Julie · @nihonmama
7th Jun 2015 from TwitLonger
.@BlaineGibson3 went to the Maldives and surfaced some NEW info. #MH370
Nihonmama
Posted June 7, 2015 at 12:45 AM jeffwise.net
Guest Post: Northern Routes and Burst Frequency Offset for MH370
Oh happy day! Someone else out there who understands that WITNESSES matter.
There’s a closed MH370 group (but anyone can join) on Facebook that my kind friend Jyothish (@aviatorjk on Twitter) hipped me to. Turns out that a gentleman by the name of Blaine Alan Gibson (a lawyer from the States) is on a dig in Asia (funded on his own dime). He recently left the Maldives.
Yesterday, he posted a VERY interesting piece about one of the the Kudahuvadhoo sightings. Turns out he also talked Abdu (or Abdul) Rasheed Ibrahim — the same person interviewed by The Australian investigative reporter Hedley Thomas. But Blaine got some additional information from Rasheed that did not appear in Thomas’story, namely: that the plane deliberately TURNED S/SE and flew away in that direction AFTER Rasheed saw it and there was “slight steam” coming from the plane. Blaine also talked to some pilots in the Maldives, who had interesting comments about the civilian and military radar.
For those who are not on FB, Blaine’s post appears in it’s entirety below. He is also on Twitter: @BlaineGibson3
http://on.fb.me/1QB0CUi
“MH 370 MALDIVES SIGHTING: REFLECTIONS and CONCLUSIONS
In the early morning of March 8, 2014 the residents of Kudahuvadhoo definitely saw a plane that fit the description of MH 370. They did not make it up. Abdul Rasheed, an employee of the Court, had the best view of the plane. The plane approached him at 6:15 AM from the northwest and flew on a bearing of 121 degrees towards the island, and upon reaching the southwest corner execeuted a deliberate turn heading South/SE at a bearing of about 168 degrees. As it turned he saw it was a mostly white plane with a long row of windows and a red stripe. When shown pictures of different planes he positively identified MH 370 as the plane he saw. Other witnesses testimony is consistent with his based on the angles they saw it. Humaam Don heard a loud noise and saw a white plane with blue and some red markings as it flew by and away from him towards the southeaset. He also noted “slight steam” coming from the plane. Other witnesses reported the loud noise and reported a white plane, sometimes with varying degrees of red and blue on it. When shown a picture of MH 370 (together with other planes) they said looked like it, or could be. Time estimates ranged from 6:15 to 7:00, but the witness who saw it the best said 6:15.
The Maldives Defence Force was wrong when they said there was no plane. This had the unfortunate effect of making some witnesses afraid to speak, especially the older women. While some may argue this was part of some big coverup, it could simply be that they were embarassed by their poor radar coverage. When I asked pilots about the civilian and military radar coverage in the southern Maldives I was told it was very poor. I asked one if radar would have detected MH 370 if it flew over Kudahuvadhoo, and he answered with a clear NO. Another pilot answered maybe… unless it was flying low. Another person said the radar at the southern airports was only switched on and monitored when there were scheduled airplanes taking off and landing, which was not the case that early in the morning.
So what was the identity of this plane ?? Everybody has confirmed that large planes never fly that low over Kudahuvadhoo. It was not a regularly scheduled flight. No regular flights were flying in that region until later that morning.. My interview with a Maldivian pilot confirms that Kudahuvadhoo is not on the approach to any airports. When planes fly from Male to Gan they fly to the east of Kudahuvadhoo at an altitude of 22,000 feet. Only one Kudahuvadho resident (Sufi pictured with the fish) reported ever seeing jet planes flying overhead, but at a much higher altitude, only once or twice a month, and he believed them to be passenger planes flying from the Middle East to Australia, but could not be sure.
In order to dispense with the Maldives sighting critics love to say it was a “private jet”. However neither the Maldives Defence Force, who coined the phrase (after first claiming there was no plane at all), nor anyone else, had ever identified this large “private jet”. My interviews with Male International Airport workers confirm that it was definitely NOT the Boeing 747 belonging to the then Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. His white plane with the green Saudi monogram dropped him off in Male, went back immediately, and picked him up later. It flew nowhere near Kudahuvadhoo. Maldives Immigration confirms that Prince William and Kate arrived Male airport March 6 on a regularly scheduled British Airways flght, and did not have a large private jet at their disposal in the Maldives. So both of those early and persistent rumors and internet disinformation are false.
