Slate: Why Inmarsat’s MH370 Report is a Smokescreen

Inmarsat chartFive weeks into the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, more than $30 million has been spent scouring great swatches of the southern Indian Ocean. Yet searchers have still not found a single piece of physical evidence such as wreckage or human remains. Last week, Australian authorities said they were confident that a series of acoustic pings detected 1,000 miles northwest of Perth had come from the aircraft’s black boxes, and that wreckage would soon be found. But repeated searches by a robotic submarine have so far failed to find the source of the pings, which experts say could have come from marine animals or even from the searching ships themselves. Prime Minister Tony Abbott admitted that if wreckage wasn’t located within a week or two “we stop, we regroup, we reconsider.”

There remains only one publically available piece of evidence linking the plane to the southern Indian Ocean: a report issued by the Malaysian government on March 25 that described a new analysis carried out by the U.K.-based satellite operator Inmarsat. The report said that Inmarsat had developed an “innovative technique” to establish that the plane had most likely taken a southerly heading after vanishing. Yet independent experts who have analyzed the report say that it is riddled with inconsistencies and that the data it presents to justify its conclusion appears to have been fudged.

Some background: For the first few days after MH370 disappeared, no one had any idea what might have happened to the plane after it left Malaysian radar coverage around 2:30 a.m., local time, on March 8, 2014. Then, a week later, Inmarsat reported that its engineers had noticed that in the hours after the plane’s disappearance, the plane had continued to exchange data-less electronic handshakes, or “pings,” with a geostationary satellite over the Indian Ocean. In all, a total of eight pings were exchanged.

Each ping conveyed only a tiny amount of data: the time it was received, the distance the airplane was from the satellite at that instant, and the relative velocity between the airplane and the satellite. Taken together, these tiny pieces of information made it possible to narrow down the range of possible routes that the plane might have taken. If the plane was presumed to have traveled to the south at a steady 450 knots, for instance, then Inmarsat could trace a curving route that wound up deep in the Indian Ocean southwest of Perth, Australia. Accordingly, ships and planes began to scour that part of the ocean, and when satellite imagery revealed a scattering of debris in the area, the Australian prime minister declared in front of parliament that it represented “new and credible information” about the fate of the airplane.

The problem with this kind of analysis is that, taken by themselves, the ping data are ambiguous. Given a presumed starting point, any reconstructed route could have headed off in either direction. A plane following the speed and heading to arrive at the southern search area could have also headed to the north and wound up in Kazakhstan. Why, then, were investigators scouring the south and not the north?

The March 25 report stated that Inmarsat had used a new kind of mathematical analysis to rule out a northern route. Without being very precise in its description, it implied that the analysis might have depended on a small but telling wobble of the Inmarsat satellite’s orbit. Accompanying the written report was an appendix, called Annex I, that consisted of three diagrams, the second of which was titled “MH370 measured data against predicted tracks” and appeared to sum up the case against the northern route in one compelling image. (See the chart at the top of the post.) One line on the graph showed the predicted Doppler shift for a plane traveling along a northern route; another line showed the predicted Doppler shift for a plane flying along a southern route. A third line, showing the actual data received by Inmarsat, matched the southern route almost perfectly, and looked markedly different from the northern route. Case closed.

The report did not explicitly enumerate the three data points for each ping, but around the world, enthusiasts from a variety of disciplines threw themselves into reverse-engineering that original data out of the charts and diagrams in the report. With this information in hand, they believed, it would be possible to construct any number of possible routes and check the assertion that the plane must have flown to the south.

Unfortunately, it soon became clear that Inmarsat had presented its data in a way that made this goal impossible: “There simply isn’t enough information in the report to reconstruct the original data,” says Scott Morgan, the former commander of the US Air Force Rescue Coordination Center. “We don’t know what their assumptions are going into this.”

Another expert who tried to understand Inmarsat’s report was Mike Exner, CEO of the remote sensing company Radiometrics Inc. He mathematically processed the “Burst Frequency Offset” values on Page 2 of Annex 1 and was able to derive figures for relative velocity between the aircraft and the satellite. He found, however, that no matter how he tried, he could not get his values to match those implied by the possible routes shown on Page 3 of the annex. “They look like cartoons to me,” says Exner.

