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”

  2. Official transcript now we can read Greg stones comments -I had referenced these comments about false positive pings and sea life.
    http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1404/19/cnr.10.html
    SCIUTTO: Let me bring in before I make that point just because we have Greg Stone, this is news, this idea that they’re going to look again at the data to perhaps refine the search area, you know, you know, the sense of these pings and how they use those pings to find a better direction as to where the plane might be. How do you read these developments?

    GREG STONE, CHIEF SCIENTIST, CONSERVATIVE INTERNATIONAL: Well, I have a couple of comments. One is, you know, I have not been privy to looking at the data on these pings. But I do know there’s a lot of — seem to be from what I heard in the news anyway, they were pretty spotty. And there are other things in the ocean that can create that frequency of sound. For example, there are a number of tuna that are tagged with special devices and they’re swimming around and they’re pinging away as well. So —

    SCIUTTO: To be fair, Greg, the investigators have said they have very good confidence that what they’re hearing from these pings are from that plane, from the black boxes.

    STONE: OK. Well, I’ll go with that. But I just do want to point out that there are other things in the ocean that make that sound and, in fact, that they haven’t been able to locate anything so far makes me also agree that, you know, you need to reassess and go other places. The other thing that I wonder about is, why do we only have that one Bluefin, autonomous underwater vehicle out there. There are quite a few in the world and some of them with better capability than that. For example, there’s a Remus class of vehicles that can go deeper.

    And it seems to me that we should be deploying those other assets. They exist. And they could cover a larger area. I mean, this thing travels at the speed of walking underwater so, you know, going back to the Grand Canyon analogy, can you imagine, you know, walking around at night with a flashlight trying to find something in that vast area? I would get two or three vehicles.

    SCIUTTO: And it’s a very good point, one that a number of guests have asked before, why not more resources at this particular time. Listen, all of you are going to have another chance to talk because we’ll going to come back to the panel in a short time to get us through these developments.

  4. @ warren and all

    All ‘experts’, with few exceptions, overstep and pretend to know more than they do know. It’s the sin of pride.
    Is there a cover up going on, or are we observing gross confusion and incompetence at every level? We live in an age of incompetence.

  6. I believe that Chris may be correct here; I can’t imagine how acoustic pingers placed on tuna would serve any purpose, although I want two for my twins. Thanks, Chris, I didn’t even see that until you pointed it out. How could Dr. Stone have made such a gross error?

    Regardless, the other Dr. Stone at Metron located Air France 447 by specifically disregarding the pinger locator data. Therefore, we can assume that the data that has been collected by the search effort could have originated from other sources. Double regardless, I am sticking with the remains of the aircraft being somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean until evidence indicates otherwise. I am going with the assumption that the aircraft was based upon the White House indicated such 100 hours after push back at KUL, together with the clunkier, more generalized aspects of the Inmarsat data set and its analysis (supplemented with undisclosed data/information).

    Littlefoot the plane would not be required to have communicated with the ground in a hypothesis where the aircraft was intentionally diverted to Malaysia for political reasons. Again, this is reconciled by it being diverted to Malaysia with the intent of political incarceration (i.e., the pilot would be jailed upon landing the plane safely and be transformed into a martyr of democracy).

    Incidentally, Captain Zaharie was a native of Penang, which would be the terminus of his base leg turn from IGARI. The intended destination under the working hypothesis, then, was either Penang (VPL) or Kuala Lumpur (KUL). Penang as a destination got lost in the weeds of the prevailing hypothesis of a catastrophic failure which would have resulted in the pilot seeking an emergency airport with a direct approach over water. No such direct approach over water was required. An approach for a landing at Penang, however, would most likely include a descent over Malaysia, while it could have involved a brief flight over water and then a return to Penang. Regardless, the Malaysians have been less than forthcoming on the flight path of the aircraft for whatever reasons, so we can’t reasonably speculate further here.

    Again, a conflation of the destination with the present location is a principle error under the working hypothesis.

    If it proves that the aircraft could quite literally be anywhere, then we are not going to know anything until Malaysia makes some assertions/announcements regarding the criminal aspect of the investigation, which again is not in the hands of the International Investigation Team but the rather the Royal Malaysian Police. I would assume that would at least need to be forthcoming regarding the flight path of the aircraft and have some idea as to the identification of the pilot at the point of diversion.

  7. Dang, I am writing too quickly to head errata.

    Correction: “Again, a conflation of the intended destination at diversion with the present location of the aircraft is an error found in many hypotheses in the frame of our working hypothesis.”

