In the weeks since MH370 debris began washing up in the Western Indian Ocean, I’ve struggled to understand the condition in which they were found. Particularly baffling were the three that washed ashore in Mozambique and South Africa, which were almost completely clean and free of marine fouling. I’ve talked to a number of marine biologists who study organisms that grow on floating debris, and they told me that given their pristine appearance these pieces couldn’t have floated for more than a few weeks.
Some observers have suggested that perhaps the objects had failed to pick up significant fouling because they drifted through waters that were too cold or low in nutrients, but further examination showed that this could not be the explanation.
One commenter on this blog suggested that the pieces were too shallow, or too small, to permit the growth of Lepas barnacles. This, too, is an unsuitable explanation, since Lepas can grow on bits of floating debris that are as small as a few centimeters across. The photograph above shows a small but vibrant community growing on a piece of pumice spewed from a volcano in Tonga; the largest Lepas (goose barnacle) in the image is 23 mm long.
In acknowledging the very obvious problem that this lack of biofouling presents, David Griffin of the Australian government’s science agency, CSIRO, has written (referring to the first Mozambique piece) that “this item is not heavily encrusted with sea life, so it has probably spent a significant length of time either weathering in the sun and/or washing back and forth in the sand at this or some other location. The time at sea is therefore possibly much less than the 716 days that have elapsed since 14 March 2014, and the path taken may have been two or more distinct segments.”
The idea then, is that these pieces washed across the Indian Ocean, were deposited on a beach, were picked over my crabs and other predators, bleached in the sun and scoured by wind and sand, the were washed back out to sea, then came ashore again within less than two weeks and were discovered.
One problem with this scenario is that while we might just about imagine a sequence of events happening to one piece, it seems incredible to imagine it happening to three pieces independently, in different locations and at different times. (To be fair to Dr Griffin, he proposed this idea at a time when only once piece had yet been found.)
Another problem with Dr Griffin’s idea is that no major storms took place in the two weeks preceding the discovery of each of the pieces in Mozambique and South Africa. Indeed, the region has been experiencing a drought.
In short, there is not plausible sequence of events by which the three pieces found in Africa could have arrived there by natural means.
What about the piece which turned up on Rodrigues Island? As I wrote in my blog post, the size of the barnacles blatantly contradict the possibility that the object was afloat for two years. And given that Rodrigues is surrounded by a reef, hundreds of miles from the nearest land, the idea that it might have washed ashore somewhere, gotten re-floated, and then came ashore again to be discovered is close to inconceivable.
Taken separately, these objects defy explanation. Taken together, however, they present a unified picture. Though discovered weeks and months apart, in locations separated by thousands of miles, they are all of a piece: they are all wrong. They do not look–at all!–like they should.
There is only one reasonable conclusion to draw from the condition of these pieces. Since natural means could not have delivered them to the locations where they were discovered, they must have been put there deliberately. They were planted.
In fact, we can go even further than that. Whoever put these pieces on the shores where they were discovered wasn’t even trying very hard. It would only have taken a little bit of imagination and a small amount of effort to put these pieces in the ocean for a few months to pick up a healthy suite of full-sized Lepas. This clearly was attempted in the case of the Rodrigues piece, but no effort at all was expended on the African pieces.
Why? Were they being lazy, or simply overconfident? Or did they know that it wouldn’t matter?
Perhaps the events of last July influenced their decision. After the flaperon was discovered on Réunion Island, it was whisked away by French authorities, given a cursory examination, and then hidden away. The public were never told what the investigators found, or didn’t find. No one seriously questioned whether the flaperon could really have come from a crash in the Southern Indian Ocean. (Well, almost no one.)
Six months later, the failure of the seabed search was looming. The Australian government had already begun saying that it might not find the plane, and preparing the public for the decision to call off the search. The narrative that the plane had nonetheless flown south to some unknown point in the southern Indian Ocean needed bolstering. Given how little inquiry had been directed at the Réunion piece, whoever planted the most recent four pieces might reasonably have assumed that the public would accept the new pieces uncritically, no matter how lackadaisical their preparation.
Maybe they were right. Past experience has shown that people have a remarkable ability to squint their eyes and avoid seeing the obvious ramifications of evidence plunked down in front of them. A good example was the seabed search that took place after acoustic pings were detected back in the spring of 2014. The frequency of pings was wrong, and the physical distribution of the pings indicated that they could not possibly have come from stationary wreckage. So it was clear from the data that the pings were not coming from black boxes. But numerous experts twisted themselves into knots explaining how the deep-sea hydroaccoustic environment was very weird, with salinity gradients and underwater valleys that channeled sound, and so on. I was on a panel on CNN one day when famed science communicator Bill Nye explained that the sound waves probably were refracted by passing through water masses of varying densities, and refraction causes frequencies to change. When you have to start changing the laws of physics to justify your interpretation of the data, it might be time to start looking for a new interpretation.
