In a guest post Gerard Mendoza Ferrandis takes a good look at the facts regarding the disappearance of MH370 and evaluates the various theories that have been put forward. While some of the theories are based on the facts we had at the time, many others have been fuelled by misinformation and conspiracy, leading to a lot of sensationalism regarding the case.
Gerard discusses what are the indisputable facts and how best to categorise the various theories. He proposes a framework for evaluating the various theories.
More than 10 million of us board an aircraft every day. It is paramount for the future of the aviation industry and the safety of the flying public, that we solve the mystery of the disappearance of MH370. The next of kin of those lost in the crash of MH370 are still waiting for answers as to what happened to their loved ones almost 10 years ago.
Gerard has updated his paper based on the comments he has received.
The updated paper can be downloaded here
‘Indisputable, unquestionable fact’ 2 in Gerard Mendoza Ferrandis’s report contains an editing error.
The report currently states:
“Nevertheless, a fact that allows to corroborate this data is the that the mobile phone of the First Officer pinged one of the cellphone towers in the Island of Penang.”
A spurious ‘the’, or ‘definite article’, has either been added, or left as a result of editing, in the phrase ‘…the that the…’.
Presumably the meaning that the author wished to communicate is something along the lines of:
“Nevertheless, a fact that allows to corroborate this data is that the mobile phone of the First Officer pinged one of the cellphone towers in the Island of Penang.”
Additionally, this ‘indisputable, unquestionable fact’ suggests that the First Officer’s phone was on board MH370 after the plane left Kuala Lumpur.
In the absence of proof to the contrary, it must be theoretically possible that the ‘Penang ping’ was generated by a person in Penang who had the First Officer’s phone, or SIM, or by a telecommunications signal relaying device that was not on board MH370 at the time of the ping.
The ‘third-party-ping’ and ‘simulated ping scenarios are both possible, but extremely unlikely. However, it might just be worth adding them to the author’s ‘comprehensive compilation of theories proposed thus far regarding the MH370 case’,
What both these unlikely scenarios raise is the possibility that the MH370 event was part of a pre-planned clandestine operation that:
1. Went exactly according to plan and is unfolding exactly according to plan.
2. Went completely wrong, with every effort made to bury the facts.
3. Somewhere in between.
While recovery of the wreckage will help to bring closure, it will not alter the fact that MH370 was being ‘watched over’ by undertrained, understaffed, overworked, exhausted air traffic controllers in March 2014, at a time of heightened national, regional and international tension.
Tommy, thank you for the editorial correction. That is indeed what I intended to say.
It is true that the ping could have been caused by an individual on the ground. Furthermore, even though test were made to check if it was possible that this connection could have been made from the plane, the report concludes “The Telco service provider expert cautioned the Team that the tests would be difficult to conclude and use as scientific/theoretical assumptions for the case of MH370, as the measurement results were only valid for that specific time, flight path, speed, altitude, devices used, and environment during the tests.”
However, this ping was detected on March 8 at 01:52:27 MYT (March 7 at 17:52:27 UTC). This timing closely matches the primary radar tracking of the aircraft, which was detected at 10 NM south of Penang at 17:52:31 UTC by the Malaysian Military Radar. If it was a clandestine operation, it would have had to be perfectly synchronized. I am not saying this is impossible, but I do believe that Occam’s Razor does apply here. It is not unreasonable to think that the FO would have his phone on him.
I agree with your view on the sub-optimal performance of ATC at the time. This may have been an easier search if it had not been the case. Alas, no one could have expected an event like MH370’s disappearance.
“If it was a clandestine operation, it would have had to be perfectly synchronized. ”
An observer on the ground or airborne in Penang, on seeing MH370 fly past, and in possession of the First Officer’s phone, would not have found it difficult to be perfectlly ‘lock and step’ in making or authorising a call.
However, I agree with you that it is most probable that the phone was on board MH370, and in the possession of the First Officer..
I have previously commented here that there is no evidence that anybody other than the First Officer piloted the plane after it took off from Kuala Lumpur. (The Pilot In Command, Captain Zaharie Shah would have piloted the plane up until take-off, before taking on the roles of navigator / supervisor).
I have also speculated that the First Officer might have been using his phone in an attempt to request permission or assistance to land at Penang, following an emergency situation on board that had made it impossible or unsafe to use the usual communications channels..
