A hundred days have passed since MH370 went missing — and while air and sea search operations have been put on hold, hope springs eternal. Today, the BBC is reporting that Inmarsat remains confident that its analysis of the satellite data will lead to the plane, saying that the authorities never searched the area of highest probability because they were distracted by the underwater acoustic pings that turned out not to have come from MH370’s black boxes. Once a new search gets underway, it will explore an area that conforms much better to the likely speed and heading of the missing plane:
By modelling a flight with a constant speed and a constant heading consistent with the plane being flown by autopilot – the team found one flight path that lined up with all its data. “We can identify a path that matches exactly with all those frequency measurements and with the timing measurements and lands on the final arc at a particular location, which then gives us a sort of a hotspot area on the final arc where we believe the most likely area is,” said Mr Ashton.
Unfortunately, it will be several months before such a search of this new area can get underway, since the survey of the ocean floor will be required to figure out how deep it is and what kind of underwater technology should be used. Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Australian organization leading the search described a more complex and ambiguous state of affairs, telling the AFP that experts were still struggling to narrow down the highest-probability search area, taking into consideration not just the satellite data but also “aircraft performance data [and] a range of other information.”
What other information? Your guess is as good as mine. As I wrote last week in Slate, Inmarsat has by now leaked enough clues about MH370’s electronic Inmarsat “handshakes” that outsiders can now understand why, mathematically, the plane must have gone south. Yet we have not the slightest hint of what sequence of events might have taken it there. We don’t even know how it could have navigated southward. An airliner like the 777 doesn’t just wing off in random directions like a paper airplane; its Flight Management System would have been following a series of waypoints or a compass heading. Yet its range of possible courses doesn’t seem to match up with any particular heading or waypoint. (The last search area matched up with a flight route that tracked waypoints between the Cocos Islands and Australia, which is likely one of the reasons it seemed so appealing to authorities, but as we now know, that came up empty.)
MH370 looks to be a unique case not just in aviation history. No machine this big, no group of human beings this large, vanished so completely and so mysteriously since the advent of modern technology. What’s more, MH370 didn’t just disappear once, but three times.
The first disappearance, of course, was when it vanished from air traffic controllers’ screens in the early morning hours of March 8, apparently after someone turned off its transponder and automatic status-reporting equipment, and took a hard left turn. Based on the speed and precision of its navigation, the plane almost certainly was under human control.
The second disappearance occurred about an hour later, as the plane slipped beyond the range of military radar. Minutes later, some kind of unknown event caused the plane to transmit a mysterious triple burst of electronic signals to the Inmarsat satellite. At around the same time, the plane took another radical course change, pivoting from a northwest heading toward mainland Asia to a southwestern course that would take it over western Indonesia and out into the open ocean. Based on the slim evidence of subsequent Inmarsat pings, the plane seems to have flown in a simple straight line, so it may not have been under human control at that point.
Then it disappeared a third and final time, this time leaving not a single clue.
What has made the case so difficult to understand isn’t just the scarcity of information concerning its fate, but the superabundance of false clues. In the months that followed the disappearance, I had a front row seat to the flood of bad data as I covered the story for Slate and CNN. Day by day, new developments would come in from sources all around the world, and the challenge was to figure out which would turn out to be erroneous. What to make of reports that the plane had climbed to 45,000 feet after its initial turn, then precipitously dived (faster, it turned out, than the laws of physics would allow)? How excited should we be about the debris that satellites had spotted floating in the southern Indian Ocean (yet never was to be seen again)? How soon before searchers tracked down the sounds coming from the black box acoustic pingers (which turned out not to have come from the black boxes at all)?
The fog of misinformation was made worse by the Malaysian and Australian authorities. Faced with an ever-rising chorus of demands that they explain the search operation, they dragged their heels in releasing basic information, left simple questions unanswered, were slow to correct mistakes, and left huge gaps in the data that they did ultimately release.
The resulting uncertainty created a playground for amateur theorizers of every stripe, from earnest to wackadoodle. MH370 was a supermarket of facts to pick and choose from as one’s pet theory required. And the Internet gave everyone a chance to go viral in an instant. One of the more intriguing scenarios was put forward by Keith Ledgerwood, who posited that the plane had flown north and evaded radar by shadowing a Singapore Airlines flight. (The flight path turned out not to match the Inmarsat data.) Another that got a lot of play was the theory by Christian Goodfellow that the plane’s initial turn had been made because the flight crew was trying to get the burning airplane to an emergency landing in Langkawi, Malaysia. (Burning planes don’t fly for eight hours.)
Vehement passion was, alas, all too common as theories multiplied. I and everyone else who was publicly associated with MH370 was bombarded by emails, tweets, and blog comments offering evidence that solved the mystery once and for all. I soon formed a Pavlovian aversion to the name Tomnod, a crowdsourcing website that parceled out satellite images for the public to pore over. It was remarkable how many clouds, whitecaps, and forest canopies people could mistake for a 777 fuselage, and then proselytize for with deranged fervor. It always baffled me how people could get so attached to their ideas about an incident in which they had no personal stakes.
