Mick Rooney, aka @Airinvestigate, has released further documents from the secret Royal Malaysian Police investigation into the disappearance of MH370. I asked him if he could tell me anything about how the documents were sourced or why they are being released now, but he says that he is bound by an oath of confidentiality not to discuss further.
Those familiar with recent events surrounding the case might be able to hazard a guess.
Here are the files:
data-from-flight-simulator-computer
This 14-page document includes technical information about the data found on Zaharie’s flight simulator hard drives. It appears that the machine crashed multiple times in the months before MH370’s disappearance. The document also includes a log of when the flight sim was played, the last time being on March 15, 2014, a week after the plane disappeared (presumably this reflects activity by investigators.) Prior to that, the sim had last been played on February 20, two weeks before the disappearance. This suggests that Zaharie was not using his flight simulator to practice vanishing in the weeks before his disappearance.
data-from-prelim-exam-report-translated-from-malay
This 7-page document seems to have been machine-translated from Malay, and appears to describe a preliminary investigation of the computer hard drives by a Malaysian police technician. It lists the various hard drives found with the flight-sim computer. Among the information recovered were passwords and account information for Zaharie’s hobbies and interests, as well as information about an online bookstore, Zaharie’s various social media accounts, and online shopping. Of particular note, investigators found a deleted folder labeled “777TwinTower” which contains pictures of a Malaysia Airlines plane flying toward the Kuala Lumpur city center. Given widely held suspicion that Zaharie took MH370 on a suicide flight, and that fact that terrorists flew two planes into New York’s twin towers in 2001, this will no doubt raise eyebrows. However, this document notes that: “These images have been taken from the computer screen to play a simulated airplane. The assessment believed that the owners of these computers have taken one of those images for the purpose of being used as an icon on the account.” That is to say, an innocent interpretation of this folder and its contents would be that Zaharie, a proud Malaysian 777 pilot, wanted to create an image of his plane flying past an iconic Malaysian landmark.
After a section discussing the seven deleted points from the flight simulator, which have been much discussed in this forum, the report concludes with a brief Summary: “The results of the examination of the goods were found that no any activity outside the common. The overall computer use to host gaming Flight Simulator only. Nor has any information source which directly indicates there any plans to eliminate MH370 found.”
This 31-page document appears to contain all of the saved data in the seven above-mentioned flight simulator points. Hopefully independent flight simulator experts will look it over and render an opinion for the rest of us who lack the expertise to properly grapple with it.
Overview
How does this new information alter our understanding of the MH370 mystery?
For me, it is noteworthy that so little incriminating information was found on any of Zaharie’s computers, even (especially) among the deleted files. The way we use computers these days, they are essentially extensions of our brains. Any passing fancy that drifts through our head is likely to be reflected in our internet search history, in notes we write to ourselves, and so on. When Andreas Lübitz was in the throes of his final mental dissolution, he spent a great deal of time online reading about mental disorders and researching ways to commit suicide. It’s all right there to be seen. Yet on Zaharie’s computer there is nothing. Indeed, he seems to have been spending his time prior to the disappearance doing things like making instructional DIY home-repair videos and pretending to fly an antique DC-3 airplane. Not, it would seem, the behavior of someone contemplating his imminent extinction.
In the light of this newly released information, it is easier to understand why the Malaysian police came to the conclusion that nothing about Zaharie’s behavior points to him being the culprit.
@All
Just off the news feed re MH370\http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/incidents/australian-aviation-enthusiast-comes-up-with-plausible-theory-about-mh370s-fate/news-story/adffe907d99c2e049eae9d6d86ab2117
Cheers Tom L
@Tom Lindsay
Nothing new. It contains the same information that we saw in the media a few weeks ago.
Short on Petronas Towers etc. :
I think AM2 is right in all. And a real translation is necessary. And Dennis is right in that it probably won’t take us further.
In connection, with the drives being very innocent, I wouldn’t count on Z being stupid. Everything he would do would leave a track, and apparently he didn’t leave any. Is it possible for him to get hold of a degausser without anyone noticing afterwards? (What would one cost?) Without anyone stepping forward when the papers where raving? Without any noted excessive expenses. If he has managed to stay spotless after all scrutiny, he is either pretty clever or not our man. The computer crashes might be a clue, or? But surely RMP has looked into what happened there.
And I get those MAS pilots/officials in his home (FB) on the retina. What were they doing? Anyone who knows? Adjusting the sim to B777 conditions?
@Aaron
Sure I can imagine SIM-users save screenshots they like and like to use in a simulation often.
