MH370: The Plane That Disappeared (Netflix)

[XelaM]

Has anyone seen this new Netflix documentary about MH370?

It's just unbelievable that in our time a passenger plane can just disappear without a trace.

I find the conspiracy theories in that documentary totally bizarre, but I also feel very sorry for the pilot's family who has effectively been scapegoated without any real evidence that he brought the plane down. If it was a murder-suicide why would he fly for another 8 hours instead of just crashing into the ocean where he was? It makes no sense. It's also an insane coincidence that two of Malaysian Airlines planes suffered tragedies in the space of just a few months in 2014 - nothing to do with any mechanical issues on the planes.

@UnagiForLife

I wonder why the electrical fire theory wasn’t mentioned in the series, it makes a lot of sense.

That sort of sceanrio I think got looked in the report but in a nutshell it doesn't really survive first contact with the data.

I'll admit it was attractive to those who didn't want to think this was a deliberate act but TBH it gets very hard to cling to the fire theory once you're aware of the apparent sequence and timescale of events.

For it to "work" you'd need to postulate you had a fire that started just as the aircraft was in a seam in ATC/radar coverage, immediately disabled the crew, carried on burning in the main electrics bay just long enough to knock out only some selected electronic systems (e.g. radio, transponders, ACARs,), plus somehow log-off from Satcom but not destroy it...and then the fire would have to go out..puff.

......Leaving the major flight essential systems servicible, such as the attitude reference system (ADIRU), most if not all of the autopilot modes..and leave the (now logged off) satcom system serviceable enough to make periodic "handshakes" over a period of multiple hours with the Ground Earth Station.....

The horrible reality/history of inflight fires, especially electrical ones, especially within the fuselage is that if they do become serious and take hold you are likely to lose the entire aircraft in under 30 minutes ( classic example was Swissair 111 back in '98), that sort of fire simply doesn't fit the data for MH 370.

Again, link to the report:

reports.aviation-safety.net/2014/20140308-0_B772_9M-MRO.pdf

For those of you who do not want to believe it was a senior flight crew member, can I ask why? We know there are many people each year who kill others and commit suicide. Why does it not feel to you like this is the explanation here?

The man who found bits of the plane, I dont know if I think thats genuine or not, why were the pieces accepted as genuine by the authorities if it was dodgy?

The safety report p.138 covers at least some of the wreckage..

FWIW many/most all aircraft "bits" have serial numbers/batch numbers marked on then that allow an individual part to be tracked throughout it's working life.

@notimagain I thought there was something wrong/odd with the serial numbers?

No idea, I don't see anything about serials being "odd" in the safety report. If other claims are being made TBH haven't seen them so can't comment.

Many of the pieces did not have serial numbers, but they wouldn’t have been expected to do so. A few did, though, and were therefore confirmed as mh370 with many of the rest being highly likely as mh370 (and a few other bits of plastic or whatnot being impossible to attribute)

There are not many pilots who commit suicide by taking down passenger planes. In fact, I personally only know two instances in aviation history where this happened on a passenger plane (Germanwings flight and Egypt Air flight that I mentioned on this thread earlier) and one cargo plane where an engineer tried to commit suicide by attacking the pilots. So it's a completely exceptional occurrence.

In both instances where pilot murder/suicide has happened on passenger planes, the co-pilot has crashed the plane very quickly to prevent the other pilot or crew from doing anything to stop it. Also, in both instances it was obvious from their personal circumstances that they were planning on doing this. The same goes for the engineer on the cargo plane.

Here we are talking about a very well-respected highly experienced Captain with an exemplary career and seemingly no motive. Those who worked with him (including one stewardess who lost her husband on that flight) say it could not have been him.

The way the other pilot murder/suicides were executed was very quick, whereas here the plane was in the air for another 7-8 hours. That doesn't make sense to me. Anything could have happened in those 7-8 hours to stop him. Why was he just continuing to fly? It's a very odd way to commit murder/suicide.

