MH370, 15 minutes near Banda Aceh

[.Scott]

About a month ago, Oct 7, FullWings posted this:It’s getting to the point where there’s not much to be gained from further snippets on MH370. It crashed into the sea, it was almost definitely suicide, everybody’s dead, move along.If we accept the "almost certainly suicide" assessment, then we have our lesson learned. We have another demonstration of the important safety implications of crew mental health and perhaps more impetus to address that area with more scrutiny.

Personally, I have never subscribed to the suicide theory. As an engineer, I am very familiar with equipment failing in surprising and unexpected ways. Out of the many scores of simulations the pilot ran on his home simulator, one ran out into the Indian Ocean - as though he was distracted from his practice session and didn't get back to it until the simulation had run its full course. Given a cockpit fire and no recovery of the wreckage or the recording, in how many of your flights would this level of "evidence" for suicide be found simply as a matter of happenstance?

Earlier today, a Mick Gilbert posted his analysis and interpretation of positioning data received from MH370 while it was in the vicinity of Banda Aceh. The raw data is more detailed than I have seen before. The positioning analysis is also more complete than I have seen before. As for his interpretation, I will leave that to others on this forum with more experience in this type of flying.

His article is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wbakv38v2y0g1zy/Exploring%20The%20First%20Log-On%20-%20Phone%20Call%20Gap%20V3.2.pdf?dl=0

If you're not into that much detail, here's an article on his article:https://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/2016/11/11/61373/

The gist of the article is that, during the time MH370 was near Banda Aceh, before its excursion into the Indian Ocean, many flight paths are possible. But by making reasonable assumptions, few paths are likely - and these most likely paths bear on the situation in the cockpit and the cause of the disaster.

[Nemrytter]

Summarised as: A basic example of curve-fitting, how to connect some data points together in a number of vaguely-realistic but uninformative ways.

[Zionstrat2]

.Scott thanks for posting- very interesting and it will also be interesting to see if the theory holds water.

Combined with the TOC hypothesis (that Pilot left the cockpit leaving a low time FO in command at the time when fire started), it seems possible that there was potential for unplanned meandering to the west with coms and transponder out.

However, both of these hypothesis are the opposite of 'stealthy avoidance of radar and ATC' that seemed to be documented in the beginning of the investigation.

Does anyone know if that apparent attempt to avoid attention by riding the edges of controlled airspace been totally discounted?

[.Scott]

I just read through several sections in the Wiki article - including the full "radar" section. Of course, secondary radar was lost right away. Other than that, there was nothing particularly stealthy about his flight path. He flew right over Penang Island - which picked him up on its primary radar. More stealthy would have been to head southeast without crossing any land masses.

More stealthy still would have been to fly much lower. But I do realize that if you subscribe to the mad pilot theory, you could claim that he stayed high to disable the passengers.

[Ian W]

These theories were discussed at extreme length. It was difficult for the mechanical failure theorists to come up with a scenario that disabled those in the cockpit rapidly, stopped ACARS and SSR Transponders and RT close to simultaneously (at precisely the point in the airspace and handoff sequence where it would not be immediately noticed) and yet leave the FMC/FMS in sufficient working order to fly the aircraft back over the peninsula then turn up the Malacca Straits then turn around the North of Indonesia by Banda Aceh and proceed west fortuitously to outside radar cover before turning South then fly for another 6 hours direct South with no wandering and apparently no altitude changes until fuel exhaustion. Occam's Razor would lead to the assumption of some sentience in the cockpit with an intent in mind.