The disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, which was to connect Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, on March 8, 2014, remains one of the greatest mysteries in civil aviation. To the point of still being the subject of all fantasies, fueling the wildest hypotheses. The announcement of the resumption of research operations in the Indian Ocean was expected: last March, the ship Armada 78-06 from the British company Ocean Infinity was forced to turn back due to difficult weather conditions. The operation should therefore resume from December 30, announced the Malaysian Ministry of Transport on December 3.
Jean-Luc Marchand, satellite engineer, and Patrick Blelly, airline pilot and long-haul captain, both retired, have published a Analysis of the trajectory of flight MH370. Nicknamed “Caption Hypothesis”, this specific report and detailed of more than one hundred pages constitutes an exhaustive document retracing the flight of MH370, from its loss of contact with Malaysian and Vietnamese radar screens to its supposed perdition off the coast of Australia. The two men calculated a more precise crash zone, never explored until now. The coordinates of this zone (-35.70°S; 93.03°E), located just outside the one already examined in 2018, refer to a probable impact point of the device off the coast of Western Australia, in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
The Tangwall Campagin. What do we know about this new search campaign for the wreck of MH370? Is it more likely to succeed than previous search operations at sea?
Jean-Luc Marchand. Yes, because the different impact points of the plane studied and proposed by the different research groups have been refined over time. The means implemented (boats, underwater drones, etc.) are now more efficient. We believe that the plane has a good chance of being found in one of the locations planned for this search operation. The area targeted by Ocean Infinity now takes into account the hypothesis of a piloted flight to the end, since it is outside the seventh arc (located in the middle of the Indian Ocean, 2,000 kilometers west of Perth, Australia, Editor’s note) that they began looking for last March.
Why is the hypothesis of a suicide by the captain, in your opinion, the most credible avenue to explain the disappearance of the aircraft? What allows you to say that the plane was flown until the end?
Patrick Blelly. In our opinion, this flight was executed perfectly and by someone who knew the Boeing 777 and its operation very well, and who also had very good piloting skills. There are not many suspects left on board when we know that the co-pilot was a student not yet qualified on this plane. In view of the large debris found (flaperon, right flap and piece of the left flap), we favor the thesis of a “controlled”, therefore piloted, landing. We believe that the three items listed above were torn from the plane as it landed, then drifted until they were found on beaches on Reunion Island and on the coasts of southeast Africa.
“It’s very easy for a device to ‘disappear’”
If they had been pulled into the wing at the time of impact with a vertically falling aircraft, they would have crashed inside the wing. However, we do not see any impact on their leading edges. For us, if these flaps were “extended”, it was because there was hydraulic and electrical power available (APU). And this implies that someone ordered this shutter release. It should be noted that a similar simulated flight route to the southern Indian Ocean had been carried out a month previously. The history of this journey was found on the personal simulator of Commander Zaharie Ahmad Shah, which constitutes a disturbing element.
By making the best use of all these elements, our trajectory answers the question of “how”. We are now certain that the transponder was manually set to standby ; moreover, the absence of constraint on the handle of the device shows that there was no opposition. The hijacking thus took place “peacefully”, so to speak.
How can we explain that an aircraft such as a Boeing 777 could suddenly disappear in one of the most monitored air zones in the world, in the middle of the China Sea?
P.B. Air traffic control is based on the sharing of responsibilities between the ground and the plane. At the chosen location, control responsibility was on board, with the ground passive as it waits for the aircraft to declare itself entering the next sector. It’s a passive moment. Contrary to what one might believe, it is very easy for a device to “disappear”: we first cut the transponder to no longer respond to radars (SSR) and no longer transmit ADS-B information (Automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast, surveillance system for air traffic control) used by ATC (Air Traffic Control) and applications such as FlightRadar.
Then, after turning, we cut off all the main current on board (only the batteries and the small propeller called the Ram air turbine remain, which provides minimal electricity and which allows you to fly “manually” like at the flying club (this is not a joke!), while retaining the hydraulic power coming from the engines. By cutting off all the electrical power, there is no longer any communication leaving the plane, but the military can still see it via the so-called “primary” radars. so, it would have been necessary for all the radars to be turned on and for the operators to look at their scopes or not to sleep. A plane which has disappeared from civilian radars and which is only a blip on a “normal” air route does not attract the eye of a less vigilant military air traffic controller.
What do we know for certain about the last minutes on board the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777?
JL. Mr. Little is known, and we can only make hypotheses based on the various technical and environmental data available to us. They include Inmarsat data (British company specializing in satellite telephony, which made it possible to reconstruct the trajectory of the plane from the 7 “pings” emitted by satellite connection after the transponder was cut, Editor’s note), the different electrical possibilities for re-powering the systems depending on the electrical networks available, the remaining fuel, the gliding performance of the plane, the weather of the location, the visibility, the debris found (and therefore the type of contact with water that we favor: high speed or low speed), the type of trajectory that we think is most likely (piloted or not), etc. But we’ll only have the real answers when we have the black box data… if it’s ever published.
Exactly, would the discovery of the wreckage of the plane and the black boxes provide all the answers to the mystery of the disappearance of MH370?
P.B. In 90% of plane crashes, the discovery of the black boxes made it possible to understand what had happened – except when they were disconnected voluntarily, as was the case for the crash of the SilkAir 185, for example. This is probably not the case for the MH370, but we do not have absolute certainty. We believe that the person at the controls made sure that the plane was not found; it is therefore unlikely that she would have been concerned about the black boxes.
Finding the wreckage would allow us to know if the plane landed softly or at high speed, which would already be progress in understanding the final phase before impact. Anyway, the Voice Recorder (Cockpit Voice Recorder, a black box which continuously records noises and conversations inside the cockpit) only concerns the last hours of the flight. As for the other, it will provide all the data since the start of the flight (Flight Data Recorder, black box which records all the technical data of the flight and the instruments: speed, altitude, angle, power, etc.). This information will provide details on what we will know overall.
What interest does Ocean Infinity have in financing this new offshore research operation with its own funds? Are his motives purely disinterested?
JL. Mr. His motives are certainly not disinterested. Ocean Infinity is mainly a wreck “hunting” company, but it is diversifying thanks to the publicity surrounding its finds. The contract, if successful, is profitable: the search campaign is financed by Ocean Infinity with its own funds, but all of the investments made are reimbursed if it manages to find the wreck of MH370. There is therefore a convergence of interest and that is so much the better. If it were to succeed in its mission, we assume that it has economic interests in making its “brand image” known and increasing its notoriety throughout the world. It has a sufficiently large and modern fleet today to carry out quality research at the bottom of the oceans (bathymetry, oil or mineral research and other galleons loaded with gold that sank during previous centuries) which would allow it to make profitable and absorb the potential losses – and unconfirmed to date – of the search for MH370.