This would have been a completely heinous and very elaborate (and risky) plan by someone who had no motive and a brilliant career until that day.

thank you for replying, @XelaM

“Those who worked with him (including one stewardess who lost her husband on that flight) say it could not have been him.”

I would say that there are often people after a murder-suicide who say things like “he seemed such a lovely man”

”So it's a completely exceptional occurrence.”

The whole thing was an exceptional occurrence, whether deliberate or misadventure. I might be misremembering the Air France disaster but I think it was clear from early on that there was bad weather in the area, and any lack of contact hadn’t been anything like 7h.

with respect to continuing to fly - once the autopilot was set, I don’t think we have evidence as to whether whoever was in charge of the plane was still alive/conscious.

if someone has determined to commit suicide, what meaning does “risky” have? An issue with security pre 9/11 is that many checks (eg off boarding baggage if no passenger present) assumed a would be terrorist wanted to live. Suicide attacks are harder to prevent.

“Anything could have happened in those 7-8 hours to stop him.”

Assuming he had vented the oxygen and killed or incapacitated all on board, nothing really could’ve stopped the plane. Yes, it might have been shot down - jets were scrambled on 9/11, I think - but the plane had gone dark on comms and was over a vast ocean. Difficult to find, no benefit (saving people on the ground) from shooting it down - and the end result the same with all dead even if that happened.

@XelaM

So going with the "a trained individual did it theory"

Anything could have happened in those 7-8 hours to stop him.

Such as?

Internal intervention:

Assume Flight deck door now locked with the perpetrator inside - stop them how?

If that perp then decides to depressurise the aircraft at altitude it's probable that within maybe as little as 30 minutes, probably a lot less for many, nobody on board is going to be in a fit state to intervene or take any action at all.

External intervention:

If perpetrator has a level of tech knowledge commensurate with that gained on a 777 conversion they will think the aircraft is pretty much invisible electronically ( the fact that the satcom indulged in what have been called "handshakes" with ground stations even when not logged wasn't something crew were aware until this incident highlighted the issue...), so the perpetrator probably felt there was no chance of external intervention (e.g interception by the air force).

If the end game is then to put the aircraft beyond the reach of investigators then nipping across the Malaysian peninsula before setting course to the SSW into the Indian Ocean and letting the aircraft fly to fuel exhaustion looks like a perfect way of doing it.

My own POV is similar to many in the professional pilot or ex-pro pilot community; we hate the idea of this being pilot suicide, but setting that aside and being objective it has to be said that if you know the systems (aircraft, ATC etc) it is very very hard to draw any other conclusion than that this was a deliberate act by somebody with a fair bit of technical knowledge.

Now exactly who and exactly the why we may never know.....

Pressed post too soon, thanks for the much more concise answer than I managed.

@notimagain I meant the manual ELT's that would be part of designated crew equipment that you'd take depending on the crew seat you had. I seem to remember that they activated automatically when submerged. I know all of this would be thoroughly looked at but I just wondered if you guys knew why they weren't activated or found.

Personally i hope there was a prolonged decompression of some form and that they died after hypoxia set in unless they did manage to land somewhere ofcourse. It is very scary that a plane can just be lost.

“unless they did manage to land somewhere ofcourse”

MH370 broke up in the ocean. There is no chance it landed anywhere.

”. It is very scary that a plane can just be lost.”

I think it is a reminder of how big and uninhabited much of our planet is. One thing I remember from the incident is that people were blithely finding cargo containers that had been lost at sea. I know they aren’t as big as a plane, but they are pretty big on a human scale… but like a grain of sand in a basin on an oceanic measure.

I agree I think it went down in the ocean but it hasn't been proven and you never know, you can hope......