I’m not saying that people’s attempts thus far to explain the condition of the MH370 debris through non-nefarious means is misguided. Far from it–as the saying goes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and when presented with evidence like the MH370 debris which invites such an uncomfortable (some will no doubt say outlandish) conclusion, it’s necessary to carefully rule out simpler explanations. However, once that has been done, we must not avert our eyes and say, “Well, I just can’t accept that conclusion, it’s not reasonable, there must be some explanation you’re missing,” or come up with a Nyeism that posits as explanation some phenomenon previously unknown to science.
If the MH370 investigation has taught us anything, is that restricting the discussion to “acceptable” explanations is a fatal trap. Early in the mystery, Duncan Steel hosted a discussion on his web site for people to exchange views and information. He had a rule, however: it was forbidden to discuss any scenarios which posited that the plane had been diverted intentionally, as he felt that this was disrespectful to the people on board. Of course, we now know that the plane was certainly diverted by someone on board, so effectively what Steel was outlawing was the discussion of any scenario that might possible be correct.
This mindset is alive and well. Recently on a discussion forum, one of the participants flatly stated that she was not interested in hearing about any theories that involve a hijacking. The ATSB has shown itself to be equally narrowminded. It has on multiple occasions declared that its interpretation of the Inmarsat data is unassailable. First it said that there was 100 percent chance that the plane was in the first 60,000 square km search area. When it turned out not to be, they drew a 120,000 sq km search area and declared that there was a 100 percent chance it was inside there. Come June, they will find (as we know now because of the condition of the African debris) that it is not there, either. Yet their recurring failure has not shaken their faith in their “reasonable” belief about what happened to the plane.
So maybe whoever planted the debris in Mozambique, South Africa, and Rodrigues weren’t lazy–maybe their understanding of human psychology simply allowed them to take the minimum steps necessary. Whether their calculation was accurate or not will now become apparent.
Sorry, the link in my last post ought to be:
https://abn397.wordpress.com/2015/09/05/the-importance-of-reunion-island/
It was written in September, though the point in the last paragraph is still relevant.
@Ge Rijn – Further to ALSM’s number 1. (Refraction (due to ray path bending caused by air density gradients)), I had the same question and found that there is a range of frequencies that do not refract at the boundary between our atmosphere and outer space. Both the transmit and receipt frequencies (not sure if these are the proper terms) used by Inmarsat fall within this range. Frequencies outside of this range do indeed refract.
@Jeff Sorry, on further investigation I found what you said – these are not generally eaten – too little meat.
FYI source was University of Michigan database
Animal Diversity Web (ADW) is an online database of animal natural history, distribution, classification, and conservation biology at the University of Michigan.
@Victor: can you please post your evidence to this forum? I’d like to discuss this with Florence. Thanks.
If much more certain IDs were determinable from photographs in the public domain, then the French prosecutor’s statement – and indeed the entire investigation on which it rests – delivered NEGATIVE value to the search, because it apparently focused on an inferior ID method, which produced more ambiguous results. Are you publicly accusing the French of incompetence, or interference?
Lauren H:
Refraction takes place with all types of waves at all frequencies when the medium has density gradients. This is also true for L band AMSS frequencies (1.5-1.6 GHz). And the refraction can be very significant when the LOS path is horizontal through the atmosphere, such as is the case for RO (radio occultation), or very low elevation angles with AMSS (when the satellite is close to the horizon). But 100% of the Inmarsat data collected for MH370 relates to communications when the elevation angles were high (about 40 degrees at the lowest point). At this elevation angle, the bending due to refraction is negligible as far as defining the arcs.
Here is a link to a NSF video produced to document the GPS/MET experiments that my team at UCAR conducted back in the 1992-1995 time frame. It is an easy way to learn how RO works using the observed L band bending angle. https://goo.gl/RG9Uq3
@Airlandseaman@Lauren H,
Thank you both for answering my question so well.
@ABN397. Rodrigues, Mauritius, Reunion, middle and South Mozambique coast, South East African coast.
If you draw a line between those places it follows quite gently the involved ocean currents.
Bit strange nothing still found on Madagascar which is the biggest obstacle in those currents and shields the coast of Mozambique almost completely.
But this could be also an argument against a delibarate planting of debris, for the Madagascar coast would be a lot more logical to plant debris in the first place. It would make more sence imo. Deliberatly choosing the locations were parts are found know and leaving Madagascar out would not be ineptly but rather stupid if there was no reason to do this imo.
Thats also a reason why I still believe there is/was no reason to do this till proved otherwise.
@Brock McEwen: I have no idea what you are referring to, and please don’t twist my words. I made no accusation. I simply tried to interject some facts into the discussion based on evidence confidentially shared with me. I encourage you to check the accuracy of my statement with Florence de Changy, but please use MY words and not your interpretation of my words because they don’t seem to agree. I would be surprised if Florence disagreed with my words.
@ Jeff: “So the BFO and BTO values neither ‘line up’ nor contradict one another. If that makes any sense.”
That’s a good way to put it. There is no contradiction.
