
Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever - acdanger
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-02-15/missing-malaysia-jet-mh370-weeks-away-from-keeping-secrets-forever
======
rwhitman
The MH370 tracking problem is unfortunate but what I'm most fascinated by in
all of this is the continuing reminder of how powerless we are as a
civilization when it comes to the oceans.

A plane crashes in an area with no landmass and we lose it. We've overfished
many species to near-extinction because we completely failed to understand
exactly how many fish there actually are. The sea acts as a natural eraser for
human habitation, sometimes wiping out all evidence of entire communities
within hours. We lose all kinds of cargo into the ocean and haven't the
faintest clue where it goes. We're only beginning to figure out how to convert
seawater into potable form effectively. The majority of our planet is covered
in something we can't even figure out how to build habitats on top of without
piling up dirt underneath.

The belief that we have any mastery over this planet seems to humbly
disintegrate when looking at our relationship to our oceans

~~~
monk_e_boy
I live by the Atlantic, people go missing every so often. It seems tragic but
normal to the locals. The sea is the sea. It'll slurp you out and kill you.

Tourists seems quite shocked that there isn't more that could be done.
Everything in a city is very safe, it's pretty hard to accidentally kill
yourself. It stands to reason that we should put up some more signs, or have
someone stop them from doing something silly.

We had storms last week. A car was found in a car park next to a beach. The
guy was working somewhere near the beach. He was never seen again. No one
knows what happened. The search and rescue do a days search, but where do you
look?

~~~
mmmBacon
Same thing happens here along the Northern California coast. With El Nino this
year, the waves are bigger and more powerful than a typical winter and catch
people unaware. There are occasional "sneaker" waves that break on the beach
and knock people down.

Recently: [http://www.mercurynews.com/central-coast/ci_29405514/san-
jos...](http://www.mercurynews.com/central-coast/ci_29405514/san-jose-pair-
missing-after-being-swept-into)

[http://abc7news.com/news/pacifica-man-drowns-trying-to-
save-...](http://abc7news.com/news/pacifica-man-drowns-trying-to-save-wife-
swept-out-by-big-waves/1193987/)

~~~
personlurking
There was a story from last week, in France. The guy filming is apparently
handicapped, but there was a fifth person who entered the scene afterwards and
saved all of them.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSgSMZsMh4A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSgSMZsMh4A)

Or this one from 2013, in Lisbon (college hazing gone wrong)
[http://news.sky.com/story/1183112/portugal-five-students-
mis...](http://news.sky.com/story/1183112/portugal-five-students-missing-in-
sea)

------
gaur
Another case of a rambling article burying the lede.

I skimmed the article and still can't figure out why we're weeks away from a
point of no return. Is the search going to be called off? Is there a
transponder that's going to give out? Why can't the journalist just _put the
important information up front_ , instead of a bunch of irrelevant crap about
someone's sleep deprivation?

~~~
cddotdotslash
In the fifth paragraph, it says "Without fresh clues, the hunt should end
about June, when four ships are due to finish combing the seas off western
Australia." I imagine that the news would be quite boring if every article
were written as a bullet-point list of points. Sometimes people enjoy reading
a story, not just a two minute summary.

~~~
imglorp
That's just bad journalism. The first few lines should be who-what-when-where-
why. Then you fill in the details and backstory at length.

~~~
TrevorJ
It's the business model. The longer you are on a web page the more ad cycles
you see. I agree with you, its' not good writing, but I think that is where it
comes from.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
But the more you annoy the reader that's just looking for the reason the
search is going to fail in 30 days. And the more you do that as a business,
the more a bunch of readers (those who prefer that you not waste their time)
get inoculated to you, and quit clicking on links to you. That's bad business.

~~~
TeMPOraL
That's bad _long-term_ , but profitable _short-term_. It's rare a business
that cares about the former.

------
willvarfar
"The company already offers a similar service for ships and boats, which use
Inmarsat’s network free of charge for distress signalling."

Interestingly, back when I was an intern, BT used to charge an exorbitant rate
for those distress calls. I once wrote-up the whole internship thing
[http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/17282439831/an-
ei...](http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/17282439831/an-eight-in-a-
million-chance)

"I was pretty uncomfortable when I found that mayday calls were being charged
at the highest rate - £8 per minute if I recall correctly - even though
Inmarsat itself explicitly carried those calls for free. I remember the
manager I asked about that, when I found those calls in real logs, not meeting
my eyes as he talked distantly about why that was."