“I have also speculated that the First Officer might have been using his phone in an attempt to request permission or assistance to land at Penang, following an emergency situation on board that had made it impossible or unsafe to use the usual communications channels..”
Hypothetically, if such a situation were to ever occur for real, the lesson here is that a pilot would have to descend as low as possible or practical, and fly a “constant radius” around a “known cell tower location” at a speed as slow as possible, to stay within the antenna beam lobes, to stay within the 30km maximum range, and to minimise the doppler shifts(s), so as to maximise the probability of a successful log on to the teco-network.
Rational aviation experts do not really consider Hypoxia of The Pilots to be a leading theory as to cause of the accident, except to say the passenger cabin may have been depressured. We are not expecting a smooth turn around Penang and other maneuvers to turn South far beyond Indonesia if the pilots were Hypoxic. The B777 pilots have special Pressurized O2 masks with many hours of supply (O2 re-filled before take-off) and a relatively advanced EICAS (computer) screen giving them knowledge of any loss of pressure. We not expecting Xponder/ACARS/SATCOM outage at IGARI, followed by SATCOM reboot sans Flight ID and ACARS at 1825 with Hypoxia. In the past MH370 discussions, we have a phrase: could have been a “remarkable accident” meaning there is a rare chance it could have been a convoluted failure that just happens to looks like a hijacking, but the chances are not good. With the passage of time, as we have all learned more, there is less and less technical support for a remarkable failure (there is enormous denial of deliberate diversion of course).
Also on 15-March-2014 Prime Minister Razak speaking for Malaysia, NTSB, FAA, AAIB, Boeing, Inmarsat advised the world that deliberate diversion (hijacking) was the apparent cause. The passage of time (as more data has come out) has only solidified that statement. Any reference that does not accept that fact is in denial, and yes I know, many are in denial.
There appears to be a broad general consensus that MH370 was diverted from its filed flight path and was flown westward back over southern Thailand and Malaysia, towards Penang and beyond.
There is no clear consensus as to why this might have happened.
There is no clear consensus as to who turned the plane back, whether the turnback was part of a premeditated plan, or an emergency response, or compliance with an order from a hijacker.
In sifting through the multiple intentional and accidental distraction layers that have hampered and delayed the search for MH370, it is important not to divert or hijack the facts so that they more closely match a preferred narrative.
This is what Malaysia’s President said on the ides of March 2014:
“Despite media reports that the plane was hijacked, I wish to be very clear: we are still investigating all possibilities as to what caused MH370 to deviate from its original flight path.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/15/malaysian-pms-full-statement
So many people are under the impression that the pilot killed himself and the others as part of a premeditated plot to make the plane disappear for good, there is absolutely no strong or conclusive evidence as to the Captain’s role of the flight and besides an article written by William Langeweice (don’t remember how to spell his name correctly,) do we have any clinical evidence that he was depressed, how accurate or those reports ?
There’s no evidence to the contrary either. A lack of evidence isn’t evidence for the exclusion of anything.
The fact that the plane was almost certainly flown, and not continued on its heading of last setting, or reasonable autopilot behavior, is circumstantial evidence one of the pilots acted maliciously. There are circumstances in the pilots life that could be interpreted as causing suicidal behavior.
Hi Gerard
In the article you state “In 2015, the captain of Germanwings Flight 9525
deliberately crashed the airliner into the Alps.”
However, was it not the case that the first-officer rather than the captain was responsible for this?
The first line of Gerard Mendoza Ferrandis’s report states:
“The MH370 case is already more than 9 years old, and since its disappearance many theories have sprung up that attempt to give an explanation to the events of that faithful day. ”
It may well be that what the author intended to write is:
“The MH370 case is already more than 9 years old, and since its disappearance many theories have sprung up that attempt to give an explanation to the events of that fateful day. ”
If the word ‘faith’ was not incorrectly typed by Mr Ferrandis but was ‘autocorrected’ by software, it is a reminder of the awesome power of erroneous auto-corrections in altering the meaning or validity of bona fide communications.
Thank you to everyone that noticed the mistakes. They have now been corrected.
Having just re-read the report , “A Good Look At The Facts: Disproven & Unresolved Theories” by Gerard Mendoza Ferrandis, two thoughts arise:
The first is that some of the “indisputable facts” are not indisputable.