  9. @Rand

    At least from the reports I’ve seen, the White House/Pentagon apparently had an early indication of the disposition of the plane (in the water), but they did not put it specifically in the *Southern* Indian Ocean at that time. Taken at face value, it looks like their intel indicated the endgame without revealing the trajectory of the flight.

    http://abcnews.go.com/International/malaysia-airliner-pinging-indication-crashed-indian-ocean/story?id=22894802

  10. I understand that the Bluefin-21 “focused underwater search area” is 10 km radius circle centered on Ocean Shield’s second pinger detection (April 8th). As the search of this area is almost complete without success, media is speculating on the next steps. Some experts are suggesting broader searches in other areas, as if the Ocean Shield’s detections were from another, non-MH370 source, which may be the case.

    Please refer to http://www.veooz.com/photos/DH3XTN5.html and imagine that 10 km circle. Three of those four observations are outside of it. There is no way that 10 km could be considered a multiple number of standard deviations associated with confidence level of say, 99%. The focused underwater search area was meant to be a starting point for the single Bluefin-21. Defining a “less-focused underwater search area” with a greater radius would be next logical step for the Bluefin.

    Because of the importance of quickly resolving the final location of MH370 and beginning recovery, additional search resources should be employed.

    Detection range is a function of many obvious factors plus the general noise environment and perhaps some channeling effects due thermal boundaries, etc. (I’ve heard comments to this effect but don’t recall the exact words). These additional factors would have varying effect over time, especially as the towed pinger locator was moving through water that, itself, was subject to current.

    Thus, the probability of detection during a given time interval at a given distance was also function of the bearing from the pinger and state of the intervening environment, both of which were shifting as the searches progressed.

    This model helps explain the long gaps between detections. It also suggests that the first detection lasting 2h20m should have been given greater weight in defining the “focused underwater search area”. It also suggests the initial sector of an expanded search.

  12. @ Tdm, Rand.

    My comment wasn’t aimed at Greg Stone in particular. More the general conversation on pingers and the like. For instance someone earlier had mentioned the possibility of ‘pingers’ not transmitting when below the surface. Obviously thinking of radio tags. Just wanted to point out there is a difference.

  13. Tdm, thanks for the clarification re the acoustic tags.

    Luigi You can find a link to the primary source for the story (White House Press Briefing 4/13/14) below. Jay Carney White House Press Secretary actually did specifically reference the Indian Ocean. He then referred to “a piece of information or pieces of information” (implying more than one soiurce?) and suggested that the DoD may have more information. He did not refer the reporter to the NTSB or the US Embassy in KL or any other US agency, he referred them to the DoD. We can then infer that the DoD briefed the President on MH370 within at least 96 hours of it having disappeared, making it a highlighted matter of imoprtance in his morning national security briefing.

    It is by way of this 3/13 briefing that I have found support for the assertion that US post 9/11 assets and operational protocols were activated shortly after the aircraft was declared missing. To a lesser degree, there is a possibility that the Inmarsat methodology did NOT origniate with Inmarsat and is supplemented with other information. Again, the DoD is Inmarsat’s largest single global custumer.

    Work your way back through the prcoess of the “Indian Ocean” re MH370 appearing in the President’s morning national security briefing on either 12 or 13 Mar (the least intensive means for the White House to be informed of the same). When did DoD begin looking at MH370, when did it go from an SAR mission on a crash to a national security issue? Shall we say that the DoD began to look at it in this frame approximately, what, 72 hours after take off? Who set them on this path, and when?

  15. Ugh, more errata: the date of the press briefing in the first sentence of my longer post was to read 3/13/14.

    Re Malaysia being more transparent regarding their criminal investigation, perhaps something will be forthcoming in the midst of Obama’s visit, as there would be points won by both parties in revealing cooperation between the two on MH370. The Malaysians could then emerge as more transparent regarding the investigation and explain away the ‘delay’ by way of expressing that it was a matter of joint national security. On the flip side, sensitivities regarding sovereignty in Malaysia may stifle the conversation, just as revelations regarding US monitoring of global satellite communications could likewise stifle it. Perhaps both sides will merely express their condolences to the victims and laud the search effort. Regardless, hopefully there will be a tidbit or two of new information emerging in the coming days.

  16. @Rand

    The White House press officer’s remarks suggest the US might have had a heads up about the military radar track showing the plane heading west out to the Indian Ocean, opening up the possibility that it was there and not in the South China Sea as people originally assumed. The military radar stuff started leaking quite early, although Hishammuddin was able to muddy the waters for some time after. (Indeed, they are still pretty muddy six weeks later. Mission accomplished!)

    The remarks of the unnamed “senior Pentagon official” reported in the ABC News article are more interesting since they imply there was intel specifically indicating the plane went into the water, even though the same intel apparently did not reveal much about the location of that event (the Indian Ocean is huge). From the article:

    *******

    “We have an indication the plane went down in the Indian Ocean,” the senior Pentagon official said.