Even more significantly, I haven’t found anybody who has independently analyzed the Inmarsat report and has been able to figure out what kind of northern route could yield the values shown on Page 2 of the annex. According to the March 25 report, Inmarsat teased out the small differences predicted to exist between the Doppler shift values between the northern and southern routes. This difference, presumably caused by the slight wobble in the satellite’s orbit that I mentioned above, should be tiny—according to Exner’s analysis, no more than a few percent of the total velocity value. And yet Page 2 of the annex shows a radically different set of values between the northern and southern routes. “Neither the northern or southern predicted routes make any sense,” says Exner.
Given the discrepancies and inaccuracies, it has proven impossible for independent observers to validate Inmarsat’s assertion that it can rule out a northern route for the airplane. “It’s really impossible to reproduce what the Inmarsat folks claim,” says Hans Kruse, a professor of telecommunications systems at Ohio University.

This is not to say that Inmarsat’s conclusions are necessarily incorrect. (In the past I have made the case that the northern route might be possible, but I’m not trying to beat that drum here.) Its engineers are widely regarded as top-drawer, paragons of meticulousness in an industry that is obsessive about attention to detail. But their work has been presented to the public by authorities whose inconsistency and lack of transparency have time and again undermined public confidence. It’s worrying that the report appears to have been composed in such a way as to make it impossible for anyone to independently assess its validity—especially given that its ostensible purpose was to explain to the world Inmarsat’s momentous conclusions. What frustrated, grieving family members need from the authorities is clarity and trustworthiness, not a smokescreen.

Inmarsat has not replied to my request for a clarification of their methods. This week, the Wall Street Journal reported that in recent days experts had “recalibrated data” in part by using “arcane new calculations reflecting changes in the operating temperatures of an Inmarsat satellite as well as the communications equipment aboard the Boeing when the two systems exchanged so-called digital handshakes.” But again, not enough information has been provided for the public to assess the validity of these methods.

It would be nice if Inmarsat would throw open its spreadsheets and help resolve the issue right now, but that could be too much to expect. Inmarsat may be bound by confidentiality agreements with its customers, not to mention U.S. laws that restrict the release of information about sensitive technologies. The Malaysian authorities, however, can release what they want to—and they seem to be shifting their stance toward openness. After long resisting pressure to release the air traffic control transcript, they eventually relented. Now acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein says that if and when the black boxes are found, their data will be released to the public.

With the search for surface debris winding down, the mystery of MH370 is looking more impenetrable by the moment. If the effort to find the plane using an underwater robot comes up empty, then there should be a long and sustained call for the Malaysian authorities to reveal their data and explain exactly how they came to their conclusions.

Because at that point, it will be all we’ve got.

This is a cross-posting of an article that was published on Slate.com on April 18, 2014. You can read the original here.

 

 

505 thoughts on “Slate: Why Inmarsat’s MH370 Report is a Smokescreen”

  4. It took me a long time to figure out — in passing I’d “approved” a trackback/ping, and it wound up showing up in bold at the bottom of the page like that. So, lesson learned.

  5. @matty seems we were saying what the hell at the same time about Alan Milner! Lol the 1st link had been there for awhile, so as soon as I saw the new one I was quick to read. Then I decided @JeffWise must be having it on with us & showing some of the fabulous conspiracy theories out there! Hopefully you read it Jeff, it was a good one!

  6. @Rhett –

    It was the grammar on the 2nd one that did my head in. The 1st one was written ok, what the hell was the 2nd? Meant to be the same article.

  7. @matty the grammar was so strange that I did a search on the author. Even using the middle initial, the two possibles I think I narrowed it down to, I eliminated. They had very good communication skills, unlike what we read. That was odd. Much different from someone even trying to translate from another language.

  9. Jeff ,here’s the pressure on authorities to release the raw inmarsat data ..I still come to the conclusion this data will not be released due to the fact this may indicate or possibly reveal a secondary flight path that does not add up to authorities claim. It could lead to some problems for the authorities!

    http://indianexpress.com/article/world/asia/mh370-families-demand-release-of-raw-satellite-data/
    ”
    The next of kin of the passengers and crew of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 have formed Voice370, short for MH370 Victims Families and Crew Association.
    In an open letter signed by family members from China, Malaysia, the United States, New Zealand and India, it urged the Malaysian Government to release the raw Inmarsat data so that “it can be subject to broader analysis by relevant experts”.

