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.

Could MH370 have been hacked? It's possible!

To no-one's great surprise -- certainly not mine -- the latest search for the remains of the Malaysian Airlines B-777 used on flight MH370, which disappeared on 8 March 2014, has come up with nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch. How could it be otherwise, when (as I've said repeatedly, as in "New search for MH370 - Walt's advice on how to get answers", WWW 6/1/18), the searchers are almost certainly looking in the wrong place!

News.com.au reported last week that although they lost out on the multimillion-dollar finder's fee, the underwater exploration company Ocean Infinity is showing no sign of giving up on the lost plane. Even though the search has been officially called off (again), the Norwegian research vessel MV Seabed Constructor is continuing the hunt on its own, and is now looking in "previously uncharted areas".

Today, instead of talking about where MH370 wound up, let's talk about why it dove into the Indian Ocean (if indeed it did). The leading theory at the moment is that the pilot was suicidal, and flew the aircraft into the briny deep, after depressurizing the cabin to kill all the pax. Plausible, but not the only possibility.

Think about this. Almost anything that's connected to the internet can be hacked. (Look up "internet of things" on Google.) Things connected to the internet include airline operatins and... wait for it... flight controls. That's why airline ops occasionally grind to a halt "because the computer's down."

Thus the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported in government documents, obtained by Motherboard, that it's "only a matter of time" before cyber criminals are able to hack and remotely control an airplane.

The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), a Department of Energy government lab, warned in a recent presentation that the "potential of catastrophic disaster is inherently greater in an airborne vehicle." The presentation, about methods used to identify vulnerabilities in commercial aircraft, expanded on research done by the DHS last year, in which they successfully hacked a Boeing 737 by remote means.

Greg Phillips, head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Royal Military College of Canada, told Global News that the cybersecurity of commercial aircraft is indeed a major concern for the industry. "Any significant systems that involve human life are potentially targets for hacking," he said, "and that’s everything from the power grid to the water supply to the sewer to any kind of transportation, so aircraft, rail, etc. They’re all potentially vulnerable because they’re all controlled by computers, so yeah, we do need to worry about them."

A spokesthingy for Airbus Industries commented, "This is an industry issue, and one that we take seriously. However, we do not see any way for this to happen today, and we are constantly reviewing our systems and security procedures to continue to protect against potential cyber-attacks."

Is it possible, then, for cyber criminals to remotely control airplanes today? Probably not, but, Mr Phillips said, it can't be ruled out entirely. "You’d have to be able to communicate with the aircraft either on the ground or while it's in flight, and ideally what you'd want to be able to do is communicate with it in real time so you could tell it to do something like go into a power dive right now and kill everybody."

Say wut?! Isn't that the latest theory on what happened to MH370, which numbered among its passengers scores of Chinese IT professionals? Errr, yes... but of course we're only speculating here. It's equally possible (IMHO) that MH370 was shot down, accidentally or on purpose, by a missile launched by Indian or American armed forces, the latter operating out of the US base at Diego Garcia. Who knows....

Aussie officials now say maybe MH370 WAS hijacked

When last we heard from the geniuses spearheading the investigation into the disappearance of Malaysian airlines flight MH370, they weren't buy into suggestions by Walt (and others) that the plane might have been hijacked by persons unknown and flown to a place unknown (but really, Diego Garcia).

Instead, the official line as of two weeks ago was that everyone on board somehow fell asleep, and the plane flew by itself into a "water landing" in the far southern reaches of the Indian Ocean -- a long way from Diego Garcia -- where it would likely be found, errr, sometime in the future. This theory was based on an educated guess by Inmarsat, with which the Australian Transport Safety Board more or less agreed.

Today, in a stunning 179-degree turn, the ATSB issued a new report by the air crash investigators which found the jumbo jet suffered a mysterious power outage after taking off from Kuala Lumpur.
Power supplying equipment on board missing flight MH370 may have been tampered with, they said. Cutting the power could have rendered the flight invisible to radar, including that operated by Inmarsat, which makes the Inmarsat theory a little less than sound, to say the least.

Aviation experts have now concluded the power cut was a deliberate act by somebody "messing about" in the cockpit of the Boeing 777. No shit, Sherlock!

How did they figure out that the power had been cut? Because the plane made unexpected contact with a satellite about 90 minutes after it took off on March 8th -- after MH370 had turned off course from Beijing, but before it turned south toward the Southern Indian Ocean. Inmarsat now professes bafflement. Their spokesthingy told the meedja, "We cannot explain it. It's another little mystery." A master of understatement, that man!

