Malaysia Airlines MH370

They've just confirmed that the wing part was from MH370. Incredible, really and still so damn sad.

I saw steve ganyard, some retired marine pilot dude, on Charlie rose talk abt how the wear on the wing indicates in his opinion that someone was conscious and poss trying to land as opposed to the plane going nose down into what/where-ever it crashed

yea heres what he said on abc news at some pt I guess

I want to bring in retired colonel Steve ganyard, a pilot himself. I want to take our viewers back to that piece of wing because the angle of that flap and how intact the debris is, as you heard Jim reporting, leading someone to believe that someone might have deliberately done this. What do you think tonight? I think you're right. There are two scenarios. Everybody was unconscious, the airplane went in at a very steep angle. What we're seeing here on this debris is something that's intact which opens the very chilling possibility that there was somebody alive, conscious, and trying to land that airplane after it ran out of gas.

Let's not lose sight of the fact that we're still no nearer finding the bulk of the wreckage, the bodies of the deceased or any answers as to how this tragedy happened.

http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/3D1F/production/_84574651_mh370_debris_simulation_624map.png

damn

http://www.airlive.net/2015/07/breaking-piece-of-wing-found-on-la.html

says the reunion island wing piece is confirmed as MH370

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/missing-mh370-possible-boeing-777-part-found-mozambique-sources-say-n530066

More debris being found on Eastern coast of Africa:

http://jeffwise.net/2016/03/10/mh370-debris-storm/

it sounds like experts are working towards a conclusion that the pilot intended to commit suicide and was choosing a path to avoid radar...

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/mh370-malaysia-airlines-captain-deliberate-plane-crash-murder-suicide-zaharie-amad-shah-a8350621.html

was just thinking about this the other day, did any of that debris mentioned just upthread ever get confirmed as being from the plane?

oh n/m it addresses that in the article

What seems very weird to me is that, if the whole point was murder-suicide, it could have been accomplished much more simply, directly and easily than what happened. Once you incapacitate the crew and passengers, just point the 777 at the ground and mission accomplished. Why go to such lengths to make the plane disappear when that is not essential to the main plan?

Another good detailed article breaking the news that Zaharie's flight simulator had underwater practice runways near the Indian Ocean:

http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/cops-find-five-indian-ocean-practice-runways-in-mh370-pilots-simulator-bh-r

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Monday, March 17, 2014 11:00 PM (four years ago)

Pretty good summary of where things stand

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd2KEHvK-q8

Good presentation. Really is a headscratcher.

Can't believe I've been covering this story for five years straight.

That's a pretty good video, aside from a couple of minor factual errors (e.g. the Ocean Infinity search took only three months rather than more than a year). I think the original hypothesis - fire/electrical failure leading to hypoxia and hours of flight on autopilot - is probably still the best explanation for what happened, everything else is either too insane or too simplistic.

at this point, it's a matter of identifying where exactly it went down, and finding people with enough money, time, and tech to search. And that's the hardest bit.

Outstanding Will Langewiesche article:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/mh370-malaysia-airlines/590653/

tl;dr: the pilot did it, but the Malaysian government won't admit to anything because of autocratic embarrassment.

absolutely superb, thanks

yeah that was great.

yes

wow

it’s so sad & sobering to read how it might have played out, but man it is good to read something that feels like it’s based on some kind of solid analysis at least

Depressing, but this basically has been my top theory for what happened since the main pieces of evidence came to light.

depressurizing & increasing altitude to kill the passengers was so ;_;

i mean ok cool gentle death is maybe what you would prefer to hear but also gentle death is still a) mass murder & b) wtf

^^ yeah that was the detail I did not know previously that stood out to me the most

That is a great and compellingly written narrative for sure but I still have strong doubts about whether the pilot did it, and I think it's irresponsible that this piece argues so strongly for it, when it goes against everything we know both about the pilot and the surrounding circumstances.

This bit though is otm:

A close observer of the MH370 process said, “It became clear that the primary objective of the Malaysians was to make the subject just go away. From the start there was this instinctive bias against being open and transparent, not because they were hiding some deep, dark secret, but because they did not know where the truth really lay, and they were afraid that something might come out that would be embarrassing. Were they covering up? Yes. They were covering up for the unknown.”