  10. @Tdm – I think they will release it, it will look ridiculous if they don’t. It should have been thrown open day one. Outrageous really.

  11. Indonesia has military radar at Lhokseumawe in Aceh province which looks directly at the stretch of water portrayed by Butterworth’s radar and they saw no suspicious or unidentified traffic that night.

    Nor does Indonesia lack the ability to intercept. During the Timor crises Indonesian F-16s on a number of occasions turned back overflights by the Royal Australian Air Force with a threat of force.

    The problem is that Malaysia has now promoted three different versions of the Straits of Malacca aircraft.

    Version #1 turned hard left at IGARI flew below radar east of the Malay peninsula at 5,000ft through a 7,000ft mountain range direct from IGARI to VAMPI then turned hard right to zig-zag north to GIVAL then hard left to IGREX, then another hard left to fly south…. Show me where on the Burst Offset Frequency chart these manuvers are described?

    Version #2 MH370 turned hard left at IGARI from 17:21 UTC climbed to 45,000ft and reached the south side of Penang Island at 18:07 UTC some 46 minutes later …well excuse me but the definition of service ceiling is the altitude at which an aircraft can only climb at just 100 feet per minute so to climb a further 1,900feet higher takes how long – just 46 minutes? Get real, this never happened… then version #2 continues that MH370 dived to 5,000ft turned NW to VAMPI then to MEKAR then turned south. Any climb from IGARI would be fully visible to military radar at Kuantan but it wasn’t seen by Kuantan radar at all because the Malaysian Air Force already told us it wasn’t on day 4.

    Version #3 published recently on CNN claims MH370 climbed west from IGARI to 39,000ft, dropped to the west of penang and then flew to GIVAL then to IGREX and then turned south.

    I am so sick and tired of Malaysia and conspiracy theorists shifting the goalposts to adapt their beliefs to nebulous ever changing claims.

    None of these manuvers are reflected by the BOF chart. None of these manuvers are corroborated by Indonesian radar. Now that Michael Exner has realised something which I was postulating online back in March that the BOF data was inverted, the Malacca Straits flight is even less supported by INMARSAT handshake signals.

  12. The revised Burst Offset Frequency chart by Mike Exner here:

    http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh212/727Kiwi/MH370/Exnerprojection_zps7a2a16dd.jpg

    Corrects the inverted Doppler frequencies in the original BOF chart caused by double transmission errors.

    If you follow the movements of this BOF chart then it is corroborated by actual radar/transponder returns from MH370 after take off as MH370 flew east.

    In Exner’s revised BOF chart there is no suggestion MH370 turned west until 18:25 UTC

    What it does corroborate however is an aircraft flying east until struck by calamity at some point between 17:07 UTC and 18:25 UTC which then turned south from Vietnam and flew a steady course southwest to the Indian Ocean.

    This also tends to be supported:

    (1) By a sighting from an oil rig off Vietnam

    (2) By an unpublished distress call from MH370

  13. @Simon Gunson –

    Regarding the Indonesian airforce turning back overflights by the Australian airforcee. Put simply it didn’t happen. I was in the army at the time and I can assure you the there were no overflights and the Indonesians behaved impeccably throughout, thanks mainly to being leant on very heavily by Bill Clinton. Throughout the Timor deployment Australian transport planes flew in and out routinely and our F18’s sat with engines running in case anything did actually flare up, but it never did. Mainly because a bunch of US Navy vessels were parked – Belleau Wood was one – right on the horizon and the Indons were warned bluntly by the US.

  14. But there was some slightly cranky arm waving over some helicopter flights before the deployment got rolling. They were special force intel missions that were run and won well before the Indons knew what had gone on. All in all pretty fortunate because when our first soldiers stepped off the plane in Dili there were still 30,000 Indon forces there. It was very tense and could have turned ugly.