In this case though the saved images are from a MAS plane flying towards the Petronas Tower linked to a B777 saved in a folder named ‘777TwinTower’ by a pilot who vanished with a MAS B777 2 1/2 months after he deleted this folder.
The name ‘TwinTower’ is the name reserved for the New York Twin Towers.
It’s a very sensitive name. Zaharie could have used ‘777KLtower’ or ‘777PetronasTower’.
But he used ‘777TwinTower’ and according to the report played a simulated airplane with those pictures. Simulations were saved in the folder according the report.
If this is not suspisious and not worth knowing all details of this folder I wonder what is.
What did this simulated flight(s) towards the Kuala Lumpur Tower and KLCC looked like??
And again: that line from the FB page in connection to the MAS people being there: “as long as you are not planning to be a terrorist” (or something like that). Did he put that up there himself or was it done afterwards? Is it a transcript from a video or is it a caption to a photo that he put there himself?
If he was planning isn’t a bit too far to go to put that out there? He must have realised it would drag his face through the press.
@Ge Rijn: I think it should be looked into. You probably need to be a Kualalumpurian to decide whether “twin towers” is an adequate name. But even so I can’t say that it would be strange if he called them that. Inside his own more or less bilingual head, what can you say?
@DennisW: “path of least resistance”
Reformulate the problem completely? You should have no fixed offset values that constrain you there.
@TBill. The possible Chillit search. Interesting. A couple of points. One piece of information which led to the HMAS Sydney search success was the estimate of drift of some life rafts, recovered at sea. Dr Griffin of the CSIRO did the current and drift estimations, utilising wind information specially derived by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and which had a much lesser spread of possibilities than earlier efforts. Earlier attempts at estimating currents were wrong also, taking no account of eddies in the area. Griffin utilised BLUE link, an extant RAN/CSIRO funded project, for ocean currents and also wave data from satellite radar altimetry. Art Allen of the US Coastguard’s Office of Search and Rescue estimated life raft drift at between 3 and 1 percent of wind, depending on submergence and a German survivor of the battle gave his account of that. The outcome, a spread of possibilities, allowed for a likely determination of when a fix by the captain of the German ship (Kormoran, an auxiliary cruiser) was taken. Her subsequent course and speed I assume could then be added from that datum, which proved to be a noon fix, to the afternoon battle, adding to other evidence of where the battle had been. This is all from a magnificent book on the subject by David L. Mearns, the chief searcher. No sign of Bayes.
Of course this was but a part of the sifting of information by Mearns (there had been 59 opinions over the years of the positions of the two combatants and some earlier spot searches).
Both ships were sunk. The successful search (March 2008) utilised a side scan sonar, video later, the search area variously 2300 sq nm or 1768 sqnm, both ships’ depth about 2500 metres. It was a 45 day search, cost about $A5m. It was much closer to the W. Australian coast and considerably further north than that for MH370. The battle had been in November 1941, ie before Pearl Harbour. HMAS Sydney had sunk an Italian cruiser in the Mediterranean earlier.
Some questions to be answered in the Chillit approach are why there should be more confidence in that than the current search, what would make the difference and how has that search cost been estimated? Presumably a search area is in mind already?
In the SYDNEY instance naturally there were persuasive accounts prepared before the new search was authorised and supported. Disagreement over where to search had bedevilled earlier campaigns.
@Ge Rijn:
“…If this is not suspisious and not worth knowing all details of this folder I wonder what is…”
This is not at all suspicious. It’s what people do with flight sims, have fun.
However, this is a red herring in that it has been thrown to divert attention from what we are trying to do – find MH370.
“If this is not suspisious and not worth knowing all details of this folder I wonder what is.”
@Gerijn
To be honest now you’re linking words like Twin towers with the tragic event of 9-11 and thinking this could be the same type of motive..
Regardless of what you, myself and others may want to speculate on the nature of this folder…It’s irrelevant to actual fact of what did happen..
I,e a plane mysteriously went of course a vanished some in the Indian ocean..
@DennisW, Everyone but you seems to agree that BFO does indeed provide important constraining information in the absense of a BTO value. Specifically, it requires that the plane was either flying on a similar heading to later BFO values (i.e. southward) or that the plane was in a descent.
It is possible that just such a descent was occurring, or that the plane was circling and just happened to be pointed in the right direction at that instant, but the unlikeliness of such coincidence is what allowed the DSTG to essentially ignore it.
