Jeff Wise's new MH370 theory

[Stevan Gvozdenovic]

Why would they be less likely? Well because they wouldn't(and didn't) need permanent invisibility in that case. Turning off transponder and comms greatly increase your chances to get over malaysian mainland unchallenged and there is no reason to lose time on fiddling with Satcom because those chances basically stay same. Malaysia needed days to request and get data from Inmarsat, it's not something you get in real-time.

And it doesn't matter if it was one of the pilots or some other perpetrator, the main theory is that MH370 has been intentionally flown to a remote area so nobody could ever find it.

Another thing that negates that theory - if somebody wanted to hide the plane he would want to sink it and leave no debris which means he would descend to a low level flight immediately after entering IO and wait for a suitable calm patch of sea, he wouldn't want to wait for fuel exhaustion and loss of thrust (which would further decrease chance of controlled landing) not to mention risk to come down in a very rough sea which is fairly common for roaring forties. Also he wouldn't make the turn towards Australia and get the plane closer to the mainland, he would just go SW.

So if the plane really is in SIO (and it most probably is) I'm quite sure it got there by accident(cockpit conflict or mechanical/electronic problem that developed after 18:25), not by intention.

 

[TWCobra]

So if the plane really is in SIO (and it most probably is) I'm quite sure it got there by accident(cockpit conflict or mechanical/electronic problem that developed after 18:25), not by intention.

If the aircraft travelled in a straight line to where it crashed, then it was no accident. (See my explanation of this regarding default autoflight modes and changes in magnetic variation.)

My sources tell me that the straight line is probably what happened

 

[occams rusty scissor]

And it doesn't matter if it was one of the pilots or some other perpetrator, the main theory is that MH370 has been intentionally flown to a remote area so nobody could ever find it.

I thought the main theory is that it crashed somewhere off the coast of Western Australia, hence the $100 million search. This other theory is just weird BS without much substance.

Another thing that negates that theory - if somebody wanted to hide the plane he would want to sink it and leave no debris which means he would descend to a low level flight immediately after entering IO and wait for a suitable calm patch of sea, he wouldn't want to wait for fuel exhaustion and loss of thrust (which would further decrease chance of controlled landing) not to mention risk to come down in a very rough sea which is fairly common for roaring forties.

Again...I'm not a pilot, but isn't a belly landing in open sea as a DELIBERATE action a fairly difficult task with a high chance of being killed?? Also...why would he do that??

 

[Stevan Gvozdenovic]

If the aircraft travelled in a straight line to where it crashed, then it was no accident. (See my explanation of this regarding default autoflight modes and changes in magnetic variation.)

My sources tell me that the straight line is probably what happened

I also think the straight line was the most probable outcome but what if the autopilot was planned to be on south heading just temporarily and something happened before the making of another turn?

I thought the main theory is that it crashed somewhere off the coast of Western Australia, hence the $100 million search. This other theory is just weird BS without much substance.



Again...I'm not a pilot, but isn't a belly landing in open sea as a DELIBERATE action a fairly difficult task with a high chance of being killed?? Also...why would he do that??

well 1000 miles off the coast is still remote area

and yes it's very difficult task and it doesn't make sense

 

[TWCobra]

I also think the straight line was the most probable outcome but what if the autopilot was planned to be on south heading just temporarily and something happened before the making of another turn?

A straight line in those circumstances can only be done via an FMC waypoint being inserted, or True being selected as the heading reference. Both require deliberate, non-accidental action.

 

[Stevan Gvozdenovic]

I know but what if the waypoint or heading were selected with intention to act later which was prevented by circumstances in the plane? I know the full path could be preprogrammed before it but who knows what went through his head during the flight.

 

[TWCobra]

Bottom line is: Straight line to SIO=Deliberate action. Anything else is speculation.

 

[TWCobra]

Just went through the latest factual report. Some items from this discussion.

1. Satcom avionics is actually in the roof near doors 3L and 3R. The circuit breakers are in the Main Equipment Center (MEC) below the flight deck. (But not accessible from the flight deck). Satcom is powered by the left AC bus.

2. Flight Attendants do not appear to have access to Satcom voice in flight however there is an SMS/Email system accessible from the passenger seats. There is nothing in the report about whether this was accessed at any time during the flight.

3. There were four Electronic Location Transmitters (ELT's) on board. Two in the slide rafts, One in the tail but activated either by the pilots or by an impact and one in the cabin which would be carried on to a slide raft by a cabin crew member. There were no reports of ELT signals being picked up at any time by satellites.