  15. Correction – thee actually was a couple of armed skirmishes where Indon police fired on an Australian patrol. One of theirs got killed and a couple injured.

  16. Matty
    I don’t believe the Malaysian government will release the raw Inmarsat data because they don’t have it. I suspect they only have a summary of Inmarsat’s calculations and their conclusion. Inmarsat will not release the raw data because it is much too embarrassing at this point. As I have suggested all along, they rushed, and then fudged, their analysis. Exner and Company now confirm this.

    We know Malaysia decided to focus on the southern route before Inmarsat gave their support. We now need a good reliable leak to tell us why they made that decision. And that information will probably be as ambiguous as everything else in this extraordinary drama.

    If the plane went down over water, why has no debris washed up anywhere? Lots of folks looking. There are parts of the aircraft that will float indefinitely.

  17. @Arthur T –

    Your’e making sense Arthur. Maybe the Inmarsat crowd were sweating on the bluefin actually finding something? Now it’s a bit like Oh shit!! What do we do? Something else also occurred to me today – the only peer review that would have any meaning here at all would need to come from satellite experts. Who cares about NTSB or AAIB? It’s a very technical analysis.

    I see on CNN that some of the pings in that cluster are about to be discarded – too low a frequency. Brings into serious doubt the remaining pings if you ask me, whole thing suddenly too ambiguous. Why the close proximity? What a mess.

  18. Simon: Exner’s inversion of the Inmarsat data is interesting. There is no date on the projection; when did he post it, how fresh a perspective is this?

    I understand your tiring to the point of nausea regarding Malaysian statements re their radar data and the fishing expeditions of conspiracy theorist. As someone, however, who is a proponent of the view of a corrupt and incompetent Malaysian government dissembling in an effort to obfuscate the facts regarding what occurred in their airspace, I am just as open to Exner’s inverted model.

    My particular view has been that it is very difficult to reconcile an intended diversion at IGARI with a terminal flight trajectory to any destination on the southern or northern arc. I have likewise suggested, in the interest of reconciling this two elements of the flight path with some sort of causal event that occurred while in Malaysian airspace. This is not a conspiracy per se, but rather the product of simple logic; mathematics, really.

    Exner’s projection of the flight path is supported by the data save for, as you have indicated, statements by Malaysian authorities claiming to have painted MH370 on two occasions post diversion at IGARI, while likewise claiming that the aircraft did indeed flight west over Malaysian airspace. If these claims are supported, then Exner’s projection was merely an exercise in revealing how the conclusion regarding a c. IGREX to the southern Indian ocean was falsely derived.

    Again, is Mike Exner presently supporting the indicated projection, or was it merely a means of demonstrating that the aircraft did not necessarily fly west from IGARI to IGREX? Please let us know Mr. Exner’s present position on the flight trajectory and/or present evaluation of the Inmarsat analysis.

    Regardless, concerns regarding the statements by the Malaysian authorities and their actions early on in the timeline remain warranted. Rest assured, MH370 is the largest threat to their hold on power since independence in 1957, and they are acting accordingly.

  19. Arthur T: yep, I think that you are on it. Basically, I view the Malaysians as obfuscating to cover their incompetence or perhaps something worse, as in having had some additional form of contact with the aircraft while it remained in their airspace.

    Regardless, this event remains a threat to their hold on power, and the means of maintaining their grip is by way of ensuring that they are 1. as much victims as anyone else (i.e., we don’t know anything about what happened to the aircraft); 2. avoiding sharing publicly anything that may come back to bite them later (i.e., hedging/game theory); and in general preserve a sense of official confidentiality regarding the flight and its investigation, so as to project that Malaysians need their leadership in such sensitive matters. Regardless, the primary objective is to ensure that they are exculpable in all scenarios while being given credit if and when the aircraft is found.

    I would even go so far as to say that the Malaysian authorities don’t give a rat’s ass about finding the aircraft and providing solace to the victims’ families. As I have argued previously, the Malaysian leadership has no sense of accountability; rather, they perceive power as largely having risen above accountability. They have already set up a team for an internal investigation, but this work has likewise already been handed to yet another crony, and nothing will come of it, certainly nothing that would threaten their already tenuous position.

