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.

The wired article may be interesting but it is full of holes so TBH I'd ignore any thoughts of Langkawi.

I may have mentioned this before but the fire theory is great until you to try to work out how such a fire can incapacitate the crew, knock out only certain parts of the communications system, log the satcom off but leave it serviceable enough to perform "handshakes" with ground stations for almost seven hours, and also leave a lot of the other electrical systems you need intact in order to fly a 777 for roughly seven hours in the dark..... such a fire is not really credible.

why was the search strip so far south of this route?

You need to read the full report for that (either the Malaysian one or the Australian Search report) - the search strip was based on the aircraft's estimated endurance and also information the clever boffins at Inmarsat were able to extract from the satcom data that was still being routinely exchanged between aircraft and a Ground Earth Station for several hours after the rest of the communications systems went offline.

Have finally watched episode one of the documentary that kicked the thread off! I knew all the stuff but it was quite helpful to see the route develop in real time and some of the interviews.

From the Australian report it seems they know it came down in the ocean and the information they have indicates wasn’t a controlled ditch or glide. How awful.

I’m exhausted so only glanced over it but there are quite a few differences to the info given on the documentary.

This makes way more sense than any of the other theories posited so far.

The murder-suicide theory just doesn't ring true for me what we know happened.

Ah! They changed things. So the pilot wasn't as free from any issues as purported in the documentary and by the Malaysian government. That does sadly make the murder suicide theory much more credible and believable.

Plus if you add on the fact that he may have wanted the plane and his motives untraceable for insurance purposes (and/or possibly to avoid shame on his family !?!)

How very sad.

Sounds like a shit documentary given Boeing have confirmed some of the pieces found were definitely from MH370. So it has been ‘found’, it was obviously smashed to bits on impact. That area of ocean is enormous, a non existent intact plane can’t be found and a few bits that floated, swept up in currents, were lucky enough to find their way to land. So that but if the mystery is solved. It’s the ‘Why it went down’ that hasn’t been solved.

TBH I don't immediately recognise that rule (though TBF it might be a version of the Aussie domestic, no alternates rules, or perhaps one of the rules used for going to very isolated airports where a concept called island reserve is used))..whatever that rule is that you are quoting it's not how most of the world do it on most Long Haul flights.

Definitely a thing on domestic here. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve circled somewhere for 90mins while they desperately hope conditions at Sydney resolve so we can land. Often they will do it over Canberra so if it ends up not being possible then you land there and stay overnight (as all my flights back to Sydney are late afternoon/evening), but they try to the last second to see if conditions at Sydney resolve. Once, the pilot informed us there were 5 of us circling with fingers crossed and we would be number 2 in making it in if they ended up getting the green light, and we were definitely in circle pattern for 90mins. There are always two givens in this situation. The alcohol runs out and the water runs out😂. Pilots are quite open that they will ride it out to the last minute with one saying no one wanted their bed in Sydney more than they did and like hell we’d be sleeping in Canberra if they could help it🤣.

Here we are talking about a very well-respected highly experienced Captain with an exemplary career and seemingly no motive.

It's not as if this Netflix documentary is the first to suggest captain involvement. Murder-suicide is probably the leading theory as to what happened to MH370 and those poor souls on board.

Sorry if I missed this but I cannot find a definite answer - I saw it reported that the pilot had a similar route on his simulator. Is this true?

Totally agree. I know some posters on here have aviation knowledge but so do many who believe that theory so i don't think it can be discounted.

I really don't believe it was the pilot at all. He had an exemplary record and no-one who knew him believes it was him.

Morning ...(Rubs sleep from eyes, grabs coffee..).

AFAIK not a route, but some waypoints (geographic positions) that may have been artifacts from multiple flight sim sessions.

The Malaysian safety report has this on page 27..

"It was also discovered that there were seven ‘manually programmed’
waypoint4 coordinates that when connected
together, will create a flight path from KLIA to an area south of the Indian
Ocean through the Andaman Sea. These coordinates were stored in the
Volume Shadow Information (VSI) file dated 03 February 2014. The
function of this file was to save information when a computer is left idle
for more than 15 minutes. Hence, the Royal Malaysian Police (RMP) Forensic Report could not
determine if the waypoints came from one or more files.
The RMP Forensic Report on the simulator also did not find any data that
showed the aircraft was performing climb, attitude or heading
manoeuvres, nor did they find any data that showed a similar route flown
by MH370."

I really don't believe it was the pilot at all. He had an exemplary record and no-one who knew him believes it was him.

That just smacks of what people usually say when a man kills his family and then himself. ‘I can’t believe it, he was such a great guy’. Co-workers and everyone that knew them usually express shock and rabbit on about how wonderful they were.

I think that's really unfair. There is zero proof it was him, just theories. Imagine if it was your loved one and everyone was accusing him of mass murder. Terrible.

You can't discount the fire theory completely but it's would be a hell of a coincidence for it to play out in a way that would match what data we have..it's early but if you want to understand why many who have relevant knowledge don't believe the fire theory you'll have to bear with me:

From what we can gather everything on the flight seemed normal until the first point enroute where there was slight weakness/seam/gap in ATC coverage - the handover at the border between Malaysian and Vietnamese ATC.

It's not uncommon in many parts of the world, especially overwater, to have a short period when you are not in full contact with ATC and not radar identified ... anybody with route experience in that part of the world would know that if you wanted to go "dark" that would be an ideal point to turn transponders etc off. They'd also know there would potentially be confusion between ATC agencies if you went missing at that point and if you look at the report you'll see that certainly happened...

