#Simon Gunson's failed forray into Court! +Simon Gunson #MH370

Simon Gunson  who I intend to expose for what he is....wrote the following:

Yesterday  -  Shared publicly

 

So please explain this to me:

The floor hatch to the avionics compartment in a Boeing 777 is behind the Captain's seat, so disconnecting the ACARS at 17:07 UTC required the Captain to get up from his seat at 17:06 UTC step back over the centre console to get behind his seat. Getting out of one's seat during climb phase is something contrary to company policy and bound to alarm any co-pilot.

However the First Officer Hamid made a perfectly calm, normal radio call at 17:07:55 UTC. Please explain to me how could one pilot could disable ACARS below the cockpit floor whilst the other was calmly making a normal radio communication?

For security reasons, pilots do not know with whom they are assigned to fly until they reach the airport, so please don't tell me both pilots conspired to do this together.

The Captain could not both have incapacitated his co-pilot and climbed below, if the co-pilot subsequently made a perfectly normal radio call after that at 17:19 UTC.

Just out of interest what kind of lawyer are you and have you ever led cross examination in a court room because these are questions I would put to you in a court room.
Nor could the Captain have held a gun on his co-pilot whilst he was below the floor in the Avionics Bay. Since the VHF radio communication was at the same time ACARS communications ended the co-pilot could not be in both places so the captain could not have pushed him below at gun point either.

If the Captain incapacitated his co-pilot at 17:06 UTC how was it Fariq Hamid was also able to make another perfectly normal radio communication at 17:19 UTC?

Your theory of pilot suicide/hijacking has more in common with a marvel comic that real world airline flying.
Even assuming one pilot incapacitated the other there were three male cabin crew and there is a way to gain cockpit access if pilots lock staff out. An example of this happened in an Air New Zealand B777 flying from Perth where the Captain deliberately locked out the first officer in an act of air rage. 

Cabin crew have walk around oxygen bottles so not even decompressing the aircraft could prevent cabin crew from overpowering a rogue pilot. Your theory falls flat on its face when confronted with a reality check.  "

BEFORE I REPLY A COMMENT:

I post blogs to exchange ideas, to share insights I have and to learn from the insights of others.

To this end, replies or responses which agree with the views I posted are not as treasured as those in which questions are posted to me, or those in which my views are challenged or in which it is suggested that I'm wrong.

I welcome any chance to learn, to exchange views, or  even to be proven wrong. If I'm proven wrong, I'll change my view and be glad someone took the trouble to point me in the right way. I welcome all questions raised, which I might not have considered, since these could lead me to confirm a theory held or to realise that it was wrong.

However, Mr. Gunson's email, particularly the highlighted portions thereof, is an unfortunate personal attack on me, in my capacity as a legal professional, and in my capacity as an aviation analyst. He attempts not only to attack my theory, but goes further to imply that it is so ill-considered and baseless that it is unworthy of any lawyer or aviation expert. In essence, my theory reveals just how clueless and out of my depth I am in the field in which I claim certain expertise.

In fact, he presumes to suggest that he would cross-examine me on my theory...and the implication is that he would wipe the floor with me.

Well now. Let's see about that shall we.

I seldom suffer fools. And rising to him is probably unworthy of me, but sometimes, when an arsehole elects to jump on the tail of a sleeping lion, the consequence of his folly ought to be visited upon him.

MY RESPONSE to his "cross examination"

