June 29, 2019 at 05:44What really happened to the disappeared Malaysian Boeing (part 2/3)
- Transfer
1. Disappearance
2. Coastal tramp
3. Goldmine
4. Conspiracies
5. Possible scenario
6. Captain
7. Truth
The first fragment found by Blaine Gibson, a fragment of the horizontal plumage stabilizer, was discovered on a sandbank off the coast of Mozambique in February 2016. Photo by: Blaine Gibson
The Indian Ocean is washed by tens of thousands of kilometers of coastline - the final result will depend on how many islands are counted. When Blaine Gibson began looking for the wreckage, he had no plan. He flew to Myanmar, because he was going there anyway, and then went to the coast and asked the villagers to which coast the things usually lost in the sea are nailed. He was advised several beaches, and one fisherman agreed to take him to them by boat - there was a bit of garbage, but nothing that would have to do with the plane. Then Gibson asked the locals to be on the alert, left them his contact number and went on. In the same way, he visited the Maldives, and then the islands of Rodriguez and Mauritius, again not finding anything interesting on the coast. Then came July 29, 2015. About 16 months aftera streamlined metal fragment larger than one and a half meters that seemed to have just washed ashore.
The team leader, a man named Johnny Beg, guessed that it could be a fragment of an airplane, but he had no idea which one. At first, he thought about making a memorial out of the wreckage — installing it on a nearby lawn and planting flowers around it — but instead he decided to report the find through a local radio station. The gendarme team arriving at the scene took the debris with them, and was soon identified as part of the Boeing 777. This was a fragment of the moving tail section of the wing called the flaperon, and subsequent examination of the serial numbers showed that it belonged to the MH370 .
This was a necessary material proof of the assumptions based on electronic data. The flight ended tragically in the Indian Ocean, although the exact crash site remained unknown and was located somewhere thousands of kilometers east of Reunion. Families of missing passengers had to give up the illusive hope that their loved ones could be alive. No matter how soberly people assessed the situation, the news of the find was a serious shock to them. Grace Nathan was devastated - she said she was barely alive for several weeks after flaperon was discovered.
Gibson flew to Reunion and found Johnny Beg on the same beach. The run was open and friendly - he showed Gibson the place where he found flaperon. Gibson began to look for other debris, but without much hope of success, because the French authorities had already conducted a search, and they were inconclusive. Floating wrecks take time to drift across the Indian Ocean, moving from east to west in the low southern latitudes, and the flaperon must have arrived earlier than the other wrecks, since its parts could protrude above the water, acting as a sail.
A journalist from a local newspaper interviewed Gibson for a story about an independent American researcher visiting Reunion. On this occasion, Gibson specially put on a T-shirt that says “ Look". He then flew to Australia, where he spoke with two oceanographers - Charita Pattiaratchi from the University of Western Australia at Perth and David Griffin, who worked at the government research center in Hobart and was invited as a consultant to the Australian Bureau of Transportation Security, a leading search agency for MH370. Both men were experts on currents and winds in the Indian Ocean. In particular, Griffin spent years tracking drifting buoys - he also attempted to model the complex characteristics of flaperon drift on his way to Reunion, hoping to narrow the geographic coverage of underwater searches. It was easier to answer Gibson's questions: he wanted to know the most likely places for floating debris to appear on the shore. An oceanographer pointed to the northeast coast of Madagascar and,
Gibson chose Mozambique because he had not been there before and could consider him his 177th country, and went to a city called Vilanculos, because he seemed relatively safe and had good beaches. He arrived there in February 2016. According to his recollections, he again asked local fishermen for advice, and they told him about a sandbank called Paluma - it lay behind a reef, and they usually went there to pick up nets and buoys brought by the waves of the Indian Ocean. Gibson paid a boatman named Suleman to take him to this sandbank. There they found all kinds of garbage, mostly a lot of plastic. Suleman called Gibson, lifting a gray piece of metal about half a meter across, and asked: “Is this the 370th?” The debris had a cellular structure, and on one of the sides there was clearly a stenciled inscription “NO STEP”. At first Gibson thought that this small chip was not related to a huge airliner. He says: “On a rational level, I was sure that this could not be a fragment of an airplane, but with my heart I felt that it was he. By then it was time for us to sail back, and then we had to touch on personal history. Two dolphins swam to our boat and helped us to get aground, and for my mother, dolphins were literally totem animals. When I saw these dolphins, I thought: Two dolphins swam to our boat and helped us to get aground, and for my mother, dolphins were literally totem animals. When I saw these dolphins, I thought: Two dolphins swam to our boat and helped us to get aground, and for my mother, dolphins were literally totem animals. When I saw these dolphins, I thought:Still, a fragment of the plane . "
This story can be perceived differently, but Gibson was right. It was determined that the found fragment - a fragment of the stabilizer of the horizontal plumage - almost certainly belongs to MH370. Gibson flew to Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, and handed the find to the Australian consul. Then he flew to Kuala Lumpur, just in time for the second anniversary of the tragedy, and this time he was met as a close friend.
