What really happened to the missing Malaysian Boeing (part 1/3)
1. Disappearance
2. Coastal tramp
3. Goldmine
4. Conspiracies
On a quiet moonlit night on March 8, 2014, a Boeing 777-200ER, operated by Malaysia Airlines, flew from Kuala Lumpur at 0:42 and turned towards Beijing, rising to the intended flight level 350, that is, to an altitude of 10,650 meters. The designation of the airline Malaysia Airlines - MH. Flight number - 370. The plane was driven by Farik Hamid, the co-pilot, he was 27 years old. It was his last training flight, after which he was waiting for the completion of certification. The actions of Farik were led by an aircraft commander, a man named Zakhari Ahmad Shah, who, at the age of 53, was one of the most senior captains on Malaysia Airlines. According to Malaysian customs, his name was simply Zachary. He was married and had three grown children. He lived in a closed cottage village. Had two houses. In the first house he had a flight simulator, Microsoft Flight Simulator. He regularly flew it and often wrote on online forums about his hobby. Farik treated Zachary with respect, but he did not abuse his power.
')
In the cabin there were 10 flight attendants, all Malaysians. They had to take care of 227 passengers, including five children. Most of the passengers were Chinese; of the rest, 38 were Malaysians, and the others (in descending order) were citizens of Indonesia, Australia, India, France, USA, Iran, Ukraine, Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Russia and Taiwan. That night, Captain Zachary worked with the radio while co-pilot Farik flew the plane. Everything went as usual, but the transfer of Zachary was a bit strange. At 1:01 he said on the radio that they had leveled off at an altitude of 35,000 feet - an unnecessary message in a zone with radar surveillance, where it is customary to report about leaving from a height, and not about achieving it. At 1:08, the voyage crossed the Malaysian coastline and headed across the South China Sea towards Vietnam. Zachary once again reported the height of the aircraft at 35,000 feet.
Eleven minutes later, when the plane approached the control point near the Vietnamese air traffic control service, the dispatcher in the Kuala Lumpur Center conveyed the message: “Malaysian three-seven-zero, contact Ho Chi Minh one-two-zero-point-nine. Goodnight". Zachary replied: “Good night. Malaysian three-seven-zero. He did not repeat the frequency as it should, but otherwise the message sounded normal. This was the last thing the world heard from the MH370. The pilots did not contact Ho Chi Minh and did not respond to any of the subsequent attempts to call them.
A simple radar, known as a “primary radar”, detects objects, sending radio signals and receiving their reflections as if it were an echo. Air traffic control systems, or air traffic control systems, use the so-called “secondary radar”. It relies on the active responder installed on each aircraft, or the transponder, which sends more detailed information, such as the tail number and height of the aircraft. Five seconds after the MH370 entered Vietnamese airspace, its transponder icon disappeared from the Malaysian dispatcher service, and after 37 seconds the plane became invisible to the secondary radar. The time was 1:21, 39 minutes after takeoff. The dispatcher in Kuala Lumpur was busy with other sides located in a different part of the screen, and simply did not notice the disappearance. When after some time he discovered the loss, he assumed that the plane had already gone beyond the reach, and that it was already being dispatched by dispatchers Ho Chi Minh.
Meanwhile, the Vietnamese controllers saw the MH370 enter their airspace and then disappear from the radar. Obviously, they misunderstood the official agreement, according to which Ho Chi Minh should immediately notify Kuala Lumpur if the incoming plane does not contact for more than five minutes. They tried to re-contact the plane, but to no avail. By the time they picked up the phone to report the situation to Kuala Lumpur, 18 minutes had passed since the MH370 disappeared from radar screens. This was followed by an outstanding manifestation of confusion and incompetence - according to the rules, the Kuala Lumpur Aviation Rescue Coordination Center should have been notified within an hour after the disappearance, but by 2:30 it was not done yet. Four more hours passed before the first emergency response measures were taken at 6:32.
