This is happening late at night and will bear further discussion in the morning, but I wanted to get something up online quickly to explain the basic gist of the situation. A little over an hour ago, at 9.30pm EDT here in the US, the Australian government announced that it was abandoning the current search area and moving to a new one 11oo km to the northeast. The reason, they said, is:
The search area for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has been updated after a new credible lead was provided to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA)… The new information is based on continuing analysis of radar data between the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca before radar contact was lost. It indicated that the aircraft was travelling faster than previously estimated, resulting in increased fuel usage and reducing the possible distance the aircraft travelled south into the Indian Ocean.
This explanation really doesn’t make any sense. I want to quickly explain why, and give some context of where all this is happening geographically.
First, here’s a very crude chart I’ve made on Google Earth showing the old search area and the new search area (very roughly estimated). You’ll recall that earlier this week Inmarsat released an analysis of its “ping” data that plotted different routes the aircraft might have taken. The upshot was that if the plane was flying at 450 knots, it would have wound up at a spot on the 8.11am ping arc marked “450.” If it had flown at 400 knots, it would have wound up around the spot marked “400.” (click to enlarge)
As you can see, it appears that the old search area assumed a flying speed of a bit more than 450 knots, and the new search area assumes a flying speed of a bit more than 400 knots, with prevailing currents causing debris to drift to the southeast.
The shifting of the search area to the northeast would seem to stand at odds with the assertion of the press release, which implies that new radar analysis finds the plane was flying faster then originally estimated. In fact, it was flying slower than originally estimated.
At any rate, the abandoning of the old search area, after such significant assets had been lavished upon it, raises the question of why they were so confident about it that speed estimate in the first place. And then raises the obvious sequela: Why are they so confident in this one?
BTW, here’s that graphic from the Inmarsat, showing the 450 and 400 knot plots:
So this new data shows that the southern path that Inmarsat said matched the pings, and that the airline used to conclude that the flight ended and all were lost, was completely wrong….and apparently it takes 20 days worth of analysis to determine the speed of an aircraft appearing on Malaysian military radar.
I don’t understand why all that’s being released is conclusions vs actual facts and data? If it takes a week of analysis to determine that you’re 600 miles off-target then maybe they need some other eyes looking at the information.
@Jeff – Any luck getting the raw data from Inmarsat? I’m also curious what their thoughts are in light of this new information.
To be fair, if the plane crashed intio the ocean, any surface debris has been floating for 3 weeks now, so the search area might be effected by currents as much as pings. On the other hand, if we are going to start taking the radar data as our lead I think we need to throw out all the assumptions about constant speed,heading and altitude. Please Inmarsat, share what you’ve got so your conclusions can be tested.
Jeff, thank you. And let me be the first to say “I’m glad it’s not just me.” It was surreal, hearing Piers Morgan report tonight that the plane was flying faster then previously thought and so would have burned through its fuel sooner. As you say, that scenario pushes the path farther west, not east, with the plane crossing the equal-doppler circles at shallower angles, not steeper ones. Or maybe the circles have also shifted in time and space. Anything is possible, at this point. And with a faster fuel burn, could plane even have been in the air at 8:11 am when the last full ping was received? This is getting weird.
Thanks Jeff for putting this up. This was my thought as well. How can they say the plane was going faster but it traveled less. I understand they are saying if it went faster it would burn more fuel. But the last ping is the last ping. it flew until 8:11 or 8:19 at least – likely crashed 8:19 as the last handshake was not complete. if you travel until 8:19 and go faster, you get further than if you travel until 8:19 and go slower. I think Les Abend got it right the other day and just repeated it now – the plane perhaps stayed down at 12000 ft. This would cause the plane to go slower not faster – like the 400 kts – and would burn more fuel. As Les just said on CNN – “they may now be searching in the right place for the wrong reason.” the plane cannot have gone faster, in the same time, and go less distance. it feels the new data is driven by boeing guestimates and is less tied to inmarsat data – I wish they would get everyone all on the same page.
Just as I did, you dropped a pin on a 270T bearing from Perth at 1850km (999nm). Then you plotted a search area well to the SE of this push pin. Why is that? Ocean currents in the weeks since the plane would have gone down?
I think I’ve finally figured this out.
I read press release carefully, and it say the plane was traveling faster while being tracked by radar over the Malay peninsula. That means NOT after it turned south. I don’t think it is a misstatement (accidentally saying “faster” when they meant “slower”).
Leaving the southward leg at 400-450 knots, the plane would’ve run out of fuel sooner and the search area should be shifted northward, not northeast. So why did they shift it northeast?
We know the plane has an appointment with destiny at 8:11 am, the time of the last full ping. With less fuel at the moment of turning south it would not have enough fuel to be in the air until 8:11 am, so it must’ve slowed down for the southward leg.
I believe that when they learned the westward speed had to be adjusted upward, they adjusted the southward speed downward in order to hold constant the 8:11 am appointment with destiny.
This results in a shift northeastward.
Thanks, Jeff! Is this new potential debris site, and thus its new crash site, possible, if MH370 didn’t fly over Indonesia? This lack of radar data from above Sumatra, means either the plane went North, or the plane went south around Sumatra, or, the plane flew over Sumatra, and the Indonesians are lying.
This one detail, continues to bother me.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/03/26/govt-insists-mh370-did-not-fly-indonesian-airspace.html
@Hal
the 8:11 ping established that southern (and originally also northern) arc. the plane has to have ended near there. They cant just hist north. at the slower speed (400 kts) they shift northeast to stay along the arc.