Re: the barnacles: I think the best way to think about them is that they establish a minimum time at sea, and can say little if anything about the maximum time adrift. If the barnacles are 2.5 months old, all that can be said is that the object has been adrift for at least 2.5 months; it does not follow that the object has been at sea for only 2.5 months.
Ecological succession happens. If one walks into a forest and cuts down the thickest tree one can find and see that it was 40 years old, all one can say is that there have been trees there for 40 years. One cannot say there were not trees there 100 years ago.
Same with floating debris objects: we cannot say there were not mature barnacles on them in the past. In you Bioforensics article, there is a photo labeled “A closeup of the presumed flap fairing”: right in the middle of it, albeit unmentioned in your article, there is a white, apparently calcareous deposit on it. Judging from the size of the honeycombs of 1/8″, then calcareous deposit is close to 1/2″. That could have been the attachment point of a relatively mature gooseneck barnacle.
In addition, as you do point out, fishes can graze on barnacles, preventing them from getting established. Triggerfish in particular, have heavy jaws capable of crushing shelly organisms. The 5-gyres article you site of a Japanese boat did not have many barnacles on it, but sustained a population of triggerfish. In addition, I have read several accounts of survival stories of people who have floated for months at a time on rubber rafts after their boat sank. I don’t recall mention of barnacles growing on their rafts, but they do invariably describe the population of fishes that develop.
Yes, of course the debris objects are consistent with a planting scenario, but they cannot rule out the likely possibility that they have been in the ocean since March 2014, possibly interspersed with time beached on remote sand bars. Also, I don’t see what storms have to do with it. A few days in the swash zone of placid surf is going to cause significant abrasion, especially to algae biofilms.
The one thing the debris objects portend–assuming they were not planted–is that the ending of MH370 was a violent, but “medium-energy” event: there was no picture perfect ditching, but there was no Mach 1, Silk Air-style impact either: yes, the flight control surface objects found could (POSSIBLY!) be explained away as coming off due to “flutter”, but not the interior wall piece. If the aircraft went nose-in at close to Mach 1, the fuselage would have concertinaed in a small fraction of a second, with forces probably on the order of 100 g’s: the interior bulkhead would have been smashed to smithereens: it’s too big, and in too good of shape to have survived such an impact.
Also, the bilateral distribution of the objects is not consistent with a ~Mach 1 impact. Of the 5 objects, 4 are pretty much known to have come from the right side of the aircraft. This is not multiple sigmas of statistical significance, but it is highly suggestive nonetheless.
Regarding the interior object, I am beginning to think it is probably not from the toilet wall near door #2R for the following reasons: (1) there is no decorative foil on the inside of the wall; (2) the inside, outboard slots are at right angles to the floor, rather than slanted; (3) there’s no other evidence that there was an actual toilet on the inner side; (4) the square hole at the bottom is too close fuselage side, indicating it came from a tapered section of aircraft; (5) B777 seats are supposedly designed to withstand 16 g’s of force, but the wall pieces seems IMO too flimsy to support a jump seat with an adult person strapped in at 16 g’s. I’m thinking it’s more likely that the object is part of the wall of a simple closet.
The importance of the above discussion, of course, relates to the possibility of controlled flight inputs. I was drawn to this possibility only reluctantly for the following reasons: (1) autopilot-off, no-pilot flight for a B777 is impossible–sorry, RF4, you are incorrect; (2) the initial phase of the flight prior to FMT is more or less normal: i.e., normal cruising speeds, normal altitudes, normal navigation via waypoints; (3) no obvious attempts to land at Kota Bahru, KUL, Butterworth, Penang, Langkawi, Phuket, Banda Aceh; (4) the general implausibility of weird fire episodes that would kill everybody, eliminate communications, yet leave the autopilot intact; (5) there is a nice, straight waypoint path–POVUS thru RUNUT–that is fully consistent with the BTOs and normal cruising speeds and altitudes.
Thus, given an initial behavior of a staight-line, bat-out-of-hell path to the middle of nowhere in the SIO, there is little reason to think that behavior subsequent to flameout would be different. The desire to go as far as possible would still be there, and thus it is likely IMCO that the crash site is up to 2 degrees of latitude south of the current, intensive search area based on the pilot incapacitated model.
Sherlock Holmes said, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” Certainly, a scenario where the BFOs were spoofed and the airplane hijacked to Kazakhstan is highly improbable. It could be truth, but we must eliminate simpler possibilities first. It could simply be the case that controlled flight inputs allowed the aircraft to proceed a bit further south of the current search area.
@Warren P.
Sherlock Holmes said, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
I thought I said that. Oh well, the ravages of age.
I have three problems with a terminus further South as you are suggesting:
1> No debris (discarding towelette) has been found in WA.
2> A terminus further South is not compatible with the debris found to date (drop CSIRO – they are far afield from other drift models).
3> There is no plausible motive (other than Shah wanted to disappear – really??)
@Richard
“The repeated line is curiously timed:
–:-7:5- ==> 7500 (squawk code for hijacking)…
However, I struggle to imagine circumstances under which they would attempt to communicate a hijacking in this manner and how they could hope to have ATC understand their intent.”