    I have spoken with more than a dozen well-educated Malaysians over the course of this saga, and while this does not represent a sample from which any statistically valid assumptions can be drawn, I can tell you that such people are generally incensed by their government’s performance, they are either heralding this event as an opportunity for regime change, or they are deeply ashamed of how it reflects upon them as Malaysians. Many Malaysians are deeply resentful of their Chinese compatriots and the relative success of Singapore and Thailand, while this resentment is more a product of a low sense of national esteem than anything else. This is why Minister Hussein is forever shamelessly brandishing his Kukri knives as a symbol of Malaysian pride, for he knows that, well, he quite frankly sucks in the leadership department. George W. Bush devolved down from liberty down to ‘anything for God and Country’ post 9-11, and the US remains soiled to this day from this unfortunate process. In Malaysia, a devolution to tribalism is the present answer, representing a similarly slightly desperate attempt to consolidate power when that power is now being questioned.

  20. Angus Houston is citing intellectual property on the part of Inmarsat as the grounds for not releasing raw data. Previously Inmarsat have cited “protocol” as grounds to not release it. Pretty obvious they holding on in self interest.

  21. It’s basically laughable. We are talking about a type of analysis that will never be used again. But if you throw it open you might have to share the spotlight. And be publicly scrutinized, and who wants that? Pressure will build though and I wonder at what point Houston will ask them to release it?

  22. A rational explanation:

    Let’s say that the only reliable information that we have is that from the people of the Maldives, i.e. the aircraft fire suppression bottle that was washed up and the eyewitness accounts. Further, let’s assume that this tragedy was accidental and not the result of foul play. What can we come up with?

    The length of time the fire suppression bottle was in the water and the direction the eyewitnesses saw the plane flying place the plane in the stretch of water between the Maldives and Diego Garcia. As the bottle floated, it was empty, which means it was discharged before the plane hit the water supporting Chris Goodfellow’s fire hypothesis.

    During the night, the plane managed to fly all the way across from Malaysia. This indicates that the plane was still being reasonably well controlled by its digital computers. The latter may have reverted to their limp-home mode in which they only use a subset of their sensor inputs and don’t provide envelope protection. However, the digital computers were still well in control.

    On reaching the Maldives, the plane turns to the left to continue in a southerly direction. The key question is where did that command to the control system to turn come from? It is faintly possible that a member of the flight crew regained consciousness just at this moment but surely he would have turned north to Male. The most reasonable conclusion is that the command came from outside the aircraft. If we exclude foul play, this can only mean the US military taking remote control of the aircraft.

    Things get a little speculative here. Having gained remote control, now what? To attempt to land a partially crippled plane on a runway would have posed an unacceptable risk to people on the ground. Instead the aircraft was ditched as gently as possible in the sea.

    Why the secrecy? The US military does not want people to know about its capability to remotely control large civilian aircraft and its willingness to use that capability. The Malaysian authorities on the other hand are primarily concerned with minimising reputational and financial damage to themselves and their airline. Once it was decided to maintain secrecy, it became necessary to run a diversion operation for the news media and to release a lot of misinformation.

    Was the plane ever “lost” at any stage? I concur with John Chuckman’s assessment that the plane was tracked all the time by the US spy satellite network and for the last part of its flight by the sophisticated radar at Diego Garcia. This would have given the military plenty of warning to organise their response.

  23. This seems to be a rational explanation:

    Let’s say that the only reliable information that we have is that from the people of the Maldives, i.e. the aircraft fire suppression bottle that was washed up and the eyewitness accounts. Further, let’s assume that this tragedy was accidental and not the result of foul play. What can we come up with?

    The length of time the fire suppression bottle was in the water and the direction the eyewitnesses saw the plane flying place the plane in the stretch of water between the Maldives and Diego Garcia. As the bottle floated, it was empty, which means it was discharged before the plane hit the water supporting Chris Goodfellow’s fire hypothesis.

    During the night, the plane managed to fly all the way across from Malaysia. This indicates that the plane was still being reasonably well controlled by its digital computers. The latter may have reverted to their limp-home mode in which they only use a subset of their sensor inputs and don’t provide envelope protection. However, the digital computers were still well in control.

