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:
# Gene –
Just incredible to me. Modeled data or real data? Take your pick. A dozen hours in a 777 might save thousands overall. But all quiet here this morning. Just more crap about another signal yesterday, all becoming ambiguous if you ask me.
@Gwiz don’t go, we’re just getting started, and we need you!
Perhaps we of Jeff’s Squadron should all meet up in Perth when this is all over. We’ve covered so much ground that at least one of us has to be correct in intuiting something about the flight! @Matty, could you play host? We may be waiting a while…
@Littlefoot I am in Shanghai and wish I could watch Jeff on the boob tube, too. Can somebody here please post Jeff’s shows to Youtube? Jeff is probably too occupied to do it himself, and I am sure that he would appreciate the effort.
I believe what Jeff is getting at is that there has yet to appear any sequence of logic where all elements of the puzzle can be integrated into a sensible whole.
Deconstructing the logic to the search and excavating the process faults (fault logic analysis) is a way of flushing out confirmation bias that could have misdirected the search; this I believe is the angle that Jeff is pursuing. The gaps in the logic and their resolution by probable assumptions are in turn what I have largely been focused on. Quite frankly, I believe it is these gaps that have everyone not an internal part of the search process chasing their tails. Duncan Steel feels that there is rather a degree of incompetence at work.
A further indication as to there being a closed loop of information and processes upstream in the search process is the fact that Dr. Larry Stone and his colleague, Ms. Colleen Keller, at science consultancy Metron, the firm that located Air France 447 utilizing Bayesian Search Theory, have yet to be called into the search for MH 370. To be of any help, one can assume that Dr. Stone and Ms. Keller would need access to the complete set of information in the process of applying their search experience and intuition in order to apply probability values to the objective data and information sets to guide the search. Integrating a subjective appraisal with the objectivity of the data is the fundamental process of Bayesian search theory. The authorities can’t provide him with the complete data set, and he would thus not prove effective as a participant in the search; thus has he yet to be invited to the party.
You can read an excellent, recent article on Bayesian methodology contributed to by Dr. Stone, below. I found it interesting how the primary obstacle to locating Air France 447 was the fact that, prior to Metron being involved, the search team had been focusing on CONFIRMED pinger locator data. When Dr. Stone and Ms. Keller came into the process, they rather quickly reassigned a lower probability to the confirmed pinger data and a higher probability to the batteries having expired and, voila, their calculus directed the search to a locale far removed from the site with the confirmed pinger data. They were then able to locate the remains of the aircraft within days. This is an example of confirmation bias misdirecting a search par excellence.
Meanwhile, in the present case, we have two discrete locations of pinger data supplied by locator beacons that have a certain probability that their batteries have already expired, in deep water, with rugged bottom terrain and a possible covering of deep silt, all wrapped up in a methodology informing the direction of the search that nobody outside of the process is necessarily comfortable with. So, we need to ask ourselves what could be going through the noodles of Dr. Stone and Ms. Keller at this very moment in terms of the probability that they have indeed located the aircraft?
The article with contributions by Dr. Stone and Ms. Keller:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-statisticians-could-help-find-flight-370/
A radio interview with Dr. Stone can be found here:
http://www.metsci.com/Portals/0/Interviews/Larry_Stone-Flight-MH370.mp3
Ugh, apologies to Jeff and everyone: i have double-posted, with my last post including material from a previous post that I thought, weeelll, had not posted. And my last post has yet to post!
Regardless, my last post, which I assume will surface at one point, is more refined and to the point; I took a moment to edit it. Again, my apologies.
Did I say all quiet! Our mate Geoffrey Thomas started a mini wildfire here just now, about midnight over there, by tweeting: the boxes may have been found, Aust PM to make announcement. And he did, to say we are increasingly confident we have found it. Then Houston pours water on it!! Situation normal he says, and Thursdays signals a false alarm by the way.
Good old Geoffrey Thomas spreading porkies : “Mr Thomas, who had thus far been seen as an authoritative source on the search, earlier told radio station 6PR in Perth: ‘‘The Ocean Shield, which is towing the pinger, and also the HMS Echo, which is the hydrographic ship, both of them have left the search area, which is rather interesting, and they’ve also left the search area at some speed. They’re obviously no longer towing the pinger locater.
