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:
@ world traveler :
You’re not ten degres off-subject, maybe just a few days late to this conversation-thread.
Before you go offer yourself to CNN as their correspondent who is going to into western China asking questions, ask yourself how many of their own kids did they run over with their tanks in Tiananmen Square and how long did it take the rest of the world to learn about it?
If MH370 landed there, US intel may or may not know, in real time, and if China and Malaysia and enough other govt’s (like US, AU, and UK) don’t want it known, CNN ain’t going to know either.
With so many ‘corrections,’ so many re-statements, one is forced to ask : is this really and truly just mere incompetence that we’re witnessing here, can the Malaysians really be this far out of their element, or is something else going on here, some intentional disinformation? Malaysia has been getting a lot of help, not from day # 1, but from shortly thereafter, for the best in the world at this sort of stuff, and still, day 25, we’re getting ‘facts’ corrected/changed.
Capt. Tillman just made the comment about ‘feeling like a puppet.’ That’s goes for all six billion of the rest of us.
@Rand Mayer – Thanks for saying that. I think it would be useful to understand the graph that INMARSAT published, but I’m not sure I have much useful to add.
If the INMARSAT guys are scientists then they’ve been very careful about what they put on their x axis and their y axis, and about the algorithm that determines the position of every plotted point. So I would not conclude, as some here have, that they’re just all wrong and can be ignored.
I also believe that they were trying to express complicated stuff in a way that the layman will understand. So for example this plot may have already been adjusted to assume a geostationary satellite.
But ambiguities remain and we’d learn a lot if INMARSAT would simply publish the geographical tracks that correspond to their predicted N and predicted S routes.
I have done my own analysis of the little data available and have found a northern route that matches all the distances and Doppler effects of the southern route… This has used 3D CAD mapping techniques and charts used for flying. My path follows the pattern that had been set by flying a complex route that shirts around the edges of Air traffic control areas (just as the flight did to get across to the Malacca straights. My guessed route follows a path (not a simple Arc) but matches the known ping data as closely as I am able given the limited data available.
• Started by constructing a 3D model of earth
• Added relevant areas from Sky Vector charts in patches
• Added Satellite position
• Projected Original Arc(S)
• Added best known data initial path
• Plus included data from assumed turn and path to the Malacca Straights, up to the last known point from military radar.
• Then I plotted a turn south, without passing over Indonesia, heading towards the southern ocean.
• I tried to use the assumptions that the “experts” used for speed and heading on a great circle route.
• This gave me a good match to a point off of the Australian cost west of Perth..
• Ping points were added that matched speed and time used in the official assumptions, to me this correlated well. Validating the methods I was using. This also showed 2 ping points moving Towards the satellite.. The rest moving away.. Therefore also matching the Doppler Effect theory data that was published.
• Next I plotted the Ping Radii and direction data for my assumed ping points.
• This gave me the data to try and look at my own theory that the plan had continued to fly a route avoiding obvious attention of Air Traffic controllers… by being out of range or on the boundary of zones.
• The initial path passes close to the boundaries and past the Andaman Islands. Ping points matching distance and relative direction to the satellite.
• I continued this route, (without plotting every small twist and turn) and passed along the boundary between India and Bangladesh. Again ensuring ping points matched distance and direction of travel (relative to Satallite) was similar to southern route.
• I know this bit seems hard to believe.. but they had managed to get across Malaysia… Thailand boundary.. only special checks later found the track…… with countries that were connected with the case…
• I kept this path going and ended up in a remote region of western China….
• I kept trying other ideas to get the route to end more westerly in Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan or Afghanistan… but nothing seemed to get it that far.
• I Zoomed in.. and also looked at the exact same region on Google maps… I was in a region called Xinjiang…
• Everything seemed to have come to a dead end….
• A very remote region so could get there without being noticed and possibly land.. but WHY..???
so I did a google search on
“MH370 passengers from xinjiang”
then… wow…
http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/as-search-for-mh370-continues-police-take-close-look-at-uighur-passenger-cr
more research and …. plus much more…!!!! ????
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/world/asia/chinese-court-sentences-3-uighurs-to-death.html
This needs more attention.. could be big.. although connections have been denied.. and are helped by the current assumption that the only route must be south… this seems to not be true…!
Pictures 3D models built for this are available.
Hal
The arcs shown are not predicted routes… they are the position at a point in time…
the last full Ping connection to the plane.
The actual route is different and hence all the talk about the Doppler effects.
Where is Michio Kaku with some cool graphics when you need him…
Redneck Applied Science:
So buddy and I are sitting around with a six pack talking about this missing plane. Now we ain’t all sciency but we get a notion in our head. So a roll of string, empty can, old ladies compact mirror and an LED pen light later we gotta lab goin’ on in the trailer. Buddy ties a string to the empty and hold the light in my right hand pretending to be the ground station. Meanwhile in my left is the mirror satellite and I got movin’ elliptically as they say. I’m sighted in on the can with mirror and I see the shadow movin’ and the reflection changin’. Doppelganger shift is startin’ to make sense now. We got the can in the middle of the living room of the trailer. I tell buddy to pull forward. I tell buddy to pull it backways. Each way the shadow and reflection is different. More of that Doppelganger shift goin’ on. Buddy takes a swig and reminds me that plane was going up and down. Alright then, we tie a string to the tab of the can and loop it through the hook where the heavy bag was. Had to get rid of that because on late nights I’d stumble and trip into the coffee table. Then find myself in the morning eye to tongue with the neighbours cougar hound.
Anyway… Up and down the can goes, shadow and reflection changing. We get smart and move on the diagonal front and back. Right and left. Same thing and no two things are lookin’ the same. Huh? I think we get Doppelganger shift now. Now if that were on a piece of paper, how would that look?
Redneck Applied Logic:
Lot’s of it looked about the same close up. Some it looked the same but different. But when the can was farthest aways it always looked different. Sounds like different lines to me? Maybe we still ain’t seein’ things right?
I think that old kraut had it right about that cat. Until we open the box that cat is both livin’ and dead. The plane both on land and in the ocean.
In the meantime I’ll stick with beer and stay away from the Koolaid. And maybe I’ll see if I can come up with another modest proposal?