    On reaching the Maldives, the plane turns to the left to continue in a southerly direction. The key question is where did that command to the control system to turn come from? It is faintly possible that a member of the flight crew regained consciousness just at this moment but surely he would have turned north to Male. The most reasonable conclusion is that the command came from outside the aircraft. If we exclude foul play, this can only mean the US military taking remote control of the aircraft.

    Things get a little speculative here. Having gained remote control, now what? To attempt to land a partially crippled plane on a runway would have posed an unacceptable risk to people on the ground. Instead the aircraft was ditched as gently as possible in the sea.

    Why the secrecy? The US military does not want people to know about its capability to remotely control large civilian aircraft and its willingness to use that capability. The Malaysian authorities on the other hand are primarily concerned with minimising reputational and financial damage to themselves and their airline. Once it was decided to maintain secrecy, it became necessary to run a diversion operation for the news media and to release a lot of misinformation.

    Was the plane ever “lost” at any stage? I concur with John Chuckman’s assessment that the plane was tracked all the time by the US spy satellite network and for the last part of its flight by the sophisticated radar at Diego Garcia. This would have given the military plenty of warning to organise their response.

  24. Laughable indeed, Matty. Meanwhile, I saw on a tweet from @370Breaking that Inmarsat’s McLaughlin told CNN that they are not keeping the data from the Malaysian government. Meanwhile, another tweet has Minister Hussein saying ‘OK’ to releasing the data if it does not impact the investigation.

    Over at dsteel.com, someone referenced the difference between raw data and data that had been processed at some level, and that the latter was provided to the Malaysians.

    I never really thought about it, but you are quite right: the analytical process will never be used again, so why then is it considered proprietary information? Clearly, someone does not want the data released, but why?

    It seems to boil down to the same two basic forms of characterizing the process. Either we can go the Ari Schulman route and assume that nobody is all that confident where the plane went down (i.e., “…concealing how really little they know about what happened…”); or it’s more about some entity not wanting to lift the skirt on the process and not being able to openly say why for whatever undisclosed reason.

    Perhaps it really is just about bureaucracies used to being in control and finding that they are not in control, clinging to veiled processes and information that are inherent to their trade craft. Perhaps the implications of losing an aircraft are so unsettling that all have agreed to circle the wagons, so that at the very least nobody else will get the idea that cloaking an aircraft and diverting it to an unknown is actually possible, even if this really a matter of a mechanical malfunction at IGARI.

    Perhaps Inmarsat, a financially troubled company as far as I can discern, is seeing a huge opportunity in garnering customers here amongst the owners of the 11,000 long-haul airliners now in existence. Perhaps all are concerned about potential liability issues. Or, perhaps Inmarsat is beholden to their largest customer, the US government, and have been directed not to reveal a process for tracking unresponsive aircraft post 9-11 that was developed years ago as an element of a broader initiative to further US agency access to global satellite communication systems.

    Admittedly, the last point that I have suggested is a bit extreme, but it completes of the spectrum as to ‘why’ there is reticence regarding the release of the data. For the moment, perhaps providing everyone with the benefit of the doubt as Ari has suggested and keeping things simple is the best approach. Losing an aircraft when aircraft are designed not to go missing or otherwise fail is already a big enough of a public trust issue to have everyone a bit nervous about what they should and should not be doing and saying.

    Regardless, the processes surrounding the search for MH370 reveal antiquated approaches to international relations and information sharing where borders are blurring and new nodes of connectivity are being formed in ways that destabilize the status quo. It’s a reminder of ‘how things work’: power is largely grounded in not sharing what you have.

    This entire saga is disgraceful, and it is our saga, our story. This is our humanity, revealed. I feel a bit like a chimpanzee, watching my neighbor ape eat its young.

  25. Apologies for the multiple typos and grammatical errors. Have been writing on the fly, but will do a better job of editing things from here.

  26. Rand – I think it’s a scandal in the making. Pretty clear that Houston trusts the analysis but until it’s been replicated by mathematics/satellite experts it’s not actually science. The pings are looking dodgy, no debris, no clue – something will give.

