Two weeks ago, I wrote a couple of posts about the strange reboot of MH370’s satcom system that occurred shortly after the plane disappeared from primary radar, and asked if anyone could come up with a reasonable explanation. I drew attention in particular to the left AC bus, which the satcom equipment is connected to. This bus can be electrically isolated using controls located in the cockpit, and this appears to be the only way to recycle the satcom without leaving the flight deck. I suggested that there might be some other piece of equipment that the perpetrator wanted to turn off and on again by using the left AC bus, thereby causing the satcom to be recycled as an unintended side effect.
The readers rose to the occasion. Gysbreght pointed out that paragraph 1.11.2 of Factual Information states that “The SSCVR [Solid State Cockpit Voice Recorder] operates any time power is available on the Left AC transfer bus. This bus is not powered from batteries or the Ram Air Turbine (RAT).”
This is an incredibly interesting observation. Reader Oz fleshed out Gysbreght’s insight, writing to me via email:
We could isolate the Left Main AC by selecting the generator control switch to OFF and the Bus Tie switches to OFF; SATCOM is now dead. What else happens……….the Backup generator kicks in automatically to supply the Left Transfer bus. Here’s what’s so spine chilling; if you now simply reach up and select the Backup Generator switch to OFF………..you now lose Left transfer as well. The CVR is gone! I couldn’t believe how easy the CVR was to isolate!
To recap;
Left Gen Control to OFF
Bus Ties to OFF (Isolate)
Left Backup Gen to OFF.
I now firmly believe your mystery reboot was Left AC power being switched back ON……….. after something that had occurred that the perp or perps didn’t want any possible evidence of on the CVR……whatever was being hidden was done by around 1822; AC back to normal.
Gysbreght notes that the Factual Information also identifies the location of the CVR as Electronic Equipment Rack, E7, in the aft cabin above the ceiling, and suggests: “Later [the perp] could have opened Electronic Equipment Rack E7, physically pulled the SSCVR power supply plug from its socket, and then gone back to the MEC to restore power to the Left AC bus.”
Oz has his own theory: “If you are thinking why the hell you would turn Left AC/Left transfer back on? Flight deck temperature control comes from these…”
There’s a precedent for a suicidal airline pilot depowering the black boxes before flying a plane into the ocean: the pilot of Silkair Flight 185 appears to have done just that before pointing the nose down and crashing in December, 1997. It’s easy to imagine Zaharie reading the accident reports and realizing he should also figure out a way to disable the CVR before implementing his suicide plan. When the moment came, near IGARI, one can imagine the veteran 777 pilot suddenly flipping various switches while the baffled newbie, Fariq, looked on.
It’s certainly an intriguing scenario, but it is not without its flaws. As Gysbreght notes, “I would expect the Captain to know that the CVR only retains the last two hours and overwrites older recordings.” So if Zaharie planned to commit suicide by flying the plane for hours into the remotest reaches of the southern ocean, he wouldn’t have needed to turn the CVR off: the portion between 17:07 and 18:25 would have been erased anyway. This is not in insurmountable problem, however. Maybe he orginally intended to crash right away, a la Silkair, but then lost his nerve.
I’m not quite ready to declare, as Gysbreght has, “Case closed,” but I have to admit that the CVR idea is fascinating. Great work, Gysbreght and Oz!
Cheryl – yes it could a screen saver of some sort with the grounded plane imposed. A nerdy touch? Would be true to form?
@Matty, maybe the picture of the plane on the water runway is from a fictious simulation program. It sure doesn’t look real. But it’s intriguing and fantasy inspiring.
@All, the phrase “a plane full of dead bodies” got me thinking. I don’t believe Zaharie started with the plan to commit a basically senseless but elaborate suicide. But maybe something did go wrong and he ended up with a plane full of dead bodies, that would be not only a VERY strong suicide motive, it would also explain his attempt to make surw that the plane would never be found. Because he wanted to spare his family the shame of being associated with a mass murderer. In this case his drive might’ve been strong enough to come up with an adequate plan. And he certainly would not have the desire to stay around in order to witness the aftermath. This would be more a rational suicide of a cornered man who found himself quite literally in a dead end, and not the action of a sick mind – as in the GermanWings case.