~~~
samstave
Why don't we have an additional distress beacon on all planes that says their
gps coords to Inmarsat continuously no matter what?

Basically why can't we use the Inmarsat network for more than distress but any
and all planes report to some tamper proof system every minute?

(Yes I know how many flights there are, but you don't need to store the data
once a plane has reached its destination successfully)

~~~
cmurf
It's complicated. One of the complications is requiring anything. Most trade
agreements now in place defer major standards compliance in aviation to ICAO,
and ICAO ends up being lowest common denominator when it comes to rules.
Simply, less rich countries don't want to pay for every possible feature.

Another complication is there's almost no such thing as a "backport" in
aviation. The equipment a particular plane model is certified for is the
equipment it has for life, save for some software updates. And this isn't in
the category of a software update, it's new physical equipment. The easiest
part is a new weight and balance for every airplane getting the new equipment.
Harder is wiring the thing in, and getting it space in the cockpit - that's
often quite difficult. If it requires integration of any sort, very difficult.
There's extremely low willingness to substantially alter certified aircraft.
There are individual systems that make up a whole, change any one part, you
change the whole. The liability is too high for the return, these kinds of
lost plane events are rare.

~~~
neurotech1
Actually, your mistaken. Cockpit avionics upgrades are relatively common, even
in small aircraft like Cessna 172s. Considering a new Cessna 172 is around
$250k, and a refurbished aircraft, with new glass cockpit is around $50k (and
sometimes significantly less).

Aircraft have whats known as a Supplementary Type Certificate, which permits
changes to a certified aircraft. Even a major upgrade from radial engine to
turboprop has been authorized for some aircraft, including DC-3 transports
made in the 1940s.

Another example is Southwest Airlines. The 737-300 series jets have glass
cockpit upgrades for a common configuration between a 737-300 (Classic) and a
newer 737-700 (NG).

If the ICAO mandates upgrades, it will happen. It might not be cheap, but its
quite doable.

~~~
throwaway60453
The above comment is very cavalier with the facts on pricing and availability
of airplane upgrades.

~~~
neurotech1
Missing the key point. Aircraft are updated with newer avionics after leaving
the factory quite routinely.

Considering Southwest currently has 122 737-300s in service, they wouldn't
upgrade them if it wasn't available at a reasonable cost:

[http://www.airfleets.net/flottecie/Southwest%20Airlines.htm](http://www.airfleets.net/flottecie/Southwest%20Airlines.htm)

Cockpit upgrades for 737s:

[http://www.aviationtoday.com/av/issue/feature/Product-
Focus-...](http://www.aviationtoday.com/av/issue/feature/Product-Focus-
Cockpit-Displays_77438.html)

Cockpit upgrades for C172 type aircraft:

[https://flyhpa.com/2012/08/the-
garmin-g500-g600/](https://flyhpa.com/2012/08/the-garmin-g500-g600/)

------
SeoxyS
I find it hard to understand how we can be justified spending so much money
and effort trying to find the wreck. What is there to gain? The only benefits
I see are:

\- Giving family members (maybe a few thousand people) closure.

\- Understanding what happened, and potentially making a few improvements to
plane safety as a result.

Given the _very slim_ chance of them even finding the plane and learning
anything useful out of it… I don't see how the search justifies a 9-figure
price tag. (I don't mean to be insensitive)

~~~
netinstructions
> Understanding what happened, and potentially making a few improvements to
> plane safety as a result.

Well Wikipedia says a Boeing 777-200ER costs $261.5 million[1]. That's about
double the cost for the search. If it's possible to prevent even one future
mishap as a result of learning anything the cost is justified.

Besides closure is important for the families and friends of the passengers.
Especially with crazy articles saying the plane could have landed in
Kazakhstan[2]. Imagine the suffering people must be going through thinking
their loved ones are 95% dead but 5% possibly maybe caught up in a crazy
conspiracy. Even if it's 1% or 0.001% likely it could be enough to keep one
awake at night.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777)
[2] [http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/02/jeff-wise-
mh370...](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/02/jeff-wise-
mh370-theory.html)

~~~
Aelinsaar
When you add the lost money from lawsuits, lost value, etc... I'm sure it's
much, MUCH more.