‘‘At the same time we’ve heard from sources of ours in Sydney that the Prime Minister might be making an announcement … and the suggestion is they may have triangulated and located the black boxes, but that’s unconfirmed.
Unconfirmed alright. If anything it’s gone backwards.
@ matty – well Australia should have used their radar data sooner !why listen to imarsat..
http://www.dsto.defence.gov.au/attachments/The_development_of_over-the-horizon_radar.pdf
@Tdm – This sort of confirms to me that Jindalee didn’t track MH370. Abbott and Houston good mates for quite a while but Abbott has over egged here and could be embarrassing. So far not one signal confirmed as a box signal, a bunch confirmed as not a box signal, not one signal that they could actually hold, not one piece of wreckage, and the batteries stuffed by now very likely as they were 6 years old and due to be replaced.
Jeff,
For days, CNN’s technical experts have told us that the lower frequency, of the FDR’s pings, are of little concern; that it has to do with lower battery voltage and/or how the deep environment acts upon the pinger’s oscillator.
Tonight, on CNN, you placed considerable emphasis on the frequency shift, implying that it is an important reason for doubt about the credibility of this contact. Would you please elaborate.
BTW, I have great faith in the rigor of your analyses.
Regards, Den
I just broke down and added jeffwise.net and the jacc.gov.au to my bookmark bar. I’m digging in for the long haul…
@Gene and Rand,
You two are cleverer from far away, than I was in my living room. Of course, the heli got tangled in the fur of the dog. German Spitz dogs have long fur. That’s, why I mentiond the race of all pets. The dog was the only way, the heli could’ve left the room. But in my situation it looked very unlikely, since, when the dog pounced at the heli, he didn’t actually get to the heli. I saw that clearly. But, when I started to move the heli’s rotors, it apparently moved itself under the dog’s tail, and got entangled at a spot, where you couldn’t see it from any angle. The dog is actually very excitable and ticklish. That was another reason, why I ruled that out at first. But the heli is very small and light, and I had moved the rotors only for a second each time, so the dog apparently didn’t even notice. Only after a glas of wine, and while contemplating black holes (the dog is black), I realized, that this was the only way, it could’ve happened. I had to feel up the whole body of Charly, until I found the darn thing. I had to perform an operation with nail scissors, but after I had removed all hairs, the heli was completely intact.
This was a classical Sherlock Holmes problem. After you removed the impossible solutions, the highly unlikely had to be the correct one. And from my point of view, it was a very unlikely chain of events: The dog didn’t even touch the heli at first, then, Charly is excitable and ticklish, and finally the heli got entangled at a spot, where you could’t see it from above.
@Rand, we may well be in for the long haul. Now, the Australian prime minister and Angis Houston are contradicting each other. while Tony Abbot told the Chinese, the could be found within days, Houston claims, there was no significant progress.
i wrote a long comment at duncansteel.com, trying to explain, why it’s wrong to state, as Duncan has,that the disaster explanation is the most likely one. Even from his beloved Occam’s razor POV, that’s just not true IMO. Especially Occam’s razor should suggest, that the disaster theory is NOT the most likely one. He has repetedly ignored so many other sources of info, or hadn’t even heard of them. while he was doing his math, that he’s really not in a position to say so. So far, we don’t even know, what’s the most likely scenario.
I still don’t know, if my comment passed moderation, because my internet connection only works part time for some reason right now, but, when it’s through, I will post it here.
Another interesting Reuters article from Govindasamy et al:
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBREA3A0NS20140411?irp=932
It illuminates the tensions between Malaysian military and civil authorities. Apparently some military official feared to lose their jobs, if they shared data with civil authorities. The tracking of the plane with primary radar for a good part of it’s path still isn’t confirmed officially, which is puzzling, because we were told yesterday, that they could determine the plane’s low hight by analyzing the radar track.
The early days of the search were apparently seriously hampered by bureaucracy.
@ Littlefoot Perhaps the guys at Reuters are reading this blog! Anywho, there you have a snapshot of internal military communication processes, as well the processes between the military and civilian silos. Now, imagine how the nodes and channels of communication operate between nations.
If the Americans, the UK and Australia are now leading the search, I wonder to what extent the Malaysians are being left out of the loop in terms of whatever data sets and the information they have produced.
Duncan has a new post discounting the southern route; have a look.
@Rand, this is getting crazier and crazier.