The enigma surrounding MH370 has been the subject of ongoing investigation and the source of feverish speculation. Many families on four continents have experienced a devastating sense of loss. The idea that a complex machine equipped with modern technologies and redundant communications may just disappear seems absurd. It is difficult to completely remove the message, and it is completely impossible to disappear from the network, even if the attempt is intentional. A plane like the Boeing 777 should be available for communication at any time, and its disappearance has generated many theories. Many of them are ridiculous, but they all arose due to the fact that in our age a civilian plane cannot simply take an abyss.
One still managed, and after more than five years, its exact location remains unknown. However, much of the disappearance of MH370 has become clearer, and it is now possible to recreate some of the events that took place that night. Sound recordings from the cockpit and recordings of flight recorders will probably never be restored, - however, what we need to know is unlikely to be able to get out of the black boxes. Instead, answers will have to be sought in Malaysia.
That evening, when the plane disappeared, a middle-aged American named Blaine Gibson was sitting in the house of his late mother in Carmel, California, sorting out her business and getting ready to sell property. He heard news about the flight MH370 on CNN.
By education, Gibson, whom I recently met in Kuala Lumpur, is a lawyer. He has lived in Seattle for over 35 years, but spends a little time there. His father, who died a decade ago, was a veteran of World War I, survived the mustard gas in the trenches, was awarded the Silver Star for valor and returned to the service of the Chief Judge of California, having spent more than 24 years in this post. His mother was a graduate of Stanford Law School and an ardent environmentalist.
Gibson was an only child. His mother loved to travel the world, and she took him with her. At the age of seven, he decided that the goal of his life would be to visit every country of the world at least once. In the end, it came up against the definition of “visiting” and “country,” but he remained true to the idea, abandoning the chances of a stable career and having a very modest legacy. In his own words, on the way, he indulged in some famous riddles - the end of the Mayan civilization in the jungles of Guatemala and Belize, the explosion of the Tunguska meteorite in Eastern Siberia and the location of the Ark of the Covenant in the mountains of Ethiopia. He printed his business cards “The Adventurer. Researcher. Striving for the truth, ”and wore a felt hat like Indiana Jones. When news of the disappearance of the MH370 arrived, Gibson’s close attention to the incident was predetermined.
Despite reflex refutations from Malaysian officials and outright confusion from the Malaysian air force, the truth about the strange trajectory of the flight of the aircraft quickly revealed. It turned out that the MH370 continued to periodically communicate with the geostationary satellite in the Indian Ocean, operated by the British satellite communications company Inmarsat, for six hours after the disappearance of the aircraft from the secondary radar. This meant that there was no sudden catastrophe on the plane. Presumably, during these six hours he flew at cruising speed at high altitude. Conversations with Inmarsat, some of which were merely confirmations of the connection, were short system connections — no more, in essence, than an electronic whisper. The system for transmitting the main content - entertainment for passengers, messages for pilots, automatic reports on the technical condition - was apparently disabled. In total, there were seven connections: two were automatically initiated by an airplane, and five others - by the Inmarsat ground station. There were also two satellite calls; they remained unanswered, but eventually provided additional data. The majority of these compounds were associated with two parameters, which Inmarsat began to fix and save recently.
The first and more accurate of the parameters is known as the burst-timing offset; we will call it the “distance parameter” for simplicity. This is a measure of the time of transmission to the aircraft and from the aircraft, that is, a measure of the distance from the aircraft to the satellite. This parameter defines not one specific location, but all equidistant places - almost a circle of possible points. Considering the limits of the flight range of the MH370, the near parts of these circles become arcs. The most important arc, the seventh and last, is determined by the last connection to the satellite, which is in a complex way connected with the depletion of fuel reserves and the failure of the engines. The seventh arc extends from Central Asia in the north to Antarctica in the south, and MH370 crossed it at 8:19 Kuala Lumpur’s time. Calculations of probable flight paths determine the intersection of the plane with the seventh arc and, therefore, its end point - in Kazakhstan, if the plane turned north, or in the southern part of the Indian Ocean, if it turned south.