I recall that you argued that mechanical failure should be disregarded as an explanation for MH370 because only 20 percent (or something) of accidents are caused by mechanical failure. I wonder why you’re willing to accept such terrible odds in this circumstance.
Speaking broadly, it’s easy to arrive at arbitrary end points if we allow ourselves to disregard constraints arbitrarily. The ATSB does not have this luxury. The fact that they weighed their constraints carefully does not make them “stupid.”
@Ge Rijn, You wrote, “The name ‘TwinTower’ is the name reserved for the New York Twin Towers.” Actually the name of the two side-by-side identical tall structures in downtown KL is “Petronas Twin Towers.” The website URL is http://www.petronastwintowers.com.my/.
@Jeff:
Damn! You are making basic research now! You are making us all look silly.
@DennisW:
….when you have considered any Ex-Wife Upset values…?
@Jeff Wise. “Speaking broadly, it’s easy to arrive at arbitrary end points if we allow ourselves to disregard constraints arbitrarily. The ATSB does not have this luxury. The fact that they weighed their constraints carefully does not make them “stupid.”
Spot on.
Getting a tad absurd, what next..
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2186921/shock-new-mh370-theory-suggests-hero-pilot-of-doomed-jet-ditched-burning-plane-into-the-sea-to-avoid-bustling-cities/
@DennisW
Nothing screams ‘something very incriminating to hide’ louder than owning or purchasing a degausser. DBAN or srm run off a Linux rescue CD followed by a high level reformat to NTFS would do the job just as well. It may take days to perform a DoD-level wipe, but it’ll work on a spinning platter drive. You can also overwrite deleted data space (as opposed to merely deleting the inodes) on a live system.
I’d love to know how good Captain Shah’s technical chops were outside of simulator setup for a number of reasons, but it seems, if investigators could find the deleted waypoints and folders, he didn’t know about shellbags… As for the investigators ‘firing up’ Captain Shah’s PC before creating a forensic image of the drive… *facepalm*.
@Aaron:
“Getting a tad absurd, what next..”
I think that failing to be able to demonise ZS effectively they are now trying to establish the guy as a hero. However, as far as the cover-up goes this is irrelevant and the story stays the same – the pilot done it and plane in SIO.
So why raise this now? Perhaps another red herring to throw those getting closer to the truth off the track again. Perhaps the mysterious Fariq Hamid’s cell phone connect near Penang is very important to understanding where the plane can be found?
“So why raise this now?”
@Boris,
Good points you make.The problem with MH370
mystery it’s brought out all kinds of arm chair experts putting fourth their theory on the disappearance..
Some going as far to publish a book then using various tabloid papers to spin their story to try a sell more books…
Others which I’ll not name have become rude on others on forums if anyone openly questions that persons theory..
Sometimes it leads me to think some of these ppl have better to do except troll various forums..
For me I remain open to the possibility that anything could have happened to MH370 till concrete evidence suggests otherwise..
@Jeff
Without a BTO value it is difficult to assess the integrity of the BFO. For example the Inmarsat data at 18:25:34 and 00:19:39 clearly has “impossible” BTO values. Do you want to go ahead and trust the BFO at those times? Some people do, and I am not criticizing them for that. I elect not to trust those values because you do not really need them. Someone will correctly argue that the 00:19:39 BFO is useful to infer that the plane dropped out of the sky close to that time, and did not glide another 50nm. While that is true, it is not all that helpful when your analytics have the aircraft several hundred nautical miles from where it actually was at that time.
Likewise since the publication of the DSTG book it is very clear (see Figure 5.4 and the BFO statistics) that we have been too restrictive in the size of the BFO errors we have been restricting ourselves to.
My intent and continuing theme is to show that the ISAT data, while a wonderful thing to have, is not able to unambiguously determine a terminus. It is guide that can be used to eliminate possibilities like the Bay of Bengal, the Maldives, and any Northern path. There are many possible paths to the South.
Given that ambiguity, an underwater search based on the ISAT data alone, is an expensive dice roll. I would not have done it.
@Stendec
You make good points relative to a degausser. I suppose I am also aging myself. Before my hearing degraded I was a bit of an audiophile, and used reel to reel tape machines (have not seen one of those in awhile) to listen to music while archiving the record. It was common practice to degauss the tapes before use. Come to think of it, I have not seen a degausser around in a long while either, but they were fairly common “back in the day”.