Just suppose, the plane really went North. We all saw the youtube clip, where Chris McLaughlin clearly said, he SAW from the radar track, that the plane went South. Was he lying? Or had someone shown him faked material?
As far as the disaster theory goes, the Northern path actually makes more sense, since the plane was already flying Northwest. This 180 degree turnaround puzzled me most of all. It doesn’t make sense in any scenario.
But, if Duncan is going down that road, he simply MUST give some sort to various human actions, which might’ve muddied the water.
@Jeff, Rand, Gene, and others.
I read the response to my long post at duncansteel.com/archives/647
at 08:24 11/24/2014
He let me know, that my commentary was beneath contempt.
What do you think: was I really that much out of line? All, I tried to say, was, we really don’t know, what happened, and it was rash to say, one theory is more likely than the other, especially, when the analysis doesn’t fully consider human action.They accused me of hubris for wanting to know everything. But basically I said, we can’t judge, what’s likely or not right now.
Shouldn’t I have said anything, because Duncan responded in his post to Sahra Bac’s heartbreaking post. Yes, I probably shouldn’t have posted my response in that thread, but in a later one.
Normally I try, not to be offensive to any one.
Please, tell me honestly, what you think. I’m a little lost here.
CNN reported Thursday that a senior Malaysian official had revealed that their air force scrambled search aircraft to look for MH370 on March 8 around 8AM. That’s just about the time the plane went into the water according to the current model. The story has been denied by the Malaysian government’s spokesman. Some coverage on the report and the denial:
http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/defence-minister-denies-malaysia-scrambled-fighter-jets-after-mh370-plane-v
http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Nation/2014/04/11/MH370-RMAF-search-plane/
http://www.malaysia-chronicle.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=261052:who-is-right-who-is-lying?-hishams-bare-denial-of-cnn-story-not-good-enough-kit-siang&Itemid=2#axzz2yaRbLq00
@Littlefoot – Do we win a prize? Yep Sherlock Holmes and Occam’s Razor at odds. I was reading through comments in one of the Duncan Steel articles and noticed an Occam’s razor debate. Now maybe this is too simple a way to look at it, but it seemed to me that one was trying to verify mathematical probability analysis using a philosophical probability analysis. Something else I couldn’t reconcile.
@Rand – That’s an interesting read from Duncan Steel. I don’t feel so bad about my original guess in Jeff’s earlier blog about the potential of Sary Shagan, Kazahkstan.
[Tried to post this earlier, didn’t seem to take.]
Thursday CNN reported a senior Malaysian official revealed their air force scrambled search aircraft to look for MH370 on March 8 at 8 AM. That is about the time the aircraft went into the water on the current model. The Malaysian government spokesman has denied this story. See, for example, the following article on the claim and the denial:
http://www.malaysia-chronicle.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=261052:who-is-right-who-is-lying?-hishams-bare-denial-of-cnn-story-not-good-enough-kit-siang&Itemid=2#axzz2yaRbLq00
@Gene, since you were so quick, I think you’deserve a prize… I have to think hard 🙂
@luigi warren
“Latest from @CNN Claiming that Msian Air Force aircraft scrambled soon after @MAS reported #MH370 missing early 8/3 is a false allegation,” the Defence Minister’s communications team tweeted.
Hishammuddin later retweeted the post on his official Twitter account, @HishammuddinH20
@gene
I am Sure u have read this article on the kazikstan possibility.search teams had better find some wreckage soon in southern ocean….@matty in perth -is this paper credible down under?
http://www.news.com.au/national/uighur-separatists-claim-over-missing-flight-mh370-may-be-reexamined/story-fncynjr2-1226855911080
@Tdm, I don’t know, how reliable that source is, but it’s apparently 3 weeks old.
@Gene, yes, I’d say, you earned a reward. Maybe, I won’t contradict you for 3 weeks.
😉
Should the plane really have gone North, how can that be reconciled with Chris McLaughlin’s interview, where he claims, he’s seen turning the plane South on a radar track?
Is he lying or did they show him a fake radar picture?…
@Tdm – I believe the Uyghur reference that caught my attention was on CNN in the early days. I would hate to think the sarcastic scenario I proposed in response to GWiz somehow ended up being true. Truth being stranger than fiction in this case would be a little too bizarre for me.