Peter Marosszeky, of the University of Wooloomaloo [New South Wales, surely! Ed.] opined that switching off the power must have been an attempt to hijack the plane. "It would have to be a deliberate act of turning power off on certain systems on the aeroplane," he said. "The aircraft has so many backup systems. Any form of power interruption is always backed up by another system. "The person doing it would have to know what they are doing. It would have to be a deliberate act to hijack or sabotage the aircraft."

Air safety expert David Gleave, of Loughborough University [Where dat? Ed.], agreed, saying it could have been "deliberate". He told The Telegraph [Oh. UK, then. Ed.] that "A person could be messing around in the cockpit which would lead to a power interruption."It could be a deliberate act to switch off both engines for some time. By messing about within the cockpit you could switch off the power temporarily and switch it on again when you need the other systems to fly the aeroplane." See Malaysia Airline MH370: 9/11-style terror allegations resurface in case of lost plane.

Now who would have done something like that? Islamic extremists, like al-Qaeda? Tibetans or Uighurs trying to strike a blow for freedom from China? Or? Well, let us not jump to conclusions. Look in Diego Garcia!

Latest developments in the MH370 mystery

Let's be honest -- as Walt and the victims' families have been asking for weeks now -- about the search. Scores of planes and ships have been all over the southeastern part of the Indian Ocean, looking for "things" shown in several satellite images. So far they have found nothing -- rien, nada -- except garbage. Because it's our human nature to foul our own environment, the seas are full of trash, and that's what's going to turn up in the searchers' nets... especially if they're looking in the wrong place.

The lamestream media are reporting that dozens of Chinese relatives of passengers on Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 have descended on Kuala Lumpur early this morning. Why are they there? To demand proof from Malaysian authorities that the aircraft -- missing for more than three weeks -- crashed in the Indian Ocean. "Tell us the truth; show us the proof!" they cry, not unreasonably.

Walt believes the truth is out there. [Where did you get that line? Ed.] But not where the searchers are looking. The conspiracy theorists are coming out in full force now with explanations ranging from hijacking by Uighurs to abduction by aliens. Echoes of 9/11 and the Kennedy assassination are reverberating around the blogosphere.

Regular readers will know that Walt himself has thrown out some suggestions. See "MH370: Three guesses from Walt", "Where is MH370?" and "MH370: 1 + 3 = ??? Walt puts two possibilities together".

Lest you think I'm way out to lunch on the Diego Garcia connection -- "For the second time: Diego Garcia is a key piece of the MH370 puzzle" -- let me tell you that DG (as we'll call it) has been mentioned as a possibility in "Flight MH370 Found? Not Quite – Now the Real Whitewash Begins" and "Flight MH370 Is At Diego Garcia – Here’s The Proof". Google "Diego Garcia MH370" and you'll come up with at least half a dozen more pieces along the same lines. (I thought of it all by myself though!)

If the Chinese want the truth, they're asking the wrong people. The Malaysian authorities either don't know, or are saying what they're told to say by... wait for it... the US military. Information (or disinformation) has been coming from China, France, and Australia, as well as Malaysia, a staunch American ally.

But what have we heard from the country with the world's biggest network of satellites, military bases and other means to find out what really happened to MH370? Nothing -- rien, nada -- except garbage. I refer to the change of direction by the USS Kidd, which I queried on March 19th!

The Kidd had been searching to the north, more or less along the line between Malaysia and Diego Garcia, then suddenly did a 180 to the search area southwest of Perth. Was that done to throw others off the scent? Would the US Navy mislead us? Is the Pope Catholic? [There's some doubt about the last two questions. Ed.]

If the US military had nothing to do with the disappearance of MH370, why has nothing -- rien, nada -- been said by way of denial? Have the Prez and Mr. Skerry really been so preoccupied with the Ukraine that they haven't been able to comment? Walt has written to the White House requesting an explanation, but so far has received no reply.

Where is MH370?

On Friday, Walt posted three guesses as to what happened to Malaysian Airlines flight 370, which remains very much missing.

Wikipedia tells us [You can look it up. Ed.] - Diego Garcia is a tropical, footprint-shaped coral atoll located south of the equator in the central Indian Ocean. It is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT).

The United States Navy operates Naval Support Facility (NSF) Diego Garcia, a large naval ship and submarine support base, military air base [with a very long runway! Walt], communications and space-tracking facility, and an anchorage for pre-positioned military supplies for regional operations aboard Military Sealift Command ships in the lagoon.