The second is that the list of “indisputable facts” could be considered to be both incomplete and arbitrary
Rather than diverting into discussions about whether or not a fact is indisputable, or into discussions about the completeness or arbirariness of a list pf facts, it is probably more useful to attempt to glean something of valuue from the narrative structure of Mr Ferrandis’s report,
The eight facts that are listed in the report can be considered as “narrative wayponts” that will tend toward the generation of multiple narrative instances that guided the listener / reader toward the same or very similar narrative conclusion.
Bearing in mind that the title of this site is “The Search For MH370 – Serving The Global MH370 Community”, it might be useful to summarise the current state of affairs in the global search effort as follows:
MH370 was a scheduled civilian flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
It departed from Kuala Lumpur but did not land in Beijing.
Forty minutes into the flight it diverted towards Kota Bharu, then flew to Penang, up the Malacca Strait, around Sumatra and southwards into the Indian Ocean.
Though some debris has been recovered, the main wreckage has not been located.
Different groups have identified different candidate serach areas.
From the moment the plane diverted from its flight plan the search for it has been hampered by false, possibly well-intentioned, trails.
As a result, the Global MH370 Community does not currently know where the wreckage of the plane is, but would very much like to.
It is possible to supply a different set of “narrative waypoints” that might help the Global MH370 Community to generate alternative search narratives. These in turn might help to supply sufficient credible new evidence for a new officially endorsed search to be launched by the appropriate regional and global authorities..
These “narrative wayponts’ are a mixture of facts and presumptions. As such, they are possibly more useful as a template, rather than a definitive guide.
As in Mr Ferrandis’s report there are eight “narrative waypoints’ to be included:
1. There have been suggestions that the plane may have recovered from the dive in the SIO after fuel exhaustion.
2. If the final descent of the aircraft was not as high speed as first thought, there is a chance that the fuselage sank largely intact.
3. Ionising smoke detectors were installed in 9M-MRO toilets.
4. Ionising smoke detectors typically contain a very small amount of Americium (Am-241).
5. Am-241 has a half-life of 432.2 years.
6. A 3D array of deep ocean radiation sensors could monitor the level of oceanic Am-241
7. GPS enabled Raspberry Pi Pico scintillators can be tuned to screen out background radiation, interference and pollutants, to monitor Am-241 gamma radiation levels.
(https://spectrum.ieee.org/pi-pico-gamma-ray-detector)
8. GPS-located radiation data can be correlated with ocean current / drift analysis data to track radiation sources (eg the tiny amounts of Am-241 in the smoke detectors that were installed in the toilets of 9M-MRO).
Gerard, thanks for your well thought out synopsis.
May I add to the hypoxia scenario. If the decompression is caused by a rupturing crew O2 bottle, the damage in the avionics bay could damage all the systems we know failed. eg Comms, transponder, power to SATCOM, autopilot/autothrottle, L AIMS. The pilots may have been unaware of the decompression until being overcome.
The aircraft could then meander on with no pilot and no one at the controls.
Hi – one question that seems absolutely fundamental is: Are there any other plausible explanations for why there would be two waypoints in the Southern Indian Ocean on the Captain’s home flight simulator? Are there any commercial routes that he could conceivably fly (eg to Perth) that would require a route using those waypoints?
While the other waypoints on the simulator (KL, SoM etc) could otherwise have innocent explanations (as they are on potential commercial routes he would/might fly), unless the waypoints in the SIO have similarly innocent explanations (which seems unlikely as they are thousands of miles from land and seemingly not on any route), then surely that strongly suggests he pre-planned the seizure and ditching of MH370?
The only two plausible explanations are hypoxia and pilot murder/suicide. The former suffers from several problems specifically (i) turning off the transponder, (ii) the three significant course changes made by the aircraft, (iii) the lack of any distress signal, and (iv) the timing happening in the 60 seconds of vulnerable dead air between KL and Vietnamese ATC. With the simulator evidence, the pilot theory is much more consistent with the facts and the only problem with it is the lack of motive.
@David Nickless,
Welcome to the blog!
