@jeffwise : In S1E30 you say that theories by GreenDot and MentourPilot are affected by the same problem: They claim that all electrical systems were depowered, but then they seem to work just fine:
« At the end he points out that, yeah, practically nothing will have electrical power anymore and the plane will be basically like – imagine a city during a blackout – like that's what's happening: You'd have a couple of really critical things that are running off of generators um in this case running off the RAT, and everything else is dead. And so in this video in what follows, he and ... the same thing is true in Green Dot, is that they imagine the entire plane has been depowered but then what you see is a plane that has all of its things working normal, you know, and so none of these effects are actually taking place. And this is another reason why this idea is so problematic »
My question:
Are they really saying that "all of its things are working normally" ?
It's been a while. In the Green Dot video, doesn't he show the plane with all the lights on and everything?
Even if I fumbled this point, I don't think that it's reasonable to imagine that Zaharie would have isolated both of the plane's AC buses just for the sake of making sure that the satcom wasn't transmitting. I don't even think it's reasonable to imagine he isolated just the left AC bus, which would have had dramatically fewer negative effects. But that's far more plausible than what Green Dot and MentourPilot are proposing.
I'll be talking more about this point in the video that I'm hoping to drop tomorrow.
Ok, that's possible. I only listened to the audio. If that's what the video shows your criticism has legs. But their flight simulator probably can't accurately simulate such edge scenarios. I think it's more important to listen to their actual stories (rather than the visual illustration of it).
"Coincidence? Why would leaving radar coverage matter for the purpose of restoring power to the SDU?"
It occurred to me, that I never really contemplated this question, because it seemed so obvious. But now that I'm thinking about it, I'm at a loss of a compelling, straightforward explanation.
Here is my attempt at an explanation, but it's not a very good one:
Hi Peter, Sorry, I've been in the weeds and it's been difficult to find the time to respond. I clicked through to your comment on Victor's blog. I like that you're digging deep into this point, because I agree that it feels significant. A couple of points: a) I long thought of radar coverage as a discrete, bounded area, almost like an FIR, but now I don't think that's right; the energy of the radar beam attenuates gradually, not discretely, and one doesn't "leave" it so cleanly; the strength of the return depends on the orientation of the target. I think that what might have happened is that as the plane was flying away from Butterworth, it presented a relatively small cross-sectional profile, and became invisible; then at 18:22 turned to the northwest and momentarily presented a larger side-profile and so was briefly detected again. I suspect that the timing of the reboot was figured out not by the strength registered on a hand-held device, but a calculation by someone who knew the parameters of the radar system well and understood how aircraft geometry affects detection. Mind you, just a theory! b) I think it's worth noting that we have all arrived at a consensus that, whoever took the plane, was operating with an attitude of sneakiness and deception. For pijack proponents, this can be explained by imagining that Zaharie not only wanted to kill himself and his passengers and crew but also had some other nefarious goal, perhaps inspired by watching too many Marvel villains onscreen, that had to do with creating a paradoxical genius masterpiece that would both leave him untainted by guilt but would also earn him fame as a mastermind. Not saying that's impossible, but what I'm proposing is that deviousness fits better with the mindset of a cyber attacker than a suicidal person.
@jeffwise : Thanks for responding. I am in general agreement with you.
Sorry, my question to you probably was not worded well enough. Let me try to rephrase:
Assuming it was not a coincidence but the perpetrator deferred the SDU reboot on purpose until having left radar coverage: What purpose did this serve? What disadvantage would have been associated with rebooting the SDU while still within radar range?
I am probably missing something obvious. But at worst, rebooting the SDU would send a ping to Inmarsat, who weren't expected to monitor traffic in real time. So why does it even matter if the SDU is rebooted before or after leaving radar coverage ?
My theory is this: if the SDU was rebooted while the plane was still under primary radar coverage, it would have been possible to calibrate the motion of the plane with the Inmarsat data. It would be apparent that a plane traveling north would generate BFO values that implied it was going south.
If on the other hand if the perps waited a long time to rebooted the SDU, there would have been a long enough gap that the Inmarsat data wouldn't make it as clear where the plane supposedly went in the southern Indian Ocean. I think the perps wanted investigators to think they knew where the plane went, so they would keep talking about it. They wanted to create maximum distraction and bafflement.
@jeffwise : That's clever. If I understand you correctly, you mean that looking at it from the perspective of stage magic, rebooting the SDU before leaving radar coverage would give away the magic trick, right? Because the southern route implied by the spoofed BFO data would be belied by the radar data showing MH370 travelling to the north. That is what you are saying, right?
Of course there are 2 inherent assumptions here:
• the BFO data was spoofed
• the perpetrator knew about the BFO/BTO data
What about the mainline theory (vanishing into the SIO) ?
Can you think of a reason for deferring the SDU reboot until after leaving radar coverage in this case as well ?
I don't think the reboot of the SDU (or shutting it off in the first place, for that matter) makes any sense in the context of a pilot hijack. People are trying to jury rig explanations because they've convinced themselves that Zaharie must have done it, so he must have had a reason for isolating the left AC bus, but I just don't think any of them hold water.
@jeffwise : I have suicidal thoughts since a couple of years, so I am speaking from a practical point of view. If I were to leave this world, I would not ever want to be found (which is not as easy as it sounds). So I can very much relate to the idea of taking a plane and disappear into the great vastness of the sea, where my body won't ever be found. Of course, I wouldn't take other lives in the process, but as for the rest, I completely get the idea. So to me, turning off SDU, XPNDR, ACARS, etc. is perfectly logical. If I had the necessary knowledge, I would certainly do that.
Anyway, I think your argument ("if the SDU was rebooted while the plane was still under primary radar coverage, it would have been possible to calibrate the motion of the plane with the Inmarsat data") applies to both theories: the BFO spoofing theory and the mainline theory, because in both cases the perpetrator didn't want to be found.
Well, I'm sorry to hear that, we don't want to lose you! I'll defer to your intution, but I think that you're mixing up apples and oranges when you refer to "SDU, XPNDR, ACARS..." It makes sense to turn off the transponder, ACARS, IFE, and all of that. Those are easy to do and can be done normally. Turning off the SDU is an entirely different category and, again, doesn't provide any benefit (at least a good one that I've heard anyone propose). What you're left with is a guy who was supposedly trying to be sneaky and very sophisticated about his knowledge of the wiring of the plane but wound up messing with it in a way that didn't assist his plan.
We don't need to go around and around about this forever -- you either think the SDU reboot is fishy, or you don't. I get that you don't and that's fine.
@jeffwise : thanks for your empathy. I'll try to stick around.
Oh, I find the loss and reboot of the SDU super-fishy!
I just explore all possible avenues, since I am this rare kind of animal who isn't married to any pet-theory.
I think the strength of your theory resides in explaining a lot of strange factors (like the SDU reboot) and I give you enormous credit for that.
On the flipside, why can't you agree but keep saying hat turning off the SDU "provides no good benefit" ? I have asked you lots of times, but I don't think you ever answered this question:
In the mainline theory, depowering the SDU prevents transmission of the ACARS logoff message (which would have been definite proof of nefarious action) thus sparing the perpetrator and his family the shame of being exposed as a proven mass-murderer. This is certainly a good argument, no ? Can't we agree on this, too ?
"wound up messing with it in a way that didn't assist his plan" --> well, it seems to have worked for over a decade now. And this despite the Inmarsat data which he could not have anticipated, right ?
You ask if I think it's a good argument that isolating the left AC bus would be a worthwhile thing to do for the sake of not sending an ACARS logoff message. First of all, I don't think you mean ACARS logoff, I think you mean logoff from the Inmarsat satellite. Second, I don't understand what difference that would make. It's quite clear that the plane was deliberately diverted and the electrical equipment switched off through intentional act. And if a person really wanted to turn off a piece of equipment, I'm sure that any 777 pilot would tell you that they would simply pull the relevant circuit breaker.
• Re: "they would simply pull the relevant circuit breaker":
SATCOM/SDU doesn't have a circuit breaker in the cockpit, only in the E&E bay. (Hence your theory about the Russian or the Ukrainians entering the E&E bay, no ?)
• Re: "It's quite clear that the plane was deliberately diverted and the electrical equipment switched off through intentional act."
I agree. But where is the irrefutable evidence for that? Because there is no definitive proof, there are still a lot of people believing in an accident scenario (some malfunction causing loss of communication, hypoxia, disorientation, and ghost flight in the end). A logoff message would be 100% proof of an intentional act. That's why it makes a huge difference for us investigators and for the perpetrator.
• With the regards to the logoff message, your comment shows me that apparently I still don't fully understand it.
Deselecting SATCOM as an ACARS communications channel via the CDU apparently does not generate a logoff message according to Mick Gilbert:
But if this is true, then why was the SDU depowered ?
And how do we even know that the SDU was depowered ?
I always thought that we know because no ACARS messages were received after IGARI *and* no ACARS logoff message was received either. I thought this told us that the SATCOM must have been depowered.
But if this isn't true, then how do we even know that the SATCOM/SDU had lost power ?
I am confused right now and would be very thankful if you could sort this out (in case you have the technical knowledge).
@jeffwise : In S1E30 you express doubts about the equipment cooling fans losing power (which is at the center of GreenDot's and Mentour Pilot's theories, if I recall correctly). Agreed, this truly sounded like a ridiculous idea. But apparently it's true!
Well, specifically what they're claiming is that Zaharie turned the SDU back on because, having isolated the entire electrical system, the fans were unpowered and hence unable to cool the E/E bay computers. So I don't think that the order in which the ELMS sheds loads to various systems speaks to this, unless I'm missing something.