Well I’m here in Perth, and spare a thought for the reporters up there at Pearce airbase waiting around all day for the search planes to return empty handed. There isn’t much else to do in Bullsbrook! It’s dropping off the news bulletins now, but Israel are persisting with their enhanced security buffer(air) to my knowledge. Very them you could say, but they’re clearly not in the thrall of Inmarsat, who seem to be running it. I want to drop the whole thing and get on with what I was doing before this mumbo started, but it’s just too bloody weird. Especially the conduct of this search – as if ocean debris didn’t exist? Racing off to investigate another patch of litter! When the average Joe thinks it’s all pretty odd, and is moved out of his torpor to remark so, then it probably is.
Has Inmarsat sent everyone on a wild goose chase?
With no sign of any debris, the decision will soon have to be made whether or not to do and extensive (and extremely expensive) survey of the ocean floor, which could go on for many years and yield nothing.
Inmarsat has no intension of making public their data and analysis. They will, however, be forced to share it with a panel of outside experts in satellite telecommunication, and in mobile platform radar. They are claiming that they can read and interpert frequency shifts in the response signals from the aircraft, and they can differentiate aspects of the signal using the apparent figure eight wobble of the satellite, and glean information about the aircraft’s orientation. The aging satellite was never designed for such a demanding task.
The Inmarsat folk are engineers, and engineers use formulas. They are not attacking this problem from fundamentals using differential equations and inertial frames of reference. They are puting faith in an ad hoc computer algorithm they worked up using data from planes with known flight paths, with a little theory thrown in. Burst Frequency Offset sounds authoritative, but it is not well defind in this context.
The Inmarsat satellite is in a geostationary orbit. This is a circular orbit in the equitorial plane out about 22,000 miles moving at a speed about 7,000 mph. The angular velocity of the craft is the same as the angular velocity of the rotating earth, so it appears stationary to someone standing on the earth. If the orbit is slightly elliptical, but still with a period of 24 hrs, it will appear to oscillate east and west within a 24 hour cycle (because the angular velocity of an elliptical orbit varies). If the plane of the orbit is also slightly inclined from the equitorial plane the satellite will also appear to oscillate north and south in the cycle. Together this gives a figure of eight pattern. Furthermore, if the orbit period is somewhat less than 24 hrs, the figure eight will appear to drift west. All this apparent motion is an artefact of the way the satellite is being observed. It is not real motion in the sense that it would be detected by an accelerometer on the satellite.( The satellite, unconcerned, moves along its stately orbit.) The use of the wobble as a basic parameter tells me that Inmarsat is not doing a complete fundamental analysis of the problem, and is fudging their calculations (perhaps unconsciously).
A convincing analysis of the frequency shifts is a very difficult and subtle problem.(This opinion is confirmed by Mike Exner, Jeff’s satellite consulant.) You must start with an inertial frame of reference anchored in the background of stars. You are exploring the interaction of three non-inertial frames, each sending and receiving signals: the earth (which is rotating ), the aircraft (which is following the curvature of the earth at the very least), and the satellite (which is moving in a circle ). It is worth noting that the satellite, being an object in free fall in a gravitational field, provides an inertial frame in a very local environment, like the inside of the Space Station.( This is a fundamental tenet of Einstein’s gravitational theory, General Relativity.)
You then proceed to do order of magnitude calculations to decide which terms are making negligible contributions and can be droped, and when you can start doing roundoffs. This is treacherous territory – it is very easy to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Physics has a long history of fudging calculations when the going gets ruff. It started with Isaac Newton. He could not nail down the orbit of the moon as hard as he tried, so he fudged his calculations to get the result he needed. He was failing to include second order perturbations. The Calculus, which he only recently invented, was not yet up to it.
(More on the limitations and pitfalls of moving frames of reference at a future date, if anyone is interested. )
We seem to be headed to the worst possible outcome. The friends and family of the passengers and crew will not know where their loved ones died, when they died, how they died, and most important, why they died. They will have no bodies to bury nor a watery grave they can visit by ship.
Jeff suggested a CrowdSource search on CNN tonight. Just maybe ! The case against a landfall has not been made.
a couple of quick comments.
I don’t believe that there are any sort of nefarious intentions lurking behind the Inmarsat data and its analysis. In fact, I find the work quite remarkable, most especially since there is little else in terms of location data to go on at present. I even thought of reason as to further reasons why the Inmarsat data has risen to such prominence in terms of its role in the search. Namely, any other sources of information on the flight would likely involve intelligence and military assets that are designed to protect information rather than disclose it; nothing nefarious, just simple inherent process. The Inmarsat data emerged from a private company without such inherent limitations and thus in a timely fashion, and thus has it been vigorously pursued. In short, there most likely is additional data regarding MH 370 that has yet to be revealed due to methodical processes concerning intelligence information and thus the Inmarsat data provided timely common ground upon which the global community could act. No conspiracy required.
As for confirmation bias, scientists make process errors quite frequently no matter their mathematical or empirical process prowess. The change in assumed values associated with the Inmarsat data set guiding the search and its subsequent relocation are indicative of not only properly addressing such errors but likewise provide evidence as to their probability.
The restating of the content of the last voice communication by the pilots of MH 370 is a great illustration of the principles of Transformational Grammar and how we must be vigilant regarding information provided by government sources. Malaysian Transportation Minister H. Hussein yesterday restated the last communication as “good night Malaysian 370” where previously the very same man had stated that the words were “all right, goodnight.” This is an example of Deletion (recalling that Transformational Grammar states that translation, distortion and deletion are utilized to transform a relatively truer statement into a relatively less true statement). Here, “370” was deleted from the information. Yesterday, in explaining the apparent lapse, he used Translation when he said “we are not hiding anything. We are just following the procedure that has been set.” A truer statement would have been: “We did not communicate the exact words intentionally because we were unsure of the policy ramifications of the pilot confirming that he was indeed MH 370.” From here, we could even enquire as to whether “all right” has now been deleted from the communication intentionally, as the next point of enquiry would be to ask what did he say “all right” to! Again, nothing nefarious, just insincere with motivations other than simply locating the aircraft and offering sincere condolences to the families of those that lost their lives. Mr. Hussein does need to answer to friggin’ China, the big dog on the block, after all, whether he likes it or not.