• Those who rush to judge others often make an elementary school-boy error. They don't  read or consider the view they wish to challenge properly. This is particularly so when they set out with a prejudiced instead of an open mind. This causes them to filter out crucial facts.
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• Simon Gunson's  criticism of my theory has one fundamental flaw. It presumes that when I refer to the possibility pilot involvement, I actually mean the Captain. Why? He probably is aware that the Captain is the favoured perpetrator amongst those who suspect a pilot was involved,  he simply presumed to attribute that view to me, irrespective of whether I subscribed to it or not.
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• It pains me to point out to Mr Gunson that the game Simon says, has no place in a mature debate. That which you allege, by implication or otherwise. you must be able to prove.
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• Nowhere in my article do I say which pilot might have been the perpetrator.
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• Simon relies upon the fact that airline practice is that neither pilot knows in advance that they will be flying together. He goes on to accept it as an irrefutable fact that neither pilot had sufficient advance knowledge of the roster. Thus, the pilots could not have been operating together.
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• And here, the first of many holes in Simon's theory. The mere fact that airline policy or standard practice may require that the identity of one's fellow pilot be withheld until the eleventh hour cannot ever serve as proof that in fact, the Captain or the co-pilot may not have had sufficient advance knowledge of their shifts to serve any joint common purpose they may have had.
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• The rotations or shifts do not just appear out of thin air. They are either generated by a computer programme or by a member of staff of the airline. Presumably, there are instances where these rotations or shifts are done a few days or so in advance of a flight. This information would then be stored on a computer or on paper in a file, with copies distributed to relevant departments.
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•  If this event was deliberate, as I contend, and if a pilot was involved, as I believe was likely, then it is more likely than not  that this was carefully planned. Accepting that, one can accept too, that if both pilots were involved in some plot or joint suicide mission, then to suggest that the Captain would not have had ways and means to find out in advance when he would be flying with his accomplice, would be ridiculous.
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• I'm sure an experienced pilot like the Captain would know the airline system and procedures inside out, and I consider impossible to believe that the information about the identity of co-pilots was ever considered to be so valuable or worthy of protection that it was subject to the highest security and impenetrable secrecy. On the contrary, I have found in my litigation career involving cases in all sorts of industries,  that systems can be bypassed and often are routinely bypassed.
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• I'd be surprised if pilots did not make it their business to find out who is responsible for pilot schedules, and also about where that information is kept. I'd bet too, that the pilots would soon learn which of the secretaries possessed of this information they could use their uniformed charms on in order to make changes to schedules or flight partners for all sorts of reasons.
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• So as Simon would so eloquently put it, his assumption that both pilots could not have acted together falls flat on its face. Certainly, he could not adduce his assumption before any Court as a fact.
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• Hell, who is to say that the Captain may not have known precisely how to manipulate the computer system or to influence a staff member to make the requisite scheduling change desired. My considered view is that if I were afforded a chance to interview pilots and staff of Malaysian Airlines, and then to cross-examine them in Court, I'd be surprised if I couldn't reveal all sorts of lapses, and loopholes, in the pilot shift allocation system. What's more, I am certain these were not secret.
• Of course now, that the implications of advance knowledge of pilot shifts and flights allocations are understood, I am certain everyone will attempt to cover any such security lapses, loopholes or common deviations from standard operating procedure.  
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• So, I do not and cannot exclude the possibility that both pilots were involved. I do accept, however, that it is more likely that one pilot was involved. Could he have had a cabin crew member or some other person as an accomplice? That is also possible.
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• But let's humour Simon, and accept it as a proved fact that only one pilot was involved.
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• Simon's bull point is "The Captain could not both have incapacitated his co-pilot and climbed below, if the co-pilot subsequently made a perfectly normal radio call after that at 17:19 UTC."
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• Sadly, however, Simon's "cross examination" technique does not close the escape routes before he sets his trap. Unfortunately, a proper skilled trial lawyer carefully closes the escape routes, before posing a question to which he knows there is no answer.
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• The answer, Simon, is that the co-pilot could have incapacitated the Captain during climb and this would leave him enough time to do what was required in the avionics bay without any problem at all.
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• Instead, let me use Simon's version against him, but simply flip the two parties. "so disconnecting the ACARS at 17:07 UTC required the Co-pilot to get up from his seat at 17:06  UTC step back over the centre console to get behind the seat of the incapacitated captain." No problem there, Simon would have to concede.
• If the Co-pilot  knew what to do, he could pop in at 1706, flip the switches or remove the fuses at 1707:00 UTC and still have fifty seconds to return to make his ATC announcement at 1707:55 UTC. (It could even be that he knew how to do that announcement from within the avionics bay itself. )
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• Also Simon's theory uses times gleaned from various systems around the world. I don't accept that these are always perfectly in sync. It's possible that ATC transmission times recorded might differ from the time the ACARS was switched off by more than the margin he allows for.

