
Lost Jet’s Path Seen as Altered via Computer - OWaz
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-flight.html?hp
======
Paddywack
My conspiracy theory:

The plane was hijacked and there has been contact with Malaysia/China/USA. One
of the conditions for hostages to be held safely is that the Authorities do
not make this public.

This would explain:

\- the otherwise unbelievable delays and pure misinformation by the Malaysian
government. Stalling for time.

\- the fact that they did not publicly do background checks on all passengers
until recently. They already know who the hijacker is. Now that there is
pressure because of elapsed time and that people are seeing holes in the
story, they need to be seen to be doing something.

What makes this implausible:

\- it still does not explain where the plane landed and has been hidden
without trace in the interim (perhaps they know - NW Pakistan, NE Afghanistan
maybe, and just can't get to it without harming the hostages)

\- it would be a diplomatic nightmare to have countries using their assets in
a futile search when Malaysia already knows what has happened. (On the other
hand, if they took 20 countries into their confidence then they would
definitely have had a leak by now.)

\- talking of leaks - I am sure even if it was a tightly held secret that they
were in hostage negotiations, someone would have made it public by now. That's
just the way things are these days.

EDIT: Formatting

~~~
mseebach
You theory is plausible, but there is no need to explain the lack of public
information. It's entirely reasonable that the investigators doesn't feel they
require the inputs of thousands of amateurs and thus publicizing every shred
of evidence they come across just isn't a priority(1).

Specifically addressing public background checks on all passengers: These are
people whose families are grieving. The have a completely reasonable
expectation of privacy, and I don't think there is good reason to _ever_
publish _any_ but the most rudimentary of information on these individuals.

Can you imagine a loved one dying in mysterious conditions and then have
Reddit shred through their background information and publishing conspiracy
theories about a link between their experimenting with drugs in college, a
painful divorce and how that means they might be a suicide-hijacker (or
whatever)?

1: I'm not saying there's no value in it, there are clearly some capable
people pitching in left and right, but it's a radical paradigm shift in
investigation, and while you're looking for a missing aircraft is a time for
sticking to procedure, not undertaking paradigm shifts.

~~~
Paddywack
Hi. I agree with a lot of what you say. However, the information that I am
referring to was plausible and already in the public domain, but that they
were refuting.

Examples of this are the delay between the two comms engines being switched
off; the Rolls Royce engine data; and their military satellites.

All of this information was gleaned from reliable sources [their own military,
the engine manufacturer, the normal ATC systems], and you are 100% correct in
that it should have been verified before being released. But, my point is that
the delay between the time the information first came to light [even through
leaks] in release was just too excruciating long to comprehend. In the interim
flatly they denied that the information even existed. I can only assume that
some of the leaks from "official sources" were in part because they knew that
materially[1] important reliable information was being held back.

On another note - I do feel for the families. The mis-information, delays and
incorrect denials are only adding to the speculation. There must be a better
way to report information.

[1]= Materially important to quelling speculation. Material to re-directing
the futile searches in the wrong places.

------
omarali
Non-paywall link
[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCkQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2014%2F03%2F18%2Fworld%2Fasia%2Fmalaysia-
airlines-
flight.html&ei=uNQnU6GFCoSGogSn_oC4Aw&usg=AFQjCNFbtxp_8dZcv3F4AqbKdal00yui_w)

~~~
fizx
Or incognito.

~~~
joshlegs
i think this is actually part of the business model a few newspapers are
trying to take on. More of a 'gently encourage' people to buy subscriptions
rather than a hard and fast 'Brick Wall' paywall. From what I hear, it's
working pretty well.

------
harshreality
The map with overlayed position information shows an arc of possible last
positions given the position of the satellite that received the last known
signal.

Edit: the satellite getting ACARS pings is apparently geosynchronous, so
triangulation is not possible, but...

What is the arc of the final position based on? The Earth is not flat, and
geosynchronous satellites are at about 36,000 km altitude (compare to Earth's
radius of about 6375 km). Shouldn't the position, if based on ranging from a
geosynchronous satellite, be much closer to a straight line (and actually
dipping to lower altitudes in the center)? Why does the graphic appear to
depict a range from a point low over the Indian ocean rather than a point in
geostationary orbit?

What possible location or ranging information could create an arc like that?
If the ping was not to a geosynchronous satellite, that raises questions—the
ping couldn't have been from the ACARS system, and it would mean triangulation
might be possible.

