How Crazy am I to think I know where MH370 is? Jeff Wise in NY Magazine

originally posted by: Psynic

originally posted by: jaffo

originally posted by: Psynic

originally posted by: jaffo

originally posted by: Psynic

originally posted by: AutumnWitch657
a reply to: RP2SticksOfDynamite

And when they do what will you have to say then?

Let's cross that bridge if and when we come to it.

That no debris has been found up to now is a lot more relevant than your "what if?"

This plane will more likely than not turn up eventually in the southern Indian Ocean.

Due to the lack of any evidence whatsoever to indicate the Southern Indian Ocean, other than a conveniently invented mathematical theory called BTO, which has NEVER BEFORE BEEN USED and which Sir Timothy Clark says is nonsense, your continual assurances of the A/C being discovered there is really pointless.

So is your baseless theory. The whole "evade radar by flying near a border" thing is so stupid as to be beyond laughable.

I didn't realize how deeply confused you truly are.

Please show me where I made any claim to the effect of "evading radar by flying near a border".

Take your time.

Read your OP. He says clearly that he was told that flying close to borders is a good way to avoid radar. Which is ridiculous.

Hey everyone,

Jeff Wise is currently having a live Q&A on gawker.com

Live chat

a reply to: Arbitrageur

IRBM or TBM yes. Under optimal conditions and with luck, they might get a cruise missile salvo. An aircrafts engines while cruising, no way.

originally posted by: Xcathdra

originally posted by: thesmokingman
Technology that existed many years ago makes it impossible for this plane to just disappear. There is more to the story yes, but I do believe that the US and Malaysia at the very least know where the plane is, no matter what happened to it. In fact, I guarantee it.

That's just it... Looking at all possible scenarios you come to a conclusion that if one nation knew where the plane was there would be a second nation who would report it. If it landed in Kazakhstan then there would be nations reporting that ho are not friendly to Kazakhstan. Same with Israel, Iran etc etc.

The only way for the scenario to work would be if ALL major players with the capability to monitor deep airspace are in on the "plan".

My theory comes from the fact that a few weeks/month after it vanished, Malaysia came out and said they knew what happened to the plane, and that was quickly suppressed by the media. I have no doubt the US talked with them and there was an agreement not to release the information. Here is the article about the police chief knowing where 370 was. www.dailymail.co.uk...

I asked Mr. Wise If he can explain how flying close to borders would help an aircraft evade detection by radar. that seems to be the most common issue surfacing in this thread. Unfortunately it doesn't appear that he answered it.

a reply to: drock905
That area has the most rugged and remote mountains in the world. If you could make it over Bangladesh, you could theoretically run between the mountains avoiding radar until the fuel ran out. Mountains are good for blocking radar.

originally posted by: drock905
I asked Mr. Wise If he can explain how flying close to borders would help an aircraft evade detection by radar. that seems to be the most common issue surfacing in this thread. Unfortunately it doesn't appear that he answered it.

Mr. Wise already explained in the article he got that border idea from somebody else, he didn't dream it up on his own.

I don't think his theory is very likely to be correct, and I think borders have better radar coverage than his source inferred, but that's not the major problem I have with his theory.

Let's say a country does detect an aircraft skimming its border. If it's not clearly entering and posing a threat, they may just ignore it. Plus, we know that Malaysia didn't seem to pay much attention to the unknown aircraft skirting its airspace which they later figured might be MH370. They didn't scramble any planes to investigate it, right? In the middle of the night the radar operators in other countries could similarly be asleep and/or not paying attention. So even if it did show up on radar, that doesn't mean they would do anything about it, if it didn't look like a threat, and flying parallel to the border wouldn't look like much of a threat.

Inmarsat could be wrong I guess, but they seem pretty confident about the southern path so that's probably a bigger reason I don't favor the northern track.

originally posted by: Metallicus
There is no way 'they' just lost this huge airliner. I don't know if this gentleman is correct, but I am positive the 'official story' is wrong.

completely agree, and BTW great Post OP.

I had been wavering towards the idea that it was landed at Diego Garcia,
but at this point I guess any theory is as good as the next one.