Najib's government was corrupt yes, but more than that, it was incompetent and it hates having to deal with bad news for longer than necessary. It would have been so easy for them to blame the pilot, particularly after his political leanings came to light. He supported the opposition, he was likely upset that opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim had just been jailed again on dubious charges. Early on, it even seemed that the police were eager to pin it on the pilot - they raided his home, they seized the simulator, they leaked info to the press that they were looking deeply into his family background and politics. They let the FBI and other countries get involved, and carried out thorough psychological profiles on all the passengers and crew. And yet, at the end of the day, the investigators were forced to dismiss the conclusion that either of the pilots were involved.

This piece casts doubt on that investigation but unlike other parts of the Malaysian government, the police are very, very good at their jobs. If there was anything at all they could pin on the pilot, trust me, they would have found it, and even if they had tried to hide that evidence, someone would have leaked it. This is just how things work in Malaysia, it's corrupt to the core but nothing stays hidden.

Instead, everything about Zaharie checked out. He was captured on CCTV looking relaxed, smiling and joking with the co-pilot and cabin crew, nothing in his background, finances or medical history indicated that anything was out of the ordinary. The simulator entry that supposedly charts a similar flight path to MH370 was among hundreds of other simulations, and was different enough from the actual flight path of the plane that it can't be persuasively argued that the pilot was following that particular simulation.

Besides, why even risk turning back over land, passing by multiple countries which could have seen this unidentified aircraft flying into their airspace (so many questions for Southeast Asian military/air force that no one's asking btw)? Why not just fly out past the South China Sea straight into the Pacific?

And lastly, analysis of the wing flap recovered from Tanzania (which is huge, I've seen it in person, it's about 14 feet long) suggests that no one was in control of the plane when it went down.

Here's a couple more takes that gets into why the pilot theory isn't compelling enough, when you factor in the country's politics and other evidence:

Thread: Anything Langeweische writes on an aviation disaster becomes the authoritative narrative, and this story will be no different. But given that the Atlantic points the finger squarely at Malaysian political culture, it should have spent more time trying to get it right. 1/x https://t.co/anWQV5oPpj

— Aaron Connelly (@ConnellyAL) June 17, 2019

Another reason that I haven't seen anyone really get into is Malaysian attitudes towards suicide. This is a country where mental illness is poorly understood and treated, but it also has historically low rates of suicide (something like 2-5 out of 100,000), and it's lowest among Malay Muslims who make up the majority of the population.

Outside of extremist jihadist circles, Muslims generally do not look favourably upon suicide. Growing up, I would hear constantly about how people who committed suicide were selfish, that they were cruel to their families, that they were headed for hell. There's a huge stigma too against people whose relatives commit suicide - that they didn't do enough to turn their family member towards "the right path".

Zaharie, a middle-aged, upper middle class, Muslim Malay family man, knew what it would do to his children if he was found to have committed not just suicide, but large-scale mass murder. I don't doubt that he was possibly troubled, lonely, depressed, maybe even suicidal. I just have strong doubts that this would have been the way he would have chosen to do it.

This has never been a case of Occam's razor. It's equally plausible that the odd flight path taken by MH370 was a sign of someone trying to save the plane and failing. Perhaps something went wrong, the pilots couldn't radio for help and tried to turn back but passed out before they could land, activating the autopilot in a last ditch effort to keep the plane in the air. But this too is a possibility that investigators have considered and discounted because there simply isn't enough evidence to say so for sure.

Thanks for that Roz, I always appreciate your contributions.

yeah same

On the question of why the pilot would turn back over land, I’ve read speculation that he wanted to fly over Penang his old hometown one last time. I agree it’s hard to believe anyone would be capable of this, especially someone so outwardly normal. However out of all the scenarios it seems the one most consistent with the otherwise bizarre sequence of events is that someone skilled and very knowledgeable wanted to make the plane disappear forever. The stigma against suicide would have been an incentive to preserve the mystery. We can’t rule out it was someone else on the plane but the pilot had many advantages that would have dramatically increased the difficulty of an already unlikely feat for anyone else.

Zaharie, a middle-aged, upper middle class, Muslim Malay family man, knew what it would do to his children if he was found to have committed not just suicide, but large-scale mass murder. I don't doubt that he was possibly troubled, lonely, depressed, maybe even suicidal. I just have strong doubts that this would have been the way he would have chosen to do it.

Langewiesche briefly mentions on SilkAir 185 and EgyptAir 990 in his article, but the investigations (and how they were attenuated by government/airline officials) are worth digging into. Again, the only conclusion you can reach is that we'll never find out.

Surprising number of commercial pilot-suicides:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SilkAir_Flight_185
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EgyptAir_Flight_990
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Air_Maroc_Flight_630
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAM_Mozambique_Airlines_Flight_470
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines_Flight_350
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525

On the question of why the pilot would turn back over land, I’ve read speculation that he wanted to fly over Penang his old hometown one last time.