Why is it not relevant in your view ? After the "entire electrical system was isolated" in Mentour's scenario, the APU would start. That's where the ELMS is important, as it sheds non-essential electrical loads (such as the cooling fans apparently!!) when the APU starts:
“The Electrical Load Management System (ELMS) automatically sheds non-essential electrical loads when the APU starts. The ELMS protects the electrical power system. It sheds (disconnects) electrical loads to keep the load levels below the power supply levels. In-flight the ELMS monitors the status of these three power sources for load shed control:
[…]
– Equipment cooling vent fan. »
Where I am coming from:
I highly doubted the theory that the cooling fans could possibly lose power at all. They use almost no power (probably something like 0,1% of the power for the equipment they are intended to cool). So it doesn't make sense to shut down the fans (which you mention in the episode as well). This yields almost no savings in power consumption, but comes at the price of losing the equipment entirely due to overheating. So from a technical point of view, this is quite nonsensical. It would be more logical not to separate fan power from equipment power.
What I am trying to get at: In S1E30 you say, you are skeptical that Mentour Pilot's theory (overheating equipment due to cooling fans losing power) is even possible. And until now I completely agreed with your point of view for the very same reason.
But the FCOM portion linked above says otherwise apparently:
(1) ELMS can shed ... "equipment cooling vent fan." (We didn't think that was a possibility at all.)
(2) Apparently the electrical load of the cooling fans is shed even BEFORE other much less essential loads such as "Electronic passenger seat equipment". This is extremely weird.
I think the more important thing to realize is just what an insane measure it would be to isolate the aircraft's entire electrical system just for the sake of cutting power to the satcom -- which itself in no way helps {note: I orignally wrote "hinders" by mistake} the proposed elaborate suicide plot.
Cutting power to the satcom does not advance the suicide plot by itself. But it is beneficial for the supposed plot to vanish without a trace and without proof of pilot guilt.
Yes of course you're right. I'm going to edit in a fix of my backwards language. The point I was making that if he wanted to be electronically dark he could do so by deselecting ACARS, IFE, etc from the control panel. Green Dot's idea was that he wanted to be extra sure nothing would transmit. My two problems with that: 1) you're getting even less marginal benefit from this extreme, complicated, and dangerous maneuver because you're only doing it for a belt-and-suspenders sense of certainty 2) but even then that still doesn't make any sense because you're flying right over the primary radar of an air force base!
re (1) I agree with you, that cutting all AC power is overkill. Isolating the L main AC bus would suffice.
re (2) Jeff, you make the same argument (AF base flyover) in episode S1E30 .
I don't know who took the plane and why. But let's contemplate the suicide theory for one moment: It's easy to understand that nobody wants to enter aviation history books as the killer of over 200 souls. Not in the west, and particularly not in Malaysia.
So it does make plenty sense to vanish
(A) without trace and
(B) without providing definitive proof of guilt (so that other theories remain in play, such as desorientation due to hypoxia, some weird mechnical failure, hijacking, etc.)
You don't seem to take into account these 2 aspects of the perpetrator's possible motive.
Isolating the L main AC bus before disabling ACARS prevents sending the shutoff-message, which would have been proof of nefarious human intervention.
In S1E30 you say that nobody monitors the ACARS messages in real time. But that's the point ... you say it yourself: in real time, yes, but of course the ACARS messages would be (and indeed were) scrutinized afterwards.
I don't know why you emphasize the AF base flyover, because regardless of where the plane takes off and regardless of its subsequent course, it will always have to cross areas with radar coverage.
If MH370 had continued northbound at IGARI, it couldn't have disappeared in no man's land, so the turnback was quite effective.
I don't know what better plan or route you see to accomplish these 2 goals. Starting at KUL, there is radar everywhere on the surrounding islands, so it was pretty clever to disappear at IGARI and not be traced in real time afterwards, no ?
OK, so Zaharie carried out this crazy elaborate stunt in the way that he did because he really wanted to kill 238 people but he didn't want to be fingered as the culprit. And everything went perfectly according to plan. Now riddle me this: who is the guy that everyone thinks did it?
BTW, yes, I think if they had continued out past BITOD they could have diverted eastward to areas where there probably isn't much radar coverage and that would have been much more baffling, with no reason to suspect the captain.
It's not sure that heading for the Pacific Ocean would have been better radar-wise (see comment below). But he would have been tracked all the time by ATC, which would have triggered launching of interceptors if MH370 didn't respond to repeated ATC calls.
The turnback at IGARI had the advantage of disappearing when nobody was looking, as you well know. Continuing past BITOD wouldn't have that advantage.
• Look, I don't know what happened. And you know, that I find your theory fascinating. That's why I listen to each single episode. But let's give credit where credit is due. The pijacking theory has its merits.
• I don't blame anyone. It could have been either one of the 2 pilots, or a third person (a hijacker).
• Yes, it's understandable that most people don't want to go down in history as mass murderers, no? There are even precedential cases, in which the perpetrators disabled the FDR/CVR before commiting suicide: « Silk Air Flight 185 crashed in Indonesia, killing 104 people on board. US investigators suggested the captain may have switched off the flight recorders and caused the plane to dive. » So that's not just my pure speculation. https://www.vox.com/2015/3/26/8294971/pilot-suicide-crash
• "Who is the guy that everyone thinks did it?" First of all, that's because the perpetrator couldn't anticipate the Inmarsat data. Without it, it really would have been anyone's guess what really happened. Second of all, even with the Inmarsat data, there is not unanimity. You are exhibit A, Jeff! :-) 10 years have passed and there is still lots of debate about what really happened, with theories abounding. So as far as that is concerned: mission accomplished!
• With regards to continuing past BITOD: Where exactly should the perpetrator have deviated from the submitted flight plan? What should he told ATC? How should he have crossed the Philippine Air Defense Identification Zone undetected? How should he have dealt with the intercepting fighter jets?
You write, "the perpetrator couldn't anticipate the Inmarsat data." Isn't that that the Green Dot hypothesis is all about, switching off the satcom so that no data would be sent?
At any rate, even without Inmarsat data, suspicion would have fallen on the pilot because of the timing of the turn at IGARI and the subsequent sequence of turns. As the Australian PM Tony Abbot put it, the only place to fly a plane from is the cockpit.
I agree that the pijacking theory has merits. What I'm trying to establish here is the the reboot of the SDU is deeply problematic for it.
Sorry for the confusion -- the old show pages linked to videos on Andy's YouTube channel, so I created a new set (with the same material) that links to videos on the new YouTube channel. You can find them at FindingMH370.com or DeepDiveMH370.com under the tab "Deep Dive: MH370, Remastered"
Yes, unfortunately losing the comments was a price of this approach. For what it’s worth, I didn’t delete per se but unpublished, so the material is accessible, if there was something you wanted to know.
PS if you think I've made a mistake by doing this it's possible I could change course by un-unpublishing them and simple changing the video that they were linked to -- hadn't thought about it before, honestly
"I could change course by un-unpublishing them and simple changing the video that they were linked to"
Dear Jeff,
YES, please do this!
Can we please get our comments back.
You promised a solution in your comment below. It is half a year now, that we have been waiting. But despite repeated follow-ups on my behalf below (on 16 Dec and 25 Dec) no answer from you ...
@jeffwise: To be very blunt and honest: It's a gut punch when contributors take their time to write something up and their work and efforts get deleted (and for no inevitable reason to boot).
I don't know if you have had this experience yourself (maybe think about typing a long and important email and then losing it due to some mishap before sending). It's incredibly frustrating and annoying. And yes, as a result I could very well see users stop commenting or leaving altogether ... which would be very unfortunate and also a potential financial loss.
Only changing the video URL would not only be much easier and straightforward but would also conserve all the comments. So yes, IMO that would be by far the better option !!!
The question remains: How can you transfer the new comments (from the "remastered show pages") to the corresponding original show pages ?
If you could transfer or copy them over, that would be great.
Otherwise I assume the new/remastered pages have fewer comments than the original ones, so if there really is no way to preserve them, it's still better to lose fewer comments.
When you have decided, please let me know and give me a couple of hours, so that I can save my comments (on the new/remastered pages) before they get deleted.
Thanks for your understanding and for sorting this out as graciously as possible.
Thanks for this input, Peter. For a start, I won't unpublish anything more until I get this sorted out and I will let you know what solution I arrive at. And I appreciate your letting me know how you feel, if you hadn't told me I wouldn't know.
After all the user interaction is the Substack bloodstream which drives traffic and ultimately financial contributions. (Hence you promoting "liking/commenting/clicking/subscribing" in each and every episode of course.)
BTW, it's not just my personal feelings. I have read many similar comments from other users in the past. I don't remember exactly in which context, but I think it was expressed over at jeffwise.net (I can try to remember more details in case it is important to you.)
I initiated a discussion on the IG blog which might be of interest to you, as it is related to this episode's topic: the depowering and repowering of the SDU:
In this episode you say, that nobody came up with a good explanation for why the SDU was depowered/repowered. Victor brings up a very good one:
« 1. Reason for the shutdown of the SATCOM: Possibly to prevent the use of the SATCOM phone in the passenger cabin before passengers were incapacitated.
2. Reason for the re-start of the SATCOM: To restore the electrical system to the preferred, fully redundant state. »
As a side-note: In this episode you say that the A/P is lost in the GreenDot/MentourPilot scenario (all electrical systems depowered). According to Andrew this is true, but he says the A/P is NOT lost when only the L main AC bus is isolated. I don't know if you are aware of this difference, so I thought I'd mention it.
I don't consider Victor's explanation a good one because you can turn off the sat phone from the cockpit without having to resort to such extreme shenanigans as isolating an entire bus.
As for the A/P being available when the Left A/C bus is isolated, I think we covered this in Season 2 Episode 1; we found that actually almost everything is still available when the Left AC bus is isolated, in contrast to the extreme loss of function that occurs when the entire electrical system is isolated, which to my mind made MenTour Pilot's scenario really ridiculous.
Not so say that a suicidal pilot isolating the left AC bus makes very much sense, either; as Ron Rogers made clear, isolating the left AC bus is something a 777 would never contemplate without a checklist telling him or her to do it.
