far south of Banda Aceh. So what were the SpecOps on that Wolfhound looking for, flying way out of their way, over the tip of Sumatra?

    2. Mar/7/14 – Kate Tee, on a yacht sailing from Cochin (India) to Phuket (Thailand), sees a “bright orange glow”, heading towards her boat (moving from North to South). Further: “what looked like black smoke behind the orange glow, which resembled a contrail, but black…. I couldn’t see any fire or flames, or anything like that, it was just a plane glowing orange and surrounded by an orange glow like a halo. As though it were being lit up by sodium lights, but I couldn’t see sodium lights. As it came a little closer, I could clearly see the hull was glowing orange….As it moved behind us, I could see the shape very clearly, and it was that of a passenger plane. When I awoke, there was an orange glow (like a dome) over the horizon, in the approximate direction I felt the plane had flown. My first thought was “Shit, it has crashed after all”, but the orange glow was not flickering in any way. It was very similar to the white glow we had seen two and three nights previously. I noted it over several observations, and the intensity remained constant.”

    3. Mar/8/14 – a (still UNCONFIRMED) China Times report of an SOS call. Rough translation: “the U.S. Embassy said the 2:43 U.S. military bases stationed in Thailand U-Tapao SOS signal was listening to some of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 emergency call, said the aircraft cabin facing disintegration driver call, they want a forced landing”

    4. Mar/12/14 – Mike McKay, working on oil rig Songa Mercur off the coast of the Vietnamese town of Vung Tau, sends an email to Vietnamese officials: “I believe I saw the Malaysian Airlines plane come down. The timing is right.”

    NOTE: 2/19/15 NZHerald – Mike McKay comes out of the woodwork and “today insisted he thinks the official search for the Malaysian jet is happening in the wrong place.

    “‘I’ve thought about it and thought about it, over and over and while I cannot say for certain that the burning object in the sky was definitely MH370, the timing fits in with when the Malaysian plane lost contact. I have been trying to disprove that what I saw was the aeroplane ever since.’ And so far he has failed to disprove it.”

    5. April/14 – FlyingwithFish (a well-known aviation/travel tweep who also appears to have a very good inside connection at DHS (Dept of Homeland Security) tweets:

    “Does #China’s MSS currently have #MH370? A DoD briefing would indicate the US Gov’t think they got to it first.”

    6. Apr/14 – ‘Metao’, who appears to be an insider, on Reddit:

    “A transient is an temporal anomaly. A boom is what you think. So, this wasn’t well publicised, but the translation is: a very loud broadband noise like an explosion (or heavy object striking the water at high speed) was detected on two different data recorders, one belonging to CMST off Rottnest Island, and one belonging to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty people near Cape Leeuwin, I think? at around the same time of the half handshake. Using speed of sound estimates it was possible to guess where the noise came from, and it was near the arc calculated by inmarsat.. Ocean Shield went there with the TPL – towed pinger locator – and viola.

    Apparently hoops were jumped through to access Diego Garcia’s data, but they’ve been doing seismic measurements, so the data is a mess and unusable.

    As I said some of this i know firsthand and some is second. As far as I know the second hand information is legit, but has not been well publicised (but as far as I know it’s no secret). A journalist should call CMST, do a little leg work, and write an article. You know, do some journalism instead of regurgitating press releases and interviewing professional press consultants (aka people that didn’t cut it doing real work).”

    7. May/19/14 – ABC/4 CORNERS documentary airs.

    As Spencer notes: “somehow MH370 was identified as being friendly in REAL TIME. Who identified MH370 as being friendly, if not the military?”

    And not only that. I posted here, more than once, that Hishammuddin Hussein, using verbal and non-verbal cues, clearly seemed to be suggesting that MH370 was shot down. From the interview:

    ABC “Why shoot it down if it’s not hostile?”
    Hishamhuddin: “Well the Americans would”

    WHY WOULD HE SAY THAT?

    8. June/14 – ‘Petrossian50’ – a tweep whose real identity is unknown, whose comments, while often cryptic, also appear to be prescient at times, tweets:

    “I want to enjoy, expose and embarrass my treacherous, deadly former employers. MH370 went wrong!”

    And

    “MH370 again, where is the immigration official that let the 2 flagged passports through? Again, ISI knows more.”

    ISI is PAKISTAN intelligence. If Petrossian is telling the truth, why would Pakistan ‘know’ about the two flagged passports on MH370?