Could it have been a military plane ? Remotely possible, but military planes have never been seen flying low over Kudahuvadhoo before or after. And what military planes are that large with a long row of windows and a red stripe, and what would they be douig violating Maldivian airspace and buzzing an insignificant atoll only on that one morning ?
So could it be that they saw MH 370 ? Yes it could. However for that plane to have been MH 370 the Inmarsat data interpretation would have to be wrong…whether it be the northern arc toward Kazakhstan or the southern arc to the South Indian Ocean. Additionally, the Maldives sighting ocurred about 30 to 60 minutes after the plane would be expected to run out of fuel based on the reported fuel load from KL and the final ACARS fuel reading. So if those readings are correct, MH 370 would have to be on its very last gasps of fuel. Of course those records could be wrong, or the plane could possibly have landed and refueled. The Kudahuvadhoo sighting is inconsistent with the eyewitness report of Mike McKay, but conistent with may eyewitness reports from fishermen and others on both sides of the Malay Peninsula, including Kate Tee far off the coast of Phuket.
I asked local Kudahuvadhoo fishermen and others if they had found any debris or personal effects that could be from a plane crash, and they said no. And in Kudahuvadhoo they were keeping their eyes open. I spoke with people in Male about the fire extinguisher that washed ashore in the north. They heard from the press that it was handed over to local police, and they assumed then given to the Maldives Defence Force, but never heard anything more about it, and have no idea of any tests, investigations, or determinations were ever made. I was unable to learn anything about an early rumor that some fishermen had seen or heard something resembling a plane crash at sea, and since Kudahuvadhoo is a very small place that fact alone leads me to believe the rumors were incorrect. However I have asked my friends there to inquire and keep me informed.
The most astounding thing to me is the miniscule number of people who have traveled to Kudahuvadhoo to investigate and report. Initially the local police took reports and according to residents, filed them away. The Maldives Defence Force paid an early visit to interview the witnesses, , and then at first said they made it up, ridiculed them, and told them if they wanted to help find MH 370 to go to Kazakhstan or the South Indian Ocean. All the early interviews by the Maldivian news were done by telephone…no reporters actually bothered to go there. According to witnesses and people in the hotel and guide business, no foreign search authorities or investigators ever went there. The only foreigners to go there were me, two French reporters a few months ago, two Australian reporters in February this year, and a Frenchman named Marc. I asked if the private investigator hired by the passengers’ families went there to interview people, and they said no. Yet that independent investigator somehow concluded that the plane seen was a “private jet”, parroting the same phrase used by many others. That is not how I conduct my amateur investigations with my own money … let alone a professional one with somebody else’s.
After my recent visit to Kudahuvadhoo I am more convinced than ever of the crediibility of these witnesses and their sighting, and I personally believe, but am not yet totally convinced, that they saw MH 370. My original theory was that MH 370 encountered an emergency, and set a course for Penang or Langkawi to make an emergency landing, The flight crew was overcome, and the plane continued on its course as a ghost plane to be sern in Kudahuvadhoo. However my simple Occam’s Razor theory is disproven by the timing and direction, as a ghost plane would have flown in a straight line and arrived earlier. Most of all, it is disproven by the deliberate right turn upon reaching the atoll to head almost due south, which I never saw in any press report or forum discussion, and I beleve the first reporter or foreigner to discover it was me.. I never believed before that MH 370 landed or was attempting to target Diego Garcia in a 9/11 style terror attack. However I cannot deny and must report the fact that upon reaching Kudahuvadhoo, whatever that plane was, for whatever reason, made a deliberate turn and headed on a bearing in the direction of that secretive military island. I still have not formed a clear theory as to what happened to MH 370 and its passengers and crew. I am looking for more evidence to form and hopefully confirm one. I hope that others in this forum, and most important the search authorities snd officials and governments involved will also be willing to question their own pet theories, and not myopically focus solely on the search in the Southern Indian Ocean. More important, I hope they do not jump to conclusions and rely on a pilot suicide theory based on little or no evidence simply because it is a quick and easy explanation.”