    The official initially said there were indications that the plane flew four or five hours after disappearing from radar and that they believe it went into the water. Officials later said the plane likely did not fly four or five hours, but did not specify how long it may have been airborne.

    *******

    Now, maybe those remarks reflect no more than a reasonable surmise: the last known radar contact had the aircraft heading west over the Indian Ocean, the plane didn’t land at any known airport and it didn’t crash into any tall buildings, ergo it probably went down somewhere in the Indian Ocean. OTOH, given it was known that the plane did not go down in the South China Sea but rather flew on, one might say that analysis jumped the gun — unless, that is, it was informed by intel tending to exclude hostage-taking or theft scenarios. It’s a fine point, for sure. But still, why did the official push the line that the plane went into the water unless there was some concrete indication that is what actually happened?

  18. Tdm: What are the implications regarding what you are sharing?

    Luigi: Thanks for the clarification re the White House and press announcements on 13 Mar. I goofed: I conflated “southern Indian Ocean” with “Indian Ocean.” Your pointing out my error spurred me to ignoring my day job and poking around the timeline of events a bit further. Somebody named Andrea was barking up the same tree on Duncan’s site today, and then I also read the ABC news link you forwarded, as well as the official press briefings once again.

    I also poked around on the DoD’s press room website, but only found references to information being provided by the DoD that Admiral Kirby “did not want to get into” (i.e., nothing there except the obvious). Kirby was also pressed in one session by a reporter regarding whether he was aware of any information not made public that was shared with the Malaysian authorities. He said, quite directly, that he was not aware of anyone at DoD sharing such information.

    The ABC news article is congruent with the question asked by an unidentified reporter at the White House press briefing on 13 Mar 1:20pm EDT. The reporter has asked “…there had been some reporting [from unidentified sources] that the plane may have flew for another four hours or so after it was last – sent a signal about where it was.” Jay Carney then indicates a that a “new search area may be opened in the Indian Ocean.”

    Regardless of whether there was primary Malaysian radar information informing the search, the question by the reporter re the duration of the flight indicates that he had a source (presumably a US official) that had access to the satellite ping data set and its analysis. This is congruent with the ABC reporting, and it may be the same WH press correspondent who posed the question in the briefing.

    Meanwhile, Malaysian Minister of Defence and Transportation Hussein reported on 21 Mar that “the investigations team” received the complete Inmarsat data set which included the six handshakes at approximately 12 Mar 15:00 (all Malaysian times this paragraph); he did not state from whom they received it. He went on to state, “The Malaysian authorities immediately discussed with the US team and the investigations team then sent the data to the US, where further processing was needed before it could be used. Initial results were received on Thu 13 Mar 13:30pm [but all agreed] that further refinement was needed, so the data was sent back to the US. The results were received at 14:30 14 Mar.

    According to Inmarsat’s website, they informed the Malaysian authorities on Mar 13 that there was data that could inform the search for the aircraft.

    The Malaysians initiated the search in the southern and northern corridors on 15 Mar, according to Hussein’s press briefing on 21 Mar.

    Conclusion: US analysts received the information from the Malaysians no earlier than 12 Mar 06:00 EDT. American analysts from an unnamed agency replied with their own analysis Mar 13 01:30 EDT, 12 hours prior to the White House press briefing held on 13 Mar 13:20 EDT. An unnamed correspondent at the briefing knew of the Inmarsat data set and its analysis from unnamed US officials (i.e., he knew enough to ask the question and referenced an extended flight duration). Likewise, White House Press Secretary Carney could have likewise been informed of the data set and its analysis. Therefore, the correspondent could have learned of the satellite ping data analysis being approved and sent to Malaysian authorities within the 7.5 hours that would have transpired between 13 Mar 06:00 and 13:20 EDT (with the assumption that people sleep). Likewise, he could have learned of the analysis (and its results) over the 36 hours that elapsed from the time the Malaysians first sent the information to US analysts.

    In short, there is nothing to indicate that the US actually developed the Inmarsat data set analysis, as I have been claiming (although they may still have!) As Luigi has pointed out, Malaysian radar may or may not have played a role at this juncture. Regardless, testing this element of the hypothesis was an interesting exercise.

    Again, we are left with the Malaysians holding at least some of the missing pieces to the puzzle, while they have now sent their preliminary report to the UN and asked that it not be made public. Matty’s shit storm will now begin.

