The alignment of Captain Zaharie Shah’s home simulator flight path with the WSPR flight path analysis is no coincidence.
The flight path from Captain Zaharie Shah’s home flight simulator passes right through the WSPR defined crash location. The coordinates from Captain Zaharie Shah’s home simulator flight path were recovered by the Royal Malaysian Police during their investigation into the disappearance of MH370.
There are two key coordinates on the home simulator flight path, one at the turn south in the vicinity of the Andaman Islands at around 10.2°N 90.2°E and the other at fuel exhaustion at around 45.1°S 104.1°E.
The major difference between Captain Zaharie Shah’s home simulator flight path and the WSPR flight path analysis is that the flight path is much longer in the home simulator. The reason for the longer path is the amount of fuel assumed during the simulation.
The flight path from Captain Zaharie Shah’s home flight simulation was run on 2nd February 2014, with a starting fuel amount of 68,523.8 kg fuel on board. Capt. Zaharie Shah flew the Malaysian Airlines System (MAS) flight MH150 from Kuala Lumpur to Jeddah on 4th February 2014 and had an estimated 68,450 kg of fuel on board following the MAS standard fuel planning practice. It is no coincidence that the two fuel amounts in the simulator and in the real world are almost identical.
This raises the question: Was the original target actually MH150 and not MH370? If the initial plan was to hijack flight MH150, then it obviously did not happen. A possible reason is that there were two sets of crew on flight MH150 making it more risky to divert and hijack. Was MH370 was chosen instead, although there was less fuel, but because there was no extra flight crew on board?
A short paper discussing these questions can be downloaded here
@All,
Geoffrey Thomas has published a new article on airlineratings.com titled “Was MH150 The Intended Target Not MH370?”
https://www.airlineratings.com/news/was-mh150-the-intended-target-not-mh370/
The flight path from Captain Zaharie Shah’s home flight simulation was run on 2nd February 2014, with a starting fuel amount of 68,523.8 kg fuel on board. Capt. Zaharie Shah flew the Malaysian Airlines System (MAS) flight MH150 from Kuala Lumpur to Jeddah on 4th February 2014 and had an estimated 68,450 kg of fuel onboard following the MAS standard fuel planning practice. It is no coincidence that the two fuel amounts in the simulator and in the real world are almost identical.
Mr Godfrey added that “MH370 with 239 people on board remains the worst loss of life in aviation history as a result of a diversion and hijacking since the 911 multiple hijackings on 11th September 2001″
“MH370 is the worst aviation incident in the history of commercial aviation of all 447 aircraft listed as missing or as cause undetermined in the Aviation Safety Network accident database, which goes back to 1919.”
“A diversion and hijacking of MH150 to Jeddah would have been even worse news for a mainly Muslim country like Malaysia.”
If it was a hijacking why were no demands made?
You assume there were demands to be met.
@ka004343482,
In other pilot suicide hijackings, no demands were made.
There was no demand made by the co-pilot of German Wings flight 4U9525 on 24th March 2015 with 150 fatalities in a suicide hijacking.
There was no demand made by the co-pilot of Egypt Air flight MS990 on 31st October 1999 with 217 fatalities in a suicide hijacking.
Terrorist hijackings are very rare these days, since the security measures brought in after 911 on 11th September 2001.
There were 303 hijackings between 1968 and 1972, mostly in the US and mostly coupled with demands for money or to be flown to a particular destination, mostly to Cuba. This was brought to an end in 1973 when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the US introduced rules which required the screening of all passengers and carry-on luggage before boarding passenger aircraft. This became a global security measure, that we all take for granted today.
Very interesting article! Out of curiosity, were the flight crew of MH150 ever interviewed by investigators? Was Captain Zaharie friends with some member of the crew? Was he acting strangely on the flight? Did he try and get the copilot to leave the cockpit but he wasn’t able to do so? Seems like there would be a lot of interesting questions if MH150 were indeed the target and haven’t heard much about the theory before. Thanks!
@Sammy,
Welcome to the blog!
There is no record of the flight crew of MH150 ever being interviewed by the investigators in any of the official reports.
You ask a number of very good questions.
The investigators spent a lot of time analysing Captain Zaharie Shah’s home flight simulator, including involving the FBI.
The Malaysian Safety Investigation Report refers to the RMP Forensic Report on page 27: “The RMP Forensic Report on the simulator also did not find any data that showed the aircraft was performing climb, attitude or heading manoeuvres, nor did they find any data that showed a similar route flown by MH370. The RMP Forensic Report concluded that there were no unusual activities other than game-related flight simulations.”
The ATSB Report “The Operational Search for MH370” includes a section on Captain Zaharie Shah’s home flight simulator on page 98 to 99, where they state: “The simulator data was a partial reconstruction of a flight simulator session from 2 February 2014.”
The ATSB report explains: “On the day the simulation was conducted the PIC was on a rostered day of leave. The following day the PIC was rostered to fly from Kuala Lumpur to Denpasar, Bali and return the same day. On 4 February 2014 the PIC was rostered to fly from Kuala Lumpur to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The first three data points recovered from the simulator were consistent with the route from Kuala Lumpur to Jeddah. In the weeks between the Jeddah flight and the accident flight the PIC was rostered to fly return flights from Kuala Lumpur to; Denpasar, Beijing, Melbourne and then Denpasar again.”
