If this is true, it's hard to believe somebody hasn't at least been checking along the route the pilot flew in his homemade flight simulator. Then again, it goes against the narrative . . . .
New York [magazine] has obtained a confidential document from the Malaysian police investigation into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 that shows that the plane's captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, conducted a simulated flight deep into the remote southern Indian Ocean less than a month before the plane vanished under uncannily similar circumstances. The revelation, which Malaysia withheld from a lengthy public report on the investigation, is the strongest evidence yet that Zaharie made off with the plane in a premeditated act of mass murder-suicide.
The document presents the findings of the Malaysian police's investigation into Zaharie. It reveals that after the plane disappeared in March of 2014, Malaysia turned over to the FBI hard drives that Zaharie used to record sessions on an elaborate home-built flight simulator. The FBI was able to recover six deleted data points that had been stored by the Microsoft Flight Simulator X program in the weeks before MH370 disappeared, according to the document. Each point records the airplane's altitude, speed, direction of flight, and other key parameters at a given moment. The document reads, in part:
Based on the Forensics Analysis conducted on the 5 HDDs obtained from the Flight Simulator from MH370 Pilot's house, we found a flight path, that lead to the Southern Indian Ocean, among the numerous other flight paths charted on the Flight Simulator, that could be of interest, as contained in Table 2.
Taken together, these points show a flight that departs Kuala Lumpur, heads northwest over the Malacca Strait, then turns left and heads south over the Indian Ocean, continuing until fuel exhaustion over an empty stretch of sea.
Search officials believe MH370 followed a similar route, based on signals the plane transmitted to a satellite after ceasing communications and turning off course. The actual and the simulated flights were not identical, though, with the simulated endpoint some 900 miles from the remote patch of southern ocean area where officials believe the plane went down. Based on the data in the document, here's a map of the simulated flight compared to the route searchers believe the lost airliner followed:
[Graphic of flight plan at link.]
Rumors have long circulated that the FBI had discovered such evidence, but Malaysian officials made no mention of the find in the otherwise detailed report into the investigation, "Factual Information," that was released on the first anniversary of the disappearance.
The credibility of the rumors was further undermined by the fact that many media accounts mentioned "a small runway on an unnamed island in the far southern Indian Ocean," of which there are none.
From the beginning, Zaharie has been a primary suspect, but until now no hard evidence implicating him has emerged. The "Factual Information" report states, "The Captain's ability to handle stress at work and home was good. There was no known history of apathy, anxiety, or irritability. There were no significant changes in his life style, interpersonal conflict or family stresses." After his disappearance, friends and family members came forward to described Zaharie as an affable, helpful family man who enjoyed making instructional YouTube videos for home DIY projects -- hardly the typical profile of a mass murderer.
The newly unveiled documents, however, suggest Malaysian officials have suppressed at least one key piece of incriminating information. This is not entirely surprising: There is a history in aircraft investigations of national safety boards refusing to believe that their pilots could have intentionally crashed an aircraft full of passengers. After EgyptAir 990 went down near Martha's Vineyard in 1999, for example, Egyptian officials angrily rejected the U.S. National Transport Safety Board finding that the pilot had deliberately steered the plane into the sea. Indonesian officials likewise rejected the NTSB finding that the 1997 crash of SilkAir 185 was an act of pilot suicide.
Previous press accounts suggest that Australian and U.S. officials involved in the MH370 investigation have long been more suspicious of Zaharie than their Malaysian counterparts. In January, Byron Bailey wrote in The Australian: "Several months after the MH370 disappearance I was told by a government source that the FBI had recovered from Zaharie's home computer deleted information showing flight plan waypoints ... my source ... left me with the impression that the FBI were of the opinion that Zaharie was responsible for the crash."
However, it's not entirely clear that the recovered flight-simulator data is conclusive. The differences between the simulated and actual flights are significant, most notably in the final direction in which they were heading. It's possible that their overall similarities are coincidental -- that Zaharie didn't intend his simulator flight as a practice run but had merely decided to fly someplace unusual.