  27. See the below, poached from the WSJ:

    http://www.smh.com.au/world/missing-flight-mh370-no-one-knows-what-happened-to-plane-says-malaysian-pm-najib-razak-20140514-zrc0s.html

    Everything he stated is uncannily congruent with the plane having disappeared, it’s the fault of less-than-adequate internationally mandated civilian aviation systems and that an international effort is encountering difficulty in locating the aircraft.

    See nothing, hear nothing, say nothing. It’s almost ridiculously obvious how the Malaysian authorities are deliberately avoiding contributing anything of heir own to the process, even agreeing with the press that some (certainly not them) were indeed a bit slow in terms of their response. No qualifications, no information from the criminal investigation, no nothing. It’s as if they are merely reading the press reports on the incident and regurgitating them as their own.

  28. Rand – as a few others in separate forums have suggested, the plane remaining missing would be the best case scenario for the Malaysians. No damning post mortem, just an open ended mystery that the entire world couldn’t solve. They are where they want to be – well in the background. In the early days their dread at every press conference was palpable. It’s a govt that is all about privilege and pretty light on responsibility. This wasn’t meant to happen.

  29. Rand and Matty,
    I think you both have it right.
    We have got to the point where it is no longer in the interest of the major players that the aircraft be found. The potential for a major embarrassment is too great. Providing ‘solace to the victims’ families’ is the least of their concerns, or not their concern at all.
    What is the right word to characterize the flight investigation and search effort? A folly? A fiasco? A scandal? A lession in incompetence, for sure.

    But I remain hopeful that, as Matty put it, ‘something will give’.

  30. The way Abbott waded into this, and the way INMARSAT have nakedly exploited the circumstances, I get the feeling that they all thought the plane would show up and they could all move on after benefiting from the whole exercize. Abbott ran with this ball but now finds himself with noone to pass it to. In the case of INMARSAT, their satellite is half stuffed, their data largely ambiguous, and their methods will go in the bin when this thing is finally settled, so their current position is outrageous. A narrow commercial interest could be limiting the search. It was perfect publicity – as long as the plane turned up!!

    And for not surrendering the data to the relatives immediately, the Malaysian govt are totally spineless. They want no further part of the whole thing.

  31. Further to it, behind the scenes, for the last two months INMARSAT will have been networking frenetically in the sort of company it craves. You can’t begin to put a value on it. But if it reveals it’s material it could all be over. A bunch of numbers is at the centre of it – that’s all. A bunch of numbers.

    On the subject of numbers, if reports are correct, what was PM Abbott, or anyone else for that matter doing, spruiking acoustic detections that were 10.5khz outside of the required range? 27 instead of 37.5?? Having watched Abbott for years I feel I can attest that he was pretty excited about the whole thing.

  32. Arthur T: James Kunstler, the writer and muckraker, has a term that encapsulates the incoherent mess that is the search for MH370. The term is ‘clusterfuck,’ which Kunstler defines as multiple failures in multiple systems. I hope that I have not stepped on any toes (Jeff), with my crossing the line in terms of linguistic decorum. Regardless, the term would appear applicable in this instance.

  33. So Inmarsat has offered up free in flight tracking services in light of MH370’s disappearance. Whether their data is flawed or not. Or if their interpretation of the data is flawed or not. Or if they are covering for other intelligence assets. Or whatever. Inmarsat is not failing to capitalize on the situation. This initial service is free, but I would be willing to bet that Inmarsat has made calculations on down the road spin offs that would be to their financial benefit. All this based on pings that, as of yet, haven’t led to any discoveries of wreckage. Am I the only one going WTF?

  34. It’s not too difficult to think of a scenario with an airline and/or a government being directly or indirectly involved. I actually can think of several scenarios. Quite understandably, an airline and/or a government has no interest in finding a missing plane, if any such scenario was true. I don’t claim that any such scenario is true, but if it was, I’d personally find it sad that those involved would get through with it.

  35. @Gene –

    I think it’s getting shameless. Remembering that doppler effect in nothing new and not anyone’s property, that all they have done here is write an untested algorithm, that will never be used again, I think it’s immoral to be so secretive with the search floundering. But the publicity gravy train will come to a stop if there is any issue at all with their work.

  36. .Gene,
    You have made the case perfectly why we will never see the Inmarsat data.