@Lee – good point. Shifting the endpoint north is equivalent to changing the time and/or doppler shift of the last ping. They are inseparable and we cannot change either, so the plane MUST have slowed down after turning southward. This is a case of inadequate communication because they use “faster” only to describe the westward leg connecting the South China sea and the Strait of Malacca and forget to mention that the southward leg is now slower.
There’s a dead Frenchman named Breguet who just summoned me through a Ouija board to clarify the issues of RANGE vs ENDURANCE in jet aircraft.
If you want RANGE (meaning distance) in a 777, you’re going to fly at a Mach number between M0.82-0.84 (depending on weight and temp, it’s around 460 kts groundspeed in zero wind) at the OPTIMUM altitude (which is somewhere up in the flight levels depending on weight but the fact that MH 370 climbed to FL350 initially ought to tell you something about what its initial optimum altitude was).
Yes, contrary to popular belief, jet engines burn MORE fuel per lb of thrust at high altitude (RR Trent 892 has an SFC of about 0.56lb/lb/hr in cruise vs 0.35 lb/lb/hr at sea level). But the attendant improvements in L/D ratio and groundspeed more than make up for it when it comes to RANGE.
If the objective is to keep a 777 of a certain takeoff weight in the air as long as humanly possible and nobody cares how far you travel, there will be a particular combination of airspeed and altitude that results in the most favorable convergence between drag and SFC. I don’t know what that combination is for MH370 at the weight it flew, but just like range it would be a function of L/D ratio and SFC and I’d bet the airspeed would be pretty close to Vg (Best Glide – which is L/D max anyway).
There’s an outside chance that 12,000′ might be it, but 400 knots true airspeed is WAY high. That’s about 325 knots INDICATED airspeed while Vg (best glide) at that weight is somewhere between 240-260KIAS.
My money is on MH370 making the run from Aceh to Perth way up in the Flight Levels at 460 KTAS. Someone will have to figure the winds aloft that exact night in order to determine Groundspeed.
Has anyone at CNN done that?
I am reposting here from the previous post and thread, as this is where a new discussion seems to have developed.
Kudos to Jeff and a number of others here who are attempting to analyze the data and information concerning MH370 that is in the public domain. This blog has turned into the nuts concerning the incident, as far as I am concerned.
The Inmarsat data set as a whole and its analysis bother me, as confirmation bias lurks large here, and the entire search effort is largely based upon the data and its analysis.
The lack of additional data from primary radar sources and the other national security assets of the nations concerned also bothers me. Even the remote-sensing satellite data has generally suffered delays in its production, not all of which can be accounted for by time-in-analysis.
Questions:
1. From the outside, the Inmarsat data and the analysis by the Brits and the fact that it has not been peer reviewed (as far as we know) leaves any conclusion open to confirmation bias, does it not?
2. Are there any positive indications that any other sources of data, classified or unclassified, have been withheld by the national security assets of any nation? Has anyone covered this aspect of the investigation somewhat adequately other than the NYT (Mar 26)?
3. The principles of Transformational Grammar and the processes of “translation, distortion and deletion” are quite obviously producing disseminated information (produced from the data) by government authorities that is more ‘surface structure’ (less true)-oriented as opposed to ‘depth structure’ (more true)-oriented. Noam Chomsky has yet to really chime in (he is getting older), but have you (Jeff) come across any other transformational grammarians that have properly analyzed the government information?
4. Who are the transnantional czars/organizations for both the investigation and the search? Are they adequately empowered, or is it really more national security and safety assets working away independently in their own silos?
5. Is anyone leveraging one of the crowd-sourcing petition platforms in an effort to seek higher-quality information from government authorities on MH370?
Thanks to anyone whom can provide some answers to my queries. I do realize that most of you are occupied with the math of thing, but then there elements (above) that must be considered in the analysis. And please do keep up the good work; this is a mystery that demands answers, with the alternative being only a form of madness.
(Jeff: I am a good friend of Sue Brooks and John Leary; I am sure that they would want me to say ‘hello!’)
If they did mean faster only prior to 02:22, implying slower later, then why did they use 469 kts for the new post radar speed? Any way you parse it, the language was wrong or mangled badly.
Jeff, thanks for the quick assessent of the situation, and for providing a new discussion platform.The other thread was becoming awfully long.
This confirms my suspicion, that satellite pictures of little white dots show just that: little white dots, which can be anything, from marine mammal lifeforms to big squalls to containers from freight ships. If it really shows debris, it just shows, that our oceans are unfortunately full of garbage.
I also agree with others, that this new press info doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. Maybe something got lost in translation, which means in this case, translation of scientific facts to the public audience.Especially the assumption,that data from the last known radar tracking of the plane led to the conclusion, that the plane had a different speed than previously assumed, when it headed south doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. Who says, that the plane’s speed (and height) didn’t change after it was lost from all radars. It changed it’s course quite drastically after all, from Northwest to Southeast!
And I agree with Rand Mayer’s speculations, that there might be other factors at play, which have nothing to do with hard data.
Jeff, is your assumption, that the data, which show the plane always moving away from the satellite, lead to a ‘grey area’, to which the plane couldn’t have gone, still valid? This calculation of a ‘grey no go’ area led you to the conclusion, that the plane must’ve gone over Indonesian air space on it’s way south. According to a poster at duncansteel.com’s latest article (Leslie at 3/29 01:29 AM) the table of burst frequencies doesn’t support this, or is at odds with the data, that show the plane always moving away from the satellite. Could someone with more knowledge look into this? I think, it’s important, because, if the grey no go area isn’t valid anymore, due to new information and additional data, it opens up even more possibilities for the course of the plane after the last acknowledged radar contact.
airlandseaman said: “If they did mean faster only prior to 02:22, implying slower later, then why did they use 469 kts for the new post radar speed? Any way you parse it, the language was wrong or mangled badly.”