A better way to communicate a hijacking, or rather a distress, is to “hesitate” pushing the push-to-talk button 3 times, like the first 3 points of the morse code for SOS. Pilots sometimes acknowledge message by just pushing the button once for a short time, only sending an unmodulated carrier wave for about half of a second (I saw my flying instructor doing it, then I did it myself, but there was no other aircraft in the circuit).
I have read somewhere that ATC controllers are sensitive if you push the button 3 times like the letter “S”.
@ airlandseaman:
Here is a freebie for you. A close-to Mach 1 impact would form a momentary “crater” with a depth of perhaps 50 meters, if the Silk Air crash is anything to go by. That would involve 100 g’s of force. Thus, the reason more debris objects haven’t been found is that the instant the remains of the aircraft stopped moving, the “crater” of seawater would close-in around the wreckage at a depth of 150 feet. At such a depth, the pressure would be ~70+ psi. Perhaps at that depth, any honeycombs, even if they survived the crash itself, would be crushed due to the pressure and sink.
As for the found objects, the flight control surface objects could be explained as due to flutter. The fact that most or all of the found objects come from the right side is simple coincidence. And the Rodrigues object came not from 2R, but from the very aft of the aircraft. As it was concertinaing, the instantaneous pressure in the back would have caused an explosion; the fuselage failed right where the part came from and was flung to the outside of the aircraft in time to avoid being sucked into the main water “crater”.
In which case, we shall find the aircraft in the next couple of months! 🙂
Captain Zaharie sat on the left side of the FD, copilot Hamid on the right.
Zaharie was the acting pilot on the ground in KL, with Hamid handling communications. Once airborne, they switched roles, but not seats, to give the copilot more hours of 777 flying experience.
However, after diversion, the erratically weaving flight path, and near total lack of communications, hints at a plane with next to no electrical power, being flown manually in a mechanical flight mode. The high degree of difficulty involved hints that the captain took over flight control from the copilot, at 1:22am, near IGARI. Indeed, JAL750 and / or MH88 identified copilot Hamid on emergency radio circa 1:30am, and a plausible fleeting phone call about 1:50am near Penang from the copilot’s cell, once again hint that the captain controlled the aircraft ( and the copilot communications ) for at least the first half hour of crisis.
So, please note, that the aircraft passed the bright lights of Kota Bharu, about 1:36am, on the north, such that the captain, on the LHS of the FD, would have had the best view of that visually conspicuous & major landmark, “make do waypoint one” (?).
However, the airplane then passed to the south of Penang about 1:52am, and then again to the south of Palau Perak island ( and its lighthouse atop ? ) about 2:03am. That hints that the copilot, seated on the right, was now the acting pilot flying. Moreover, no evidence of communications attempts, and a straighter flight track maintaining a constant heading, hint that the autopilot had been reactivated, to assist the novice copilot, now in his 40th hour “on type” at the controls of a 777.
Against this, the deep curve around Penang, described as an Ayers Rock maneuver to give the captain on the far side of the FD a good view of his island city hometown, arguably hints that the captain was still behind the yoke at Penang. Nevertheless, after that turn, the straighter flight trajectory out to (the south of) Palau Perak, VAMPI, and MERAK, hints at copilot control from the right seat, near & between Penang and PP, 1:52-2:02am, and an activation of the autopilot near or between PP and VAMPI, 2:03-2:13am.
If so, then, logically, captain Zaharie vacated his left seat to troubleshoot aircraft electronics well enough to reactivate the autopilot, about 2:00am…
and, presumably, to subsequently reactivate the Left Main Electrical Bus and SatCom circa 2:20am, near MEKAR.
According to this picture, captain Zaharie was MacGyver’ing ac electronics for most of the half hour from Penang to MEKAR, meticulously isolating components and bringing them back online individually, to avoid additional (?) short circuits and other electrical fault related issues.
This scenario exposes the captain to any and all noxious toxic fumes, billowing from CBs, for a protracted period… unless he could have worn his oxygen mask around the cockpit and-or even into the E/E bay.
Finally, the FMT was a significant heading change of 110 degrees. And, turns, especially at high speeds like M0.84 and 500+ it’s, are (can be) high-G maneuvers (2+). Acceleration forces affect blood flow to the brain, certainly much more than straight and level flight. So, turns must be much more dangerous than the legs between them. A multi G turn seems much more likely to have induced hypoxia and incapacitated an already weakened flight crew, than passively monitoring the autopilot during legs of level flight. So, perhaps the apparent ghost flight begins at about the time of the FMT, because the latter caused the former ?
If so, then depending upon autopilot mode settings, perhaps the FMT was initiated, but only partially completed, with pilot incapacitation “part way through the turn” translating into the aircraft leveling off and soaring past Indonesia on into the SIO ? If so, then that would probably severely circumscribe the range of autopilot parameter settings consistent with this suggested scenario, “George wants to fly straight and level, but will allow a human pilot to twist the yoke to turn the plane, if and only if they apply and use great muscular force” or something like that.
