Batting 1000 in MH370 Predictions

The world is abuzz with the latest possible find of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 by the Australians.  This is the diagram that they have released.

I have been making inferences all along, and two days ago, using logical inferences, I predicted that the search should start some 2,000 kilometers off Perth in Australia.  I published this map in the blog entry below:

Well some possible wreckage has been sited some 2,260 kilometers off Perth.  My inferences were within roughly 10 percent of where the possible wreckage was found.

If it turns out to be MH370, then I have batted 1000 on my inferences.  

Again, time will tell.

Probable Location of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370

(click on picture for larger image)

Probable Location of Flight MH370

I have been amazingly accurate with my inferences and predictions about Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370.  Days before it was even intimated, I put out the possibility that it was in the Indian Ocean.  And then a couple of days later before the authorities admitted it, I said that it was a deliberate act from the flight deck.  I even named the co-pilot as the rogue character (see entries below this one in this blog).

So here I go again.  Where to look?  Well we do know that the last satellite transmission was somewhere in the red arc pictured above.  It is cut off by the blue circle as the maximum distance and amount of fuel that the aircraft had.

So let's assume that the co-pilot wanted to fly the plane to kingdom come, until it fell from the sky never to be seen again.  What he is hoping for (and you read this here first) is that the plane is never found.  And it may never be.  My guess is that the flight path would circle around the island of Sumatra just in case there was radar there.  Remember, they wanted to avoid radar.  Then they would just fly straight south until the plane stopped flying.  They wouldn't want to come too near Australia on one side, and didn't want Madagascar's radar picking them up, so they flew pretty much south.

The distance traveled would be a function of speed.  My guess is that they would travel at "normal" airline speeds -- not too fast and not too slow.  That would bring them close but not all the way to the maximum distance arc.   So if I were in charge of the search, I would start looking on the arc about 2000 kilometers off Perth Australia due west and look up and down the arc there. It stands to reason that MH370 is somewhere along that arc.  And if the plane is found, I am willing to bet that the pilot would found with either a bullet, or massive trauma to the head, and he was dead around the time of the turn west from the Beijing flight plan.

Time will tell, again!

Inference -- And Fearless Prediction Again -- The Co-pilot did it!

Update:  I made this inference two days before any authorities did.

Update 2: 2 days later, authorities now say that the last voice transmission came from the co-pilot validating this earlier prediction.

As part of my job, I teach computers to make inferences.  I have an inference engine in my head.  Four days ago, using a well-reasoned argument, I inferred that the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370, under a certain set of circumstances, was probably in the Indian Ocean. (See the entry two posts below this one.)   Today, it was announced that the USS Kidd is in fact searching the Indian Ocean, because telemetry signals indicated that the plane flew for hours after the transponders went silent.  The inference looks to be largely correct.

I have another inference to make.  New facts have come up.  Radar and ACARS (engine reporting to the satellite) data shows that it wasn't a random left turn.  The aircraft turned at specific GPS waypoints.  The only way that this could happen, was that either the autopilot was programmed that way, or a someone watched for the waypoints, and manually followed them.  Only a professionally trained pilot would know how to do this.

So that leaves two scenarios.  Either a professionally trained pilot hijacked the airplane, or the pilot or co-pilot did it.  The cabin door to the cockpit is reinforced so that if there was a hijacker, he would either have to break into the cockpit or sneak his way in.  We do know that the young 27 year old co-pilot was a loose cannon who invited women to fly in the cockpit, so that could be how the hijacker got in.  However, if that was the case, the older 52 year old pilot would have sounded the alarm and somehow issued a mayday - even as he was being killed.

The extreme knowledge of turning off the transponders, and then no mayday and then the plane flying for hours is very strange.  In any inferential reasoning, the rule of Ockham's Razor comes into play.  Ockham's Razor is a tool of logic.  It is referred to as the tool of parsimony.  Essentially, if there are two equally valid explanations for an event, we must take the simplest one.

The simplest explanation here, is that for whatever reason, be it mental illness, religious fanaticism or whatever, the co-pilot took over the plane, and flew it into the ocean.  When it is all said and done, there is a very very high probability that it will turn out this way.  The second most probable event is a hijacker, but I am betting that the co-pilot did it.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 ~ My Analysis

(click on graphic for larger image)

Update:  I made this prediction four days before any authority did.

Here is my two cent analysis of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 mystery.  Point A on the graphic is where the transponders stopped working at cruise altitude.  Point B is where the military radar last saw Flight 370, still at cruising altitude in the Straits of Mallaca, near the tiny island of Pulau Perak.

There are two possibilities at point A.  The first is that the plane suffered severe mechanical malfunction that took out the transponders and the pilot turned the plane around.  The second possibility, is that the plane was hijacked either by the pilot with mental issues, or by terrorist act.  The transponders would be turned off either ordered by the terrorists or by the mad pilot.  I saw a Pentagon analyst say that if this was a terrorist attack, this could be dry run or a feasibility study to see if this would work in the United States.

The heading is way off course.  There are two possibilities again.  Either the pilot believed that he was headed back to Kuala Lumpur and was mistaken, or the course is deliberate.  It doesn't much matter until point B is reached.

If the pilot is flying a damaged plane, and he believes that he is on the course back to Kuala Lumpur, he will hold his course to point C until he sees the lights of the city.  Unfortunately he get to North Sumatra and there is no city.  He keeps flying until the plane falls out of the sky between points C and E.  If the pilot was not under coercion and sane, then he would realize that by point E that he had flown long enough to reach Kuala Lumpur and missed it.  Again in the same state, he should have realized that he was not over the Malay Peninsula and might have turned south to point D, when reaching point D should have realized that he missed Kuala Lumpur.  With the damaged plane, sane pilot scenario, the wreckage should be found in the orange circle, or at maximum in the pink circle or if there was a course change, in the yellow circle around C,D, and E.

The terrorist or mad pilot scenario is scarier.  If there was a terrorist or if the pilot went mad, there was enough fuel in the plane to take the flight out into the deep Indian Ocean to point F and past so that the plane would never be found or not found for a long time.  If the plane ditched around land, the water is relatively shallow compared to surrounding ocean. This same scenario would hold true if the plane de-pressurized killing all aboard and then continue to fly on auto-pilot like the case that killed golfer Payne Stewart.

So there you have it.  If there is a reasonable explanation, I would look in the Indonesian waters off North Sumatra for the wreckage.  If the loss of the plane defies rationality, if it is found, it will be somewhere off in the Indian Ocean.

Time will tell.