Cr*p. I didn’t see that.
@littlefoot – concerning little white dots, last night CNN published an article on this “new credible evidence” in which they simultaneously stated that the search area has been moved ~700 miles AND that the floating debris seen at the old search site might be airplane parts. Can they both be true? My favorite comment on that story went something like this:
“There are four things I’ve learned from CNN’s reporting on this:
1) There is lots of trash in Indian Ocean.
2) We have satellites that can see this trash.
3) CNN can get breaking news from trash.”
At this point I would not be surprised to learn that the plane is in South China Sea just off the coast of Thailand, where the first oil slick appeared.
@Hal (are you related to HAL by chance :),
if they don’t find pieces of the plane anytime soon, they’ll have a hell of a public relations problem. No matter how sound their calculations are in theory,their conclusions won’t be readily accepted, and give rise to the wildest speculations. For the sake of the grieving families, I really hope, that won’t happen.
This plane could turn into the ‘Mary Celeste’ of the 21st century. The case of the Mary Celeste, a famous 19th century case of a perfectly intact ghostship,sailing by itself, but apparently abandonned in the middle of the Atlantic for no discernable reason (look for it at Wiki!) shows by the way, that this fascination with unsolved mysterious disasters is nothing new. Experts STILL try to solve the riddle of the Mary Celeste, though they have narrowed it down to a few reasonable scenarios.
It’s human nature, that we want to KNOW (we hate, being unable to solve riddles), especially, if it concerns situations, we could be in ourselves, like flying (or crossing the Atlantic in the 19th century).
The trouble with these calculations is, that they have to make assumptions about the plane’s behaviour after the last acknowledged radar sighting. But since we don’t know, why the plane got lost in the first place, that leads to many wild uncertainties.
I just read at CBS’s site, that the new search area of water is even deeper than the previous one. While the search conditions right now are apparently mmore benign, this might make the discovery of the black box even more difficult. Interestingly, some posters speculated last week, that someone, who wants the plane lost forever, might ditch it into the Diamantina Trench. The new search area roughly corresponds with this…
@littlefoot – running out of fuel and targeting a particular ocean area seem to be inconsistent with each other. I’m not buying the idea that he could predict exactly how much fuel and flying he needed to run out in a particular location.
For that matter, running out of fuel really works against a suicide theory, as it increases the risk of passenger interference. Did he/could he confirm they were all dead?
If the plane is indeed in the IO, which I’m not even convinced of, I’d have to think it was either a ghost ship that ran out of fuel, or it was plunged without respect to the location.
The lack of any detected explosion would also appear to support the fuel outage.
On the other hand, the material revision to the math and continued refusal to release just 12 millisecond values leads me to think its not in the IO at all.
If there was suspicion that it was intact, it would be imprudent to state that for various reasons. 1) we wouldn’t want people shooting down the wrong 777s, 2) we wouldn’t want to tip our hand as to what we know. 3) we would not want to run out of FDR ping time if we were wrong.
Something occurred to me last night that might drastically affect the speed and fuel burn estimates.
What if the aircraft was flying on one engine? A 777 crossed the Pacific during flight testing on one engine.
A possible scenario: aircraft suffers a fire or other mechanical problem an hour into the flight. It loses comm, pressurization and one engine. The pilots divert to land at Banda Aceh (or another nearby airport), but are overcome by smoke or lose consciousness due to lack of oxygen. The plane continues along the autopilot route entered to the alternate airport, flying until fuel exhaustion.
Another factor that might enter in would be whether during the emergency the pilots dumped fuel in anticipation of an emergency landing.
It would be interesting to get access to a 777 simulator and see which airports would be listed on the ARPT page of the FMS at the location where the comms failed, and see how vectors to those airports line up with the estimated aircraft tracks.
@JS, it’s not confirmed, that the plane crashed because it ran out of fuel. All we know, is, that after the last ping, the plane didn’t have enough fuel to reach a landing place, if we assume, the southern arc theory is roughly correct. A suicidal perpetrator might have made calculations, how far and to what locations he might get the plane, and those Indian Ocean deep trenches were in the plane’s reach.
And if the plane crashed, because it ran out of fuel, it still doesn’t contradict the suicide theory: The perpetrator could’ve made sure, the plane gets lost, made a turn South, and then just let it fly until it ran out of fuel. In all those human intervention theories, the passengers were dead for hours by then, if the cabin was depressurized.
As it is, we just don’t know, what happened. Every scenario sounds bizarre to a great extend. There is probably no simple solution. I
didn’t say, btw, that the perp tried to put the plane into a deep crevasse of the IO, I just remarked, that some people speculated about it, and the new search area fits this theory better.And that’s all it is: a theory amongst many.
I looked for the Diamantina Trench (or Deep) on the map, and if I’m not very much mistaken, the right corner of the rectangle, representing the new search area on Jeff’s map, seems to be touching it!
This is interesting, because some posters, who speculated about the suicide theory, and that the plane was meant to get lost forever, if possible, picked the Diamantina Trench as a suitable location as early as 8 days ago. That was well before Inmarsat came out with it’s calculations.
