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A Crucial Clue the MH370 Investigators Missed

32 points by tomohawk 8y ago

fouronnes3 8y ago
Article is completely unreadable on mobile due to layers of cookie consent popups and GDPR disclaimers :(
akhilcacharya 8y ago
I've been following the case since the plane was first declared missing, and Jeff Wise has been pushing the conspiracy angle for quite a while now. I'm willing to consider it, but I'm not sure if he's proposing anybody with the (absolutely immense, more-than-state-actor) means or motivation to do something like this and keep it a secret for nearly 5 years.
- ams6110 8y ago
  I was also about to post, asking about motive. What is the motive to make a 777 full of people disappear. What was on board, or who was on board, that would be worth this effort? It's pretty close to beyond belief that this was just a "test run" to prove it could be done. But either way, there's no theory on motive offered here.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    According to a conspiracy minded friend, there was a lot of gold on board that would have been well worth stealing. I’ve also seen the theory put forth that the plane was stolen in order to crash it into Ukraine, frame the Russians for shooting it down, and turn international opinion against them. (To be clear, I think both of these are completely looney tunes, but it’s what I’ve heard.)
    - ablation 8y ago
      I've never heard either of those before! Even if it was literally full of gold to its cargo capacity of 248,600 lbs with gold, that's still only in the region of $4.7 billion at current prices. Surely a drop in the ocean (no pun intended) for a nation/actor capable of carrying out such a disappearing act.
      - mikeash 8y ago
        It’s been a while, but I think he guessed the gold was worth a couple hundred million. I recall he thought it was a criminal act of great sophistication, not a government thing. But I share your doubt here.
  - losteric 8y ago
    puts on tinfoil hat - perhaps they were bait to draw an intense investigation which could be used to probe military capabilities?
ablation 8y ago
> "Whoever took MH370 was determined, aggressive, and far more sophisticated than investigators have been willing to contemplate. They have also succeeded in fooling officials, the public, and most of the press for half a decade. That’s an uncomfortable prospect, and one that many people would prefer to ignore. But if it’s true—or even possibly true—then it’s something that needs to be dealt with expeditiously. Because that could mean whoever took MH370 is still out there...and nothing whatsoever has been done to stop them." This just reads like so much conspiracy theory. I just cannot figure out the motivation behind anyone to do this, knowing what we know. Given that, the whole article just feels... thin. I know it's Jeff Wise pushing his book full of this, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised, and perhaps his well-founded take on it is in there. Perhaps not.
ggm 8y ago
Why people seek reasons beyond the two well known reasons planes fall out of the sky is beyond comprehension, except that it fits the zeitgeist of today: conspiracy theory sells more than occam's razor. Occam's razor suggests that the simpler solution would apply: It was controlled flight into terrain i.e. pilot action. The second choice after this, is a significant failure in flight. You would have to walk a long long way past this to get causal chains which made conspiracy theories the best choice, and almost every time you have to take something we know, like systemic corruption in Malaysia at all levels which makes people lie about things, and use it as a 1 == 0 rule to justify they knew about the conspiracy when a more likely answer is, they simply are lying out of policy and practice. Obviously "somebody knows more" but it will be about a very pedestrian thing like falsified repair reports, a spare part bought on the black market to save money (Malaysian Airlines has been in significant financial trouble in the past and bad spares are a problem in the industry worldwide) A black mark against the pilot for personal reasons. It won't be about a large international 'lets do this' thing and the reason is quite simple: There is good evidence that large, state actor conspiracies do not remain secret. Things which neccessarily demand hundreds of people remain silent, do not remain secret because hundreds of people either cannot remain silent or leave causal chains, evidence around them. We know about secret US bases because of fitbit GPS. We know about Israeli super-secret device hacking. We know about the Russians in Syria. We know about Iran-Contra. There is no 'wake up sheeple' story here. There are of course small conspiracy moments, like the people who sold the forged spare parts, or the people who knew the state of mind of the pilot and don't want to talk about it. Thats a different kind of conspiracy of silence: they have strong motivations to remain quiet, and less of them exist, and less evidence is likely to leak.
- DuskStar 8y ago
  Unfortunately, CFIT raises the questions of "but why" and "why like this", while hardware failure alone cannot explain the disappearance. Look, the government-accepted cause is already pretty much a conspiracy theory. Pilot (and copilot, and possibly other crew) decide to make themselves disappear, and almost succeed. Except we haven't found a plane where that theory says we should have.
  - deleted 8y ago
ynniv 8y ago
People have a lot of opinions on what could have happened, but I would like to know why hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent investigating the southern arc and at no point has anyone even considered investigating its northern counterpart. Edit: ... and this post was flagged off the first 14 pages within an hour. Not "dead" per se, but clearly forgotten. Wouldn't want anyone to think too hard about these things.
- tristanj 8y ago
  It was considered and quickly ruled out. Look at the trajectory of the northern arc [1]. It passes directly over India, which is covered by Indian civilian and military ground radars. There are major airports along this flight path. MH370 did not appear on civilian radar and the Indian military also confirmed MH370 was not detected on military radar. The northern arc also directly passes through Kashmir, which is contested by India Pakistan and China. There were no reports of the plane passing through this area. To put it in the words of an Indian military pilot [2]: >“There is no way or the slightest possibility of our radars’ having missed the plane,” the Indian pilot said. “We do not have an open air policy. Any blip, the slightest, has to be given attention. Most of our radars are semi-automated. If there is any aircraft not identified by virtue of its registration or identification, there will be an instant reaction at our end.” From this, we can conclude one of 1) There is a multinational conspiracy concealing the true path of the plane 2) The immerstat data is falsified (fails occam's razor) or 3) Rule out the northern arc. [1] https://i1.wp.com/cache.emirates247.com/polopoly_fs/1.574328.1452549054!/image/image.jpg https://i1.wp.com/cache.emirates247.com/polopoly_fs/1.574328... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/world/asia/experts-see-robust-radar-along-missing-jets-potential-path.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/world/asia/experts-see-ro...
  - ynniv 8y ago
    Yes, it was quickly ruled out. Was that the correct conclusion? How can we confidently say that the plane didn't evade radar? What about SIA68?
    - tristanj 8y ago
Ibethewalrus 8y ago
Dumb question: how possible is that the plane landed in a country that wanted to save paying $ millions for one?