• So using Simon's own analysis, there was nothing to prevent a co-pilot from disconnecting the ACARS and from making a transmission to ATC.
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• "Getting out of one's seat during climb phase is something contrary to company policy and bound to alarm ..."  Since Simon says he wants me to employ  reality checks against which to measure my theory, the same should apply to him.
• NOTHING TURNS ON IT, but Simon couldn't even get this detail right. If he checks the ATC records, the airliner reported being at cruise prior to 1700 UTC. So even on this point, Simon is dead wrong and this is the third point on which his theory, and his "cross examination" in his chosen word "falls flat". By now, the witness would have him on the run and he'd be feeling a right arsehole, which of course, would be what he is.
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• How's your reality check doing now Simon? All falling apart like something out of a marvel comic?
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• From here on out, assuming no member of the cabin crew or some other person on board was involved, the Co-pilot would then implement whatever plan he would have come up with in advance to prevent the Cabin crew from intervening.
• The co-pilot could have told the cabin crew that the crew were dealing with a technical fault which required a precautionary change of course to allow for them to sort it out, before proceeding on course, and to allow for them to return to Kuala Lampur in the unlikely even they could not.
• This would not cause any suspicion or give the crew any reason to suspect that the Captain was incapacitated. They would think he was dealing with the problem and leaving the co-pilot to communicate with them.
• There is no reason why the co-pilot could not have provided credible updates on this technical problem without arousing suspicion.
• IF any member of the cabin crew noticed the failure to turn back on route or to KL on any in cabin displays, the co-pilot  could say that the problem was more serious than expected and they were being diverted by ATC towards a less busy airport as a precaution. A similar announcement to the passengers that they were trying to sort out a technical issue, that they were being diverted as a precaution, and that there was no reason for alarm would not arouse suspicion.
• I assume too, that the cabin crew would know not to trouble the cockpit or seek to gain access during this time, nor would any failure to permit access appear unusual in the circumstances.
• I suspect its possible that the cabin crew would do nothing for  as long as the co-pilot could convincingly persuade them that the pilots were battling a growing emergency.
• Two possibilities arise now: The co-pilot kept the charade going convincingly up until the end or until it was far too late to do anything.
• OR the cabin crew did intervene to foil a suicide attempt or some other plot and this ended in a disaster. E.g the plot was foiled
• OR the cabin crew smelt a rat, but were told by the co-pilot that he alone had control of the aircraft and would crash it if anyone tried to enter.  He could have spun another lie to say he was flying them to an alternate destination and that they would all be safe if they co-operated. Would a cabin crew risk intervening.
• The co-pilot could spin a lie about discovering a massive bomb in the avionics bay, which bomb was capable of detonation remotely by satellite signal.
• All sorts of possibilities present themselves.
• In response to Simon's cross-examination I have presented a whole host of reasonable plausible ways for a pilot to keep the cabin crew from suspecting anything for a long while or indeed, even the entire time.
• And finally, even if the cabin crew did smell a rat, they would surely nevertheless  be reluctant to forcibly intervene to remove their only pilot.
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• Having a credible version to delay / confuse the cabin crew to buy the time he required would have been part of any plan a suicidal pilot / or hijacking pilot  would have had to come armed with.

• The above answers completely dispose of  Simon's final questions , his "cross examination", ...indeed everything.
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I could stop now, but sadly, Simon dared to ask what type of lawyer I am. The answer, is one who is going to have you for breakfast as I complete doing a proper hatchet job of the cinders of your case while I proceed to build mine.

MY THEORY

My case is that the  loss of the aircraft was most likely due to an unlawful deliberate act, not to technical failure. Nothing more. Nothing less.

