And when I look at the map I see the plane would have to have flown near the Himalayas. Shangri La anyone? Inexperienced pilots would be unfamiliar with handling transting over high altitude mountains. Did Tomnod do a search of possible mountain crash sites?
Well, don't forget that the Inmarsat data kept coming after the plane flew near the Himalayas, so it couldn't have crashed there -- the 7th arc lies beyond the mountains, in Central Asia.
You’re right to look at the plane debris first because it’s the only physical evidence. It’s just that no matter what, you can only come up with inconsistencies at best. There would always be possible exceptions. I think planting the flaperon would create the biggest distraction and slow the search into other possibilities.
You raise an excellent point. This has happened time and time again -- the pilot-suicide narrative is full of inconsistencies, but it's always possible for proponents to say, "well, there must be a perfectly logical explanation." In the case of the flaperon, the two strange aspects of the Lepas -- their age and their distribution -- can be explained away by saying, "Well, we just don't know enough about how these things grow." I'm hoping to blow up that explanation by finding out a lot more about how they grow.
If we assume that the plane made it through the straits and then the satcom gets turned on without an identifier, could this be a spoof? That would mean there are any number of possibilities. A magician distracts you from seeing the movement. If Inmarsat got hacked then the plane could be anywhere.
No, because there are only certain ways that the data could be hacked from inside the plane. It doesn't seem possible to alter the BTO, for instance, so the ping rings and hence the route are fairly well defined.
If they’re smart enough to hack the plane they certainly could hack the server. They could even have the data points created anytime before the flight. That explains the missing flight identifier. I believe there was talk at one point about the plane circling off Indonesia. If they had the plane crossover the starting data point at the right starting time then ground radar would appear to confirm the satellite indicated location. Then it’s 6 free hours of flight time. I know this is a stretch but I think you need to revisit all prior assumptions.
I wouldn't assume hacking Inmarsat would be easier than cyber hijacking a 777 -- I'll be getting into this in more detail in future episodes but basically a 777 is one of the most cyber-insecure airliners flying.
More to the point, though: if the Inmarsat data was created from whole cloth, then there's no reason to think that it was flying for six hours, that it circled near Indonesia, anything.
And, I think, importantly, you're proposing a scenario for which there is no evidence at all. Whereas with the on-board spoofing scenario, we're building off the evidence at hand.
Trip, I understand your point in raising this point, and philosophically it's valid to propose that every piece of evidence could be faked -- as Descartes pointed out, every experience that we think we feel could just be an illusion created by a demon -- but to give it too much credence is essentially to question the entire undertaking of trying to solve the mystery. So let's consider that avenue closed.
So that would posit a sophisticated attacker who hijacked the plane, then covered their tracks by planting false data on the Inmarsat servers, then planted debris after the fact. The plane could be anywhere at all in the world.
Bear in mind that, if they had simply skipped the Inmarsat-hacking part, they could have just flown the plane wherever they wanted to go anyway; it was completely invisible after 18:22. So there would have been no benefit in them going through the effort of hacking into the Inmarsat system, which presumably had some serious level of cybersecurity defenses.
Hi Jeff, long time reader, first time commenter (smile). On one of your videos I saw a brief glimpse of a flow chart showing the options on what happened to the plane. I would be very interested in a walk through of a flow chart you’re currently using. I keep coming back to your magic analogy. Magicians try to convince you that the magic happened at the moment of reveal, when in reality it happened long before that.
I don’t think we’re looking far enough upstream. I think everything was in place before the plane took off. I think one of the Russians could have gotten in the cargo bay on the ground and then switched control at Good night. Malaysian flights are not nearly as structured as western flights. I lived in Shanghai and flew in and out of KL and Southeast Asia at the same time as MH370. The red eyes are bright and loud for the first hour after take off with duty free sales. No one pays attention to the seat belt signs at takeoff and landing. Many times people were getting their suitcases down from the overhead bin on final approach.