The ATSB report concludes: “There were enough similarities to the flight path of MH370 for the ATSB to carefully consider the possible implications for the underwater search area. These considerations included the impact on the search area if the aircraft had been either glided after fuel exhaustion or ditched under power prior to fuel exhaustion with active control of the aircraft from the cockpit.”
The Malaysian authorities concluded that there was nothing suspicious despite spending a lot of time analysing Captain Zaharie Shah’s home flight simulator. Why the Malaysian authorities involved the FBI in the investigation, when they thought this was not “unusual” and just “game-related flight simulations” is impossible to believe.
The ATSB took the home flight simulator seriously and recognised the consistency with flight MH150 from Kuala Lumpur to Jeddah, which took place on 4th February 2014.
In an article in “The Australian” newspaper dated 17th April 2017 they report: “When last year it was revealed the FBI had discovered Zaharie had plotted a course quite close to that track on his home computer flight simulator, the ATSB joined the Malaysian government and Malaysia Airlines to hose down suggestions this pointed to the “rogue pilot” hijack theory.”
Hello
Never mind the good questions what fantastic answers you have provided.
In a recent Lore Lodge video it was stated that the simulation session on 2 February was dated 21 February and that on this date Shah was due to fly MH370 to Beijing. Do you know if this is correct?
Thank you
John.
@John Finlay,
The Lore Lodge video is incorrect regarding the date of the simulation session, where the deleted data points were recovered, which was definitely 2nd February 2014 and not 21st February 2014.
When the captain’s computer was recovered, there were several drives with different versions of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Flight Simulator installed. It was previously reported that the deleted flight files were created using FSX, as FSX is referenced extensively throughout the Malaysian police report. This is incorrect.
In fact, the aircraft model used in the simulation was a “PSS Boeing 777-200LR No VC”, which refers to an aircraft model developed by Phoenix Simulation Software. This aircraft model is only available for Flight Simulator 2004, also known as FS2004 and FS9.
There was an FSX simulation session on 21st February 2014, but this is irrelevant for the FS9 simulation session to fuel exhaustion in the Southern Indian Ocean, I am referring to.
Captain Zaharie Shah did fly on 21st February 2014 to Beijing, but there was no diversion or hijacking.
@All,
In an email to the Independent Group dated 5th October 2017, the ATSB admits that they have several pages more data from the FBI, which was recovered from the home flight simulator of Captain Zaharie Shah, than is contained in the leaked Royal Malaysian Police (RMP) report. This was originally thought to just be header and footer data, that was not relevant to the investigation of the disappearance of MH370. It turns out that this original assessment was wrong.
The key data missing from the RMP report was the [DateTimeSeason] of the simulation time for each of the “Program Generated” files found on the external hard drive. The additional ATSB data from the FBI shows that Captain Zaharie Shah started the simulator run on 2nd February 2014 at 15:26 local time and finished the simulator run at 16:38 local time. Captain Zaharie Shah was assigned the flight MH150 from Kuala Lumpur to Jeddah, which took place on 4th February 2014 with an actual time of departure at 15:14 local time. The simulator run appears to have been made at the same time of day as the real world flight, which was planned to take place according to the duty roster, previously published in the short paper which can be downloaded from the post above.
The home simulator run lasted 72 minutes, which is much shorter than the real world flight time of 9 hours 19 minutes for MH150 on 4th February 2014 from Kuala Lumpur to Jeddah. Captain Zaharie Shah paused the simulator at several points and manually moved the aircraft forward to a new location to shorten the simulator time. The total simulation run time in the Malacca Strait was 29 minutes, the total fuel jettison time was 38 minutes and the flying time in the Southern Indian Ocean to use up the remaining fuel after jettisoning was 5 minutes, which totals 72 minutes.
This simulation was made in order to check, how far the fuel load of 68,523.8 kg required for the Kuala Lumpur to Jeddah flight would take a diverted flight into the Southern Indian Ocean. A recreation of the simulation by Victor Iannello and Yves Guillaume dated 29th November 2016 shows the aircraft flew an additional 449 nmi past the end point at 45°S 104°E, before the tanks were empty, but whether this difference is due to the manual repositioning and refuelling of the aircraft or manual jettisoning of fuel is not clear.
The FBI data, missing from the RMP report, shows the alignment of the timing of the simulation by Captain Zaharie Shah to the flight MH150 from Kuala Lumpur to Jeddah. Up until now, we have only observed the alignment of the fuel amounts in both cases.
The major question arising from the FBI data, in the possession of the ATSB, but missing from the RMP report is why the RMP did not include all the data from the FBI? Did the RMP have the data and decide not to include in their internal report? I doubt it.
The question is then, why was the data given to the ATSB, but not to the RMP?
The ATSB has not disclosed the complete FBI data in their possession and this should now be done to provide transparency in the investigation. This would also enable independent investigators to analyse the data from the home flight simulator of Captain Zaharie Shah.
Wouldn’t it be helpful for the RMP report to be published rather than relying on an admission from ATSB “that they have several pages more data from the FBI, which was recovered from the home flight simulator of Captain Zaharie Shah”? What is there for them to hide?
@Colin MacGillivray,
Welcome to the blog!
The RMP report has been published, since it was leaked. The ATSB claim they have several more pages from the FBI, which is not in the RMP report and that they have not published.
Who is hiding what and why?