Technical analysis allows us to assert with confidence that the plane turned south. We know this from the second registered Inmarsat parameter - burst-frequency offset. For simplicity, we will call it the “Doppler parameter”, since the main thing that it includes is the measure of radio frequency Doppler shifts associated with high-speed motion relative to the satellite position, which is a natural part of satellite communications for aircraft in flight. For the successful operation of satellite communications, Doppler shifts must be predicted and compensated for by onboard systems. But compensation is not quite perfect, because the satellites - especially as they age - do not transmit signals exactly as it was programmed in the aircraft. Their orbits may deviate slightly, they also depend on temperature, and these flaws leave clear marks. Although the Doppler shift values ​​were never used to locate the aircraft, Inmarsat technical specialists in London were able to notice a significant distortion, implying a turn south at 2:40. The turning point was a little north and west of Sumatra, the northernmost island of Indonesia. With some assumption it can be assumed that the plane then flew straight at a constant height for a very long time in the direction of Antarctica, which lies outside its range.
After six hours, the Doppler parameter indicates a sharp decline - five times faster than the normal descent rate. A minute or two after crossing the seventh arc, the plane plunged into the ocean, possibly losing components before impact. Judging by the electronic data, there were no attempts at a controlled landing on the water. The plane was supposed to instantly scatter into a million pieces. However, no one knew where the fall occurred, and even more, why. Also, no one had the slightest physical evidence that the interpretation of satellite data was correct.
Less than a week after the disappearance, the first article on satellite connections was published in The Wall Street Journal, which indicated that the aircraft most likely remained in the air for hours after it had been silent. Malaysian officials finally admitted that this is true. The Malaysian regime is considered one of the most corrupt in the region, and the publication of satellite communications data showed that the Malaysian authorities in their investigation into disappearances were secretive, cowardly and unreliable. The incident investigators sent from Europe, Australia and the United States were shocked by the confusion they encountered. Due to the fact that the Malaysians hid the details known to them, the initial search for the sea was concentrated in the wrong place in the South China Sea, and did not detect floating debris. If Malaysians immediately told the truth, such garbage could be found and used to determine the approximate position of the aircraft; black boxes could be found. The underwater search eventually focused on a narrow strip of the ocean thousands of kilometers away. But even a narrow strip of the ocean is a very big place. It took two years to find the black boxes of Air France 447, which crashed into the Atlantic during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris in 2009, and there they investigated exactly where to look for them.
Initial searches in surface waters ended in April 2014 after almost two months of useless effort, and the focus shifted to the depths of the ocean, where it remains today. At first, Blaine Gibson watched these frustrating efforts from afar. He sold his mother's house and moved to the Golden Triangle in the north of Laos, where, together with a business partner, he began building a restaurant on the Mekong River. At the same time, he joined the Facebook group devoted to the disappearance of the MH370, which was filled with both speculation and news that contained rational arguments about the fate of the aircraft and the whereabouts of the main wreckage.
Although the Malaysians were formally responsible for the entire investigation, they lacked the means and experience to conduct underwater search and recovery work, and the Australians, like the good Samaritans, took the initiative. The areas of the Indian Ocean that were indicated by satellite data — approximately 1900 kilometers south-west of Perth — were so deep and unexplored that it was necessary first of all to create a sufficiently accurate submarine topographic map to allow safe towing of special vehicles, side-scan sonar, at a depth of many kilometers under water. The bottom of the ocean in these places is covered with ridges hidden by darkness, where the light never penetrated.
A diligent underwater search made Gibson wonder if the plane wrecks would ever be cast ashore. Visiting friends on the coast of Cambodia, he asked if they had stumbled upon something like that — the answer was no. Although the wreckage would not have been able to sail to Cambodia from the southern part of the Indian Ocean, Gibson wanted to be open to any options until the discovery of the wreckage of an aircraft could prove that it was the south of the Indian Ocean that really became his grave.