Today, ministers from Malaysia, China, and Australia announced that once the current seabed search for MH370’s wreckage is completed, they will suspend further efforts to find the plane. The search was originally expected to wrap up this month, but stormy weather has pushed back the anticipated completion date to this fall. So far, 42,000 square miles have been covered at a cost of more than $130 million, with another 4,000 square miles to go.
"I must emphasise that this does not mean we are giving up on the search for MH370," Malaysian Transport minister Liow Tiong Lai said. Officials have previously stated that if they received "credible new information that leads to the identification of a specific location of the aircraft," the search could be expanded.
But some, including relatives of the missing passengers, believe that that evidentiary threshold has already been past. Recent months have seen the discovery of more than a dozen pieces of suspected aircraft debris, which analyzed collectively could narrow down where the plane went down. (The surprising absence of such wreckage for more than a year left me exploring alternative explanations that ultimately proved unnecessary.) The fact that Zaharie apparently practiced flying until he ran out of fuel over the remote southern Indian Ocean suggests the current search is on the right track -- and that another year of hunting might be a worthwhile investment.
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#3
"The Captain's ability to handle stress at work and home was good. There was no known history of apathy, anxiety, or irritability. There were no significant changes in his life style, interpersonal conflict or family stresses."
That doesn't match what I heard from a VERY reliable source. Just the opposite as matter of fact. Pilot's personal life WAS in turmoil. Wife was fixin to divorce him and he had..performance issues w/girlfriend. He was also distraught over the ongoing political drama in MY as a Anwar Ibrahim supporter. Lastly - pilot had a very predictable pre-flight routine. He would arrive, do flight plan, pre-flight A/C, and smoke 1 x cigarette (numerous videos confirm). On this flight, after the pre-flight, he chained smoke about 8 cigarettes and looked visually upset - again caught on video. FBI thinks pilot is good for it.
Posted by: Bangkok Billy ||
07/23/2016 17:40 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Wife was fixin to divorce him and he had..performance issues w/girlfriend.
Only a Mohammedan would see this as anything less than a wonderful opportunity.
[Inquirer] There is enough land in the Philippines for all, including the Bangsamoro people, President Duterte said on Friday.
Praising Moro Islamic Liberation Front leader Al Haj Murad for pursuing peace talks, Duterte said that he was ready to give the MILF the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) it wanted but without the contentious provisions deemed unconstitutional.
The proposed BBL, written by negotiators after the signing of a peace agreement in 2014, would establish an autonomous Bangsamoro region in Mindanao. But the investigation of a battle between elite police forces and Moro rebels in Mamasapano, Maguindanao, in January last year that left 44 police commandos, 17 MILF fighters and three civilians dead delayed BBL deliberations in Congress, and the legislature adjourned in February without passing the proposed charter.
Duterte noted that there were warnings of a return to war if Congress did not pass the proposed BBL. The MILF stood by its promise to talk, he said.
Duterte declared, "I am ready to give the BBL minus the constitutional issues that are contentious and cannot be solved by an agreement between me [and the MILF]."
One such issue is the proposed regional armed forces and regional police, which breaks the chain of command and cannot be allowed, Duterte said. But he added he was willing to grant the unchallenged provisions of the BBL, and the same goes for Nur Misuari's Moro National Liberation Front faction, which signed a peace agreement in 1996.
Duterte said, "Even if you give them that part of the territory (the proposed Bangsamoro region), there’s enough land in the Philippines. The Philippines is vast. As long as there is no fighting, everybody can be accommodated, and we can establish industrial zones."
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[IBT] The Malaysian government has begun negotiations with the kidnappers of five of its sailors, deputy home minister Datuk Nur Jazlan Mohamed has said. Mohamed added that the government had confirmed that the Abu Sayyaf Group was behind this latest abduction.
The Abu Sayyaf was reported to have abducted these five sailors from a tugboat in the bay of Dent Haven off Lahad Datu in the Malaysian state of Sabah on Monday.
Mohamed said the Malaysian government had taken over the negotiations to release the five abducted sailors after their kidnappers contacted their families. He said, "We know the people involved and we are negotiating with them. I hope any discussions made would not be highlighted in the media or any other form; what is more important is to secure the release of the victims."
Continued on Page 47
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Inquirer] There is enough land in the Philippines for all, including the Bangsamoro people, President Duterte said on Friday.