Something struck me today which has been mentioned by others: if the aircraft was indeed intentionally and somewhat skillfully diverted from its intended flight path, would it not logically follow that it was intentionally flown to a place where it would be difficult to locate any wreckage and/or the flight voice and data recorders? Did not the pilot, assigned or hijacker pick the perfect location, The Southern Indian Ocean for such a disappearance? Or is it merely a coincidence that the plane flew to one of the most remotest locations on Earth?
Finally, and this runs completely counter to the Inmarsat data set and its southern arc conclusions, should we not continue to work with the possibility that after navigating rather erratically between waypoints GIVAL, VAMPI and IGREX. that IGREX was the intended waypoint? If “last is best” with VAMPI discounted as a navigational error, then would not IGREX indicate that the pilot(s) had found their bearings and were on their intended course headed north by northwest?
No drama, no woo woo, no speculation, no suspicion of nefarious designs; just the facts and the data and how they can be viewed.
Just saw Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston give a pretty pessimistic media address Perth time. He even sounds a bit pissed off, but I can assure you he’s a good operator with a very good reputation. He said we have a very poor understanding of how fast or far it traveled. I’m confident he would say something if he thought Inmarsat were pulling too many strings or getting too much uncritical airtime.
@Gene, very amusing account. How much was your process of acquiring knowledge influenced by the liquid content of the cans? 😉
Meanwhile, I posed a very wordy question in my last post, maybe too wordy. So I might try a bit shorter:
What is the evidence for the Northwest zigzag path of the plane? And wouldn’t this path, together with the Malaysian military radar an the Thay sighting give the plane a time frame? And wouldn’t this time frame (Keith Ledgerwood used it for his ‘shadowing theory’) tell us, how fast the plane was flying on average in the first stage of it’s journey? How then could Ingmarsat come up with a new calculation of the plane’s travelling speed, and claim, it used more gas on it’s Western way over the Malaysian peninsular after the first drastic turn?
I don’t get their explanation for the shift of the search field AT ALL, and wonder, if they had additional info, which they didn’t make public for whatever reason.
Duncan Steel and other simply have dropped the zigzagging Northwestern path of the plane. Why? Again, what’s the evidence for those maneuvers? I think, it’s very important for the early time frame, and for the determination of what happened to the plane.
@Rand Mayer, agree with most of what you have written. I see the very process of Inmarsat and others correcting themselves not as an indication of a dark conspiracy, but rather the opposite: correcting mistakes, including new information, some of it, maybe, of SI nature, which cannot made public. And good oldfashioned bungling and bumbling, of course.
It also shows, that there ARE mistakes, and nothing is written in stone. Inmarsat et. al. work with too many assumptions, which may or may not be correct. As long as we don’t know, what happened to the plane, it’s very hard to make assumptions, especially, if the plane was navigated with intent to the very end.
Yes, Rand Mayer, I personally believe, it’s very possible, that the plane was flown with intent to the very place, where it might be next to impossible to retrieve anything meaningful. The perpetrator (pilot) might not even have been aware of the ping data and the calculations based on them. After all, it’s never been done before. He well might’ve thought, that nobody could tell even roughly, where the plane is, after it moved out of all radar range.
As to the Malaysian authorities, one simply cannot help but suspecting them of more than incompetence and poor communication skills. How hard can it be to determine the exact last words of a crew member, and who spoke them? If they have something to hide, though, they are doing a pretty poor job at behaving inconspicously.
As to the formally correct “good night, mh370”, I cannot get this song text out of my head now:
“Good night, Irene, good night, I see you in my dreams…”
@Littlefoot
…Ummmmm… The liquid content greases the wheels of empirical thought. More grease, more thought.
@Jeff
I didn’t catch the “Monkeys in the cockpit” segment but I would say throw something a little bit wild out once in a while to break out of the comfort zone or out of the rhythm.
Question:
I tweeted David Soucie and Don Lemon last night asking about the pingers. It has come up repeatedly about how the pingers must be stored in a cool dry place. This caused me to wonder what the conditions are like for the pingers when they are mounted in the aircraft. Are they mounted in a place that keeps them cool and dry when the plane is parked without power?
Alright, so, according to “The Sidney Morning Herald” from Tuesday, the Malaysian authorities have reiterated, that they believe in deliberate action being responsible for the loss of the plane, rather that a disaster. At least one thing, they haven’t changed, yet…
I looked up again Keith Ledgerwood’s post about his ‘shadowing theory’, and he states, that the Malaysian military radar lost the plane at about 18:15 UTC between way points GIVAL and IGREX. He used data, which were being made publically available. While a lot of people have doubted his theory, nobody complained, that he got those data wrong. So, we know, where the plane was at 18:15 UTC: Over the Malacca Straight between GIVAL and IGREX, heading in a Northwestern direction. Since we know, where the plane was at the time, when the copilot/pilot/? radioed:”Good night,MH370″, we know exactly, how many miles and how fast the plane flew up to 18:15 UTC.
Conclusion: Inmarsat’s statement, that the plane flew faster in that section, must be wrong, because it was known all the time, how fast the plane was on average, until it was lost from military radar screens at 18:15 UTC between GIVAl and IGREX. They must’ve had other infos, on which they based their suggestion of a new search area.
Another possibility: Malaysian military authorities were wrong with their radar sighting, or they published a wrong set of data for whatever reason. If so, we haven’t heard of it, yet.
A third (remote) possibility: After the plane made it’s radical Western turn, it didn’t fly straight, until it was caught by military radar, but made all sorts of twists and turns, which weren’t caught on any screen. Then it would’ve flown more miles, thus having to be faster, in order to reach it’s location at 18:15 UTC. But Inmarsat has no way to know that for sure.
I’m mentioning this third possibility in order to show, that NO caluculation of the plane’s whereabout’s, not Inmarsat’s nor Duncan Steel’s ( as he admits himself), can show the complete course of the plane, since there was no continuous stream of communication with the plane. The last radar sighting and the pings are only snapshots.The plane theoretically could’ve done all sorts of things in between those snapshots, which affect gas usage and thus, how far it could’ve gone.