In March 2015, in Kuala Lumpur, the relatives of the passengers met on the anniversary of the disappearance of the MH370. Gibson decided to attend without an invitation and without being intimately acquainted with anyone. Since he did not have any special knowledge, his visit was received with skepticism - people did not know how to react to a random amateur. The event was held in an open area in a mall, a typical meeting place in Kuala Lumpur. The goal was to express general grief, as well as continued pressure on the Malaysian government in order to get some explanations. There were hundreds of people present, many came from China. From the stage, quiet music sounded, in the background hung a large poster depicting the silhouette of a Boeing 777, as well as the words " where ", " who ", " why ", " when ", " who ", " how ", and also " impossible "," Unprecedented "," without a trace "and" helplessly . The main speaker was a young Malaysian woman named Grace Subatirai Nathan, whose mother was on board. Nathan is a criminal lawyer who specializes in capital punishment cases that Malaysia lacks because of draconian laws. She became the most successful representative of the close relatives of the victims. Stepping onto the stage in a T-shirt that was not the size of MH370 with the appeal “ Look, ” she spoke about her mother, about the deep love she felt for her, and about the difficulties she faced after her disappearance. Sometimes she sobbed softly, as did some of the spectators, including Gibson. After her speech, he approached her and asked if she would take a hug from a stranger. She embraced with him, and over time they became friends.
Leaving the mourning event, Gibson decided to help, taking up the gap that he found - the lack of coastal search for floating debris. This will be his niche. He will be a beach tramp looking for fragments of the MH370 on the coasts. Official researchers, mainly Australians and Malaysians, actively invested in underwater searches. They would have laughed at Gibson's ambitions — just as they would have laughed at the prospect that Gibson would indeed find fragments of an airplane on the beaches hundreds of kilometers apart.
Left: Malaysian lawyer and activist Grace Subatirae Nathan, whose mother was aboard MH370. Right: Blaine Gibson, an American who went in search of the wreckage of an airplane. Photo by: William Langewiesche
2. Coastal tramp
3. Goldmine
4. Conspiracies
1. Disappearance
On a quiet moonlit night on March 8, 2014, a Boeing 777-200ER, operated by Malaysia Airlines, flew from Kuala Lumpur at 0:42 and turned towards Beijing, rising to the intended flight level 350, that is, to an altitude of 10,650 meters. The designation of the airline Malaysia Airlines - MH. Flight number - 370. The plane was driven by Farik Hamid, the co-pilot, he was 27 years old. It was his last training flight, after which he was waiting for the completion of certification. The actions of Farik were led by an aircraft commander, a man named Zakhari Ahmad Shah, who, at the age of 53, was one of the most senior captains on Malaysia Airlines. According to Malaysian customs, his name was simply Zachary. He was married and had three grown children. He lived in a closed cottage village. Had two houses. In the first house he had a flight simulator, Microsoft Flight Simulator. He regularly flew it and often wrote on online forums about his hobby. Farik treated Zachary with respect, but he did not abuse his power.
')
In the cabin there were 10 flight attendants, all Malaysians. They had to take care of 227 passengers, including five children. Most of the passengers were Chinese; of the rest, 38 were Malaysians, and the others (in descending order) were citizens of Indonesia, Australia, India, France, USA, Iran, Ukraine, Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Russia and Taiwan. That night, Captain Zachary worked with the radio while co-pilot Farik flew the plane. Everything went as usual, but the transfer of Zachary was a bit strange. At 1:01 he said on the radio that they had leveled off at an altitude of 35,000 feet - an unnecessary message in a zone with radar surveillance, where it is customary to report about leaving from a height, and not about achieving it. At 1:08, the voyage crossed the Malaysian coastline and headed across the South China Sea towards Vietnam. Zachary once again reported the height of the aircraft at 35,000 feet.
Eleven minutes later, when the plane approached the control point near the Vietnamese air traffic control service, the dispatcher in the Kuala Lumpur Center conveyed the message: “Malaysian three-seven-zero, contact Ho Chi Minh one-two-zero-point-nine. Goodnight". Zachary replied: “Good night. Malaysian three-seven-zero. He did not repeat the frequency as it should, but otherwise the message sounded normal. This was the last thing the world heard from the MH370. The pilots did not contact Ho Chi Minh and did not respond to any of the subsequent attempts to call them.