1. I refer first to the arguments in my blog under reply see the link: http://siegfriedwalther.blogspot.com/2014/12/mh370-af447-experts-confirm-views-first.html
2. The point to note is that once one eliminates all the other likely causes, the one which remains standing, no matter how implausible is the real cause. I submit that my theory is not even implausible, but it is the only one left standing.
3. As for previous incidents of pilot suicide permit me to lead expert evidence:
   Airline boss Ewan Wilson also believes there have been five other suicide tragedies involving commercial jetliners – which aren't linked to terrorism – in the last 30 years.
   Ill-fated flight MH370 disappeared with its 227 passengers from 15 nations and 12 Malaysian crew members while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 this year.
   Engine failure, sabotage, terrorism and even faulty air traffic control have all been blamed for sending the plane off course.
   Mr Wilson will tell aviation experts in Britain that pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah planned the tragedy as part of an "ultimate post-mortem triumph".
   He said: "We have shown why hijacking by a passenger or accidental depressurisation are highly unlikely scenarios.
   "By a process of elimination, this leaves pilot suicide as the only other serious option in our analysis of what occurred on March 8."
   The Kiwi Airlines boss believes the dad-of-three locked his co-pilot Fariq Hamid out of the cockpit, then shut off all communication and turned the aircraft around.
   He fears 53-year-old Shah then depressurised the plane – causing the cabin crew and passengers to die from hypoxia once the oxygen supply had run out.
   Mr Wilson believes the pilot then made eight different course changes before finally allowing MH370 to fly on auto-pilot for the last few hours of its journey into the southern Indian Ocean.
   The air accident investigator says Shah either ran out of oxygen or re-pressurised the Boeing 777 plane before guiding it to its unknown final resting place.
   Incredibly, Mr Wilson has found five previous fatal flights which took the lives of 422 passengers and crew which he believes were also caused by suicidal pilots.
   He is now calling for the aviation industry to ensure that pilots and cabin crew are psychologically fit to fly.
   He said: "There is a fundamental desire to ignore the mental health issue in the aviation industry, so the parties do not want to be named.
   "We will have a constructive discussion about mental health screening within aviation.
   "Our research indicates there have been five previous incidents of murder/suicide in commercial flights over the last three decades or so, accounting for 422 lives.
   "The sad addition of MH370 would bring that number to 661."
   "Soon after the disappearance of MH370 rumours of problems in Shah's personal life surfaced – rumours about the state of his marriage and his disenchantment with the Government's treatment of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim.
   "Four months on from the disappearance of the flight, investigators still regard him as their chief suspect."
   The Kiwi Airlines boss has met with Shah's brother-in-law and widow but said both have rejected his findings that the pilot was suicidal.
4. Further support for the theory that the plane went rouge:Flight MH370: flight path suggests plane went 'rogue'2 MayTHE flight path of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane suggests that it tried to dodge military radar and avoid flying over land, according to a preliminary report from Malaysian authorities.Nearly two months after the plane disappeared on 8 March, families of the missing passengers were yesterday told to return home from the hotels in Beijing and Kuala Lumpur provided by the government.Authorities also released an interim report, including a detailed map showing the flight's unusual route. The map suggests that the plane did not, as previously believed, follow a series of predetermined navigational waypoints, says the Daily Telegraph. Instead, it flew directly above the Strait of Malacca in a northwesterly direction and then turned again and travelled south for about seven hours before crashing in the Indian Ocean.This route would have reduced the risk of detection by avoiding Indonesian territory, although it may have passed over the northern tip of Sumatra.
   Aviation expert David Learmount told the Daily Telegraph: "It does look like the plane was trying to avoid Indonesian air space. It was an aircraft that has gone rogue. It didn't need to follow waypoints. There are no roads in the sky – pilots can go wherever they want."
5.  AND:
   Flight MH370: mysterious power outage 'a deliberate act'
   30 June
   The missing Malaysia Airlines plane appeared to suffer a mysterious power cut during the early stages of its flight, which experts believe was a deliberate attempt to hijack or sabotage the aircraft.
   A report from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is investigating the disappearance, has revealed that the plane made an unusual "log on" request – known as a "handshake" – to a satellite less than 90 minutes into the flight. The investigators said this was "not common" in the middle of a flight and likely to be caused by a "power interruption".
   David Gleave, an aviation safety expert from Loughborough University, told the Daily Telegraph it could have been caused by someone attempting to turn off the plane's communications and other systems.
   "A person could be messing around in the cockpit which would lead to a power interruption," he said. "It could be a deliberate act to switch off both engines for some time. By messing about within the cockpit you could switch off the power temporarily and switch it on again when you need the other systems to fly the aeroplane."
   Another aviation expert, Peter Marosszeky, from the University of New South Wales, said it was likely to be a "deliberate act of turning power off" by someone who knew what they were doing. "It would have to be a deliberate act to hijack or sabotage the aircraft," he said.
6. AND my final expert witness:  
   Byron Bailey, a former RAAF fighter pilot, charter pilot and senior captain with Emirates, said that even if something happened to the flight crew, the plane would have flown itself to Beijing via its pre-programmed computer.
   "For it to alter course and fly a different route as alleged would require the deliberate manual intervention of someone with considerable expertise of FMS [flight management computers] protocols, which suggests a pre-planned intention," he writes in Australia's Daily Telegraph.
   If the flight had crashed in an accident, "masses of debris would be floating around for a long time afterwards", says Bailey.
   He also explains that the 777 has 80 computers and three sets of nearly every system on board – including three radios, three radar transponders, three autopilots and three flight management computers – to ensure a "practically fail safe" operation.
   "A failure of one will result in transfer, usually automatically, to another. This means for air traffic control to lose secondary radar contact with MH370 someone had to deactivate all three by manually selecting them to off," says the former pilot.
   He cast doubt on the theory of an electrical failure, pointing to the plane's five generators, and ruled out a fire or decompression, saying that there would have been time to contact air traffic control.