Jeff
Did the comment I posted this morning about 2:30 am get lost. It took me forever to write it!
Arthur
Somebody please give Inmarsat Arthur t’s number.
@NickSampson – excellent! This is very intriguing indeed and I wonder if you could produce graphics indicating your plotted locations corresponding to doppler offsets. Sure, I understand that the plotted points do not all alone create a path, but the inmarsat endeavor was to add some simple assumptions (speed, altitude, straight-and-level flight) and from that *infer* a path. We all recognize that a very large number of possible paths (circles, loops, spirals) can match the plotted doppler points, but in this case it is critical to minimize the number of possible solutions (using reasonable constraints) not maximize them. Assuming approximately constant speed and a reasonable number of turns (e.g., no crossing one’s own path), what does your northern route look like?
I’m talking to friends in the software industry about trying to rope in someone who’s enthusiastic both about MH370 and writing code to put together an easy-to-use graphic interface that would let non-technical members of the public (e.g. me) to input flight paths and see how they well the routes match Inmarsat’s published data for MH370. I feel like we’ve cracked the hard part of the problem (or rather folks like Mike Exner and Duncan Steel have), all we need to do is create an easy-to-understand interface to let people play with it.
@jeffwise – that would be very cool.
@ Arthur TA 2.42 am –
It is a wild goose chase. It seems they left one debris field to go to another 11000 kms away because of satellite snaps and the latest and best info from Inmarsat. They just forgot to take enough rubbish bags. This is why having Angus Houston there is important. He rose to Chief of Defence because of his many good attributes and is a go-to figure for the Aust Prime Minister. He has already discussed publicly that if “we don’t find wreckage on the surface we will in consultation with everyone who has a stake in this, review what to do next.” Houston is a clean break from the Malaysian fiasco. If has concerns he will say so and cut through at the same time. Think integrity, intellect and organization.
@Arthur T. Thanks for your post. I wish I could have read it yesterday, as it further fills out in a more quantifiably explicit way the doubts I have regarding the Inmarsat data set. I have been having persistent and repeated recollections of studying Ptolemy’s epicycles in planetary motion pestering me and wondering why..
Question: are the points of intersection in the plotted lines in the Inmarsat BFO graph a projection of the satellite’s figure 8 wobble or a reflection (no pun) of the symmetry of the northern and southern arcs or what?
Thank you all from the great unwashed for pursuing this. I know nothing about planes, satellites, or radars but even I have been asking “what about the northwest waypoints and direction it was heading?”, “what about the pings in between the first and the last?”, “what was in the cargo and who was on board?”. On behalf of those of not considered important enough to be told the facts, keep Questioning, analysing, and searching for the truth. Juanita
I read just now that a British nuclear sub has joined in the search for MH370. Are they desperate to confirm the Indian Ocean as the resting place? If so it means they don’t really know where it is, contrary to many theories on the respective intelligence services. Wreckage needs to show up, there seems to be a lot riding on it. There might never again be such a clamour for a piece of plane.
Sorry about bombing these comments Jeff but regarding the nuclear sub: I’m told by a defence correspondent with good contacts that it’s an unusual disclosure. The location of subs is normally restricted info as they are typically doing sensitive stuff. This search has been described as a masculinity contest though and maybe the British PM couldn’t resist. It means that there are likely other subs involved, because the Australian govt never divulge that sort of stuff and the US has more of these things than anyone. It means this is one very serious search. Is there any precedent for this??
1. I found this rather comprehensive analysis (a google translation from the Malay original version) written by Andak Jauhar (Malaysia) in a search for further media sources regarding primary radar contact with the aircraft. Incidentally, there is map depicting the aircraft flying to waypoint SADRI, but no further reference to it in section 7. The article also refers to the relative paucity of information from primary military radar sources yet lists the nations that have made declarations to the effect that they found nothing.
http://andakjauhar.wordpress.com/analisis-gerakan-mencari-menyelamat-mh370/
2. I also found the below dated Mar 29 and written by Mattias Chang, a former senior advisor to former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. It’s resorts to quite a bit of hyperbole, but it highlights stonewalling by the intelligence and military assets of various countries and underscores how the search for MH 370 has only thus far involved limited and quite “standard” cooperative SAR efforts between various nations.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/disappearance-of-malaysian-airlines-flight-mh-370-the-trillion-question-to-the-u-s-and-its-intelligence-services/5375780
3. I assume primary radar at the Indian Air Force Base on the Andaman island of Car Nicobar (VOCX) detected MH 370 at IGREX; there is only a distance of 100 nautical miles between the two. Surely Car Nicobar tracked MH 370’s direction of travel? Incidentally, the Car Nicobar air station lies directly between waypoints IGREX and SADRI.
I wish I had the time to fly to Port Blair in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and take the ferry to Car Nicobar and poke around the housing quarters a bit. This puzzle is beginning to drive me mental.
@Hal, can you please also chime in on my question regarding the intersection of the plot lines in the Inmarsat graph?
Duncan Steel has a new post, which really should be mandatory reading for those, who want to explore this conundrum in debth:
duncansteel.com/archives/507
read the comment section, too! There’s valuable info in it as well. Especially the exchange between ‘Eugene’ and ‘Duncan’, starting at 2/4 04:56PM is very interesting, since it analyses the claim, that the plane was always moving away from the satelltite.
For me, this post answered a few important questions:
a. If you calculate with publically available data, a Northern route is indeed possible… at least at a certain speed level.
b. Duncan seems to regard the assertion, that the plane always moved away from the satellite, as still valid.That apparently exludes Northwestern routes at an average speed of more than 380 knots. So, if Inmarsat based their first predictions on the plane averaging 400 to 450 knots, then the Northwest route is out indeed! But, if it was slower, the Northern route is viable. Note: The commenter Eugene debates the assertion, that the always moved away from the satellite. Read the exchange, starting at 04:56 PM.
c. I was wondering, why Duncan in his earlier calculations didn’t include the spotting of the plane from Malaysian military radar, leading the plane to a location between the way points GIVAL and IGREX before it disappeared from their screen. He apparently was just not aware of this info, and might include it in another post.