Intentionally or not, if this new search area checks out (which is far from certain), it might be one hell of a task to get to the black box… if they find it.
I should amend my remarks a bit: The outer red circle and the dot of the 08:11 ping would suggest, that perhaps the plane didn’t quite make it to the deep part of the trench, if that even was the intention, although theoretically it could’ve flown into an Eastern direction for a while after the last ping, if it still had some fuel left, since the last ping only indicates the last contact with the plane, not the crash itself. For some reason, the new search area at BBC’s site is marked more to the North East than Jeff’s rectangle.
@Jeff, Was glad to hear you speaking to the accuracy of the reported plane speeds, with Don Lemon tonight. Things have gotten a little out of hand and you add a note sobriety to the speculative environment.
@littlefoot – HAL 9000 is my twin brother. Ha ha. Marie Celeste is a great story. And are you old enough to remember the Thresher? It was U.S. submarine that got lost and sank in 1963. My family was glued to our B&W TV for what seemed like weeks (might’ve just been days) waiting for updates from Walter Cronkite. Yes the fascination with a lost ship or aviator is immense.
I’ve been reading through your analysis and I am fascinated by your professional expertise and approach in trying to find an answer regarding the missing MH370. While browsing the net I came across some website that claim that a “clone” Malaysian Airline Boeing 777-2H6(ER) is sitting/stored in a Tel Aviv hangar since Oct/Nov 2013 and obviously speculating as to why. Although this has nothing to do with any scientific calculation regarding the flight path, I thought I share it with you…if nothing else, for a laugh.
http://www.planespotters.net/Production_List/Boeing/777/28416,N105GT-GA-Telesis-php
http://www.planespotters.net/Production_List/Boeing/777/28420,9M-MRO-Malaysia-Airlines.php
Jeff, thanks for sharing and asking questions.. I am just wondering, did everyone jump into conclusion based on Inmarsat data?
All the satellite data is telling us is that there are 2 possible arcs based on the last ping from the plane. And later based on doppler effect, it is concluded that the southern arc is the most likely scenario.
However, there is no way the Inmarsat satellite can tell if the plane has been flying in small circle around the 40 degree arc, or how long the plane has been remaining on air..
What if the plane ‘landed’ on water before the last ping and continue to send the ping (assuming the comm to Inmarsat satellite was not damaged)? That could explain why later Inmarsat says there was another handshake after the last ping?
All we have today is there are satellite photos of ‘debris, but after so many days of searching, nothing has been found. Could all these be just pollution/rubbish in the Indian Ocean? Or could it be just one of the debris drifted from the original crash site, which could be hundred/thousand of miles away?
What if we have been searching in the wrong location? Shouldn’t we start retracing the whole of Southern arc (especially closer to Indonesia/Northern Australia)?
Friends :
Did we all miss something, or is it just me who missed something?…
During week # 1 the world was told MH370 hit three ‘waypoints’ over the Strait of Malacca proceeding on a heading averaged out to be generally NW (which allowed support for Keith Ledgerwood to propose his ‘shadowing of SIA68 theory’) I have not seen anywhere, and I’ve followed this story daily as much as anyone else has, where anyone in ‘officialdom’, or where ‘the investigation’ has definitively, unequivocally, refuted that info about hitting those ‘waypoints’ (if anyone can point me to where this has been ‘officially refuted’ please correct me).
What we have heard, is “a [unnamed] source close to the investigation has told CNN” that MH370 was at 12K feet over Malaysia. CNN — and we — are giving some weight to that, … but that info also does not refute what the world was told during week one about hitting those waypoints. We also have heard that ‘the investigation’ has gleaned from further analysis of radar data that MH370 was traveling faster than originally assumed while in Malaysian airspace, ergo, greater fuel consumption, but that info also does not unequivocally refute that it hit those waypoints.
That info is critical. IF MH370 did hit those waypoints it allows support to the argument that MH370 was diverted, was ‘disappeared’ with intent. If it did not hit those waypoints it allows those who are pilots to find support for their ‘overcome by fire/fumes.’ But put Ledgerwood, and ‘intent,’ and ‘pilots overcome’ all aside — for our guesstimates along the Southern arc, if it DID hit them, MH370 spent more time, and fuel, doing so, and would therefore be even further northeast than the ‘new’ search area, would it not?
You make a really excellent point. I took these waypoints as very compelling evidence that the plane was not only deliberate control, but that a careful and intelligent plan was unfolding. And then all talk of them just vanished. I want to talk to the journalists who reported on them, and will let you all know what they say.
Jeff :
Know what?… The first weekend (7-8 days after the disappearance) of the search was when the Inmarsat 8:11-ping-arc graphics going north and south were put up by CNN. There is a very ‘well-wired-in’ journalist who was the first to say that ‘sources close to the invesigation’ were convinced that MH370 had either gone north or south, and quoted a ‘source’ saying “at the bottom of the Indian Ocean.” This was the first time i heard anyone use that phrase, and it was said DAYS BEFORE Inmarsat further analyzed their data and made public THEIR conclusion that it HAD TO BE the southern arc (allowing the Malay PM to follow with his statement “ended in the Southern Indian Ocean”).
So I ask : Did U.S. Intel know something… BEFORE Inmarsat did their further analysis? Now I know someone is going to get into my face and peg me as a ‘conspiracy-theorist,’ okay. But here’s a question : If U.S. Intel knew it was the Southern arc, BEFORE Inmarsat did their work and made public their results–Then Inmarsat didn’t HAVE TO, did they? Unless… Inmarsat’s work and public release is a cover story.
