VIDEO: The DEI problem in the handling of large, lethal machines

There are lots of problems with the theory and practice of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). Chief among those, IMHO, is that the "E" (for "Equity"), in demanding equality in everything for everbody, regardless of race, gender, religion etc, is premised on the theory that God created everyone equal. He did not.

Look around you, in your workplace, your classroom, your place of worship, wherever. You cannot avoid seeing a rainbow of different colours, different sizes, different shapes, and different genders (although how many "genders" there are is disputed nowadays).

Those are the differences you can see. As you interact with the humans around you, you find that they have different cultures, different religions (religion and culture being inseparable), different aptitudes (white men can't jump!) and different levels of intelligence. 

To expect that you can mold Diversity into Equality is the veriest nonsense. I would like to be an all-star hockey player (with the Montréal Canadiens, of course!), but I don't have the ability or the talent, and you can't force the Habs to let me play for them because short, bald, overweight octagenarians are under-represented on their roster.

Admit it! Some people are better at some things than others, and some are worse, sometimes tragically so. Some readers have noted (and taken me to task for) my remarks about Chinese drivers. And Chinese sailors. And I'm not the only one to question the wisdom of letting poorly trained pilots fly airplanes just because they're women. See "DEI pilot song", WWW 15/8/25 (includes video).

That brings me to this video recreation by Allec Joshua Ibay of the tragic crash of Kenya Airways flight 507, a scheduled Abidjan–Douala–Nairobi passenger service, operated with a Boeing 737-800, that crashed in the initial stage of its second leg immediately after takeoff from Douala International Airport in Caméroun on 5 May 2007.

To see how this proves my point about DEI, you should understand that when the African colonies of Britain, France and Portugal were given their independence... ready or not... in the 1960s, one of the first things the new black rulers did was to set up a national airline. Hey, how can you be a nation without an airline.

Since there were almost no black pilots in those days -- not even in the US of A -- hundreds of black Africans were enrolled in crash courses [Careful now... Ed.] to learn how to fly these ultra-sophisticated marvels of aeronautical engineering. Until they did, pilots were recruited from Europe and North America. 

Then came DEI, or "Africanization" as it was termed on the Dark Continent. It was shameful, the liberals said, that white men (almost none of the pilots were female) should be flying African airliners. As if the locals couldn't do it! And so you got pilots like the captain of Flight 507, who, in spite of many flying hours, never quite got the hang of things like managing the autopilot.

Note also that the first officer on the ill-fated flight had only 837 hours of experience. He had been the subject of incessant criticism by the captain and didn't dare to open his mouth about the impending disaster until after the captain said "We are crashing!"

What you see there is African culture at work. (I say this as one with seven years' experience in training and management in southern Africa.) Africans defer to age and authority, as they still do to tribal chiefs. (Yes, such things still exist.) To question an elder, especially one who has just called you out, is unheard of. By the time the FO got over that cultural block, it was too late.

In closing, let me repeat the point of "The DEI pilot song", as the lesson to be learned from this video. It's not about white supremacy, but about how the woke goals affect airline standards, pilot competency, and aviation safety. Will qualified candidates be passed over in the name of diversity? Can DEI hiring and meritocracy coexist? 

Sadly, the problems caused by DEI are not unique to the aviation industry. Any human enterprise involving more than one person must sooner or later face the reality that we are not all created equal.

Allec Joshua Ibay, RIP.

We are sad indeed to report that one of our favourite bloggers, Allec Joshua Ibay, best known for his "Air Disasters" series on YouTube, died in a car crash in his native Philippines on 24 July 2025. Allec had a lifelong interest in airplanes and aviation, and always wanted to be an airline pilot, like his father before him. 

While he was learning to fly, he started creating these simulations using FS2004, to educate himself and others about the lessons to be learned from these accidents. Over the years, he put up 728 videos, and his channel has over 272,000 followers. 

Allec did get his commercial pilot's licence a couple of years ago, but now has been taken from us. But through his channel, he's still "keepin' `em flying." RIP.

VIDEO: Delta 4819 crash: all signs point to DEI pilot error

Yesterday, Canada's Transportation Safety Board released its preliminary report into the crash (call it "collision with terrain" if you like) of Delta Airlines flight 4819 on landing at Toronto's Pearson International Airport (YYZ). If you missed our initial post on this story, click here to read it and see the video.

The TSB report, boiled down to one sentence, says that the Bombardier CRJ900, experienced a hard "pancake" landing. A warning system on the flight sent an alert indicating a high rate of descent less than three seconds before the plane touched down. Less than a second before touchdown, the plane's rate of descent was 1110 feet per minute.

The flight manual defines a hard landing as a "landing at a vertical descent rate greater than 600 ft/min when the aircraft's gross weight is less than or equal to [maximum landing weight]." Flight 4819 (operated by Delta Air Lines subsidiary Endeavor Air) weighed less than its maximum allowable take-off weight at the time of the crash. 

The report also says that less than a second before landing, the angle of the plane's aircraft, known as the pitch attitude, was 1 degree. The flight operations manual states pitch attitude at touchdown should be between 3 and 8 degrees.

In today's video, Dan Millican -- the same experienced pilot who appears in the earlier video -- analyses the TSB report and draws some inescapable conclusions as to the role played by DEI First Officer who was flying the plane. We've added a summary of the report below the video window.

   

In a news release yesterday, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada said, "It is too early to draw conclusions as to the causes of this accident. A full investigation report, which will include the TSB's analysis into why the accident happened and the Board's findings, will be released in due course.