A simple radar, known as a “primary radar”, detects objects, sending radio signals and receiving their reflections as if it were an echo. Air traffic control systems, or air traffic control systems, use the so-called “secondary radar”. It relies on the active responder installed on each aircraft, or the transponder, which sends more detailed information, such as the tail number and height of the aircraft. Five seconds after the MH370 entered Vietnamese airspace, its transponder icon disappeared from the Malaysian dispatcher service, and after 37 seconds the plane became invisible to the secondary radar. The time was 1:21, 39 minutes after takeoff. The dispatcher in Kuala Lumpur was busy with other sides located in a different part of the screen, and simply did not notice the disappearance. When after some time he discovered the loss, he assumed that the plane had already gone beyond the reach, and that it was already being dispatched by dispatchers Ho Chi Minh.
Meanwhile, the Vietnamese controllers saw the MH370 enter their airspace and then disappear from the radar. Obviously, they misunderstood the official agreement, according to which Ho Chi Minh should immediately notify Kuala Lumpur if the incoming plane does not contact for more than five minutes. They tried to re-contact the plane, but to no avail. By the time they picked up the phone to report the situation to Kuala Lumpur, 18 minutes had passed since the MH370 disappeared from radar screens. This was followed by an outstanding manifestation of confusion and incompetence - according to the rules, the Kuala Lumpur Aviation Rescue Coordination Center should have been notified within an hour after the disappearance, but by 2:30 it was not done yet. Four more hours passed before the first emergency response measures were taken at 6:32.
The enigma surrounding MH370 has been the subject of ongoing investigation and the source of feverish speculation.By this time, the plane was supposed to land in Beijing. His search efforts were initially concentrated in the South China Sea, between Malaysia and Vietnam. These were international operations of 34 ships and 28 aircraft from seven different countries, but the MH370 was not there. Within a few days, the primary radar records, extracted from air traffic control computers and partially confirmed by the secret data of the Malaysian air force, showed that as soon as the MH370 disappeared from the secondary radar, it abruptly turned to the south-west, flew back through the Malay Peninsula and began to lurch near the island of Penang. From there, he flew north-west up the Malacca Strait and further across the Andaman Sea, where he disappeared outside the radar range. This part of the journey took more than an hour - and she suggested that the plane was not hijacked. It also meant that it was not the accident and the suicide of the pilot that had happened before. From the outset, the MH370 led researchers in an unknown direction.
The enigma surrounding MH370 has been the subject of ongoing investigation and the source of feverish speculation. Many families on four continents have experienced a devastating sense of loss. The idea that a complex machine equipped with modern technologies and redundant communications may just disappear seems absurd. It is difficult to completely remove the message, and it is completely impossible to disappear from the network, even if the attempt is intentional. A plane like the Boeing 777 should be available for communication at any time, and its disappearance has generated many theories. Many of them are ridiculous, but they all arose due to the fact that in our age a civilian plane cannot simply take an abyss.
One still managed, and after more than five years, its exact location remains unknown. However, much of the disappearance of MH370 has become clearer, and it is now possible to recreate some of the events that took place that night. Sound recordings from the cockpit and recordings of flight recorders will probably never be restored, - however, what we need to know is unlikely to be able to get out of the black boxes. Instead, answers will have to be sought in Malaysia.
2. Coastal tramp
That evening, when the plane disappeared, a middle-aged American named Blaine Gibson was sitting in the house of his late mother in Carmel, California, sorting out her business and getting ready to sell property. He heard news about the flight MH370 on CNN.
By education, Gibson, whom I recently met in Kuala Lumpur, is a lawyer. He has lived in Seattle for over 35 years, but spends a little time there. His father, who died a decade ago, was a veteran of World War I, survived the mustard gas in the trenches, was awarded the Silver Star for valor and returned to the service of the Chief Judge of California, having spent more than 24 years in this post. His mother was a graduate of Stanford Law School and an ardent environmentalist.
Gibson was an only child. His mother loved to travel the world, and she took him with her. At the age of seven, he decided that the goal of his life would be to visit every country of the world at least once. In the end, it came up against the definition of “visiting” and “country,” but he remained true to the idea, abandoning the chances of a stable career and having a very modest legacy. In his own words, on the way, he indulged in some famous riddles - the end of the Mayan civilization in the jungles of Guatemala and Belize, the explosion of the Tunguska meteorite in Eastern Siberia and the location of the Ark of the Covenant in the mountains of Ethiopia. He printed his business cards “The Adventurer. Researcher. Striving for the truth, ”and wore a felt hat like Indiana Jones. When news of the disappearance of the MH370 arrived, Gibson’s close attention to the incident was predetermined.
