MH 370: Missing Malaysian Airliner

[Drew Phipps]

Debris in Tanzania to be examined for link to missing MH370 -report
Jun 25th 2016 6:45AM

http://www.aol.com/article/2016/06/25/de.../21403611/

KUALA LUMPUR, June 25 (Reuters) - A new piece of debris found in Tanzania will be examined for a possible link to the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, Malaysian state news agency Bernama cited the country's transport minister as saying on Saturday. "This debris is quite large... only if it is confirmed to be that of Boeing 777 will we send an investigation team there to study whether it really belonged to MH370 or not," Malaysian transport minister Liow Tiong Lai was quoted as saying.


Liow said recent discoveries of bags and other personal items found in Madagascar were not connected to MH370. Flight MH370 disappeared in March 2014 with 239 passengers and crew on board shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing. Investigators believe someone may have deliberately switched off the plane's transponder before diverting it thousands of miles off course over the Indian Ocean. A piece of the plane washed up on the French island of Reunion in July 2015. (Reporting by A. Ananthalakshmi; Editing by Ed Davies)

[Drew Phipps]

Exclusive: MH370 pilot flew a suicide route on his home simulator closely matching final flight

Jeff WiseJul 23rd 2016 6:31AM

http://www.aol.com/article/2016/07/23/ex.../21437621/

New York (a magazine?) has obtained a confidential document from the Malaysian police investigation into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 that shows that the plane's captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, conducted a simulated flight deep into the remote southern Indian Ocean less than a month before the plane vanished under uncannily similar circumstances. The revelation, which Malaysia withheld from a lengthy public report on the investigation, is the strongest evidence yet that Zaharie made off with the plane in a premeditated act of mass murder-suicide.

The document presents the findings of the Malaysian police's investigation into Zaharie. It reveals that after the plane disappeared in March of 2014, Malaysia turned over to the FBI hard drives that Zaharie used to record sessions on an elaborate home-built flight simulator. The FBI was able to recover six deleted data points that had been stored by Microsoft Flight Simulator X program in the weeks before MH370 disappeared, according to the document. Each point records the airplane's altitude, speed, direction of flight, and other key parameters at a given moment. The document reads, in part:

"Based on the Forensics Analysis conducted on the 5 HDDs obtained from the Flight Simulator from MH370 Pilot's house, we found a flight path, that lead to the Southern Indian Ocean, among the numerous other flight paths charted on the Flight Simulator, that could be of interest, as contained in Table 2."

Taken together, these points show a flight that departs Kuala Lumpur, heads northwest over the Malacca Strait, then turns left and heads south over the Indian Ocean, continuing until fuel exhaustion over an empty stretch of sea. Search officials believe MH370 followed a similar route, based on signals the plane transmitted to a satellite after ceasing communications and turning off course. The actual and the simulated flights were not identical, though, with the stimulated endpoint some 900 miles from the remote patch of southern ocean area where officials believe the plane went down. Based on the data in the document, here's a map of the simulated fight compared to the route searchers believe the lost airliner followed: (map omitted in article)


Rumors have long circulated that the FBI had discovered such evidence, but Malaysian officials made no mention of the find in the otherwise detailed report into the investigation, "Factual Information," that was released on the first anniversary of the disappearance. The credibility of the rumors was further undermined by the fact that many media accounts mentioned "a small runway on an unnamed island in the far southern Indian Ocean," of which there are none.


From the beginning, Zaharie has been a primary suspect, but until now no hard evidence implicating him has emerged. The "Factual Information" report states, "The Captain's ability to handle stress at work and home was good. There was no known history of apathy, anxiety, or irritability. There were no significant changes in his life style, interpersonal conflict or family stresses." After his disappearance, friends and family members came forward to described Zaharie as an affable, helpful family man who enjoyed making instructional YouTube videos for home DIY projects hardly the typical profile of a mass murderer.


The newly unveiled documents, however, suggest Malaysian officials have suppressed at least one key piece of incriminating information. This is not entirely surprising: There is a history in aircraft investigations of national safety boards refusing to believe that their pilots could have intentionally crashed an aircraft full of passengers. After EgyptAir 990 went down near Martha's Vineyard in 1999, for example, Egyptian officials angrily rejected the U.S. National Transport Safety Board finding that the pilot had deliberately steered the plane into the sea. Indonesian officials likewise rejected the NTSB finding that the 1997 crash of SilkAir 185 was an act of pilot suicide.