Duncan’s post leaves me with the burning question, if the good people at Inmarsat are just blind to the possibility, that the plane, at a certain speed level, might have gone North as well, or, if they have additional info, maybe of SI nature, which hasn’t be made publically available.
I still have problems with the idea of Inmarsat being involved in a huge cover up, sending everybody on a wild goose chase, with tons of money and resources being wasted on a doomed mission.Even an atomic sub is searching right now.And the passengers’ families are brokenhearted…Why would they play along with that scenario? This makes me think, they (and others) must’ve additional knowledge, which cannot be disclosed for whatever reason. That would be still a cover up, but on a much smaller scale.
Duncan Steel cautions his readers, that certain Northern routes are viable, if one solely uses publically available data. That doesn’t mean, the plane HAS gone North. Only, that it’s not impossible… unless, there are other secret facts, which exclude it.
Rrr…a post of mine did not post; perhaps it will, later.
If there is undisclosed primary radar and/or remote sensing information that supports the Inmarsat data set AND the southern route, this would indeed answer many questions.
Australia, Diego Garcia and primary radar assets aboard naval vessels (as well as state-of-the-art and thus classified) satellites all could have detected MH 370. I believe that this is more likely than not. Again, there are all sorts of reasons why intelligence and military authorities would be slow in committing their hard and soft assets, as we have seen. By in large, the search began with standard levels of SAR cooperation from various states and is only now beginning to reveal true cooperation amongst the various nations concerned.
The Indian Air Force Base (VOCX) on Car Nicobar in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands is located only 100 nautical miles from waypoint IGREX. The primary radar based here together with the primary radar assets located on the main island in Port Blair (VOPB) are a important element of India’s defense against China’s maritime assets in the region (the A&N islands were attacked by China in the 1960’s). It seems rather unlikely that Indian primary radar would not have tracked MH 370 heading either south or north from IGREX, yet the Indian authorities haven’t provided much information – publicly.
Perhaps there are FAA and NTSB types in Port Blair now. It took the Malaysians a couple of weeks to invite the Americans over for a visit, so we could expect the Indians to take even longer. And those in Myanmar or Indonesia? Forget it.
I wish I had the time to fly to Port Blair and take the ferry to Car Nicobar and poke around the off-base housing quarters a bit. The weather must be beautiful, and I have heard that the beaches are amazing. The trip would be a good tonic for a puzzle that is now beginning to drive me mental.
@ Rand Mayer –
I read an article quoting an Indian defence official saying the Nicobar radar facility is only operational on a need basis. It wasn’t on the night. I don’t know how accurate that is.
Regarding Australia’s over the horizon radar: It has the ability to look westward as well as to the north and east quite some distance but they say it wasn’t operating west at the time because it was not specifically tasked to. There are certain things we monitor continually but I would not be surprised if that was not one of them.
@Matty, I read the same, concerning JORN, Australia’s Over The Horizon radar. That it was probably pointed northwards at the date of the flight.
Are you Australian? How reliable is that info, and would there be a good reason, why Australia wouldn’t talk about it?
@Matty thanks for the on-the-ground info.
I believe the universal claims by all primary radar jurisdictions as to inherent technical limitations, etc. point more to the fact that all nations are generally reluctant to be forthcoming regarding their intelligence assets.
At Nicobar, for example, the IAF has indeed repeatedly stated that their primary radar systems have a limited range and that they were deactivated at the time of the flight. We can accept this at face value, or we can consider that we are talking about a primary radar station located at a national frontier on the strategic shipping lanes of the Straights of Malacca, and that they actively monitor Chinese maritime assets in the area, some of which frequent neighboring Myanmar. We could also point to the fact that the US perceives the Andaman and Nicobar islands as enough of a strategic location that the Pentagon commissioned the RAND corporation to explore the stationing of US operated drones at Port Blair.
Primary radar assets are generally classified. There are all sorts of mechanisms and processes to ensure that they remain classified and that information concerning their data and performance are not publicly disseminated. Search and rescue operations are mandated and somewhat controlled by international treaty, but there is specifically and intentionally no obligation to share radar, remote sensing and other intelligence data.
@Rand Mayer said: “@Hal, can you please also chime in on my question regarding the intersection of the plot lines in the Inmarsat graph?”
This tells us that at 6:40 am (approx) there’s no difference in N versus S routes wrt to the doppler data. More than that I cannot say because I honestly have no clue why the INMARSAT northern-route data inflect downward instead of continuing upward.
Our reverse-engineeringh folks (e.g., @DuncanSteel and others) have plotted their predicted northern tracks as monotonically increasing (e.g., near straight-line) doppler values. That makes sense to me.
BUT clearly the INMARSAT fellows don’t see it that way. Their northern-route BFO maxes at 4:40 am and starts decreasing from there.
I wish someone from the numerical community (Duncan?, airlandseaman?) would hear my pleas to explain how to account for the difference between their predictions and INMARSAT’s.
In any reverse-engineering exercise, shouldn’t you first account fully for what is given?
Thanks for this Jeff. Your explanation is quite straightforward and accessible for the layperson. I’ve tried reading duncansteel.com/archives/507 but it’s over my head. The call to make Inmarsat raw data available for verification by independent scientists might have greater strength if an outline of Duncan Steel’s analysis were published in a more lay reader-friendly version. Could you please do this? A link to your version could then also be posted on social media. Much appreciated.
@ Rand Mayer
I’m a retired Australian soldier who has a keen interest in politics and science. My oldest brother was a defence correspondent(journalist) for years and ended up with a very cosy rapport with a lot of top brass, some even attended his wedding, so I’m used to hearing a lot. The problem Australia has with the Jindalee radar is that it’s very good and very big. Aust is uniquely positioned to bounce a signal off the equatorial ionisphere where it is optimally consistent to get a good long range picture. From the direction of the Seychelles in the west to Fiji in the east there is not much we can’t see. Even in the nineties when the software/computing side of it was constrained Jindalee could monitor light aircraft taxiing in Singapore and well beyond. BUT…….Australia is a country of 22 million with an strangled defence budget and that surveillance capability is potential only. It’s an enormous area we are talking and surveillance is on a prescribed basis. And it’s also totally restricted. The Australian PM is a serious Christian and my feel is if he knew it went south he would have put life above everything. As it is he didn’t twitch until he was asked and there were Australians on the plane.
