Thus the aviation experts reached no conclusion about what happened aboard the plane that vanished with 239 people on board en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, leaving one of the world's greatest aviation mysteries unsolved. Kok Soo Chon, head of the safety investigation team, told the meeja "The answer can only be conclusive if the wreckage is found."
Walt suggests (again) that the wreckage won't be found until hunters stop looking in the southeastern part of the Indian Ocean (off the west coast of Australia) and start looking in the western part. The bits of debris found to date have all been located on the shores of southern Africa and nearby islands. See "New search for MH370 - Walt's advice on how to get answers", WWW 6/1/18.
Experts believe someone may have deliberately switched off MH370's transponder before diverting it over the Indian Ocean. There has been speculation that either the pilot or the co-pilot did that, and then flew the aircraft into the sea in an act of murder suicide. Mr Kok-up thinks not. "We are not of the opinion it could have been an event committed by the pilots," he said, but added they were not ruling out any possibility since the in-air turn back was done manually and the systems in the plane were also manually turned off.
Who else might have done it, then? Said Mr Kok, “We cannot exclude that there was an unlawful interference by a third party." Perhaps he and his colleagues have read "Could MH370 have been hacked? It's possible!", WWW 12/6/18. If not, they should!
UPDATE ADDED 31/7/18: Fox News reports that Malaysia's civil aviation chief resigned today, taking responsibility for shortcomings during the disappearance of MH370. Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said in a statement the report referred to above showed failures by Kuala Lumpur air traffic control to comply with standard procedures.
Walt, two points
ReplyDelete1. History: a previous crash in teh Indian Ocean in 1987 (where they did recover the plane) was a South AFrican 747 Combi. Story was it was carrying dangerous arms-related cargo which caused a fire. Enquiry, widely regarded as a coverup, did not reach that conclusion. Even after a change in government, noone has been willing to open the case. Speculation is that it would expose both government and company to major insurance claims.
2. MH370: there were reports that, on the pilot's home flight simulator, he had been practicing routes to Diego Garcia. Those have gone very quiet and there is no mention of Diego Garcia in the 1500 page MH370 report launched yesterday.
I think you are right - the overwhelming evidence is that there was an attempt to go to DG which, at hte time, was an important base for bombing Afghanistan. You could see the B52s on the runway on Google Earth, for goodness sake.
But, following the SA story, there are many, many good reasons that noone would want to talk about this.
Thanks, whoever you are. The latest report pretty much negated the suggestion that the pilot (or co-pilot) "went rogue", opening up the "third party" option which previously had been denied, denied, denied. If you click on the Diego Garcia or MH370 tags, you'll find I'm still very strong on the Diego Garcia connection and the involvement of the US military.
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