Finding MH370

Today I join Aaron Murphy at the uFly flight simulator near Toronto, Ontario. Our goal: to find out the absolute maximum distance it’s possible to glide a 777 after fuel exhaustion. That, in turn will let us set the boundaries on the universe of all possible place the plane could be. Not just where it’s likely to be, but where it definitely has to be, assuming in went into the ocean in the first place. If we search out this whole area, we’re guaranteed to find the plane. Or else to prove that investigator’s ironclad assumptions about the case were wrong from the start.

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Malaysia has said that Ocean Infinity can start searching again in November. But where will they look? The prospective search zone is relatively small, constrained by drift modeling, aircraft performance, and satellite data analysis. If the plane went into the southern Indian Ocean, it's all but guaranteed to be here. And if it isn't?

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In the second episode of a two-parter about this June's amazing discovery of a Pan Am DC-4 that lay in 2,000 feet of water off the coast of San Juan, Puerto Rico for 74 years, I talk with Tony Romeo, CEO of the underwater survey company Deep Sea Vision, whose HUGIN 6000 Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) detected the plane's wreckage on its first pass over the search area.

Tony talks about how he used the same equipment to search some 5,000 square miles in the middle of the Pacific for the wreckage of Amelia Earhart's plane, and explains how he would look for the wreckage of MH370.

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Finding a missing airliner on the seabed is something that's naturally going to be of great interest to anyone fascinated by the mystery of MH370, and today I’m going to be talking to someone who has done just that: Russ Matthews, President and Co-founder of the Air/Sea Heritage Foundation, who organized an expedition that this past June found a Pan Am passenger plane that had lain undiscovered on the seabed near Puerto Rico for more than 70 years. 

To learn more about the Air/Sea Heritage Foundation, visit their website at https://airseaheritage.org/.

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Sid Gandotra, the host of the “Sit Down With Sid” podcast, interviews a lot of people from different corners of MH370 world, including a lot of people who frankly I don’t see eye to eye with. I consider him a neutral arbiter: he’s willing to listen to what others have to say, and he’s not afraid to pass on the criticisms of me that he’s heard from other people. In today’s episode I respond to those critiques.

For more information about today's episode visit the showpage at FindingMH370.com, where you can also sign up for a free newsletter that goes out with each episode.

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In 2015, French hydroacoustic researcher Dr Jean-Yves Rocher and his team collected data from a network of buoys that had been recording underwater sounds in the southern Indian Ocean for the past year--including the moment that MH370 presumably ran out of fuel and crashed there. He submitted his findings to French and Australian search authorites, but they never published it or released it to the public. In today's episode we learn for the first time what his data revealed. To provide context, we also talk with retired US Navy intelligence specialist Robert Parker and University of Washington hydroacoustic scientist David Dall-Osto.

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The Malaysia government has extended by one year the no-find no fee deal that it made with Ocean Infinity last March to search for the missing Malaysian airliner. Under the terms of that deal, Ocean Infinity would search a 15,000 square kilometer area of the southern Indian Ocean near the 7th arc and receive $70 million if it was successful. The company would have 18 months to complete the search. This past March, however, the company threw in the towel before the deadline expired. Why the change of heart? We don't yet know, but what's clear is that another chapter in the saga of the missing plane appears to be in the offing.

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There's never been an air accident like MH370, but that doesn't been that we can't learn from cases that share common characteristics. Today we discuss the case of a Peruvian 727 that vanished in the midst of a repositioning flight from Malta to Peru. My co-host is Ed Dentsel, host of the Unfound podcast.

Shockingly, I had never even heard of the case until Ed brought it to my attention. Though similar to MH370 in many ways, it offers some striking contrasts as well, and in particular highlights the tremendous advances in satellite communications and navigation technology that took place during the 24 years that separate the two events.

In other news, I’ve got a new poll question up to test of your core MH370 knowledge — have you been paying attention? To give it a go, click here.

#MH370 #unsolvedmystery #mystery #unexplained #unexplainedphenomena

To learn more about this episode, to sign up for a free weekly newsletter, or to view other episodes from Season 1 and 2, please visit our show page at FindingMH370.com.

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For a concise account of the MH370 mystery check, and an explanation of what might have happened to it, check out my book "The Taking of MH370,” availalble on Amazon:

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I’ve been unflinchingly critical of other people’s videos about MH370, and now the shoe’s on the other foot. An account called Aviation Files has put up a video entitled “MH370: Why It Never Crashed” that gives a detailed account of my investigative efforts into MH370. It’s gotten quite a response — as I write these words, about a month after its release, it has been viewed nearly 180,000 times. As far as I know it’s the first time anyone has done a detailed third-party critique of my work, and of course I’m interested to see how the ideas I’ve been developing have been making their way out into the information ecosystem. In today’s episode I watch and give my response in real time.

You can see the Aviation Files video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29yWY63Tvs8&lc=UgzL0DDkNvJPKiC0LK94AaABAg.AVvoHJ3TzogAWkTwKJMj7O

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Someone took MH370. But who, and why? In today’s episode of Finding MH370, we delve into the motivation and methodology of one potential culprit with someone who has a rare and compelling perspective — recently retired CIA officer Sean Wiswesser, who spent decades studying and applying the lessons of espionage and spy tradecraft.

I want to be clear up front, I’m not talking to Sean about what the CIA thinks happened to MH370. Rather, we're discussing the strategic environment in which the disappearance took place. That will help us understand the number one question that people always ask me: Why was this plane taken? What was the motive?

The most widely held assumption, of course, has long been that the captain must have taken the plane. In the previous three episodes, we saw how the three pillars underlying that main theory turn out to be fragile. The implication — that the captain wasn’t the culprit — leaves us with only one plausible alternative explanation, that the hijacking was carried out by extremely ruthless and sophisticated outside actors. Namely, Russia.

But why would Russia want to do such a thing?

This is where Sean Wiswesser’s expertise comes in. He has studied their motives, he has studied their mindset and their methodologies, he has gone toe to toe with Putin’s Russia for decades. You can find his book here: https://www.usni.org/press/books/tradecraft-tactics-and-dirty-tricks

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