    Also recall: Lt. Gen. McInerney claimed to have a source confirming not only that MH370 “is in Pakistan” but that the “sources have BOEING info”. McInerney hasn’t retracted his(repeated) Pakistan claim, but he hasn’t offered additional information confirming it either.

    9. July/14 – MH17 is shot down over Ukraine. On board is the step-grandmother of Malaysia’s PM Rajib Nazak and Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein.

    10. Sep/5/14 – NATURE: Indian Ocean acoustic signals discovered by Curtin researchers not crash of MH370. But this ‘finding’ doesn’t seem definitive and note the location of the “new estimate” (read: origin of the sound) http://t.co/TqHqQY1rxv Also note that US Geological Survey said the seismic event was ‘geological’, but UST (China) said ‘plane crash’.

    11. Late Sept and early Oct/14 – WSJ, Reuters and then Newsweek report on the attack (by AQ, and current and ex-Pakistani naval officers) on the PNS Zulfiqar – a PAKISTANI warship.

    “The plan was to hijack PNS Zulfiqar to launch an attack on a U.S AIRCRAFT CARRIER (CAPS mine). ‘They had taken over control of the ship and were proceeding to attack the American vessel when they were intercepted by the Pakistan Armed Forces.'”

    Matty, your response when I posted that story here: “that Pakistan story is amazing – in that it wasn’t a major story?”

    PING. Why wasn’t this a major, massively reported story? An AQ plot to attack an US aircraft carrier that was thwarted (by Pakistan) and it didn’t get wall-to-wall coverage?

    12. Dec/14 – QZ8501, a flight of the Indonesian affiliate of AirAsia (which is based in Malaysia), crashes en route from Surabaya, Indonesia to Singapore. TWO WEEKS BEFORE 8501 CRASHES, a Chinese blogger (‘OP’/’Landlord’) warns of an AirAsia disaster in a Chinese online forum (which then appeared in rough translation on Reddit):

    “the people that brought down MH370 is going to target another Malaysian airline… and it all has something to do with the US… Black hand has hijacked and shot down MH370 and MH17. This has pretty much killed the 6th largest airline: Malaysian airline. Now the black hand are targeting AirAsia to ruin this airline cause it too belong to Malaysia. Given how powerful the black hand are I suggest that all Chinese thinking about traveling to avoid AirAisa, so that you don’t disappear like those on MH370… Don’t be a victim go hid. avoid Malaysian airline and AirAsia and life is precious, and your safety is important.”

    How did ‘Landlord’ know two weeks before the fact that disaster would befall an AirAsia airplane?

    13. Jan/27+28/15 – ‘John’, who clams to be a NoK and airline pilot tweets:

    “yes the pilots #MH370 were informed US navy exercises that night”

    When I pressed John to clarify whether he meant in the GoT or Malacca Straits, he told me (via DM) that the NOTAM to MH370 concerned exercises in the Malacca Straits.

    NOTE: There were military exercises in the Malacca Strait (‘Exercise Malapura’), between Malaysia and Singapore, that took place between Feb 25 and Mar 6, 2014.

    Now, do planes taking off from KLIA bound for points north and east, first fly out over the (southern) Malacca Strait, turn around and then proceed north? If they don’t (and if John’s info is correct), why would Malaysia (KLIA operations or ATC) have given MH370 a notice about military exercises in the Malacca Strait?

    The obvious implication is that someone KNEW that MH370 was going to turn around, cross back (west) over peninsular Malaysia, and head toward the Malacca strait.

    Other than one tweet on Feb/16, ‘John’ has gone silent.

    14. Feb/17/15 MalayMailOnline (h/t Lucy Barnes):

    Court suggests MH370 passenger’s children settle out of court

    Regarding the plaintiff’s filing:

    “The two brothers claim that the Immigration Department had failed to conduct thorough checks on the MH370 passengers which enabled a NUMBER OF PASSENGERS to board the flight using false identification documents.”

    A “number of” doesn’t sound like two. It sounds like MORE THAN two. But according to reports, the only two pax on board MH370 who allegedly had false passports were the two Iranians who were emigrating to Europe — and who reportedly were later cleared by INTERPOL. Is it possible that there were OTHERS on MH370 with fake travel documents that we are not being told about, despite reports that everyone on board was ‘cleared’?

    Moreover, why, at this early stage, when the discovery phase would very likely not be completed, is the High Court in Malaysia trying to get the plaintiffs suing Malaysia and MAS to settle, especially given that settlements often entail confidentiality agreements? In other words, what evidence is Malaysia trying to prevent from coming out during trial?