Sorry, Simon, your humiliation continues. Next discredit the opposition as lunatics..




Simon's posts reveal he has an agenda. He is a conspiracy theorist....Have a look at what he calls fact. Good luck with that in court mate.
The fact MH370 kept flying another 6.5 hours was kept secret until China hacked Malaysian Government computers on 9th March with a cyber attack. The claim MH370 had made an emergency landing at Naming in China was a false press release designed to penetrate the computers of crash investigators.

The Chinese press release on a PDF file concealed a Trojan Horse used to download data. When Malaysia's Government noticed high traffic loads and clogged email inboxes they called in IT specialists.

It was after this that Malaysia called in a Russian Public Relations company and began to manufacture false claims of pilot suicide and a fictional account of MH370 flying through the Straits of Malacca.

America's NSA has been involved with MH370's disappearance since the day MH370 went missing (8th March) and refuses to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests citing Executive Order 13526. 


So as a wise arse once said.....who was it now? Oh yes, it was Simon who said
Your theory falls flat on its face when confronted with a reality check.  "


I suspect your "facts" will require a whole host of reality checks.


So, that's the case for my theory. So perhaps next time  a professional person writes to say that his theories are logical, considered, and were later supported by other experts, I suggest you treat that person with the respect everyone, whether a lawyer or not, deserves.


Secondly, don't make a prick of yourself by questioning my competence, and then by presuming to take me on in my own " back yard"  ie. a court proceeding by "cross examining" me.


I'll eat you up and spit you out, you worm. Never learnt anything from Hitler and Napoleon's Russian campaigns? Don't take on an enemy in his back yard.


Finally, a tip. When cross examining, ...never ask a question to which you do not know the answer. Why?






see below:CROSS EXAMINATION TIP: Know the answer before you ask the question


Inexperienced litigators don't always comprehend the importance of never asking open ended questions whilst cross examining a witness. 





This is not always easy to do. Occasionally, when at a loss about what to ask next, even experienced counsel have been known to resort to open ended questions in the (often vain) hope that the witness himself will offer up something useful upon which one might seize.



This is what can happen:


In a criminal trial a state witness had just given his evidence in chief for the state, during which he had identified the accused who had been some distance away, around fifty feet, on the other side of the road, at night. 


Under vigorous cross examination the witness insisted that despite that the identification had been made at night, a street lamp on the other side of the road had allowed him to make an accurate identification of the perpetrator i.e. the accused. 


At his wits end, and in desperation, the Defence counsel forgot his training and sarcastically posed an open-ended question to the witness. ( I should add that this occurred in the US in front of  a jury trial. )


Attorney: "Mr Auld, won't you please tell the jury just how far you think you can see at night?"


He of course hoped that the annoyingly self-assured witness would be tempted to exaggerate his ability , thereby offering the attorney a chance to go onto the attack. This is not what occurred. 


Witness: I don't really know your honour. 

The witnesses then adopted a modest tone for the first time.
And then, with his next utterance....disaster for the defence. 

Witness: Perhaps you can tell me (he said to the attorney.)  ...How far is the moon?



. 

1. Finally, Truth is often stranger than fiction. If you first heard of a plot to fly four airliners into buildings prior to 9/11 you would have thought it was something out of a bad disaster movie rather than something which could have been planned.
   
   Disturbed minds however, should never be underestimated! 

And that my Lord, concludes my case....


SIEGFRIED WALTHER DEC 2014
Advocate of the High Court of South Africa, member of the Cape Bar, Former Attorney of the High Court of South Africa.
Arbitrator and former Military Law Officer.


OH, and a proper written apology from you will cause this article to vanish....