Regarding Indian radar I read another defence official there(wish I could remember the source) saying that their monitoring along the Pakistan border/Chinese border is very intense. The rest of the country though with those big sea approaches is comparatively laid back. He sounded open to the idea some plane could slide in. And another article I can’t now trace, quotes a couple of pilots saying that travelling through a lot of countries with no transponder is actually not that difficult. They say if you stick to a commercial path some might ask you to identify, but generally just keep an eye to make sure you stick to a route and altitude – something any pilot could experiment with. There is also the human element to military radar, especially at 2.00am. You would get pretty sick of watching traffic on the highway all night.
@Hal, @Rand
“@Rand Mayer said: “@Hal, can you please also chime in on my question regarding the intersection of the plot lines in the Inmarsat graph?”
@Hal said: “This tells us that at 6:40 am (approx) there’s no difference in N versus S routes wrt to the doppler data. More than that I cannot say because I honestly have no clue why the INMARSAT northern-route data inflect downward instead of continuing upward.”
***********
If I may comment on the above:
There is some confusion on what exactly the Burst Frequency Offset (BFO) value represents, some have interpreted it to be the Aircraft related Doppler shift. IMHO, this is incorrect.
What BFO would to appear to be is the difference between the received frequency and the expected receive frequency, at the Gateway Earth Station (GES).
This difference is also called Offset, hence the term Burst Frequency Offset.
This BFO has several components:
1. The Doppler due to the satellite motion when it transmits down to the GES
2. The satellite related Doppler in its communications with the aircraft
3. The aircraft related Doppler in its communications with the satellite
Airlandseaman has been able to break down these components on Tim Farrar’s blog. His breakdown reveals that item (2) above is relatively very small compared to the two others.
**************
Now, specifically why is it that “why the INMARSAT northern-route data inflect downward instead of continuing upward”.
It is because that is a BFO value.
Now, if one would subtract from this BFO value, the component of the Doppler due to the satellite motion when it transmits down to the GES, then what remains are items (2) and (3) above.
Then, one would be able to see the Doppler for the Northern route in question, and yes, it no longer inflects downward but instead, increases in value.
@Hal Thanks for your explanation. I am surprised that Duncan Steel has not answered your query regarding the differences in the respective conclusions, as it would be quite simple to address. Try again?
As for the possibility that there was additional primary radar detection of MH 370 beyond the Malaysian and Thai disclosures, it seems that the general consensus was that there wasn’t any. Whether its common practice to have aircraft without active transponders navigating along known air corridors without being molested, official statements by various nations to the effect that there wasn’t any primary radar detection, operators asleep at the switch – the list of rationalizations is virtually endless.
My point is that, rather than simply assume that there wasn’t any additional primary radar contact, we might want to consider how the working paradigm would shift if there was indeed additional primary radar contact and that has as of yet gone undisclosed (the how and why of which I have covered previously). Altering this one assumption, coupled with the possibility that there may be additional undisclosed, high-value satellite imaging or tracking data, opens the door to all sorts of questions and possibilities that I believe are now being largely ignored by all but a few in the mainstream media.
One example:
There is the possibility that additional primary radar and/or remote sensing data that has of yet remained undisclosed has 1. corroborated the Inmarsat data set; and 2. excluded the ‘northern arc.’ The Inmarsat team was most likely not supplied with such information, yet they or the Malaysians (more likely) could have been guided by it, were it to exist. Meanwhile, all sorts of people, from Congressmen to puny pundits like us, not to mention our generous host, Jeff Wise, are pursuing this thing quite vigorously, and thus availability of the data is an issue. The sleepless Duncan Steel, I can tell you, is not going to be all that happy if some corroborating radar and/or satellite data later surfaces.
And, we already know how changing one assumption can alter the location of the search area…
@Rand Mayer, I wholeheartedly agree with your last comment. There are facts out there, we know, that we don’t know them, and there are possibly quite a few facts out there, and we don’t even know, that we don’t know them. I’m paraphrasing D. Rumsfeld here. Whatever you think about the guy, that phrase was brilliant. My husband is a theoretical physicist (String Theory), and he quotes that phrase often in lectures.
What might make the arm chair sleuth’s work even more difficult, is the growing suspicion, that even the facts, which were made public, are not reliable and sometimes plain wrong.
Duncan Steel at
duncansteel.com/archives/507
at 4/3/08:54 PM
made a long and interesting comment on military radar and Australia’s JORN.He claims, that wikipedia’s range map for JORN is wrong, and the real range is much larger. So, if the plane really went South to it’s grave in the Southern Indian Ocean, it must’ve been within the range of JORN for some time. The big question is, if anyone was looking, and in which direction the system was pointed.The long range also means lots and lots of data. Understandably, the authorities of any country are very reluctant to share infos, derived from their military radar systems. So, whatever ANY country has claimed so far in this affair has to be taken with many grains of salt.
Unfortunately, that might be true about the alledged ‘zigzag course’ over Malacca Straight along known waypoints, too!
This info came from Reuters reporters, who quote two undislosed, well placed sources, and has never been officially confirmed. It was mentioned in one of the Malaysian briefings, that the plane was last spotted on military radar at 18:15 UTC. The waypoints IGARI, VAMPI etc. have never been officially mentioned. If you follow Duncan Steels comments after 4/3/ 8:54 PM about the radar systems, this sparsity of independent verification of the way point info is mentioned. A commenter from Indonesia calculated, that the plane must’ve had an absurdly high, if not impossible speed from the point of last contact over Malaysia’s East coast to this point at 18:15, alledgedly over Malacca Straight, heading in a Northwestern direction.