So, what could’ve gone so horribly wrong? Is there a logical chain of events which killed all the passengers but left Zaharie alive long enough to set the plane onto a course into the SIO? And what actions could’ve caused the reboot of the SDU? What did he want to achieve with those actions. I’d say in this scenario Zaharie certainly would NOT want to preserve anything on the voice recorder.
@littlefoot,
“I’d say in this scenario Zaharie certainly would NOT want to preserve anything on the voice recorder.”
I think you have hit on an important point which tends to point more toward Zaharie.
If the mystery reboot was a consequence of trying to hide something on the VCR; that means a conscience is in play, albeit a deeply troubled one. Had it been a radicalised FO or other I don’t think they would have given 2 hoots about hiding their actions.
OZ
Littlefoot/OZ – Question now is how do you accidentally kill everyone?
It would be argued by some that with nothing at all found maybe they did indeed hide their actions?
@Matty,
My belief is this was no accident; my point is the perp had some mental state of conscience as to their actions; i.e. to intentionally to kill those on board (if that was the case) and therefore to mask it.
Maybe I’ve misconstrued your post?
OZ
The Captain was married with three children. The FO was single.
So is Gen Sutarman talking about the FO’s maid?
Why was that maid so silent during questioning by the police, that the Indonesian police had to bring the maid’s parents to Malaysia?
@Matty, the only way to kill everybody but the captain would’ve to be depressurisation, I guess. How that could’ve happened accidentally without Zaharie being able to save the plane with a dive, I don’t know. Unless it happened late into the flight over the open ocean and he did make a dive but didn’t have enough fuel for flying at the required low altitude and make a landing. Then it wouldn’t even be suicide but more like an accident. Not entirely plausible because in this case I would expect Zaharie to make the precarious situation known and ask for SAR. Unless he thought the chances of survival were slim to none and he opted instead for hiding his actions.
Not entirely plausible. That’s why I asked for ideas about what could’ve possibly gone wrong. The suicide motive of having a plane full of dead people is obvious. How this could’ve happened – I don’t know…
@Gysbreght, why shouldn’t Zaharie have a maid because he had a family?? That’s all the more reason to have a maid for help in a big house, while the FO had a single household and probably didn’t need one one a regular basis.
@spencer
“What would have liked Z to do after murdering 238 people?”
well the problem is that you take his murder for granted, we don’t know if all passengers were alive until the end or not, my bet would be yes they were as there is no any credible proof they weren’t (we have explained here several times why there is no phone signal at cruising altitude so you can’t rely on that)
@Robert
“Is it seriously credible that the Captain (locked in the cockpit) would be able to control a plane full of live passengers and crew all the way to Christmas Island?”
why not? Very similar case happened only two weeks before MH370 when ethiopian copilot locked out the captain and went to Switzerland instead of Italy, without any problems.
But it will not work every time, apparently.
“Equally, is it credible that he would contemplate landing on Christmas Island with a couple of hundred dead bodies on board, and confess to mass murder?”
read above, noone knows if they were dead or not
“The phone silence during the flight across the Malaysian Peninsula seems to me to be very telling.”
also explained above, no phone signal at cruising altitude(well, at most places)
@littlefoot:
because in that case it would have been the family maid, not the pilot’s maid.
@Gysbreght, that’s semantics. You could be right or wrong about that. Don’t forget that all this is translated into English or said by someone who maybe didn’t speak English completely fluently. You could as well argue if she had been Farik’s maid they would have said “the copilot’s maid”. Before you jump to any conclusions you need more information.
@littlefoot:
I think I’m right in asking a question that comes to mind. Thank you for answering it.
@Gysbreght, yes, of course you’re right to ask. Sorry, if I sounded standoffish. And it would be interesting indeed to know if the maid – no matter whose maid she was – had anything of interest to tell after all. Or if she remained silent.
@all
I have been puzzled by the “hole” in the radar data ever since I first saw it. Various posters have attributed it to altitude variations.