    And, was the fact that two Iranians were on board MH370 used as a red-herring?

    15. June/9/14 – Petrossian50 tweets:

    “Again coming back to earlier ‘obvious’ findings: the two Iranians triggered (not committed) the actions. Malaysia knows but is gagged”

  13. Jay –

    There are dozens of commercial jets that have gone missing, either hijacked/stolen/diverted mysteriously, in the world at present that are unaccounted still. As JS points out some have turned up in Africa after lengthy absences. If I recall correctly there about 19,000 commercial jets operating in the world with no location register and no tracking. The sight of a plane at an airstrip is not really remarkable and who is to know their histories. They are traded all the time. If someone nicked MH370 it wouldn’t be sitting in plain view. Jeff’s Kazakhstan scenario is in the former USSR which happens to be strategically dotted with large and generally derelict air bases with an abundance of hangar infrastructure. These locations are generally remote. Some people sniffed when VIctor suggested a landing at Banda Aceh but when you live near an airport you tune the noise out. As I said there is nothing remarkable about jet engines when you hear them all the time. Same applies to the Maldives.

    On debris though, we may never again see such a concerted and sustained effort over such a time span to find a bit plane. Satellites, sub trackers with the latest surface scanning radar, planes, ships, the world’s media. To this day nothing, it’s pretty remarkable when AF447 left junk everywhere – we recovered 3000 pieces of it. A high fragmentation crash will have left a long trail of seats, life jackets, composites, suitcases, assorted cargo, buoyant panels, shoes, you name it. Those satellites were hard at it within a week but only found sea junk. All in all, remarkable. We have never come up this empty before having thrown the kitchen sink and I bet prior to there would have been plenty prepared to state that this was basically impossible.

  14. @Nihonmama:

    You do a very good job of digging up the various odd reports and puzzling happenings over the past 11 months, but I still haven’t seen you suggest one cohesive scenario that incorporates these various news clippings and twitter messages. If I understand correctly, you’re suggesting that MH370 flew back into the Straits of Malacca in order to be shot down by the ongoing naval exercises? This truly makes less sense than flying it to the SIO to disappear.

  15. @Jay:

    “I still haven’t seen you suggest one cohesive scenario that incorporates these various news clippings and twitter messages”

    #protip: I don’t need to suggest a cohesive scenario (yet) to point out that the ‘narrative’ has a problem. Multiple ones, actually.

  16. @All

    Hishammuddin is still a spooky dude to me, his eye’s betray him. The perfect nervous liar that would probably pass a polygraph, only because he believes it himself. PURE unadulterated incompetence. Anyone could have floated the Queen Mary into their airspace w/o reservation to the sound of snoring in the wheelhouse. Although, given the chance, I would have asked. “How would you have known it was commercial & friendly given that there was no transponder feed, neither primary nor secondary proving otherwise?” HUGE lapse in security that will never be admitted to.

    Landing in @ Bander-E, Maldives…really doesn’t hold water either. I was an AC lineman for over 15 years & you MUST have ground support for an AC that size. Ya gonna silence ground crew too? Tow it, fuel it, not to mention riotous pax that were bound for China. Unless dead already…then why that path? You would have to agree with the Northern path of Jeff Wise. Why stop & be discovered? Fly straight to the destination why risk detection?

    Here again, we circle around to the unthinkable, suicide. This would be another reason why MAS & the Gov’t is taking the accident avenue, other than paying off the NOK & blackening the obvious.

  17. Chris – who said there was no ground support? Nihomama’s reference to the Pakistani naval cell who had arranged to take over a vessel for the purpose of attacking a US vessel is potentially illuminating. The way Victor puts it – If I am correct – it involved a second aircraft.

  18. @Spencer, all

    I dont buy one bit of the fairy tales of the “inept” and “tired” RMAF using their night shifts for an extra time for a sound sleep before their radar screens.

    Those “sleepers” are commanded by an australian general in Butterworth from the likes of Angus Houston or so and you can be dead sure, that no personnel would have the chuzpe to violate rules unless it would get sacked immediately and would probably go to jail also.

    They were fully on alert that night, military exercises just ended one day before. Also there are insider reports of the fighter jets in Butterworth being readied for start. They got back to the hangar when the plane turned to NW instead direction of the KL towers.