I can't go find you the chapter and verse right now but I think it's pretty widely accepted that the pilot can deselect the Infllight Entertainment System, which the satphone is a part of, from the panel.
The issue isn't that a suicidal pilot would care about checklists; it's that pulling circuit breakers is anathema for 777 pilots (and airline pilots in general), for reasons that I think Ron Rogers laid out quite compellingly.
BTW I don't fault you for getting stuck on this point, I feel like it's a core idea to the MH370 mystery that I've really struggled to convey effectively. I think a lot of people who assume that the pilot must have done it hear that the SDU was rebooted and jump straight to, "No big deal, clearly Zaharie must have figured out how to do it," overlooking the fact that this is actually strong evidence that Zaharie couldn't have done it.
Ok, if you get confirmation that the satphone can be disabled from the cockpit, please let me know. I'll also ask on the IG blog (see link above), in case you are interested in their answer.
Re checklists: I understand that pulling circuit breakers is anathema for pilots as it puts everyone at risk and also there just isn't any need to do so unless instructed by a checklist. Both points don't apply to a suicidal pilot. Even your co-host Andy pointed this out in S1E30. I'll have to relisten to the part, because I am not sure you really refute his argument there.
I think you do a very good job in second-guessing how the depowering/repowering of the SDU fits into the suicide-theory, because as you rightly point out, their proponents tend to gloss over this fact and it really is a strange part of the MH370 story. But in the link I posted above, I think the IG gives reasonable answers. Andrew (himself a B777 pilot) says it's very easy for a pilot to find out how to disable the SDU, all the more so for an an experienced B777 Type Rating Examiner. So what is "actually strong evidence that Zaharie couldn't have done it" ?
I think there is a question mark over what exactly he did (in this theory) and why. But what makes you say, he COULDN'T HAVE ?
@jeffwise : In S1E30 you say that there was a "brouhaha" between you and Mentour Pilot. I looked on Twitter but didn't find any exchange. I would be very interesting in the technical details of your discussion with him. Could you post a link ? Thank you.
I already had the popcorn ready for the "brouhaha" you mentioned, but couldn't find anything close to a brouhaha in your link. Unless I missed something, the conversation seems pretty civil to me.
I also don't see you addressing your main point of contention, namely the depowering/repowering of the SDU.
So Brodskii in the cockpit, Deineka and Chustrak fiddling with cables. But the overhead bus... is somebody standing tiptoes on the headrest of the seat? Or have I missed something?
Was the time, ticket purchase point and transaction ever determined for these three? It would be interesting to know if the MA booking system had to move some passengers around in order to accommodate these passengers in these particular seats. When are you getting the Head Of KLIA Security on the podcast? Ha ha.
I wonder why the military saw it as friendly if the plane was flying at 47,500 ft, 44,700 ft, 58,200 ft and then 4,800 ft? Following flight routes, yes, but doing aerobatics with a passenger plane, nope!
It's not clear if someone fiddled with the box in the ceiling over the passenger cabin -- it might be possible to achieve the same thing via the electronics bay. Even if they did, I think there are multiple ways a person could elevate themselves to the necessary height.
As for the tickets -- great question. Florence de Changy, whose theory I've ridiculed but who is a competent reporter, has stated that of all the passengers on board the plane, it was only the Ukrainians whose ticket source was unable to be determined. An intriguing idea that I myself have not looked into.
As for the altitudes, I think they are physically impossible and don't match with the observed speed of the plane so I've always assumed them to be spurious.
I remembered Ken (ep 22) suggesting they would need a 10ft ladder to get to it, and thought he said there was no other way of doing it.
My husband, dare I say it, has just bought me Florence's book. I'm so sorry. I think I read about the tickets not being verified in one of the Asian papers. Who knows where that came from? Less reputable newspapers seem to copy and paste articles from other papers.
Indeed, spurious and impossible data but they supplied it to the investigation team. Very interesting.
Also very interesting spelling from RetiredF4 - "direkt", "hight", "See" and "Street of Malakka". No capitalisation for the acronym AFAIK either. I really should stop questioning everything, but I'm glad you think the questions are interesting and not annoying.
Oh, if Florience got that bit of intel from a newspaper that's not good...
As for RetiredF4's spelling, it's a testament to his language skills that there are only a few such subtle hints that English is not his mother tongue. Wenn nur, mein Deutsch so gut wäre wie sein Englisch...
Great job. One other point. I lived in Shanghai from 2008-15. I have flown in and out of KL, Bangkok, Manila, Hong Kong, Singapore, Beijing, Tokyo, Mumbai, Delhi and Seoul. In the red eyes the lights stayed on and stewards were busy hawking duty free items for at least the first hour. People were active for most of the flight. Chinese learn to sleep through everything so they don’t need a dark and quiet cabin. The idea that the passengers settled in and were asleep by the time they made Igari is not true based on my experience. Flying after MH370 all the planes stayed over land skirting coastlines. That’s why I think they must have faked an emergency and depressurized the plane to subdue the passengers. The one passenger was a diver and might have had masks and oxygen in his carryon. Did we ever see his bag in the security footage? Any evidence of all three passengers being together at the same place and time? All 3 were on the flight with questionable origins and reasons.
I haven't seen the security footage myself -- I know that Florence de Changy has, and wrote that if anyobody looked like hijackers it was the two Ukrainians. I haven't seen any evidence that they were in the same place as the Russian, Nikolai Brodsky, at any time. But yes, all of their reasons for being on the flight seem a little dubious to me. Worth exploring more in a future episode. /JW
What would a 3 person scenario look like? What would they need to know and what would they need to do? Prior to boarding they would need to understand the planes electronics enough to cut off the appropriate switches. They would need to understand access to and the location of the critical controls. They would need to know how to fly by wire. So they would have had significant training. Could they have communicated with anyone on the outside while this was going on. The first thing would be to cut off the transponder and sharply turn the aircraft before Vietnamese airspace, creaing an emergency that would require a turn back to KL Next incapacitate the flight crew and passengers with depressurization. Fly the plane up the Straits and at the end turn on the buss. Then engage the autopilot with the appropriate waypoints. All kinds of holes here but I hadn’t seen anyone try to recreate a 3 person scenario.
Trip, I suppose there are various scenarios that one could imagine -- I've always had in mind the two men from the back causing a diversion so that the third in business class can get through the hatch without anyone noticing. Then, once in there, he plugs a custom box into the ARINC 629 bus and it's off to the races.
So definitely not the Ukrainians jumping up and down in anger when they saw the Russian in Business Class, and the Chinese jumping up and down to stop the commotion, causing the plane to land in the sea. How I had fun reading a Russian conspiracy forum the other day.
since you all are imaginating scenarios here i guess here the two iranians come into play (keelie, does this german phrase "coming into play" work in english too or does it sound weird for you native speakers?) according to these articles
at least one of them were computer specialists, both boarded only with a small bag and their laptops. islamic republic of iran IRI is well known for years and years for their huge and skilled cyberwar battlegroup, an important part of the #IRGCterrorists, that controls the brave people of iran and drive cyberatacks against israel and rest of free world.
many members are as young as the two and being allowed to study or even surviving the life under the regime often has the price to be a member of one of the regime's organizations. and IRI is an ally to russia, both work together in weapon development, - production and repression technologies.
so i think its one possible scenario that it was a five person`s team, the russian for controling the cockpit, the two ukrainians to control the cabin and the two iranians were the hackers who climbed into the EEbay and did the spoof you suggest, jeff.
to me when i read the descriptions of the ukrainians, their bevaviour at boarding and what you found about them (referring to the long article about them in your blog) i think they where russian special forces (remember, in the beginning of 2014 ukraine was not the western oruitated contry of today, maidan revolution went only weeks before and switched the country later but not until then. that old ukraine was a strong ally to russia and the two were so old that they must have been in soviet army before decline of the sovjetunion. we have to see them with the eyes of that time not todays time) together with the russian. they were not hackers but the iranians. so in my hypothesis here the team consisted of these 5.
and 3 are a bit too less i think. you need more than one to control such a huge cabin plus the cockpit and someone who aplies the spoof. the hijackers of B737 lufthansa "landshut" in 1977 were 4 PLO terrorists, and they failed. luckily. only one of them survived the rescue mission by german special forces GSG9. this tells me, that there had to be more than the two plus one.
interesting points in that very early german newspaper article in the BILDzeitung. i know, often not a well reputed source, comparable to eg. the SUN in gb. but they MAY have a point here:
"Theory 2: The two Iranians were not fugitives, but members of a secret service. This is supported by the unusual flight route (Kuala Lumpur - Beijing - Amsterdam and from there on to Frankfurt or Copenhagen), which is typical of agents who want to cover their tracks after a mission and leave a country.
This is called an "exfiltration pattern" in secret service circles. It involves changing passports several times at airports with the weakest possible security measures so that the agent's route can no longer be traced. "
"It is also striking that Thailand has increasingly become a playing field for the Iranian secret service in recent years.
The most prominent case: on 14 February 2012, explosions rocked Bangkok.
Iranians possibly wanted to carry out attacks on Israeli diplomats and politicians. At the time, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak was in the country. But when the six assassins were handling the explosives, explosions occurred. One of the men lost both legs. The assassins were caught."
There is an interesting similarity to the Ukrainians, in that the route that they were taking doesn't seem to make all that much sense -- in both cases, going through Beijing when a more direct route would have been much simpler. I just now looked up flights from Kuala Lumpur to Frankfurt on Google Flights and was offered routes through Shanghai, Bangkok, and a lot of Gulf airports. Given that so many Gulf carriers thrive on serving as a hub between Europe and Asia, that would be a much more high-probability routing.
yes! and, iranians can enter turkey without visa. and turkish airline flights eg frbetween tehran and istanbuul or izmir are quite cheap. tuskis mediteranian coast is a often used holiday area for iranians with the money for where they can be relatively free. from there its not that far anymore to reach eu. the passport controls i mentioned as reason that they never would have been allowed by KLM to enter the plane to amsterdam in peking would have occured her at boarding a plane from turkey to amsterdam, frankfurt or kopenhagen. from turkey they would have had other though highly risky äh deadly ways to enter germany or denmark.