Delta 4819 took off from Minneapolis (MSP) with 76 passengers, two flight crew members and two cabin crew members. The names of the pilots have been scrubbed from the Internet. in the wake of Delta's denial that they were DEI hires. 

All we know is that the Captain was male, hired by Mesaba Airlines (forerunner of Endeavor Air) in 2007, and that the First Officer was female, hired by Endeavor in 2024. Delta says stories that she had failed training events are false. 

According to the TSB, the FO was in control of the plane when it crashed. At 1400 EST, winds were gusting to 35 knots in the area. After the flight crew received clearance to land at Runway 23 at YYZ, they flew the approach at 149 knots, "given the reported wind gusts."

 Around 2.6 seconds before touchdown, a "sink rate" alert sounded, "indicating a high rate of descent," the report said. The alert came from the plane's enhanced ground proximity warning system. At the time the alert sounded, the plane's airspeed was 136 knots. Less than a second before touchdown, the aircraft's indicated airspeed was 134 knots and its ground speed was 111 knots. 

Around 1412, the right main landing gear touched the runway. The report continues: "At touchdown, the following occurred: the side-stay that is attached to the right [main landing gear] fractured, the landing gear folded into the retracted position, the wing root fractured between the fuselage and the landing gear, and the wing detached from the fuselage, releasing a cloud of jet fuel, which caught fire. The exact sequence of these events is still to be determined by further examination of the fracture surfaces." 

The plane then began to slide along the runway, eventually going off the right side into a snow-covered grass area, coming to rest on Runway 15L, near the intersection with Runway 23. Meanwhile, the right wing became fully detached from the plane and slid around 215 feet further along Runway 23. Once the aircraft came to a stop, an evacuation began. There were 21 people injured among the 80 on board, with two people reported to have serious injuries.

John Gradek, an operations and integrated aviation management professor at McGill University, told the media the plane had "a hard, flat landing", sometimes called a "pancake landing". He said the plane's descent rate was "significantly higher than you would expect to have in a given landing area.... It was, by all classifications, a hard landing. The nose only being up 1 degree is also not typical, he added, and can result in a flat landing that puts stress on the aircraft, he said.

Getting back to the DEI question, here's a photo from the Endeavor Air website.

On the same page, one can read Endeavor Air's Mission Statement, followed by:

"OUR MOST IMPORTANT BEHAVIORS [which include]

Promote diversity and inclusion in all aspects of the airline and our operation."

That's all ye know and all ye need to know.

UPDATED. new VIDEO: Deadly DCA air crash - OTJ training + DEI

Regular readers will know that Walt is not one to jump to conclusions. [**cough** Ed.] However, I do think it's not too soon to start asking questions about yesterday's collision of an American Eagle CRJ700 and a UH600 helicopter belonging to the US Army. Here's the audio of Air Traffic Control directing other aircraft around the scene, with video of the moment of impact. 

 

The American Eagle airliner was carrying 60 pax and a crew of four, all of whom are presumed dead. The precise number of victims was unclear as rescue crews are still hunting for survivors, and recovering the bodies of those who didn't make it.

We do know that the Army chopper was on a training flight -- OTJ training in the middle of one of America's busiest and most complex airspaces. We also know that until President Trump signed his EO a few days ago, the American military was prioritizing the hiring of vizmins, BIPOCs, wimmin, trannies and others who "experience sexuality differently", without regard to their aptitude or qualifications. 

We would like to know who was flying the helicopter at the fatal moment. Whose voice is heard saying they could see the airliner? Was he/she/it a DEI hire? Same question for the air traffic controller who apparently didn't realize that the two aircraft were flying at the same altitude or warn them of the impending collision.

Just asking, you understand.

UPDATE ADDED 2/2/25

Looks like I got the answer I was expecting. Not such an unwarranted suspicion as some have suggested. 

In this video, Michael 'Rocket' Blackstone, a professional pilot with 26 years as an airline pilot, as well as an aerobatic airshow performer and stunt pilot asserts that the likely causes of this horrific accident are now pointing toward the 28-year-old 500-hour pilot, Captain Rebecca Lobach.

Capt. Lobach was apparently at the controls of the PAT-25 H-60 helicopter. She was allegedly taking a competency check ride with Chief Warrant Officer Andrew Eaves, 39, who was evaluating her even though he had only about 1000 hours himself.. 

  

These H-60 pilots failed to "see and avoid" the American Eagle CRJ traffic called out by DCA tower after stating that they had the traffic in sight. Clearly, the H-60 crew did not have the traffic in sight, failed to steer left as directed to pass behind the CRJ, failed to fly at or below the required 200' MSL, maximum altitude on the helicopter route. 

The ATC controller passed the full responsibility of in-flight separation at night to a helicopter crew whom he saw never make any heading changes to avoid the American Airlines aircraft. 

Mr Blackstone argues that this situation was completely avoidable, and many regulatory changes must be implemented immediately to protect the flying public from the dangers of military training missions.

VIDEO: The mystery of Malaysian Airlines MH370 (simulation)

This month has been full of interruptions and distractions, which caused me to miss a couple of dates and events about which I wanted to say something. One such was the sixth anniversary of the disappearance and presumed crash, on 8 March 2014, of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370. I have written about or referred to the mystery of what happened to MH370 in no fewer than 45 posts. Click here to see them all, in reverse chronological order.