  19. It’s really quiet here. But what can one say about the continued failure to discover even a shred of the missing plane?
    As to the US intelligence having a head start:That might be quite simple. I read at a Malaysian site (in English of course), that the US had Inmarsat’s calculations BEFORE the Malaysian authorities got it. The point of that article was, that it is unfair to accuse Malaysian authorities of delaying SAR operations. This has a ring of truth to it. While they most certainly admitted very reluctantly, that the plane had turned West at IGARI, it might well be possible, that US intelligence had advanced knowledge of Inmarsat’s calculations.The big question is of course, if they just didn’t question Inmarsat’s assertion about the plane having taken the Southern route, or if there was additional SI information like more primary radar tracks available.
    This article seems to suggest, there might be additional sources of information which might’ve made the ‘Ocean Shield’ looking at the current search area in the first place:
    http://www.news.com.au/travel-updates/search-for-malaysian-airlines-mh370-may-require-a-rethink-but-australia-wont-stop-looking-for-wreckage/story-fnizu68q-1226893413243
    Since so far nothing was found, the big question is of course, if the equippment just wasn’t good enough or if this alledged additional information was unintentional/intentional misinformation.

  20. @Rand, just read your comment after I posted mine. Unfortunately I don’t have the link anymore, but the articleI read insinuated, that it was the other way round: US had Inmarsat’s calculations before the Malaysians had them. Since we don’t know, what was going on behind closed doors, we will probably never know, and neither Malaysian or US authorities or Inmarsat for that matter will come clean about the correct timeline. But I guess, it’s safe to assume, that the US’s assertion, that the plane went into the Indian Ocean, was based on Inmarsat’s data.Again, the big question is, if they had additional SI info about the initial path of the plane, which made them so sure, that it had turned South.

  21. Another thing to contemplate re: ‘the plane is at the bottom of the Indian Ocean’. It was mentioned, that there was no registration of seizmic movements indicating the crash of a big plane anywhere along the Northern arc. And none of the four ELT devices went off. They fail more often, when the plane crashes into a body of water than on land. Those two facts – no seizmic movements along the Northern arc and no ELT signals – might’ve lead to the conclusion, the plane most likely crashed into the Indian Ocean….
    Or it landed somewhere along the Northern arc….

  22. @Rand, littlefoot

    Which still leaves us with the question of why the Pentagon official cited an “indication” that the plane went into the water, apparently long before the (controversial) doppler analysis excluded the Northern Arc. It’s not even clear that they would have had the two alternative arcs that early in the game — they may well have had nothing beyond that the plane was powered up for hours after it went missing. At that early time point the possibility of hijacking and landing in Western China or Kyrgyrstan, perhaps connected to Ughyur separatism, was still on the table. The raw ping data and all the radar tracking we have kinda/sorta heard about since would not have been sufficient to exclude that scenario, let alone indicate a crash into the ocean. (That line of reasoning is how we came to this blog, right?) So, did they jump the gun, or did they have some other “indication” that we haven’t heard about?

  23. I think the early indication that the plane went down in the waters of the Indian Ocean is probably that it was perfectly obvious to senior Malaysian and US officials from very early on who commandeered the plane and why, and that scenario is very poorly compatible with a secretive landing of the plane on the Northern Arc (or anywhere else for that matter). Because one news organization (the venerable if tacky Daily Mail) actually did some investigative reporting on this case, it’s an “open secret.” Because it’s highly embarrassing to the Malaysian leadership and none of the US government’s business, officially we all still have to pretend this is a big mystery.

  24. @Luigi, you might well be right. And the Malaysian authorities zeroed in pretty quickly on a criminal investigation.
    Tdm found a great link, which deserves to be reposted. Many might’ve missed it, because it’s the last comment of Jeff’s previous post:
    http://www.sarawakreport.org/2013/05/down-at-the-airport/
    This strengthens my pov, that this mystery started in the dirty swamps of Malaysian politcs and it might have been the plan to end it there. The airport and the Malaysian airlines (state owned) were the locality of a possible election fraud.It would be very interesting to find out, who piloted all those planes to Kuala Lumpur, full of ‘voting fodder’.
    Am I the only one btw, who feels that fate itself (or someone of more earthly origins)has a big grudge at Malaysian Airlines right now? Three emergency landings and one missing plane in a bit over a month don’t look too good for a debth ridden airline. An sabotage investigation is on the way as we speak.

  25. I don’t think this has been mentioned here earlier (forgive me if it has) but IF it’s true it could explain a lot.

    From: http://www.reddit.com/r/MH370/comments/230gri/do_the_pings_stopping_suggest_they_were_from_mh370

    “…a very loud broadband noise like an explosion (or heavy object striking the water at high speed) was detected on two different data recorders, one belonging to CMST off Rottnest Island, and one belonging to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty people near Cape Leeuwin, I think? at around the same time of the half handshake. Using speed of sound estimates it was possible to guess where the noise came from, and it was near the arc calculated by inmarsat.. Ocean Shield went there with the TPL – towed pinger locator – and viola.”