Everything after takeoff was electronic; satellite, radio or radar. The few visual sightings have been dismissed as unreliable. The debris appears inconclusive. So all we can do is use that data to try to piece together what actually happened. You mention that the turn at Igari was more than an autopilot could do. What’s the probability that everything electronic was spoofed? I sent you an article on how Russians were spoofing ships. Maybe the Inmarsat engineer was on to something. You will never be able to prove that the plane didn’t go to the Indian Ocean because you can’t prove a negative. I look forward to you getting back to your original hypothesis.
Hey Trip, I like your thinking. I agree that it's quite possible that the operation might have happened "further upstream," with perhaps the plane being infiltrated on the ground before the flight even started, but I don't know how one would go about demonstrating that. As for the turnback at Igari, I recall seeing recently someone claiming that it wasn't necessarily true that the turn was too steep to be done on autopilot--can't remember where, but I don't know that it really matters; it was clearly a decisive maneuver either way.
You write that "You will never be able to prove that the plane didn’t go to the Indian Ocean because you can’t prove a negative." I'm not sure about that; my contention is that, if we can clearly demonstrate that the biofouling on the flaperon cannot plausibly be explained by a natural drift from the seventh arc, I think we will have effectively proven that the plane didn't fly into the Indian Ocean.
Oh my goodness that made me laugh and gave me a sinking feeling in my stomach!
For some reason, I read the Wikipedia page as to they don’t live in any waters that have a depth of more than 100 m but yes sorry you’re saying that of course they live in the top 100 m across the whole ocean!!!
lol oh that’s for all the funny and rather embarrassing. Thank you for the correction.
‘most barnacles inhabit shallow waters, with 75% of species living in water depths less than 100 m (300 ft), and 25% inhabiting the intertidal zone’ wiki.
That's too funny. Glad we got it sorted out!
And when I look at the map I see the plane would have to have flown near the Himalayas. Shangri La anyone? Inexperienced pilots would be unfamiliar with handling transting over high altitude mountains. Did Tomnod do a search of possible mountain crash sites?
Well, don't forget that the Inmarsat data kept coming after the plane flew near the Himalayas, so it couldn't have crashed there -- the 7th arc lies beyond the mountains, in Central Asia.
You’re right to look at the plane debris first because it’s the only physical evidence. It’s just that no matter what, you can only come up with inconsistencies at best. There would always be possible exceptions. I think planting the flaperon would create the biggest distraction and slow the search into other possibilities.
You raise an excellent point. This has happened time and time again -- the pilot-suicide narrative is full of inconsistencies, but it's always possible for proponents to say, "well, there must be a perfectly logical explanation." In the case of the flaperon, the two strange aspects of the Lepas -- their age and their distribution -- can be explained away by saying, "Well, we just don't know enough about how these things grow." I'm hoping to blow up that explanation by finding out a lot more about how they grow.
If we assume that the plane made it through the straits and then the satcom gets turned on without an identifier, could this be a spoof? That would mean there are any number of possibilities. A magician distracts you from seeing the movement. If Inmarsat got hacked then the plane could be anywhere.
No, because there are only certain ways that the data could be hacked from inside the plane. It doesn't seem possible to alter the BTO, for instance, so the ping rings and hence the route are fairly well defined.
I’m saying that the data after the satcom turn on didn’t come from inside the plane.
Oh, you mean it got hacked in the Inmarsat servers?
If they’re smart enough to hack the plane they certainly could hack the server. They could even have the data points created anytime before the flight. That explains the missing flight identifier. I believe there was talk at one point about the plane circling off Indonesia. If they had the plane crossover the starting data point at the right starting time then ground radar would appear to confirm the satellite indicated location. Then it’s 6 free hours of flight time. I know this is a stretch but I think you need to revisit all prior assumptions.
I wouldn't assume hacking Inmarsat would be easier than cyber hijacking a 777 -- I'll be getting into this in more detail in future episodes but basically a 777 is one of the most cyber-insecure airliners flying.
