I had fairly well concluded that the most likely cause was a fire disrupting the electrical and control systems, when CNN now say the sharp left turn was pre-programmed 12 minutes before sign off from Malaysian Air Traffic control, which was followed fairly quickly by that left turn.
CNN claim to have this from an US official, from data sent back before the reporting systems went off. It is hard to know what to make of it: obviously there are large economic interests that much prefer blame to lie with the pilots rather than the aircraft. But if it is true then the move was not a response to an emergency. (CNN went on to say the pilot could have programmed in the course change as a contingency in case of an emergency. That made no sense to me at all – does it to anyone else?)
I still find it extremely unlikely that the plane landed or crashed on land I cannot believe it could evade military detection as it flew over a highly militarized region. Somewhere there is debris on the ocean. There have been previous pilot suicides that took the plane with them; but the long detour first seems very strange and I do not believe is precedented. However if the CNN information on pre-programming is correct, and given it was the co-pilot who signed off to air traffic control, it is hard to look beyond the pilots as those responsible for whatever did happen. In fact, on consideration, the most improbable thing is that information CNN are reporting from the US official.
A Turkish prosecutor asked a court to imprison the editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet newspaper pending trial for espionage and treason. In May, the outlet published photos of weapons it said were then transferred to Syria by Turkey’s intelligence agency. Besides the editor, Can Dündar, the prosecution said it is seeking the same pre-trial restrictions for Cumhuriyet’s representative in Ankara, Erdem Gül.
Dündar arrived at an Istanbul court on Thursday, saying that he and his colleague “came here to defend journalism.”
“We came here to defend the right of the public to obtain the news and their right to know if their government is feeding them lies. We came here to show and to prove that governments cannot engage in illegal activity and defend this,” Dündar was cited by Today’s Zaman.
The articles, published on Cumhuriyet’s front page in May, claimed that Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) is smuggling weapons in trucks into Syria and was caught doing so twice in 2014. The trucks were allegedly stopped and searched by police, with photos and videos of their contents obtained by Cumhuriyet.
According to the paper, the trucks were carrying six steel containers, with 1,000 artillery shells, 50,000 machine gun rounds, 30,000 heavy machine gun rounds and 1,000 mortar shells. The arms were reportedly delivered to extremist groups fighting against the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad, whom Ankara wants ousted from power.
The Turkish authorities denied the allegations, saying that the trucks were carrying aid to Syrian ethnic Turkmen tribespeople and labeled their interception an act of “treason” and “espionage.”
https://www.rt.com/news/323557-turkey-arrests-editor-cumhuriyet/
The Turkish government are very complicit with “moderates” fighting in SYRIA
ITALY seizes 800 shotguns bound for Belgium from TURKEY
Italian police seized almost 800 shotguns bound for Belgium from Turkey on a truck that arrived in the northeastern port of Trieste, Reuters reported. Customs rules had not been violated, but the Turkish truck driver did not have the licenses needed to transport the 781 Winchester SXP shotguns, the finance police, who are often in charge of port security, said on Thursday. Pump-action Winchester SXP rifles are made for hunting, but police said they had “substantially” increased their border inspections in the wake of the Paris attacks and subsequent alert in Belgium. “Given the delicate nature of the cargo, its origin and its destination, the documentation regarding the rifles was immediately examined,” according to the statement.
TURKEY seems to be acting like a rouge state,
yet they are members of NATO and aspiring to membership of the EUROPEAN UNION
I wonder if Ford vans think they made such a corking decision to quit Southampton, England, after 50 peaceful and fruitful years, to relocate to TURKEY,
no doubt the wages of sin are cheaper.
http://www.ibtimes.com/flight-mh370-update-what-havila-harmony-third-vessel-capable-scouring-most-difficult-2201143
@Q This chat on reddit is interesting .
https://www.reddit.com/r/MH370/comments/3inxp7/could_an_accident_cause_the_disappearance_of_mh370/
Oil smuggling into TURKEY becomes priority target of anti-ISIS strikes
https://www.rt.com/news/323603-isis-oil-smuggling-turkey/
Islamic State’s daring and impudent oil smuggling into TURKEY should become a high-priority target in order to cripple the terrorist group, President Putin said, backed by FRENCH President Francois Hollande. Both agree that the source of terrorist financing must be hit first and foremost.