4. Three non-standard Rt communications should be noted, however they are probably not important.

a. The flight crew reported at cruising altitude not once but twice. The second one seven minutes after the first. There is no requirement to report attaining cruising altitude in a radar environment.

b. The flight crew did not read back the frequency when switching to Ho Chi Minh. They merely said goodbye. There is a requirement to read the frequency back when transferring to another frequency.
Seconds later the transponder was turned off.

Some comments. The only way to shutdown the Satcom from the flight deck would have been to turn the Left AC Bus off. That would introduce numerous other problems as the AC buses are the most important and many systems are powered from them. To lose an AC Bus is a major emergency in a 777.

As I understand it, the SMS/Email system would have been working and accessible at all times during the flight.

I always wondered if it was possible for a switched on crew member to activate the ELT in the cabin if they knew the aircraft was being taken off course by someone. Either no-one thought of it or they didn't have enough time to do so.

So there were two means available to cabin crew to alert someone on the ground to what was happening. The fact that neither was used suggests perhaps the people in the cabin were take out of the equation early on, possibly via a depressurisation.

The strange RT comms are probably not significant. However they should be noted.

 

[WeedWhacker]

would there be any way for flight crew to raise an alarm to ATC? Are there any auxiliary comms outside of the flight deck for a scenario where hijackers lock flight crew out?

Only possibility I can envision is a possible cell-phone connection. Nowadays many airlines offer satellite-based Internet connectivity....BUT? If a pilot intent on suicide has hard-locked the door to the Flight Deck? Then that pilot can also raise the cabin altitude to induce hypoxia to everyone else, all whilst having several hours' worth of oxygen via his mask.

 

[Stevan Gvozdenovic]

it was a night flight, if he persuaded F/O to keep things quiet nobody would notice things are wrong unless they looked on their GPS

 

[Rob]

Stevan, the flight was supposed to last only 5 and a half hours.
Yet that last Inmarsat communication was at 08:19:37, almost 9 hours into the flight.
Why would you think that nobody would notice anything wrong when the flight lasts 4 hours longer than intended ?

Yet nobody (including flight attendants) used the SatCom links available to them to alert anyone outside the plane.

That suggests the passengers and flight attendants were incapacitated. They remaining question is : how fast into the flight were they incapacitated, and how did that happen, apparently so fast that nobody could do anything to contact anyone outside the plane.

 

[Stevan Gvozdenovic]

yupp that's indeed telling, however maybe pilot knew about that and somehow disabled that part of the system but not the whole system

 

[TWCobra]

You are speculating again Stevan. From the system description given, that wasn't possible.

 

[Stevan Gvozdenovic]

admittedly

 

[derwoodii]

a very small find that maybe dismissed due to poor evidence history & hygiene trail as just rubbish or maybe a hopeful lead

http://www.news.com.au/travel/trave...a-airlines-plane/story-fnizu68q-1227256227487

A TOWELETTE that washed up on a Western Australia beach is being examined to determine whether it could have come from missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

The towelette — a small pre-moistened paper towel — has been shipped to Canberra for further testing after being discovered in July by a couple walking along a beach in Cervantes, Nine News reports.

The couple who discovered the towelette said the item was "unopened, which was very unusual".

the articles interactive theory explorer works ok

 

[occams rusty scissor]

The towelette — a small pre-moistened paper towel — has been shipped to Canberra for further testing after being discovered in July by a couple walking along a beach in Cervantes, Nine News reports.

The couple who discovered the towelette said the item was "unopened, which was very unusual".

Yeah I saw that the other week. Made me wonder what "testing" was taking so long, I can't imagine there'd be much to test? But that's just me being cynical I guess. Imagine that, the only debris to be found may be that towelette?

 

[derwoodii]

will put this here as not wishing a new thread for topic but the lack of confirmed debris finds has me frustrated.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/16/mh370-search-may-be-in-the-wrong-place-again.html

There is no previous case in the history of modern intercontinental jets where a crash into an ocean has not produced floating wreckage – and within days of the disaster. No matter how violent the impact of an airplane hitting the water there will always be some scattered debris that never sinks.

Last fall the Australian Transport Safety Board, who are directing the sea search for the Boeing 777, said they had assigned a team of experts usually used to predict the path of oil spills to produce a "drift model" – a highly sophisticated calculation combining ocean currents, wind and weather patterns and knowledge of the buoyancy of airplane wreckage – in order to predict when and where wreckage from Flight 370 would appear in places where it would be spotted.
At that time the Australians said that their best guess was that wreckage could take as long as a year to appear and that the most likely place was the long coastline of Western Sumatra on the Indonesian archipelago.