I’ve been doing some “back of the envelop” calculations (don’t really have the appropriate tools) relative to the radar data coming from the vicinity of Banda Aceh in Indonesia and not Butterworth. The initial part of the track would require the aircraft to be at about 28,000′ (roughly 240nm range from Banda Aceh). The track makes sense in the context of a slow descent from that point to about 24,000′ when the hole starts. Radar is blocked by local mountain ridge at that point. The aircraft reappears from the behind the hill at about 12,000′ and the track continues toward Mekar.
The aircraft either continued descending beyond Mekar to escape Indonesian radar or the Malays truncated the track at the point since it would be out of the range of the Butterworth, and could not be readily explained.
Think about it. The Malays are asleep at the switch, and borrow some radar data from their Indonesian buddies and claim it as their own (screwing it up in the process, of course). Maybe the Malays never saw the plane at all.
I would ask someone with better tools to look at this possibility with more care. Normally I don’t post things without better analytics. So I apologize in advance for that.
@Dennis, interesting observation. I was also intrigued with this gap in the radar tracks ever since I saw i. At first I attributed it to considerable altitude changes of the plane over the Strait for whatever reason. Then we were told that – contrary of what had been in the news during the first weeks – the plane probably never changed altitudes drastically and never tried radar evading maneuvers.
If you contemplate that Malaysia might’ve never seen the plane at all – who do you think saw the plane apparently doubling back to Penang? The Thais?
Personally I don’t believe the Malaysians really “saw” the plane actually making the turnaround after IGARI – at least not in the clearcut fashion they presented it later on their many changing drawings. And except on the photo of the Lido picture which shows edited radar tracks the public never saw pictures of radar tracks from the point of turnaround to Penang.
@DennisW – Around 12/22/2014 GuardedDon posted kml files to this blog that can be imported into Google Earth or Google Maps and show his explanation for the “hole.” He shows each of the two legs from two different radar stations in Thailand.
@Littlefoot – This article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522 explains how an inadvertent cabin depressurization led to a crash. I’m not suggesting that this is what happened to MH370 but something similar could explain some of the actions. The problem with this explanation is we believe a person was at the controls around Penang and if there was a depressurization, either the Captain or the FO would have descended immediately to 10-12,000 feet.
I do not know if the Outflow Valves are fail-open, fail-closed, or fail-as-is, but if they fail open, the cabin would depressurize upon loss of power and/or loss of signal to these Valves.
too many things point out to a deliberate act, it couldn’t be a coincidence, not in this universe
@Lauren, thanks.
Yes, I know about the Helios crash, where they simply forgot to close the valves before they started and before they knew it, they were too far gone to do something sensible about it. Bizarre crash! I don’t think anything remotely like this could’ve happened to mh370 because I believe that far after Penang someone was in control. And like you said, whoever was piloting would be expected to have made a dive. This isn’t a life threatening situation – normally. But on a hijacked plane are different rules. I try to come up with a plausible chain of events which could’ve left Zaharie – very much against his original intentions – with a plane full of dead bodies. Because that would really be a very strong motive not only for suicide, but also for making it as difficult as possible to find and salvage the plane. He might’ve wanted to save face and the reputation of his family beyond his own death. That would be for me one of the few plausible reasons why he might’ve set the plane knowingly onto a course towards the SIO.
But unfortunately my imagination isn’t good enough here. Could a passenger or someone of the crew have panicked? My idea probably doesn’t work and whatever happened must’ve been something entirely different.
@littlefoot
“Could a passenger or someone of the crew have panicked?”
yupp that’s what I think happened
Curious indeed, on top of everything else, that Z chose to post THESE particular pics on his fb.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=217456908376725&set=a.217454471710302.44762.100003372525116&type=3&theater
Please, DO NOT read to much into this. LOL.
What’s wrong with the picture?!
Also kinda morbid that his facebook profile is still not deactivated.
@Stevan, but that’s not enough. It’s not so easy to induce a crash inadvertently and irretrievably, especially if you have an experienced captain in the cockpit. It’s not like someone had firearms smuggled onboard and started a shootout in a panic. And remember: in your championed Christmas Island scenario they must’ve almost made it. Why should anyone start to panic so late in the game?
@Spencer, you are suffering from confirmation bias big time. These pics are from summer 2012! I love remote controlled models, too.
