Revisiting MH 370 - November 2014

Straight to the point. Malaysia as well as the world, still could not find the plane while searching at southern corridor near to Australia, despite Australian Prime Minister announcement that there is credible evidence which possibly lead to finding of the plane there. Of course, it was based mainly on the revolutionary calculation by the engineers of Inmarsat, a calculation based on satellite to the plane communication. It pushed the Prime Minister of Malaysia to agree to announce the Inmarsat finding and parties who are in the search of the plane agreed to end up with the conclusion made based on the calculation.

Does the Malaysian side has the ability to validate the calculation? Before that question, shall we ask that whether Malaysia has the access to the raw data gained by Inmarsat and used by the Inmarsat engineers to calculate and conclude the finding?

If Malaysia has the data, will it share with everybody, announce it to public so that it can be used by the independent investigators around the world to reevaluate the finding? 

But then, if Malaysia really doesn’t have the access to the data, Malaysia cannot be blamed for not revealing what it doesn’t have. 

Another situation is, the data is protected by international secrecy law or the country’s law to which the Inmarsat subjected to, so Malaysia if happened to know, could not make such data goes public.

Personally, I believe Inmarsat did not share the raw data. What the world can access is the official report that on the surface of it did shows the calculation concludes the possibility of the plane location ended up in the southern corridor the area of SAR being implemented now.

Published Inmarsat graph

The problem here, the Inmarsat engineers are not the only experts in the business. Since MH 370, there are independent investigators trying to assist in solving the mystery. Some of them are not merely investigators, they are experts in the business and big players as well. 

One of them is Michael Exner, a satellite expert who did his own investigation. However he recently criticised on some articles in the online news misquoting him out of context, and one of them is Malaysian online news portal. Here I want to avoid misquoting him, therefore I would quote him word to word;

I was addressing the question, can one turn off the power to the AES, from the cockpit, without affecting any other loads? In that context, the experts I have consulted (777 line pilots and sim trainer) state that it is not possible by any means they are aware off. We tried to find a CDU screen that would enable that action, but found none. Nor could we find any place in a manual describing a way to turn off the power to the AES (without turning off other loads). 4. It is possible to disable the transmission of air to ground ACARS messages from the CDU, but not received messages. Disabling the transmission of ACARS messages does not turn off the AES power, thus it has no effect on normal handshakes or other uses of the AES for communications. 

Bottom line: I stand by my statements that the AES power cannot be turned off from the cockpit, except by isolating the entire buss to which the AES is connected, the consequences of which would be far greater than just disabling the AES. One could turn off the power to the AES via a CB Panel in the E_Bay, but the fact that this is possible is in no way a suggestion that this happened. OTOH, it could have happened. The ACARS transmissions can be disabled from the CDU, but note that following a power cycle the system reverts to automatic mode (VHF and SAT enabled) with ACARS ON.

Basically from his opinion, netizens including those who are experts in this field, came with a new possibility; (Although may not of Exner's own opinion)

1. all communication systems were turned off implied that the suspect deliberately avoided any form of detection.
2. the suspect displayed a deep knowledge of how international air traffic control protocol worked.
3. the fact that the Satellite Data Unit (SDU) was able to be turned back on only suggested that the suspect used advanced hijacking skills.
4. all above lead to a conclusion that is Malaysia Captain, Zaharie Mohd Shah, was innocent.
   
   

So, it is not about questioning the competency of the Inmarsat engineers. They perhaps the best engineers in the business. It is the question of adequacy of the information revealed by Inmarsat, the raw data that lead to the calculation and conclusion, that is being publicised. 

Willing experts or non-experts as well, would use the information revealed and do reverse calculation to get the exact original data. From the original data gained through this reversal, they intended to recalculate the possibility of the final location of the plane. However several attempt of such reverse calculation failed to gain the original data. Perhaps, Jeffwise able to describe it in a paragraph and ends up describing it as a smokescreen;

This is not to say that Inmarsat’s conclusions are necessarily incorrect. (In the past I have made the case that the northern route might be possible, but I’m not trying to beat that drum here.) Its engineers are widely regarded as top-drawer, paragons of meticulousness in an industry that is obsessive about attention to detail. But their work has been presented to the public by authorities whose inconsistency and lack of transparency have time and again undermined public confidence. It’s worrying that the report appears to have been composed in such a way as to make it impossible for anyone to independently assess its validity—especially given that its ostensible purpose was to explain to the world Inmarsat’s momentous conclusions. What frustrated, grieving family members need from the authorities is clarity and trustworthiness, not a smokescreen.

