generalspeaking

Thursday, May 24, 2018

Puzzles, Mysteries, Intrigues

"He was killing himself."
"Unfortunately, he was killing everyone else on board. And he did it deliberately."
Larry Vance, veteran aircraft investigator, Canada

"Put bluntly, the MH370 'crash' is undoubtedly a crime of the unlawful killing of 238 innocent people."
"[Clinging to the MH370 accident theory akin to] complicity of a crime."
"The Australian government has also been remiss, they should have put pressure on the Australian Transport Safety Bureau to listen, and act, on professional advice from the aviation community."
Mike Keane, former military pilot

A Royal New Zealand Air Force P-3 searches the Indian Ocean off the coast of Western Australia for debris after the Malaysian airliner vanished. (Kim Christian/AP)

"What they fail to understand is that while you don an oxygen mask and prevent the worst of the hypoxia situation, you are flying an aircraft at 40,000 feet."
"You are taking an aircraft from sea level to [Australia's highest mountain] Mount Kosciuszko in 20 minutes, then you are taking it over the course of a couple of minutes to the height of Mount Everest plus 1,000 feet. You'll get decompression sickness too."
"During the climb-out [on a cargo plane 25 years ago in the U.S.] the flight crew was unable to pressurize the aircraft and the captain elected to proceed with the flight."
"The crew donned their oxygen masks and shortly thereafter the captain became incapacitated from decompression sickness. The first officer took command and they landed the plane."
Peter Foley, spokesperson, Australian Transport Safety Bureau

"Captain Zaharie dipped his wing to see Penang, his hometown. If you look very carefully, you can see it's actually a turn to the left, and then start a long turn to the right. And then [he does] another left turn."
"So I spent a long time thinking about what this could be, what technical reason is there for this, and, after two months, three months thinking about this, I finally got the answer; Someone was looking out the window."
"It might be a long, emotional goodbye. Or a short, emotional goodbye to his hometown."
Simon Hardy, senior pilot and instructor on the Boeing 777

Malaysia Airlines MH370 went missing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Photograph: Laurent Errera

The investigators with the Australian Transport Safety Bureau are certain that their theory about the mysterious downing of the never-found Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, is correct, that the entire disaster was an unplanned and horribly unfortunate accident. It's neat and final and they have no wish to have it re-opened, scrutinized and open their minds to the clarifying findings of other seasoned experts whose investigation has led to other explanations.

The most certain of which appears to be that the airlines captain of the flight, Zaharie Ahmad Shah's personal life was in shambles and he was depressed, finding the meaning of life eluding him leading to his wish to end it all. And though there are innumerable ways in which that ending could have been accomplished, it seems that this man did not wish to depart life singly, on his own, but planned instead for a spectacular ending that would take the lives of 239 people, none of whom beside himself would have any inkling that this flight would be their last.

A Canadian professional air transport investigative team of which Mr. Vance is a part has written a book detailing their minute examination of all records and evidence and interviews to construct their theory that this was a suicide and a mass murder combined; that one man deciding to end his life decided at the same time to deprive 238 other people who had no share in his feelings or his thoughts of theirs as well. What kind of satisfaction that might serve up to someone launching himself on a death mission will never be known.

The Boeing 777 aircraft took off from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, headed for Beijing, China

The man at the controls of Flight MH370 conspired with himself to murder a planeload of passengers and crew. The official theory is that the captain, co-pilot other crew members and passengers were all unconscious and the plane, uncontrolled, simply ran out of fuel, plunging into the Indian Ocean. And then the Australian version of 60 Minutes invited airplane investigators who had launched their own research project to come up with a different version. to appear on the show and discuss the situation.

They posit that the veteran pilot of MH370 depressurized the plane himself, turning off its transponder and while everyone was affected by oxygen deprivation and was unconscious, he was not, and carried out his nefarious plot to ferry the plane and passengers to a watery grave. The question of how it might be possible that a modern aircraft tracked by radar and satellites could disappear is at the crux of the matter. And their theory is that Zaharie simply wanted it to disappear and engineered it to be so.

Peter Foley with the ATSB, spoke to lawmakers in Canberra at a hearing, that he has serious doubts that the pilot could have plotted suicide and murder given the difficulty of flying a depressurized plane. He had, as it happened, led the ATSB's search for MH370 that had failed despite all efforts and grim determination. His disinclination to give the new theory any credit aside, he did concede that the suicide-by-pilot theory was, nonetheless "plausible". The ATSB had been apprised by experts supporting the "controlled ditching" theory.