Today, instead of repeating myself, I'm reposting a simulation video made by Allec Joshua Ibaya, a Filipino aviation buff, posted to YouTube on 8 April 2017. Mr Ibaya doesn't offer any theories about what happened to the ill-fated airliner, but does a good job of depicting what was known at the time he made the video. Nothing of any consequence has become known since.

WARNING: This video is an example of what some people call "disaster porn", and may be disturbing to some viewers. If you think might be one of the easily affected, you know what to do. Don't watch!

Iran admits its rocket shot down PS752... "but Trump!"

Iran's president has finally acknowledged what Walt and almost everyone else have suspected from the getgo. It was indeed an Iranian missile that downed Ukrainian International Airlines flight PS752 on Wednesday, killing all 176 people (mostly ethnic Persians) on board.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran deeply regrets this disastrous mistake," Hassan Rouhani said late Friday in a post on Twitter. "My thoughts and prayers go to all the mourning families. I offer my sincerest condolences." Walt's lifetime pct .984.

Iran announced Saturday that its military "unintentionally" shot down the Ukrainian jetliner that crashed earlier this week, killing all 176 aboard, after the government had repeatedly denied Western accusations that it was responsible. The plane was shot down early Wednesday, hours after Iran launched a ballistic missile attack on two military bases housing American troops in Iraq in retaliation for the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in an American airstrike in Baghdad. No one was wounded in the attack on the bases.

A military statement carried by state media said the plane was mistaken for a "hostile target" after it turned toward a "sensitive military centre" of the Revolutionary Guard. The military was at its "highest level of readiness," it said, amid the heightened tensions with the United States. An Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander said his unit accepts "full responsibility" for what happened. In an address broadcast by state TV on Saturday, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh said that when he learned about the downing of the plane, "I wished I were dead." Walt thinks that can probably be arranged.

But the responsibility is not that of Gen. Hajizadeh alone, nor even that of the mad mullahs who form the government of the Islamic Republic. The "heightened tensions", we are asked to believe, were caused by the assassination of Gen. Soleimani, the mastermind behind Islamic terrorism that has plagued the Middle East sandpit for years and caused 1000s of deaths to Muslims and infidels alike. And who ordered Soleimani's assassination? Why, Still-President Trump, of course!

"In such a condition, because of human error and in a unintentional way, the flight was hit," the military said. It apologized and said it would upgrade its systems to prevent future tragedies. For its part, the Iranian government, through its foreign minister, expressed "profound regret" for the "incident". So that's all right then.

Credit where credit is due Dept.: Meme scraped from Blazing Cat Fur.

Not only "bad guys" shoot down commercial airliners

Agent 3 e-mail to chastise me for mentioning in my coda to yesterday's piece on the apparent shooting down of Ukrainian International Airlines flight PS752 by an Iranian missile, only the downing of Korean Airlines KAL007 by Soviet air forces. Agent 3 reminds me of two even worse "incidents", and possibly a third.

How quickly we forget [YOU forgot! Ed.] the crash of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, which crashed in July of 2017 near the border of Russia and Ukraine. The B777 -- a bigger plane than the B737-800 -- was supposedly flying at 10,000 metres (33,000 feet), at which altitude it could only have been hit by a large and sophisticated surface-to-air missile, probably the same Russian-built Tor-M1 missile system used by the Iranian military. See "Russian Missile System Suspected of Bringing Down Ukraine Airliner: Short Range, Fast and Deadly", Moscow Times, 10/1/20.

Who did that? The government of Vladimir Putin is keeping shtum, but the prime suspects were and remain the Ukrainian rebels, backed by Russia, trying to separate the eastern Ukraine from the motherland. Whoever did the dirty deed must surely have made a horrible mistake, firing on a civilian airliner. Right?

That tragedy was preceded, nine years earlier, by the shooting down of Iran Air flight IR655. On 3 July 1988 the Airbus A300 was en route from Tehran to Dubai when it was hit by an SM-2MR surface-to-air missile fired from... wait for it... USS Vincennes, a guided-missile cruiser of the United States Navy. The aircraft was destroyed and all 290 pax and crew were killed.

The large jet was hit while flying over Iran's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf, along the flight's usual route, shortly after departing Bandar Abbas International Airport, the flight's stopover location. The Vincennes had entered Iranian territory after one of its helicopters drew warning fire from Iranian speedboats operating within Iranian territorial limits. According to the American government, the Vincennes crew mistook the Airbus for an F-14 Tomcat, an American-made jet fighter that had been part of the Iranian Air Force inventory since the 1970s. Rather a glaring error.

The US Navy claimed the Vincennes made ten attempts to contact the aircraft on both military and civilian radio frequencies, but received no response. The Iranian government said the cruiser negligently shot down the aircraft, which was transmitting IFF squawks in Mode III, a signal that identified it as a civilian aircraft, and not Mode II as used by Iranian military aircraft.

The event generated a great deal of criticism of the Paranoid States of America, and particularly Vincennes captain William C. Rogers III, for "overly aggressive behaviour in a tense and dangerous environment." Walt expects to hear phrases like that a lot, in the aftermath of this week's tragedy. In the days immediately following the incident, President Ronald Reagan issued a written diplomatic note to the Iranian government, expressing deep regret. Walt expects a similar note to be issued by the mad mullahs of the Iranian government, any minute now.

