MH370:
Questions Remain
I’ve
always been strict about keeping to astronomy for this website, but I bent my
own rule for a week or two by posting a few pieces on the disappearance of
flight MH370. I’ve decided to archive the
final article here.
Why
my interest? Perhaps because I worked for a while writing software for military
aviation, including a spell on Malaysia’s own Butterworth Airforce Base and because, as a former private pilot
and son of a pilot, the whole thing struck close to home. The whole business
seemed to confound everything I knew, or thought I knew, about aviation.
Finally, there’s (a very slim) chance you
might be able to help!
Whether
or not wreckage and/or the plane are ever found, the whole MH370 affair is
stranger than fiction.
I
am not a conspiracy theorist. I know the Moon landings were genuine. I don’t
believe Kennedy was assassinated by the ‘military-industrial complex’ and I am
as sure as I can be that the Queen didn’t murder Princess Di’. But MH370? I am no longer sure what to believe …
Questions
remain that may never be satisfactorily answered. Among them:
1
What about radar, in particular OTHR?
According
to an article in the New Straits Times, the Australians have an Over The Horizon Radar (OTHR) Facility called the Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN), capable of ‘picking
out the type of aircraft taking off from Changi airport
in Singapore’. If true, then they would have tracked
MH370 into the southern Indian Ocean, identified it as a civilian airliner,
known that it had ditched and known roughly where; conceivably known these
things from day one. Yet no admission has ever been made and no SAR mission was
sent out, despite the fruitless searching elsewhere, despite the desperate
relatives, despite the fact that there may initially have been survivors.
Evidence?
·
Almost
from the start, unnamed US officials were briefing US media that MH370 crashed
in the southern Indian Ocean, long before Inmarsat had completed their
investigation into the ‘pings’.
·
When
the Australians began their search, they focused solely on a small area of the
southern Indian Ocean: they knew where to look.
·
Two
weeks in, all pretence of looking at other places on ‘the arc’ of possible last
locations for MH370 had ceased.
·
Possible
sightings elsewhere have been summarily dismissed by the Australian search
team: they clearly have a certainty about MH370’s fate that goes way beyond
Inmarsat’s Doppler-effect calculations that look to me on the limits of the
data precision.
Interestingly,
both Australian and US officials have declined to comment on their OTHR
capabilities, beyond saying that they saw nothing. But
if that’s true, why not? According to the Wikipedia article on
JORN it has a range of at least 3000-4000 km stretching north and west of
Australia and can spot a Cessna 172 (I used to fly one of those – it’s tiny!)
taking off 2500km away. From the graphics I have seen, MH370 should
have been seen by JORN on the part of its flight path off the north east of
Australia, if it ended up where they have been searching.
2
What about the pilots?
From
very early on it was clear to me that if the plane had indeed been diverted and
then flown until it ran out of fuel and crashed or ditched, then one of the
pilots was most likely responsible.
Furthermore,
if one of the pilots was responsible then, with no indicators or admissions of
terrorism, then it had to be suicide. But why go to such elaborate efforts to
commit suicide?
To
an oceanographer it might look like whoever was responsible wanted to ditch
MH370 in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, perhaps in order to avoid debris
ever being washed ashore and thus to ensure that MH370 remained an open mystery
forever (consider that but for the Inmarsat ‘pings’ and perhaps the OTHR, MH370
would have performed the perfect disappearing act). But why do that?
The
only answer, it seemed to me, was to hide the suicide: perhaps to avoid family
stigma, perhaps to create an open inquest verdict that left relatives able to
collect life insurance.
But
in either case, the clue to any suicide would lie with immediate personal and
family circumstances. Yet, two weeks into the investigations the Malaysians
still hadn’t interviewed the pilot’s family, still hadn’t got to the bottom of
the final phone call, had released no information on professional or personal
circumstances or life insurance particulars.
3
What about the flight simulator?
An
article in an Australian newspaper revealed, after a few days, the disturbing
fact the Captain Shah had a sophisticated 777 simulator at home. Perhaps indeed
he was so fanatical about his job that he spent evenings playing at it, but why
would he need to? Surely as a simulator instructor, Shah would have been able
to get all the time he needed on a professional simulator? Until proved
otherwise, the suspicion must be that Shah was practising illicit flying,
including perhaps at extreme low and high altitudes, that
would have aroused suspicion on his simulator at work.
And
yet … the Malaysians failed to investigate the simulator for over a week,
despite the lack of information on where to focus search efforts that the
simulator might have shed new light on.
4
What about the passengers?
Let
us remind ourselves that MH370’s seven hour flight to oblivion happened with
240 people on board, including IT and communications professionals and skilled
crew members apart from the pilots. What were they all doing meanwhile?
It’s
a painful question to ask, but it needs to be asked.
It
is true that those 240 souls were locked behind an impregnable door to the
flight deck. But that means, given that this increasingly looks like a solo
act, they were probably able to act as they wished, free to team up, pool their
expertise and plan, still in possession of their phones and mobile devices.
It
is also true that making mobile calls from a plane is difficult. But did none
of those phones and devices connect to a cell? Was not a single text or email
sent, no GPS fix obtained and registered? It seems unlikely, yet I have seen no
evidence that much effort has been expended in looking for such evidence.
Other
questions about the passengers remain unanswered. Could the cabin
pressurisation have been switched off to incapacitate them? If yes, then how
effective and lasting would this have been?
5
Why do people still talk about fire?
If
the scant facts about MH370 are true, then a fire or systems failure could not
have caused them. Can we conceive of a fire so ferocious and swift that it knocked
out all comms before a mayday could be
sent, yet left the autopilot, flight controls and airframe intact to keep
functioning for a further seven hours while MH370 flew into one of the remotest
regions on the planet, well off any rational flight path? This stretches
credulity in my opinion.
Yet
time and again, professionals say it was fire. Is this simply denial in an
industry ultimately based on trust in pilots?
6
Is there anything you can do?
Maybe. Astrophotographers
are always having their shots ruined by planes and vapour trails. And MH370 was
a night flight, after all. So it seems to me possible (if highly unlikely) that
someone, somewhere in SE Asia (or elsewhere) photographed a 777 that shouldn’t
have been there. If you have an image with what looks like a 777 in it, taken at the
right time, let someone know …
Conclusion
I
am not an expert, not involved, not in possession of the full facts. But from
any rational standpoint, it’s hard not to see MH370 as, if not a conspiracy
exactly, then at best a series of cover-ups and bungles. The worst culprits
though are not in my opinion the Malaysians themselves, but the US and
Australia.
The
Americans and Australians are unwilling to provide any closure for the relatives
by simply admitting they know roughly where MH370 ended up. Yet know I strongly
suspect they must do, thanks to OTHR facilities such as JORN.
Huge
efforts are being made by people – search crews and merchant ships – but these
efforts would have been far more effective if directed to the right place in
the first place. But at least we can guess at the reason for this cover-up:
military secrecy in the face of China.
Meanwhile
there seems no clear reason for the cover-up, or at least delay in making
public, of any motives or evidence for pilot malfeasance and possible suicide.
This may be down to a combination of Malaysian culture and a general desire not
to spook airline customers.
If
MH370’s fate was act and not accident, it may be that the search operation has
progressed just as the shrewd individual who planned the disappearance must
have hoped it would: to aid and abet in concealing the real fate of MH370,
perhaps for ever.