In June 2016, Gibson turned his attention to the remote northeastern shores of Madagascar, which turned out to be a real gold mine. Gibson says that he found three fragments on the first day and two more in a few days. A week later, local residents brought him three more details found on a nearby beach, thirteen kilometers from the site of the first finds. Since then, the search has not stopped - there were rumors that a reward is due for the wreckage of the MH370. According to Gibson, once he paid $ 40 for one piece - this turned out to be so much that the whole village was enough to drink for the whole day. Apparently, the local rum is extremely inexpensive.
Many debris, unrelated to the aircraft, was discarded. Nevertheless, Gibson is involved in finding about a third of the dozens of fragments that are currently identified as unambiguous, or likely, or presumably related to MH370. Some debris is still being explored. Gibson's influence is so great that David Griffin, although grateful to him, is very concerned that detecting fragments can now be statistically distorted in favor of Madagascar, possibly due to more northern coastal zones. He called his consideration the "Gibson effect."
The fact remains that after five years no one succeeded in tracing the path of the wreckage from where they were brought to land to a point in the southern Indian Ocean. Aiming to be open to the new, Gibson still hopes to discover new fragments that will explain the disappearance - for example, charred wires indicating a fire, or shrapnel marks indicating a missile - although what we know about the last hours of the flight is largely excludes such options. The debris found by Gibson confirms that the analysis of satellite data was correct. The plane flew for six hours, until the flight suddenly ended. The one who sat at the helm did not try to accurately land on the water; on the contrary, the collision was monstrous. Gibson admits that there’s still a chance to find something like a message in a bottle - a note of despair scratched by someone in the last minutes of life. On the beaches, Gibson found several backpacks and many wallets, all of which were empty. According to him, the closest thing he found was an inscription on the wrong side of a baseball cap made in Malay. In the translation she read: “To the one who reads this. Dear friend, we will meet at the hotel. ”
Illustrations created by La Tigre Studio
(A) - 1:21, March 8, 2014:
Near the waypoint between Malaysia and Vietnam over the South China Sea, the MH370 disappears from the air traffic control radar and turns southwest, again passing over the Malay Peninsula .
(B) - about an hour later:
Having flown northwest over the Strait of Malacca, the plane performs the “last sharp turn,” as the researchers would later call it, and heading south. The turn itself and the new direction were restored according to satellite data.
(C) - April 2014:
The search in surface waters is stopped, the search begins in depth. Analysis of satellite data shows that the last time a connection to the MH370 was established in the arc region.
(D) - July 2015:
The first MH370 chip, flaperon, was discovered on Reunion Island. Other confirmed or probable fragments were found on beaches scattered in the western Indian Ocean (places highlighted in red).