To round out this list, let's not forget Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, a B777 which vanished into thin air... or deep water... five years ago this coming March, with 239 souls aboard, now presumed dead. The Malaysian government declared the loss an accident, but no-one has yet been able to say for sure what happened to the large airliner. I continue to believe that the plane was shot down by either Indian or (more likely) American forces operating from the US military base on Diego Suarez. That would have been an accident... of course.

PS752: Cue Iran's "sincere apology"

Here's the headline Walt expected: "US officials say 'highly likely' Iranian missile brought down Ukrainian airliner". Lifetime pct .983.

The rest of the story, so far (the news is breaking just now) is that American satellites detected the launch of two missiles shortly before the Ukrainian International Airlines B737-800, operating flight PS752 from Tehran to Kyiv, crashed shortly after takeoff.

Reuters and The Associated Press both report that US officials say they believe the shooting down of the aircraft was "accidental". When Still-President Trump was asked about the crash at a presser a few minutes ago, he told reporters he had a terrible feeling about the downed airliner but offered no additional details. "Somebody could have made a mistake," he told reporters at the White House. "I have my suspicions."

As to the consequences, Walt's prediction is that there will be no retaliation by the USA, Ukraine, or anyone else. The government of Iran will express its "sincere regret" about the "incident", and will pay millions of petrodollars in compensation to the families of those killed. That will suffice for the US government, since doing anything else -- shooting down an Iranian airliner, for instance -- would provoke a war which, in truth, the Americans do not want.

There is a precedent for my prediction -- the case of Korean Airlines flight 007, which was shot down on 1 September 1983 by a Soviet Su-15 interceptor while en route from Anchorage to Seoul. The B747 deviated from its original planned route and flew through Soviet prohibited airspace. The Soviet Air Forces treated the unidentified aircraft as an intruding American spy plane, and destroyed it with air-to-air missiles, not accidentally but deliberately. All 269 passengers and crew aboard were killed.

Ukrainian Airlines tragedy: suspicions of terrorism mount

Sometimes silence speaks louder than words. ["The dog that didn't bark". Ed.] Here is what is known, now, about the last moments of Ukrainian International Airlines flight PS752. The B737-800, fully loaded with fuel, lifted off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini airport at 0612 Wednesday, almost an hour late, for the four-hour flight to Kyiv. No reason for the delayed departure has as yet been given.

Tracking data suggests that the plane had reached a speed of about 500 km/h and an altitude of just over 2400 metres, when, about four minutes after takeoff, it suddenly plunged to earth, crashing near a soccer field and irrigation canal outside the town of Parand, 30 km northwest of the airport.

There was no distress call or other communication from the cockpit in the moments before the crash. The aircraft just disappeared from the radar == there one moment, gone the next.

Our aviation expert (Agent 17) says the sudden disappearance from the radar, combined with radio silence, indicates a sudden catastrophic event. If the plane had lost an engine or had other mechanical/technical trouble, there should have been time for the pilots to alert air traffic control and, perhaps, declare an emergency. But nothing was heard. Just silence.

The timing of the tragedy -- just four hours after the Iranians launched a barrage of missiles at two bases housing American and other international military personnel in Iraq, an initial reprisal for the Americans' January 3rd killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani -- raises suspicion that the plane may have been sabotaged or shot down... accidentally or on purpose. Stay tuned.

UPDATED: Crash of Ukrainian airliner work of Iran/Islamic terrorists?

New just breaking... Ukraianian International Airlines flight PS752 crashed just after takeoff from Tehran's international airport this morning, killing all 176 passengers and crew. Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister Vadym Prystaiko said 82 Iranians, 63 Canadians and 11 Ukrainians were on board. The Ukrainian nationals included two passengers and the nine crew. There were also ten Swedish, four Afghan, three German and three British nationals, he said.

Some reports say the aircraft -- a Boeing 737-800 (not the same type as the Max8) -- was on fire when it crashed. That could indicate a mid-air explosion. May Walt be forgiven for wondering if this tragedy is in any way connected with the retaliation promised by the Iranian government for the killing of Gen. Qassem Suleimani by a US drone strike, late last week. Stay tuned.

UPDATE ADDED at 1230: Latest reports are that the Iranian government will not hand over the "black boxes" (=flight data recorders) from the crashed plane to either Boeing or America. Iran's semi-official news agency quoted the head of Iran's civil aviation organization as saying it was not clear which country Iran would send the black boxes to for analysis, but it would not give them to Boeing, which is based in the United States, a country with which Iran has no diplomatic relations. What does that tell you?

MH370: "Third party interference" (= hijacking?) can't be ruled out

Walt is still following the investigation into what happened to Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, which disappeared somewhere over -- or into -- the Indian Ocean on 8 March 2014. Today, investigators released yet another report on their findings, which so far have amounted to, errr, just a tad more than nothing. Today's report says the controls of the Boeing 777 were likely "deliberately manipulated" to take it off course, but they were not able to determine who was responsible.

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.

Aussies foil Islamic terrorist plot to bring down an airliner

Walt takes off his hat -- the one with the corks dangling from the rim -- to the Australian rozzers (= police) and government for their candour in saying, right off the bat, that they believe "Islamic-inspired terrorism" is behind the plot to bring down an airplane, foiled by the arrest of four men in raids on Sydney homes this weekend.

Aussie Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said that security has been increased at Sydney Airport since Thursday because of the plot. "I can report last night that there has been a major joint counterterrorism operation to disrupt a terrorist plot to bring down an airplane," he told reporters. "The operation is continuing."