Rebel 5

Out of curiosity I have spent some time today trying to find out the radar coverage (civilian and military) in the area of the northern route proposed by Mr. Wise. I couldn't really find what I was looking for, (its probably not public information anyway) other then some old declassified defense paper on China's early warning systems from the 80's, but I doubt that its relevant 30 years later. There is a gap in early warning radar on China's coast over the East China Sea but nothing else found that seemed relevant.

China's Air Defense Gap

I found an article from the Sydney morning Herald quoting an experts saying it would be impossible to fly that route undetected


Ar tice

"The northern trajectory goes towards northern Iran, passing through Pakistan and Afghanistan, the heartland of Al Qaeda and multiple Islamic extremist insurgencies.

While the route goes over countries renowned for security instability, the region is covered by multiple radar systems.

However, while the northern route goes over countries renowned for security instability, the region is covered by multiple radar systems.

"It's hard to believe it could go over northern Thailand undetected. They have extensive radar," said Des Ball, professor of strategic and defence studies at the Australian National University.

There are also radar installations operated by Myanmar, China, India and the US, among others, underneath the northern flight path. In addition, high tech US surveillance satellites also intently monitor the area as part of the war on terror.

"Going over land is more logical but it's hard to see how the plane wouldn't have been detected," said Professor Ball.

Even though MH370 turned off its transponders and disabled its secondary radar, military radar and some civilian radar would still be able to pick it up with what is known as primary radar".

I also found an interesting thread on www.flyertalk.com breaking down the events

Flyer Talk

one part that stuck out is

Q. Did the pilots use terrain following to mask the aircraft from radar?

Highly unlikely. A one-time Air Force member and pilot members have told us that, even with extensive training, special terrain-following radar and mapping, night goggles etc. The Air Force has lost aircraft and crews. Without extensive training, knowledge and experience, it would be suicidal. Also note much terrain masking is flown at or below 500 (five hundred) feet above the terrain.

Thoughts? Any former commercial or military pilots with any experience?

originally posted by: thesmokingman
Technology that existed many years ago makes it impossible for this plane to just disappear. There is more to the story yes, but I do believe that the US and Malaysia at the very least know where the plane is, no matter what happened to it. In fact, I guarantee it.

It's funny that my uncle, who has been a commercial pilot for over 20 years and an officer in the marine corp before that, says this is nonsense and planes can easily go missing if the equipment went offline.
I don't know myself, but I'll take his word over yours. Sorry, no offense meant.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur

Inmarsat could be wrong I guess, but they seem pretty confident about the southern path so that's probably a bigger reason I don't favor the northern track.

INMARSAT are lying.

It's totally impossible for them to be "confident" about a theory they claim to have created to track this one airplane.

BTO has not been tested. Ever. It's a fiction.

And it's the basis for the red herring scam that directed the search to the remotest and least accessible area of the ocean, where no one could ever reasonably expect to find a lost aircraft.

There's still that quote from US LT General McInerney

“LIGNET put out a report, substantiated yesterday, that there sources got their information from Boeing sources, which is covert. Not that they got their information from the Boeing Company because they’re involved in the investigation, that the airplane was in Pakistan. That was confirmed by LIGNET on Monday and I got another source at LIGNET that confirmed it yesterday… I do believe that those people in Pakistan, in the ISI, those people who knew where Osama Bin Laden was and didn’t tell us. I believe those same elements could be involved with getting that airplane into a Pakistan air force base.”

originally posted by: rebelv

originally posted by: Metallicus
There is no way 'they' just lost this huge airliner. I don't know if this gentleman is correct, but I am positive the 'official story' is wrong.

I had been wavering towards the idea that it was landed at Diego Garcia,
but at this point I guess any theory is as good as the next one.

Rebel 5

Which would mean the US abducted 238 innocent people, imprisoned them on a desert island and allowed their families and loved ones to believe they were dead.

I wouldn't even accuse Kim Jong Un of such an atrocity.

There is no precedent for the States ever doing anything nearly this evil.

I guess some theories aren't "as good as the next".

Good story, but there is just no way to alter the data between the aircraft, satellite and ground station.
It was not even data, just a handshake from which they got timings (ping return) and burst frequency offset, it would be crazy to think that inmarsat and IG were deluded with false data.
However, that doesn't mean that there could not be a mistake in the calculations and interpretation of the data.
The ACARS system was not working after 17:07 but the satcom terminal which can only be turned off by pulling a circuit breaker in the E&E bay was operational after the power was somehow lost between 17:07 and 18:25 when it logged in again.