Following the disappearance of the MH370, three formal investigations were launched. The first was the largest, most thorough and most expensive: a technically sophisticated underwater search for Australians, whose purpose was to detect the main fragments, which would allow to obtain data from black boxes and voice recorders. Search efforts included determining the technical condition of the aircraft, analyzing radar and satellite data, studying ocean currents, a good share of statistical studies, and also physical analysis of fragments from East Africa, many of which were obtained from Blaine Gibson. All this required complex operations in one of the most troubled seas of the world. Part of the effort was undertaken by a group of volunteers, engineers, and scientists who met online, They called themselves the Independent Group and showed such effective cooperation that the Australians took their work into account and officially thanked for their assistance. This has never happened before in the history of accident investigations. However, after more than three years of work, costing about $ 160 million, an investigation in Australia was unsuccessful. In 2018, it was picked up by the American company Ocean Infinity, which concluded a contract with the Malaysian government on the terms “no result, no payment”. The continuation of the search involved the use of the most modern underwater vehicles and covered the previously unexplored section of the seventh arc, in which, according to the Independent Group, the detection was most likely. A few months later, these efforts also ended in failure. that the Australians took their work into account and officially thanked for their assistance. This has never happened before in the history of accident investigations. However, after more than three years of work, costing about $ 160 million, an investigation in Australia was unsuccessful. In 2018, it was picked up by the American company Ocean Infinity, which concluded a contract with the Malaysian government on the terms “no result, no payment”. The continuation of the search involved the use of the most modern underwater vehicles and covered the previously unexplored section of the seventh arc, in which, according to the Independent Group, the detection was most likely. A few months later, these efforts also ended in failure. that the Australians took their work into account and officially thanked for their assistance. This has never happened before in the history of accident investigations. However, after more than three years of work, costing about $ 160 million, an investigation in Australia was unsuccessful. In 2018, it was picked up by the American company Ocean Infinity, which concluded a contract with the Malaysian government on the terms “no result, no payment”. The continuation of the search involved the use of the most modern underwater vehicles and covered the previously unexplored section of the seventh arc, in which, according to the Independent Group, the detection was most likely. A few months later, these efforts also ended in failure. after more than three years of work, costing about $ 160 million, the investigation in Australia was unsuccessful. In 2018, it was picked up by the American company Ocean Infinity, which concluded a contract with the Malaysian government on the terms “no result, no payment”. The continuation of the search involved the use of the most modern underwater vehicles and covered the previously unexplored section of the seventh arc, in which, according to the Independent Group, the detection was most likely. A few months later, these efforts also ended in failure. after more than three years of work, costing about $ 160 million, the investigation in Australia was unsuccessful. In 2018, it was picked up by the American company Ocean Infinity, which concluded a contract with the Malaysian government on the terms “no result, no payment”. The continuation of the search involved the use of the most modern underwater vehicles and covered the previously unexplored section of the seventh arc, in which, according to the Independent Group, the detection was most likely. A few months later, these efforts also ended in failure. The continuation of the search involved the use of the most modern underwater vehicles and covered the previously unexplored section of the seventh arc, in which, according to the Independent Group, the detection was most likely. A few months later, these efforts also ended in failure. The continuation of the search involved the use of the most modern underwater vehicles and covered the previously unexplored section of the seventh arc, in which, according to the Independent Group, the detection was most likely. A few months later, these efforts also ended in failure.
The second official investigation was conducted by the Malaysian police, and it consisted of a thorough check of everyone on the plane, as well as their friends and relatives. It is difficult to assess the true extent of the police discovery because the report on the results of the investigation has not been published. Moreover, he was kept secret, becoming inaccessible even to other Malaysian researchers, but after someone organized the leak, his inferiority became apparent. In particular, it omitted all the information known about Captain Zachary, and this did not cause much surprise. Malaysian Prime Minister at that time was an unpleasant man named Najib Razak, who is believed to be deeply mired in corruption. The press in Malaysia was censored, the loudest were found and silenced. The officials had their own reasons for caution - from a career, which should be protected, up to, perhaps, their lives. Obviously, it was decided not to delve into the topics that Malaysia Airlines or the government could put in a bad light.
The third official investigation was the accident investigation, conducted not to make a decision on liability, but to identify the probable cause - it should have been carried out by an international group in accordance with the highest international standards. A special working group, created by the government of Malaysia, was at the head, and from the very beginning a mess reigned in it - the police and military considered themselves to be above this investigation and despised it, while ministers and members of the government saw it as a risk to themselves. Foreign specialists who came to assist began to run away almost immediately after their arrival. The American aviation expert, referring to the international protocol for the investigation of aircraft accidents, described the situation as follows: “The ICAO“ Appendix 13 ”is designed to organize investigations in a confident democracy.