Heck of a coincidence if the fire happened just at that point and caused the confusion.

A few minutes later for a short period an aircraft is picked up on some Primary radars crossing the Malaysian peninsula on a south easterly heading pretty much along the line of the Thai Malay Border and then turning north west to track up the centreline of one of the airways that runs up the strait of Mallaca.

It would be a heck of a coincidence that the aircraft could do that all by itself having had a fire in the avionics bay and with the crew incapacitated.

Having flown outside radar coverage again aircraft is still communicating at a basic level via satcom for several hours and appears to have tuned again once well off shore and headed south...

Heck of a coincidence etc....

I'd agree you can't completely discount a fire but in terms of probability how do you honestly think it rates verses the theory that somebody onboard the aircraft with technical knowledge (aircraft and ATC) onboard the aircraft was behind all this?

"crossing the Malaysian peninsula on a south easterly heading" should of course be "south westerly"..😡

Ultimately, unless the cockpit voice recorder is recovered and still operable, we won’t ever know for definite. But to me, the overwhelming balance of probabilities is that a human did this deliberately.

One reason to think it was the pilot, rather than the first officer or anyone else on the plane with flight experience, is that the sharp left turn was at a difficult and dangerous angle, and he had the most experience to pull this off. Another is that he was the last person in charge when comms went dark.

Research on the passengers hasn’t shown any likely hijackers etc. And it leaves you with the same problem, not wanting to think a person could do this. But some person almost certainly did.

I think that's really unfair. There is zero proof it was him, just theories. Imagine if it was your loved one and everyone was accusing him of mass murder. Terrible.

sure, but you just can’t go by ‘wonderful guy’ theory as that is meaningless as I said. Maybe not him, but while no PROOF, on the basis of probability it was a human act. While no PROOF, on the basis of probability it was more likely him than anyone else on board. So with no proof we will never have a definitive answer but on probability ……

Having watched the Air Crash investigation series on My5 that gives details and re-enactments of aviation accidents and near-misses, there are so many unexpected things that had gone wrong on planes. Some of those accidents would have been a complete mystery as well had the wreckage not been found. So I still think we shouldn't blame the Captain without concrete evidence, which we are unlikely to ever obtain.

Hate to say it but whilst Air Crash Investigation is highly regarded I'd caution believing it tells the whole the objective truth or the whole story about accidents. It's made for entertainment and it certainly sometimes oversimplifies the tech side of accidents/incidents and sometimes overplays mysteries/unknowns when it can.

Anyhow with regard to your post I agree with your final point that you can't blame one specific individual but I'm afraid whichever way you slice what evidence we do have (and there's a lot, just not the physical wreckage) there's enough there when you look at the whole sequence in totality to very much point to human intervention by somebody very conversant with the 777, ATC, the region etc....

Somebody who made a very specific series of moves so that the plane took a long look of Penang, the captain's home island.

Former British Airways senior Boeing 777 pilot Simon Hardy :

"Someone was looking at Penang. Someone was taking a long, emotional look at Penang. The captain was from the island of Penang. ... It does a strange hook... in order to look at [Penang] you have to turn left or right, get alongside it and then execute a long turn. If you look at the output from Malaysian 370, there were actually three turns, not one. Someone was looking at Penang."

Pilots are people like anybody else. Ofcourse some are going to have mh problems that don't get picked up. They're not infallible. I always thought that they, especially the ones who flew on the larger aircraft had to have nerves of steal to take them into the air. It's an awful incident and I really feel for the families of those lost.

The Netflix doc seems to be purely entertainment based loosely on facts. The reports linked in this thread seem to stop short of saying it is most likely captain, i guess because they can't be 100% certain. If it wasn't he's being scapegoated by multiple countries, agencies and authorities which is unlikely.

I have watched the documentary, read the medium article and listened to the podcast. Not read the link to the report yet.

The FBI help out internationally when asked for help, especially when it comes to profiling, and I specifically remember the Robert Hendy-Freegard crimes which goes beyond the bizarre.

The problem with MH370 is that there's little to go on profile because obviously this is an incident that will never happen again so the why becomes blurred.

However, I think the how is clear and is probably the only certainty in this.

With much thanks to @notimagain and @SheilaFentiman for your valuable input on this thread.

I agree with the op that conspiracy theories will not work in this scenario.

With much love and respect to all those who lost their families.

“So I still think we shouldn't blame the Captain without concrete evidence, which we are unlikely to ever obtain.”

And all reports are leaving this question open, I think.

But equally, if the most probable cause is a human’s actions, then shouldn’t air safety behave and act on that? The Air France recommendations included reducing contradictory messages from systems. If we said “oh, let’s not be unfair to the crew, let’s assume it was fire and start improving fireproofing” then no recommendation eg not allowing manual switch off without 2 people agreeing (or whatever) then the wrong outcome would happen.

if the most probable cause is a human’s actions, then shouldn’t air safety behave and act on that?

In the case of MH370 what do you suggest?

"Air safety" have to be mindful that any solution must not increase exposure to other possible risks to a flight.

Hi @notimagain

Nothing in particular, TBH. My point was more that crash investigations usually lead to recommendations.

If the most likely cause of the crash was human action, which I think it was, then recommendations (if any) should be based around that rather than being deferential to the feelings of the Captain’s family.

For example, it could be that it’s sensible for two people to authorise turning off the transponder, but I don’t know if there are reasons that would be more trouble than good.