Bear with me whilst I catch up, I've had some things to do in real life and then I got lost scouring the internet and maps again.
Germanguy - 'Coming into play' - yep, we say that. I'll happily be called a weird native speaker :D
Jeff/Germanguy - I thought the route was explained by the person booking the tickets for them - it was the cheapest route that day. And didn't they have other flights booked but missed them? I'm probably getting muddled again. The stolen passports being obtained certainly led them to meeting some dubious characters, maybe the booking agent too.
Routes available today may not have been available at the time, just a thought although probably not relevant.
Germanguy - Theory 2 Question: Why would the Iranians need to cover their tracks, if they were agents/hijackers and landing in Kazakhstan?
"Deadly ways to enter Germany or Denmark" - Do you mean via unsafe passage, such as a being locked in the back of a lorry, or something else? Sorry it's late and I'm wondering if I'm missing something.
Both - Turkey is very interesting with regards to the Ukrainians too, as well as Istanbul being a gateway between Europe and Asia.
I wonder how many people took laptops onboard. You don't need to be employed as a computer expert to be a hacker, but there were an awful lot of people on the plane with tech jobs/experience.
Last question, is there any way to check if life insurance policies were taken out for the passengers, shortly before the flight? Maybe I've watched too many movies, listened to too many conspiracy theories podcasts, and that's a step too far into data protection infringement/intelligence gathering. I know families sued but there's that saying: Follow the money.
I struggle with English and it is my native language. 😊 I was merely observing that my spidey senses are far too tingly… but if you are a spy, blink twice and scratch your left elbow. It’ll be our little ‘secret’! 😉
Were is it officially stated that the military "saw" it?
There was a military radar track posted, afaik first time in a meeting with family members.
During night time without any military tension, no military exercise or planned military traffic in the local area of interest it is normal that most of the equipment is offline and only one radar might be active but not monitored in person 24/7.
With the transponder not working there is only primary radar contact without altitude information available. Just for understanding, the primary radar contact is a direkt radar return created by objects reflecting the energy emitted by the radar station. Secondary radar contact is the pictured digital answer of the transponder of the aircraft.
As the secondary digital radar return is more accurate and comes with detailed information like flight level, callsign, vector and speed. The primary radar return, if available, is usually suppressed to avoid clattering of the digital secondary radar information.
The published radar track is a primary radar track with the depicted altitude information measured by hight finder radar or computed from the raw primary radar information. Its accuracy is the less precise the less information is available. And its fair to say, it was produced from an recording and not monitored live. It is also fair to say they had figured it out when the initial search response had been moved from the South China See to the Street of Malakka and then on to the Andaman Sea.
For the record, I have confidence in the radar data being real, but neither accurate concerning altitude information and not monitored live at all.
"I have confidence in the radar data being real, but neither accurate concerning altitude information and not monitored live at all." -- my sentiments exactly.
so in the days before there must have been a lot of transfer air traffic of the planes that took part of ths exercise. some people say that one of them may have been involved in the mh370-mystery. at least that one or some AWACS where in the area and saw MH370 on her way to the end. (i do not. i have not looked for the exercise's details until now)
Yes. And its not my Thesis. But there had to be Transfer Flights all across the Area in the Days before and after the Exercise. Don‘t know if they where recorded in public database like flightradar24. since i have no account there. But i think one should check this in order to eliminate that hypothesis. (Ha ha, i am a fan of sherlock holmes, who once said, that after you eliminated all the impossibles, the truth remains. and falsification is the key method of obtaining scientific research results)
You wrote, "I think one should check this." I agree that it's essential, when developing ideas, to keep front of mind what research one should do to verify or disprove them -- otherwise, we're just engaging in speculation, and that won't bring us closer to the truth. At the same time, though, if one sees an avenue for exploration, one should shoulder the burden of doing that exploration rather than expecting someone else to do it!
As said, nowhere is stated that a human being, a radar controller on an active station observed anything at all. Every observation is referenced to the "radar system", and therefore no immediate action took place.
Later on they checked the automatically recorded data.
I think you're probably right, but we really don't know. They must have realized pretty quickly because they were searching over the Andaman Sea the first day, as I recall.
Let me add, there are procedures established when unknown traffic with transponder offline is observed in the area of responsibility. It would at least call for immediate reporting to higher headquarters and further observation and investigation.
Me thinks the initial step to check the tapes came from civil ATC or some higher up entity the like "we lost an aircraft, can you check wether you had anything unusual on the radar"?
When the search shifted they still looked at the position of the turnaround at the same time.
Thanks for that insight. Yes, it remains puzzling that SAR remained active in the South China Sea for so many days after they'd already determined that the plane had flown pack over the peninsula.
It is said that if it were not for the SDU power off/reboot, we would not have any of the IMMARSAT data (BTO, BFO, ping arcs, etc). I may have misunderstood it, but since the SDU performed a normal/expected logon before take-off, it would reply to all ping requests during the flight, wouldn't it ? (therefore we would still be able to compute the ping arcs).
So I’ve tried to subscribe but the message says can’t manage subscriptions in the app. It might be nice if it also said how you can manage subscriptions.
I fully agree, switching an electrical bus or one or more generators is definitely not in the books of a pilot, except it is a necessary step in an emergency procedure. I never wasted any thought on it that it happened. You never know what will happen and wether the systems will come on again when needed.
My take was and is, if a crew member or a hijacker would be informed enough to know what bus or which generator he was supposed to power down while knowing which other equipment would be degraded, he would also be familiar with the option in the electronic bay and plan on using that one. This is especially true for a crew member. I bet no passenger would be suspicious about a crew member shielding the entrance area with the installed curtain - or if this one was absent with a trolly -, open a hatch, climb down a ladder and come up again 1 minute later. Most pax wouldn't even know where this hatch would lead to, the freight room, the crew resting module, the plumbing for the toilet, a storage room.......
And a hijacker couldn't care less what others would think about when in control of the cabin or cockpit and cabin.
The official investigation and the conclusions of the "experts group" is full of holes, all summed up to proof nothing else than an assumption - the captain did it.
Really interesting observation. I've always thought that the captain couldn't have pulled the circuit breakers in the electronics bay because he would only have a minute from "Goodnight Malaysia 370" to going dark at IGARI, but maybe that's not so. Would be interesting if someone did a walk-through to simulate how long it would take in an actual 777 -- maybe a helpful 777 pilot could help us out...
@jeffwise : In S1E30 you say that theories by GreenDot and MentourPilot are affected by the same problem: They claim that all electrical systems were depowered, but then they seem to work just fine:
« At the end he points out that, yeah, practically nothing will have electrical power anymore and the plane will be basically like – imagine a city during a blackout – like that's what's happening: You'd have a couple of really critical things that are running off of generators um in this case running off the RAT, and everything else is dead. And so in this video in what follows, he and ... the same thing is true in Green Dot, is that they imagine the entire plane has been depowered but then what you see is a plane that has all of its things working normal, you know, and so none of these effects are actually taking place. And this is another reason why this idea is so problematic »
My question:
Are they really saying that "all of its things are working normally" ?
Where do they say that actually ?
@jeffwise: I listened to both youtube videos and they don't say that.
It's been a while. In the Green Dot video, doesn't he show the plane with all the lights on and everything?
Even if I fumbled this point, I don't think that it's reasonable to imagine that Zaharie would have isolated both of the plane's AC buses just for the sake of making sure that the satcom wasn't transmitting. I don't even think it's reasonable to imagine he isolated just the left AC bus, which would have had dramatically fewer negative effects. But that's far more plausible than what Green Dot and MentourPilot are proposing.
I'll be talking more about this point in the video that I'm hoping to drop tomorrow.
Ok, that's possible. I only listened to the audio. If that's what the video shows your criticism has legs. But their flight simulator probably can't accurately simulate such edge scenarios. I think it's more important to listen to their actual stories (rather than the visual illustration of it).
@jeffwise , if you are still there:
Remember when you pointed out MH370's many "coincidences":
• diversion after the hand-off in no-man's-land
• turnback only 5 seconds after IGARI
• SDU reboot initiated only 35 seconds after leaving radar coverage
• etc.
?
You dedicated an entire article to these (probably not) "coincidences" here:
https://www.jeffwise.net/2015/07/13/the-mysterious-reboot-part-2
Andrew asked a very good question:
"Coincidence? Why would leaving radar coverage matter for the purpose of restoring power to the SDU?"
It occurred to me, that I never really contemplated this question, because it seemed so obvious. But now that I'm thinking about it, I'm at a loss of a compelling, straightforward explanation.
Here is my attempt at an explanation, but it's not a very good one:
https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2024/03/05/ocean-infinity-proposes-new-search-for-mh370/#comment-37499
So I wanted to ask you directly: What do you think?
Can you come up with a good explanation (for why the perpetrator waited with the SDU reboot until after leaving radar coverage) for both
• the Jeff Wise theory (BFO spoofing + northbound hijacking) and
• the mainline theory (perpetrator wanted to "go dark" and vanish without a trace, as much as possible)
?
I'd very much look forward to hear your thoughts on this.