@Littlefoot – Three weeks uncontested? Hmmm… With regards to the Chris McLaughlin’s interview and radar tracks, I would want to know whether he was referencing something official or something generated by media sources.
@Gene, yes, unfortunately nobody asked him, how he knew, but as far as I remember, except from this Reuters article, nobody claimed, that the plane went as far as to the Andamans, except that Reuters article. And that didn’t say, that the plane went South. Mclaughlin sounded, as if he was talking first hand knowledge. But what exactly is first hand knowledge in this darn business? Only those, who watched the plane live on the radar screen have some first hand knowledge…
Shows again, how the human input muddies the water constantly.
Here is Chris McLaughlin admitting “we cannot tell you to the last degree where plane is”1:43
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ71jEAPDZg
You know maybe we could contact Chris directly? Ask him that question and a few others. Here is his published contact info:
Chris McLaughlin
Tel: +44 (0)20 7728 1015
Email: chris.mclaughlin@inmarsat.com
Addendum- to above youtube link .chis mclaughlin states we went to Boeing to get auto pilot settings .say what ,as malaysia continues to claim a criminal act you have Chris McLaughlin stating the theory inmarsat used was based on auto pilot settings ….
here is the auto pilot (1)in a 777 -200.it is very easily programed .lets say as stated inmarsat was using stock ap settings provided by Boeing so they could produce a trajectory location it may be very inaccurate .why? Well if someone was adjusting the autopilot it would be easy (As shown ) and Inmarsat would have no speed altitude setting to complete their theory.simply put Malaysia would never find mh 370 based on inmarsat.so let us hope those pings are mh370 by some miraculous miracle.
How easy is it to program a 777- 200 auto pilot.2 minute video.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dsRmkz8rEAM
Missing auto pilot link…
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dsRmkz8rEAM
@Tdm –
The publication is an online one and no worse, no better than any of them these days. They all went nuts on this, recycling rubbish, trawling the web for anything. I’d say the most sensible Australian newspaper these days is a national daily called The Australian. They are standing back intent on preserving their dignity while the others scrap it out for headlines.
Prime Minister Abbott has been held out a little bit here. Days ago it was pretty clear they thought they had found it, and that’s what he has been told. Maybe what he should have been told was that everything was on ice until they have a photo of wreckage. Something that might not happen as far as I’m concerned.
Somehow a re-tweet from the Malaysian Defense Minister doesn’t have the same gravitas as President Nixon going on national TV to proclaim, “I am not a crook.”
Back to the wreckage issue: If the plane went in at the latest search location it’s suddenly even more odd that there is none. Remembering that we have been scrutinizing every bit of rubbish from space this scenario should have yielded something, maybe even landfall 5 weeks later? We are now a LONG way from the southern Indian Ocean.
PM tweaks the rhetoric – from The Australian online April 4th, 4.00pm (Perth) :
TONY Abbott has warned the public “not to underestimate” the difficulties of the task ahead in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.
He took a step back from his statement of confidence yesterday, adding that locating the plane was a “massive” job that was likely to take time.
The painstaking air and sea search for the missing airliner off Perth continues, with rescuers listening out for more of the signals thought to come from the plane’s black boxes.
The prime minister’s announcement from Shanghai had triggered speculation that a breakthrough was imminent.
But retired air chief marshal Angus Houston, who heads the hunt from Perth, quickly issued a statement clarifying that there had been no such development.
Meanwhile, scammers targeted relatives of the passengers from the missing flight.
A bogus email was sent to the families suggesting compensation claims were possible, but that recipients would need to pay administrative charges before funds could be released.
The email, which claims to come from the airline but originates from a Yahoo account in Hong Kong, appears to be a standard “advance fee” fraud.
Today, Mr Abbott reiterated his confidence in the search, but emphasised the difficulties remaining.
“We do have a high degree of confidence the transmissions we have been picking up are from flight MH370,” said Mr Abbott on the last day of his visit to China.
But he added, “no one should underestimate the difficulties of the task ahead of us.
“Yes, we have very considerably narrowed down the search area but trying to locate anything 4.5 kilometres beneath the surface of the ocean about a thousand kilometres from land is a massive, massive task and it is likely to continue for a long time to come.”
The Australian-led search for the Boeing 777, which disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, is racing to gather as many signals as possible to determine an exact resting place before a submersible is sent down to find wreckage.