@Stevan, yes it’s may be morbid not to deactivate it, but that’s hardly Zaharie’s fault.
@Littlefoot
And, respectfully, you are all over the map, big time.
You have NO idea as to when Z hatched this plan (I personally believe it was in the works for some time i.e. well before the elections).
And confirmation bias is pretty much null and void given that Zaharie IS the perp. Sorry.
Everything related to Z is on the table. To think otherwise is reckless and irresponsible.
I think he was VERY selective with his chosen pica and words. After all, that would be very much in keeping with his personality.
The soldier fought his battle silently.
Not his the strife that stays for set of sun;
It seemed this warfare never might be done;
Through glaring day and blinding night fought he.
There came no hand to help, no eye to see;
No herald’s voice proclaimed the fight begun;
No trumpet, when the bitter field was won,
Sounded abroad the soldier’s victory.
As if the struggle had been light, he went,
Gladly, life’s common road a little space;
Nor any knew how his heart’s blood was spent;
Yet there were some who after testified
They saw a glory grow upon his face;
And all men praised the soldier when he died.
And lest we not forget this little gem. More confirmation bias on part. Sigh.
@Spencer, yes I might be all over the map big time insofar as I try out different scenarios. Something you should try. Because it opens up many different aspects of the case which you simply miss if you are myopic. And even if Zaharie was the sole perp, which isn’t proven one bit, your suggestion that you can deduct from a few model plane pictures that he hatched his diabolical plan for years, Is so far removed from any realistic scenario and just shows that you’re not very well acquainted with human nature. I’m sure you don’t accept this from me. But try on Jay’s experiences as a psychiatrist in training. He shared a few very valuable thoughts yesterday.
Devil’s Advocate: Is it possible that the reboot was the result of someone plugging something into the satcom? If so, what could be done then? Could it have lead to false or misleading “pings”?
@Spencer, I said many times, that it would be a great mistake to ignore Zaharie’s social pages and what they tell us about his character. It might well be part of the solution. And this poem you quoted DOES give me pause. But what I also deduce from this material and everything else we know about the guy, is, that he was highly intelligent and creative. If he wanted to achieve something beyond death – something he might get praised for posthumously,as envisioned in the poem – he would’ve hatched a more intelligent plan than a ridiculous plot to hide a plane in the SIO!
@StevanG
“Also kinda morbid that his facebook profile is still not deactivated.”
Many commentaries on his FB chronicle disappeared after 8th march 2014 and reappeared in late december 2014 but some commentaries are still missing (upper part is missing, blank).Maybe the FBI confiscated many commentaries as part of the investigation.
@Spencer :
“I personally believe it was in the works for some time i.e. well before the elections”.
Yes, that´s thinkable.
Fact is he felt persecuted.On 23rd May 2013 he wrote :
“Pru 13 over, so its time they try to dismantle us. We r not going to be quiet.”
Yes, he was possibly not going to be quiet. He was possibly a timebomb and waited for the boom after the elections went over.
@ Lauren H
Thx for the reference. Have not found it yet.
@littlefoot
“It’s not so easy to induce a crash inadvertently and irretrievably, especially if you have an experienced captain in the cockpit. It’s not like someone had firearms smuggled onboard and started a shootout in a panic. And remember: in your championed Christmas Island scenario they must’ve almost made it. Why should anyone start to panic so late in the game?”
who knows, maybe they were afraid of dying, knocked out the captain so Fariq (or someone else) took controls of non-fully functioning plane and missed the island completely without working nav
I am just quite sure(like 99% sure) that something strange and non-planned happened on board but I don’t know what exactly.
At the end it might have been even a suicide but only if a dozen passengers were dead for some reason.
@Littlefoot
I’m interested in your thoughts, but as you’ve stated “I certainly don’t think Zaharie was a mass murderer/suicide”, it does give me pause that it is you who suffer from this animal we call confirmation bias.
That’s myopia, fyi. Martyrdom (conceptually and practically) occurs on this planet every day of the year.
Ssince you have misrepresented my POV by saying the following: “your suggestion that you can deduct from a few model plane pictures that he hatched his diabolical plan for years, Is so far removed from any realistic scenario and just shows that you’re not very well acquainted with human nature”.