Hi Peter, Sorry, I've been in the weeds and it's been difficult to find the time to respond. I clicked through to your comment on Victor's blog. I like that you're digging deep into this point, because I agree that it feels significant. A couple of points: a) I long thought of radar coverage as a discrete, bounded area, almost like an FIR, but now I don't think that's right; the energy of the radar beam attenuates gradually, not discretely, and one doesn't "leave" it so cleanly; the strength of the return depends on the orientation of the target. I think that what might have happened is that as the plane was flying away from Butterworth, it presented a relatively small cross-sectional profile, and became invisible; then at 18:22 turned to the northwest and momentarily presented a larger side-profile and so was briefly detected again. I suspect that the timing of the reboot was figured out not by the strength registered on a hand-held device, but a calculation by someone who knew the parameters of the radar system well and understood how aircraft geometry affects detection. Mind you, just a theory! b) I think it's worth noting that we have all arrived at a consensus that, whoever took the plane, was operating with an attitude of sneakiness and deception. For pijack proponents, this can be explained by imagining that Zaharie not only wanted to kill himself and his passengers and crew but also had some other nefarious goal, perhaps inspired by watching too many Marvel villains onscreen, that had to do with creating a paradoxical genius masterpiece that would both leave him untainted by guilt but would also earn him fame as a mastermind. Not saying that's impossible, but what I'm proposing is that deviousness fits better with the mindset of a cyber attacker than a suicidal person.
FYI: Here is our ongoing discussion about the AES repowering 35 seconds after leaving radar:
https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2024/03/05/ocean-infinity-proposes-new-search-for-mh370/#comment-37493
https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2024/03/05/ocean-infinity-proposes-new-search-for-mh370/#comment-37567 (and below)
@jeffwise : Thanks for responding. I am in general agreement with you.
Sorry, my question to you probably was not worded well enough. Let me try to rephrase:
Assuming it was not a coincidence but the perpetrator deferred the SDU reboot on purpose until having left radar coverage: What purpose did this serve? What disadvantage would have been associated with rebooting the SDU while still within radar range?
I am probably missing something obvious. But at worst, rebooting the SDU would send a ping to Inmarsat, who weren't expected to monitor traffic in real time. So why does it even matter if the SDU is rebooted before or after leaving radar coverage ?
My theory is this: if the SDU was rebooted while the plane was still under primary radar coverage, it would have been possible to calibrate the motion of the plane with the Inmarsat data. It would be apparent that a plane traveling north would generate BFO values that implied it was going south.
If on the other hand if the perps waited a long time to rebooted the SDU, there would have been a long enough gap that the Inmarsat data wouldn't make it as clear where the plane supposedly went in the southern Indian Ocean. I think the perps wanted investigators to think they knew where the plane went, so they would keep talking about it. They wanted to create maximum distraction and bafflement.
@jeffwise : That's clever. If I understand you correctly, you mean that looking at it from the perspective of stage magic, rebooting the SDU before leaving radar coverage would give away the magic trick, right? Because the southern route implied by the spoofed BFO data would be belied by the radar data showing MH370 travelling to the north. That is what you are saying, right?
Of course there are 2 inherent assumptions here:
• the BFO data was spoofed
• the perpetrator knew about the BFO/BTO data
What about the mainline theory (vanishing into the SIO) ?
Can you think of a reason for deferring the SDU reboot until after leaving radar coverage in this case as well ?
I don't think the reboot of the SDU (or shutting it off in the first place, for that matter) makes any sense in the context of a pilot hijack. People are trying to jury rig explanations because they've convinced themselves that Zaharie must have done it, so he must have had a reason for isolating the left AC bus, but I just don't think any of them hold water.
@jeffwise : I have suicidal thoughts since a couple of years, so I am speaking from a practical point of view. If I were to leave this world, I would not ever want to be found (which is not as easy as it sounds). So I can very much relate to the idea of taking a plane and disappear into the great vastness of the sea, where my body won't ever be found. Of course, I wouldn't take other lives in the process, but as for the rest, I completely get the idea. So to me, turning off SDU, XPNDR, ACARS, etc. is perfectly logical. If I had the necessary knowledge, I would certainly do that.
Anyway, I think your argument ("if the SDU was rebooted while the plane was still under primary radar coverage, it would have been possible to calibrate the motion of the plane with the Inmarsat data") applies to both theories: the BFO spoofing theory and the mainline theory, because in both cases the perpetrator didn't want to be found.
Well, I'm sorry to hear that, we don't want to lose you! I'll defer to your intution, but I think that you're mixing up apples and oranges when you refer to "SDU, XPNDR, ACARS..." It makes sense to turn off the transponder, ACARS, IFE, and all of that. Those are easy to do and can be done normally. Turning off the SDU is an entirely different category and, again, doesn't provide any benefit (at least a good one that I've heard anyone propose). What you're left with is a guy who was supposedly trying to be sneaky and very sophisticated about his knowledge of the wiring of the plane but wound up messing with it in a way that didn't assist his plan.
We don't need to go around and around about this forever -- you either think the SDU reboot is fishy, or you don't. I get that you don't and that's fine.
Re: "the SDU reboot is fishy"
The late Dennis Workman agreed with you that the SDU reboot stinks:
https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2017/10/12/simulator-data-from-computer-of-mh370-captain-part-1/#comment-7978
Smart guy, sorry to lose him.
@jeffwise : thanks for your empathy. I'll try to stick around.
Oh, I find the loss and reboot of the SDU super-fishy!
I just explore all possible avenues, since I am this rare kind of animal who isn't married to any pet-theory.
I think the strength of your theory resides in explaining a lot of strange factors (like the SDU reboot) and I give you enormous credit for that.
On the flipside, why can't you agree but keep saying hat turning off the SDU "provides no good benefit" ? I have asked you lots of times, but I don't think you ever answered this question:
In the mainline theory, depowering the SDU prevents transmission of the ACARS logoff message (which would have been definite proof of nefarious action) thus sparing the perpetrator and his family the shame of being exposed as a proven mass-murderer. This is certainly a good argument, no ? Can't we agree on this, too ?
"wound up messing with it in a way that didn't assist his plan" --> well, it seems to have worked for over a decade now. And this despite the Inmarsat data which he could not have anticipated, right ?
You ask if I think it's a good argument that isolating the left AC bus would be a worthwhile thing to do for the sake of not sending an ACARS logoff message. First of all, I don't think you mean ACARS logoff, I think you mean logoff from the Inmarsat satellite. Second, I don't understand what difference that would make. It's quite clear that the plane was deliberately diverted and the electrical equipment switched off through intentional act. And if a person really wanted to turn off a piece of equipment, I'm sure that any 777 pilot would tell you that they would simply pull the relevant circuit breaker.
@jeffwise :
• Re: "they would simply pull the relevant circuit breaker":
SATCOM/SDU doesn't have a circuit breaker in the cockpit, only in the E&E bay. (Hence your theory about the Russian or the Ukrainians entering the E&E bay, no ?)
• Re: "It's quite clear that the plane was deliberately diverted and the electrical equipment switched off through intentional act."
I agree. But where is the irrefutable evidence for that? Because there is no definitive proof, there are still a lot of people believing in an accident scenario (some malfunction causing loss of communication, hypoxia, disorientation, and ghost flight in the end). A logoff message would be 100% proof of an intentional act. That's why it makes a huge difference for us investigators and for the perpetrator.
• With the regards to the logoff message, your comment shows me that apparently I still don't fully understand it.
Deselecting SATCOM as an ACARS communications channel via the CDU apparently does not generate a logoff message according to Mick Gilbert:
https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2017/10/12/simulator-data-from-computer-of-mh370-captain-part-1/#comment-8000
But if this is true, then why was the SDU depowered ?
And how do we even know that the SDU was depowered ?
I always thought that we know because no ACARS messages were received after IGARI *and* no ACARS logoff message was received either. I thought this told us that the SATCOM must have been depowered.
But if this isn't true, then how do we even know that the SATCOM/SDU had lost power ?
I am confused right now and would be very thankful if you could sort this out (in case you have the technical knowledge).
@jeffwise : In S1E30 you express doubts about the equipment cooling fans losing power (which is at the center of GreenDot's and Mentour Pilot's theories, if I recall correctly). Agreed, this truly sounded like a ridiculous idea. But apparently it's true!
According to https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2024/03/05/ocean-infinity-proposes-new-search-for-mh370/#comment-37424 this is confirmed by the FCOM !
Well, specifically what they're claiming is that Zaharie turned the SDU back on because, having isolated the entire electrical system, the fans were unpowered and hence unable to cool the E/E bay computers. So I don't think that the order in which the ELMS sheds loads to various systems speaks to this, unless I'm missing something.
Why is it not relevant in your view ? After the "entire electrical system was isolated" in Mentour's scenario, the APU would start. That's where the ELMS is important, as it sheds non-essential electrical loads (such as the cooling fans apparently!!) when the APU starts:
“The Electrical Load Management System (ELMS) automatically sheds non-essential electrical loads when the APU starts. The ELMS protects the electrical power system. It sheds (disconnects) electrical loads to keep the load levels below the power supply levels. In-flight the ELMS monitors the status of these three power sources for load shed control:
[…]
– Equipment cooling vent fan. »
Where I am coming from:
I highly doubted the theory that the cooling fans could possibly lose power at all. They use almost no power (probably something like 0,1% of the power for the equipment they are intended to cool). So it doesn't make sense to shut down the fans (which you mention in the episode as well). This yields almost no savings in power consumption, but comes at the price of losing the equipment entirely due to overheating. So from a technical point of view, this is quite nonsensical. It would be more logical not to separate fan power from equipment power.
What I am trying to get at: In S1E30 you say, you are skeptical that Mentour Pilot's theory (overheating equipment due to cooling fans losing power) is even possible. And until now I completely agreed with your point of view for the very same reason.
But the FCOM portion linked above says otherwise apparently:
(1) ELMS can shed ... "equipment cooling vent fan." (We didn't think that was a possibility at all.)
(2) Apparently the electrical load of the cooling fans is shed even BEFORE other much less essential loads such as "Electronic passenger seat equipment". This is extremely weird.
@jeffwise : The bottom line seems to be:
In the GreenDot scenario (plane depressurized + all power cut), overheating can apparently occur!
see: https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2024/03/05/ocean-infinity-proposes-new-search-for-mh370/#comment-37459
But if only the left main AC bus was isolated, the cooling fans would continue to operate.