Unfortunately the commentor doesn’t tell, how he calculated the plane’s speed. I tried to verify his claims, which was surprizingly difficult, since there’s no info about the times, the plane hit those waypoints. 18:15 is assumed to be the last time, military radar had the plane on it’s screen, somewhere between GIVAL an IGREX, if that info is to be trusted. I calculated, that the plane, according to this route and time line, must indeed have flown at or above top cruising speed, though nowhere as fast as this commentor claimed (712 knots, which is indeed impossible).
But even my calculated range of speed is pretty incredible, since the plane supposedly did all sorts of things, like diving and turning, zigzagging, and possibly shadowing another plane.
So, the ‘way point navigation’ info, gleaned from Malaysian military radar sightings, rests apparently on two undisclosed sources, and was originally just this Reuters report, which was never officially confirmed. Jeff had contact to Siva Govindasamy, one of the reporters, and he was assured, that this info still stands.But is it to be trusted word for word? Is the timeline correct? Those are very important questions, since the ‘human perpetrator theory’ and the Northern Route hypothesis lose a lot of it’s appeal, if this ‘way point navigation’ info is doubtful.
Distilling it a little further from this end it’s plausible even likely that Jindalee wasn’t watching MH370. I think the best analogy for Jindalee is a flashlight. Point it and turn it on and you can see almost anything in that enormous arc, otherwise it’s generally dark out there. There is the provision to light the whole thing up in wartime but not now.
All we really do know is that we just went another day without a plane. Or a piece of one.
Jeff,
Saw you on CNN (4/3, 9:10 p.m. PDT), group discussion of the “big” news. You apparently poured your glass of Koolade onto a potted plant. Good on ya.
A new interview with Anwar Ibrahim in the Daily Telegraph confirms that MH370 pilot was passionate about politics and “justice:”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/malaysia/10743378/MH370-Malaysia-Airlines-Anwar-Ibrahim-says-government-purposefully-concealing-information.html
Capt. Zaharie comes across as a real nice guy in his how-to videos. Still, I have to say that at this point the Malaysian ruling party’s campaign against Ibrahim seems like the most plausible motive for seizing the plane. That is, of course, assuming the authorities are correct that this was a criminal act. The best-established fact of note we have is that the plane was still operational for hours after the seizure, the pings stopping when it was probably at or near the limit of its range. That makes a shoot-down scenario unlikely, even if such a thing could be kept secret. It does seem likely, although not certain, that the plane eventually turned south over the Indian Ocean. Perhaps it became a zombie flight running on autopilot after a struggle or pilot suicide, although that seems a bit of a stretch. If someone was still in control, then the trajectory and the duration of flight suggests a chicken run. That scenario would involve the pilot or hijacker communicating with someone in authority. Indeed, that is usually how hijackings do work. Maybe that is in fact what happened and we just haven’t been told about it.
I am 100% certain of one thing: This is one for the history books. The utter lack of physical evidence, the strange silence of a pilot, the obscure route served neither by reliable radar nor by cell phone towers, the “coincidences” (iranians traveling on fake passports, 20 members of a signalling technology company, Richard Quest’s interview and flight with the co-pilot just weeks before).
And afterward the many mis-directions of our attention, the partial disclosures. Yes I’m quite certain that information is being withheld by every player in the game.
It’s a perfect storm of uncertainty. Humans don’t like uncertainty. We look for hard evidence, and if that doesn’t work we try logic, and when that fails we spin plausible stories. @Rand Mayer, you are not the only one “going mental” over this.
Being of a slightly conspiratorial turn of mind, I was onboard the hijacking train early. But Mary Schiavo’s words have stood the test of 4 weeks’ time: STILL no ground chatter. If that plane landed in one of the “stans”, not only did the radar operators have to be asleep, but so did everyone walking around on the streets. You can’t swear an entire populace to secrecy.
Maybe, even as we speak, there’s a raid on entebbe being planned behind the scenes, while the fuss and bother of towed ping-detectors keeps us all looking the other way. I’d like to believe in the northern route. It’s intriguing, and it means those people have a chance to have survived.
But. If someone forced me to bet $1000 right now, I’d put it on equipment failure and a tragic losing battle fought by two heroic pilots.
I’m off for a week to a sweet little surf break south of the border. Lurking but probably not posting. Keep up the good fight, fellows!
@HAL, have a nice vacation!
So, now we’re placing bets? Why not?
If I had some spare money, I’d put it either on an incredible chain of coincidence after coincidence after coincidence of failures and disasters and human errors, which spirited the plane away somehow, or on pilot abduction cum
suicide/murder.
IMHO,much depends on what happened over Malacca Straight, and if Reuters report of apparently deliberate human navigation of the plane to those way points to a Northwestern direction, stands the test of intense scrutiny. If it does, I simply cannot believe in equipment failure/disaster. There’s a reason, why Philip Baum, editor of Aviation Security International Magazine, leans to deliberate and intelligent human intervention :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26720772
He says, they tested all sorts of failure/disaster scenarios, and just couldn’t get the plane as far as it apparently travelled.
Interestingly, Inmarsat must’ve acknowledged somehow, that the plane travelled for some time over Malacca Straight in a Northwestern direction, because they have the plane doing just that (though not ‘zigzagging’)in their picture of the two possible routes, leading to the Southern Indian Ocean search areas. You can take a look at this picture at Duncan Steel’s newest post. He himself hasn’t incorporated this scenario in his selection of possible routes so far, because it hasn’t been reliably confirmed. The question arises of course, if Inmarsat has insider informations, which haven’t been made public.
If the Reuters story on the aircraft tracking several waypoints after its deviation from the intended flight path holds up, and we accept at face value the Malaysian government’s declaration that the diversion was a criminal act, then we can assume that the plane was intentionally diverted by a reasonably capable pilot. With the source of both elements of information being the Malaysian government, we can assume that they have primary accurate radar tracking data upon which they have based their conclusions. They also have their analysis of the sequence of events involving the interruption of the ACARS system, the transponder and radio communications to support this conclusion. Finally, they have the fact that radio communications with the aircraft ceased in the interval between the handoff from KL and when there should have been a “good morning Vietnam,” a rather uncanny coincidence. This track of logic negates the “Goodfellow Hypothesis” of a fire aboard the aircraft – unless one wanted to hold to the idea that the flight actually proceeded along its suspected flight path without a pilot to a crash location in the southern Indian Ocean upon running out of fuel.