Commercial-scale oil smuggling from Islamic State controlled territory into Turkey must be stopped, Putin said after meeting Hollande in Moscow.
“Vehicles, carrying oil, lined up in a chain going beyond the horizon,” said Putin, reminding the press that the scale of the issue was discussed at the G20 summit in Antalya earlier this month, where the Russian leader demonstrated reconnaissance footage taken by Russian pilots.Putin stated that sales of oil from ISIS are in direct violation of international law, and that the proceeds from ‘black gold’ cost innocent people their lives.
“In this respect there is a special UN Security Council resolution banning the direct purchase of oil from terrorists, because these barrels, that they supply, it is not just oil, there is the blood of our citizens, because from the money [received], terrorists buy weapons, ammunition, and then conduct bloody actions,” Putin said.
I wonder if president Putin pointing out at the G20 Summit in TURKEY
about oil being shipped from ISIS to TURKEY
could be the reason that the RUSSIAN war plane was shot down by TURKEY?
Does anyone believe the Malaysian government version of events any more?
Double dealing tyrant who’s sabotaging the West’s battle to crush ISIS:
TURKEY’s Erdogan seems to be doing almost everything he can to cripple the forces actually fighting ISIS,
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3335819/Double-dealing-tyrant-s-sabotaging-West-s-battle-crush-ISIS-Turkey-s-Erdogan-doing-cripple-forces-actually-fighting-ISIS-writes-MICHAEL-BURLEIGH.html
“The fact is that Erdogan’s regime has on many occasions turned a blind eye to ISIS activity in Turkey, as well as to Turkish businessmen and smugglers doing trade deals with the jihadist butchers.”
Brussels, the center of the EU and of NATO
seems to also be home to a nest of vipers.
“BELGIAN police have released new details of a fifth suspect in the Paris attacks they want to question.
An international arrest warrant was issued for Mohamed Abrini, who has several prior arrests for theft, on Tuesday. His family says that on November 13 he spent the entire night in Brussels.
However just two days before security footage shows him near the French capital in a car that two days later would be used by the Paris killers.
It is unknown what role if any Abrini played in the shootings.
His name is one of 85 residents suspected of links with Islamic radicals that the Belgian authorities have handed over to local government officials in Molenbeek, the Brussels district that has emerged as a hotspot of radical Islam in Belgium.
Abrini is on the run and the public have been warned not to approach him as he is described as probably armed and dangerous”.
http://www.euronews.com/2015/11/27/belgian-police-release-new-details-about-on-the-run-fifth-paris-suspect/
Passengers are suing aviation firms after they had to run from a British Airways flight when it caught fire on the runway.
They claim the plane was “defective and unreasonably dangerous” and that GE Aviation and Boeing knew parts were prone to “fracture and failure”.
The fire broke out on the Boeing 777-200 on 8 September as it prepared to take off from Las Vegas with 157 people on board.
BA senior captain Chris Henkey, from Reading, Berkshire, aborted take-off, declared the emergency and ordered the evacuation of the passengers.
The 13 crew members on the Gatwick-bound flight were praised for their bravery during the incident, which left 27 people – including all the crew – needing treatment for minor injuries.
Mr Henkey, who retired from flying shortly after the incident, criticised some passengers on the plane for dragging their luggage from overhead storage units and taking it with them, saying it was dangerous and caused a delay in getting people off the plane safely.
He was praised for his “textbook” response to the emergency by aviation experts after a recording of his calm response to the situation when talking to air traffic control was released.
A lawsuit has now been launched by 65 of the people on board, most of whom are British, and lawyers say more passengers are expected to join the claim.
http://news.sky.com/story/1596046/passengers-sue-over-ba-jet-runway-fire
A US National Transportation Safety Board investigation found the engine of BA flight 2276 had “multiple breaches” in its casing.