32 points by tomohawk 8y ago

Article is completely unreadable on mobile due to layers of cookie consent popups and GDPR disclaimers :(

I've been following the case since the plane was first declared missing, and Jeff Wise has been pushing the conspiracy angle for quite a while now. I'm willing to consider it, but I'm not sure if he's proposing anybody with the (absolutely immense, more-than-state-actor) means or motivation to do something like this and keep it a secret for nearly 5 years.

ams6110 8y ago
I was also about to post, asking about motive. What is the motive to make a 777 full of people disappear. What was on board, or who was on board, that would be worth this effort? It's pretty close to beyond belief that this was just a "test run" to prove it could be done. But either way, there's no theory on motive offered here.
- mikeash 8y ago
  According to a conspiracy minded friend, there was a lot of gold on board that would have been well worth stealing. I’ve also seen the theory put forth that the plane was stolen in order to crash it into Ukraine, frame the Russians for shooting it down, and turn international opinion against them. (To be clear, I think both of these are completely looney tunes, but it’s what I’ve heard.)
  - ablation 8y ago
    I've never heard either of those before! Even if it was literally full of gold to its cargo capacity of 248,600 lbs with gold, that's still only in the region of $4.7 billion at current prices. Surely a drop in the ocean (no pun intended) for a nation/actor capable of carrying out such a disappearing act.
    - mikeash 8y ago
      It’s been a while, but I think he guessed the gold was worth a couple hundred million. I recall he thought it was a criminal act of great sophistication, not a government thing. But I share your doubt here.
- losteric 8y ago
  puts on tinfoil hat - perhaps they were bait to draw an intense investigation which could be used to probe military capabilities?

ablation 8y ago

> "Whoever took MH370 was determined, aggressive, and far more sophisticated than investigators have been willing to contemplate. They have also succeeded in fooling officials, the public, and most of the press for half a decade. That’s an uncomfortable prospect, and one that many people would prefer to ignore. But if it’s true—or even possibly true—then it’s something that needs to be dealt with expeditiously. Because that could mean whoever took MH370 is still out there...and nothing whatsoever has been done to stop them." This just reads like so much conspiracy theory. I just cannot figure out the motivation behind anyone to do this, knowing what we know. Given that, the whole article just feels... thin. I know it's Jeff Wise pushing his book full of this, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised, and perhaps his well-founded take on it is in there. Perhaps not.