Those ‘waypoints’ have been dropped from the timeline/dialog….why?
I believe it’s entirely possible, that MH370 was pirated/hijacked/commandeered , flew into some countries airspace with no transponder and no communication, got shot out of the sky by that nation’s military on the morning of Mar 8th, then, when it became known that Malaysia Air had a passenger-liner missing, that nation had a ‘oh-shit,’ moment, and, at the highest levels, some talk to hush it up was begun. India (Hindu), would be in an awkward place if it’s military shot down a Malay (Moslem) airliner, carrying over a hundred-fifty Chinese(Buddist) nationals. Likewise, China would be in an awkward spot if THEIR OWN military shot down a plane carrying a hundred-fifty of its own people. Either of those possibilities would be … delicate… incendiary. So some other story had to be concocted. So where else could MH370 be, plausibly? At the bottom of the deepest ocean it could have flown to given the fuel it had, an unfriendly ocean with a lot of sea-junk floating about, and winter is coming, difficult weather to search in, necessitating a postponement for months….
There are interesting hints that US intel knew early on where this investigation would end up (at the bottom of the Indian ocean). Also, the US response to the whole situation seems a bit muted/token to me, especially given the apparent possibility that jihadist terrorism was involved. Suppose for a moment that the Daily Mail reporting is accurate, and the captain indeed had festering anger at the Malaysian government, at the same time as becoming estranged from his family. I believe it has also been reported that he had run simulations of landings at multiple Indian Ocean airports. This might suggest a scenario where he commandeers the plane, heads it out to the ocean, calls the PM’s office or military HQ by satellite phone to issue a statement and/or make demands, they ignore/rebuff him and he follows through on his threat to crash the plane. US intel tracks the whole communication including the denouement, perhaps after the fact. The US might feel constrained from revealing the source of the intel (too late to save the passengers anyway, internal matter for Malaysian authorities, etc.), and at the highest levels the Malaysian authorities might not be in too much of a hurry to find the plane or recover the black box. Speculation based on very limited data, obviously, but it might explain a few things. Thoughts?
How do the three waypoints line up with Inmarsat’s prediction(s) of route?
They don’t; Inmarsat just overlooks them. But it seems to me that the large Doppler spike at 2.25 corresponds to the turn to GIVAL, then continuing on to IGREX.
Your latest comments embolden me to repeat a question I asked earlier: Can anyone explain precisely what the Burst Frequency Offset chart is showing in the time period between take-off and the second ghost ping (3:40 am)?
1 – The predicted routes do not reverse and go west over the Malay peninsula. So at what point do they turn North (or South)? And what would those tracks actually look like plotted over ground? Neither can possibly replicate exactly the path that MH370 took.
2 – What is the “official” explanation for the huge jump in BFO at 18:27? If they did a controlled turn, descended to 12k feet, and flew W over the Malay Peninsula, the BFOs should have been dropping during this period, relative to the take-off value (because the satellite was west of the plane).
Can anyone explain? Thanks!
@Jeff, thanksfor reminding everyone of the zigzagging towards the Andaman islands and the way points again.I was greatly puzzled, that many representations seemed to have dropped them, as if they were never talked about. But they are immensely important for determinating human intention vs. disaster scenarios. So, why aren’t they talked about any longer? Also, don’t these way point ‘sightings’, if still valid, give a fixed time frame for the plane’s early movements? If so, the plane can’t have flown faster in the early stages, as we were told, when the new search area was postulated. They must have other, unofficial reasons for looking there. The ‘fly faster, burned more fuel, travelled shorter distance’ theory still doesn’t make one bit of sense.
@Hal, no I don’t know about the missing submarine, will look for info. But as a kid, I decided to find out, what happened to the Mary Celeste :). I guess, others have done that more or less convincingly by now.
While I shouldn’t be surprised, I’m shocked nevertheless about the amount of garbage floating in our Oceans.Since these items tend to cluster and form big trash islands, it’s even harder to spot potential plane debris.
@Luigi Warren, I’ve thought along the same lines. While I rejected pilot abduction and suicide in the early stages, because the actions seemed to be too well thought out, and too elaborate for a simple suicide crash, I now think, the perpetrator might’ve intended to make demands, which were not met, and led to a suicidal scenario with the intention to greatly harm the Malaysian government and/or Malaysia Airlines. While there is no hard evidence for that theory publically available, there are many soft facts and hints, and it would explain the seemingly incompetent and inexplicable dragging out of the early investigations by the Malysian officials, which so enrages the families of the passengers. Someone at ‘reddit’ developed a theory along that line (minus the making of demands) as early as 2 weeks ago, which interestingly predicts the new search area pretty accurately,before the announcement was made, that we all should look along the Southern arc. I will write more about that later, with links and sources.
@Hal, I’d also greatly appreciate, if we talk some more about the burst frequency offset charts. As I mentioned at 3/28 10:02, a poster at duncansteel.com (leslie 3/29 01:29 am) remarked, that those charts don’t seem to support the contention of inmarsat, that the plane always moved away from the satellite, which led to Jeff’s graphic depictions of ‘grey areas’, where the plane couldn’t have gone.
Can’t seem to locate where to register on this site; apologies got being a bit of a Luddite, Jeff.
The Inmarsat data set and its analysis continues to bother me in terms of the potential for confirmation bias. The repositioning of the search site is indicative of how a small error in the data or its calculation can lead to quit a large error in terms of selecting where to establish the search grid.