I think the more important thing to realize is just what an insane measure it would be to isolate the aircraft's entire electrical system just for the sake of cutting power to the satcom -- which itself in no way helps {note: I orignally wrote "hinders" by mistake} the proposed elaborate suicide plot.
Yes. Andrew agrees, that cutting all AC power "is possible, but not realistic":
https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2024/03/05/ocean-infinity-proposes-new-search-for-mh370/#comment-36954
Cutting power to the satcom does not advance the suicide plot by itself. But it is beneficial for the supposed plot to vanish without a trace and without proof of pilot guilt.
Yes of course you're right. I'm going to edit in a fix of my backwards language. The point I was making that if he wanted to be electronically dark he could do so by deselecting ACARS, IFE, etc from the control panel. Green Dot's idea was that he wanted to be extra sure nothing would transmit. My two problems with that: 1) you're getting even less marginal benefit from this extreme, complicated, and dangerous maneuver because you're only doing it for a belt-and-suspenders sense of certainty 2) but even then that still doesn't make any sense because you're flying right over the primary radar of an air force base!
re (1) I agree with you, that cutting all AC power is overkill. Isolating the L main AC bus would suffice.
re (2) Jeff, you make the same argument (AF base flyover) in episode S1E30 .
I don't know who took the plane and why. But let's contemplate the suicide theory for one moment: It's easy to understand that nobody wants to enter aviation history books as the killer of over 200 souls. Not in the west, and particularly not in Malaysia.
So it does make plenty sense to vanish
(A) without trace and
(B) without providing definitive proof of guilt (so that other theories remain in play, such as desorientation due to hypoxia, some weird mechnical failure, hijacking, etc.)
You don't seem to take into account these 2 aspects of the perpetrator's possible motive.
Isolating the L main AC bus before disabling ACARS prevents sending the shutoff-message, which would have been proof of nefarious human intervention.
In S1E30 you say that nobody monitors the ACARS messages in real time. But that's the point ... you say it yourself: in real time, yes, but of course the ACARS messages would be (and indeed were) scrutinized afterwards.
I don't know why you emphasize the AF base flyover, because regardless of where the plane takes off and regardless of its subsequent course, it will always have to cross areas with radar coverage.
If MH370 had continued northbound at IGARI, it couldn't have disappeared in no man's land, so the turnback was quite effective.
I don't know what better plan or route you see to accomplish these 2 goals. Starting at KUL, there is radar everywhere on the surrounding islands, so it was pretty clever to disappear at IGARI and not be traced in real time afterwards, no ?
OK, so Zaharie carried out this crazy elaborate stunt in the way that he did because he really wanted to kill 238 people but he didn't want to be fingered as the culprit. And everything went perfectly according to plan. Now riddle me this: who is the guy that everyone thinks did it?
BTW, yes, I think if they had continued out past BITOD they could have diverted eastward to areas where there probably isn't much radar coverage and that would have been much more baffling, with no reason to suspect the captain.
Re: continuing past BITOD:
It's not sure that heading for the Pacific Ocean would have been better radar-wise (see comment below). But he would have been tracked all the time by ATC, which would have triggered launching of interceptors if MH370 didn't respond to repeated ATC calls.
The turnback at IGARI had the advantage of disappearing when nobody was looking, as you well know. Continuing past BITOD wouldn't have that advantage.
Re: "eastward to areas where there probably isn't much radar coverage":
There is !
See here:
• https://maxdefense.blogspot.com/2019/03/iai-elta-systems-complete-delivery-of.html (last image)
• https://www.pitzdefanalysis.net/2023/07/devt-philippine-adiz-implementation.html (third image)
• https://defense-studies.blogspot.com/2015/12/sistem-radar-nasional-dapat-beroperasi.html (first image)
• Look, I don't know what happened. And you know, that I find your theory fascinating. That's why I listen to each single episode. But let's give credit where credit is due. The pijacking theory has its merits.
• I don't blame anyone. It could have been either one of the 2 pilots, or a third person (a hijacker).
• Yes, it's understandable that most people don't want to go down in history as mass murderers, no? There are even precedential cases, in which the perpetrators disabled the FDR/CVR before commiting suicide: « Silk Air Flight 185 crashed in Indonesia, killing 104 people on board. US investigators suggested the captain may have switched off the flight recorders and caused the plane to dive. » So that's not just my pure speculation. https://www.vox.com/2015/3/26/8294971/pilot-suicide-crash
• "Who is the guy that everyone thinks did it?" First of all, that's because the perpetrator couldn't anticipate the Inmarsat data. Without it, it really would have been anyone's guess what really happened. Second of all, even with the Inmarsat data, there is not unanimity. You are exhibit A, Jeff! :-) 10 years have passed and there is still lots of debate about what really happened, with theories abounding. So as far as that is concerned: mission accomplished!
• With regards to continuing past BITOD: Where exactly should the perpetrator have deviated from the submitted flight plan? What should he told ATC? How should he have crossed the Philippine Air Defense Identification Zone undetected? How should he have dealt with the intercepting fighter jets?
You write, "the perpetrator couldn't anticipate the Inmarsat data." Isn't that that the Green Dot hypothesis is all about, switching off the satcom so that no data would be sent?
At any rate, even without Inmarsat data, suspicion would have fallen on the pilot because of the timing of the turn at IGARI and the subsequent sequence of turns. As the Australian PM Tony Abbot put it, the only place to fly a plane from is the cockpit.
I agree that the pijacking theory has merits. What I'm trying to establish here is the the reboot of the SDU is deeply problematic for it.
@jeffwise : Have you deleted the show pages for S1E01 – S1E26 ???
I was trying to find them, but all I can find are the pages for episodes S1E27 onward.
Sorry for the confusion -- the old show pages linked to videos on Andy's YouTube channel, so I created a new set (with the same material) that links to videos on the new YouTube channel. You can find them at FindingMH370.com or DeepDiveMH370.com under the tab "Deep Dive: MH370, Remastered"
@jeffwise : I am not talking about the remastered episodes but the originals ones.
It seems like S1E01 – S1E26 are deleted and only S1E27 – S1E31 are still in the archive.
Does this mean, you have deleted all our comments below these episodes ??
Yes, unfortunately losing the comments was a price of this approach. For what it’s worth, I didn’t delete per se but unpublished, so the material is accessible, if there was something you wanted to know.
PS if you think I've made a mistake by doing this it's possible I could change course by un-unpublishing them and simple changing the video that they were linked to -- hadn't thought about it before, honestly
@jeffwise said on 28 Nov 2024:
"I could change course by un-unpublishing them and simple changing the video that they were linked to"
Dear Jeff,
YES, please do this!
Can we please get our comments back.
You promised a solution in your comment below. It is half a year now, that we have been waiting. But despite repeated follow-ups on my behalf below (on 16 Dec and 25 Dec) no answer from you ...
Please don't let all our work go wasted!
Thank you.
@jeffwise ?
@jeffwise: I hope you will reply to a longstanding supporter of yours ?
@jeffwise: To be very blunt and honest: It's a gut punch when contributors take their time to write something up and their work and efforts get deleted (and for no inevitable reason to boot).
I don't know if you have had this experience yourself (maybe think about typing a long and important email and then losing it due to some mishap before sending). It's incredibly frustrating and annoying. And yes, as a result I could very well see users stop commenting or leaving altogether ... which would be very unfortunate and also a potential financial loss.
Only changing the video URL would not only be much easier and straightforward but would also conserve all the comments. So yes, IMO that would be by far the better option !!!
The question remains: How can you transfer the new comments (from the "remastered show pages") to the corresponding original show pages ?
If you could transfer or copy them over, that would be great.
Otherwise I assume the new/remastered pages have fewer comments than the original ones, so if there really is no way to preserve them, it's still better to lose fewer comments.
When you have decided, please let me know and give me a couple of hours, so that I can save my comments (on the new/remastered pages) before they get deleted.
Thanks for your understanding and for sorting this out as graciously as possible.
Thanks for this input, Peter. For a start, I won't unpublish anything more until I get this sorted out and I will let you know what solution I arrive at. And I appreciate your letting me know how you feel, if you hadn't told me I wouldn't know.
@jeffwise : Are you any closer to rescuing our comments ?
@jeffwise : Are you any closer to rescuing our comments ?
Thanks for trying to salvage the comments.
After all the user interaction is the Substack bloodstream which drives traffic and ultimately financial contributions. (Hence you promoting "liking/commenting/clicking/subscribing" in each and every episode of course.)
BTW, it's not just my personal feelings. I have read many similar comments from other users in the past. I don't remember exactly in which context, but I think it was expressed over at jeffwise.net (I can try to remember more details in case it is important to you.)
@jeffwise @andytarnoff
I initiated a discussion on the IG blog which might be of interest to you, as it is related to this episode's topic: the depowering and repowering of the SDU:
https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2024/03/05/ocean-infinity-proposes-new-search-for-mh370/#comment-36951
Andrew's and Victors's answers are interesting.
In this episode you say, that nobody came up with a good explanation for why the SDU was depowered/repowered. Victor brings up a very good one:
« 1. Reason for the shutdown of the SATCOM: Possibly to prevent the use of the SATCOM phone in the passenger cabin before passengers were incapacitated.
2. Reason for the re-start of the SATCOM: To restore the electrical system to the preferred, fully redundant state. »
As a side-note: In this episode you say that the A/P is lost in the GreenDot/MentourPilot scenario (all electrical systems depowered). According to Andrew this is true, but he says the A/P is NOT lost when only the L main AC bus is isolated. I don't know if you are aware of this difference, so I thought I'd mention it.
I don't consider Victor's explanation a good one because you can turn off the sat phone from the cockpit without having to resort to such extreme shenanigans as isolating an entire bus.
As for the A/P being available when the Left A/C bus is isolated, I think we covered this in Season 2 Episode 1; we found that actually almost everything is still available when the Left AC bus is isolated, in contrast to the extreme loss of function that occurs when the entire electrical system is isolated, which to my mind made MenTour Pilot's scenario really ridiculous.