One of the observers of the investigation process says: “It became clear that the main goal of the Malaysians was to hush up this story. From the very beginning, they had an instinctive prejudice against being open and transparent, not because they had some kind of deep, dark secret, but because they themselves did not know what the truth was, and were afraid that it was there will be something shameful. Did they try to hide something? Yes, something unknown to them. ”
The result of the investigation was a 495-page report, unconvincingly imitating the requirements of “Appendix 13”. It was filled with boilerplate descriptions of Boeing 777 systems, clearly copied from the manufacturer's manuals and not of any technical value. In fact, nothing in the report was of technical value, since Australian publications have fully described satellite information and analysis of ocean currents. The Malaysian report was not so much an investigation as an excuse, and its only significant contribution was a frank description of air traffic control errors, probably because the Vietnamese could be blamed for half the errors, and also because the Malaysian air traffic controllers turned out to be the easiest and most vulnerable target . The document was published in July 2018,
This conclusion encourages the continuation of speculation, regardless of whether it is justified or not. Satellite data is the best evidence of a flight path, and it is difficult to argue with them, but people will not be able to agree with the explanation if they do not trust the numbers. The authors of many theories have published speculations picked up by social networks that ignore satellite data, and sometimes radar tracks, aircraft design, air traffic control records, flight physics, and school geography. For example, a British woman who runs a blog under the name Saucy Sailoress and makes a living by fortune telling on the Tarot wandered around South Asia on a sailboat with her husband and dogs. According to her, on the night of the disappearance of the MH370, they were in the Andaman Sea, where she saw a cruise missile flying toward her. The rocket turned into a low-flying aircraft with a brightly glowing cabin, flooded with a strange orange glow and smoke. When he flew past, she decided that this was an air raid directed against the Chinese navy, which was further into the sea. Then she did not yet know about the disappearance of the MH370, but when she read about it a few days later, she made conclusions that were obvious to herself. It would seem implausible, but she found her audience.
One Australian has claimed for several years that with the help of Google Earth he managed to find the MH370 somewhere in the shallow water safe and sound - he, however, refuses to tell the coordinates while working on crowdfunding of the expedition. On the Internet you will find allegations that the plane was found intact in the Cambodian jungle, that it was spotted when landing in the Indonesian river, that it flew through time and was pulled into a black hole. In one scenario, the plane flies off to attack an American military base on Diego Garcia, and then it is shot down. A recent publication that Captain Zahari was found alive and lying in a Taiwanese hospital with amnesia was widespread enough for Malaysia to refute this. The news came from a purely satirical site,
A New York-based writer named Jeff Wise suggested that one of the electronic systems on board the aircraft could have been reprogrammed to send false southbound data to the Indian Ocean to mislead investigators when the plane actually turned north toward Kazakhstan . He calls it the “rally script” and talks about it in detail in his latest e-book, published in 2019. His assumption is that the Russians may have stolen the plane in order to divert attention from the annexation of Crimea, which was then in full swing. An obvious weak point of this theory is the need to explain how, if the plane flew to Kazakhstan, its wreckage ended up in the Indian Ocean - Wise believes that this was also tweaked.
When Blaine Gibson began his search, he was a newcomer to social networks, and he was expecting a surprise. According to him, the first trolls appeared as soon as he found his first fragment - the one on which it was written "NO STEP" - and soon there were much more, especially when searches on the coast of Madagascar began to bear fruit. The Internet is seething with emotions, even in relation to unremarkable events, but the catastrophe translates into something toxic. Gibson was accused of exploiting the affected families and of fraud, the pursuit of fame, drug addiction, work for Russia, work for the United States and, at least, for professionalism. He began to receive threats - messages on social networks and phone calls to friends, predicting his death. One report said that he would either stop looking for the wreckage or leave Madagascar in a coffin. Another foreshadowed that he would die from polonium poisoning. There were much more of them, Gibson was not ready for this and could not just brush it off. During the days we spent with him in Kuala Lumpur, he continued to monitor attacks through a friend in London. He says: “Once I made a mistake by opening Twitter. In essence, these people are cyber terrorists. And what they do works. It works well. ” All this caused him psychological trauma.
In 2017, Gibson organized an official mechanism for the transfer of debris: he gives any new find to the authorities in Madagascar, they transfer it to the Honorary Consul of Malaysia, and he packs it and sends it to Kuala Lumpur for research and storage. On August 24 of the same year, the honorary consul was shot dead in his car by an unidentified person who left the scene of the crime on a motorcycle and was not found. A French-language news source claims that the consul had a dubious past; perhaps his murder had nothing to do with the MH370. Gibson, however, believes that there is a connection. The police investigation is not over yet.
Currently, for the most part, he tries not to disclose his location or travel plans; for the same reasons, he avoids email and rarely speaks on the phone. He likes Skype and WhatsApp because they have encryption. He often changes SIM cards and believes that sometimes he is chased and photographed. There is no doubt that Gibson is the only person who independently went in search of fragments of the MH370 and found them, but it is hard to believe that the wreckage is worth killing for them. It would be easier to believe if the keys to dark secrets and international intrigues were hidden behind them, but the facts, most of which are now publicly available, point in a different direction.