  26. @Chris, that’s highly interesting, but what is the source for the info of the captured ‘explosion’ or ‘crash’ data? If that is true, it would indeed explain a lot. That could be the kind of ‘good information’ Prof. Stupples was talking about in the article, I linked at 07:14 AM.
    I also agree with the notion, that, unless we believe in decoy pingers, the end of the pings at about the time, the batteries were expected to give up, indicate, that they originated indeed from the black box.
    All this sounds mighty good, but why hasn’t this bluefin found anything so far??? It would be one more piece of rotten luck, if the plane is hidden in the crevasse, which was too deep and prompted the robot to return early at the first day of it’s search.

  27. The problem is I don’t think it’s easily verifiable but of course the person who posted it swears it’s true…

  28. Luigi: OK, duh, now I follow you. Sources were indicating it went into the water on 13 Mar while the PM of Malaysia did not announce the northern and the southern arcs until 15 Mar. Thereafter, he continued calling the ministers of various nations, some in Central Asia. Now you have me wondering if Carney conflated southern Indian Ocean with the Indian Ocean. He did, in fact, reply with the ‘Indian Ocean’ (and it was the first time he had done so) when asked the question prefaced with the information regarding the duration of the flight. He could have been completing the basic communication structure of satellite – several hours – southern Indian Ocean.

    In general, it seems that things advanced fairly quickly from a ‘plane crash’ into a ‘disappeared’ airliner. On 11 Mar, the Wall Street Journal reported on the plane remaining aloft for up to four hours, while on the same day it was reported elsewhere that Malaysian primary radar had detected the aircraft. On 12 Mar, the Malaysian Air Force Chief denied that the aircraft had been tracked by primary radar, while the Vietnam minister of transport claimed 8 Mar to have informed the Malaysians that the flight had been diverted. All very obfuscating stuff on the part of the Malaysians.

    There is nothing really substantial that I have added here after you indicated the conflict in the use of the word water while continuing to search in Kazakstan. I simply wanted to go through it in the interest of due diligence.

    Sleep….

  29. @Chris, that’s a big problem for our discussion, then 🙁 , but again, Prof. Stupples was talking about sensitive information, which might have lead the ‘Ocean Shield’to the current search area rather than good luck. I guess that kind of info could qualify as ‘sensitive’. My big question would be: why did this take so long to get reckognized as important? Secrecy and burocratics might explain the delay,though.

  30. @littlefoot.

    Please refer to my “April 23, 2014 at 12:26 PM” post above for a more detailed answer to your question “why hasn’t this bluefin found anything so far???”.

    The Bluefin’s current search area is much smaller than one that would have a usefully higher confidence level (95%-99%) of containing the locator beacon (and MH370 debris).

    I guess it was a starting point, but if so, that fact was not communicated well.

  31. Have just re-read the Stupples piece again and I’m not sure where these figures for search area are coming from. As pdcurrier pointed out, Bluefin is supposed to be searching in a circle of 10km radius. Thats about 300 sq km. Mr Abbott says 700×80=56000 sq km and the Prof. says 2000 sq km. Take your pick.

  32. Sorry, didn’t mean to imply Abbott & Stupples were referring to Bluefin specifically.

  33. @Chris and pdcurrier, unfortunately the numbers are all over the place. The capacity of square miles per day isn’t clear either. In his latest tweet Jeff says 40 square miles per day, but that depends very much on the conditions as well. There’s again a lot of miscommunication going on.
    Then there might as well be an inner circle, where they started the search and an outer circle, which might get searched later. It will be interesting, how they will progress now. Will they bring in better equippment and continue to search the current area, or will they start from scratch and re-evaluate everything? That might be an indication of how much they believe in the current search area.

  34. If you reckon the Bluefin’s ‘cruising’ speed is about 6-7kph, something of that order anyway and, conveniently, its scans reach 500m each side, then that’s 6-7 sq km per hour. As you say, littlefoot, allow some for conditions, how many mountains it has to go up and down and it doesn’t add up to much. (Narrowly avoided Bogart quote there). I think they’re going to need a bigger sub. Doh!

  35. @Chris, lol!
    ‘Play it again, S..ub!’ Bogey doing the explaining would be great!
    Yes, get bigger and smarter subs, which can delve deeper. And give us at least a hint, why you guys were so sure about the current location! Tony Abbott, you were talking about results coming within the next few days quite a while ago! So, you either deserve an Oscar, if this is all a big cover up, or you had some pretty good info. People don’t trust the search teams less and less. They need to regain lost ground with better communication of their strategies.

  36. Correction: That should read of course
    ‘people trust the search teams less and less’

  38. Hello all , I don’t know what to make of this “report” I had not heard of this Russian report before..is it total fabrication or plausible ?
    http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Malaysia-Airlines-mystery-Singapore-Airlines-shadow-US-suspicious-cargo-and-other-theories-keep-kins-hope-alive/articleshow/32257782.cms
    “A report emerged from the Russian and European Union media on Tuesday said the US had seized MH370. Quoting a statement claimed to be from the main intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces (GRU) at Kremlin in Russia, media reports said Russian agencies were ‘puzzled’ as to why the United States Navy captured and then diverted the plane to their vast and highly secretive naval base Diego Garcia in the southern part of the Indian Ocean.