Some light on this from Mandala499 on airlinersnet.

I just had a look again at the Inmarsat data logs... My view on the Inmarsat data logs show that:
- There was a good hour of missing satcom link to the aircraft at 17:07 and the system was logged on again at 18:25.
-- Simply put, the aircraft satcom did not respond to queries sent by the ground system.
-- All the communications logged here are from the P channel, and T channel, no R channel (which is the satellite's receiving channel).
-- This indicates that the satcom on the aircraft was not working during this time.
-- Either the aircraft was upside down during this time, or there was a AC power failure onboard.
-- A simple navigation problem would have resulted in the satcom link not being lost but simply reverting to the back up satcom link antenna. The HGA would lose contact due to the lack of ARINC429 feed, but the LGA would still be working with no doppler correction.
-- What is difficult to understand is that what happens from 17:07 an 17:21 when the transponers went off. This needs a further look into.

- The final handshake was previously thought as the aircraft suffering from fuel exhaustion given the following:
-- This requires a failure of power supply resulting from the electrical generator on the left engine, and that power was then restored as the system switches to the generator from the right engine.
-- The final handshake process was quickly followed by silence.
-- Putting the time of occurence with the fuel load, it is now more likely than before that this was a result of fuel exhaustion of the aircraft.
-- This would require the log on request to be first detected on the R channel, but in this case it's from the P channel.
-- HOWEVER, the information released shows that the final handshake was initiated by the ground, not by the aircraft, so this makes it unlikely that fuel exhaustion was the trigger for this handshake.

From the data, it does look like there is a possibility that this may not be foul play at all and that it could be a mishap of an electrical sort that resulted in a cascading of failures of the communications system as per Pihero's theory, and that the crew may have been planning to divert to Penang, but was overwhelmed by something that resulted in them not ending up in Penang and ending up going elsewhere, under control or not. This is indicated by the radar plot that they did not go straight towards Penang, but seems towards navigational waypoints normally used in the arrivals into Penang from the north west.
Further, this seems to be backed up by the lack of response from the aircraft's satcom between 17:07 and 18:25 and aircraft initiated log-on at 18:25, which is before the tranponder going offline, until after the aircraft disappeared from military radar,

Again, the satcom (antenna, and satellite data unit) cannot be turned off on its own from the cockpit. You need to go to the E&E bay and pull the circuit breakers to turn it off.
The only other way to switch it off is to take power away from the left AC Bus. And there's no way to put power back to the left AC Bus from outside the cockpit while the aircraft is flying.
From the cockpit, the crew can switch off the ACARS (ie: tell ACARS to not send or receive anything through the satcom), but not the satcom itself.

Switching the left AC bus off means... the left utility bus is also switched off...
and... that means,the following are affected... Left engine EEC, primary flaps trailing edge, Window heaters, onboard brouters, pitot heaters, TAT probe heaters, Left AOA sensor heater, Cabin System Management Unit (and downstream users of it), Cabin overhead electrical units, pre-recorded cabin messages, Passenger Systems Services, IFE (audio and video), Satcom, Voice Recorder (CVR?), some of the left fuel boost pumps, Right AC Hyd Pump, Center 1 AC Hyd Pump, Some flight controls affected...

E&E Bay


R-channel.

data 7/03/2014 16:42:04.408 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 146 14920 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 16:42:31.906 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 125 14900 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 16:42:47.907 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 123 14920 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 16:43:12.407 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 126 14920 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 16:55:37.907 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 156 15200 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 16:55:52.907 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 159 15200 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 16:56:07.906 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 158 15220 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 16:56:17.407 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 156 15240 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 17:07:03.907 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 130 15600 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 17:07:18.906 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 132 15600 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 17:07:33.907 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 130 15620 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 17:07:48.907 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 131 15620 ACARS
data 7/03/2014 18:25:34.461 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 273 51700 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 18:27:03.905 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 176 12560 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 18:27:08.404 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 172 12520 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 18:28:14.904 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 143 12480 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 19:41:02.906 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 111 11500 Log-on/Log-off Acknowledge
data 7/03/2014 20:41:04.904 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 141 11740 0x15 - Log-on/Log-off Acknowledge
data 7/03/2014 21:41:26.905 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 168 12780 0x15 - Log-on/Log-off Acknowledge
data 7/03/2014 22:41:21.906 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 204 14540 0x15 - Log-on/Log-off Acknowledge
data 8/03/2014 00:10:59.928 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 252 18040 0x15 - Log-on/Log-off Acknowledge
data 8/03/2014 00:19:37.443 IOR-R1200-0-36F6 R-Channel -2 49660 Log-on/Log-off Acknowledge
Log-On Request, initiated from the aircraft terminal.
data 7/03/2014 18:25:27.421 IOR-R600-0-36E1 R-Channel 142 17120 Log-on Request (ISU)/Log-on Flight Information
data 8/03/2014 00:19:29.416 IOR-R600-0-36F8 R-Channel 182 23000 Log-on Request (ISU)/Log-on Flight Information