2. Coastal tramp
3. Goldmine
4. Conspiracies
5. Possible scenario
6. Captain
7. Truth
The first fragment found by Blaine Gibson, a fragment of the horizontal plumage stabilizer, was discovered on a sandbank off the coast of Mozambique in February 2016. Photo by: Blaine Gibson
3. Goldmine
The Indian Ocean is washed by tens of thousands of kilometers of coastline - the final result will depend on how many islands are counted. When Blaine Gibson began looking for the wreckage, he had no plan. He flew to Myanmar, because he was going there anyway, and then went to the coast and asked the villagers to which coast the things usually lost in the sea are nailed. He was advised several beaches, and one fisherman agreed to take him to them by boat - there was a bit of garbage, but nothing that would have to do with the plane. Then Gibson asked the locals to be on the alert, left them his contact number and went on. In the same way, he visited the Maldives, and then the islands of Rodriguez and Mauritius, again not finding anything interesting on the coast. Then came July 29, 2015. About 16 months aftera streamlined metal fragment larger than one and a half meters that seemed to have just washed ashore.
The team leader, a man named Johnny Beg, guessed that it could be a fragment of an airplane, but he had no idea which one. At first, he thought about making a memorial out of the wreckage — installing it on a nearby lawn and planting flowers around it — but instead he decided to report the find through a local radio station. The gendarme team arriving at the scene took the debris with them, and was soon identified as part of the Boeing 777. This was a fragment of the moving tail section of the wing called the flaperon, and subsequent examination of the serial numbers showed that it belonged to the MH370 .
This was a necessary material proof of the assumptions based on electronic data. The flight ended tragically in the Indian Ocean, although the exact crash site remained unknown and was located somewhere thousands of kilometers east of Reunion. Families of missing passengers had to give up the illusive hope that their loved ones could be alive. No matter how soberly people assessed the situation, the news of the find was a serious shock to them. Grace Nathan was devastated - she said she was barely alive for several weeks after flaperon was discovered.
Gibson flew to Reunion and found Johnny Beg on the same beach. The run was open and friendly - he showed Gibson the place where he found flaperon. Gibson began to look for other debris, but without much hope of success, because the French authorities had already conducted a search, and they were inconclusive. Floating wrecks take time to drift across the Indian Ocean, moving from east to west in the low southern latitudes, and the flaperon must have arrived earlier than the other wrecks, since its parts could protrude above the water, acting as a sail.
A journalist from a local newspaper interviewed Gibson for a story about an independent American researcher visiting Reunion. On this occasion, Gibson specially put on a T-shirt that says “ Look". He then flew to Australia, where he spoke with two oceanographers - Charita Pattiaratchi from the University of Western Australia at Perth and David Griffin, who worked at the government research center in Hobart and was invited as a consultant to the Australian Bureau of Transportation Security, a leading search agency for MH370. Both men were experts on currents and winds in the Indian Ocean. In particular, Griffin spent years tracking drifting buoys - he also attempted to model the complex characteristics of flaperon drift on his way to Reunion, hoping to narrow the geographic coverage of underwater searches. It was easier to answer Gibson's questions: he wanted to know the most likely places for floating debris to appear on the shore. An oceanographer pointed to the northeast coast of Madagascar and,
Gibson chose Mozambique because he had not been there before and could consider him his 177th country, and went to a city called Vilanculos, because he seemed relatively safe and had good beaches. He arrived there in February 2016. According to his recollections, he again asked local fishermen for advice, and they told him about a sandbank called Paluma - it lay behind a reef, and they usually went there to pick up nets and buoys brought by the waves of the Indian Ocean. Gibson paid a boatman named Suleman to take him to this sandbank. There they found all kinds of garbage, mostly a lot of plastic. Suleman called Gibson, lifting a gray piece of metal about half a meter across, and asked: “Is this the 370th?” The debris had a cellular structure, and on one of the sides there was clearly a stenciled inscription “NO STEP”. At first Gibson thought that this small chip was not related to a huge airliner. He says: “On a rational level, I was sure that this could not be a fragment of an airplane, but with my heart I felt that it was he. By then it was time for us to sail back, and then we had to touch on personal history. Two dolphins swam to our boat and helped us to get aground, and for my mother, dolphins were literally totem animals. When I saw these dolphins, I thought: Two dolphins swam to our boat and helped us to get aground, and for my mother, dolphins were literally totem animals. When I saw these dolphins, I thought: Two dolphins swam to our boat and helped us to get aground, and for my mother, dolphins were literally totem animals. When I saw these dolphins, I thought:Still, a fragment of the plane . "
This story can be perceived differently, but Gibson was right. It was determined that the found fragment - a fragment of the stabilizer of the horizontal plumage - almost certainly belongs to MH370. Gibson flew to Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, and handed the find to the Australian consul. Then he flew to Kuala Lumpur, just in time for the second anniversary of the tragedy, and this time he was met as a close friend.