@Dennis W:
Sherlock Holmes also said, “Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid.” 😉
1. M Pat’s study based on actual buoys (not numerical simulations) shows that only a small percentage (~4%) of all objects that wash up somewhere would wind up in WA. If there were controlled inputs, the initial debris field may have not been very large, zero or very few objects would have washed up in WA. If they did, they were simply overlooked, never found, or washed away before they were found.
2. I don’t think a starting point that is 100 nm different from the current search area is going to make a radical difference in where debris objects wind up.
3. Do not make the mistake of trying to understand the mind of a batshit crazy person. You might as well try to wonder what it is like to be a bat. Me, personally, I don’t know if Zaharie was at the controls, or if it was a dumb-ass Etheopian hijacker drunk on whiskey, or a raquet-tailed drongo who was at the controls–it doesn’t matter for the search’s purposes. (I will say this: I find the fact that Zaharie STOPPED posting to his fb page 3 months before the flight to be telling. It is my experience that when people who regularly post there suddently stop for a long period, it is due to a personal crisis.) Anyways, there is precedent. Cf. Captain Button who intentionally made his A-10 disappear. It took 3 weeks to find the wreckage, despite being in the middle of CONUS.
@Warren P
Did not mean to imply the 100nm would make a difference. The current search area does not work either. I estimate a maximum Southern terminus of around 30S.
may be Zaharie got fed up with FB so he stopped posting there.. I know people who did that but did not have any crisis.
@MH
Conversely, I did not have a crisis until I started posting there, and then I suffered major depression. Too many clowns and not enough circuses.
@DennisW – Yes that could happen.. even to Z if the feedback to his posts was -‘ve.
Mechanical Backup
In the unlikely event of a complete electrical system shut–down, cables from the
flight deck to the stabilizer and selected spoilers allow the pilot to fly straight and
level until the electrical system is restarted.
What suprised me when I read it is that all the time the ATSB has been searching, and still is, on the premise there was no a controlled end of the flight.
Why did they leave that possibillity out?
So much info points clearly to a controlled flight and so little to a ghost flight.
Then why not take the controlled flight end scenario into account in this multi million search effort?
If controlled it could have possibly glided a 100Nm after flame out and would have made a substantial differents in defining the most probable search area.
Now they (ATSB) says that if nothing is found in the current search area they will declare in that case it was probably a controlled gliding end, which would increase the search area 3 fold and they are not prepared to search further for no one is prepared to raise the funds for such an operation.
If they all had started on the (imo) much more convincing data pointing to a all controlled flight the most probable crash area would have been defined quite different.
Then this area shifts (imo) a max 100nm from the 7th arc north east, east, south, and south east pressuming it did not glided back to the north or west.
I think its strange they rejected this (imo) obvious possibillity. It would be a shame to declare after search ending; ‘it was probably a contolled gliding end of the flight, we are sorry but funds are not available anymore’.
Than I’ll realy start believing in a cover up with planted debris and all.
Strange the satelitte had problems already after igari how and where the plane flew. At first the malaysians showed the plane doing a big loop.
http://img.astroawani.com/2014-03/61396164824_295x200.jpg
And for the entire time up until it crashed/landed the satelitte recieved data as if the plane where in different places close to each other.
Even rolls royce registered a landing, not a crash.
@Ge Rijn
You raise an interesting question.
In the ATSB report “MH370-Definition of underwater search areas” of June 2014, they justified the assumption of no control inputs at/after flameout, as a way of limiting the size of the search area.
The ATSB have always said they were responsible only for the search – the investigation itself (ie what happened on board, the how and why) being down the Malaysia.
The Malaysians have not been particularly keen to share any information with the ATSB (as far a we can tell, anyway) and this is basically why the search effort is in such a shambles.
The debris recovered so far, points clearly to an extended, pilot-controlled glide. My humble opinion of course. Definitely not the development the ATSB wanted.
Not a happy situation, to put it mildly. Can the ATSB now get a consensus to extend the search further south, basically downrange of the DSTG Bayesian hotspot, confined between E87.5 and E88.5? At the moment, I wouldn’t put money on it.
I can hear some of you yawning already. I know, I have only the one song don’t I.
@Richard
paraphrase:
———–
12:42:48 MH370 (Z): Okay level one eight zero direct IGARI Malaysian one – err – Three Seven Zero
…
01:01:17 MH370 (Z): Malaysian – uh – Three Seven Zero maintaining level three five zero
01:07:56 MH370 (Z): Ehhh… Seven… Three Seven Zero maintaining level three five zero
…
01:19:29 MH370 (Z): Good Night Malaysian – uh – Three Seven Zero
It seems possible that something has affected his cognitive state.
——————————
Both instances interrupt chatter better Lumpur Radio and “Cathay 791” which was descending to land…
Captain Zaharie may have been further highlighting “7” and “5”:
370
350
—
-7-
-5-
7&5 are the different digits which change… CZ seemed to like associating himself with 7s and 5s…
albeit buried in more noise than is likely anyone else would notice…
perhaps even including hypothetical highly knowledgeable hijackers ?