@JeffW, Have you been able to make some headway on the 2 Ukranians? I have been trying to dig up Malaysian Russian/Ukranian relations and have found nothing of interest. Malaysia was one of the 1st countries to support Ukranian independence , but that is ancient news. The most juicy titbit is MY and the disputes with China on the South China seas, namely James Shoal and MY recalibrating its policies and siding more with the Phillipines and Vietnam. Nothing shocking there IMO. If the Ukranians/Russian were involved there has to be a motive. For me, MH17 and MH370 is mind boggling. What are the chances? But if MY was a target of sorts, the question is why? Did something go amiss with MH370 (sending a clear message) and they went into the rebound with MH17? Is there anything in your theory/investigation that puts MY on Russias radar? I am trying to keep an open mind to a hijacking scenario rather than just looking at ZS/F :).
@David
Chillit’s search area is shown on the link, centered on 25.5-S and 101.2-E. Believe Chillit has used his own version of “triangulation” to define spot. He has shifted Arc7 a little north vs. ATSB. Yes the area is small but I believe Chillit is hoping others will follow his funding example.
Interesting to note the Chillit end point is fairly close to Iannello McMurdo and Godfrey’s latest and DennisW recent version are all converging on that area. I was serious that DennisW path version if it were changed to magnetic from Cocos could be in the same end point location as Chillit.
@DennisW,When we were growing up my dad, an electro technical engineer, had this voltage meter back in the 60’s with 2 protruding pins. Whenever he thought we were untruthfull he made us get that machine, and touch the pins with our sweaty palms. He made us believe that if the dial moved we were lieing our asses off. It always worked its magic. Those were the days.
@Keffertje
In defense of HiJack scenario, which is secondary for me, one could argue we know 9M-MRO went to Beijing on March 7, that was an opportunity for HiJackers to board and hide in EE bay or connected luggage area. Then you had O2 bottles filled in KLIA, so it is hard to imagine hiding there, but if it were a conspiracy maybe. Or also if it was a conspiracy, that presented opportunity to turn off ELT, empty emergency O2 bottles, turn off flight recorder maybe and other possible preparations.
@TBill, there had to have been a reason, in the event of a hijacking. I will keep digging. Security wise thse countries are as leak as a sieve.
On FB account: answering and correcting myself (back to the sources).
Judging from a visit to Z’s FB page it feels like the gentleman/men from MAS who visited Z (as of picture post; last try before upgrade) and tried his sim cannot be related to anything. Other (sim-)pilots had responded btw of share/comment buttons to Z’s post about his new upgrade pack(whatever) called Rampage arriving from California (was it). There was the exchange of Q&A where Z calls himself a “sim extremist” and the interlocutor says something about “well, just not a terrorist”. This is in the flow of posts somewhere in 2013. I had the impression this took place at Z’s home in front of a camera. That was not the case.
There is something to observe there which is connected to another thing to observe: Logically, the interlocutor calls Z an (inverted) “terrorist” in the light of the flow of posts around. Z was pretty busy between mid-January 2013 and end of May the same year, posting no less than 380 posts during that timespan (there were 380 share button links, I gather one per his own post). If we call that 135 days, he made an average of 2.8 posts a day during that time. If we allow him to be unavailable for this during his flights, the day average will of course rise. Almost all of this is political, with quotes, newspaper links and pro and contra (election) propaganda apparently sent to him or discovered by himself online. Most likely this is in direct connection with a parallell political process or elections. And he is, whether “contracted” for it or not, acting as a mouthpiece for PKR.
It is not clear to me if this starts after the holidays in January 2013 or started earlier; or, if it really stopped in June 2013 or has been redacted away afterwards; but one can see perhaps a slow start with the politics in January, and a pretty abrupt stop with politics in May. As far as one can tell, the posts where published in the public sphere from the beginning, but one would perhaps need to see if commentators also always was his friends. I saw some political quarrels among visitors, though.
In the light of this, the DIY videos are pretty tuned down politically to say the least. He is completely and unabashedly outspokenly PKR in everything that is about social comment etc. And anti the government coalition BN. One can see a genuine identification with groups that are suppressed. And he is buying in on the propaganda himself too, as far as one can judge. There is cooking and other stuff there too, but I would rate the political content well over 90 percent.
Without being familiar with the exact political developments in MY I would say he may have been a slice disappointed in MAY 2013. If it stops there. From then on you see an add for a washing machine filter, two food dishes and a picture of kids dancing, as the new chosen FB profile picture. This all of course gives you the impression that he unknowingly might have burnt all his ships there. Also a few psychological ones. This gives food for thought. Who knows what went through his mind.