Lawyers for the passengers claim the firms knew the parts were prone to
“fracture and failure”
and said GE Aviation had lobbied against stricter inspections of the engines before the fire.
However, GE Aviation said the engine had different parts and said it was “among the most reliable jet engines in commercial aviation history”.
James Healy-Pratt, of London-based Stewarts Law, said the passengers did not blame the pilots or crew.
He said: “The pilots and cabin crew performed heroically in guiding the aircraft to an emergency stop.”
Neither Boeing nor GE Aviation has commented on the lawsuit.
They also raised a Federal Aviation Administration directive from 2011 warning of defects in parts on similar engines.
The TURKISH state slips deeper into the mire
Pro-Kurdish lawyer Tahir Elci shot dead in Turkey
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34952954
A prominent pro-Kurdish lawyer and human rights activist has been shot dead in Turkey’s south-eastern city of Diyarbakir.
“We do not want guns, clashes and operations here”, Mr Elci was saying before being shot.
“The moment the statement ended, the crowd was sprayed with bullets,” a local official from the pro-Kurdish HDP party, Omer Tastan, told Reuters.
The US embassy in Ankara said it was “shocked” at Mr Elci’s “tragic death”, calling him a “a courageous defender of human rights”.
It’s ramping up between TURKEY and RUSSIA
Kremlin says RUSSIA fully mobilised to tackle threat from TURKEY
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/11/28/uk-mideast-crisis-turkey-russia-kremlin-idUKKBN0TH0HB20151128
President Vladimir Putin is fully mobilised to tackle what the Kremlin regards as an unprecedented threat from Turkey following the shooting down of one of its warplanes by a Turkish F-16, the Russian leader’s spokesman said on Saturday.
In comments which underscore how angry the Kremlin still is over the incident, Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, called the behaviour of the Turkish air force “absolute madness” and said Ankara’s subsequent handling of the crisis had reminded him of the “theatre of the absurd.”
“Nobody has the right to traitorously shoot down a Russian plane from behind,” Peskov told Russia’s “News on Saturday” TV programme, calling Turkish evidence purporting to show the Russian SU-24 jet had violated Turkish air space “cartoons”.
Peskov said the crisis had prompted Putin, whose ministers are preparing retaliatory economic measures against Turkey, to “mobilise” in the way an army does in tense times.
“The president is mobilised, fully mobilised, mobilised to the extent that circumstances demand,” said Peskov.
“The circumstances are unprecedented. The gauntlet thrown down to Russia is unprecedented. So naturally the reaction is in line with this threat.”
Peskov said Putin was aware of a Turkish request for him to meet President Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the Paris climate change conference next week but gave no indication of whether such a meeting would take place.
Erdogan on Saturday said the Paris summit could be a chance to repair Ankara’s relations with Russia.
Peskov denied Turkish press reports which said Moscow and Ankara had struck a deal for their warplanes to stop flying along the Syrian-Turkish border, saying military ties between the two countries had been severed and a hot line meant to avoid misunderstandings among their pilots dismantled.
Peskov, according to the TASS news agency, also spoke of how Erdogan’s son had a “certain interest” in the oil industry. Putin has said oil from Syrian territory controlled by Islamic State militants is finding its way to Turkey.
Erdogan has spoken of slander and asked anyone making such accusations to back up their words with evidence.
Peskov said he “noted” that Turkey’s newly-appointed energy minister, Berat Albayrak, was Erdogan’s son-in-law.
Peskov said there could be up to 200,000 Turkish citizens on Russian soil.
“What’s important is that everyone who is able to use their influence to guarantee at least some predictability in the pattern of Turkey’s behaviour,” said Peskov. “Russian planes should never be shot down.”
I am not sure if this has been posted before it’s from JULY I saw it today when I was checking on the FB page for MH370 ,I don’t recall seeing it if it was .