At 1:07:50+ he even opens with the number “7”, as if trying to say “7-5-0-0”.
Speculative hijacking about 1:00am exactly as aircraft reaches cruising altitude?
Hijackers were monitoring, disabling all forms of communications? Trying to commandeer the airplane without alerting anyone…
Sounds more similar to 9-11…
Cathay 7-91 @ 1:01:11am…
Is Zaharie figured out he was doomed, maybe he tried to resist, by performing a UFO turn and crippling / scuttling electrical power systems ??
Chinese flight Cathay 791 was descending to land… Descent, China… Beijing was the apparent target ??
All very cryptic and extremely ambiguous
@RetiredF4 said:
“Concerning the flaperon maintenance records of Malaysia it comes to my mind, that their maintenance center burned down and most of their documentation was lost, accidentally after the loss of MH370.”
Wasn’t it the *avionics* workshop that had a (small) fire? There’s pictures of office workers walking around in a (small) first floor indoor office with fire extinguishers, and a small amount of burnt paper on the floor, and a little smoke. MAS described the incident as ‘minor’ saying it was brought under control quickly and no damage was done to the office/workshop. Looks like it happened during daytime when the offices were occupied – perhaps a hot soldering iron being put down on some sheets of paper? Not really a case of ‘workshop burnt down’ / (all?) maintenance records lost as the media generally suggested at the time.
That workshop would mostly have diagrams, manuals and parts lists for the techs to use, I would have thought. There may also have been job/worksheets, but the information on the job, the serial numbers, repairs done etc would (?) likely have then been entered on the central MAS maintenance computer system once the job was finished.
In any case, *avionics* workshops would surely not hold maintenance records on the airframe?
http://www.businessinsider.sg/fire-breaks-malaysia-airlines-avionics-workshop/
@Erik Nelson
Problem with the hijacking scenario is “who were the hijackers?”
All passengers and cabin crew have been checked out for hijacking potential, result negative.
Only other alternative is someone managed to get on the plane prior to passenger boarding. Likelihood if this happening is zero.
@ALSM – Thanks for the link and education. I’ll try to find where I got the notion that some frequencies do not bend. Either way, it’s good to know that the difference is negligible.
@Warren Platts – I like your “crater” theory that minimizes debris. I’d think 70 psi might be enough to prevent luggage, seats & life jackets from floating. I agree that it might not have been a M1.0 vertical dive because the interior piece is too big for that. But it’s way too small for any kind of ditching. (@ROB – Please explain why you think there is any chance of a ditching. It did not happen. Check reports of other crashes.)
@Erik – Good possibility. But if the FMT caused initial hypoxia, what kept them incapacitated?
@Eric Nelson
Again a fantastic script, although all fiction and nearly nothing based on facts. I would not comment on this phantasy, but the following caught my attention.
you said:
Finally, the FMT was a significant heading change of 110 degrees. And, turns, especially at high speeds like M0.84 and 500+ it’s, are (can be) high-G maneuvers (2+). Acceleration forces affect blood flow to the brain, certainly much more than straight and level flight. So, turns must be much more dangerous than the legs between them. A multi G turn seems much more likely to have induced hypoxia and incapacitated an already weakened flight crew, than passively monitoring the autopilot during legs of level flight.”
More than 10.000 flights per day cruise with speeds around M .84. The turns these aircraft perform are not dangerous at all, as they are no high g maneuvers. The loadfactor has nothing to do with the speed a turn is flown, but with the bank angle. 2g’s would result in a 60° bank turn, which the protections of the 777 would not allow and which no sound soal would fly in manual mode either. I do not grasp how you would end up thinking, that any air transport pilot or hijacker would intend to maneuver a 777 with 60° bank. It is not only fiction, it is bad fiction.
A multi-g turn in your fiction would not induce hypoxia. If the eyesight and brain is not provided with enough blood pressure and thus not enough oxygen with g forces greater than 3 g over some period, the following blackout would lead to a relaxing of the loadfactor and the blood would reach the brain again. As the blood is still saturated with oxygen, the eyesight and brain will be online within 5 seconds. But a 777 would not survive such multiple g maneuvering anyway.
Sorry to be rough on you, but this fantasy posts are not usefull at all.
@Lauren
I have explained ad nauseum, yes ad nauseum literally, why the evidence points to a ditching. I’m not doing it again.
@RetiredF4:The loadfactor has nothing to do with the speed a turn is flown, but with the bank angle. 2g’s would result in a 60° bank turn, which the protections of the 777 would not allow and which no sound soal would fly in manual mode either. I do not grasp how you would end up thinking, that any air transport pilot or hijacker would intend to maneuver a 777 with 60° bank.
It’s possible. A pilot on a.net claims to have flown a B777 at 60 degree BA, and another claims it is certified up to 67 degrees (2.5 g’s). The bank angle protection does not prevent you from bank angles greater than 35 degrees, it is just an actuator that applies pressure to control in the opposite direction, but you can easily over ride it by applying more pressure. That’s part of the main design philosophy of the B777: that the pilot remains in ultimate control.