------
melling
"In a world where a $100 smartphone can be tracked for free, the $250 million
jet vanished."

It sounds like Inmarsat is now making basic ping location available for free:

[http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/182223-inmarsat-now-
givin...](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/182223-inmarsat-now-giving-away-
free-satellite-tracking-for-airplanes-but-mh370-is-still-nowhere-to-be-found)

~~~
0xffff2
That quote is disingenuous in the extreme. You absolutely _can not_ track a
$100 smartphone in the middle of the Indian ocean, for any price.

~~~
melling
That's Bloomberg's comment not mine. Not sure where the sudden need to
downvote is coming from. My point is that it's now a free service to track
planes. It was possible to track MH370, for example, but it required a fee.

~~~
0xffff2
Yeah, I know what quotation marks mean... My point is that the quote makes it
seem much easier to track an airplane than it actually is. It's great that
Inmarsat is providing the service for free now, but the quote makes it seem
like the service is trivial to provide when it really isn't.

~~~
hluska
Your comment would be better if you weren't so aggressive.

~~~
jsprogrammer
Curious, what language did the poster uses that implies aggression? I see
none.

~~~
gherkin0
> Curious, what language did the poster uses that implies aggression? I see
> none.

This: "Yeah, I know what quotation marks mean..." It comes off as snappy.

------
kazinator
> _“There’s always this question: Have we missed something?”_

The question persists simply because its answer continues to be "yes". The
plane is _somewhere_ , and you didn't look there.

------
mariuolo
"Forever" is a long time.

It could be found in a few years or in a few decades. Although reading the
flight recorders by then could be problematic.

It's not the first time anyway, a British plane disappeared on the Andes in
1947 (after sending a cryptic Morse message BTW) and was found 50 years later,
so I wouldn't despair.

~~~
pm24601
Andes are dry and cold and will preserve things. People hike the Andes. People
can see things from above in the Andes.

The ocean is deep. Sediment drifting down from above layers the debris. Ocean
currents disperse the light aluminum fragments that remain from the ocean
impact.

An undersea landslide covers the fuselage or it slides down into an underwater
canyon, separating and breaking apart.

I vote "forever".

~~~
caf
On the other hand, this search itself has found I believe two previously-
unknown shipwrecks from the 19th century.

------
Twirrim
"forever". What hyperbolic drivel. Ultimately we will find the plane, be it by
deliberate searching action, or accidental discovery as we further map the
oceans or whatever else draws us below the waves.

------
intrasight
Rest assured that this mystery will be solved. Petabytes of data? Please give
it to Google so they can add it to Google Maps. The fact that we can't
successfully crowd-source this search is indicative of our having very
incomplete maps of the ocean floor.

Eventually (could be a hundred years but I expect less) there will be a swarm
of autonomous submersible robots doing detailed scans. They will find all
kinds of interesting things - including MH370.

~~~
0xffff2
>Please give it to Google so they can add it to Google Maps.

What do you think "add[ing] it to Google Maps" would accomplish? What makes
you think the data analysis is easily crowd-sourced? I.e, what makes you think
that analyzing the data requires no special experience or expertise?

>there will be a swarm of autonomous submersible robots doing detailed scans

Why? What would be the economic case for doing this? Building machines that
work at the extreme depths of the sea floor is incredibly hard. The search for
a single lost airplane (and it really is just the one, not a single other
commercial airliner is unaccounted for) certainly isn't going to fund this
pipe dream.

~~~
hueving
>Why?