Could it be a range from a low earth orbit satellite, or an over the horizon
communications system? In the middle of the Indian ocean? The only thing even
close to that is _Diego Garcia_ , but the illustrated location is several
hundred miles north of Diego Garcia. I'm discounting over-the-horizon radar,
because I think that would have to mean they knew which blip was the missing
plane, and isn't the only way to know that to be tracking it?

What about the second to last known signal, or the third to last? Given that
we're not talking about arcs from points low over the Indian ocean, but from a
point in high orbit, and the plane can only be within an ~8 mile slice from
max altitude to the ground, and given that the earth is also curving away from
the satellite, how can the arc of possible positions from the final ping cover
that much ground?

Australia has radar coverage of some of the southern area where the plane
might have been. Are we to believe nobody's checked Australian radar logs to
eliminate part of the southern arc of final positions depicted?

Is this search being run by incompetent officials, or are they releasing
purposefully incomplete or inaccurate information to the press, or is there
some mysterious reason why they generated an arc like that from a
geosynchronous satellite and why prior ACARS pings or radar logs don't help
narrow the search area at all?

~~~
tom_morrow
the inmarsat satellites are on geostationary orbits.

the "4 or 5 undisclosed-to-the-public satcom ping data" might remain
undisclosed due to a) already having been used to provide the resulting
location estimate of the "last ping" or b) the data being deemed uninteresting
or c) the usual combination of bureaucracy, secrecy, perceived nefarious aims
and observed incompetent means.

------
ejdyksen
_American officials and aviation experts said it was far-fetched to believe
that a passenger could have reprogrammed the Flight Management System._

Unlikely? Sure. Far-fetched? Not as far-fetched as many other ideas that have
been floated recently.

I recently bought a highly realistic 777 model for MS Flight Simulator X [1],
and it has a very good replica Flight Management Computer. Also, when you
purchase the software, it comes with _thousands_ of pages of manuals for the
real jet.

You can see the FMC being programmed inside the simulator here [2].

[1]
[https://www.precisionmanuals.com/pages/product/777LRF.html](https://www.precisionmanuals.com/pages/product/777LRF.html)

[2]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx_NkdZEGE0&t=0m30s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx_NkdZEGE0&t=0m30s)

------
trackofalljades
This sounds pretty reasonable, and I have absolutely no technical expertise or
personal experience with which to refute it, but does this fit with the claim
by Rolls Royce that the engines' feedback systems were still talking to them
well after the course change?

If you "pull the busses" do the engines still have the ability to send their
telemetry data?

------
dandelany
The Times seems to quote officials as saying they know this via ACARS
messages. However, assuming the primary radar returns are good enough, this is
reasonably inferred by its radar track alone - the chances of hitting 4
separate navigation waypoints (IGARI, VAMPI, GIVAL, IGREX) based on random
human flying is pretty much nil. So this may be just confirmation of what most
investigators were already assuming.

Sad as it is to say, at this point I think the most likely cause is a bizarre
pilot suicide. That night one of the pilots likely allowed a dark, dark
thought they once had to overtake them for some reason.

First this person programmed a set of remote 5-letter nav waypoints into the
FMC without the other pilot noticing - not a difficult task by my
understanding. Most likely to hide the evidence for insurance reasons, or just
out of shame, to hide his actions from the world (a long flight also ensures
the CVR will tape over the relevant bits after its 120min loop - CVR/FDR is
one of the few things that cannot be disabled from the cockpit of a 777).

After the radio handoff, the other pilot left the cockpit for a moment. The
perpetrator then set the transponder to standby and disabled ACARS messages
from being sent via both VHF and SATCOM. Finally, in order to ensure hypoxia
took hold quickly, he set the plane to climb as high as the autopilot would
take it (which ended up being ~FL450), and then depressurized the plane,
quickly and painlessly killing everyone aboard, including himself. Multiple
airline pilots in the airliners.net forums have been discussing these
possibilities and they seem to agree that all of these things can be performed
by a single pilot, in a few minutes time, entirely from the cockpit. The ghost
plane then flew the programmed route until running out of fuel.

While this is certainly bizarre, unlikely, and hard to fathom, I posit that it
is the least unlikely scenario, because it can be done entirely by one person
whose motives we don't understand. Historically, there have been many people
who have done bizarre, horrendous things for motives we can't begin to
understand - whether due to insanity, sociopathy or zealotry. I truly hope I'm
wrong, but I just can't see a grand multinational hijacking conspiracy as
being more likely than a sad man wishing to end his sad life in an evil way.

If you're thinking of replying to this with your own theory, let me just add
that I say all of this not to add flame to the fire of speculation, or to
accuse a potentially innocent man of mass murder, but to try and finally put
the whole thing to rest in my own mind - I seem to have been rather obsessed
with the whole story over the past few days. While the past week has been a
flurry of information and misinformation, it's quite likely we will never know
what happened to MH370, at least not for a very long time. We need to find the
explanations for ourselves that allow us to come to peace with the incident
personally, so that we can collectively move on at some point.