@Lauren H: re ditchings: there is at least one precedent: ET961, hijackers forced airplane to fly until fuel exhaustion, then a ditching was attempted. And in any case, there could be controlled inputs for a nose-in crash, but it could be from a low altitude, say, FL1, after a long glide; highly undesirable flight condition would ensue, but it would be relatively low velocity, and the crash site could then be 100+ nm to the south of the current search area….
@Victor: please try to see this from my perspective. I’m only trying to better understand what appears to me to be a significant gap between
a) what the French prosecutor used to publicly confirm the flaperon’s authenticity (Endoscopy, 1 of 3 hits)
b) what your confidential sources seem to know (serial #s, 2 of 2 hits)
I don’t doubt your source – I’m just surprised we didn’t – and apparently still can’t – all learn of this superior ID via official channels.
Regarding Florence: in the radio interview, she seemed quite concerned by the “1 in 12” endoscopy results. That’s why I wanted to compare your source data to hers. I did not know it was confidential when I asked for it, because you hadn’t mentioned anything.
Victor, please believe that I am merely doing my best to get to the bottom of this. I meant no offense whatsoever, and am only trying to understand this bizarre decision by the prosecutor to base his public statement on what I’m learning months later was an inferior basis of identification.
@Rob. Imo it still also is the only most logical scenario to work with regarding the objective information (false or not) there is till now.
But I realise some other scenarios are still possible too.
And when days, months and years go by with more questions raised then anwsers given these other scenarios become more and more interesting to explore.
On the gliding issue. Had they started out on the premise of a controlled glide ditching, an uncontrolled crash would also have been included in the search zone. The searchzone only would have required a shift of circa 100Nm to the east of the current hot spot (imo).
@Lauren H. More or less succesfull ditchings are rare but not that rare. I guess you saw this list before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_landing
@RetiredF4:
“I do not grasp how you would end up thinking, that any air transport pilot or hijacker would intend to maneuver a 777 with 60° bank.
But a 777 would not survive such multiple g maneuvering anyway.”
I don’t know the limits of the 777, but when I learned to fly on Cessna 152, I was asked to practice 60° bank turn (the Cessna is certified to a maximum positive load factor of 4.4). I enjoyed the sensation of being crushed on the seat…
Doesn’t a 777 pilot need to practice such kind of sharp turns to avoid a collision? But if the 777 is certified to only to 2.5g’s as Warren Platts said, then passengers have a good reason to be afraid of high bank turns and turbulence…
OK Annette @aussie500 just told me there’s a similar hinge near the R1 door that’s attached to a storage cupboard bulkhead.
@Brock, You can be a bulldog elsewhere, but please don’t harrass people in this forum. Victor has answered your question. I, having seen the same evidence, can vouch for the fact that it is correct. If Florence wants to doubt that the flaperon is from MH370, that’s her prerogative, but I can attest that the link between that part and that plane is as definitive as can he hoped for.
@Ge Rijn:
“Then this area shifts (imo) a max 100nm from the 7th arc north east, east, south, and south east pressuming it did not glided back to the north or west.”
If the pilot / hijackers wanted the aircraft never to be found, then a glide back to North-West was the best direction to hide the aircraft wreck…
@Warren Platts, @Marc,
The short version is, that M.84 does not automatically come with 60° bank turns and 2 g’s or even with the mentioned multiple g’s. loadfactor is a function of bank angle, not speed. Boeing 777 may be flown at M.84 also when turning, it is not more dangerous than flying steaight. A normal healthy person can handle 3-4″g’s for some time without getting unconscious. Further on, high g’s may cause short unconciousness, but not hypoxia. An unconcious person does not pull g’s, thus the unconciousness is gone in seconds. The pilots are able to overcome the protections, but then the poster should at least mention a reasonable cause for pulling multiple g’s.
The original poster is just adding some unrational assumptiones to sound like facts in order to make a case for his version of the events after IGARI.
Ge Rijn – on the subject of no leaks vs nothing to leak.
The media management of MH370 in general has amounted to little more than a stonewall after two years. Everything is scant and they have been miserly with information – insulting even. I don’t think this was the right way to behave for MAS as there is a clear public interest in knowing the outcomes and progress with the various endeavours underway. Compared to the way 9/11 was handled in the public realm it leaves a lot to be desired. I think it’s remarkable that no detail has popped out beyond what has been released. This is not the norm in SE Asia, and I just wonder why. Civil/domestic considerations aside though, in 2016 there is a real and pressing need to know what happened to this plane and the strange landscape of silent indifference from a raft of intl players persists. I’m sure they know a lot more than we do, it’s the way it’s been treated that raises eyebrows. What’s the big deal. Zero media management equals restricted info?? This was a state owned airline.
@RetiredF4,
You posted a link to an article you either didn’t read or didn’t understand.
It is not a part number, its an access panel zonal reference number.
Try 676EB; the panel number…. the part number is 113W9250-10.
Maybe you should look up ATA Spec 100 and then you might understand.
