MH370 captain 'deliberately evaded radar' during final moments of doomed flight

a reply to: Nothin

Tel Aviv is one of many storage sites around the world. That aircraft was sold to a US based company to part out. It was a twin to MH370, because it was a Malaysian 777 that they got rid of. They removed the last of the 777s from their fleet two years ago, in favor of A330s and A350s.

The Arava Desert.

originally posted by: CthulhuMythos
a reply to: Agit8dChop
I agree, if it was a suicide job it makes no sense to be trying to evade radar, you would just fly straight into the sea. Evading radar suggests plane theft, so military air base is, for me, still the likely answer. Was there not some sort of message that got out after, from someone who was on the flight, that suggested they were in a building, which made the air base the logical option?

Interesting the authorities were not willing to release the satellite data so the dude could help trace the flight path. I didn't know of this, but it sure adds weight to the plane theft and military base theory.

that message supposedly from a passenger being held hostage in a building was fake

a reply to: shawmanfromny
If the pilot wanted to commit suicide, why not crash a few minutes after takeoff?

Or even better, just jump off a building. Why take so many people with you?

originally posted by: carewemust
a reply to: shawmanfromny
If the pilot wanted to commit suicide, why not crash a few minutes after takeoff?

Or even better, just jump off a building. Why take so many people with you?

To expect a rational answer from someone who is behaving irrationally is not logical. Look at Hinckley who tied to kill president Reagan to impress Jodie Foster. Maybe that reason made sense to him, but does it make sense to any normal, sane person?

Pilots who murder/suicide by crashing the plane can't be interviewed to learn their motivations as they are dead, but even if they could be interviewed I'm not sure their reasoning would follow any more logic than Hinckley's.

I finally finished reading the latest report, which unsurprisingly concludes:

"In conclusion, the Team is unable to determine the real cause for the disappearance of MH370."

However, the report does rule out or dismiss some theories, including that of the OP of this thread, since it directly states:

"2) There is no evidence to indicate that MH370 was evading radar."

I agree with that by the way, after reviewing the evidence.

They also dismiss the battery and/or mangosteen cargo problem theory after extensively testing various combinations of those.

The maintenance record on the plane seems squeaky clean to me with the only irregularity I recall being a slightly expired battery on the underwater locator beacon, which probably still works after the expiry date for some time though as the report says you may not get the full 30 days minimum battery life performance after the battery expiration date.

There is a safety procedure change that resulted from the disappearance of MH370. The United States already had a regulation that a single person was not to be alone in the cockpit, because they can lock the door and prevent even the other pilot who enters the correct security code from re-entering the cockpit for 5 minutes, which is a big problem if that pilot who locks the door is having a mental breakdown. If there's another person in the cabin, like a flight attendant, they can unlock the door to let the other pilot back in, to try to stop the one having a mental breakdown from crashing the plane.

Malaysia didn't have that policy when MH370 disappeared, so if one pilot left the cockpit to use the bathroom, the other pilot could lock the door and not let them back in. Now Malaysia, like the US, no longer allows just one person alone in the cockpit, so while not pointing any fingers at the pilots, pilot suicide has to be on their list of possibilities and it had to be either the pilots or some kind of hijacker diverting the plane from its flight plan. Whether this was done in response to any condition such as fire is not known since they have no evidence of a fire but recovery of the aircraft would be needed to establish that.

They really need to find that plane, but maybe they never will, so the other notable corrective action recommendation is do not lose track of any more planes. They could have responded much more effectively when Ho Chi Minh controllers told the Malaysia controllers the aircraft never checked in. The report says this:

"7) The aircraft primary radar target was designated as ‘friendly’ by the Royal Malaysian Air Force as it did not pose any threat to national airspace security, integrity and sovereignty."

I am skeptical that target was really being followed all that closely during the event. It sounds to me like they didn't know what was going on at the time and a lot of this was pieced together from replaying the radars after the event. I'm also skeptical that any non-responsive aircraft deviating from it's flight plan should be designated "friendly" after 9/11. That's not enough reason to declare it hostile but if hijacked it could be so I'd consider it "unknown" whether it's friendly or hostile and would think an escort would make sense for several reasons. That wording is probably to save face since they probably should have sent an escort to the 777 if communication was lost, and even if they never needed to do anything else like shoot it down at least they would eliminate huge search areas they wasted time with since they didn't know where the plane went down for a long time, not that they know exactly now, but they think they know the general area and an escort (or several escorts over time) could have been a big help in locating where the plane went down.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

I think you'd be surprised when it comes to intercepting flights. A couple years ago the Pentagon quietly said that we weren't intercepting all of the Russian aircraft that were entering the Alaska ADIZ. And some of the "intercepts" were with tankers, or similar aircraft that were in the area.

a reply to: Zaphod58
Considering Americans and Russians are working together on the international space station, I'm not surprised by that and I don't think Russia wants to start World War 3 any more than America does. Before 9/11 I didn't consider a hijacked plane that much of a threat to others either, since before that they generally weren't used as weapons, but obviously 9/11 was a game-changer in that respect. That's reflected in this briefing note regarding loss of communication, see 1.6 which I bolded:

www.skybrary.aero...

Air-Ground Communications Briefing Note
3- Loss of communication...

