New MH370 Debris Suggests a High Speed Impact

Today Blaine Gibson and other MH370 family members delivered to Malaysian authorities five new pieces of debris that are believed to be from the missing aircraft. The parts were found as a result of a campaign led by Blaine and the families to make the residents of Madagascar more aware of debris from MH370 that has drifted across the Indian Ocean and continues to land on the shores of East Africa.

Blaine has provided photographs and descriptions of the five parts, which are made available here in a zipped file. More recent high-resolution photographs are available here. The most recently discovered part (Part 5), pictured above, was found by a local fisherman this past August.

One piece of debris (Part 3) was identified by MH370 Independent Group (IG) member Don Thompson as a shattered piece of the interior floorboard of a Boeing 777. The part’s location in the B777 and the nature of the damage is consistent with a high speed impact, and therefore has probative value.

Identification of the Floorboard Piece

IG members Don Thompson and Mike Exner assisted Blaine in identifying the floorboard piece, and Don documented his findings in a report. An important clue was the piece contained a portion of a placard with the identifying characters WPPS61. Don was able to determine that the full placard number is BAC27WPPS61. This type of placard is affixed to high strength panels of material specification BMS4-20, which is used as flooring material in passenger compartments of commercial aircraft, including the Boeing 777-200ER. Amazingly, Don was able to find a similar placard affixed to the floorboard of wreckage from MH17, which was also a Boeing 777-200ER. This leaves little doubt that the piece recovered from Madagascar is from MH370.

Discussion

The new debris gives us additional insight about where and how the aircraft impacted the sea. In light of the past efforts to find the aircraft, there are three main possibilities that remain:

The aircraft impacted the ocean relatively close to the 7th arc, but at a latitude further north than the area previously searched. The aircraft impacted the ocean at a latitude previously searched, but farther from the 7th arc than previously assumed. The aircraft debris field was in the subsea area previously scanned by sonar, but was either missed or misidentified.

Sources close to the previous search effort believe (3) is very unlikely, as there was a thorough review of the sonar data by multiple parties with high levels of experience, and because any “points of interest” were scanned multiple times to ensure the resolution was adequate to make a determination with a high level of confidence.

When considering the satellite data, the final two BFO values at 00:19 UTC are consistent with an aircraft at an increasingly high rate of descent. The new debris and some of the previously recovered debris also suggest that the aircraft impacted the ocean at high speed. That means that (2) is possible only if the aircraft first was in a rapid descent (producing the final BFO values), and then the pilot skillfully recovered from the rapid descent and glided some distance away from the 7th arc beyond the width of the subsea search, and then later the aircraft again descended at high speed and impacted the sea (producing the shattered debris). This sequence of dive-glide-dive is considered by many to be a very unlikely sequence of events, although it cannot be completed dismissed.

What is left is possibility (1). This suggests future subsea search efforts should proceed along the 7th arc, starting where the last search ended near 25S latitude, and continuing farther north. (In a previous blog post, I showed that an automated flight ending along the 7th arc at 22S latitude is possible.)

The part recovered in Madagascar in August 2018 was the latest in a series of finds that began with the discovery of the flaperon on Reunion Island in July 2015. Because of the wide range of discovery times, and because there is an undefinable delay between when a part arrives on a beach and when it is discovered, it is difficult to use the timing and location of debris discoveries to precisely pinpoint where to search for MH370.

Finally, the new debris finds illustrate the critical role of independent investigators in the search for MH370, and one investigator in particular. The local communications campaign to educate residents of Madagascar about debris washing ashore was spearheaded by Blaine Gibson with the help of some of the MH370 families. Blaine has also done a commendable job of developing a local network to help recover the debris after discovery. We have to wonder if additional debris is sitting on the shores of other countries like Tanzania, Kenya, and Somalia, where there were no similar campaigns to alert and organize the residents.

Links in this article:

Photographs and description of debris provided by Blaine Gibson

Additional high resolution photographs of debris

Identification of the piece of floorboard by Don Thompson

Reconstructed path ending near 22S latitude by Victor Iannello