Well, the hamster wheel is spinning mightily again and making as much progress as before.
A couple of points that don't seem to have been picked up or commented on, although I freely admit to not having read all of the first thread. Quite a lot though.
Phugoid oscillations are being stated here as the end result of the flight to fuel exhaustion based on a long ago post to this forum, recently reposted. However, the ATSB 's
Flight Path Analysis Update report states that the likely end-of-flight scenario "
resulted in the aircraft entering a descending spiralling low bank angle left turn and the aircraft entering the water in a relatively short distance after the last engine flameout." This was the result of simulator work conducted by Boeing and Malaysian. (page 8 of the main body of the report, although there are no page numbers, unfortunately.)
Numerous people have pooh-poohed the possibility of a hypoxia event at some stage, arguing that someone was in control to the very end. In this context, it is noteworthy that the ATSB's report:
MH370 – Definition of Underwater Search Areas notes that: "
the final stages of the unresponsive crew/ hypoxia event type appeared to best fit the available evidence for the final period of MH370’s flight when it was heading in a generally southerly direction" (page 34 & Appendices) This was based on a review of various accident types, although reasonably enough they caveat that this is a working hypothesis for search purposes, and that responsibility for a final determination lies with the accident investigating authority.
Yesterday, posting here,
andrasz stated that:
the interim report quite unambiguously stated that provided the conclusions derived from the Inmarsat data are correct, only intentional human intervention could have placed the aircraft on its final course.
I'd appreciate a link to that unambiguous statement. It's an important issue. It's not in the Malaysian authorities'
Interim Statement, and I can't find it in the accompanying
Factual Information Document. (This is 586 pages long admittedly, but I've looked in the likely places and quite a few others
, and in any case, it isn't the sort of statement I would expect to find in a factual summary.)
If you are going to assume that the pilot planned a suicide flight, then you do need to take into consideration that the aforementioned
Factual Information Document, is quite unambiguous that there is no evidence of disciplinary, financial, medical, behavioral, psychological or social issues affecting either the captain or crew. (pages 19-21). This report was issued a year after the loss, so there had been plenty of time for all sorts of investigations to flush problems out.
Somewhere I have seen similar reports about the passengers. A couple of aspiring illegal immigrants, and that's all, IIRC.
Personally, I'm in the "wait and see when there's data" camp. I understand the attraction of postulating that the course changes shortly after loss of contact imply some pilot control
at that stage, but they don't speak to the motive for those changes, or, crucially, to the on-board events and circumstances, and certainly don't evidence pilot survival until the end of the flight some eight hours later.