Federal Police Commissioner Andrew Colvin said he didn't yet have a lot of detail on the specifics of the attack, the location and timing. He could say only that "in recent days, law enforcement has been become aware of information that suggested some people in Sydney were planning to commit a terrorist attack using an improvised device." But, when asked if ISIS was behind the plot, Mr Colvin was politically incorrect enough to say, "We believe it's Islamic-inspired terrorism."

AP quoted Greg Barton, a "security expert" with Deakin University in Melbourne, as saying that the first plot to target aircraft in Australia, which is the highest aspiration of many extremists, was a "pretty big threshold moment." He went on to say that the plotters were apparently making a peroxide-based explosive device rather than using nitrate-based chemicals that can be detected by airport security swab tests.

Islamic fanatic Salman Abedi used a peroxide-based explosive, triacetone triperoxide, better known as TATP, to kill 22 concert-goers in Manchester, UK, just over two months ago. According to Prof. Barton, "TATP is called 'Mother of Satan' because it often kills the bomb maker because it's very unstable as it's mixed. But if it's mixed well, it can be very potent and a small amount can be enough to bring an aircraft down if it's done very, very expertly."

The plan most likely was to take the explosive on board in carry-on luggage unless there was a baggage handler involved who could ensure that a stowed bomb exploded near the fuselage where it would be most damaging. This may be the method used to cause the crash of Egyptian Airlines flight MS804 in May of 2016. French investigators called it an accident, but Walt suggests taking their findings cum grano salis. See "MS804: Where there's smoke there's fire", WWW 21/5/16.

Names of the four Mohammeds ["men", shurely! Ed.] arrested (but not yet charged) have yet to be released. Walt presumes they are, at this very moment, "helping police with their investigations". May I suggest that before the coppers put the rubber hoses away, they ask the detainees what they know about MS804, and, while they're at it, MH370. Sooner or later, the pieces of the Islamic jigsaw puzzle must fit together!

"Experts" admit looking in the wrong place for MH370

Looks like this second-last week of 2016 is going to be the biggest newsweek -- not to be confused with the useless magazine of the same name -- of the year. It's only Tuesday and so far we've got four Islamic terrorist attacks, the election of Donald Trump by the Electoral College [not really news. Ed.] and now... wait for it... confirmation of what Walt has been saying for well over a year: The "experts" conducting the search for Malaysian Airlines MH370 have been looking in the wrong place!

That's right, folks. You read it here as early as 18 December 2014 ("Just fancy that!"), and even before! (Click here to see all of Walt's posts on MH370.) For two years, in spite of questions raised by my goodself and numerous other sceptics, the Australian-led search team have been looking for debris from the missing B-777 in a remote patch of the Indian Ocean west of Australia. Today, at last, the sleuths made what was surely a painful admission: they've probably been looking in the wrong place. Probably? Hah! Definitely is the correct word. And I have no hesitation in saying: I told you so!

The latest analysis by a team of international investigators concluded the vanished aircraft is "highly unlikely" to be in the current search zone and may instead be in a region farther north. Since the plane disappeared in March 2014, the "experts" have analyzed a series of exchanges between the aircraft and a satellite to estimate a probable crash site somewhere in a vast arc of ocean in the southeastern part of the Indian Ocean. A deep-sea search of a tens of thousands of square miles of water along the arc came up empty.

To make matters worse, as Walt told you last May ("MH370: 5 pieces now, all in 'the wrong place'"), pieces of debris kept turning up on shores at the western end of the Indian Ocean, in such places as Madagascar, Réunion, Mozambique and South Africa. To elucidate the fuzzification, the "experts" went back over the satellite data and did a drift analysis of the (by now) more than 20 items of debris likely to have come from the plane. The analysis, based on where the items washed up and when, suggested the debris originated somewhere "farther north".

The report identifies a 25,000 square kilometre area to the north of the current search zone as the most likely place where MH370 hit the water, the report said. The investigators concluded with "a high degree of confidence" that the plane is not in the current search area, and that the new area needs to be searched.

So will they extend the search to that area, beyond the planned completion date of 31 December? Errr, no. Australia’s transport minister, Darren Chester, who has to wear this one, suggested the analysis wasn't specific enough to justify continuing the hunt. In other words: show us where it is, and we'll have a look. Besides, there's no more money. So that's it, then. MH370 and over 200 pax and crew can rest undisturbed in their watery grave. Let's move on to other things that are less likely to prove embarrassing for all concerned.

Latest on MS804: Explosion theory looks more likely

Early on Thursday, this Egyptair Airbus A320-232, registration number SU-GCC, was en route from Paris to Cairo with 66 people aboard when it vanished from radar. The plane was last "seen" by Greek radar. The Greek defence minister said the plane turned 90 degrees, then 360 degrees, before plummeting into the Mediterranean sea.

Yesterday, an Egyptian aviation official contradicted the Greek report. Ehab Azmy, who is head of Egypt's state-run provider of air navigation services, told AP that the plane had been flying at its normal height of 37,000 feet before dropping off the radar. It was not observed, he said, to swerve and change direction before it disappeared. The reason for the discrepancy between the Greek and the Egyptian aviation official's accounts of the crash is not clear, and neither Egyptair nor the Egyptian Ministry of Civil Aviation have commented on the final movements of the aircraft.