In my view, we need to find the wreckage of MH370 and recover all the available evidence including the Flight Data Recorder and DNA samples from the skeletons in the cockpit area. Only then will we be able to solve the mystery of MH370. At the moment, we do not know exactly what happened to MH370 or the identity and motive of the perpetrator. Until we find out exactly what happened to MH370, we cannot learn the lessons out of this incident in order to prevent such a tragedy happening again.
I find it peculiar, after having seen all documentaries made on “how plane vanishes” and about MH370, no one of them discusses or brings up at all:
a) How long a plane can glide fly after the fact it has ran out of fuel. Long, both in kilometers and hours.
b) The so called Ground Effect, on top of that. I e that a plane can fly longer wth the same amount of fuel, or to save fuel just above a plain ground, or sea surface.
Read up on the Air Transat flight 236 from Toronto to Lisbon, in 2001. “This was also the longest passenger aircraft glide without engines, gliding for nearly 75 miles or 121 kilometres”. I always hear and see “when the fuel ran out, MH370 ditched in the ocean”. Beats me. Why is this possibilty never brought up, or on the contrary, explaining why this wasn’t possible?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Transat_Flight_236
Well, about ground effect, you all aviation experts know that there’s reduced drag by flying right above the surface of the water. You can get longer with less thrust. Is there any evidence that MH370 didn’t fly “under the radar” to use the ground effect for coming longer?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_effect_(aerodynamics)
@Mats Eriksson,
Welcome to the blog!
You ask two questions:
a) How long a plane can glide fly after the fact it has ran out of fuel. Long, both in kilometres and hours.
The consensus amongst Boeing 777 pilots is that without power, the lift over drag ratio is between 17 and 18.
We used a glide ratio of 18:1.
For an aircraft losing power at 40,000 feet, the theoretical maximum glide distance is 40,000 x 18 = 720,000 feet or 219.5 km or 118.5 nmi.
Air Transat flight TS236 was an Airbus A330 and glided for 19 minutes after dual flameout and covered a distance of 121 km.
Air Canada flight AC143 was a Boeing 767 and glided for 17 minutes after dual flameout and covered a distance of 120 km.
b) The so called Ground Effect, on top of that. I e that a plane can fly longer wth the same amount of fuel, or to save fuel just above a plain ground, or sea surface.
I do not believe that MH370 used the Ground Effect, which is only observed very close to the surface of the earth or sea.
in the Wikipedia article you cite the author states “When an aircraft flies at or below approximately half the length of the aircraft’s wingspan above the ground or water there occurs an often-noticeable ground effect. The result is lower induced drag on the aircraft. This is caused primarily by the ground or water obstructing the creation of wingtip vortices and interrupting downwash behind the wing”.
By contrast fuel efficiency of a Boeing 777 with Rolls Royce Trent 892B engines is maximised at high altitude. The fuel endurance of MH370 was 7 hours 35 minutes 47 seconds. This is only achievable at high altitude. On 7th March 2014 17:50 UTC, the aircraft weight was estimated at 213,023 kg and the optimum flight level would be FL360 (36,000 feet). By 8th March 2014 00:17:30 UTC, the fuel was exhausted and the aircraft weight was 174,369 kg and the optimum flight level would be FL400 (40,000 feet).
Aircraft typically use step climbs between (in this case) FL360 and FL400 to maintain the most efficient flight level.
Ok! Well, thank so much for a prompt reply. Then we all know we can rule those 2 things out. I find it funny anyway, since all of these conspiracy theories – and self proclaimed aviation experts – has brought up this or that, but never found anyone comparing this one to other gliding flights, or ground effect flights…
But anyway, sufficiently well explained so that I understood it, and I will rule these things out in the future… too!
By all means, until we’ve found the plane and black box, everything is vivid imagination and speculation.
But leaning towards demeanor from crew OUTSIDE the plane/flight, captain Shah had NO civil/recreational plans in his home calendar marked after 8th of March that year, which he did have the year before, while all other crew members had. It’s not a 9-5 job weekdays only, so one must keep track of the schedules when you’re off or on, and what private spare time is available or not for different social duties. Playing golf, birthdays, dentist appointment (which Shah had) whatever.
His surviving family are very coy about this, and airline too, they want to find out other possibilites first. Hey, even the pilots chart at work/airport, where it is listed who should fly what to where and when was blank for him past the 8th of March. He shouldn’t go on any vacation! But authorities still found this as “nothing sinister”… beats me.