MH370

First of all, my title of this review doesn't exactly refer to the documentary itself. It refers to the mostly mad array of theorists who devote themselves to trying to ordain, to lay down as if fact for the world, what happened to Malaysian Flight MH370.

A few of them are the basis of this film, indeed there's not too much really else to it.

These Key Stone Cops who buzz around MH370 are the state of things regarding discussion of the lost plane - in documentaries, articles, books and in the many Internet discussions which invariably end up using these so-called "experts" as infallible pedagogues.

In one sense this documentary is somewhat helpful in putting a spotlight upon this state of things, wittingly or unwittingly. However, alas most viewers won't realise and like children led by the pied piper, will think these guys must be talking more or less about facts. Do they know what they're talking about? They don't in as much as all of them - even the ones I like and respect - are merely guessing.

Those whom I respect tend to make the guesswork nature of MH370 discussion more clear. Whilst the others seek to dupe the world with what can very, very easily be nothing more than madcap notions, wild fantasies. Their theories are typically passed off as if Bible truths once carved into Moses' Commandment stones but of which society has deemed best left up to them to spread the word. Now is their time, it appears. Perhaps they have been waiting since before time itself.

I mentioned the documentary can be helpful in exposing these Key Stone Cops, most pretending absolutely to know 'the truth' yet conflicting completely with each next and and previous expert on the show. However the documentary is absolutely uncritical of and fully free from analysis of what its well-paid "MH370 experts" are saying. As it pretends, six or seven years after the fact, to be trying to get seriously to the core of what happened to the missing plane, there's no question it must overall be quite a failure of a programme.

Words, words, words. I'd prefer not to evoke Greta Thunberg here, but, "Blah, blah, blah" is what's going on. Theories, guesses, estimates, often presented with verbs such as "establishing" what happened to the plane, "identifying" where it went to (each time meaning guessing or estimating and inevitably about to be contradicted by what the next "expert" "establishes" or has "identified").

I do appreciate that the film brings the "experts" separately and allows them to contradict eachother without one knowing what the other is saying (each interviewed alone). For that I give it a healthy base of 3 stars, to start with. Again, the disagreement is in fact an accurate reflection of what is going, where the Mainstream Media has pretended for years that everything is sewn-up and agreed by the great and the good due to the marvel of modern science. (Where's the blooming plane, then?). Anyway nevertheless the programme still fails in not making clear that these people with their conflicting ideas are all guessing, at best, and further for not dissecting and analysing what they are saying through basic, logical reductions.

Also, at least this programme doesn't do what the majority of the Mainstream Media has also done over years and back the nonsense of Inmarsat and the Independent Group. There is a good amount to be thankful about here, relatively speaking.

Something most people don't know, all of the official investigations from the international safety investigation based in Malaysia, also the ICAO's own safety investigation, the Royal Malaysian Police investigation, to the Australian investigation and the FBI's investigation, the many officials concluded there is no evidence to suggest particularly that either pilot or co-pilot is to blame. The three investigations conducted under strict safety investigation laws (international investigation based in Malaysia, ICAO investigation & Australian investigation) further concluded that the Inmarsat estimate of where the plane went, though once considered seriously enough to use for searching, can no longer be categorised as credible evidence to locate the airplane.

This is by far, by a huge distance, the most important point about MH370 in 2021. The programme makes no reference to this most important fact, even though by basing its approach on conflicting views it is doing something positive.

So, as the show doesn't blindly follow the heinous, brain dead route which the Mainstream Media has chosen over years, fauning at the so-called "science" (!!!) of Inmarsat & friends, it's worth a further star at least. Especially because it refrains from having an Independent Group "expert" (!!!) on the show, I think a whole 2 stars are worthy in decision making capacities.

Finally stars wise, the show decided to have the usually excellent David Learmount on it. There is an extra star going for that, even though he's not so great in this show. Uncharacteristically, at one stage he gets lost in musings about a pilot or co-pilot getting back at Malaysia for some reason. It is a theory which all of those investigations mentioned above do not think a likely scenario, and it's particularly interesting that the FBI, world renowned for character profiling, have no particular suspicions on either pilot or co-pilot over and above the other 230 something people on the plane, and as well, "persons unknown".

Anyway, even David Learmount's musings on a bad day are a world better than the ever awful Simon Hardy on MH370. It's still a bit helpful for some of us who have been following the MH370 subject for some years, to see here poor Mr Hardy, 777 pilot, so wrapped up in his wild estimations that he pretty obviously comes across as an obsessive. It won't be obvious to people who don't know about him, that there is basically no known or currently knowable science in what he's saying whatsoever.

It was also good to see Jean-Luc Marchand from the Captio group who are emminently, diversely experienced in aviation. Yet, again, Marchand's inclusion here falls short, short of how Captio have been known in their Paris and Brussels branch Royal Aeronautical Society presentations. (These can be found in Youtube). Yes, unless lost in the translation from French, unfortunately he too here is saying that such and such a theory "establishes" and "identifies" elements to be known about MH370, which aren't factually established at all, by any means.

It's great to hear Marchand, though, openly question the pseudo-science, pseudo-nonsense claims of oceanography drift theory. The theories have been used by fanatics to "prove" that Inmarsat was right in that the plane ended in the region of Broken Ridge, southern Indian Ocean. Marchand himself also takes a drift theory analysis (still pseudo-science, pseudo-nonsense, for everyone just the same) which he claims can show from discovered plane debris that MH370 did not go anywhere close to Broken Ridge. He says the analysis can show the plane ended up much further north, not far from coastal waters to the South-East of Java, Indonesia. Whether or not that can be where the plane headed, it makes a whole lot more sense that it headed near land in the end than the idea it was intentionally brought to the literal middle of nowhere in some of the deepest ocean on earth near Broken Ridge, which is absolutely senseless.

This show could have been so much worse.

The six stars I've given are only in the context of overall MH370 coverage, which is typically disastrous in itself, furthering the awful, unknown tragedy. In other words, six stars for an MH370 documentary, is an achievement it itself in relative terms.

Whilst I've made it clear before that overall the programme isn't particularly a success, still it surely has things going for it and there are reasons to watch it. Indeed just pitting the Key Stone Cops against each other blindly, in different rooms, opens up the simple truth which, so strangely, the Mainstream Media so desperately wants to hide. That simple truth is that really nothing is actually known about the plane over seven years later. It's the truth despite what they some of the "experts" would have you believe.

For those interested in proper, open-minded, intelligent, caring investigative journalism regarding the missing plane, and regardless what you might think about the conclusions itself of the author, I recommend the quite recent book "The Disappearing Act" by Florence de Changy.