~~~
omegant
Commercial pilot here, while possible (almost everything is possible at this
moment), I don´t think it was a suicide, they even say at the article that if
this is a suicide it´s inconsistent with previous cases where the pilot just
pushed the controls and dived to the ground. Why it´s too complicated?:

-To kill everybody via hypoxia you don´t need to climb to Flight Level 450 (45k feet). FL350 works just as good, the difference in the time of useful consciousness is 10 to 15 secs (from 35' at 350 to 15' at 450), not worth the trouble of climbing and possibly stalling the plane. After that time you either pass out or you start not knowing what you are doing.

-You don´t need to turn and fly for 6+ hours to random points, just keep your flight plan and selected altitude and the airplane will behave like the Helios (flying till the end of the flight plan and then holding till running out of fuel)

-Why flying for 6 hours if you want to suicide? passenger oxygen only works 15 min (time enough to reach a breathable altitude), the portable oxygen tanks for the auxiliary crew will work for 30 min more or less.. Look at this video of hypoxia test at 25k feet to see how fast you pass out [http://youtu.be/hSrGfElyfVE](http://youtu.be/hSrGfElyfVE)

-why disconnect the communications? you only need to ignore them. why bother with the ACARS?

So far all the things are more consistent with a hijacking done by someone
with some knowledge of flying a plane (like asking pilots to shut down coms,
climbing descending, turning, introducing a waypoint), but not enough to know
that flying at FL450 it´s so unstable for a plane like this, or that you´ll
eventually will run out of fuel.

Also I must say that all theories are taking in to account good and skilled
pilots and rational decisions at the cockpit (maybe from the hijacker). The
captain really seems to be a skilled professional, but I don´t know about the
flight officer. Friends of mine who are flying at Asian companies complain all
the time how awful the instruction and flying skills are there. For example
the pilots of the Asiana that crashed at SF just lacked basic flight skills,
like using the thrust levers to do a normal landing. At china the flight
officers are NOT allowed to take off, land or touch the controls below 1000'
(How can you be a pilot without knowing how to land?, what happens if the
captain has a heart stroke?). But I don´t know how good it´s pilot instruction
at Malaysia Airlines.

I´ve seen very strange results during simulators when trying to solve
emergencies, and all where very capable pilots. After all airplanes are very
complex systems working in very different scenarios. Corrected procedures and
system fixes are constant even on models that have been flying for 20+ years.

What I mean is that yet another possibility, is that the weird behavior is
caused by some kind of emergency that went wrong somehow while trying to fix
it, maybe due to a momentary bad decision that made everything more difficult,
or just plain incompetence.

Also you can not trust all the theories and data they are releasing, it might
be a bad interpretation, or just plainly wrong. For example, look at the
Malaysian government, they told everybody that they lost track of the flight
at one point. Everybody supposed that it was the actual point where they lost
ALL contact (primary, secondary and acars), but it was just the secondary
radar...and it took them almost a week to realize this. As this point is the
ABC of Search and Rescue knowledge, I can not even imaging how many things
they are screwing during this search..

edit to finish an incomplete sentence edit 2 missing words and improving some
sentences

~~~
leoc
> I´ve seen very strange results during simulators when trying to solve
> emergencies, and all where very capable pilots. After all airplanes are very
> complex systems working in very different scenarios. Corrected procedures
> and system fixes are constant even on models that have been flying for 20+
> years.

The initial behaviour of the plane around the time the transponders went out
seems very possible to explain in terms of a less-than-perfect response to a
sudden emergency. But how could one square a) making a series of direction and
altitude changes over a longish period of time, well after the initial
incident, b) no attempt to communicate at the same time and c) at most,
limited damage to the plane's systems with d) no foul play? It seems that at
least one of those has to give...