In June 2016, Gibson turned his attention to the remote northeastern shores of Madagascar, which turned out to be a real gold mine. Gibson says that he found three fragments on the first day and two more in a few days. A week later, local residents brought him three more details found on a nearby beach, thirteen kilometers from the site of the first finds. Since then, the search has not stopped - there were rumors that a reward is due for the wreckage of the MH370. According to Gibson, once he paid $ 40 for one piece - this turned out to be so much that the whole village was enough to drink for the whole day. Apparently, the local rum is extremely inexpensive.
Many debris, unrelated to the aircraft, was discarded. Nevertheless, Gibson is involved in finding about a third of the dozens of fragments that are currently identified as unambiguous, or likely, or presumably related to MH370. Some debris is still being explored. Gibson's influence is so great that David Griffin, although grateful to him, is very concerned that detecting fragments can now be statistically distorted in favor of Madagascar, possibly due to more northern coastal zones. He called his consideration the "Gibson effect."
The fact remains that after five years no one succeeded in tracing the path of the wreckage from where they were brought to land to a point in the southern Indian Ocean. Aiming to be open to the new, Gibson still hopes to discover new fragments that will explain the disappearance - for example, charred wires indicating a fire, or shrapnel marks indicating a missile - although what we know about the last hours of the flight is largely excludes such options. The debris found by Gibson confirms that the analysis of satellite data was correct. The plane flew for six hours, until the flight suddenly ended. The one who sat at the helm did not try to accurately land on the water; on the contrary, the collision was monstrous. Gibson admits that there’s still a chance to find something like a message in a bottle - a note of despair scratched by someone in the last minutes of life. On the beaches, Gibson found several backpacks and many wallets, all of which were empty. According to him, the closest thing he found was an inscription on the wrong side of a baseball cap made in Malay. In the translation she read: “To the one who reads this. Dear friend, we will meet at the hotel. ”
Illustrations created by La Tigre Studio
(A) - 1:21, March 8, 2014:
Near the waypoint between Malaysia and Vietnam over the South China Sea, the MH370 disappears from the air traffic control radar and turns southwest, again passing over the Malay Peninsula .
(B) - about an hour later:
Having flown northwest over the Strait of Malacca, the plane performs the “last sharp turn,” as the researchers would later call it, and heading south. The turn itself and the new direction were restored according to satellite data.
(C) - April 2014:
The search in surface waters is stopped, the search begins in depth. Analysis of satellite data shows that the last time a connection to the MH370 was established in the arc region.
(D) - July 2015:
The first MH370 chip, flaperon, was discovered on Reunion Island. Other confirmed or probable fragments were found on beaches scattered in the western Indian Ocean (places highlighted in red).
4. Conspiracies
Following the disappearance of the MH370, three formal investigations were launched. The first was the largest, most thorough and most expensive: a technically sophisticated underwater search for Australians, whose purpose was to detect the main fragments, which would allow to obtain data from black boxes and voice recorders. Search efforts included determining the technical condition of the aircraft, analyzing radar and satellite data, studying ocean currents, a good share of statistical studies, and also physical analysis of fragments from East Africa, many of which were obtained from Blaine Gibson. All this required complex operations in one of the most troubled seas of the world. Part of the effort was undertaken by a group of volunteers, engineers, and scientists who met online, They called themselves the Independent Group and showed such effective cooperation that the Australians took their work into account and officially thanked for their assistance. This has never happened before in the history of accident investigations. However, after more than three years of work, costing about $ 160 million, an investigation in Australia was unsuccessful. In 2018, it was picked up by the American company Ocean Infinity, which concluded a contract with the Malaysian government on the terms “no result, no payment”. The continuation of the search involved the use of the most modern underwater vehicles and covered the previously unexplored section of the seventh arc, in which, according to the Independent Group, the detection was most likely. A few months later, these efforts also ended in failure. that the Australians took their work into account and officially thanked for their assistance. This has never happened before in the history of accident investigations. However, after more than three years of work, costing about $ 160 million, an investigation in Australia was unsuccessful. In 2018, it was picked up by the American company Ocean Infinity, which concluded a contract with the Malaysian government on the terms “no result, no payment”. The continuation of the search involved the use of the most modern underwater vehicles and covered the previously unexplored section of the seventh arc, in which, according to the Independent Group, the detection was most likely. A few months later, these efforts also ended in failure. that the Australians took their work into account