    The reports said the aircraft had been diverted by the US remotely with the help of a fly-by-wire (FBW) system that replaces the conventional manual flight controls with an electronic interface allowing it to be controlled like any drone-type aircraft.

    The GRU was keeping a tab on the flight as it believed that there was a ‘suspicious’ cargo on board, which was earlier traced to the Republic of Seychelles where it kept aboard the US-flagged container ship, the MV Maersk Alabama.

    The theory goes further attacking the US government by linking this cargo with the suspicious death of two highly trained US Navy Seals — Mark Daniel Kennedy, 43, and Jeffrey Keith Reynolds, 44, who had been allegedly protecting the cargo on board the US cargo ship. However, the deaths of Navy Seals was reported in the international media earlier. Also it adds that Moscow had alerted China’s ministry of state security (MSS) about the flight carrying ‘highly suspicious’ cargo before the flight.”

  39. @TDM this story has been reported for a month or more. I’ve seen instances of it suggesting the cargo was US defence equipment taken by the taliban in an ambush either earlier this year or late last year. No idea if there’s even a grain of truth in it but I did think it interesting that the weight of the cargo was put at the exact same weight as the mangosteens we are told were on MH370. It was also reported that the cargo was shipped to the Maldives (not Seychelles) and transported from there to KL on an Emirates flight. Again, who would know what to believe? You may have seen the recent comment on Ducan Steel’s blog that the satellite data that everyone is trying to untangle because the result doesn’t make sense was sent to the US originally then sent back again for more refining before it was released to the public.
    Another interesting comment on that blog is that they’re so sure it went south because there were two separate detections of a transient boom detected in the area around the time of the final partial ping.
    I have no idea what happened to this plane and all the people on board. Sometimes I wonder if it was shot down over the Andaman Sea and everything else is BS. Perhaps its time we all pick up our pitchforks and march on the palace to demand the right not to be treated like insignificant minions 🙂

  40. @Juanita, carrying pitchforks to the palace is a good idea, but right now I certainly wouldn’t book a flight with Malaysian Airlines for the trip. Lately their planes have a tendency to deviate substantially from the intended destinations.
    I really wonder, where this idea about the registration of a crash or explosion at the time of the last halfping by two independent institution comes. It really would explain a lot. But as long as there’s no source, we can’t put much stock in it, especially since the time delay is puzzling: Why, if this bang was captured by instruments, did they start the search in different areas first, and not directly in the current search area?

  41. Well this interview with Malaysian pm by richard quest (cnn)is well let’s say its nuts ..the pm is now claiming the radar did see a plane turn back but it could not be determined it was mh370 .but it was determined “non- hostile”. What a load of bull if you can buy this statement I got a bridge for sale.

  42. They Malaysians Couldn’t determine what type of plane turned back ,who’s plane, where plane came from ,who’s flying plane,but it’s determined “non hostile” plane .crazy logic.

  43. @ Chris

    CMST is a facility shared by two local universities. Golden publicity for them if they had solid acoustic evidence. Hard to see why they would not jump out with it. Also hard to see how they would not have heard something.

  44. Tdm: I watched a clip of the PM’s interview with Richard Quest; need to locate watch the entire piece.

    I am a student and practitioner of NLP and I can tell you that he was not lying when it came to questions regarding Malaysian primary radar. He was accessing/recalling auditory information that he had been told, and it didn’t seem as if he had a multi-dimensional view of the event (i.e., that he had seen the radar data, that they had a long meeting about it with various inputs, etc.). Furthermore, he stated – twice – that it was “deemed non-hostile,” the second time with an emphasis that halted the discussion. From a linguistic structure perspective, his “going back to what he said previously”, the emphasis, and the repetition of the structure “deemed non-hostile” indicates a rehearsed response to a forecasted query. In short, he was coached.

    From here, plausible deniability comes into play: he could very well be being protected from full knowledge of what transpired in Malaysian airspace, with a fall guy somewhere lower down in the food chain ready to be sent to the gallows should whatever less than savory truth emerge. Yet there really isn’t smoking gun re there intercepting the aircraft. It’s rather that whether they intercepted the aircraft or they didn’t, the optics are just plain bad. From here, let’s see if the same exact language structure appears in the report to the UN civil aviation authority.

    I don’t know if Richard pursued the question in another part of the interview, but notice how there was no reference to attempts to contact the aircraft. More importantly, as far as I can see, the PM did not volunteer that any Malaysian authority attempted to radio the aircraft. This needs to be explored further.