The Joint Agency Coordination Centre said the remote search area where the plane was believed to have gone down some was still shrinking.
“Today, Australian defence vessel Ocean Shield continues more focused sweeps with the towed pinger locator to try and locate further signals related to the aircraft’s black boxes,” said the agency.
Ocean Shield has picked up four signals linked to aircraft black boxes, with the first two analysed as being consistent with those from aircraft flight recorders.
The beacons on the plane’s flight data and cockpit voice recorders have a normal battery lifespan of around 30 days, and MH370 vanished March 8.
AP-3C Orion surveillance aircraft were also carrying out acoustic searches in conjunction with Ocean Shield, with British oceanographic ship HMS Echo also working in the area.
Today’s total search zone covers 41,393 square kilometres and the core of the search zone lies 2,330 kilometres northwest of Perth.
“This work continues in an effort to narrow the underwater search area for when the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle is deployed,” said the JACC, adding that there have been no confirmed signal detections over the past 24 hours.
Last night, Mr Abbott suggested the mystery about the plane’s fate might soon be solved.
“We have very much narrowed down the search area and we are very confident the signals are from the black box,” he said, although the transmissions were “starting to fade”.
“We are confident that we know the position of the black box flight recorder to within some kilometres,” he added.
The PM later met Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
Air chief marshal Houston struck a much more cautious note just afterwards, saying “there has been no major breakthrough in the search for MH370”.
He said the Ocean Shield would continue to trawl for pings.
“It is vital to glean as much information as possible while the batteries on the underwater locator beacons may still be active.”
A decision to deploy a submersible sonar device “could be some days away”, he said.
No floating debris from the plane has yet been found, the JACC said again today, despite three weeks of searching in the area by ships and planes from several countries.
Up to 10 aircraft and 14 ships were taking part in today’s hunt, with the weather forecast for isolated showers and sea swells up to one metre, with visibility of five kilometres during showers.
Houston has stressed the need to find the wreckage to be certain of the plane’s fate, and has repeatedly warned against raising hopes for the sake of victims’ relatives, whose month-long nightmare has been punctuated by false leads.
How much stock should we would put in Hishammuddin Hussein’s sincerity and objectivity? From his Wikipedia entry, we learn that he’s the PM’s cousin, has been tipped as the next PM, is himself a politician and formerly a lawyer, has some experience in damage control, and has previously accused Anwar Ibrahim (Capt. Zaharie’s hero) of being a CIA agent. Basically, I think you can take what he says with a very large grain of salt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hishammuddin_Hussein
Before Hishammuddin consigns it to the memory hole:
http://www.nst.com.my/nation/general/call-traced-to-co-pilot-s-phone-1.562612
@Luigi Warren, I read that, too. It’s not certtain how credible it is.
@Luigi Warren, I read that, too. It’s not certain how credible it is.
But, when we were informed, that the plane flew a good stretch very low over the Malaysian peninsula, many wondered, why no one tried to put a call through. And, if the story is true, why did no one else call? If you think it through, you arrive at many strange implications.
@littlefoot
Doesn’t seem that strange, necessarily. It’s not clear that there was call — just an indication that the co-pilot turned on his phone and it was reacquired by the network as it came in range. For example, co-pilot finds himself locked out of the flight deck right after the plane is commandeered, turns on his phone right away to try and make an emergency call but the plane is out of range, he and the passengers are all killed or incapacitated during a subsequent climb/depressurization designed to each exactly that end. Alternatively, if no foul play was involved and comms were knocked out by accident, the co-pilot might have been struggling to contact the ground while the pilot tried to control the plane.
Of the four main scenarios in play — the pilot did it, the co-pilot did it, a hijacker did it, or nobody did it (no foul play) — this report is somewhat exculpatory of the co-pilot, that’s all.
@Luigi, you’re right: if true, it would indicate, that the copilot was probably not involved in a criminal way, but nobody was suspecting him anyway.
But the story has been denied already. Another tale,where one doesn’t know, what to believe…
In trying to determine whether or not Inmarsat was accurate in it’s interpretation or in it’s assumptions and considering that they have only released limited and/or unclear data is there a way to work the problem without Inmarsat? In other words, could one find and use a satellite similar enough in age, technology, ability, etc. to communicate with an aircraft in the same manner as ACARS? And from that try to replicate the results or create an accurate enough model of the results for comparison? I imagine it would be quite an undertaking, but in consideration of the resources used thus far and if the current search turns up nothing it may be worth it.