Gold lost on sunken ships!

~~~
intrasight
yes, that would be incentive enough

------
tcannon
Last year I sailed my 30' boat from Oakland to Hawaii. I went three weeks with
no sign of life aside from Albatross and flying fish. None. I couldn't even
get my sat phone to work 90% of the time. I covered, roughly, the distance
from Oakland to about Massachusetts. My boat was much smaller, and had very
little as far as safety equipment on a passenger jet. While both might be
exceptionally hard to spot -- even a 1000' vehicle with 1000' span would be
hard to find on solid ground somewhere between CA and MA, add deep water, and
that piece of wing was not attached to the plane when it hit the water. I know
this as it still was shaped like a wing. I'm also a pilot and can only guess
as well as other pilots, but when you over-stress the airframe from a loss of
control, you can fold a wing. No life jackets floating as they're still in the
plane which likely hit well before that chunk of wing fluttered down into the
water. I doubt we'll ever really know. Seems unlikely to have been a bomb, as
shit would be washing up.

------
linuxkerneldev
I would hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but Malaysia's politics are
quite a spectacular bowl of spaghetti. You have Saudi "donations" of billions,
a Prime Minister who stands accused of using the country's Speciall Forces
team for blowing up a Mongolian woman involved with a billion dollar French
defense company purchase of Scorpene submarines. The accused murderer now
resides in Australia. You literally have the financier of the Wolf of Wall
Street movie, parties with Paris Hilton, squandering of billions of Malaysia's
taxpayer funds. You have bankers being murdered in broad daylight. You have
attorney generals being fired and prosecutors being found dead inside barrels
of cement. You have Deputy Prime Ministers being kicked out. You have ex-Prime
Ministers raising a 5 alarm fire demanding that the Prime Minister be
arrested. You have apartheid policies being increased in the country. You have
sudden import of millions of foreign workers, who have been accused of being
used as false vote banks. So.... when they write "keeping secrets forever",
that almost seems like what was intended for this flight.

[1] [http://www.sarawakreport.org/2016/01/court-case-opens-
agains...](http://www.sarawakreport.org/2016/01/court-case-opens-against-
najib-in-france-how-come-not-in-malaysia/)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Shaariibuugiin_Altan...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Shaariibuugiin_Altantuyaa)

[3] [http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/7/28/malaysias-
na...](http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/7/28/malaysias-najib-razak-
sacks-attorney-general.html)

[4] [http://www.sarawakreport.org/2015/11/kevin-morais-drew-up-
th...](http://www.sarawakreport.org/2015/11/kevin-morais-drew-up-the-charge-
sheet-against-najib-and-then-sent-it-to-sarawak-report-says-brother/)

[5] [http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/kevin-
mo...](http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/kevin-morais-
murdered-military-doctor-among-7-arrested-say-cops)

[6] [http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/true-
stories/mala...](http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/true-
stories/malaysias-most-explosive-murder-mystery-is-blowing-up-in-
australia/news-story/d8e92bbd5172292a63664f90e2598767)

[7]
[http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/malaysia-...](http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/malaysia-
moving-towards-apartheid-tendencies-nus-academic-warns)

[8]
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/01/27...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/01/27/the-
mystery-behind-a-700-million-donation-from-the-saudi-royal-family-to-the-
malaysian-pm/)

[9] [http://www.asiasentinel.com/politics/banker-murder-
connectio...](http://www.asiasentinel.com/politics/banker-murder-connection-
malaysia-1mdb/)

[10] [http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/zahid-
de...](http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/zahid-defends-move-
to-bring-in-1.5-bangladeshi-workers)

[11] [http://www.theantdaily.com/Main/Lindsay-Lohan-Paris-
Hilton-a...](http://www.theantdaily.com/Main/Lindsay-Lohan-Paris-Hilton-
and-1MDB-what-a-threesome)

[12] [http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/12/29/fbi-probes-wolf-
of...](http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/12/29/fbi-probes-wolf-of-wall-
street-ties-to-malaysian-fund/)

~~~
helpfulanon
The evidence that the pilots were deliberately masking their flight path
shortly before the flight's disappearance, was pretty compelling. I've always
felt that the plane was intentionally maneuvered somewhere, but clearly the
destination was not dry land.

So we assume for a moment that some organized group deliberately did something
to this aircraft. Who has the motivation to execute such a scheme?