    Civilian airliners are now classified as potential weapons in most countries. In the US, this aircraft (off the planned flight path, incommunicado, etc.) would have been shot down within 30 minutes upon the order of the commander of NorCom. Other countries may not have as stringent a protocol, but they could be expected to have at least some sort of protocol for dealing with rogue airliners.

    In sum, Malaysia must have a protocol for dealing with rogue airliners; they even have relatively recent direct experience in this regard. What the PM is basically telling us is that this protocol, whatever it entails, was not engaged. True or false? This has yet to be tested.

  45. @rand Mayer
    Appriciate your perspective on his non hostile statement.in-guess it’s tough to admit guilt in shooting down a commercial aircraft. but I have no doubt Malaysians military is not that inept .here the pm admits THEY DONT KNOW IF IT WAS MH370 that crossed their airspace in dark my question that Richard didn’t ask was a squack code ever issued?
    http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1404/24/cnr.07.html
    NAJIB RAZAK, MALAYSIAN PRIME MINISTER: Now the military, the primary radar, has some capability. It tracked an aircraft which did a turn back, but they were not sure, exactly sure whether it was MH370. What they were sure of was that the aircraft was not deemed to be hostile.

    QUEST: No planes were sent up on the night to investigate.

    NAJIB: No, because — simply because it was deemed not to be hostile.

    QUEST: Don’t you find that troubling, that a civil aircraft can turn back, fly across the country, and nobody thinks to go up and have a look? Because one of two things — I understand that the threat level and I understand that either the plane is in trouble and needs help or it’s nefarious and you really want to know what somebody is going up there to do. So, as prime minister, don’t you find that troubling?

    NAJIB: You see, coming back to my earlier statement was that they were not sure whether it was MH370.

    QUEST: Even more reason to go up and have a look.

    NAJIB: They were not sure, but it behaved like a commercial airline.

  46. This interview is quite a scoop for CNN.I hope, it will turn up on youtube or somewhere else pretty soon.
    @Rand, NLP – would that be Non Linguistic Perception?. If I go just by the transcript, I tend to agree with you. The part about the plane being deemed not hostile sounds rehearsed. It looks bad, there’s no excuse for a missing reaction, and the PM simply falls back to a rehearsed answer. If he rehearsed it because of a cover up or because he simply doesn’t know, why his own militay radar guys were so careless, I cannot tell from just a transcript. But when he talks about his disbelief, that a plane to Beijing wound up ‘halfway to Antarctica’ instead, the wording sounds genuine. He might possibly be a crook and corrupt, but he’s as baffled by the whole thing as everybody else. And that strongly contradicts our theory, that, what happened to the plane is an open secret for Malaysian authorities.

  47. Does anyone else see in this interview the strong contradiction to all those leaked reports, that the plane was ‘thrown around like fighter jet, did a steep climb, only to be flown very low in high speed’. That certainly doesn’t sound like the behaviour of a commercial airplane. How could they have decided, that it was not a threat or not in trouble? Are those reports a load of crap, and if so, who where the reporters and their sources, or is the PM hiding something here, and that is the reason, why it sounds rehearsed? Maybe the preliminary report might give some answers…

  48. Littlefoot NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) is grounded is grounded in Transformational Grammar and hypnotherapy. It is generally not all that highly regarded, while I have found that it is quite powerful in therapeutic interventions, as well as in developmental, transformative practices.

    As for our working hypothesis and how it has been impacted by the CNN interview with the PM: our hypothesis remains workable, while some of its elements have now been tested.

    If we go with the assumption that the plane was intentionally diverted at IGARI for other than a mechanical failure, we must likewise make the assumption that it has a destination. If we assume that the Indian Ocean is the likely present location of the aircraft, then we must assume that the pilots were incapacitated by some means at some point in the flight, so as to prohibit their arrival at this destination. Given an intentional diversion, we must then assume that there was some sort of secondary intervention, internal or external to the aircraft that incapacitated the pilot(s) and sent it on its course to southern Indian Ocean. If go with the assumption that Malaysians did nothing while the aircraft was over their territory, than this leaves some form of internal causation for incapacitating the pilot(s).

    We have created our hypothesis in the interest of reconciling all of what we know regarding the flight. If we assume that the PM is indeed being truthful in stating that he is as baffled as everyone else and that this goes for all in Malaysia in authority and that nobody did anything, then we go with all events being internal to the aircraft, moving back up the probability tree to the various forms of internal intervention. I would only go with one (previously stated yet discounted) at this point: a hijacking at gunpoint with a later struggle on the flight deck (for which we have historic precedent in Malaysia). Therefore, our hypothesis remains largely intact.