Previous press accounts suggest that Australian and U.S. officials involved in the MH370 investigation have long been more suspicious of Zaharie than their Malaysian counterparts. In January, Byron Bailey wrote in The Australian: "Several months after the MH370 disappearance I was told by a government source that the FBI had recovered from Zaharie's home computer deleted information showing flight plan waypoints ... my source ... left me with the impression that the FBI were of the opinion that Zaharie was responsible for the crash."


However, it's not entirely clear that the recovered flight-simulator data is conclusive. The differences between the simulated and actual flights are significant, most notably in the final direction in which they were heading. It's possible that their overall similarities are coincidental that Zaharie didn't intend his simulator flight as a practice run but had merely decided to fly someplace unusual. Today, ministers from Malaysia, China, and Australia announced that once the current seabed search for MH370's wreckage is completed, they will suspend further efforts to find the plane. The search was originally expected to wrap up this month, but stormy weather has pushed back the anticipated completion date to this fall. So far, 42,000 square miles have been covered at a cost of more than $130 million, with another 4,000 square miles to go.


"I must emphasise that this does not mean we are giving up on the search for MH370," Malaysian Transport minister Liow Tiong Lai said. Officials ]have previously stated that if they received "credible new information that leads to the identification of a specific location of the aircraft," the search could be expanded. But some, including relatives of the missing passengers, believe that that evidentiary threshold has already been past. Recent months have seen the discovery of more than a dozen pieces of suspected aircraft debris, which analyzed collectively could narrow down where the plane went down. (The surprising absence of such wreckage for more than a year left me exploring alternative explanations that ultimately proved unnecessary.) The fact that Zaharie apparently practiced flying until he ran out of fuel over the remote southern Indian Ocean suggests the current search is on the right track and that another year of hunting might be a worthwhile investment.

You might ask why the FBI would withhold such evidence of a lone nut from the rescue/search team, the public and from the families of the unfortunate victims.

Here's the author's own theory (by his remark in the quoted article, now abandoned, after a year of independent unpaid investigation) of what happened: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/201...-rss-nymag (Russians stole the plane, spoofed the Inmarstat data, and flew the plane north to Baikonar.)

[Magda Hassan]

Extraordinary omission.

[Drew Phipps]

Misleading Headline: Malaysia confirms MH370 pilot plotted flight into ocean

(what they meant to say was... "on his home flight simulator")

Aol.com Editors
Aug 5th 2016 7:46AM

http://www.aol.com/article/2016/08/05/ma.../21445642/

Malaysia's transport minister finally confirmed one of the key details of a bombshell report released last month that revealed the pilot of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 simulated a flight path into the Indian Ocean. The revelation came this week after he and other officials had previously declined to confirm the New York Magazine report, and came with the caveat from Malaysia Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai that the route was only one of "thousands" found on the home simulator.


The comment echoes that of the Joint Agency Coordination Centre, JACC, which said the presence of the simulator data did not prove that pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah had intentionally crashed the plane. "The MH370 captain's flight simulator showed someone had plotted a course to the southern Indian Ocean," JACC said in late July. "The simulator information shows only the possibility of planning. It does not reveal what happened on the night of the aircraft's disappearance, nor where the aircraft is located," the group said in an earlier statement.

The Boeing 777 plane and the 239 people on board disappeared more than two years ago while traveling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. While several pieces of wreckage from the MH370 jet have washed up on beaches in Africa, they have yet to shed any significant light on what brought the plane down.

[Magda Hassan]

I saw the 60 minutes segment on this. According to the widow of one of the passengers the wife of the PM told her the pilot took the plane down. Some thing like "Isn't it a shame that he did this?"

[Peter Lemkin]

Mauritius wing debris confirmed from missing MH370

• 7 Oct 2016 at 12:45
  
• WRITER: AFP
  

SYDNEY - A piece of wing debris found in Mauritius is from MH370, Australia said Friday, the latest fragment discovered along western Indian Ocean shorelines that has been linked to the missing passenger jet.
A trailing edge section of Boeing 777 left, outboard flap, originating from the Malaysian Airlines aircraft registered 9M-MRO (MH370), the Australian Transport Safety Bureau said.

