A New Story For the Missing MH370

9 April 2014

 

A tweeter,  by the name of Jonathan Langdale,   got hold of a published ping data and analysed the signal from Inmarsat that tracked the pinging frequencies of Malaysian Airline MH370 that went missing on 8 March 2014.  He has told his “story” to many including CNN but no one listened.

What is his story?

Jonathan Langdale,  a flight simulator fanatic with some flying experience,  believed that MH370 took a large turn back at where it disappeared from the screens on the night of 8 March 2014.  The pilots then dropped the plane down to 12,000 feet with intention to perform an emergency landing at the Terengganu Airportbut they were knocked out completely,  leaving the plane flying south,  passing West of Singapore towards the Indian Ocean on auto pilot in a "kicked off" mode.

 

 
In his March 30^thprediction,  he gave his first prediction without making wind adjustment which he corrected afterwards.   He said this last prediction run on track along the location where the Chinese vessel,  Haixun01,  detected the first pinger signal.  He reckoned that he had over projected the length of the flight path.

His detailed analysis is covered here

How he came to this “story”?

According to his earlier tweets,  he claimed that he followed the published Doppler effect frequency shift data closely.  He said  

1)     The ping data showed that the ping frequency increased from 140 hz to 275 hz,  while it was making a turn back;

2)     The frequency then dropped back to 140 hz which indicated a possible attempt to perform an emergency landing at the Trengganu Airport;

3)     The frequency increased from 125 Hz to 250 Hz,  indicating that the plane flew at constant speed until the fuel run out.  

He claimed that MH370 did not fly west over to Penang as was told by the Military radar.  He said the radar could have tracked another plane.

His timing accounts using the Inmarsat's pinging data is shown below

 

He read also about some villagers at the Marang Beach sighted a very large plane flying around 1:20 am and these villagers made a police report the next morning.

 

 

 

Is his story credible?

Langdale,  by far has the most credible story besides the official one.  Both the Langdale’s and the official ones  ended the flight in the South Indian Ocean except the final destinations varies somewhat due to errors in the educated guesses.  The only difference  is that the official one advocated that there was a deliberate act to fly MH370 to avoid radar detection whereas the Langdale’s story appears to suggest that MH370 may have had some troubles with the plane (fire?) and the pilots had no time to call Mayday.  MH370 then flew South directly without any detection by other Malaysian’s radars as well as the Singaporean’s and the Indonesian’s  radars.

According to many reports,  the investigators who analysed the Malaysian military radar data indicated that the plane did fly at a height of 43,000 to 45,000 feet before dropping down to 12,000 feet.  Because the plane carried about 200 kgs of Lithium batteries,  there were rumors saying the plane could have flown  to a height of 43,000 feet intentionally to extinguish a fire onboard.  Some said the pilot is a technical fanatic who might just want to try this "trick",  choosing to fly another 8.000 feet in 10-20 minutes or another 60 minutes to reach the nearest airport.   As it was not a standard procedure,  the pilots could have switched off the ACARS recording or isolate the fire by switching off the power.  These stories and rumors, though remote,  blend well with Langdale’s story that the pilots were knocked out rather than the official story that there was a deliberate attempt to avoid the radar detection. 

Can the military radars miss the plane?

It is “impossible” for MH370 to avoid all radar detections in all the countries where MH370 was travelling, an aviation analyst said.  Unlike the United States, Britain, Australiaand New Zealand, countries in this region do not have a pact to share their signals intelligence, including satellite and radar data.

Malaysia military primary radar spotted the plane flying west and disappeared from the screen which has a 200 km range.

If MH370 did cross into the airspace of other countries unnoticed, a Weber said it would also mean that the air defense in those countries might be a bit lax in the wee hours of the morning.  The experts pointed out that military radars are expensive to operate and there might be remote chances that these radars were switch off until a trans-boundary tension is building up.  If that is being the case and  in all likelihood,  these countries would not disclose that they have missed the detection of MH370 because it would not look good on them,  especially to their citizens.  It is also a truth to tell others that their radars did not detect any unidentified plane which does not mean the plane did not fly pass through their air space.

Weber continued to say that countries might not be prepared to compromise and put aside their own security concerns to share data that might give away their defense capabilities just for finding a missing aircraft.  They were of the view that “defense is not just about capability, but also about hiding such capability or the lack of it”.   Not many countries will publicly admit to using classified technologies to find the aircraft.  What the public could read would be those non-classified capabilities or technologies;  for example,  the weather satellite images.

 

 

Conclusion

 

There are just too many stories out there in the cyber world including the official ones that said MH370 was deliberately flew west toward Andaman sea and turned south,  ending its journey in Southern Indian Ocean,  West of Australia.  The Langdale’s  story appears to tell similar tale except for the part about MH370 turning  back for emergency landing at Terengganu Airport.   One would never know the likely truth until the where about of the plane is found.