More to the point, though: if the Inmarsat data was created from whole cloth, then there's no reason to think that it was flying for six hours, that it circled near Indonesia, anything.
And, I think, importantly, you're proposing a scenario for which there is no evidence at all. Whereas with the on-board spoofing scenario, we're building off the evidence at hand.
Trip, I understand your point in raising this point, and philosophically it's valid to propose that every piece of evidence could be faked -- as Descartes pointed out, every experience that we think we feel could just be an illusion created by a demon -- but to give it too much credence is essentially to question the entire undertaking of trying to solve the mystery. So let's consider that avenue closed.
Yes
So that would posit a sophisticated attacker who hijacked the plane, then covered their tracks by planting false data on the Inmarsat servers, then planted debris after the fact. The plane could be anywhere at all in the world.
Bear in mind that, if they had simply skipped the Inmarsat-hacking part, they could have just flown the plane wherever they wanted to go anyway; it was completely invisible after 18:22. So there would have been no benefit in them going through the effort of hacking into the Inmarsat system, which presumably had some serious level of cybersecurity defenses.
Hi Jeff, long time reader, first time commenter (smile). On one of your videos I saw a brief glimpse of a flow chart showing the options on what happened to the plane. I would be very interested in a walk through of a flow chart you’re currently using. I keep coming back to your magic analogy. Magicians try to convince you that the magic happened at the moment of reveal, when in reality it happened long before that.
I don’t think we’re looking far enough upstream. I think everything was in place before the plane took off. I think one of the Russians could have gotten in the cargo bay on the ground and then switched control at Good night. Malaysian flights are not nearly as structured as western flights. I lived in Shanghai and flew in and out of KL and Southeast Asia at the same time as MH370. The red eyes are bright and loud for the first hour after take off with duty free sales. No one pays attention to the seat belt signs at takeoff and landing. Many times people were getting their suitcases down from the overhead bin on final approach.
Everything after takeoff was electronic; satellite, radio or radar. The few visual sightings have been dismissed as unreliable. The debris appears inconclusive. So all we can do is use that data to try to piece together what actually happened. You mention that the turn at Igari was more than an autopilot could do. What’s the probability that everything electronic was spoofed? I sent you an article on how Russians were spoofing ships. Maybe the Inmarsat engineer was on to something. You will never be able to prove that the plane didn’t go to the Indian Ocean because you can’t prove a negative. I look forward to you getting back to your original hypothesis.
Hey Trip, I like your thinking. I agree that it's quite possible that the operation might have happened "further upstream," with perhaps the plane being infiltrated on the ground before the flight even started, but I don't know how one would go about demonstrating that. As for the turnback at Igari, I recall seeing recently someone claiming that it wasn't necessarily true that the turn was too steep to be done on autopilot--can't remember where, but I don't know that it really matters; it was clearly a decisive maneuver either way.
You write that "You will never be able to prove that the plane didn’t go to the Indian Ocean because you can’t prove a negative." I'm not sure about that; my contention is that, if we can clearly demonstrate that the biofouling on the flaperon cannot plausibly be explained by a natural drift from the seventh arc, I think we will have effectively proven that the plane didn't fly into the Indian Ocean.
Grubby little man. Typical muckraker.
Oh my goodness that made me laugh and gave me a sinking feeling in my stomach!
For some reason, I read the Wikipedia page as to they don’t live in any waters that have a depth of more than 100 m but yes sorry you’re saying that of course they live in the top 100 m across the whole ocean!!!
lol oh that’s for all the funny and rather embarrassing. Thank you for the correction.
‘most barnacles inhabit shallow waters, with 75% of species living in water depths less than 100 m (300 ft), and 25% inhabiting the intertidal zone’ wiki.
If most of them live in Waters 75 m deep wouldn’t you have to trace it back from a 75 m deep point
Pretty much the whole ocean is that deep, until you get right to shore. Not sure if that's what you mean...