What is quite telling is that right after the transponder stopped working, the aircraft must have turned back and must have been flying with at least a normal speed including tailwind to be at the place where it was at 18:25.
No attempt to land at Penang, nor did it lose much altitude or climbed as was mentioned just days after it disappeared.
My calculation is that it must have been flying with an average speed of at least 500 knots between 17:21 and 18:25.
This contradicts the assumption that they would prepare to land at Penang in my opinion.

Looking at the data, there is also a gap between 22:41 and 00:10.
Three handshakes follow as expected, they are 20:41 -21:41 - 22:41, the handshake at 19:41 is to late, this was due to trying to contact the aircraft by satellite phone at 18:39/18:40 according to the data, but one would expect the next handshake to occur at 19:40, a minute however is not much.
But the same happens after 22:41, at 23:13/23:15 again an attempt is made to establish contact with the plane
But this time the handshake follows to early at 00:10, this to me is quite odd.

originally posted by: earthling42

It was not even data, just a handshake from which they got timings (ping return) and burst frequency offset, it would be crazy to think that inmarsat and IG were deluded with false data.

I just had a look again at the Inmarsat data logs... My view on the Inmarsat data logs show that:
- There was a good hour of missing satcom link to the aircraft at 17:07 and the system was logged on again at 18:25.
-- Simply put, the aircraft satcom did not respond to queries sent by the ground system.
-- All the communications logged here are from the P channel, and T channel, no R channel (which is the satellite's receiving channel).
-- This indicates that the satcom on the aircraft was not working during this time.
-- Either the aircraft was upside down during this time, or there was a AC power failure onboard.
-- A simple navigation problem would have resulted in the satcom link not being lost but simply reverting to the back up satcom link antenna. The HGA would lose contact due to the lack of ARINC429 feed, but the LGA would still be working with no doppler correction.
-- What is difficult to understand is that what happens from 17:07 an 17:21 when the transponers went off. This needs a further look into.

- The final handshake was previously thought as the aircraft suffering from fuel exhaustion given the following:
-- This requires a failure of power supply resulting from the electrical generator on the left engine, and that power was then restored as the system switches to the generator from the right engine.
-- The final handshake process was quickly followed by silence.
-- Putting the time of occurence with the fuel load, it is now more likely than before that this was a result of fuel exhaustion of the aircraft.
-- This would require the log on request to be first detected on the R channel, but in this case it's from the P channel.
-- HOWEVER, the information released shows that the final handshake was initiated by the ground, not by the aircraft, so this makes it unlikely that fuel exhaustion was the trigger for this handshake.

From the data, it does look like there is a possibility that this may not be foul play at all and that it could be a mishap of an electrical sort that resulted in a cascading of failures of the communications system as per Pihero's theory, and that the crew may have been planning to divert to Penang, but was overwhelmed by something that resulted in them not ending up in Penang and ending up going elsewhere, under control or not. This is indicated by the radar plot that they did not go straight towards Penang, but seems towards navigational waypoints normally used in the arrivals into Penang from the north west.
Further, this seems to be backed up by the lack of response from the aircraft's satcom between 17:07 and 18:25 and aircraft initiated log-on at 18:25, which is before the tranponder going offline, until after the aircraft disappeared from military radar,

Again, the satcom (antenna, and satellite data unit) cannot be turned off on its own from the cockpit. You need to go to the E&E bay and pull the circuit breakers to turn it off.
The only other way to switch it off is to take power away from the left AC Bus. And there's no way to put power back to the left AC Bus from outside the cockpit while the aircraft is flying.
From the cockpit, the crew can switch off the ACARS (ie: tell ACARS to not send or receive anything through the satcom), but not the satcom itself.