1.4. Prolonged loss of communication (PLOC) has not yet been officially defined. Typically,PLOC involves loss of communication measured in minutes.The term COMLOSS is used by the military to refer to PLOC.

1.5. Whether brief or prolonged,loss of communication has obvious flight safety significance; possible dangerous outcomes include the following:
(a) failure to receive (and therefore to follow) a new clearance,leading to loss of separation and perhaps an
AIRPROX;
(b) inability to pass important information to ATC;
(c) the workload of controllers and pilots is increased because of the necessity to resolve the confusion.

1.6. Since 11 September 2001 PLOC events have assumed greater security significance, because controllers are unable to distinguish between communications failure and a loss of communication due to potentially sinister causes. On several occasions,military aircraft have been scrambled to intercept aircraft which are experiencing PLOC.

In the case of the Russian aircraft you mention, I don't know how much of a threat they might possibly pose or if there is any effort to communicate with them, but looking at the Alaska ADIZ, not only is it in very tight quarters with Russia in places, but the neighboring population centers in the zone appear to be sparsely populated and are unlikely to have any targets like the World Trade Center, which probably had more people in it than all of Nome, Alaska.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

It's more to do with the time to intercept. There's no point launching aircraft after something that's along the edge of the ADIZ, or enters and then turns back.

They usually enter the ADIZ without transponder, or radio contact. The point is to provoke a response when they can, so they can gather data on radars, communications, response times and types, etc.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

From what I find

The 777 uses ARINC 629 where as older aircraft are using 429.

The newer aircraft are using a newer bus architecture based off ethernet. 787 380

Hopefully considerations are being made given the negative side of technology use.

a reply to: roadgravel
Thanks for the informative link, I found that interesting! I think hijacking by hacking is unlikely for MH370 but it's not unlikely enough in the future so I agree some proactive thinking about security is needed to prevent it.

a reply to: Arbitrageur
I found another story about the fire scenario. It has some interesting statistics that claim the rate of windshield heater fires for 777s built in 2002 is 30 times higher than the rest of the 777s (not built in 2002). The MH370 plane was built in 2002.

There’s something we haven’t been told about MH370

A new report into missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has revealed the doomed airliner came from a batch of aircraft beset by potentially disastrous windshield flaws.

The report – written by aviation researcher Mick Gilbert – centres around the discovery that “windshield heater fires” were extremely common in Boeing 777s built in 2002...

Through his research, Mr Gilbert concluded: “The rate of incidence of windshield heater fires/failures by years of service for B777s [Boeing 777s] produced in 2002 is more than 12 times higher than the incidence rate for the entire B777 fleet, and more than 30 times higher when compared to the remainder of the fleet (i.e. the fleet excluding the 2002 sub-group).

“9M-MRO [the 777 that flew MH370] was manufactured on 14 May 2002.”

a reply to: Arbitrageur

windshield heater fires for 777s

That an interesting twist. Another potential fire source.

a reply to: Agit8dChop

Some people are just crazy. Seriously.

a reply to: shawmanfromny

lets suppose this story is fairly true,, how can they be certain the plane was not remotely hijacked?

G bush said after 911 that technology would be developed to 'take over distressed planes."

is anyone really going to believe that this sort of technology does not exist and would not be used ??

a reply to: Azureblue

Because it's not nearly as simple as that.

a reply to: Azureblue
The latest MH370 report talks about Boeing's 2006 patent for such technology but points out the plane was delivered in 2002 long before the patent and that the plane was in the control of Malaysia Airlines since then so Boeing had no chance to install it (Boeing says they've never installed it anywhere yet because of safety concerns).

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: Azureblue

Because it's not nearly as simple as that.

why would that be the case?

If the technology exits bad, money hungry, greedy and very powerful people and organisations would not hesitate to use it.

It was claimed there was a sea tainer on board that aircraft with highly secret technology in it. The patents for the technology were held by 5 people all of whom were on board the aircraft.

the patent agreement said that if they all died, the patent would revert one of the Rothchilds.

Miltitary rader could still track the aircraft but offically none did why?

Why did the military not help out?

Why did the Aus or Malaysian military not immediately dispatch 1 or 2 or 4 very fast combat aircraft with cameras on board to photograph the area where it claimed it went down. ?????????? They could have been there within hours.

Why did none of this happen???

personally I reckon it was electronically high jacked and either went to Diargo Garsia (the most likely) or it went in the opposite direction all together and crashed into the sea where a submarine or surface vessel was waiting.

a reply to: Azureblue

The patent ALREADY belonged to Freescale. The people on board were the inventors but the patent was assigned to Freescale Technologies, meaning that it didn't matter if they were dead or alive.

Military radar did track them, while they were in range. Radar can only see about 250 miles before the horizon blocks the signal, unless it's an over the horizon type.

There was one OTH type radar in the area, and they weren't looking for the aircraft in real time, because they didn't know anything was wrong. Even if they did, depending on where it came down, no one had any "fast combat aircraft" that had the range to get there without a much slower tanker, unless they wanted to risk the aircraft. And none of them are equipped with cameras.

The technology didn't exist at the time. Even if it did, they would have to be monitoring hundreds of thousands of aircraft in real time, identify that there was a problem, and act on that. It's logistically impossible. Even IF they were taken over, they didn't go anywhere near Diego. There's nowhere for them to have hidden it there.