There is a very good, but not necessarily completely or maybe even partially correct rehashing of the view that MH370 was hijacked by its captain in The Australian today. It’s behind a paywall, and it is worth the money. However it is also important to keep several matters in mind, all of which long term […]

There is a very good, but not necessarily completely or maybe even partially correct rehashing of the view that MH370 was hijacked by its captain in The Australian today.

It’s behind a paywall, and it is worth the money.

However it is also important to keep several matters in mind, all of which long term readers of Plane Talking, and numerous other news and analysis sites will be more than familiar with.

Much of the ground covered has been previously discussed here and in a multitude of other places.

There are several points to consider, without assuming the pilot author Byron Bailey is completely wrong or that the ATSB is completely correct.

The evidence for a climb to 45,000 feet soon after the jet was deliberately made invisible to air traffic control has never been produced in detail. In fact the claims as to this happening appeared to emerge in the media echo chamber in the early days of the disappearance.

That isn’t to say it didn’t happen. However it would at that stage of a flight have been a difficult operation because of the very finely balanced requirement of getting a loaded jet to the highest part of its performance envelope.

It would have also been completely unnecessary, as depressurisation at its last reported cruise altitude of 35,000 feet would have just as rapidly incapacitated and then killed everyone other than a pilot that was on board.

Such a climb would also have made MH370 potentially more visible to military radar across the border in Thailand. It terms of mass murdering those on board, and exercising stealth, this claimed sequence of events doesn’t make sense, although criminal behavior doesn’t necessarily follow sane, logical, premeditated steps.

The Australian report doesn’t say what Byron Bailey thought occurred to disable the transponder on MH370 that identifies aircraft to the ATC systems. This doesn’t make his story wrong, but it would have been useful to know if he thinks that the captain accessed the below floor electronics and electrical distribution bay via a hatch in the floor immediately behind the cockpit to perform other functions at various times that would have assisted his alleged plan.

It may be that what he says about this was edited out for length or to ‘simplify’ the narrative.

The question as to what the state of the recovered flaperon tells us is important, and probably unresolved. Bailey misrepresents through emphasis elements of the Department of Science and Technology report that the ATSB released with its recent comprehensive update. That report says the final incomplete ping sequence received by the Inmarsat satellite supports an out of control fall to impact on the ocean surface after the second engine flamed out, and suggests that at one point the aircraft became inverted losing line of sight with the satellite.

The inference that report draws is that if a pilot was attempting to make a controlled ditching of MH370 he would do so when there was sufficient fuel remaining to provide full power and operability to the controls. It is a reasonable inference, making the exact state of MH370 in the final stages of its flight something reasonable readers might consider unresolved.

Bailey (as published) makes only one passing reference to analysis done by Boeing, on the flaperon. However Boeing has been involved in the deliberations of the search for its duration and assisted in detail in drawing up the various scenarios considered in its almost constant state of revision. It is more than facile to ignore that involvement in the pursuit of the “pilot did it” scenario, with gratuitous observations about the search effort.

This doesn’t mean Bailey (or Hardy) or the ATSB are wrong in their general focus in the area now being searched.

They all seem to be in a state of ‘furious agreement.’ Bailey risks being seen to be hitching his wagon to the inevitability of a discovery of durable wreckage in this general area.

Postscript. Bailey, like the ATSB, seems incapable of querying what happened on the night MH370 left KL. Malaysia Airlines lost an airliner yet made almost no calls to the flight after it was seen to be lost. There was no systematic calling out of any of the dozens of ships that were under the filed flight paths. There were no reported systematic calls to police stations, kampongs, or the all night security people or doormen at resorts which may have had a view seaward or to the skies across the Malaysia Peninsula at relevant times.

A widely respected airline which flies in this hemisphere told me that had it been one of their flights that vanished, their fingertips would have been bleeding from making repeated calls. Why did Malaysia Airlines give up so easily? Why did it go back to bed? Why did the government on the morning of the disappearance insist that the search efforts be spread further and wider, as it did for many days, when it knew according to subsequent revelations by the then acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein that it had crossed the peninsula on day one?

There is something rotten being concealed about the conduct of this flight, and of the authorities, in relation to their official narratives and actions.

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