PRO-ISIS AIRLINE PILOTS TRACKED BY LAW ENFORCEMENT IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
https://theintercept.com/2015/07/08/australia-tracking-indonesian-pilots-supporting-isis/
@MN: In light of Belgium, I went back in the al-Hilli story and reviewed the alleged contract killer who was investigated for the Chevaline massacre. He had ties to Belgium. He was cleared of involvement based on an alibi.
http://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/canada/pm-s-plane-appears-on-public-tracking-raising-security-questions-1.2678796
Are they saying that MH17 was taken down by use of a flight tracking app or website?
@Q
Jeff Wise chat on MH17
Assigning Blame for MH17
http://jeffwise.net/2015/11/25/assigning-blame-for-mh17/#comments
This is a rather illuminating interview with an Iraqi M?P/
who has been the Iraqi security chief.
‘Oxygen for jihadists’: ISIS-smuggled oil flows through Turkey to intl markets – Iraqi MP
https://www.rt.com/news/323895-isis-smuggled-oil-iraq-syria/
Iraq has been flying over Greece and SYria and Iraq for years but shoots down a Russian bomber for clipping its area for a few seconds?
War with Isis: President Obama demands TURKEY close the border with SYRIA
Ankara is accused of tolerance of – if not complicity with – the terrorists,
who use border as a crossing point for Isis recruits and oil sales!!!!!!
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/war-with-isis-president-obama-demands-that-turkey-close-stretch-of-frontier-with-syria-a6753836.html
The US is demanding that Turkey close a 60-mile stretch of its border with Syria which is the sole remaining crossing point for Isis militants, including some of those involved in the massacre in Paris and other terrorist plots.
Yet another eXplosion in North East CHINA
BEIJING (AP) — A gas leak at a steel parts factory in eastern China killed 10 people and left seven others hospitalized with carbon monoxide poisoning in the latest deadly industrial accident to hit China, officials said Monday.
The leak occurred late Saturday and poisoned 17 people, five of whom died immediately, the Zouping County government said on its official microblog. It said five more died early Sunday, and the cause of the leak was under investigation.
Satellite images show the factory next to warehouses and low-rise residential homes in a village about 60 kilometers (40 miles) east of Jinan, the Shandong provincial capital.
The deadly leak comes amid heightened sensitivity toward work safety in China, where authorities are under pressure to shore up safety practices and regulations after a huge chemical blast in Tianjin killed at least 140 people and left a swath of the port city in smoldering ruins.
Investigators found the Tianjin warehouse company was neither equipped to handle its volume of dangerous chemicals — nor permitted to store them so close to residential tower blocks.
In the aftermath of the August 12 explosion, top government leaders called for shoring up safety regulations and conducting nationwide inspections, but a string of deadly accidents across China has continued to mar the country’s work safety record.
Since the beginning of September, China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based non-profit, tracked more than 100 separate incidents of fatal work accidents, including a chemical plant blast in Shandong province that killed 13 and injured 25.
Also on Monday, a court in the coastal city of Qingdao, Shandong’s largest city, sentenced eight executives at the petroleum giant Sinopec and six former local officials to prison terms of up to eight years in connection to a 2013 pipeline explosion in that coast city that killed 63 people.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-3339005/Steel-factory-gas-leak-kills-10-injures-7-eastern-China.html#ixzz3szA1iADX
@Pink: Is there such a thing as coincidence? Why MH370 and MH17? Was MH17 specifically targeted or a victim of being (any plane) on a known flight path at a time when decisive action was taken? If we consider that what happened to both MH flights is related, there can be no coincidence.
I find myself agreeing with Brock that truth is the first casualty in these affairs. It has ceased to exist.
Two more things from the detailed discussion at JW. Russia’s Bastion “electronic countermeasures” technology may or may not be superior and undetectable to the electronic warfare capabilities of other nations. But what seems clear to me is that MH370 was under electronic warfare when it took the erratic path it did — if we want to believe that took the strange path that was reported. It sure looks like evasive maneuvres.
Second point from JW: private contractors. These are the folks hired to do dirty deeds behind the veil of plausible deniability.
For reference, one person in the al-Hilli story was described as a contractor. This could be a person who flips houses for a living, or someone with much more dubious connections and higher profit margins.