    The whole tragic saga is rapidly heading to the trash heap of history and oblivion.

    Unless we have a stroke of good luck.

  37. The Ocean Shield’s Commander Lybrand was probably speaking for quite a few of the search team when he came clean with his doubts over the ocean pings. It is the first leak we have had but there will be others for sure. It needs Houston to request an external review and he may at some point, depending on how it progresses – INMARSAT would be hard pressed to refuse. Imagine being out there? You would have to be skeptical by now so it’s a matter of time before something gives – I believe. If Abbott starts to lose skin there will be movement, but it should get leaky before that. Until then, it gets curiouser and curiouser.

  38. Old article ,you cannot overlook these facts you could claim incompetence but that would be naivety… http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304026304579449680167673144
    ASIA NEWS
    Critical Data Was Delayed in Search for Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight
    Investigators Are Still Working to Recover From the Delay.”
    Two additional people familiar with the Malaysian side of the probe said the information could have arrived in Kuala Lumpur as late as the morning of March 13.

    “Malaysia’s government, concerned about corroborating the data and dealing with internal disagreements about how much information to release, didn’t publicly acknowledge Inmarsat’s information until March 15, during a news conference with Prime Minister Najib Razak. Malaysia began to redirect the search effort that day to focus on the areas the information described, and said for the first time that deliberate actions were involved in the plane’s disappearance.

  39. Yesterday, I had a telephone chat with the Chief of Staff of the DAP (leading opposition party) Malaysia.

    Basically, the COS said that she is interested in having the scientists at dsteel.com provide the DAP with a list of specific requests for the source/raw data and its analysis that they can later frame into a formal letter of inquiry to be submitted at Parliament and/or to the Ministry of Transportation. There are also two MPs and a senior party leader/former MP also being brought into the process.

    I have queried the people (Duncan, Mike Exner, et al.) at dsteel.com as to their interest in taking this up. The COS said that she would want to formally notify members of the press but only at the appropriate juncture; I suggested Jeff Wise as one such person.

    Let’s see if this goes anywhere.

  41. Matty: Thanks. I’ll run it by him if and when we get the package together. I now have his email address.

  43. Yes, we are getting somewhere. It’s pretty clear that INMARSAT have been in no rush to get it out there, and that the Malaysian govt want nothing to do with anything and just want the nightmare to be over, and that the wall is breaking down. But what if CNN hadn’t pushed? And of course the impetus started with nerds like us!

  45. And I also get the impression that Richard Quest is more concerned with vindication of British know how than he is with getting to the truth of the matter. They’re funny like that – and also funny in lots of other good ways too.

  46. Miles obrien made some other great points on erin b show ….
    http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1405/16/ebo.01.html

    “O’BRIEN: I just have to say one thing. All this talk about ICAO Annex 13, subchapter, whatever. It is positively inhumane. Where is the humanity of Inmarsat and the Malaysians? Release the data, the narrative, the analysis, the algorithms, lay the cards out on the table once and for all. This is childish and inhumane.”

  47. INMARSAT have so far acted pretty much in their interests and nothing has changed. They would have released it if it was going to benefit them, which is why they haven’t. Imagine for a moment that there was a windfall involved, either financial or publicity wise, if they disclosed everything? I think it would be out the next day. It’s a display of ownership.

    From a Malaysian perspective – what if the analysis is dodgy? The fallout for them will be terrible, so they are reluctant to go there. Step one should have been independent scrutiny and the were in a position to request it. It’s called due diligence. They have been totally shocking throughout. Maybe this is what happens when a govt that is basically a bunch of crooks has to actually manage something.

    If you were about to implicate the rest of the world in a search in the middle of nowhere you would make sure of your facts right?

  49. Today’s New York Times report on the Inmarsat data release:

    http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/05/21/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-flight-370.html

    Read between the lines. Inmarsat is covering their tracks and diverting any criticism of their analysis to other participants.

    I am confident that the southern route determination will be discredited and deemed unreliable (but not in the eyes of the search effort).
    Unfortunately, I do not see anything new and definitive coming out of an independent analysis – only possibilites. Too many unknowns. Too little data.

    Littlefoot, Are you back yet ?

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