    Working with the PM’s interview with Ricard Quest, we can choose: 1. The PM has access to all information regarding the flight, and it remains a perplexing mystery to ALL; or 2. He has been intentionally uninformed regarding all information on the flight. In the event of 2, there is the possibility of undisclosed action taken somewhere down in the military chain of command; or there was an intention of creating an environment of plausible deniability. There is historic precedent for the latter, so let’s explore this for the moment.

    We know that the PM is not supreme commander of the Malaysian Armed Forces, and thus knowledge held on the part of commander of a primary radar unit or a squadron leader or a signal corps commander could conceivably report up the chain of command to a level where the PM could be excluded from this same knowledge. If you think this is inconceivable, I would suggest that you consider the fact that Malaysia has not been all that forthcoming regarding, as Richard Quest has described it, “what they saw that night.” The PM could conceivably be in the dark as much as everyone else, with the exception of persons in a certain silo in the military up to a certain level of command. In Asia (a large generalization), it is generally healthy to avoid responsibility and not create turmoil in a hierarchal, community-oriented context. Westerners are much more “agency” oriented, and thus it can be difficult to grasp that protecting oneself by not taking the initiative is a large part of the game – or one gets slaughtered. Case in point: Anwar.

    Conclusion: The Malaysians are not being forthcoming regarding what they know of the flight path trajectory over Malaysian territory; this is a fact. The PM is avoiding this fact by way of making very general statements and closing off the discussion. Later, he could easily claim that he acted/spoke about ‘nothing’ in the interest of national security or the integrity of the investigation. In short, I don’t buy it that nobody knows anything more about the flight path over Malaysian territory. He is deleting from the information as he goes and sticking to the basic construct of “there is no reason to conclude that the aircraft was MH370, and no reason to conclude that it was hostile.” This is hardly a fully informed statement, and it just so happens to fit with the dominant paradigm that this is a singular mystery. It might prove to be; it might prove otherwise.

    Meanwhile, we have the last radio transmission to KL ATC at 17:22 and Vietnam ATC attempting to contact the aircraft eight minutes later at 17:30. Vietnam also informed the Malaysians on 8 Mar as to the diversion of the aircraft, which the Malaysians have not addressed. The last primary radar contact was at 18:15. Perhaps it is as Matty has said that the Malaysians were asleep at the screen for 45 minutes while the Vietnamese were ‘on it’ within 8. I will sleep in the bed that I have made: the Malaysians have the means of informing the early part of the flight, only they are deliberately obfuscating the facts. The question then, is ‘why,’ and indeed the easiest answer is that it involved buffoonery and negligence. Let’s see if ol’ Ockham was the pilot of this flight and if the simplest solution provides the answer that we are all seeking to the single most bizarre civilian aircraft event in history. Perhaps it was indeed a matter of freak chain of events at IGARI involving a failure of the aircraft. Perhaps not.

    Anywho, let’s see how how the PM addresses prior statements to the effect that this was a criminal act. Tdm, can you post the transcript later when it becomes available?

    There are very real, unprecedented threats to the political powers that be in Malaysia; The PM and his cronies have largely been in control of the country since 1957. MH370 could very well prove their undoing, without any sort of fantastical involvement on the part of the opposition. Rather, they are already damned if they are forthcoming and damned if they don’t, but they are really screwed if they fully disclose that they know more or did more than they are claiming. They are in tricky territory, and they are sweating. There is, therefore, plenty of motive for obfuscation.

    PS Is it not rather ‘neat and clean’ how the PM ‘s assertions that the Malaysians really did not see anything while the aircraft was over Malaysia fits into the larger frame of the aircraft ‘disappearing’? They would need to do very little to ensure that ALL remains a mystery. Only a handful of people would need to remain silent, and then within a chain of military command. Again, they would have EVERYTHING to lose. It only sounds like a conspiracy because in the West it is rather a given to be held accountable for your actions, and rank deviousness is something for TV law and political dramas (which we all love). Not so in Malaysia, where to hold power is to largely not be held accountable – unless the entire political entitlement system collapses along with you.

  49. Very interesting comment at Duncan Steel’s latest post:
    Read Mihail P’ comment at 4/25 04:27 AM.
    He pretty much claims to have inside knowledge about the acoustic ‘boom’ registered independently at two different facilities. He confirms it to be true. Since I plowed through most comments at this side, I’ve come across many of Mihails comments. I’d say he’s very credible and informed, and raised many good points concerning information, which did not come from Inmarsat’s data sets,aka who might’ve known something, which influenced the choice of search area, additional radar tracks, SI, etc.
    I’m willing now to give this news a lot more consideration, though the question remains (and was raised at duncansteel.com as well), why it took so long to reckognize, that this acoustic boom might be connected to the missing plane. Again, plain old mismanagement, semi-secrecy and bungling?

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