Despite reflex refutations from Malaysian officials and outright confusion from the Malaysian air force, the truth about the strange trajectory of the flight of the aircraft quickly revealed. It turned out that the MH370 continued to periodically communicate with the geostationary satellite in the Indian Ocean, operated by the British satellite communications company Inmarsat, for six hours after the disappearance of the aircraft from the secondary radar. This meant that there was no sudden catastrophe on the plane. Presumably, during these six hours he flew at cruising speed at high altitude. Conversations with Inmarsat, some of which were merely confirmations of the connection, were short system connections — no more, in essence, than an electronic whisper. The system for transmitting the main content - entertainment for passengers, messages for pilots, automatic reports on the technical condition - was apparently disabled. In total, there were seven connections: two were automatically initiated by an airplane, and five others - by the Inmarsat ground station. There were also two satellite calls; they remained unanswered, but eventually provided additional data. The majority of these compounds were associated with two parameters, which Inmarsat began to fix and save recently.
The first and more accurate of the parameters is known as the burst-timing offset; we will call it the “distance parameter” for simplicity. This is a measure of the time of transmission to the aircraft and from the aircraft, that is, a measure of the distance from the aircraft to the satellite. This parameter defines not one specific location, but all equidistant places - almost a circle of possible points. Considering the limits of the flight range of the MH370, the near parts of these circles become arcs. The most important arc, the seventh and last, is determined by the last connection to the satellite, which is in a complex way connected with the depletion of fuel reserves and the failure of the engines. The seventh arc extends from Central Asia in the north to Antarctica in the south, and MH370 crossed it at 8:19 Kuala Lumpur’s time. Calculations of probable flight paths determine the intersection of the plane with the seventh arc and, therefore, its end point - in Kazakhstan, if the plane turned north, or in the southern part of the Indian Ocean, if it turned south.
Judging by the electronic data, there were no attempts at a controlled landing on the water. The plane was supposed to instantly scatter into a million pieces.
Technical analysis allows us to assert with confidence that the plane turned south. We know this from the second registered Inmarsat parameter - burst-frequency offset. For simplicity, we will call it the “Doppler parameter”, since the main thing that it includes is the measure of radio frequency Doppler shifts associated with high-speed motion relative to the satellite position, which is a natural part of satellite communications for aircraft in flight. For the successful operation of satellite communications, Doppler shifts must be predicted and compensated for by onboard systems. But compensation is not quite perfect, because the satellites - especially as they age - do not transmit signals exactly as it was programmed in the aircraft. Their orbits may deviate slightly, they also depend on temperature, and these flaws leave clear marks. Although the Doppler shift values ​​were never used to locate the aircraft, Inmarsat technical specialists in London were able to notice a significant distortion, implying a turn south at 2:40. The turning point was a little north and west of Sumatra, the northernmost island of Indonesia. With some assumption it can be assumed that the plane then flew straight at a constant height for a very long time in the direction of Antarctica, which lies outside its range.
After six hours, the Doppler parameter indicates a sharp decline - five times faster than the normal descent rate. A minute or two after crossing the seventh arc, the plane plunged into the ocean, possibly losing components before impact. Judging by the electronic data, there were no attempts at a controlled landing on the water. The plane was supposed to instantly scatter into a million pieces. However, no one knew where the fall occurred, and even more, why. Also, no one had the slightest physical evidence that the interpretation of satellite data was correct.