Other pilots have spoken about this - it's only a possibility if he was sitting and leaning over sharply in the co-pilot's seat. Otherwise, the way the plane curved and the height/speed it was at suggests he wouldn't even be able to see Penang, a tiny little island, in the dead of night. And again it begs the question, why not then fly out past Penang straight into the Indian Ocean? Why turn again, this time down south flying past the Malaysian peninsular, Singapore, and the northeastern tip of Indonesia?

Just to be clear, I don't disagree that pilot suicide is more common that you'd expect and that barring evidence of a hijacking or mechanical failure, a pilot error or intention is the likeliest cause of any flight accident. I also agree that airlines/governments can interpret the same set of facts in multiple ways, esp if they feel they have something to gain/lose. But it still makes little sense to me - MH370's erratic flight path is just not a route that anyone, especially an experienced pilot, would have taken if they were really intent on disappearing the way they did i.e. flying out for hours until fuel exhaustion.

To me, the real responsibility here lies with the air traffic controllers and military radar operators in Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and KL (mostly KL). Had any of them done their jobs properly that night, someone would have noticed the plane's turnaround much earlier. There was a four-hour delay in reaction that no one, certainly not a pilot on a mission to disappear, would have been able to foresee.

thats a really interesting thought though

assuming pilot intent, could we predict that *he* would have planned to have been discovered much sooner?

that the end path may have been a "i guess I'll do this, seeing as nobody has shown up" rather than a plan?

and what would have been his plan then, if he was caught? that's the thing with this story, it rewards conspiratorial thinking.

Anyway, the more I think about this piece the more upset I am with it. Langeweische devoted half of it on Blaine Gibson, who for sure deserves some credit for finding a lot of the plane debris, but is a known crank who isn't to be taken seriously (he shows up frequently at MH370 events in KL, often uninvited and looking around at reporters hopefully to be interviewed). And yet he's named in the piece over 40 times!

Langeweisch, rightfully, blames Malaysia's political culture but ignores the fact that the current government was not the one that handled the tragedy at the time - Najib's administration was thrown out last year. At the end of the piece, the only member of government named in the story is transport minister Anthony Loke, who was elected and appointed to the post in June 2018, more than four years after MH370.

He doesn't interview a single member of the Malaysian government or investigation team in charge at the time, nor does he reach out to anyone from Zaharie's family. His entire argument that the pilot did it relies on conversations with an unnamed colleague.

It's a brilliantly written summary of where things stand, but I don't think his conclusions stand up to scrutiny. And all of it just makes me think about that Atlantic editor who talked about how the only journalists he found who were willing to write 10,000-word pieces were white men.

and now i'm listening to the dutch press conference on MH17, that other never-ending aircraft tragedy. sigh.

Is there really a better flight path he could have taken if his intention was to avoid primary radar? It seems heading east into the Pacific would have taken him over areas with a bigger military presence, like the South China Sea, where chances of detection would be much higher.

To be fair, the impression I got from Langeweisch was that Gibson is a bit of a crank who latches vampirically onto the survivors, but a crank who also found a bunch of plane bits

The world of wreckchasers - especially the ones who latch onto a cause - is highly specific and obsessive.

just read this article, and appreciated roz's insights, but given the evidence presented I find it difficult to doubt the conclusion that zaharie was responsible

Six years gone.

time flies

maybe it will turn up after 8 years like the kid in Flight of the Navigator

they get around

Great overview article on where things are at with the search, what probably happened, etc.: Call of the Void - Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight 370?

Oof

Great overview article

otm

Yeah, its a good summary, although it seems not much new evidence has come to light since the last revive for the Atlantic article a couple of years ago. The most likely scenario is still the same.

It wasn’t until 30 minutes after that when someone finally told the operations department that Flight Explorer was not showing the real position of the plane, only a projected position.

Still reading this, but it seems insane to me that the airline didn't know this.

Yeah that jumped out. As did this which I guess I forgot was part of the chain of revelations at the time (that this was something pilots generally wouldn't know about):

Unbeknownst to him, the satellite communication unit starts to acknowledge the satellite again. This is his one mistake — but it’s a forgivable one, as hardly any airline pilots knew about this system feature before the disappearance of MH370.

Let's not forget Roz's posts a little earlier in the thread -- that's good context.

Coming to Netflix:

https://www.netflix.com/title/81307163