With more than a year gone by nothing has turned up.

 

[Whitebeard]

There is no previous case in the history of modern intercontinental jets where a crash into an ocean has not produced floating wreckage – and within days of the disaster. No matter how violent the impact of an airplane hitting the water there will always be some scattered debris that never sinks.

Not strictly true, here is a list of missing aircraft of which no trace as been found...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aerial_disappearances
OK MH-370 is by far the largest plane to go AWOL but the list over the past 30 years includes sizable planes including an AN-72, a Boeing 727, an AN-32 and a C-47.

And there was an unopened package of hand towels, marked with Malaysian Airlines logo was washed up in Australia last month. And whilst there is no concrete proof that it came from MH-370 it does raise that possibility that other, more identifiable items could still turn up.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...uld-be-linked-to-missing-flight-10097185.html

 

[What's Obvious]

Curious, so where did it initially head for? Antarctica? Tierra del fuego, the long way?

A waypoint of Zero Lat., Zero Lon. from Penang Malaysia cuts across Dhaalu Atol in the Maldives. A blank waypoint, reset, or cleared to a Zero-Zero entry is much more plausible than a 90 Degree South Lat.. The IMARSAT satellite pings suggest a heading of 82 Degrees; not a round figure that would even get you to the South Pole!

On another line of thinking, why does the official accident report graphic show a clockwise turn-back loop from actual radar plotting while all other media graphics (that I've seen) show a counter-clockwise turn-back?

 

[What's Obvious]

The primary purpose of a circuit breaker is to trip on an "over-current" and act as a re-settable fuse. It is only secondary for use as a switch. If multiple breakers trip at the same time, perhaps not by a human, it suggests that there was a power bus voltage surge. Has anyone taken the time to investigate failure modes. Which devices are most vulnerable? Which devices have "crow-bar" protection. Could a faulty alternator, voltage regulator or power inverter create a surge?

 

[What's Obvious]

If you read the official accident report and follow Radar tracking, you will notice that the hand-off between Radar systems is not seamless. Exiting one system sometimes gaps before entry to the next. At this point, MH370 is just a radio reflection blip and has no transponder identification as to what the target blip is. It is only an inference that an emerging target blip on a system is the same target that exited on a previous system. If there are multiple targets to reconcile, then it is quite possible to falsely assume one that is not associated. Further, there is a sweep time that becomes slower for greater distances. Radar cannot ping faster than the transit time for a two-way return path and over-run its operational range. Records of this target at a great distance would be time spaced, perhaps approaching tens of seconds since the sweep needs to be slow enough for angular resolution.
All this said, it begs the question: How do we know for a fact that the flight made multiple turns?
Calculations with IMARSAT are mainly based on the last know Radar position and its speed!

 

[Rob]

...
All this said, it begs the question: How do we know for a fact that the flight made multiple turns?
Calculations with IMARSAT are mainly based on the last know Radar position and its speed!

1) Exactly which multiple turns are you disputing ?
2) Calculations with Inmarsat data (the 7 arcs) are based on the distance between the Inmarsat satellite and the airplane. Nothing to do with the "last know Radar position".

 

[Qualiall]

Sorry to resurrect a dead thread--but now Mr. Wise is denying that the flaperon found came from MH370--he bases this on second hand accounts of what type of barnacles were on it.

(I feel like another thread possibly mentioned this--and if so I apologize--but this news article is only a couple days old--also super sorry about the messy URL--restrictions at work computer+unreliable cell phone signal make it easier for me to link this way--and I wasn't sure how to make it an actual hyperlink)

To sum up- he claims that the flaperon would have had to of been partially submerged for "several months" for goose barnacles to take up residence on it and that it would "defy the laws of physics" that it would float to the top after some point...he claims it "defies the laws of physics" as it should have remained submerged. I don't know physics, but I don't know why it would make it impossible for it to wash on shore.

MH370: Science writer casts doubt on flaperon finding

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCwQqQIwA2oVChMIwYnOoebYxwIVARc-Ch1dkQMd&url=http://smh.com.au/world/mh370-science-writer-casts-doubt-on-flaperon-finding-20150831-gjbcmb.html&usg=AFQjCNGjZts6aKBPysTa4YfPlBZDlEeB7g&sig2=Ze0cgcUS_eyPHYInOnddbg&bvm=bv.101800829,d.cWw