Not so say that a suicidal pilot isolating the left AC bus makes very much sense, either; as Ron Rogers made clear, isolating the left AC bus is something a 777 would never contemplate without a checklist telling him or her to do it.
How can the sat phone be turned off from the cockpit ?
If this is indeed possible, then I agree with you that this doesn't explain why the SDU lost power as well.
I agree with everything else you say (except that a suicidal pilot would not care for checklists).
I can't go find you the chapter and verse right now but I think it's pretty widely accepted that the pilot can deselect the Infllight Entertainment System, which the satphone is a part of, from the panel.
The issue isn't that a suicidal pilot would care about checklists; it's that pulling circuit breakers is anathema for 777 pilots (and airline pilots in general), for reasons that I think Ron Rogers laid out quite compellingly.
BTW I don't fault you for getting stuck on this point, I feel like it's a core idea to the MH370 mystery that I've really struggled to convey effectively. I think a lot of people who assume that the pilot must have done it hear that the SDU was rebooted and jump straight to, "No big deal, clearly Zaharie must have figured out how to do it," overlooking the fact that this is actually strong evidence that Zaharie couldn't have done it.
Turns out you were right about the satphone, too!
see: https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2024/03/05/ocean-infinity-proposes-new-search-for-mh370/#comment-36979
Good to know, thanks!
@jeffwise : I asked about the satphone here:
https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2024/03/05/ocean-infinity-proposes-new-search-for-mh370/#comment-36967
Ok, if you get confirmation that the satphone can be disabled from the cockpit, please let me know. I'll also ask on the IG blog (see link above), in case you are interested in their answer.
Re checklists: I understand that pulling circuit breakers is anathema for pilots as it puts everyone at risk and also there just isn't any need to do so unless instructed by a checklist. Both points don't apply to a suicidal pilot. Even your co-host Andy pointed this out in S1E30. I'll have to relisten to the part, because I am not sure you really refute his argument there.
I think you do a very good job in second-guessing how the depowering/repowering of the SDU fits into the suicide-theory, because as you rightly point out, their proponents tend to gloss over this fact and it really is a strange part of the MH370 story. But in the link I posted above, I think the IG gives reasonable answers. Andrew (himself a B777 pilot) says it's very easy for a pilot to find out how to disable the SDU, all the more so for an an experienced B777 Type Rating Examiner. So what is "actually strong evidence that Zaharie couldn't have done it" ?
I think there is a question mark over what exactly he did (in this theory) and why. But what makes you say, he COULDN'T HAVE ?
@jeffwise : In S1E30 you say that there was a "brouhaha" between you and Mentour Pilot. I looked on Twitter but didn't find any exchange. I would be very interesting in the technical details of your discussion with him. Could you post a link ? Thank you.
Check this out: https://x.com/ManvBrain/status/1773342794305634393
Thanks.
I already had the popcorn ready for the "brouhaha" you mentioned, but couldn't find anything close to a brouhaha in your link. Unless I missed something, the conversation seems pretty civil to me.
I also don't see you addressing your main point of contention, namely the depowering/repowering of the SDU.
Well, it was a fairly polite brouhaha.
More like a bro-haha :-)
Seriously, it would have been interesting to talk to him about the SDU though.
After all, it's the part of Mentour Pilot's podcast you included in S1E30 for a good reason.
So Brodskii in the cockpit, Deineka and Chustrak fiddling with cables. But the overhead bus... is somebody standing tiptoes on the headrest of the seat? Or have I missed something?
Was the time, ticket purchase point and transaction ever determined for these three? It would be interesting to know if the MA booking system had to move some passengers around in order to accommodate these passengers in these particular seats. When are you getting the Head Of KLIA Security on the podcast? Ha ha.
I wonder why the military saw it as friendly if the plane was flying at 47,500 ft, 44,700 ft, 58,200 ft and then 4,800 ft? Following flight routes, yes, but doing aerobatics with a passenger plane, nope!
It's not clear if someone fiddled with the box in the ceiling over the passenger cabin -- it might be possible to achieve the same thing via the electronics bay. Even if they did, I think there are multiple ways a person could elevate themselves to the necessary height.
As for the tickets -- great question. Florence de Changy, whose theory I've ridiculed but who is a competent reporter, has stated that of all the passengers on board the plane, it was only the Ukrainians whose ticket source was unable to be determined. An intriguing idea that I myself have not looked into.
As for the altitudes, I think they are physically impossible and don't match with the observed speed of the plane so I've always assumed them to be spurious.
Thanks for the great questions!
I remembered Ken (ep 22) suggesting they would need a 10ft ladder to get to it, and thought he said there was no other way of doing it.
My husband, dare I say it, has just bought me Florence's book. I'm so sorry. I think I read about the tickets not being verified in one of the Asian papers. Who knows where that came from? Less reputable newspapers seem to copy and paste articles from other papers.
Indeed, spurious and impossible data but they supplied it to the investigation team. Very interesting.
Also very interesting spelling from RetiredF4 - "direkt", "hight", "See" and "Street of Malakka". No capitalisation for the acronym AFAIK either. I really should stop questioning everything, but I'm glad you think the questions are interesting and not annoying.
Oh, if Florience got that bit of intel from a newspaper that's not good...
As for RetiredF4's spelling, it's a testament to his language skills that there are only a few such subtle hints that English is not his mother tongue. Wenn nur, mein Deutsch so gut wäre wie sein Englisch...
Or the paper took it from her, possibly.
Ja! Belgian, Dutch, German, Swiss. Craving chocolate now! Have you looked into Canada lately?
Great job. One other point. I lived in Shanghai from 2008-15. I have flown in and out of KL, Bangkok, Manila, Hong Kong, Singapore, Beijing, Tokyo, Mumbai, Delhi and Seoul. In the red eyes the lights stayed on and stewards were busy hawking duty free items for at least the first hour. People were active for most of the flight. Chinese learn to sleep through everything so they don’t need a dark and quiet cabin. The idea that the passengers settled in and were asleep by the time they made Igari is not true based on my experience. Flying after MH370 all the planes stayed over land skirting coastlines. That’s why I think they must have faked an emergency and depressurized the plane to subdue the passengers. The one passenger was a diver and might have had masks and oxygen in his carryon. Did we ever see his bag in the security footage? Any evidence of all three passengers being together at the same place and time? All 3 were on the flight with questionable origins and reasons.
I haven't seen the security footage myself -- I know that Florence de Changy has, and wrote that if anyobody looked like hijackers it was the two Ukrainians. I haven't seen any evidence that they were in the same place as the Russian, Nikolai Brodsky, at any time. But yes, all of their reasons for being on the flight seem a little dubious to me. Worth exploring more in a future episode. /JW
What would a 3 person scenario look like? What would they need to know and what would they need to do? Prior to boarding they would need to understand the planes electronics enough to cut off the appropriate switches. They would need to understand access to and the location of the critical controls. They would need to know how to fly by wire. So they would have had significant training. Could they have communicated with anyone on the outside while this was going on. The first thing would be to cut off the transponder and sharply turn the aircraft before Vietnamese airspace, creaing an emergency that would require a turn back to KL Next incapacitate the flight crew and passengers with depressurization. Fly the plane up the Straits and at the end turn on the buss. Then engage the autopilot with the appropriate waypoints. All kinds of holes here but I hadn’t seen anyone try to recreate a 3 person scenario.
Trip, I suppose there are various scenarios that one could imagine -- I've always had in mind the two men from the back causing a diversion so that the third in business class can get through the hatch without anyone noticing. Then, once in there, he plugs a custom box into the ARINC 629 bus and it's off to the races.
So definitely not the Ukrainians jumping up and down in anger when they saw the Russian in Business Class, and the Chinese jumping up and down to stop the commotion, causing the plane to land in the sea. How I had fun reading a Russian conspiracy forum the other day.
since you all are imaginating scenarios here i guess here the two iranians come into play (keelie, does this german phrase "coming into play" work in english too or does it sound weird for you native speakers?) according to these articles
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/03/11/how-two-iranian-guys-apparently-heading-to-europe-ended-up-on-a-malaysian-flight-to-china/
and
https://abcnews.go.com/US/day-malaysia-airline-passengers-stolen-passports/story?id=22852454
at least one of them were computer specialists, both boarded only with a small bag and their laptops. islamic republic of iran IRI is well known for years and years for their huge and skilled cyberwar battlegroup, an important part of the #IRGCterrorists, that controls the brave people of iran and drive cyberatacks against israel and rest of free world.
many members are as young as the two and being allowed to study or even surviving the life under the regime often has the price to be a member of one of the regime's organizations. and IRI is an ally to russia, both work together in weapon development, - production and repression technologies.
so i think its one possible scenario that it was a five person`s team, the russian for controling the cockpit, the two ukrainians to control the cabin and the two iranians were the hackers who climbed into the EEbay and did the spoof you suggest, jeff.
to me when i read the descriptions of the ukrainians, their bevaviour at boarding and what you found about them (referring to the long article about them in your blog) i think they where russian special forces (remember, in the beginning of 2014 ukraine was not the western oruitated contry of today, maidan revolution went only weeks before and switched the country later but not until then. that old ukraine was a strong ally to russia and the two were so old that they must have been in soviet army before decline of the sovjetunion. we have to see them with the eyes of that time not todays time) together with the russian. they were not hackers but the iranians. so in my hypothesis here the team consisted of these 5.
and 3 are a bit too less i think. you need more than one to control such a huge cabin plus the cockpit and someone who aplies the spoof. the hijackers of B737 lufthansa "landshut" in 1977 were 4 PLO terrorists, and they failed. luckily. only one of them survived the rescue mission by german special forces GSG9. this tells me, that there had to be more than the two plus one.
interesting points in that very early german newspaper article in the BILDzeitung. i know, often not a well reputed source, comparable to eg. the SUN in gb. but they MAY have a point here:
https://www.bild.de/news/ausland/flugzeugunglueck/malaysia-airlines-flug-mh370-maenner-mit-gestohlenen-paessen-was-bedeutet-die-iran-connection-35019628.bild.html
"Theory 2: The two Iranians were not fugitives, but members of a secret service. This is supported by the unusual flight route (Kuala Lumpur - Beijing - Amsterdam and from there on to Frankfurt or Copenhagen), which is typical of agents who want to cover their tracks after a mission and leave a country.