    Also there are the direct lies (IMO) from MAS to the HCM ATC about the whereabouts of MH370. This is a typical Non-Sensical story from a spin doctor. MAS told HCM not, that they believed the plane to be OK in Cambodia and later on the East Coast of Vietnam, they deliberately misled the HCM ATC by telling, that they knew it was in Cambodia and so on. This was a calculated deception. The spin, that the MAS officers in the MAS center in KL are so inept as not to be capable to tell a projection from a real flight position is so bad, that i wonder that everyone believed it.

    Spencer, you are perfectly right to revisit the deception and cover games of the early hours of the deviation, the way you do. I think that someone centered at Malaysia was involved in the disappearance and tried to use any means to buy time, until no trace of the plane could be found anymore.

  19. Hello,

    I have a technical question to ask if I may do so here in this forum.

    If then what go to next side flow right then down side flow left If then what go to next flow down side flow left If then what go to next flow up flow right If then what go to flow down to the SIO?

    Is that how the hypothesis was formed so systematically and perfect for events that forget all the pertinent requirements to meet those “If then What’s go to next”?

    I was just wondering where in this wild flowchart of explanations reside facts that does not allow the hypothesis to “what” and End instead of go to next?

    Was that ever included in the checks and balances at all?

    Thank you for time in answering my question!

    via Shark Lasers

  20. @MuOne

    Thank you for your reply, but that was my point exactly, Huh?

    It is a series of Flow Chart prompts virtually impossible made to appear as possible without being checked with balances and factual evidence.

    [Ed note: Shark Lasers is henceforth banned for being so incomprehensible that he could only be another already-banned commenter.]

  21. @Cosmicacademy

    Then why didn’t they scramble? Or does MAS dictate the military response? The Malaysian military just coming off of alert let pass an airliner that size blacked out with no reaction? It’s either ineptness or the grandest conspiratorial cover up’s in aviation history.

    Or maybe there were satellite calls coming from 370 dictating the play calls.

  22. @Cosmicacademy

    Forgot that the defense minister & transportation minister are one & the same. I just answered my own question…..Pardon me

  23. @Nihonmama:

    Fair enough, you don’t have to come up with a cohesive scenario, but you at least need to try and reconcile more clearly all of the points you are raising. Anybody can point out that a narrative of a major mystery has problems, especially when we don’t have all the relevant info. But you seem to suggest that your evidence is more compelling than the Inmarsat evidence. You are putting more credence in the sightings by the the oil-rig worker and the yachter than the ping data. You are putting more credence in 3rd-hand knowledge of naval exercises than the inmarsat data. You are using your skills as a forensic psychologist to determine that HH displayed behavior suggestive of deception. You are putting confidence in the slightly absurd comments by Lt. McInerney, which are completely unsubstantiated. You are tying subsequent accidents to MH370–by the way–step-grandmother of HH and Nazak..really? This was the big target here? A defenseless step-grandmother? That’ll really show em’

    I’m not saying that these things are all necessarily irrelevant, but there comes a point where this list of ‘strangeness’ needs to be narrowed down so as not to begin to contradict itself. Can you at this point think of any scenario which 1)includes these reports and 2)makes any sense?

  24. One last comment to piggy-back off my last comment..It does seem that both Mike Mcckay and Kate Tee are what we could consider to be reliable sources–that is, it does not seem as though they are lying about what they saw. However, could these sightings not be explained by either 1) The ongoing ‘naval exercises’ that are purported to have occurring or 2) A Meteorite/Meteor

  25. @Chris Butler

    While you and I share VERY similar POV’s in regard to what we potentially have here, we diverge on just when the coverup began in earnest.

    >although, given the chance, I would have asked. “How would you have known it was commercial & friendly given that there was no transponder feed, neither primary nor secondary proving otherwise?” HUGE lapse in security that will never be admitted to.

    Yes, but even more poignantly, how did you know it was from YOUR airspace (this is what Hishammuddin says). The only conclusion here is that they knew it was MH370, not just an unidentified ‘aircraft’.

    The totality of the evidence is compelling, IMO, that Malaysia knew full well that MH370 (NOT just ‘an aircraft’) had diverted.

    This makes the SCS search beyond criminal. I don’t for a minute, given ALL that I have looked at, buy that their was a HUGE lapse in security.

    Finally, let us remember that MAS knew very well the person who was piloting the aircraft that morning (regardless of whether one cares to implicate Zaharie or not). The minute MAS ops was notified that 370 had disappeared and it was realized that Zaharie was at the controls, alarm bells would be going amuk (pun intended) and surely a phone call was urgently placed to the MOT (our shifty, slimy friend).