If the aircraft’s satellite receiver/antenna were damaged early on in the process of the aircraft diverting from its intended flight path, it could be providing false indications as to movement of the aircraft over time. Perhaps the aircraft did not change its position (travel) over time, but the transmission equipment and the data set has rather made it appear that the aircraft changed its position. Perhaps the aircraft did not remain aloft for hours, but rather it only appears that it remained aloft due to the apparent (yet false) handshake signals between the satellite and the aircraft.
The indications of the course of travel by aircraft provided by the waypoints IGARI, GIVAL, VAMPI and IGREX have indeed been left behind in the wake of the Inmarsat data analysis. Perhaps this was due to the rise in prominence of the Inmarsat data analysis and the eventual discounting of the Ledgerwood “shadow scenario” by numerous aviation experts.
The erratic yet deliberate navigation of the aircraft between specific waypoints is interesting, in that, if we assume that the plane was intentionally diverted by a less than fully-qualified yet reasonably adequate pilot, we could reasonably expected this pilot to take a bit of time to find his way before reaching the IGREX waypoint. Alternatively, a fully qualified pilot with less than adequate/compromised communication and navigation systems would produce a similar pattern in aircraft behavior. Again, “what got broke, the pilot of the plane?” Both can yield the same data sets, and navigating between the waypoints (as opposed to known airports) would be a logical course of action in either case.
I would hope that someone has done a thorough analysis of the network of waypoints from IGREX onwards and contacted each and every military radar jurisdiction regarding each waypoint cross-referenced by a timeline built upon expected speed of the aircraft. Making only general inquiries to military jurisdictions/countries would only play to delays inherent to chain of command and security processes. Just as with any investigation seeking to build a ‘picture’ of what happened, each and every point of potential geographical contact along a suspected timeline needs to be investigated. It seems to me that using the waypoints as a map to guide the investigation and at least eliminate or confirm primary radar contact with the aircraft would at least supplement the search, which is now being pursued solely upon analysis of the Inmarsat data set.
Well, it seems that I now have clearance from Clarence to post…
Jeff,
If I were hijacking a 777, and at 12,000 ft. over the Malacca Strait, I believe that I would want get right down on the deck, as I rounded the northern end of Sumatra. Even if tracked by Indonesian radar, a low & slow target might appear less threatening.
If MH370 descended to 1,000 ft. and slowed to L/D max (as suggested above), can you provide an estimated track? Would it make a landing in Indonesia plausible?
Monday morning in Eastern US, monday eve off Western AU. And the ‘objects’ sighted in the NEW search area which got so many excited were deemed to be…. unrelated. Is it time to ask Inmarsat for further analysis?….(cynical?… facetious?…)
@ Luigi Warren : Your scenario is as good as any. Here’s another : MH370 was being flown Malay capitol (KL) to China capitol(Beijing) by a very-trusted senior pilot w/ over 30 years with MA, perhaps their most trusted pilot. And at night, with less traffic. What was it carrying, capitol to capitol, worth stealing?… bullion perhaps, or other cargo valued to someone, the passengers (those 20 Freescale employees)…? And as you pointed out, with his life in disarray, perhaps on this flight, this night, he felt, “WTF, what do I have to lose, this time I’ll take it.”
To me, hitting those waypoints, coupled with the ‘disappearance’ of the flight in that ‘gray-zone’ just after signing off from KL control and before checking in w/ Vietnam, signifies intent, planning (and suicide doesn’t fit with that).
The absence also of any ELT signal throws doubt on the possibility of an ocean crash
So either MH370 crashed accidentally in the Himalayas on the way to his intended destination and Inmarsat has pushed their abilities too far, mistaken in their conclusion of a southern route, or it got shot down tragically, mistakenly, somewhere and Inmarsat has been asked to provide some plausible science to support a story of it ending up a thousand miles and half a continent away, in deep ocean, from where it actually ended up.
There are any number of scenarios that would fit the facts and the data, yet the facts and the data alone provide enough to consider in terms of rebuilding MH370’s flight path.
The diversion of the aircraft precisely in the midst of the hand off from KL and prior to contact being established with Vietnam, coupled with the aircraft navigating successfully post-course deviation to more than one waypoint does indeed discount any scenarios involving a catastrophic incident (e.g., cockpit fire) where communication/ID/ACARS systems would be rendered inoperable. It does not rule out such an incident, but it does point to an intentional diversion.
From here, we don’t know who diverted the plane and why, but we could continue to focus on the intended destination of the diversion and assume that either one of the two assigned pilots or someone assuming control of the aircraft did indeed have a destination in mind, as evidenced by the fact that aircraft was navigated to not one but two additional waypoints prior to leaving the range of Malaysian military primary radar.
Discounting the possibility of suicide (historic precedent shows that suicidal pilots tend to immediately crash aircraft), the navigator of the aircraft had an intended, post-diversion destination. Aircraft don’t simply “fly,” they fly from one location to another, moving from one waypoint to another along the way. Using the waypoints and the range of the aircraft, one could then examine all possible destinations as well as all routes and methodically work both out to those destinations, as well as back from the furthest possible destinations in a bid to reconstruct the actual flight path. Wherever military radar coverage either on land or sea is known to have been ‘viewing’ a particular waypoint, one could then query these primary radar jurisdictions regarding a specific time adjusted for a range in airspeed (e.g., 400-450mph). Surely, some government authority has done exactly this, only national security concerns or chain of command issues or political considerations are trumping its prompt revelation (e.g., the Malaysian government is refusing to comment on whether it had primary radar capacity beyond the last point of contact, citing national security concerns).