This is called an "exfiltration pattern" in secret service circles. It involves changing passports several times at airports with the weakest possible security measures so that the agent's route can no longer be traced. "
"It is also striking that Thailand has increasingly become a playing field for the Iranian secret service in recent years.
The most prominent case: on 14 February 2012, explosions rocked Bangkok.
Iranians possibly wanted to carry out attacks on Israeli diplomats and politicians. At the time, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak was in the country. But when the six assassins were handling the explosives, explosions occurred. One of the men lost both legs. The assassins were caught."
There is an interesting similarity to the Ukrainians, in that the route that they were taking doesn't seem to make all that much sense -- in both cases, going through Beijing when a more direct route would have been much simpler. I just now looked up flights from Kuala Lumpur to Frankfurt on Google Flights and was offered routes through Shanghai, Bangkok, and a lot of Gulf airports. Given that so many Gulf carriers thrive on serving as a hub between Europe and Asia, that would be a much more high-probability routing.
yes! and, iranians can enter turkey without visa. and turkish airline flights eg frbetween tehran and istanbuul or izmir are quite cheap. tuskis mediteranian coast is a often used holiday area for iranians with the money for where they can be relatively free. from there its not that far anymore to reach eu. the passport controls i mentioned as reason that they never would have been allowed by KLM to enter the plane to amsterdam in peking would have occured her at boarding a plane from turkey to amsterdam, frankfurt or kopenhagen. from turkey they would have had other though highly risky äh deadly ways to enter germany or denmark.
Bear with me whilst I catch up, I've had some things to do in real life and then I got lost scouring the internet and maps again.
Germanguy - 'Coming into play' - yep, we say that. I'll happily be called a weird native speaker :D
Jeff/Germanguy - I thought the route was explained by the person booking the tickets for them - it was the cheapest route that day. And didn't they have other flights booked but missed them? I'm probably getting muddled again. The stolen passports being obtained certainly led them to meeting some dubious characters, maybe the booking agent too.
Routes available today may not have been available at the time, just a thought although probably not relevant.
Germanguy - Theory 2 Question: Why would the Iranians need to cover their tracks, if they were agents/hijackers and landing in Kazakhstan?
"Deadly ways to enter Germany or Denmark" - Do you mean via unsafe passage, such as a being locked in the back of a lorry, or something else? Sorry it's late and I'm wondering if I'm missing something.
Both - Turkey is very interesting with regards to the Ukrainians too, as well as Istanbul being a gateway between Europe and Asia.
I wonder how many people took laptops onboard. You don't need to be employed as a computer expert to be a hacker, but there were an awful lot of people on the plane with tech jobs/experience.
Last question, is there any way to check if life insurance policies were taken out for the passengers, shortly before the flight? Maybe I've watched too many movies, listened to too many conspiracy theories podcasts, and that's a step too far into data protection infringement/intelligence gathering. I know families sued but there's that saying: Follow the money.
Sorry for misspellings, english is not my native language. I try my best though.
I struggle with English and it is my native language. 😊 I was merely observing that my spidey senses are far too tingly… but if you are a spy, blink twice and scratch your left elbow. It’ll be our little ‘secret’! 😉
Absolutely no need to apologize. We all should be so fluent in a second language.
Were is it officially stated that the military "saw" it?
There was a military radar track posted, afaik first time in a meeting with family members.
During night time without any military tension, no military exercise or planned military traffic in the local area of interest it is normal that most of the equipment is offline and only one radar might be active but not monitored in person 24/7.
With the transponder not working there is only primary radar contact without altitude information available. Just for understanding, the primary radar contact is a direkt radar return created by objects reflecting the energy emitted by the radar station. Secondary radar contact is the pictured digital answer of the transponder of the aircraft.
As the secondary digital radar return is more accurate and comes with detailed information like flight level, callsign, vector and speed. The primary radar return, if available, is usually suppressed to avoid clattering of the digital secondary radar information.
The published radar track is a primary radar track with the depicted altitude information measured by hight finder radar or computed from the raw primary radar information. Its accuracy is the less precise the less information is available. And its fair to say, it was produced from an recording and not monitored live. It is also fair to say they had figured it out when the initial search response had been moved from the South China See to the Street of Malakka and then on to the Andaman Sea.
For the record, I have confidence in the radar data being real, but neither accurate concerning altitude information and not monitored live at all.
"I have confidence in the radar data being real, but neither accurate concerning altitude information and not monitored live at all." -- my sentiments exactly.
If it helps, I found it "officially" stated by the Safety Investigation Report found here:
https://reports.aviation-safety.net/2014/20140308-0_B772_9M-MRO.pdf
I haven’t seen the active military exercises integrated into the timeline.
I don't think there were any, at least not at that time and place.
from 10 to 21 Mar 2014, two days after the disappearing of MH370 there was Exercise Cope Tiger, a trilateral air exercise conducted by Singapore, Thailand and the United States at Korat Air Base: https://www.mindef.gov.sg/web/portal/mindef/news-and-events/latest-releases/article-detail/2014/march/2014mar21-news-releases-01652/!ut/p/z0/fY07D4IwFIV_iwNjc0vDY0Yc1KgsaLCLqXCRKhSBBvTfWyCOup3v5DyAQwJciV7ehJa1EqXhM_cufrQK19Rhh8iNbRqc4njnLg-bo-_BFvj_gFmQ96bhAfC0VhpfGpJKqgxzMrHSFi3qCi2qcOiIUBnB3ridRUuhsdOkxRJFh8Zg1HYsWok2LWYwktlkKn5ThNqey8Zb1u7D_Q34U-iCSJXXkIwdcz8OzPB74Png1_cQLD43Hvai/
so in the days before there must have been a lot of transfer air traffic of the planes that took part of ths exercise. some people say that one of them may have been involved in the mh370-mystery. at least that one or some AWACS where in the area and saw MH370 on her way to the end. (i do not. i have not looked for the exercise's details until now)
The distance from Korat to IGARI is more than 550 miles or 900 km, similar to the distance from Geneva to Naples -- so not really in the same area.
Yes. And its not my Thesis. But there had to be Transfer Flights all across the Area in the Days before and after the Exercise. Don‘t know if they where recorded in public database like flightradar24. since i have no account there. But i think one should check this in order to eliminate that hypothesis. (Ha ha, i am a fan of sherlock holmes, who once said, that after you eliminated all the impossibles, the truth remains. and falsification is the key method of obtaining scientific research results)
You wrote, "I think one should check this." I agree that it's essential, when developing ideas, to keep front of mind what research one should do to verify or disprove them -- otherwise, we're just engaging in speculation, and that won't bring us closer to the truth. At the same time, though, if one sees an avenue for exploration, one should shoulder the burden of doing that exploration rather than expecting someone else to do it!
As said, nowhere is stated that a human being, a radar controller on an active station observed anything at all. Every observation is referenced to the "radar system", and therefore no immediate action took place.
Later on they checked the automatically recorded data.
I think you're probably right, but we really don't know. They must have realized pretty quickly because they were searching over the Andaman Sea the first day, as I recall.
Let me add, there are procedures established when unknown traffic with transponder offline is observed in the area of responsibility. It would at least call for immediate reporting to higher headquarters and further observation and investigation.
Me thinks the initial step to check the tapes came from civil ATC or some higher up entity the like "we lost an aircraft, can you check wether you had anything unusual on the radar"?
When the search shifted they still looked at the position of the turnaround at the same time.
Thanks for that insight. Yes, it remains puzzling that SAR remained active in the South China Sea for so many days after they'd already determined that the plane had flown pack over the peninsula.
It is said that if it were not for the SDU power off/reboot, we would not have any of the IMMARSAT data (BTO, BFO, ping arcs, etc). I may have misunderstood it, but since the SDU performed a normal/expected logon before take-off, it would reply to all ping requests during the flight, wouldn't it ? (therefore we would still be able to compute the ping arcs).
Well, right, it was the part where it was turned back on, specifically, that allowed the BFO and BTO data to exist.
So I’ve tried to subscribe but the message says can’t manage subscriptions in the app. It might be nice if it also said how you can manage subscriptions.
Sorry to hear your having trouble. I wish I was more of an expert in Substack's back end. Maybe if you try logging on via the web?
I fully agree, switching an electrical bus or one or more generators is definitely not in the books of a pilot, except it is a necessary step in an emergency procedure. I never wasted any thought on it that it happened. You never know what will happen and wether the systems will come on again when needed.
My take was and is, if a crew member or a hijacker would be informed enough to know what bus or which generator he was supposed to power down while knowing which other equipment would be degraded, he would also be familiar with the option in the electronic bay and plan on using that one. This is especially true for a crew member. I bet no passenger would be suspicious about a crew member shielding the entrance area with the installed curtain - or if this one was absent with a trolly -, open a hatch, climb down a ladder and come up again 1 minute later. Most pax wouldn't even know where this hatch would lead to, the freight room, the crew resting module, the plumbing for the toilet, a storage room.......
And a hijacker couldn't care less what others would think about when in control of the cabin or cockpit and cabin.
The official investigation and the conclusions of the "experts group" is full of holes, all summed up to proof nothing else than an assumption - the captain did it.
Really interesting observation. I've always thought that the captain couldn't have pulled the circuit breakers in the electronics bay because he would only have a minute from "Goodnight Malaysia 370" to going dark at IGARI, but maybe that's not so. Would be interesting if someone did a walk-through to simulate how long it would take in an actual 777 -- maybe a helpful 777 pilot could help us out...