    If the MOT was not ALREADY aware????

    @Cosmic Academy

    Points well made and appreciated. I omitted the ‘Cambodia’ falsehood as I grew tired of everyone just dismissing it as mere confusion and incompetence…No way.

    Spencer

  26. @Spencer

    Hard to believe the Malaysian populace along with the Chinese Gov’t isn’t standing on spooky dudes desk & why more weight hasn’t been brought to bare from all directions. The Maylays will shrug it off as a BS nat’l security issue, or “we have to confirm the radar data with the b-boxes”….Gee, wonder if he turned those off too?…..How convenient.

  27. @Matty

    I’m not a radar man, but flying in the direction of Pakistan. Wouldn’t you think with all that’s been going on since the Afgan invasion, military radar would have picked up a 777? We’ve been tracking Russian fighters flying w/o transponders on.

  28. @Jay:

    “You are putting more credence in the sightings by the the oil-rig worker and the yachter than the ping data. You are putting more credence in 3rd-hand knowledge of naval exercises than the inmarsat data.” You are using your skills as a forensic psychologist to determine that HH displayed behavior suggestive of deception.”

    Oh, the horror… She’s suggesting that in totality, there are many other unexplained factors/happenings that warrant consideration (because they’re possibly relevant) and therefore, the ping data is not the Alpha and the Omega. Oh. My. God.

    FWIW, I’m not a forensic psychologist. But my undergraduate degree is in psychology. My professional training is in law (with focus on criminal) but I’ve done political asylum work too. Both of those will make one cry. A lot. Don’t practice and have worked in business (strategy/consulting/biz dev) for years, including a long stint in Japan — and the Boston Consulting Group. Add technology and entertainment too. Truth be told, I’m actually a creative person — so all of the other stuff I’ve seen/done in life comes in handy. Are we clear now?

    I recall sitting in a screening of SYRIANA, and from the opening scene to the end, a woman behind us, to her boyfriend/husband, just kept saying (loudly): “I don’t understand. What just happened? There’s too much going on. I’m cold. Why did he say that? Who is she? I just don’t get it.”

    It wasn’t linear enough. All she wanted was the ‘answer’. And so, she missed everything else.

  29. @Chris Butler

    When it became clear, that the plane would go NW, direction of the naval forces returning from their early march exercise. The could sure take care of everything, e.g. spotting any changes of course with ship based radar (over horizon?).

    Also for the record. The straits is one of most critical geostrategic points on earth. Its definitely observed by all kinds of satellites day and night. And its easy to spot a jumbo jet with his long exhaust trails by infrared from space. As soon as RMAF realized a diverted plane, all naval and space assets would have been available.

  30. @Jay:

    “to determine that HH displayed behavior suggestive of deception.”

    Another misread/misinterpretation.

    I’ve never said or implied that Hishammuddin Hussein was being deceptive. In fact, if one actually reads my post(s) on this, it should be clear that I’m saying the opposite.

    One could argue that Hishammuddin’s immediate reaction to the question looked like “an excited utterance”.

    That comes from the law of evidence. I’ll leave it you to look it up.

  31. @CosmicAcademy & All

    Let me run this by ya. As I said I’m no radar or satellite man so be patient. Two ground to aircraft calls by MAS went unanswered, meaning it made contact, but went unanswered. One was 1:58 Hr/Mins, into the flight and another 6:32 Hr/Mins into the flight. Those would’ve bounced off a satellite. Why not plot those against the BTO/BFO models?

  32. @Chris

    The latest claims being made by the science guys are that it is more likely that the calls never reached MH370 (ie…nothing went unanswered).

    I call hogwash here. For 9 months there was a general consensus that theses two calls did in fact go unanswered…and THEN, seemingly out of nowhere, posters here began to profess a more nuanced POV vis a vis these calls…that they never reached the a/c. This based on data interpretation that apparently went 9 months sans proper review? Huh?

    Not taking potshots here, but it certainly has all the appearances of a convenient and timely spin.

  33. @Nihonmama: thank you for this outstanding compendium of question marks.

    What are the chances these are ALL false leads?

    @ALSM: how is your personal assessment of the probability of finding the plane within (error tolerance du jour) of the IG spot affected by…

    1) No surface debris recovered after 11.4 months?
    2) No acoustic impact detected by Curtin U’s equipment off SW coast of Oz?

  34. @Jay and Nihonmama –

    My takeaway from Nihonmama’s post, along with some prior stories, is not that the accounts need to be reconciled, but that some need to be ruled out.

