"trader_4" wrote in message
news:81baa3d6-c7c4-4e1e-964a-

I agree with your general argument here. It's kind of a paradox
in a way. I think the media has given this story far more attention
than it deserves. CNN in particular. Some almost insignificant thing
comes out like someone says a week into this that the plane made a
"sharp turn to the left" when it first went off course, and they blow
it into major breaking news. Then they finally admit that it's unclear
if that means that it was a sudden, extreme bank turn, or just that it
was a sharp change from it's original course. We knew the latter from
day one, and even if was a steep bank turn, it's hardly major knews.
Yet they had pilots demonstrating both in a flight simulator and they
talked about if for hours.

Editors love it when they can cover a story cheaply from afar by assembling
talking heads and doing "gee whiz" stuff like showing people what a trainer
does. Hopefully they're not giving would-be hijackers quick flying lessons
or ideas. You've just illustrated why I am so suspicious of anything other
than actual radar images, recorded transmission, passenger logs and the few
other things like cargo manifests that aren't subject to "reinterpretation."
I thought it was clear from the beginning that the MGov was concealing
information, probably to keep their terrible air defense practices a secret.
A contact that big that wasn't scheduled should have been investigated by
jets. The MGov failed to do so many important things that I am now hard
over in DIS-believing anything they say. I simply assume there's an
ass-cover going on somewhere.

I especially enjoyed that British buffoon they have in Australia, who's
their aviation expert. About a week ago, when the Australian Prime Minister
made an announcement while he was before pariament, he was so excited
he must have wet his pants. He was saying that for anyone who understands
Australian politics, there has to be major significance, that they've
really found something that they know must be from the plane, or the
PM wouldn't be saying that. Well, now as I suspected at the time, he
was full of BS. It's just the PM should have known better to talk about
finding something while he was before Parliament because it would be
misinterpreted by buffoons like the CNN clown.

You'll find that getting intelligent people to serve as talking heads,
especially ones affiliated with professional organizations or companies is
very difficult. There are always buffoons looking for their moment in the
sun and many, many times the outcomes are laughable. I've seen Fox, PBS,
ABC, CNN and more get skewered by the "expert" that really wasn't. Redskins
owner Dan Snyder got foxed by someone claiming to be an Indian chief who was
telling reporters he didn't find the team name offensive. Turns out he
wasn't a real chief - that was just his nickname. Real expert witnesses get
a *lot* of $ for their services in court. AFAIK, most news orgs don't pay
for the occasional expert and they get what they pay for. (-:

The paradox is that if you're interested in the latest on any of this,
even I put on CNN to watch for 20 mins to see what's going on, because
they've been covering it pretty much 24/7. You just have to be able
to filter the BS from the facts, and sadly a lot of people can't do
that.

I check Google News under the "Malaysia airline" topic heading every day and
the coverage really waxes and wanes. Some days, nothing, other days, reams
of stuff. It's almost always triggered by some new discovery that turns out
to be nothing. Enough people are reading the stories to make the "most
emailed list" and that generates even MORE coverage and the cycle feeds on
itself.

People generally read/watch the news not so much to learn new things, but to
reinforce whatever ideas they currently hold. If they hate Joe Schmoe, the
first story they will pick to read in a newspaper will be anything that
mentions Joe Schmoe in a negative light. Confirmation bias.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

We're both doing it now. You're selecting information which favors the
hijack theory and I am selecting information that confirms to the fire
theory. It's no surprise we're at an impasse. There's nothing that can be
proved further without the wreckage and the cockpit recorders. If the wreck
is deep enough, there might be bodies that reveal smoke inhalation,
explosion damage, asphyxia and more. There might be enough of the cabin to
be salvageable and that could tell us very quickly if there was a fire.
Nothing short of that can. Even worse for the hijack theory is that the
crucial moments when the plane turned are very likely to be written over
*unless* a fire interrupted power to those devices as well. We're basically
arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of pin. It's all blue
sky hypothecation so we get to choose which theory we like the best.