In time, though, the number of theories circulating has dwindled. With Ledgerwood’s and Goodfellow’s theories debunked, no one has been able to come up with a replacement that fits with what eventually emerged as the canonical set of credible facts. To be sure, there’s still a vast army of believers, waving their Tomnod printouts and furiously typing half-literate emails about ACARS data buses. But each is a lone voice shouting into a sea of skepticism.
Even the small cadre of independent experts who have come together to decipher Inmarsat’s data seem to be at loggerheads. Each has made a tentative stab at interpreting the “raw data” released by the satellite company, but the unanswered questions remain so numerous that the group can’t form a consensus about the plane’s fate. The officials looking for the plane don’t seem to be doing much better; recent reporting by the Wall Street Journal goes even further than the AFP report I cited earlier in portraying a team riven by fundamental differences of opinion as to where it should look.
A hundred days, and counting…
This post was adapted from an earlier version published on Slate.com.
@Tdm
The captain, in an emergency such as this, would certainly if his sat phone & radios were on fire would have had his other crew members, not to mention pax…cell phone calls would have been bursting from the a/c . While he was trying to recover and find a place to land? Then the turn down the straight….?
Summarily the BBC coverage is extremely disappointing – doesn’t compare well with Australia’s Four Corners documentary.
As I mentioned, the info at the beginning about the last minute decision to change the route is interesting; it’s interesting to hear, that IGARI seemed uniquely suited for a disappearing act, because officially there was no primary radar coverage – and it’s even more interesting that Malaysia had covered that area nonetheless, but was loath to admit it’s at first, and their hand was forced more or less by the US.
The interesting part ends here. Inmarsat is still as murky and vague as ever about how they figured the path of the plane out. A lot of wishiwashi vocabular like ‘incredibly complex mathematics was used’, instead of trying to come up with a straightforward explanation.
Malaysia’s role in all this is almost left out.
Maybe the program is vaguely informative for those not familiar with the subject.
For us geeks some valuable nuggets are hidden in the first 15 minutes. The rest is one big cheer for Inmarsat. Mind you, they might well have earned it, but the way, they relate to the public is simply awful.
Littlefoot – I could have told you in advance that a BBC production would be almost in honour of Inmarsat. As I think I already mentioned they seem a bit peeved with JACC for taking so long to find the plane. Notice the BBC narrative – it’s as if they HAVE found the plane. Actually all they did was come up with a computer model that they won’t share. You can’t do that in science.
Rand – I think Steele/Exner and co have rolled far too early. It’s still unknown how the modeled BFO data was cobbled together. It’s like they didn’t want to miss their opportunity so they went. They should be putting the blowtorch on Inmarsat but they have gone along, another reason to suspect that the respective intel services are no longer primarily interested in the exact location of the plane. If they were we would be hearing a lot less from Inmarsat. I feel like we aren’t watching the main game. Inmarsat running an outrageous sideshow.
Littlefoot – a re-pressurizing dip after you had taken out the whole cabin would be very ISIS like.
Chris – The co-pilot is fully qualified to take control of the plane, and this flight was his first opportunity to do so. Was he waiting for this moment? Either way I’m sure there is a consensus the plane is in the water and no threat. Did the Israeli’s relax their heightened/expanded identification arrangements for incoming aircraft? If they did it’s in the water and everyone has moved on to other stuff. Though it woudn’t all that indicative of anything in particular if it was all still in place – my reckoning.
Somewhere back there the actual search became a civilian matter. Inmarsat know that there are professional jealousies in play as well as their blatant commercial interest. Steele/Exner/Farrar couldn’t beat Inmarsat so they joined them. Modeling with modeled numbers hasn’t proven very successful with climate.
FBI-CIA now invisible, it’s all about JACC/Inmarsat/CNN and crews like us while the families twist in the wind. I think if the FBI were interested in data gathering flights there would have been a heap of them. Strange to watch.
@littlefoot
I’ve thought you’ve had it nailed with the Dark statement. “Accident” doesn’t hold water. The way point from IGARI through the straights…While the eye witt’s saw it doesn’t hold water with the lack of crash evidence.
@Matty
Really? Waited his entire life to fly an aircraft such as this, and on his first flight as an first officer, does this..I hardly thing so Matty.
Talk about, luck of the draw.
@littlefoot & Jeff
CAN we put any legal pressure on Imarsat? With 329 souls on board, a 777 missing, bring legal rights to bear for the families?
Chris – a 777 has much greater range than what he was probably flying previously. If it’s terror as I reckon just of late, it’s the range of the aircraft that was pivotal. People say there are much easier ways to nick a plane, but the 1st thing you need is a pilot. In Hamid they might have had one. Do you storm some cockpit or just lock the door behind you. There is also the issue of what was on the plane coinciding with his 1st unsupervised run – by design.