@Dennis,TBill,Jeff,others
What is your thoughts on what Mike Chillet says about unreliable BTO data? See below
had lined up a great company with decades of experience, and previous successes in that same area (HMAS Sydney). They know that ocean as well as anyone; better than most.
“But it was not to be. When I set about confirming the exact coordinates of the 7th Arc, I discovered that it is not stable. The BTO ping ring data it is built on is highly variable. Even worse, Inmarsat has only given us a small “calibration” sample of BTO bias data values that were taken from the tarmac half an hour prior to the plane’s final flight. That raises the very real prospect that in-flight BTO data is not at all similar; that variability is even more disparate at altitude. And, unfortunately, neither Inmarsat nor ATSB will provide the actual BTO bias data during the flight. What are they hiding? Who knows. Hopefully there will eventually be criminal probes of several actors who have mostly impeded all efforts to conduct a competent professional search.”
@DennisW
As a bit of audio buff myself, you have my genuine sympathy on your personal bandwidth loss, although I’ve always said good music sounds good no matter what the fidelity…
To wipe an HDD you need a far bulkier and more powerful degausser than a tape-head wand, think VHS blanker and then some. I don’t think data eradication was Captain Shah’s forte, somehow.
Which leaves us with:
The (published) radar tracks.
The Inmarsat pings.
The Penang cellphone tower logs.
An eerily prescient claim by the CMB.
Eyewitness and acoustic data which matches none of the above.
Some debris and recovered deletions.
What better way for a relatively secular Malaysian to shield his family and stick it to the Malay Establishment at the same time than to utterly dissapear and leave the rest of the world to draw its own conclusions and blame Islamists and/or poor Malaysian security… I think that CMB claim via Hushmail could have been a deliberate red herring, point of no return, and suicide note rolled into one.
@Johan
Did you see this Z comment about Sims on YouTube- Z: “being a fan of MFS since the first version and a boeing 777 pilot all at once, , I hv yet to see a good addon as the PSS boeing777 which was release many years ago. Unfortunately its for FS9. I m still holding on to it awaits the same author rebirth. VC is crap, serious enthusiast would go for multi screens , technology is cheaper now.Some of the coolest funtionality on PSS 777, fuel trail on fuel jettision ! Comprehensive support nav data base by third party. ”
Yikes I am just seeing the fuel jettison comment now, I think he might have if he reached his target with fuel left over.
@Aaron
Chillit is over my head on that one, sounds like he has been busy organizing the search so a little weak on explaining the details for newbies like me.
@Aaron
I have no idea what Chillit means by BTO bias during the flight. There is no way to compute BTO bias after ACARS went off line. The only data we have to calculate BTO bias is prior to ACARS loss.
Frankly, I feel really good about BTO integrity except at those times that are clearly bogus (18:25:34 and 00:19:39). Who knows what was going on in the AES at those times? The other values are quite consistent.
Per Malaysian – Russian/Ukrainian relations ; consider this:
http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/malaysian-pm-najib-to-solemnise-daughters-marriage-to-kazakhstan-presidents-nephew
@Thanks for the explanation..
I was at a loss myself on Chillets BTO offset bias….
@DennisW, stendec:
I noticed that you can always go to your local degausser and degauss there.
@TBill:
Don’t forget the guy had 18,000 hours of the real thing and a load of the virtual since many years. He’s a connaisseur. And he could play out everything virtually that he couldn’t in reality. He has pushed every button, tried every lever, reflown every scenario, seen every place. The jettison, I think, doesn’t mean anything more to him than anything else, but he can appreciate the reality of it in the virtual. And if he has followed the technical development he will be as thrilled as I am (in principle) about what can be done today in terms of suggestive reality compared to the days of the slot machines.
I don’t know of course how he handled this mentally, but I can see a psychological link or bridge between the simulated reality in the sim and the moulded reality (his narrative, his fiction, his program) of the/a staged/directed flight transferred into real life. But he doesn’t really appear to be that guy.
@TBill:
I will take a look when I find time…
@Johan
I wondered what fuel jettison looked like, and it makes a big cloud contrail. So if hiding the airplane, that action would probably necessitate cover of night. Flame-out of engines, probably easier to hide during daylight.
More on FB:
Excuse my dilettantisms. In a FB post 4 May 2013, Z explicitly says it is his last FB post (prior to elections — to be held the day after.). It is in Malay, but with a translation link. So that means his activities up until then logically pertains to the at times turbulent election process. After that there is complete silence on politics.
The result in the elections apparently or most certainly opened for the process that lead to the reopening of the charges/sentence against Ibrahim, which was decided on the evening of 8 March.