    By my count, according to eyewitnesses, acoustic data, and satellite data (both photo and Inmarsat), we have, at minimum, these locations for the flight’s end:

    1. The SCS, according to Mr. McKay
    2. The NE IO, according to Ms. Tee
    3, The middle IO, according to some interpretations of Curtin data
    4. The SIO, according to most interpretations of Inmarsat data
    5. The Beshtash valley, based on images of a large smoke plume approximately along the 7th ping arc
    6. The Maldives, according to residents.

    NONE of these accounts can be reconciled, yet NONE have been ruled out yet. Eyewitnesses are unreliable. Software is buggy. Images – well, I saw MH370 on a piece of toast the other day.

    The effort should not be in silencing the sources of each account, nor trying to reconcile one with the other, but rather to try to explain as many as possible with explanations other than MH370.

    The explanation of the Curtin boom is probably a good start – a reasonable interpretation was developed without any hysteria. The spoof theory provides somewhat of an alternative explanation for the SIO data.

    But what about the others? Nobody in any position of authority has even tried.

  35. $Spencer @ All

    While TOO late running for the classroom regarding the ground to AC phone calls. I heave agree with Spencer, more cover up BS, for whatever reason the M-lays are covering up.

  36. Wups,

    Cooking and typing too fast. I have to agree with Spencer. Dispensing fact’s and whereabouts is as elusive JFK. Whith too much deceptive answers, with no concrete evidence to back it up. Flippen’ Mess!

  37. @spencer,

    In my recollection, the BFO/BTO for the sat phone calls in the log were discussed from first release of said logs.

    I also recall discussions way back when that these phone calls got to a level where the A/C systems responded (hence logged on the ground), but failed to complete to a level at which the on board phones would have actually rung.

    So there is no hogwash in terms of “the science guys” changing their mind about phone calls reaching MH370. It did reach, but didn’t ring, hence un-answered calls.

    Cheers
    Will

  38. @Spencer & All

    I knew I was running late for class when posing the question about the calls, but needed to know, just the same. Your right..Hogwash.

    Thank You

    AF447 was a 40 sq., mile search area when knowing the last transmission. With all of the suppressed information albeit from the Maylays. What about the Aussie’s (J-lee), NSA with a sat & comm system stuck up every a**’ and the known world community. Not a peep. Hard to believe.

  39. @MuOne

    >”hogwash” “the science guys”

    After working around the space for many years, experience eventually shows the mind “hogwash” vs “the science guys” in reality.

    The signal logs and the “alleged” identified cell phones in the signal logs aren’t cell phones calls.

    The signal logs clearly identify what those “alleged” telephone calls are, being outbound via “Circuit Mode Data Transfer”.

    There are no outbound calls of any record that show an inbound call to MH370 that corresponds with the events of record.

    This goes back to my comment on “If then, what next, goto” being the flow chart that has no end point except pushing an agenda and incorrectly in doing so, therefore the process has failed and is “hogwash”.

    Point is clear, thank you again for the time spent on this matter.

    via shark lasers

  40. @All

    While sounding like a big conspiracy theorist, I’m not. Does not everyone find it completely overwhelming, that we have a 21000 mile haystack to cover when we have technologies that would solve the problem if the incident was transparent. All radar data from all three nations, along with Jundalee? IF given the chance & capabilities? Not to say that the conspiracy goes to “hide 370 due to those capabilities, only that capabilities trump folks like the IG finding 370 w/o giving up intelligence values or capabilities? The Brits dispatched a sub for 370 & was recalled for “reasons”. I’m sure it was Nat’l security BS. No one wants known “Capabilities” & especially radar & sat comm. But to set aside this investigation due to these concerns,to solve it w/o the benefit of their assistance is going to be a case study, of how we figure it out…. Know what I mean?

  41. @sopcvkrt shark lasers

    Thought you were banned. Go swill more whiskey and go to bed…or better yet, just go away.

  42. @chris butler

    Excuse me I find you comment directed at to be “manifestly” offensive and skits insanity.

    I suggest you question the Editor in Chief on that matter.

    It is the Editor in Chief allowed me to address these stringent concerns on process of input/output flow data.

    Rather than argue with an abyss, I will just keep to the firm points of interest and correct them when and where appropriate..

    If you have any further questions or concerns this matter that are “manifestly” offensive and skits insanity, I suggest again to contact the Editor in Chief.

    Thanks again for your reply.

    via Shark Lasers “zap zap”

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