Meanwhile, in the public domain, there is a bit being made of the Inmarsat data while US authorities and others are remaining largely mute or at least circumspect regarding what they know regarding the flight path of the aircraft. One indeed hopes that they are analyzing the possible flight paths via the closed set of waypoints, and that doing so behind closed doors is indeed important to the maintenance of national security. The Americans can already be found building, maintaining and even manning radar installations all over Asia (e.g., in 1990, I spoke with several American intelligence personnel who were quite surprised to see me pop up at the array radar station they were manning in Xinjiang up on the Chinese-Russian border; it was a US-China joint venture of sorts providing early launch warning telemetry on USSR ICBMs). It is perfectly reasonable to assume, then, that there is indeed more primary radar data to be had and that the Americans are quietly leveraging these rather sensitive assets and relationships in an effort to determine the flight path of the aircraft.
If the actual flight path was indeed navigated intentionally, the aircraft would most likely have had a destination. Upon approaching said destination – in the dark of night with no communications systems – it most likely would have been detected and recognized as worthy of investigation by primary radar, and intercepted. From here, there are only two outcomes: it either landed intact or it did not.
Aircraft have destinations. Aircraft navigate utilizing waypoints. Aircraft always find land once again, one way or another. The primary question that everyone involved on the search is anxious to answer: what was the aircraft’s actual flight path? This will, if properly discerned, eventually reveal its present resting place. My question: is the Inmarsat data set and its analysis, in fact, the best lead on establishing the actual flight path, or will it eventually come to light via some other means?
So far Inmarsat hasn’t shown up at my personal conspiracy radar screen. Could their calculations be wrong? Well, yes, they shifted the search area already after alledgedly ‘newer and better’ calculations. But misleading the public deliberately? Being involved in a grand cover up scheme? I still can’t see it. Why would a British company with their headquarters in London do that? Bribery? If they are wrong, their reputation will take a massive hit.But when they ‘corrected’ their computations and came up with a different search area, they gave such a dubious explanation, that I started to wonder. They reasoned, that the plane flew faster than previously thought at the beginning of their journey, before they eventually turned South to their final destination in the Southern Indian Ocean. And because they flew faster at the beginning, they used more gasolin than previously thought, thus running out of gas earlier at the end. Ok, but this cannot be true, if the navigation path along the known way points over Malacca Straight in a Northwestern direction and the military radar sightings still stand. The timing of the plane is KNOWN more or less. It must have turned West shortly after the copilot said ‘good night’ at 01:19. Time and location of that last radio contact is know exactly. Then, after it turned West and crossed the Malaysian peninsula, it showed up as a blip on Malaysian military radar, which gives another timing and location. The the Thais admit, that they had it on their screens: another timing.There doesn’t seem to be much room for corrections on the plane’s time/location chart so far.Or am I completely wrong here? Wouldn’t be the first time. Of course, if the zigzagging along the waypoints over Malacca Straight, and the sighting of the plane by Malaysian and Thai radar is dropped from the scenario, they have the necessary grades of freedom to determine a faster or slower flight of the plane over the peninsula.Is that the reason, why nobody is talking any longer about the zigzag path? Because it contradicts Inmarsat’s explanations? So, if we assume, that Inmarsat didn’t tell us the whole truth about this ‘correction of calculation’ business, we have to ask, why? Do they have information from other sources, which determine the new search area? And they don’t want to give away those sources for whatever reason? Like Australia and it’s ‘over the horizon’ radar, which could’ve spotted the plane? (of course, that’s just an example and a speculation) Something like that would be a small and relatively harmless cover up. Or is the whole story about the plane’s path into the Southern Indian Ocean a smoke screen for covering up more sinister scenarios? I think not, for the following reason: If Inmarsat was concocting everything right from the beginning, there was no reason at all, to change a heavily investigated search area after just a couple of days, based on a pretty dubious explanation. People were primed to go more or less along with Inmarsat, though with some headache, because of missing peer reviews, and accept their explanation, why the plane must have taken the Southern route.But after they changed their story slightly with flimsy reasoning, suspicion and distrust came back full force. Because they had no reason to invite new suspicions, if their ping arc or Southern route story was bogus all the way, I’m actually more inclined to think, that they truly believe, for whatever reason, that they are searching in the right area.
Like everyone else here, I’ve been trying to come up with a scenario that fits in with the established facts. Trouble is, Malaysia keeps changing the facts on us. Be that as it may, I too wondered what was up with the disappearance of waypoints VAMPI, GIVAL, and IGREX from the public conversation. So this may be nuts, but hear me out: Suppose the flight was indeed hijacked, and it was indeed flown along the northern route to a remote Central Asian location, a location it could reach because some countries just didn’t take their radar defenses all that seriously. By the time the countries involved in the search realized it had been successfully seized, it was too late to do an Entebbe-like retaking of the jet. Can you imagine Special Forces gaming out a scenario to retake a hijacked jet, having to cross various countries’ airspaces in order to get inside a jet likely booby-trapped, and perhaps sitting on a lot of jet fuel to boot? I don’t know how you’d do it without losing the plane, the passengers, and the Special Ops. So perhaps a smart way to handle it would be for the searchers to make the hijackers think they were looking in the entirely wrong place, lulling them into complacency as the days went by (not unlike how Peruvian special forces retook the Japanese embassy in 1997 after they figured out Tupac Amaru played sports at the same time every day.) Some more days pass by with nothing found — until we wake up one morning to the news that there is an operation under way. Sure, it’s fantastic, but until someone pulls wreckage out of the Indian Ocean, I figure that scenario is as valid as any other.
