> I would like to know more about the simulation's provenance ... I also wonder if there is any evidence of other simulations of flights that end up in the open ocean.
I'll second this. What little info we have seen can sound damning, at least as it's usually presented, but by all acounts there were over a hundred (hundreds?) of routes from the simultor, let's see them all and maybe the idea that one went into the southern indian ocean isn't actually so wild when you see a hundred plus of routes going everwhere from malaysia.
I was actually thinking of something rather different, but you have a point: if there were a lot of routes going nowhere, this one would not seem unusual... except for the fact that Zaharie apparently repeatedly came back to it, advancing it in steps to the point of fuel exhaustion. That seems very significant to me, assuming it is not a forgery or a misinterpretation of the data.
I was thinking that there might be evidence that Zaharie considered what Irving claims (mistakenly, I believe) was the only plausible course if Zaharie wanted to disappear: eastwards across the South China Sea.
I'll second this. What little info we have seen can sound damning, at least as it's usually presented, but by all acounts there were over a hundred (hundreds?) of routes from the simultor, let's see them all and maybe the idea that one went into the southern indian ocean isn't actually so wild when you see a hundred plus of routes going everwhere from malaysia.