I must point out that the image was ‘curious’ because we also have the flight sim water runway image and the plane (MH370) disappearing (we believe) in the SIO. Not to mention ‘window seal’. I don’t think you can just dismiss the many
specifically chose photos of the model plane sitting and landing in water as 100% innocuous.
We’ll just agree to disagree…but I think you greatly underestimate the diabolical capacity human beings have (eg flying 5 hours with a fuselage full of bodies to achieve a terminus that suited him well), and that it is grossly unfair given the apparent outcome of MH370, Z’s rants and posts, and the facts as we understand them (it LOOKS like mass murder/suicide) to say that I am SO FAR REMOVED from any realistic scenario and don’t understand human nature.
Truce…and I do like reading your diverse and myriad thoughts, even if I don’t agree with them.
ffs spencer it’s a float plane it’s designed to float and land on water…
@StevanG
My bad. Stupid me to see any potential connection.
Any thoughts on the poem? Probably pretty innocuous. I mean, Z was nothing like a soldier. Guy was a soft-spoken, magnetic (IMO), genial fellow. Wouldn’t hurt a fly—although 238 people have perished on his watch, somehow—and they are STILL MISSING—yet this was unintentional???? LMAO.
@Spencer, I confess that I from time to time succumb to confirmatuon bias as well. We all do. And I appreciate greatly that you have brought Zaharie’s social pages to the attention of the blog – again and again. That was necessary and still is, since many don’t want to touch this hot iron for some reason. But the case is just not as clearcut as you make it out. When I said I’m convinced that Zaharie wasn’t a suicidal massmurderer I might’ve exaggerated. I should be more precise: Nothing, really nothing in his social pages and videos contains the slightest hint that he might turn into a suicidal massmurderer. And believe me, I know what I’m talking about as a forensic psychologist. I can well sense a potential for radicalisation and even politically motivated violence. I see a man going through a deep crisis who is maybe ready to change his life completely. Start a new one. But nothing hints at a senseless and politically totally ineffective monstrosity. Remember, I’m not saying he’s not capable to kill. Everybody can take this wrong turn under certain circumstances. But your scenario does IMO not fit to the man we learn to know through his facebook and his videos. He would’ve done ssomething very different and more effective. LouVilla quoted him saying that “we won’t go quietly”. That makes sense. But he did go quietly. Nothing more after “Good night, Makaysia370”. And that is very much out of character. And considering that we don’t even know for sure that the plane really ended up in the SIO – there’s not one shred of hard evidence – I think we should be open to very different scenarios. Zaharie might well have been mixed up in something very different. I’m not excluding that possibility. But I’m not ready to believe that he developed a morbid fascination with ditching planes into watery graves. That’s where I see a strong confirmation bias at work. Try to look at his material without hindsight knowledge. It’s difficult but possible. There’s nothing sinister in it, really not.
@Littlefoot
One simple question. What could he have done differently AND been more effective, in your opinion, FROM his POV?
Asylum-No
CI-to draw some media attention and bitch about the UMNO cronies?–NO
Fly into the Petronas towers–No.
So please, enlighten me from his POV. I’m very curious (sincerely)
And do keep in mind his best and ONLY weapon was the a/c and pax, and his access to this weapon.
if he was about killing people he would do a lot more damage hitting Petronas towers
and he wouldn’t have to overfly whole Malaysia
@StevanG
How many times must we go over this. Even YOU agreed that he would NEVER fly into the towers. This would be counter intuitive.
Enough with these straw men.
Spencer – if the model plane was indicative of Z’s motivations re MH370 then he would need to be totally unhinged? But noone saw it.
Question for you – why do you seem to need our agreement? Littlefoot is a genuine seeker like most here, you are crusading?
OZ – gotya
@spencer
yupp but I see him differently that’s why I think he would never fly into towers, as I also think he would never intentionally kill anyone
What is it the “rigueur de jour” thing to do these days in pilot etiquette or I should say oneupmanship locking one another out of cockpits? Air New Zealand, the ethiopian flight, Germanwings, and possibly MH370? What is going on with these guys, are they experiencing some kind of increased stress levels?