OZ
@Warren Platts,
“Regarding the interior object, I am beginning to think it is probably not from the toilet wall near door #2R”.
1/ No decorative trim because it’s the area under the sink.
2/ The vertical slots are where the washbasin cabinet endwall is located.
OZ
@Brock McEwen: Again, I have no idea what you are talking about when you refer to inferior forms of evidence.
All the statements about the identification of the flaperon are from the same evidence, which are numbers obtained by borescope inspection and production documentation that was made available. There are many numbers that were extracted from the flaperon (I haven’t counted how many; maybe 12, depending on how some numbers are grouped), but only two of those numbers are recordable serial numbers, corresponding to the front and rear spars. Parts like fittings and fasteners don’t have recordable serial numbers, but still may have numbers that are used during the production process. The serial number, part number, inspection date, and quality stamp on the front spar are clear. Those same features on the rear spar are blurry. However, knowing what the serial number on the rear spar is supposed to be, it is possible to positively identify it, which I have done without too much effort. That is why I am saying there are two matches while others say just one. It is difficult to look at the blurry numbers with no other knowledge and determine what they are. However, it is not very hard to determine that the blurry numbers are consistent with the expected numbers.
@Jeff @Brock
Jeff are you able to give us any more details about the flaperon flotation tests/ barnacle analysis? You mentioned “word on the street” before.
When I listened to Florence’s interview a few weeks back I also wondered about her sources of information re: the 12 numbers. However, even if the flaperon belonged to 9M-MRO on that flight and does float and has appropriate barnacle growth etc. it doesn’t appear to substantially support the case that debris drifted there from a SIO crash site as it was the sole item found over a long period.
If the 5 pieces found so far of 9M-MRO (or at least 777) debris were planted then “why?” and “who by?”. My thoughts on the “why” question are a) either to try and confirm that the current search area is more or less correct, b) if 9M-MRO has crashed or landed elsewhere, planted by the perps as some kind of message/threat to Malaysia, or c) other reason. If the reports of debris analysis are not provided soon then I’m leaning towards b).
@Steve, @Richard,
I’ve been down that route before about the pattern of speech and the “uhs.”
If you listen to Zaharie on Youtube you will notice this is his pattern of speech interjecting many “uhs” in his sentences. I think I had counted about 20 in the first minute or two or so in maybe the Aircon video on Youtube.
It’s not the “uhs” here in question but the numerical slurs, which what Jeff says about them makes the most sense now, interjecting new material. I am going with that regarding the slurs.
Richard, since the slurs begin on ground, “Malaysian “377” request taxi, we now don’t think it is their cognitive state.
More troubling is the repeated line, short handover. Coincidental most likely about the 7.5 between the two repeated lines and a 7500 hijack code. I doubt they would think ATC would “get” it.
But, someone mentioned squawk changes, could turning off the transponder be a signal to ATC that something was amiss?
@Dennis
Do you think Z is responsible for the loss of plane and lives because:
••he had access to the cockpit
••he was an experienced pilot
••he was probably upset by the court ruling that day
Is there anything else?
@Cheryl. “Could turning off the transponder be a signal that something was amiss?”
Interesting idea although I also think it would be the first thing someone would do to go dark.
Erik Nelson,
I doubt whether Zaharie was signaling out 7’s and 5’s to ATC. It sounds way too cryptic for ATC to have to figure out.
I like the “3 time push of the push-to-talk” button that Marc suggests better. But if that happened, that too went right over ATC’s heads.
Is there anything else a pilot could do if under a hijack scenario if he cannot enter the 7500 code?
@Susie C
Shah and Hamid were the only known people capable of flying the aircraft, and I have profiled them both very carefully. Hamid is typical of people in a generation removed from mine – incapable of wiping their ass without getting crap all over their hands (most of the IG falls into this category, BTW). There is no possibility Hamid could be a part of anything more complex than having a drink after work. Shah is good for it. There is no doubt about that.
There is a slim chance that the plane was taken over by hijackers and Shah was forced to do what he did, but there is no evidence of any motive for doing so.
@DennisW – well your profile of Hamid make him the conduit risk for allowing hijacking or anything else bad. If something needing pilot fixing seems he could make it worse off.
Dear @Jeff, are you genuinely adamant that all the debris, post the reunion flaperon has been planted?! If so, are you leaning toward a government being responsible? Or some kind of twisted elaborate prankster?
@MH
Hamid is in the “wonder what happened” category. No way is he a part of any of this.
@Victor, Jeff,
Please cut Brock, and the rest of us, some slack. I had the same reaction to Victor’s original post, which clearly indicated that he had some detailed non-public-domain knowledge of flaperon forensics. And if he had it, presumably it came from within the french investigation team.
So to us mere mushrooms, there was a clear apparent discrepancy between, what the officials used publicly (1 in 3) and what Victor (and Jeff), based their justifications on to link the flaperon to MH370.
No need for the apparent outrage or to call names (bulldog). Had it been clear in the original post, that more detailed info was confidentially shared with you, some invalid inferences (by us mushrooms) could have been avoided.