Switching the left AC bus off means... the left utility bus is also switched off...
and... that means,the following are affected... Left engine EEC, primary flaps trailing edge, Window heaters, onboard brouters, pitot heaters, TAT probe heaters, Left AOA sensor heater, Cabin System Management Unit (and downstream users of it), Cabin overhead electrical units, pre-recorded cabin messages, Passenger Systems Services, IFE (audio and video), Satcom, Voice Recorder (CVR?), some of the left fuel boost pumps, Right AC Hyd Pump, Center 1 AC Hyd Pump, Some flight controls affected...

data 7/03/2014 16:42:04.408 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 146 14920 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 16:42:31.906 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 125 14900 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 16:42:47.907 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 123 14920 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 16:43:12.407 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 126 14920 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 16:55:37.907 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 156 15200 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 16:55:52.907 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 159 15200 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 16:56:07.906 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 158 15220 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 16:56:17.407 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 156 15240 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 17:07:03.907 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 130 15600 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 17:07:18.906 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 132 15600 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 17:07:33.907 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 130 15620 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 17:07:48.907 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 131 15620 ACARS
data 7/03/2014 18:25:34.461 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 273 51700 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 18:27:03.905 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 176 12560 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 18:27:08.404 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 172 12520 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 18:28:14.904 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 143 12480 Acknowledge User Data
data 7/03/2014 19:41:02.906 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 111 11500 Log-on/Log-off Acknowledge
data 7/03/2014 20:41:04.904 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 141 11740 0x15 - Log-on/Log-off Acknowledge
data 7/03/2014 21:41:26.905 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 168 12780 0x15 - Log-on/Log-off Acknowledge
data 7/03/2014 22:41:21.906 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 204 14540 0x15 - Log-on/Log-off Acknowledge
data 8/03/2014 00:10:59.928 IOR-R1200-0-36ED R-Channel 252 18040 0x15 - Log-on/Log-off Acknowledge
data 8/03/2014 00:19:37.443 IOR-R1200-0-36F6 R-Channel -2 49660 Log-on/Log-off Acknowledge
Log-On Request, initiated from the aircraft terminal.
data 7/03/2014 18:25:27.421 IOR-R600-0-36E1 R-Channel 142 17120 Log-on Request (ISU)/Log-on Flight Information
data 8/03/2014 00:19:29.416 IOR-R600-0-36F8 R-Channel 182 23000 Log-on Request (ISU)/Log-on Flight Information

The so called "Data" you refer to is the theoretical construct of a single technician at INMARSAT.

There is no precedent for such doppler effect readings to have ever been used to locate an A/C.

Which is more "deluded" ?

a) A brand new form of electrolocation is spontaneously invented and used successfully for the first time in history without, not only any testing and development, but also no confirmation whatsoever of the concept actually working.

or

b) A cover-up employs a hired expert to claim he has come up with heretofore unheard of technique to retroactively analyze data to determine the position of an aircraft.

a reply to: Psynic

I agree with you, but i was referring to the story in the OP.
The handshake cannot be falsified but as i said in the next line, However, that doesn't mean that there could not be a mistake in the calculations and interpretation of the data.

There was a very plausible scenario where the jet flew north west into Pakistan or a former soviet republic. But there were also eyewitness reports that said a low flying passenger jet flew over the Maldive Islands which sounded credible. It was never anywhere near where they pretended to look for it, at any rate.

a reply to: Dutchowl

The plausible scenario to which you refer is probably the one about if the plane had turned north, it could have possibly tailgated another identical plane which was headed north as well... staying within a mile or so of the first aircraft would have rendered it invisible to radar once it went dark, the radar would only show the plane being followed if they maintained a certain distance directly behind it.

Rumors among my CIA contacts were that the plane was hijacked and flew north to an undisclosed location to possibly be used in a terror attack at a future date.

Whether any of this is true, remains to be seen.

Yes yes I know, another person claiming to have unidentified contacts with a government agency...take it for what it is, it's not the official CIA stance, simply the local rumor mill within the CIA itself at the time the plane first went missing. Being retired, I am slowly losing contacts with people I used to know, many of them have retired now as well.