Lou Villa,
A question for you. Lou I think it was you who provided pages on Malaysian radars that could be googled if a perp wanted to see when out of radar range wasn’t it? I just glanced over it then but in skimming it I seem to recall something about “in the case of loss of radio do not return to was it KLIA or where was it?” I’ll have to go back and check that link when I have time, pressed for time now.
@DennisW – Found it: http://goo.gl/jmNqrr
note: GuardedDon said there are two files, one being the red angles and the other is the a/c track but I could not import the track. The red angles is what you want anyway.
Another poster found it as well. Much thanks. Looks like Don postulated that the track was a composite from two radars. Another reasonable approach. Yes, the red angles tell his story. Thank you.
@Spencer, I will give you an answer tomorrow. I’m only still awake because it’s hot here and a thunderstorm is brewing. During the last one I witnessed two weeks ago the house beside my mother’s house burned down to the ground. I’ve never seen anything like it.
@Matty, I think no one ever has called me a seeker before 😉 but thanks. That was nice. Most of us are comoletely mystified even after more than a year and simply want to get to the bottom of this conundrum. It’s not crusade material.
And Marty, since your gut tells you, the plane went West: how would you think this unfolded? You would’ve to throw the BTOs into the bin – nothing I would get overly excited by now. The trend seems to be anyway to question more and more data. But I would then also start to question the timing. Why should the plane haven’t continued in normal cruising speed mode? It would then reached the Maldives – or Diego Garcia for that matter – a lot earlier. The time of the (in)famous sighting doesn’t make any sense, because by that time the plane would’ve had barely enough fuel to stay in the air for a few more minutes.
Littlefoot – I’d say trust in the data seems to be measurable by the time/effort you have invested in it. Victor seems like the only one to have done both; invested plenty of sweat and stayed open at the same time.
I’m not at all sure about the Maldives sighting but it’s worth noting that that govt makes the Malaysian one look good. People imprisoned for “trying to topple the government.” One guy rules for 3 decades, elections a farce, intimidation, jailings, lots of terrorist ties – in fact a hotbed, virtual military rule at the same time. It’s a crime syndicate more or less and members of that govt will be skimming the laundering that goes on there by intl Islamism. It has dedicated island runways that are deserted most of the time. If you did plan to refuel there would sending a decoy south by flying low over Kudahuvadhoo confuse things? It’s conspicuous that this plane was never identified. Outlandish on one hand but the Pakistani’s hid Bin Laden for over a decade too.
The plane made what looks like a premeditated, determined and risky lunge to the IO, very likely with a full list of dead passengers; what was the big attraction? Subtract the reboot and we would have been scanning the ME looking for it, not the SIO.
@Matty
>Subtract the reboot and we would have been scanning the ME looking for it, not the SIO.
This is interesting–Zaharie identified himself as Iranian on more than one occasion (weird, huh). And then there’s the “Bond visits Afghanistan’ (which I know you dismiss, fair enough).
@ Littlefoot and others engaged in conversation regarding suicide and its underlying psychoanalytics and behavioral implications–
I’m in the midst of writing a guest post which will go into more detail about this topic and especially how it potentially relates to MH370. Will be a way to further discuss this matter for those who are interested.
Talking of FB, I’ve always found it strange that somehow Zaharie’s girlfriend was ‘un-friended’ by Zaharie in the months after 3/8. And Zaharie was removed from her list of ‘friends’ too, one would think by TP.
Then some photos of Zaharie and TP together at a political rally, posted by a friend, were tagged with the words “remove, remove” on Google for several months after 3/8, before they were finally taken down — I’m assuming at the request of the 3rd party, not the person who posted them.
Who has the power to order Facebook to delete or change people’s FB pages posthumously, or pressure Facebook to remove photos that people have posted? I would guess, in Malaysia, the current government has that kind of power.
Be interesting to know what Facebook was asked to do.
Spencer – I’d be very interested in any Z/Iran business. It would indeed be weird, and troubling. Politically disaffected – could he have been groomed for something? If there is anything to the “Bond visits Afghanistan” clipping then how does it relate to the SIO?