@ Luigi Warren I can’t open the article re the network connection established with the co-pilot’s cell phone. If the network contact that was established was incidental, would there not have been recorded network connections to other phones, as well? If we assume that most passengers have cell phones while not all passengers turn them off upon take off, then most likely there would have been other successful connections to a network. Therefore, we can assume that the story of the co-pilot’s cell phone connecting to a network was most likely apocryphal, can we not?
What sort of scenarios pop up if the descent to a lower altitude was with the primary intent of establishing cell phone contact between any pilot and a person on the ground, regardless of whether this was successful?
Also, if a ping to the co-pilot was in fact true, it does not fully exculpate him, as he could have been attempting to contact someone on the ground to inform them that he had gained sole control of the aircraft.
I am not alluding to anything here, just raising questions/offering points of clarification.
@Rand, the cellphone story is all over the net.You can just google ‘copilot final call’ or something similar. But the sources seem very murky, and Malaysian authorities denied it which, of course, doesn’t mean much these days.
So far, it was only stated, that there was a contact established between Penang tower and the phone. No actual call was made, and it’s not clear, of course, when he switched on the cellphone.
Your points are valid. If there was an emergency, the passengers certainly wouldn’t have died instantly. The oxygen masks last a few minutes. It seems unlikely, that none of 200 plus people switched on a phone. It’s, what people do these days, especially after the 9/11 highjackings.
I would argue though, that, if it really happened, it does exculpate the copilot. If he was a participant in a highjacking, he certainly would’ve brought a satellite phone along. To establish contact to someone on the ground with a cellphone is highly unreliable and could be traced.
I don’t know, what to think of this story. Could well be apocryphal, as you say.
@Littlefoot. There are sat phones on the flight deck and in business class (Inmarsat Classic Aero service) which for the moment I assume are integrated into the Inmarsat/ACARS router/antenna system. I likewise assume that they would have been deactivated when the ACARS system was disabled.
Mobile sat phones need clear line of sight to the bird in my experience using them; they don’t function inside an aircraft.
A cell phone could establish contact with a land based tower, although unlikely. The copilot cannot be fully exculpated because he still could have intended to establish cell phone contact with someone on the ground as a contingency. A call would be traceable yes, but not immediately and the message could be coded (e.g., “Calling you from my phone means I have the plane and am flying low near Penang as planned.” He likewise could have left his phone on from the start and there was only a handshake (no comms) in the course of commandeering the aircraft ( most likely). I suppose that they would have looked into crew cell phone records first, which led to the evidence of contact with the Penang tower and the story and the extrapolations regarding a deliberate call that followed. Or it’s all total BS.
I would say any cell phone contact very unlikely. If there was a call placed, then the copilot was most likely not involved in the diversion, but still could have been. If there was a handshake only, then low altitude of aircraft confirmed but otherwise nothing to be learned.
Or, did I miss something? How would a handshake change the game?
I still believe there were two events aboard the aircraft, two phases to its diversion from the intended flight path. It’s non-linear, I have yet to read of one hypo where known points form a valid chain of causality. Or significantly more is known and even old Air Marshal Angus is just doing as he is told and engaging the search where he has been told to look. Very possible.
@Rand, thanks for your expertise on sat phones. I’ve never used one.
Another thought: IF that phone contact even happened, it doesn’t even say, that the copilot used it. Someone else (whoever was in charge, could’ ve switched it on. And, you’re right, if it happened, it would confirm low altitude at the time, contact was established.
For me, a two phased scenario gains more and more appeal, since, as you say, a linear scenario just doesn’t fit all known facts. Though, we don’t even know, what we really know.
Correction re: someone else could’ve switched on the phone. Not very likely, if it was secured with a pin. According to the murky news, it was established, that the copilot had switched off the phone before take off. The logic behind this: Otherwise it couldn’t have gotten switched on again.
So, if the copilot didn’t switch it on himself, he must’ve been either under pressure to give away the pin, or some crew member knew his pin. Or, the phone wasn’t secured with a pin.
I guess, I better refrain from speculating about that phone business, since it might never have happened in the first place…