~~~
omegant
You´ll be amazed how fast you can start screwing things at a cockpit once you
have an unknown emergency or even worst a known emergency that you have
misunderstood. Just deselecting the wrong button (for example disconnecting a
generator and a cross tie connector), will put you in manual control, with all
the cockpit lights and half the instruments off, several alarms ringing... not
a desirable situation even for an experienced pilot. You are able to forget to
communicate, to navigate, you are able to crash to a mountain because you are
looking at a flashing light, I can´t find a good example outside of aviation
to make you understand the feeling to look at a panel and not knowing what the
hell is going on.

At simulators we practice all the normal emergencies, that will cover you 99,5
of the times. Most emergencies are simple, but some times something that is
not known even to Boeing happens. Or it´s a simple emergency but you take the
wrong steps. This happens more frequently to pilots who passed a lacking
instruction method (like the one I describe that´s happening at china), but
can happen to anyone.

The Air France crash was due to a no emergency situation (they just needed to
keep altitude, and engine thrust selection to keep a normal flight and recover
the instruments) that was converted in to a crash due to a misinterpretation
and wrong piloting skills.

~~~
leoc
Sure, I understand this. The mystery is that the plane was (apparently!)
making turns over a period of at least nearly a couple of hours, well after
any initial pants-on-fire emergency (or panic misreaction like Air France),
with not even a peep on any of the radios, the transponders, or the ELT.

~~~
omegant
it´s really strange indeed. I guess they´ll finally find it and we´ll know
what happened, and how much of what we know now is true or accurate.

------
jonah
How was this known? Do changes get relayed back?

~~~
sidww2
ACARS is what the article seems to be saying is how they know. Last ACARS
transmission was 1:07 am. Any pilots here who know whether ACARS actually
transmits FMS information?

Edit: And if the report is correct and ACARS sent the information all along,
why in the world did it take them 10 DAYS to find this out?

~~~
tim333
According to wikipedia ACARS can include FMS info. It is odd that this has
taken 10 days and even now is kind of leaked by "an American official". You'd
think they would have checked that stuff straight away and made it at least
semi public so aircraft experts could check it out.

------
ccarpenterg
_Maldives island residents report sighting of 'low flying jet'_

Source:
[http://www.haveeru.com.mv/news/54062](http://www.haveeru.com.mv/news/54062)

------
e28eta
I wonder if the other 3-4 satellite keep-alive transmissions would narrow down
the potential area any?

~~~
Aloha
Not unless the transmissions include that data, its not discernible from a
single sat, beyond wide geographic area.

------
andrewrice
So is mechanical failure still in play?

~~~
matznerd
It seems that something intentional brought the flight off of the original
flight plan.

~~~
Steko
Intentional =/= terrorist hijacking/pilot suicide/random heist theory. A pilot
trying to save an aircraft does things intentionally.

~~~
InclinedPlane
A pilot trying to save an aircraft does not leave the plane on autopilot, does
not turn off transponders, does not avoid landing at the closest possible
airport, does not maintain radio silence.

It would take an even more bizarre set of circumstances than hijacking to
explain the behavior of the plane as we know it so far.

~~~
Steko
Autopilot: pilots leave controls to deal with fire.

Transponders: disabled to deal with fire or as a result.

Closest possible airport: the one the plane turned towards was arguably the
best one to go for.

Radio silence: disabled by fire.

~~~
CamperBob2
Trouble is, there are multiple separate radios they could use, both HF and
VHF. A fire that takes out the transponder and all of the radios and still
leaves the aircraft capable of flying for hours seems pretty unlikely.

Fr. Occam is pacing back and forth and stroking his beard on this one, that's
for sure.

~~~
kreeben
It seems to me the most plausible explanation at this point is a hostage
situation, not a mechanical failure. Where is the debris? And it can't be a
heist to steal a plane. Oh, it's gonna be easy, we just need to kill 250
people, no big deal. There must be easier ways to get hold of a plane. It
seems media has ruled this out on the basis "there have been no ransom
demand". But there will be. I'd say within a week. Occam?

~~~
evan_
Why would they wait two weeks? That's a long time to wrangle 250 people. I
would expect the ransom demand while the plane is still in the air, if only to
contain everyone.

