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How wise is Jeff Wise?

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  • How wise is Jeff Wise?

    I just discovered this—published last month in New York Magazine. Is anyone here familiar with it?

    In the year since the vanishing of MH370, I appeared on CNN more than 50 times, watched my spouse’s eyes glaze over at dinner, and fell in with a group of borderline-obsessive amateur aviation


    I find his theory to be an entertaining example of confirmation bias. He himself comments somewhat humbly at the end how it becomes hard to abandon one's theory once it has become an obsession. I think a few of us here can relate...

    I see obvious holes in his theory right off. Technically, the idea of anyone accessing the avionics bay and taking over control from the pilots—and then autolanding blindly—is quite far-fetched. Taking over the PFC's wouldn't get you there if the pilots subsequently disconnected them on the overhead, which they would certainly do if they acted strangely (such as rolling over 100° off heading ). You would then be in direct flight mode and the ACE's would be in direct control of flight surfaces, with no AP available. If, theoretically, you could also take over the ACE's, well, great but you are flying blind, you can't see the instruments. And of course, no AP=no autoland (and probably no ILS at the destination), and no flaps... so good luck with that.

    The idea that someone could access the avionics bay and decompress the aircraft is also ridiculous (if even possible). In a sudden decompression the crew would take immediate action. In a gradual one they would get warning. In a gradual decompression scenario it is possible for the crew supplemental O2 to be cut off from down there and maybe also the warnings but that is going to take some time, longer than what transpired, and anyway how could this be done without the cabin crew alerting the pilots? You would need multiple hijackers, with weapons. That's a very unlikely scenario to attempt these days.

    The cockpit door lock could possibly be deactivated from that bay. This is interesting and a bit disturbing but seems highly researched:



    Again, you'd need accomplices and weapons to deal with the flight crew. Not likely to happen. But, suspending disbelief, I suppose you could use the bay access to defeat the door lock and also comms and then storm the flight deck.

    He goes on to suggest that the SATCOM was shut down and rebooted intentionally to mislead the search in the wrong direction. This would anticipate that the good people at Inmarsat would eventually stumble upon the idea of using the handshake signals with great mathematical effort to establish the arc and a hemisphere in retrospect. Not only is that an enormous assumption, it is completely unnecessary. Just turn it off and keep it off so that you have indeed disappeared rather than leaving a second arc to the North leading precisely to your actual destination, just waiting there for someone as wise as Jeff Wise to see through your diabolic plan...

    But then of course, motive... Why take a planeload of civilians and disappear without any claims or demands? His idea is that the Russians were behind it. Do they need this kind of trouble with China? Don't they have enough problems with EU sanctions after shooting down the second one? Well, they would have to be behind it if the destination were Baikonur Cosmodrome because that is still an active spaceport and the runway is used for cargo flights. Somehow you would have to land a 777 there unnoticed and then drag it a great distance away, across a railway even, into a large pit and bury it there in record time. You would also have to assume that NATO intelligence is not closely watching an active Russian launch facility. And then, as with all magnificent conspiracy theories, you would have to depend on the silence of a lot of complicit personnel in the aftermath despite that having been essentially impossible throughout history.

    What's interesting to me isn't his theory. It is the fact that he truly believed in it despite his obvious intelligence and research capability—enough to publish it in a major magazine (forget about why New York actually published it; MH-370 has become viable entertainment). He seems to have researched the things needed to support his theory quite exhaustively yet entirely overlooked some really quite obvious facts that despoil its viability. Classic confirmation bias.

    He somewhat admits this at the end. If not for this admission, I would begin to wonder is Jeff WIse was not a.k.a. Northwester...

  • #2
    It depends Evan

    Does he want to solve the mistery or continue to be the media highlight?

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    • #3
      All about the $$$$.
      Live, from a grassy knoll somewhere near you.

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by guamainiac View Post
        All about the $$$$.
        That's the punchline to this story. He made a lot of money doing media appearances as an 'expert' (he has a PPL) and then blew it all working out this hare-brained theory. So, no, not for the money. He did it because he believed in it.

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        • #5
          I do not know

          Maybe it is a strategy to create awareness for a new book...

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