Greek aviation officials had said air traffic controllers spoke to the pilot when he entered Greek airspace and everything appeared normal. They tried to contact him again at 02:27 Cairo time, as the plane was set to enter Egyptian airspace, but "despite repeated calls, the aircraft did not respond." Last week, the Aviation Herald reported that smoke detectors went off in the plane's toilet and electrical systems three minutes before it disappeared.

As reported here yesterday, a number of messages were transmitted by the plane's ACARS system, which sends short transmissions from the aircraft to receivers on the ground, before it disappeared. Ed. has sourced the actual texts. Time stamps are in "Zulu time", that is GMT, two hours behind Cairo time.

00:26Z 3044 ANTI ICE R WINDOW
00:26Z 561200 R SLIDING WINDOW SENSOR
00:26Z 2600 SMOKE LAVATORY SMOKE
00:27Z 2600 AVIONICS SMOKE
00:28Z 561100 R FIXED WINDOW SENSOR
00:29Z 2200 AUTO FLT FCU 2 FAULT
00:29Z 2700 F/CTL SEC 3 FAULT

I wrote yesterday of the increasing speculation that the ACARS signals indicated that a bomb or incendiary device had exploded, affecting the right side of the aircraft. This morning we have an initial assessment from an Egyptian forensics official that human remains retrieved from the crash site suggest that there was an explosion on board the plane, although no traces of explosives have been detected.

The official based his assessment on the small size of body parts so far recovered from the Mediterranean Sea, where MS804 crashed. 23 bags of body parts have been collected since Sunday. "The size of the remains points towards an explosion," the official said. "The biggest part was the size of a palm."

However, another senior forensics official said only a tiny number of remains had arrived so far, and it was too early to specify whether there had been an explosion aboard. Investigators rely on debris, bags and clothes as well as chemical analysis to detect the imprints of an explosion, according to people involved in two previous probes where deliberate blasts were involved.

Supposing the cause of the crash really was an explosion. Who do you think might be responsible? Click here to read "MS804: 'We will bring this plane down'", WWW 23/5/16.

MS804: Where there's smoke, there's fire

We're starting to get a look at some of the debris that has been recovered from the Mediterranean Sea, about 250 miles north of Alexandria, Egypt. (We're not talking about the lifejackets recovered just after the disappearance of Egyptair MS804 near the Greek island of Crete.) Pictures circulating on the internet show some rags of clothing and a life vest, which do not appear to be scorched or burned. The absence of burn marks suggests that the Airbus 320 broke up either before or when it hit the water. But there's little more to go on, as only a few pieces of debris have so far been recovered.

Meanwhile, Egyptian officials are investigating reports that smoke detectors went off shortly before the plane crashed. And French say there were indications of a fire on board. Sebastien Barthe, a spokesthingy for the French air accident investigation service, says messages sent by the plane's automatic detection system suggest smoke was detected in multiple places on board the aircraft before it went down. Messages of that type usually indicate the start of a fire, he said, but anything beyond that is "pure conjecture" at this point.

The respected industry website The Aviation Herald has published automatic alerts transmitted by the A-320. In short succession, they indicate the opening of a cockpit window, smoke in a lavatory and smoke underneath the flight deck in the electronics bay. Further messages also suggest problems with the flight controls computer.

"Over a period of three minutes, the aircraft system shut down," said the editor of Aviation Security International."That's starting to indicate that it probably wasn't a hijacking. There probably wasn't a struggle in the cockpit. It's more likely a fire on board," he said. "Now, whether that was a technical fire, a short circuit, or whether it was because a bomb went off on board, we don't know."

So it's still much too soon to say what happened. It could be something as simple as some simpleton having a smoke in the lavatory and causing a fire. Or it could be a terrorist -- not likely a Christian or a Jew -- setting fire to his shoes or underpants. Stay tuned.

UPDATED: MS804, another MH370?

This is developing news, so I'll update this post tonight or tomorrow, but want to put out a first thought.

AP reports that an EgyptAir Airbus 320, operating flight MS804 from Paris to Cairo with 66 pax and crew on board, crashed in the Mediterranean early this morning. French President François Hollande told the mdia, "Unfortunately the information we have...confirms to us that the plane came down and is lost. No hypothesis can be ruled out, nor can any be favoured over another."

Egypt's Civil Aviation Minister, Sherif Fathy, takes a different position. While not yet confirming that the plane crashed, he said that the possibility of a terror attack as the cause of the plane's disappearance from the radar screens is "stronger" than a technical failure.

Here's what we know so far. Greek Defence Minister Panos Kammenos said the plane was about 10 to 15 miles inside Egyptian airspaqce when it made two abrupt turns and suddenly lost altitude before disappearing from radar. "It turned 90 degrees left and then a 360-degree turn toward the right, dropping from 38,000 to 15,000 feet and then it was lost at about 10,000 feet."

Haven't we seen this movie before, just over two years ago? Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 was heading northeast towards Beijing when it abruptly made a 90-degree turn to the west-northwest, then (according to the searchers' hypothesis), made a further turn towards the southwest and disappeared into the Indian Ocean somewhere off the west coast of Australia.

Regular readers of WWW will know that Walt does not agree with the theory that MH370, whether controlled or uncontrolled, slowly flew into the sea. But supposing the "experts" are correct, that's what seems to have happened to MS804. The search for wreckage is under way. Stay tuned.

UPDATED at 1225. A couple of lifejackets and some other debris has been found off the coast of the Greek island of Crete. Given that Crete is some distance north of the last known location of MS804, Walt thinks it's more likely this junk came from boats carrying "refugees". More later.