and officially thanked for their assistance. This has never happened before in the history of accident investigations. However, after more than three years of work, costing about $ 160 million, an investigation in Australia was unsuccessful. In 2018, it was picked up by the American company Ocean Infinity, which concluded a contract with the Malaysian government on the terms “no result, no payment”. The continuation of the search involved the use of the most modern underwater vehicles and covered the previously unexplored section of the seventh arc, in which, according to the Independent Group, the detection was most likely. A few months later, these efforts also ended in failure. after more than three years of work, costing about $ 160 million, the investigation in Australia was unsuccessful. In 2018, it was picked up by the American company Ocean Infinity, which concluded a contract with the Malaysian government on the terms “no result, no payment”. The continuation of the search involved the use of the most modern underwater vehicles and covered the previously unexplored section of the seventh arc, in which, according to the Independent Group, the detection was most likely. A few months later, these efforts also ended in failure. after more than three years of work, costing about $ 160 million, the investigation in Australia was unsuccessful. In 2018, it was picked up by the American company Ocean Infinity, which concluded a contract with the Malaysian government on the terms “no result, no payment”. The continuation of the search involved the use of the most modern underwater vehicles and covered the previously unexplored section of the seventh arc, in which, according to the Independent Group, the detection was most likely. A few months later, these efforts also ended in failure. The continuation of the search involved the use of the most modern underwater vehicles and covered the previously unexplored section of the seventh arc, in which, according to the Independent Group, the detection was most likely. A few months later, these efforts also ended in failure. The continuation of the search involved the use of the most modern underwater vehicles and covered the previously unexplored section of the seventh arc, in which, according to the Independent Group, the detection was most likely. A few months later, these efforts also ended in failure.
The second official investigation was conducted by the Malaysian police, and it consisted of a thorough check of everyone on the plane, as well as their friends and relatives. It is difficult to assess the true extent of the police discovery because the report on the results of the investigation has not been published. Moreover, he was kept secret, becoming inaccessible even to other Malaysian researchers, but after someone organized the leak, his inferiority became apparent. In particular, it omitted all the information known about Captain Zachary, and this did not cause much surprise. Malaysian Prime Minister at that time was an unpleasant man named Najib Razak, who is believed to be deeply mired in corruption. The press in Malaysia was censored, the loudest were found and silenced. The officials had their own reasons for caution - from a career, which should be protected, up to, perhaps, their lives. Obviously, it was decided not to delve into the topics that Malaysia Airlines or the government could put in a bad light.
The third official investigation was the accident investigation, conducted not to make a decision on liability, but to identify the probable cause - it should have been carried out by an international group in accordance with the highest international standards. A special working group, created by the government of Malaysia, was at the head, and from the very beginning a mess reigned in it - the police and military considered themselves to be above this investigation and despised it, while ministers and members of the government saw it as a risk to themselves. Foreign specialists who came to assist began to run away almost immediately after their arrival. The American aviation expert, referring to the international protocol for the investigation of aircraft accidents, described the situation as follows: “The ICAO“ Appendix 13 ”is designed to organize investigations in a confident democracy.
One of the observers of the investigation process says: “It became clear that the main goal of the Malaysians was to hush up this story. From the very beginning, they had an instinctive prejudice against being open and transparent, not because they had some kind of deep, dark secret, but because they themselves did not know what the truth was, and were afraid that it was there will be something shameful. Did they try to hide something? Yes, something unknown to them. ”
The result of the investigation was a 495-page report, unconvincingly imitating the requirements of “Appendix 13”. It was filled with boilerplate descriptions of Boeing 777 systems, clearly copied from the manufacturer's manuals and not of any technical value. In fact, nothing in the report was of technical value, since Australian publications have fully described satellite information and analysis of ocean currents. The Malaysian report was not so much an investigation as an excuse, and its only significant contribution was a frank description of air traffic control errors, probably because the Vietnamese could be blamed for half the errors, and also because the Malaysian air traffic controllers turned out to be the easiest and most vulnerable target . The document was published in July 2018,
The idea that a sophisticated machine equipped with modern technology and redundant communications might just disappear seems absurd.