Government agencies I rule out - because of lack of a cover story. It does a
government no good to leave a massive mystery open to the court of press
speculation, especially for so long. It grows distrust in the populace and
gives the perception of incompetence, which undermines power. Plus the
political risks of being uncovered are too great. There needs to be a cover.

I'd rule out corporations or business moguls for the same reason - leaving
mysterious loose ends is not in their best interest. Too much risk to
reputation.

Terrorists I rule out as well - they are motivated by public gestures that
further the cause. They'd have claimed it immediately and even if the plot was
steal the plane and use it later, they'd have done it already.

So what nefarious organization is left? What group would be OK with leaving a
mysterious unsolved disappearance out in the open? Criminal syndicates.

Professional criminals are _in the business_ of doing bad things and getting
away with it without a trace. To a career criminal, an unsolved mystery is a
point of pride.

If there was someone or something of extremely high value aboard the plane,
perhaps being smuggled, organized criminals would have the motivation to
extract it, far away from law enforcement or even satellites, and bury the
evidence without a trace.

But they would have a difficult time landing an aircraft of that size anywhere
on land without detection. Eventually it would turn up.

So how about on water? Ditch the plane gently on the ocean, Captain Sully
style, extract whatever is in the cabin and then let it sink slowly.
Disappears without a trace. Do it far enough away from civilization and nobody
will find it.

Pretty elaborate heist, and absurdly risky. But criminals aren't known for
being overly risk averse. And even if they botched the job, we'd never know
about it.

So that's my theory over who would be responsible. Definitely backed up by
what you're saying about the level of organized crime in the Malaysian
political world.

That plane was carrying some person or thing that a highly corrupt, well
financed individual or group wanted very badly - either to take for themselves
or destroy. And so far, they've gotten away with it.

------
water_badger
What do you think it means if the pilot of the plane reappears?

[http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/taiwan-mh370-pilot-
mysteriou...](http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/taiwan-mh370-pilot-mysteriously-
resurfaces-almost-2-years-after-his-flight-vanished-over-china-sea/)

------
alien3d
I'm live in Malaysia . There's a lot of weird information in few years. Some
even not logical.The airline strike hard twice in a year and now changing hand
to new company. Anybody here can downvote me here but we need agent Mulder And
Scully to solve this issue. Eistien and new agent can help also :)

------
exabrial
Did they ever look into that crazy conspiracy theory where it went north
instead of South and landed in Russia?

~~~
orionblastar
[http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/missing-malaysia-
air...](http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/missing-malaysia-airlines-
plane-recap-3251098)

They looked into the North Corridor to see if the plane flew there. I don't
think they found anything.

------
racecar789
How will Bloomberg manage the content of these animation/graphic heavy
articles?

Talking say 10 years from now.

These articles go way beyond standard text/image content.

------
DarkContinent
Is it possible to track passengers' smartphone data to get a better grip on
where the plane would have entered the ocean?

~~~
Ycros
There's nothing there for any phones to connect to...

------
rm-rfU
It will be found eventually, perhaps by a film crew in 50 years.

------
solidsnack9000
Later generations will discover our airplanes, lost at sea.

------
jorgecurio
hard to believe they have all this satellite pointing back at us and they can
track anyone anywhere seemingly but they can't find a giant several hundred
ton airplane? Either that or we underestimate just how large the body of
oceans are.

And likely more scary is the fact that once a nuclear submarine submerges,
nobody knows where it is. We can't even find this plane. A moving submarine
beneath the vast body of ocean even more so.

I wonder if it's possible to develop xray vision that sees through the earth's
ocean.

------
freddref
weeks away from forever?

------
jordache
That H3 font style looks soo bad. Just horrible, horrible topolsky

~~~
thrillgore
Topolsky hasn't been with Bloomberg for nearly a year.

~~~
jordache
it was his baby

------
acqq
The simple answer to the "mystery" is a scenario about a "lone wolf" with the
determination and the capability to direct the plane to the middle of the
ocean and die with the plane.

We saw a confirmed example of such a guy almost exactly one year later (8
March 2014, 24 March 2015):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525)

The rest are just the details.