It may also have meant that Z had opportunity to regret being outspoken about PKR on his FB account. And against BN.
Is not that a motive, despite everything? For extended but deniable suicide that is.
@TBill:
Sorry, I see. Satellites and random passer-by.
I endorse your adjusting-to-actual-circumstances approach.
@TBill:
Sorry, I see. Satellites and random passer-by.
I endorse your adjusting-to-actual-circumstances approach.
@DennisW:
You might be right about MY not being so keen on finding the plane after all.
@Johan:
“…I noticed that you can always go to your local degausser and degauss there…”
Or if he really wanted to hide things permanently he could have done what I do before taking a PC to the tip. Put HDD in a rubble sack, hit 3 times with a 5lb lump hammer, turn disc over and repeat. After all if he was planning suicide he wouldn’t be needing that disc drive ever again.
Any opinion on the Phantom Boeing?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbCcxDsH0wU
@Boris:
You got a point there. Whatever could be done without leaving a trace of anything out of the ordinary. On the face of it, the “crashes” sounds like an excuse for getting rid of disks or overwrite them and reformatting them. But I am not sure right now when that was supposed to have happened. Let’s hope the police are on to that as far as it can get them. Possibly some other computer (or tablet) could be missing.
@MH:
You got the motive for taking down MH17 right there?:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10977708/Malaysia-PMs-grandmother-killed-on-Flight-MH17.html
@Johan:
“…Possibly some other computer (or tablet) could be missing.”
If I were planning something illegal, I’d use a Linux USB flash drive to boot any winPC into the operating system on the stick and keep all data off the host PC. Leaves no trace on the PC and is very easy to conceal or dispose of if necessary.
I don’t think it would have been suspicious for ZS to swap out and scrap the disc used. then re-install the flight sim on a brand new one. The history of his PC crashing would provide an obvious reason for doing this.
@Johan, i suspected the shooting down of MH17 was in revenge for something of what Malaysia did. Nothing has clearly tied this yet… but Russia is on the hook for an explanation.
@Keffertje@TBill
Re: hijacking scenario motive: Is there any possibility that 9M-MRO could have been used as a weapon to avenge the loss of Osama bin Laden? al-Zawahiri has always promised this. Funding: whoever funded OBL. Expertise: Ukrainian?? This hypothesis I accept is firmly in the whacko camp.
@TBill (and Aaron). The Chillit proposal. I have taken a closer look, thanks, including his site. It is unclear to me who else may be behind search area selection and what its prospects might be.
The three funding countries ought to welcome non-intefering assistance I reckon, even provide support, depending on merit.
@TBill. Looks like he has pulled the plug and that it was just him? Large phase 2 needed it seems.
http://www.seventharc.net/author/chillit/
@David
That was the original news…apparently Mike Chillit has since changed his mind decided to go ahead. He is looking for partner funding.
@SteveBarratt
Aside from the questionable claim of responsibility from the China Martyr Brigades, to my knowledge we have no obvious clues to suggest a foreign HiJack motive. Obviously there are many “what-if” theories but my feeling is that the U.S. FBI believes pilot involvement, and I assume they heavily considered terrorism or mechanical failure as alternate explanations.
@TBill, SteveB,
A hijacking is not impossible or improbable. However, there are a lot of aspects to consider as well. 1st being, its 40 minutes or so into the flight, busy time with serving drinks and dinner. There would be at least 3 – 4 crew members serving business class. What are the chances someone could access the E/E bay within the very limited time-frame available? Then there is also the cockpit camera’s to consider and pilots would (I assume) pick up on any cabin disturbances and sound the alarm. So it would have to be at least 1 person already hiding below to pull it off (who’s identity would elude us all) with cohorts in the cabin. It would provide the element of surprise and access to cockpit before it could be locked manually. Even though we assume no one else would be capable to commandeer a 777, there are plenty of countries that could train someone without us knowing about it, even if they weren’t top notch (as demonstrates the erratic flying after the IGARI turn). Also, depending on the motive, the intention may not have been to ever land the aircraft but simply make it disappear. The question then also is: why? Why MH370?
MY is not a country that likes to antagonize other countries or meddle in their internal affairs. Keeping low profile is sort of their MO and not taking sides openly. What MH17 and MH370 have accomplished is it ripped away that low profile MO and put them visibly on the map. Not sure they care about that per see, but still. I am convinced we are still not privy to all of the data, so we are pretty much bouncing around theories in the dark.