Less than a week after the disappearance, the first article on satellite connections was published in The Wall Street Journal, which indicated that the aircraft most likely remained in the air for hours after it had been silent. Malaysian officials finally admitted that this is true. The Malaysian regime is considered one of the most corrupt in the region, and the publication of satellite communications data showed that the Malaysian authorities in their investigation into disappearances were secretive, cowardly and unreliable. The incident investigators sent from Europe, Australia and the United States were shocked by the confusion they encountered. Due to the fact that the Malaysians hid the details known to them, the initial search for the sea was concentrated in the wrong place in the South China Sea, and did not detect floating debris. If Malaysians immediately told the truth, such garbage could be found and used to determine the approximate position of the aircraft; black boxes could be found. The underwater search eventually focused on a narrow strip of the ocean thousands of kilometers away. But even a narrow strip of the ocean is a very big place. It took two years to find the black boxes of Air France 447, which crashed into the Atlantic during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris in 2009, and there they investigated exactly where to look for them.
Initial searches in surface waters ended in April 2014 after almost two months of useless effort, and the focus shifted to the depths of the ocean, where it remains today. At first, Blaine Gibson watched these frustrating efforts from afar. He sold his mother's house and moved to the Golden Triangle in the north of Laos, where, together with a business partner, he began building a restaurant on the Mekong River. At the same time, he joined the Facebook group devoted to the disappearance of the MH370, which was filled with both speculation and news that contained rational arguments about the fate of the aircraft and the whereabouts of the main wreckage.
Although the Malaysians were formally responsible for the entire investigation, they lacked the means and experience to conduct underwater search and recovery work, and the Australians, like the good Samaritans, took the initiative. The areas of the Indian Ocean that were indicated by satellite data — approximately 1900 kilometers south-west of Perth — were so deep and unexplored that it was necessary first of all to create a sufficiently accurate submarine topographic map to allow safe towing of special vehicles, side-scan sonar, at a depth of many kilometers under water. The bottom of the ocean in these places is covered with ridges hidden by darkness, where the light never penetrated.
A diligent underwater search made Gibson wonder if the plane wrecks would ever be cast ashore. Visiting friends on the coast of Cambodia, he asked if they had stumbled upon something like that — the answer was no. Although the wreckage would not have been able to sail to Cambodia from the southern part of the Indian Ocean, Gibson wanted to be open to any options until the discovery of the wreckage of an aircraft could prove that it was the south of the Indian Ocean that really became his grave.
In March 2015, in Kuala Lumpur, the relatives of the passengers met on the anniversary of the disappearance of the MH370. Gibson decided to attend without an invitation and without being intimately acquainted with anyone. Since he did not have any special knowledge, his visit was received with skepticism - people did not know how to react to a random amateur. The event was held in an open area in a mall, a typical meeting place in Kuala Lumpur. The goal was to express general grief, as well as continued pressure on the Malaysian government in order to get some explanations. There were hundreds of people present, many came from China. From the stage, quiet music sounded, in the background hung a large poster depicting the silhouette of a Boeing 777, as well as the words " where ", " who ", " why ", " when ", " who ", " how ", and also " impossible "," Unprecedented "," without a trace "and" helplessly . The main speaker was a young Malaysian woman named Grace Subatirai Nathan, whose mother was on board. Nathan is a criminal lawyer who specializes in capital punishment cases that Malaysia lacks because of draconian laws. She became the most successful representative of the close relatives of the victims. Stepping onto the stage in a T-shirt that was not the size of MH370 with the appeal “ Look, ” she spoke about her mother, about the deep love she felt for her, and about the difficulties she faced after her disappearance. Sometimes she sobbed softly, as did some of the spectators, including Gibson. After her speech, he approached her and asked if she would take a hug from a stranger. She embraced with him, and over time they became friends.
Leaving the mourning event, Gibson decided to help, taking up the gap that he found - the lack of coastal search for floating debris. This will be his niche. He will be a beach tramp looking for fragments of the MH370 on the coasts. Official researchers, mainly Australians and Malaysians, actively invested in underwater searches. They would have laughed at Gibson's ambitions — just as they would have laughed at the prospect that Gibson would indeed find fragments of an airplane on the beaches hundreds of kilometers apart.
Left: Malaysian lawyer and activist Grace Subatirae Nathan, whose mother was aboard MH370. Right: Blaine Gibson, an American who went in search of the wreckage of an airplane. Photo by: William Langewiesche
Continued: What really happened to the disappeared Malaysian Boeing (part 2/3)
Please report errors and typos in your private messages.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/458002/
All Articles