The composite debris, recovered from the Indian Ocean island nation in May, "was a trailing edge section of Boeing 777 left, outboard flap, originating from the Malaysian Airlines aircraft registered 9M-MRO (MH370)", the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) said in a report.
The government agency is leading the search for the Boeing 777 Malaysia Airlines plane -- which disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014 carrying 239 passengers and crew -- in the southern Indian Ocean far off Western Australia's coast.
"A part number was identified on a section of the debris," the ATSB said, adding that another "unique work order number" assigned by the flap manufacturer corresponded to MH370.
The report came two weeks after the ATSB said officials had yet to link debris recovered from Madagascar by US amateur investigator Blaine Gibson to MH370 or a Boeing 777.
Officials also said that the debris found in Madagascar was not exposed to fire, quashing earlier speculation.
No trace of MH370 has been recovered from the current 120,000-square-kilometre (46,000-square-mile) search zone, fuelling speculation it may have crashed outside the area.
But several pieces of debris linked to the flight have been discovered along western Indian Ocean shorelines -- in Mozambique, South Africa and Mauritius.
The first piece found was a two-metre (six-foot) wing part known as a flaperon that washed up on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion in July 2015.
More than 110,000 square kilometres of the search area has been scoured so far, Australia said last month, adding that the hunt was set to be completed in December.

All three pieces of wreckage linked to the flight have been found at or very very near the 'S' on this map.....but the 'officials' are spending all of their time and money looking deep at the bottom of the ocean VERY far away to the East and South. Methinks they are looking where the flight never was. Ocean currents can not explain it away, I'm afraid. Someone was spoofing the satellite data.

​

[Peter Lemkin]

Is was very quietly just announced that the official search has been permanently suspended. Case closed - without any resolution. An airliner just vanished as though by a stage magician.

[Lauren Johnson]

A comprehensive final report made public by investigators on Monday has stirred fresh controversy as Malaysian authorities say they "cannot determine with any certainty" why Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014.

However one key irregular finding in the 495-page report is that the Boeing 777's controls were most likely deliberately manipulated to take the plane off course, perhaps putting to rest theories of remote hijacking, which investigators behind the report also considered, noting only that "unlawful third party interference" could have possibly come into play related to the pilots' decision to turn back.

Kok Soo Chon, head of the MH370 safety investigation team, told reporters, "We cannot exclude that there was an unlawful interference by a third party," in reference to the decision to divert the aircraft from the intended destination.



MH370 safety investigation reports made public at a media briefing at the Ministry of Transport headquarters in Putrajaya, Malaysia. Image source: EPA photo via Daily SabahData compiled by civilian and military radars analyzed in the report shows that the plane turned back in a complete U-turn after leaving Kuala Lumpur for Beijing, which investigator's say must have been done by manual control, and further that Kuala Lumpur Air Traffic Control (KLATC) "did not comply with established procedures."

Among multiple lapses noted, the KLATC failed to communicate to Vietnamese air traffic controllers that they were handing over communications with the aircraft to Ho Chi Minh, and further ignored the plane's progress after transfer.



The disappearance of flight MH370 remains among the world's greatest aviation mysteries, and Monday's announcement has reportedly left family members "disappointed" according to multiple media statements. The airline was carrying 239 people, mostly Chinese passengers, before vanishing without a radar trace or any observable signal.

The jet turned thousands of miles off course from its scheduled route before it's believed to have crashed somewhere in the vast southern Indian Ocean.

Perhaps the foremost mystery and element of speculation remains the final communication from the plane. Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah signed off with "Good night, Malaysian three seven zero" upon the plane's exiting Malaysian airspace and soon before it turned off course.



The Malaysian pilots' background have long been under intense scrutiny, but Monday's final report presented nothChief investigator Chon said of the pilots' background and mental health, which the report spends considerable pages examining, "We are not of the opinion it could have been an event committed by the pilots." The report also summarized an extensive investigation into the health and potential criminal history of each of the passengers, but turned up nothing unusual.

Yet speaking at the press conference Chon still added that the findings weren't comprehensive enough to rule anything out, as the systems in the plane were manually turned off, and as the team was able to confirm the manual u-turn.

Via The Daily MailThe team reportedly looked deeply into every theory that's surfaced over the years, and even cited speculation on social media, including the bizarre conspiracy theories like Russian intelligence interference and alien abduction: "We had over 60 allegations...we removed them one-by-one and saw what remained behind," Kok said.

A number of massive, costly operations have been conducted in the Indian Ocean to locate the wreckage the most recent concluded in late May after three months which involved the US firm Ocean Infinity scanning an area of 112,000 sq km and netted nothing significant. China, Australia, and Malaysia had previously conducted a $200 million fruitless search last year which covered 120,000 sq km.

The main evidence showing the aircraft at some point plunged into the Indian Ocean includes the 3 confirmed wing fragments that have washed up along the Indian Ocean coast. In all, 27 pieces of debris fragments have been collected but only 3 could be scientifically matched to MH370.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang suggested a continued, open investigation: "We hope that all sides can continue to remain in close contact and coordination, to properly carry out relevant follow-up work," he told a press briefing.

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