Time Clark - CEO of Emirates also has expressed his view and is not convinced about the official statement on what happened to MH 370 as well as the story about the satellite handshakes.

"Experience shows that when a plane crashes into water, you can always find something. But in this instance, we haven't found a single scrap of evidence that the plane is there. Just the satellite handshakes, and even those I have my doubts about," he said.

While some accusing Malaysia military of concealing something because of the delay in publicising the radar information about the plane changing course towards south, how about Australian radar system? A journalist who alleged that had seen the demonstration of the capability of the Australian radar namely Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN), expressed his opinion.

Curiously, a journalist named Peter La Franchi commented in detail, expressing his opinion that Australia, clearly has a lot more explaining to do, and on a wide number of fronts. 

According to Mr La Franchi JORN has a range of at least 12,300km. The capability of this system was shown to journalists, himself included, through the Laverton radar station and the central control station in Adelaide in September 1999. He said Defence had actually demonstrated JORN's capability when the system was utilised by US to test its radar technology as was written in a press release dated July 27 2004. He implied that indeed, with JORN, MH370 should have been detected by Australian radar.

Quick announcement made of credible evidence found by Australian Prime Minister previously as well as the much relying on Inmarsat calculation by Malaysia resulting all SAR effort today only focusing in a designated area at the southern corridor in the Southern Indian Ocean. 

Knowing Malaysia’s capability in such field is very much limited and the dependency on Inmarsat calculation is the only option left for it in such pressuring and dramatic situation, I personally believe that Malaysia’s is pushed to accept the theory. It was a bonafide action on part of Malaysia to announce the possible ending of the plane there, very much depending on the calculation of Inmarsat. We had seen afterward that many families of the victims could not accept such story ending.

So how about this incident from the angle of conspiracy theories? The later incident of MH17, added more to the curiosity of the conspiracy theories researchers while its sparks idea in the mind that something fishy is going on here. Something or somebody is targeting Malaysia.

Will it be the same case of free falling destruction of WTC 7 as in 911 conspiracy theory? I mean does it look as easy as that? Well you know what I mean.

Earlier finding shows that a researcher, Mathias Chang wrote an article about the buying of a MAS Boeing 777 by a company and is kept in a hangar in Israel. Evidence shows the buying really happened as well as the kept in the hangar at Israel. Why the Israel, which has no friendly relationship with Malaysia, wants to keep a MAS Boeing 777, similar to the one that gone missing?

Further issue raised in the mystery, when some residents in Maldives islands, which is near to Diego Garcia, had reported seeing a Jumbo like aeroplane similar to the colour and size of the missing plane in the morning after the night to which the Boeing flew out of its original track. There were debates whether the gas was sufficient for the plane to undergo such a journey up to the area around Diego Garcia. Basic calculation shows that it is possible. 

An independent personal amateur investigator further interviewed some of the residents and uploaded the interviews on Youtube. It seems although the witnesses had not come to the conclusion that it was the same plane, they did mention of the striking similarity of the description of the plane they saw and the missing plane. Of course they could not ascertain it was the same plane as they had never seen MH 370 before. This account by the witnesses are not being discussed much in official news around the world except by conspiracy theorists. 

Therefore leads above are circumstantial, they may not be at par with the WTC 7 that crumbled down by itself in the case of 911. However, as in case of 911, where professionals and experts get together to uncover the real story, so it happens the same now in the case of MH370.

Matthias Chang also had shown some other leads which are also circumstantial evident that may create a theory or to show that something fishy is going on at least. I do not wish to list them here and I think to highlight the double plane in Israel’s hangar is alarming enough. To further read his article, you may go here.

If the conspiracy did happen, then it is now to consider the question of motive. If conspiracy did happen, this is a big conspiracy, involving many people. How confident are the conspirators that one of the conspiring parties would not finally reveal the true story. In the case of 911, we see that conspiracy although well planned it still shows defect. Maybe the conspirators, if they do exist, forget that the Creator of the universe created the universe with underlying rule, truth will always triumph. Or they just never know that.

Independent investigator of incikposmen