ggm 8y ago

Why people seek reasons beyond the two well known reasons planes fall out of the sky is beyond comprehension, except that it fits the zeitgeist of today: conspiracy theory sells more than occam's razor. Occam's razor suggests that the simpler solution would apply: It was controlled flight into terrain i.e. pilot action. The second choice after this, is a significant failure in flight. You would have to walk a long long way past this to get causal chains which made conspiracy theories the best choice, and almost every time you have to take something we know, like systemic corruption in Malaysia at all levels which makes people lie about things, and use it as a 1 == 0 rule to justify they knew about the conspiracy when a more likely answer is, they simply are lying out of policy and practice. Obviously "somebody knows more" but it will be about a very pedestrian thing like falsified repair reports, a spare part bought on the black market to save money (Malaysian Airlines has been in significant financial trouble in the past and bad spares are a problem in the industry worldwide) A black mark against the pilot for personal reasons. It won't be about a large international 'lets do this' thing and the reason is quite simple: There is good evidence that large, state actor conspiracies do not remain secret. Things which neccessarily demand hundreds of people remain silent, do not remain secret because hundreds of people either cannot remain silent or leave causal chains, evidence around them. We know about secret US bases because of fitbit GPS. We know about Israeli super-secret device hacking. We know about the Russians in Syria. We know about Iran-Contra. There is no 'wake up sheeple' story here. There are of course small conspiracy moments, like the people who sold the forged spare parts, or the people who knew the state of mind of the pilot and don't want to talk about it. Thats a different kind of conspiracy of silence: they have strong motivations to remain quiet, and less of them exist, and less evidence is likely to leak.

DuskStar 8y ago
Unfortunately, CFIT raises the questions of "but why" and "why like this", while hardware failure alone cannot explain the disappearance. Look, the government-accepted cause is already pretty much a conspiracy theory. Pilot (and copilot, and possibly other crew) decide to make themselves disappear, and almost succeed. Except we haven't found a plane where that theory says we should have.
- deleted 8y ago

ynniv 8y ago

People have a lot of opinions on what could have happened, but I would like to know why hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent investigating the southern arc and at no point has anyone even considered investigating its northern counterpart. Edit: ... and this post was flagged off the first 14 pages within an hour. Not "dead" per se, but clearly forgotten. Wouldn't want anyone to think too hard about these things.

tristanj 8y ago
It was considered and quickly ruled out. Look at the trajectory of the northern arc [1]. It passes directly over India, which is covered by Indian civilian and military ground radars. There are major airports along this flight path. MH370 did not appear on civilian radar and the Indian military also confirmed MH370 was not detected on military radar. The northern arc also directly passes through Kashmir, which is contested by India Pakistan and China. There were no reports of the plane passing through this area. To put it in the words of an Indian military pilot [2]: >“There is no way or the slightest possibility of our radars’ having missed the plane,” the Indian pilot said. “We do not have an open air policy. Any blip, the slightest, has to be given attention. Most of our radars are semi-automated. If there is any aircraft not identified by virtue of its registration or identification, there will be an instant reaction at our end.” From this, we can conclude one of 1) There is a multinational conspiracy concealing the true path of the plane 2) The immerstat data is falsified (fails occam's razor) or 3) Rule out the northern arc. [1] https://i1.wp.com/cache.emirates247.com/polopoly_fs/1.574328.1452549054!/image/image.jpg https://i1.wp.com/cache.emirates247.com/polopoly_fs/1.574328... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/world/asia/experts-see-robust-radar-along-missing-jets-potential-path.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/world/asia/experts-see-ro...
- ynniv 8y ago
  Yes, it was quickly ruled out. Was that the correct conclusion? How can we confidently say that the plane didn't evade radar? What about SIA68?
  - tristanj 8y ago

Ibethewalrus 8y ago

Dumb question: how possible is that the plane landed in a country that wanted to save paying $ millions for one?