This conclusion encourages the continuation of speculation, regardless of whether it is justified or not. Satellite data is the best evidence of a flight path, and it is difficult to argue with them, but people will not be able to agree with the explanation if they do not trust the numbers. The authors of many theories have published speculations picked up by social networks that ignore satellite data, and sometimes radar tracks, aircraft design, air traffic control records, flight physics, and school geography. For example, a British woman who runs a blog under the name Saucy Sailoress and makes a living by fortune telling on the Tarot wandered around South Asia on a sailboat with her husband and dogs. According to her, on the night of the disappearance of the MH370, they were in the Andaman Sea, where she saw a cruise missile flying toward her. The rocket turned into a low-flying aircraft with a brightly glowing cabin, flooded with a strange orange glow and smoke. When he flew past, she decided that this was an air raid directed against the Chinese navy, which was further into the sea. Then she did not yet know about the disappearance of the MH370, but when she read about it a few days later, she made conclusions that were obvious to herself. It would seem implausible, but she found her audience.
One Australian has claimed for several years that with the help of Google Earth he managed to find the MH370 somewhere in the shallow water safe and sound - he, however, refuses to tell the coordinates while working on crowdfunding of the expedition. On the Internet you will find allegations that the plane was found intact in the Cambodian jungle, that it was spotted when landing in the Indonesian river, that it flew through time and was pulled into a black hole. In one scenario, the plane flies off to attack an American military base on Diego Garcia, and then it is shot down. A recent publication that Captain Zahari was found alive and lying in a Taiwanese hospital with amnesia was widespread enough for Malaysia to refute this. The news came from a purely satirical site,
A New York-based writer named Jeff Wise suggested that one of the electronic systems on board the aircraft could have been reprogrammed to send false southbound data to the Indian Ocean to mislead investigators when the plane actually turned north toward Kazakhstan . He calls it the “rally script” and talks about it in detail in his latest e-book, published in 2019. His assumption is that the Russians may have stolen the plane in order to divert attention from the annexation of Crimea, which was then in full swing. An obvious weak point of this theory is the need to explain how, if the plane flew to Kazakhstan, its wreckage ended up in the Indian Ocean - Wise believes that this was also tweaked.
When Blaine Gibson began his search, he was a newcomer to social networks, and he was expecting a surprise. According to him, the first trolls appeared as soon as he found his first fragment - the one on which it was written "NO STEP" - and soon there were much more, especially when searches on the coast of Madagascar began to bear fruit. The Internet is seething with emotions, even in relation to unremarkable events, but the catastrophe translates into something toxic. Gibson was accused of exploiting the affected families and of fraud, the pursuit of fame, drug addiction, work for Russia, work for the United States and, at least, for professionalism. He began to receive threats - messages on social networks and phone calls to friends, predicting his death. One report said that he would either stop looking for the wreckage or leave Madagascar in a coffin. Another foreshadowed that he would die from polonium poisoning. There were much more of them, Gibson was not ready for this and could not just brush it off. During the days we spent with him in Kuala Lumpur, he continued to monitor attacks through a friend in London. He says: “Once I made a mistake by opening Twitter. In essence, these people are cyber terrorists. And what they do works. It works well. ” All this caused him psychological trauma.
In 2017, Gibson organized an official mechanism for the transfer of debris: he gives any new find to the authorities in Madagascar, they transfer it to the Honorary Consul of Malaysia, and he packs it and sends it to Kuala Lumpur for research and storage. On August 24 of the same year, the honorary consul was shot dead in his car by an unidentified person who left the scene of the crime on a motorcycle and was not found. A French-language news source claims that the consul had a dubious past; perhaps his murder had nothing to do with the MH370. Gibson, however, believes that there is a connection. The police investigation is not over yet.
Currently, for the most part, he tries not to disclose his location or travel plans; for the same reasons, he avoids email and rarely speaks on the phone. He likes Skype and WhatsApp because they have encryption. He often changes SIM cards and believes that sometimes he is chased and photographed. There is no doubt that Gibson is the only person who independently went in search of fragments of the MH370 and found them, but it is hard to believe that the wreckage is worth killing for them. It would be easier to believe if the keys to dark secrets and international intrigues were hidden behind them, but the facts, most of which are now publicly available, point in a different direction.
Start: What really happened to the disappeared Malaysian Boeing (part 1/3)
End: What really happened to the disappeared Malaysian Boeing (part 3/3)
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