I submitted a question about 12 hrs. ago, but it did not post. So, this is just a test.
Wow… Have you all seen the ‘new turn map’ that CNN’s Nik Robertson says has been shared w/ him by a ‘source close to the investigation.’ And today, day what, twenty-five, now we hear the last words were NOT “alright, goodnight”?…
Littlefoot : Science gives credibility to a story. What if two governments, lets say Malaysia and China, needed a cover story.
Inmarsat already has an out — they can easily say “sorry, we goofed, but remember, what we did here is something new, we and nobody else has never tried interpreting this data in this way before.”
This whole thing has pretty much gone down the rabbit hole at this point.
With the ‘ground’ of hard facts constantly shifting under our feet, we can only conclude incompetence or conspiracy. Some prefer the latter and spin nutty theories. Remember, according to Mary Schiavo (accident investigator and CNN contributor) there’s been virtually ZERO ground chatter coming in. Unlike 911 where they were inundated.
Now, she could be lying. Once someone jumps the proverbial shark and claims that INMARSAT is lying, then all bets are off.
Meanwhile we have a contingent who are so lost in the ‘trees’ of signaling specifications, half-understood physics, and experiments in 8th-grade geometry they can no longer see (or are not even interested in) the ‘forest’ of what INMARSAT was trying to communicate in the first place. I.e., Who amongst the computational wizards here can simply explain what the INMARSAT graph was “intended” to show? Wouldn’t that be the logical first step?
Sorry folks, I mis-heard Nik Robertson. I’m not certain where that ‘new map’ originates from….(who knows what is ‘fact’ in this story anyway?…)
@world traveler :
That’s not bad either… not all that fantastic. I’ll throw a curve into it : MH370 was being piloted by a 30 yr vet of Malay-Air, a trusted training-pilot. Night flight, less traffic. With 50 million in bullion on board. He sees his life unraveling, decides, “okay, I’m going for it.” It lands in far western China. Chinese military shows up on the afternoon of Mar 8 to find plane, all passengers dead, pilot (or both, or pilot and confederate) gone, valuable cargo also gone. So case is ongoing. Neither China nor Malaysia (nor any other county) want the truth be made public, that something of such value gets transferred routinely by air, and can be easily pirated.
I wonder what this new information will do to the calculations?
Also in the graph released by the Malaysian ministry of transport the proposed northern route separates from the proposed southern route and the measured route. Then at 22:45 UTC they all intersect again. How does that happen? Am I wrong thinking that if the two routes when once separated should remain separated on the graph? A south travelling satellite tracking a south travelling plane versus a south travelling satellite tracking a north travelling plane starting at the same point should start and continue to increase difference or no?
This is perhaps 10 degrees off the subject, but I do think it is a crucial component into getting more answers. At one time, two arcs were being considered as being equally valid. Now, I’ve had an on-again, off-again career as a journalist, and I know that the southern arc was the more prohibitive to investigate; unless a news organization has got its own airplane with its own spotters and can fly it for 10 hours off the southwest coast of Australia, it’s going to be entirely dependent upon whatever information the military brings back for briefings. The northern arc, on the other hand, isn’t all that hard for a news organization to go out and look into. All that’s needed is a plane ticket and a visa and a willingness to go out to some remote areas and ask questions. “‘scuse me! Does anyone here speak English? You wouldn’t happened to have seen an airplane around here, wouldja? ’bout this long and about yay high … no? OK, I’ll go to the next little town.” I’m being a bit facetious there, I know, but as we have all watched CNN at one point or another, I keep wondering why the news network with the alleged greatest resources doesn’t try to put boots on the ground instead of interviewing the same talking heads in the same studios. Yet it’s as if CNN gave up as soon as all of the governments concerned denied any violation of their airspace. The network just rolled over and went with the southern arc without explaining it to its viewers, and indeed itself. I’m not one who puts much faith in media conspiracies; when something the media do can be explained by either conspiracy or laziness, you’re better off going with laziness every time. But this has definitely been odd on the part of CNN. Again, until there is definitive proof that the plane indeed went over the ocean, I think it behooves everyone to keep all possibilities on the table and look into them until one by one they can be doubted with a high degree of certainty.
@Hal: Cheer up, don’t get discouraged. It could be argued that speculation be reigned in, but perhaps it should not be strangled. The puzzle is composed of pieces and speculation as to scenarios has a role to play in an integrative approach segueing to a solution. For now, I have some questions for you regarding the Inmarsat data, as you are indeed Hal and you seem to have the handle here on the math.
I can see that the Malaysian government’s graph labeled Burst Frequency Offset Analysis is measuring differences in the BFO over time. I generally understand the Doppler Effect and how these differences in values originated. I can also inform @Gene that the graph does not directly plot the aircraft in space, while I can see how someone could be mislead into thinking so. For example, “possible turn” does not refer to the change of direction of the plotted line in the graph, but rather to a change in the BFO frequency. As I believe @Jeff has pointed out, this could be from a turn OR from a change in altitude.
What I don’t understand is HOW the chart translates from a projection of differences in BFO values into a knowing where the aircraft was located at a given time. I do understand how the corridors were projected and the final math on time x degrees from the satellite in tracking its last movements, but I really don’t get how the BFO chart translates into a ‘map.’
@Hal, can you help?