In the event of a water landing...

Even as I write, Agent 78 is about six miles over the Pacific Ocean, from whence she sends an invitation to consider the words of the pre-flight safety demonstration:

A "water landing"? Could there be any phrase (Agent 78 asks) more oxymoronical than "water landing"? Indeed. But, dear flyers, be reassured, there is help... right under your bum...

VIDEO: American airliner downed by Islamic terrorists?

WHOA! Hold `er Newt! This is not a new story. Rather, it's a look at something that happened 30 years and 3 days ago -- the biggest airplane crash (by number of casualties) ever to occur on Canadian soil. Walt presents it to make the point that radical Islamic terrorism -- the phrase the Prez can't say -- is not a new thing. The jihadists have been waging war on us for decades.

Just yesterday Egyptian authorities released their report into the crash of Metrojet flight 7K9268, which disintegrated over the Sinai at the beginning of November. The Egyptians persist in their assertion that the Russian plane was not brought down by Islamic terrorists. However, the Russians and the American military believe that an ISIS affiliate did it. And it wouldn't be the first time.

Rewind to 12 December 1985. A DC8-63F operating as Flight 1285 by Arrow Air, under contract to the US Army, takes off just before dawn from Gander, Newfoundland, after a refuelling stop of about 90 minutes. It is carrying a crew of 8 and 248 pax -- US servicemen going home to the 101st Airborne base at Fort Campbell KY after a tour of duty in Lebanon.

The weather is misty and cool, close to the freezing point. The flight engineer does a walk-around but apparently sees nothing that would make him call for de-icing. The plane taxis down Runway 04, lifts off but fails to gain altitude. Seconds later it crashes into the forest and burns, about half a mile from the end of the runway, killing all aboard.

Initial reports from the scene include eyewitness accounts of an explosion and fire before the plane hit the trees. Not a day later, all mention of fire has disappeared from news reports, and the probable cause is put down to icing.

The crucial evidence that could have pointed to the cause should have been found in the so-called "black boxes" which were recovered intact. However, investigators said, the Cockpit Voice Recorder was defective and failed to record anything. And, unfortunately, the Flight Data Recorder was an older model that only recorded four parameters. It was scheduled for replacement a few weeks later.

The accident (???) was investigated by the Canadian Aviation Safety Board, which found that on Flight 1285's approach to Gander -- no more than two hours before the crash -- precipitation conditions were favourable for the formation of ice on the aircraft's wings. After landing, the CASB said, it continued to be exposed to "freezing and frozen precipitation capable of producing roughening on the wing upper surface" in addition to the freezing temperature. They also found that prior to takeoff the aircraft had not been de-iced.

Five out of nine members of the CASB signed the final report. In the Probable Cause section, they wrote:
The Canadian Aviation Safety Board was unable to determine the exact sequence of events which led to this accident. The Board believes, however, that the weight of evidence supports the conclusion that, shortly after lift-off, the aircraft experienced an increase in drag and reduction in lift which resulted in a stall at low altitude from which recovery was not possible. The most probable cause of the stall was determined to be ice contamination on the leading edge and upper surface of the wing. Other possible factors such as a loss of thrust from the number four engine and inappropriate take-off reference speeds may have compounded the effects of the contamination.

No fewer than four members of the CASB disagreed. In an unusual and controversial move, they issued a minority opinion asserting that there was no evidence presented proving that ice had been present on leading edges such as the wings. And, they speculated, "An in-flight fire that may have resulted from detonations of undetermined origin brought about catastrophic system failures."

The five-to-four opinion caused so much debate that the Canadian government appointed Willard Estey, a retired judge of the Supreme Court of Canada, to review the findings. Nearly four years later, he ruled that the available evidence did not support either conclusion.

Two years after that, in 1991, Les Filotas, one of the four CASB board members who dissented in the final report, published Improbable Cause, an exhaustive argument for the opinion that a possible in-flight explosion doomed the aircraft.

Mr. Filotas demanded that attention be paid to a call made on the day of the crash to a French news agency in Beirut -- the point of origin of the Flight 1285. According to United Press International, "Hours after the crash the Islamic Jihad – a Shiite Muslim extremist group – claimed it destroyed the plane to prove [its] ability to strike at the Americans anywhere." As noted above, the jihadists' claim was dismissed by both the American and Canadian governments within 24 hours.

20/20 revisited the story in April 2014. Here's the video, running time 30 minutes.



If you need more, click here to see "Arrow Air Flight 1285: unanswered questions", CBC-TV's report featuring interviews with Les Filotas and others, aired last night.

7K9268: US military intelligence believes ISIS did it

Following up on "Metrojet crash in Sinai caused by IS militants?", posted here on Monday, we see now a lot more photos of charred debris from Metrojet flight 7K9268, indicating that there was an explosion and fire of some kind. This is not the sort of thing you would find if, say, the tail fell off, as initial reports suggested. The question now is, what caused the explosion?

American military intelligence [No remarks about oxymorons, please. Ed.] told us, a couple of days ago, that it couldn't be the work of ISIS or any of its affiliates, because they don't have the missile technology to hit a plane flying at 31,000 feet. In reply, Islamic extremists said -- Walt translates from the Arabic -- "Who said anything about missiles? We just said we brought it down!"

Well, an unnamed US official told CNN, they must have planted a bomb inside the plane then. "There is a definite feeling it was an explosive device planted in luggage or somewhere on the plane," were his exact words. "It is believed to be an explosion but what kind is not clear. There is an examination of the sand at the crash site to try and determine if it was a bomb." Walt wonders if there is some type of explosive device other than a bomb!