I don't think that a reminder of the size of the ocean is good enough for the aviation industry. I don't like the precedent that it is just to be accepted that a commercial flight can be lost it without explination. In other flying incidents, they are investigated and where necessary changes made for the better. Hopefully it'll never happen again but if it did how many times would be acceptable? Surely we have the technology now that planes can be better tracked for reasons like this? I'm not directing these questions to you directly I'm just pondering.

I've just posted that and my husband has reminded me of the cargo doors on the old 74's that didn't get changed as it was cheaper for them to pay compensation and although a long time ago obviously cost plays a big part in changes.

if the plane did land and there were survivors, after 9(!) years we would certainly heard of it.
people talk.

Pieces of the broken up plane with serial numbers were washed up on the coast of Africa. I don’t see an explanation for those or for the Inmarsat data that isn’t an ocean ditching. To me, that’s proven.

“Surely we have the technology now that planes can be better tracked for reasons like this?”

I would assume there were a bunch of recommendations. IIRC, making the batteries on emergency locator beacons last more than 30 days was an early one.

“don't like the precedent that it is just to be accepted that a commercial flight can be lost it without explination. In other flying incidents, they are investigated and where necessary changes made for the better.”

it has been investigated - see the multiagency report of 400 odd pages that @notimagain posted. Unlike crash reports, there was hardly any debris so there were limits to what they could say in some areas, but it’s pretty thorough about what they could ascertain.

@Cuckoosheep

Hi

FWIW I think the exact fit ELT fit is a customer option - I've just had another look at the report again (ELTs are page 52 onwards) and the MH370 fit doesn't match what I recall we had on ours..

MH did have the hull mounted, impact triggered one as we had.

Then mentions one stored in a closet in the forward cabin ( text in report implies impact triggered)

Then two in the slide rafts at 1L and 4R, armed when slide deployed, then operate when water immersed...

The report goes on to mention " A review of ICAO accident records over the last 30 years indicates that of the 114 accidents in which the status of ELTs
was known, only 39 cases recorded effective ELT activation. This implies that of the total accidents in which ELTs were carried, only about 34% of the ELTs operated effectively"...🤔

With regard to:

Surely we have the technology now that planes can be better tracked for reasons like this?

I'm a bit out of date on this now but AFAIK last I heard was not possible to have every aircraft in the world permanently being tracked by satellite every millisecond of flight.

I know ICAO were looking at requiring all aircraft to send a position report via satcom to their operators every 15 (?) minutes regardless of the route flown....Also often on busy oceanic routes you're "pinging " back to ATC more frequently than that anyway... but all that doesn't really solve the issue of the system being deliberately disabled, though it would at least make it more obvious earlier something was amiss.

FWIW if anybody really needs even more bedtime reading then in addition to the Malaysian Safety report then you'll be pleased to know the Aussies (who because of the geography ended up leading the search effort) published a very thorough publication on that operation:

apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/2017-10/apo-nid112656.pdf

That's another example of the tremendous amount of very detailed investigation that went on that maybe didn't make it into the popular press at the time or into any later TV documentaries..

@SheilaFentiman i really do share your belief that it ditched but if I was a family member etc I wouldn’t be satisfied with a best guess or take that as being proven and even if it’s accepted that it ditched I’d want to know what caused it to and who was responsible. Ultimately we do not know what happened, we’re all just guessing. Hence the Netflix series and this thread. Investigation was a poor choice of word, explanation or reason would have been better. I’m guessing you fly or have some link to aviation from your knowledge. In all the training, discussions etc I didn’t consider or have conversations about something like this and it be unknown what happened. I do think that is scary.

@notimagain thank you.

Not in aviation, but a background in physics and I found the Inmarsat deductions very cool from a scientific perspective.

That’s why I consider the ocean ending proven - there’s overwhelming evidence for it but no evidence for a landing or other rescue.

It would be good to know who was responsible and why, but I don’t think we ever will, sadly.

This is really interesting. I'm a bit confused by the turn apparently after the Langkawi airstrip on the radar map - trying to turn to land ? And why was the search strip so far south of this route?