With regards to the Inmarsat data set and its analysis, we have Inmarsat stating unequivocally that they have turned over their work to the UK and Malaysian governments and that they cannot address further enquires as per “international protocol.” Meanwhile, the northern route has been discounted by Inmarsat and the official investigation team and SAR activities are now focused on the southern route and a likely area for termination of flight based upon an estimation as to the exhaustion of the aircraft’s fuel supply correlated with the timing of the satellite ping data. Leading outside analysts, including Jeff Wise and Duncan Steel, continue to counter that there is no publicly available evidence that would rule out the northern route.
Goodfellow has pointed out that he believes SAR activities should have begun immediately based upon the aircraft’s last known location determined by Malaysian primary radar, its direction of travel and the range of the aircraft. He has argued quite sensibly that this is SOP in any aircraft SAR effort. His thoughts were based upon the Malaysian’s initial declarations regarding primary radar tracking of the plane and its last known heading. The Malaysian’s later revised their information, stating that the aircraft tracked several discrete waypoints. Goodfellow has labeled this revised information regarding the flight path of the aircraft as “the Vampi one”. Regardless, his writings reflect despair over the fact that the SAR effort was not grounded in reliable primary radar data from the start.
It would seem then that Malaysian primary radar data has played a key role in both official and unofficial analyses of the incident. I would argue that perhaps Inmarsat or at least the UK AAIB had corroborating primary radar or satellite imagery or tracking data that selected for the southern corridor that was not made available to the public. I likewise am skeptical (as is Malaysian opposition figure Anwar Ibrahim and others) that Malaysian primary radar systems would not have produced additional data regarding the course of actual flight path of the aircraft. From here, I would go further and state that I remain likewise skeptical regarding the generally accepted frame that there isn’t any additional radar or satellite data that could be (or has been) made available to the analysis from Indonesia, India, Australia the US and possibly even Myanmar. My guess is that information on such data will come to light at a later date.
@Hal Thanks for your clarification. Enjoy the surf!
@Littlefoot Thanks for engaging my line of thought.
@Matty – in Perth Please keep us posted on developments on the ground, and thanks for your views regarding Australian primary radar, as they do make sense.
@Luigi Warren, I like your scenario. If we go with the ‘Intelligent Human Intervention Theory’, we have one person on board, who checks all the boxes: the pilot. He’s intelligent, experienced, technically very knowledgeable, with a family situation not as stable as initially thought, and passionate about politics, which might supply a credible motive.That he is also described as kind and socially concerned and helpful, is no cotraindication. In my youth I’ve worked as a student of criminal law and forensic psychology in a high security prison with second tier members of first generation RAF (Rote Armee Fraktion) terrorists,better known as the Baader/Meinhof Gang. Interestingy, Andreas Baader and other hard core members, were the persons, who should’ve been set free by German authorities, if the demands of the terrorists, who 1977 abducted that plane full of tourists to Entebbe, had been met. Anyway, my work with the second tier terrorists, showed me, that they were not evil to the core, raving lunatics, but intelligent, socially concerned, and passionate about the human condition. What they had lost somewhere along their journey through life, was a sense of proportion and concern for individual human beings.For them, their vision of an utopic society justified their crimes.But the highway to hell is paved with good intentions.
So, if the pilot was behind all this, trying to negotiate something and having been rebuked, or just trying to inflict as much damage as possible to the Malaysian government and their state owned airline, him being a nice and socially concerned human being, isn’t a contraindication at all.
Interestingly, some Malaysian sites in English language have floated the info, that the pilot had been grounded for a month before the doomed flight. Some said suspended for whatever reason, the Airline alledgedly said, just routinely grounded after a period of frequent flying. Some wondered, if the pilot had faced repercussions from the state owned airline because of his open support of the opposition leader. Since flying and being a pilot was his life, this adds up to a strong motive. This is a speculation, which hasn’t been confirmed, but it’s very interesting to check out those Malaysian sites and forums for a more local perspective.
@Rand Mayer, I guess that’s more or less your final contribution. After all, almost everything has been said, and so far no new infos have been coming forth. Thanks for your thoughts.
Like you, I feel, that Duncan Steel’s and other’s incredibly intelligent and knowledgeable efforts are ultimately futile, if something as simple as “We had the plane on our screen, heading South, but that’s sensitive knowledge”, or “The pilot told us, if we don’t meet his demands, he will crash the plane in the deeps of the Southern Indian Ocean, where we’ll never find it”, is ultimately behind the decision to search along the Southern route. The US spokesmen and authorities floated the idea of the plane ‘being at the bottom of the Indian Ocean’ very early. Time will tell… and we might never know. Yes, that’s quite possible as well.
What Duncan Steel et. al. demonstrated, is, that you should’t just accept an official explanation, just because it comes in the cloak of a semilogical scientific disguise. If you are knowledgeable, use your own brain, and try to understand the nooks and crannies. If he showed us anything, it’s the gaps in Inmarsat’s public explanations.His own work should of course be open to critique and questioning also.
Folks,
Just a little help for the ‘hard of thinking’ (me) if you would.
If the BFO values on the Inmarsat graph are all positive, as they appear to be, should that not mean that the aircraft was always moving away from the satellite (relatively) but at varying rates? I guess I’ve missed something.
Littlefoot ,I had the same thought on political motivation if you google Malaysian election rigged ,charter flights ..theres something to these extenuating facts but may be stretching it to then say captain went rogue idk. I would like to point this out .according to this inmarsat statement .this from aviation weekly article- Routine Data Analysis Helped Inmarsat Pinpoint MH370’s Path-“Since MH370 was not sending routine communications, the Inmarsat satellite was sending hourly “polling signals” to the Boeing 777. So long as the aircraft was operating, acknowledgement signals came back. “This includes its unique identification code, and confirmation the aircraft satcom is still operating and available for communications, if required,” Inmarsat explains on its website.”
That statement leads me to believe inmarsat believed the phone was available .please correct me if I am incorrect .