That ISIS did it, in some way, is only a suspicion in the minds of the US military at this point. You can almost hear them saying, "Yeah, that's it... ISIS did it... yeah... They probably did MH370 too!"

Metrojet crash in Sinai caused by IS militants?

First the facts. On Saturday morning, Metrojet flight 7K9268 crashed into the Sinai Peninsula. The flight’s planned route was from Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg, Russia. Click here to see the flight path, altitude and speed changes acquired by Flightradar24. All three of their receivers stopped receiving data at exactly the same time, 0413 GMT.

So what happened? The jetliner -- a leased Airbus A-321 operated by Russian airline Kogalymavia -- apparently disintegrated while at cruising altitude. It either exploded or was blown apart or just... broke up. Within hours, a militant group affiliated to Islamic State in Egypt claimed responsibility for bringing down the jet, but Egypt and Russia disputed the claim, suggesting militants in northern Sinai, where Egypt has been fighting an Islamic insurgency, did not have the weaponry to hit a flight at 31,000 feet. Pictures of the debris show no signs of burn or scorch marks.

The airliner's black boxes have been recovered, but have not yet been analyzed. Yesterday, however, an official of Kogalymavia put the disaster down to "external activity". Alexander Smirnov, the deputy director of the airline, ruled out a technical fault and pilot error. "The only [explanation] for the plane to have been destroyed in mid-air can be specific impact, purely mechanical, physical influence on the aircraft," he said. "There is no such combination of failures of systems which could have led to the plane disintegrating in the air."

A regional expert on Sinai security said on Sunday that the militant group’s statement "said they were responsible for downing the plane, not shooting it down." Zack Gold told the Guardian, "A legitimate ISIS-supporting account in Sinai said, 'Why is everyone talking about shooting it down, why is no one talking about a bomb or suicide bomber on board.'"

He explained that if a bomb had been planted on the plane, it would suggest security systems at Sharm el-Sheikh airport had been infiltrated or compromised, which would raise a whole range of other questions. But, he added, there has been nothing to support the claim so far, such as a pre-mission video of a suicide attacker. "The group does not have a history of major fabrications, but at the same time it's curious that they would make this claim without providing any kind of evidence. They have military capabilities, but to carry out this kind of terrorism [on a plane] they would have to display organization they haven’t shown [before]."

If it turns out that the IS affiliate in Egypt is indeed responsible, what does that portend for the American-led "war on terror" in the Middle East? Will the Russians, now bombing the jihadis in Syria, take the fight to the jihadis in Egypt? And which side will the USA take? Stay tuned.

MH370: Searching "pings" area turns up nothing. Surprised?

The search for the Malaysian Airlines B-777 operating on flight MH370, which vanished without a trace on March 8th, hasn't received a lot of media attention lately. The reason? Because there hasn't been anything to tell. Until today.

A robot submarine was searching the floor of the Indian Ocean west of Perth, Australia, in an area where acoustic signals thought linked to the missing plane's black box had been detected. Today, Australian officials in charge of the search said that the little sub had found nothing. Rien. Nada. No wreckage, no debris, no bodies -- nothing...at...all.

Bluefin-21 swept over 850 square kilometres of the seabed, but came up empty. The Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre (JACC) stated, "Bluefin-21 completed its last mission searching the remaining areas in the vicinity of the acoustic signals detected in early April by the towed pinger locator. The data collected on yesterday's mission has been analysed. As a result, the JACC can advise that no signs of aircraft debris have been found by the autonomous underwater vehicle since it joined the search effort.

"The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) has advised that the search in the vicinity of the acoustic detections can now be considered complete," the statement continued, "and in its professional judgement, the area can now be discounted as the final resting place of MH370."

That's hardly surprising, since (IWHO) [In Walt's Humble Opinion. Ed.] they're looking in the wrong place! Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said the search had been based on "the best information available at the time". [Did he say, "Truss me?" Ed.

Evidently the JACC failed to read WWW, wherein I stated quite clearly (as always) that the place to look was in the northern part of the Indian Ocean, west of the Kra Isthmus -- somewhere between the Malaysian peninsula and Diego Garcia. See:
"MH370: 1 + 3 = ??? Walt puts two possibilities together"
"For the second time: Diego Garcia is a key piece of the MH370 puzzle"
"MH370: Suppose it was a test..."

You think this is just another crackpot conspiracy theory? You think there's no reason to suspect the US military? Think about this. The governments and JACC officials doing most of the talking about the mysterious disappearance of MH370 have been Australian and Malaysian. Americans have been all but invisible. Today, however, Michael Dean, the US Navy's deputy director of ocean engineering, told CNN (according to a BBC report) that the acoustic signals probably came from some man-made source other than the aircraft's black boxes.

"Our best theory at this point is that [the pings were] likely some sound produced by the ship...or within the electronics of the towed pinger locator," was how he explained it. "Always your fear any time you put electronic equipment in the water is that if any water gets in and grounds or shorts something out, that you could start producing sound." In other words, the electronic search device might well have been listening to itself!

Why, then, did the US Navy describe Dean's comments as "speculative and premature"? Did Dean know all along that looking for the wreckage in the area where the pings were heard was pointless? Did the US Navy mean that Dean should STFU? What does the US Navy know that the JACC should know, but apparently doesn't? Stay tuned.