Air France flight makes emergency landing in St. Petersburg
Beijing-bound Air France Boeing-777 made an emergency landing at Russia’s Pulkovo airport, a source in the district’s emergency services told RIA Novosti on Monday. The plane flying from Paris with 269 passengers on board landed in St. Petersburg at 8 pm local time, the source said. The preliminary cause of the incident is thought to be the failure of one of the plane’s engines, the source added.
Not a R/R engine
An Air France Boeing 777-200, registration F-GSPZ (our reports database features 0 other incidents for the same aircraft, Air France has been listed 95 times within our reports database) performing flight AF-128 from Paris Charles de Gaulle (France) to Beijing (China) with 269 people on board, was enroute at FL330 about 220nm east of St. Petersburg (Russia) when the crew needed to shut an engine (GE90) down. The aircraft turned around to divert to St. Petersburg, drifted down and landed safely on St. Petersburg’s 10R about one hour after leaving FL330.
http://www.aeroinside.com/item/6675/air-france-b772-near-st-petersburg-on-nov-30th-2015-engine-shut-down-in-flight
I do not know why this very serious engine trouble has not interested the press.
It may be a similar engine to the very serious incident, recently to a BA aircraft, which caught fire on the runway.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11855115/BA-plane-fire-regulators-warned-of-problems-with-engine.html
It makes you wonder how AIRFRANCE and the engine maker GE can sweep the internet clean of such an incident?
St PETERSBURG, November. /TASS/. An AirFrance Boeing 777 has made an emergency landing at the Pulkovo international airport in St Petersburg, Russia, at around 17:00 hours GMT on Monday, the press service of the airport told TASS.
“An AirFrance jet performing a flight from Beijing to Paris landed in St Petersburg after an emergency was declared aboard owing to equipment problems,” a spokesman for the press service said.
“All the passengers were taken to the airport’s secure area where representatives of the airline assisted them,” he said.
An emergency was declared on board the Air France Boeing 777 making a flight from Beijing to Paris. Airlive.net portal said earlier.
At the time of reporting, no details of the incident were clear.
http://tass.ru/en/world/840485
http://tass.ru/en/world/840485
It makes you wonder if GE can make this story evaporate?
Engines are
GE GE90-90B2
AirAsia crash: Faulty part ‘major factor’
A faulty component was a “major factor” when an AirAsia plane crashed into the Java Sea last December, killing 162 people, Indonesian officials say.
The first major report into the crash found that actions by the crew in response to the malfunction also contributed to the disaster.
The Airbus A320-200, going from Surabaya to Singapore, was 40 minutes into the flight when contact was lost.
The report is the result of a year-long investigation.
Investigators had initially indicated that bad weather was a major factor in the crash.
But the new report has found that the soldering on a tiny electronic part in the system that controlled the rudder was cracked, causing it to send four warning signals to the pilots.
The crew tried to fix the problem by resetting the computer, but this disabled the autopilot. They then lost control of the plane….
read more
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-34972263
@Q When doing a review as you suggested I noticed that Pharma HT points to his bro who has an interesting location.
Would need some proper aircraft techies to comment here, but in general, the EU ROHS law could vaguely be a cause here? 2006 WEEE & ROHS waste electrical & electronic equipment – restrictions of hazardous substances directives – specifically goes after Lead (Pb) Cadmium (Cd) etc & prohibits from being used in electronic systems, to avoid adding poison to the environment.
Big problem here is that the ‘old’ solder used in electronic industry was the 60/40 “Tin” solder – a eutectic mix containing 60% Tin and 40% Lead, this had well known properties, avoiding the growth of dendritic filaments and being generally robust from fracture. It passed military standards for vibration/temperature extremes.
The new solders on the other hand, being often Indium/Tin mixtures or Silver/Copper/Tin, are much less well known, in my opinion have caused much recent contact/fracture problems in simple PC applications – due to a lower static Young’s Modulus let alone being understood/cleared for the aerospace hazards?
Surely this is known, solder, if done right, doesn’t crack! Has someone just done rudder maintenance with an WEEE-ROHS compliant component bought on eBay from a cheap supplier in Taipei?