Since I first read this post I've been reading MH370 stories with an eye
to
whether news organizations make it clear that what they are reporting are
not necessarily facts, but the best "guesses" we have available from the
people in a position to know something about the situation. That's why I
give reports like Chris Goodfellow's (that there was a fire) much greater
credence than some turkey in the Malaysian government. Goodfellow's a
pilot who's "been there, done that" whereas a defense minister hasn't and
worse, yet, probably has some pretty good reasons *not* to tell the whole
truth.

The problem with Goodfellow's fire theory is that it doesn't conform
at all to most of the facts we have.

I contend we don't have many *real* facts but a lot of theories and
suppositions masquerading as facts.

I don't just take someone's conclusion because they are a pilot. We'll
get to his pilot credentials later,
but there are more commercial pilots in fact who are saying they too believe
deliberate criminal human action was the likely cause.

If I have to choose between a Malaysian Defense Minister's opinion about
what happened v. a guy who's actually flown a plane, I'm going with the
latter. Especially since the MDM has backtracked on so many things. That's
my courtroom background. I consider him impeached and his testimony to be
worthless. That makes it easy for me to dismiss any facts he proffers. Our
difference lies in your willingness to accept some of his statements as
factual, and they well may be. For me, he's in the realm of "if you say it,
something ELSE has to back your claims."

I've asked you these points before and I'll ask them again regarding
what Goodfellow is claiming:

"When I saw that left turn with a direct heading, I instinctively knew he
was heading for an airport. He was taking a direct route to Palau Langkawi,
a 13,000-foot airstrip with an approach over water and no obstacles. The
captain did not turn back to Kuala Lampur because he knew he had 8,000-foot
ridges to cross. He knew the terrain was friendlier toward Langkawi, which
also was closer."

When they made that left turn, the airport at Kota Bahru, with an 8000ft
runway, perectly capable of landing a 777, was about 140 miles away. It's
right on the coast. Yet they chose to fly a burning plane 175 miles
farther,
all the way across Malaysia to the other coast? He just picks that
Palau Langkawi airport because it happens to be near where the plane went
by,
on the other side of Malaysia.

I think it was all over very quickly in that plane. That's especially if,
as the EgyptAir fire suggests, they had an oxygen fed fire, perhaps started
by the lithium battery cargo. It might have been an explosion in the cargo
hold or it could have been an electrical fire. It wasn't until the Valuejet
cockpit recorder was recovered that they could read the distinctive signs of
an on-board explosion (a "bup" on the CVR and a sharp rise in internal air
pressure).

We don't have any of that information but we do know an oxygen-fed fire can
destroy a cabin within 17 seconds. My theory, which explains even your
facts, is that the plane caught fire, the pilots tried to pull busses to
kill the fire and to get it to safety but it was all over (for them, not the
plane) in seconds. Once the on-board fire suppression system kicked, the
people were already dead, and the plane stabilized and flew on auto-pilot
until it ran out of gas and crashed.

Oh, and note that the plane didn't land there, or pass close to it,
instead it made a precise zig-zag to waypoints that left in perfectly
aligned with the flight path to India/Middle East at 29,500 ft. It was
on radar contact hundreds of miles

This is all based on data from the Malaysian government, isn't it? Ptui!
It's not worth anything because they've not been straight with the public on
so many things. If that's what happened, who can say whether the auto-pilot
did it? Didn't we see the same segment on CNN that explains how the AP
would "fill in" way points if nothing was entered in time? The pilots could
have mis-entered course data as the cabin filled with smoke or they behaved
erratically as the oxygen ran out. Somewhere on YouTube there must be
videos of people passing out from anoxia. They get *very* punchy before
they pass out.

Maybe you can point me to way-point and radar data I find credible, but my
last recollection was that the MGov recanted their claims about way points
and the times of radio and transponder transmissions.

The MGov got enough stuff wrong enough times to be deemed very
untrustworthy. The Inmarsat Doppler analysis, however, I find much more
credible but I am not aware that it could discriminate motion finely enough
to determine if the plane was "hitting standard waypoints." So my position
is that the way point data is inconclusive at best. If someone *was* at the
controls, why did it eventually just fly in a straight line into the middle
of the Indian Ocean? That's big damn hole in the human intervention theory.

Those recorders are going to stop pinging soon - they're running out of time
to find them. If they don't get them soon, it could easily take more than
the two years it took to find AirFrance's BB's. At least they knew where
that plane went down.

--
Bobby G.