Following Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak's statement on the loss at sea of MH370 last night, here's some things to consider, amidst the never ending rumours, gossip and conspiracy theories.
(Malaysian PM Najib Razak announces definitively the loss at sea of MH 370)
For those hoping the black boxes of MH370 will reveal everything bear in mind a few things:
1) The companies or navies capable of sending the underwater submarine that can map the ocean floor and possibly locate it needs to have a specific grid to begin work.
.png/150px-Woods_Hole_Oceanographic_Institution_(emblem).png)
(Woods Hole OI was tasked to search for the black boxes of the doomed AF 447 flight)
2) The sub will be deployed over the next few days and needs to be flown to Australia. Then it needs to go out to the location. This whole process will take a week thereabouts.
(The Remus 600 is a type of underwater submarine capable of tracking debris on the ocean floor by mapping it)
3) The black boxes gives out a beacon signal for about 30 days only. If the sub can reach the area where they are, it will have less than a week to track the signals. If not it can takes weeks or months. The crash site into the Atlantic of AF447 6 years ago was known, yet it took 2 years and around 100 dives by the sub to locate the debris field and black boxes.
(1 of the flight recorders or black boxes of AF447 was eventually spotted on the ocean floor)
4) The data voice recorder only records the last 2 hours preceding a crash r contact with water, this plane flew for around 6 more hours after the deviation from its original flight path. As such the key incidents from 1.10am on 8/3/2014 to around 2am will not be available for anyone to listen to as this communication would have been over-written and deleted. The voice recorder would only be able to capture any communications in the cock-pit from 6.11am to 8.11am on 8/3/2014 when it's presumed to have crashed into the sea. If the pilots or anyone in the cockpit was dead before 6.11am, no voice data will be there except the emergency warning sounds from the plane, eg: low fuel, stall warning (stick shaker) and terrain (too low about to crash)
5) The flight data recorder however should have been able to record whatever changes were made, including the switching off the transponder or any other flight input into the plane's computers. eg: if the pilots or someone changed the flight path or if there was any electrical or mechanical failures.
(Cockpit doors like the one above are re-enforced, making it impossible to penetrate from the outside)
6) No one would have been able to enter the cockpit if the pilots had followed procedures and locked the doors which are now re-enforced and disallowed anyone to enter. If 1 or both of the pilots were dead or incapacitated, whoever else in the cockpit would have sole control if he had locked the doors.
7) The possibility of anyone surviving the initial crash would have been extremely remote. If the plane stalled and crashed, the impact of the G-force would have been so great that everyone on board would have died on impact depending on the height from which it fell from the sky.
(The presumed area of where MH 370 met its end is in a remote and desolate part of the Indian Ocean)
8) If it fell from a lower and more tolerable G-force altitude, the possibility of people surviving would also be very low. They would have needed the crash to be much milder and they would have needed to activate their life vests only after impact. Then one needs to consider the temperature of the waters in that part of the Indian Ocean, if it was very cold, hypothermia would also have set in. If there was rough weather, then drowning would also have occurred eventually, as a life vest can only offer so much protection from the choppy seas. Plus the possibility of surviving (for more than a few days) at such a remote part of the ocean so far away from land is virtually nil.
(An Australian Flight Lieutenant flying across a large swath of the Indian Ocean as part of an international team trying to locate debris or spot wreckage from flight MH 370)
9) If the debris spotted by the Chinese and Australian planes yesterday, is found just to be floatsam and not debris from the plane, the possibility of locating actual debris or the crash site may also may be never known, if false leads keep turning up. Debris could eventually wash up ashore, most debris do after sometime, but some can end up several thousand miles away, like debris from Japan's 2011 Fukushima disaster end up on the shores of the western United States. Although on the balance of probabilities now, there seems a higher chance that debris from the plane will be found closer to the scene of the crash, but the question of how long, when and what key things will be found is one, no one can yet give a definitive answer.
10) Finally while initial evidence or investigation points to a criminal act, one cannot also rule out mechanical failure or an accident on board that knocked out the communications systems and eventually the flight crew. Only the recovery of the flight data recorder will provide the bulk of the answers, but if the voice recorders does not contain anything of value, the flight data recorders will only show whatever mechanical action was put into the system or any failure thereof. It might show some deliberate action by someone to divert or crash the plane, it will not tell us who did it, if the voice data recorders does not contain any human voice to confirm it.
(The competence and neutrality of Britain's Air Accidents Investigations Branch (AAIB) has never been called into question in the hundreds of investigations they have been involved over the years)
Whatever it is, you can be certain there will always be many conspiracy theories, even if the truth comes out. If the whole truth cannot be fully ascertained but only some and the rest speculated or theorised, these conspiracy theories will continue to fester. In the end, it's up to you what you want to believe, but bear in mind - truth is usually plain and dull. But also consider that Immarsat (the satellite company) and the British Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) were the ones that analysed the data and definitively said the plane would be in the southern part of the Indian Ocean. If the AAIB and other agencies from France, Australia and the US are involved in the investigation, these organisations are unlikely to ruin their reputations by providing false information or deliberately lying in a cover-up. Plus such a cover-up would have to involve dozens if not hundreds of persons. It's easy to make wild allegations, but proving the experts wrong is another thing altogether if you don't posses any known or reliable facts, just assumptions and theories.
(The 2 Iranians Nourmohammadi (18) and Reza Delawar (29) who used stolen passports to board this flight in order to flee to Europe)
Let me end by offering my sincere condolences to the relatives of those who perished. In particular the 2 Iranians who must have paid a bundle to smuggle themselves on board this flight in the hope of a better future elsewhere, and were wrongly suspected of being involved in the disappearance.
(This post can also be found at my FB page: https://www.facebook.com/anyhowhantam)
Sir Nelspruit
*The writer blogs at http://anyhowhantam.blogspot.com/