The easiest plane to steal is the one you are flying and have been fully trained on. The smuggling of weapons technology that Littlefoot’s article goes into will involve long haul airplanes and this was his first real time behind one.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aK4daf8MD.Bw
This is the only motive I can understand that fits the politics of today.
Hey Matty,
Storming was not one of ways used. The flt., eng & co-pilot went first. Be it with violent ends or tazed, then later finished. It would have almost certainly happened before IGARI. IGARI, this was the point of no return, either prison for the rest of his life, or doing what he “Thought” he was going to do. AGARI , was a trip wire, we’ll never know. I seem to think, it hastened his thoughts, given the blind spot or help. While littlefoot brought up the dark side of the pax..the dark side of the Co-p & flt., eng., are just as dark, but i suppose they were expired before AGARI.
I always thought it very suss that there was a flight engineer on MH370, he’s in the ISIS age group and he’s travelled on his own.
People have laughed at me for suggesting it but ISIS is a social media phenomena that was not factored in 3 months ago, and that even has Al-Qaeda worried. In Iraq they have torn up their passports and declared they are citizens of no country but the new caliphate. Social media is a separate reality, ever noticed how flammable and abusive people get there? They form their echo chambers online then take it outside. Taking the plane or attempting to for whatever reason was always a one way ride for whoever did it.
@Matty
The biggest problem with that is…. No one has come forward for the sick trophy. 239 souls & a wide body jet. No chatter, nor the explanation of political view/s , wants nor needs or demands. Just mystery from AGARI forward.
Accident? One would hope it to be. Explanation….well that’s the reason why we’re all here, confounded by it all. From every way point to every ping, why?…What happened?…
This flight has more “What if’s ” than any practical mind would allow.
@littlefoot
RE:Summarily the BBC coverage is extremely disappointing…
And, once again, I’ll ask….
Why not subpena Inmarsat? Or , at the very least, bring legal pressure for the families for full disclosure of the data? Are they too well connected to touch?
If it was an ISIS attempt to move military technology or hardware or even a plane then it failed. Tactful thing to do would be keep the head down. There is nothing much to claim. As for the passengers – well they just happened to be there – check out the video! Isis just launched a full scale offensive and took half a country and I don’t think there was a lot of chatter there either. They have moved on from a lot of their dumb ways.
On the IGARI waypoint: the flight deck Flight Management System allows the addition of optional waypoints that are not on the filed course of flight. This is to allow the pilot to make adjustments for weather, heavy traffic, no go zones and emergencies – and apparently emergencies.
I recall that there was some discussion whether the FMS had additional waypoints inputted at take off. If IGARI was not on the normal flight path to PEK and it was inputted at taxi/takeoff/climb, this would indicate either the captain or the first officer as being likely responsible for the diversion. Don’t forget that we likewise have both the deactivation of the transponder (ok, I could do it now) and the ACARS system (ok, maybe now I could locate the bus/fuse and pull it, maybe not). Regardless, coupled with the diversion taking place as I have previously framed as in the short interval between “goodnight, Malaysia” and “good morning Vietnam!”, someone quite knowledgable of the KUL – PEK flight path was likely responsible for the diversion. Not certain, but likely.
Two pilots, two most probable suspects; it’s simple math. Yes, a high jacker/passenger/crew member could have done all of the same at gunpoint, but the probability is much lower, which is evident if one teases out each discrete decision point, (assigning a probability to each) leading up to the realization of such an outcome.
@Chris Either of the pilots would not have need of a satellite phone; a cell phone would be fine. They do have a sat phone on the flight deck that is integrated into the passenger in-seat satcom system, but then both are in turn integrated into the Classic Aero system that also includes ACARS. Pulling the busses/fuses would disable the entire system non-selectively.
As for Inmarsat, I don’t believe that they could be legally compelled to release anything. Air disasters and their processes are codified in international conventions that precisely outline whom is responsible for what and what information can be compelled.
I have some new dope on Malaysian radar, now waiting for permission to disseminate it from its author. A teaser: there is no Malaysian air defense process for identifying an unidentified object as “non-hostile and commercial.” It either has a transponder, or it doesn’t, and the response to the latter is a process, rather than a matter of fuzzy choice. There are bugs in the rug of the basement of the RMAF that witnessed whatever events, and I bet those bugs can talk.
Then why not just fly the plane to..where ever? To me…this was not a terrorist plot, but a mysterious plan that went terribly wrong. We’re not getting the full story from the Malays either. I’m with you about them. For every unanswered question, unknown radar cross section works to their benefit. BUT…we will find it & by international treaty, a criminal investigation will transpire, and once the box’s have been recovered, they will be reviewed by EVERY nation with deceased citizens involved. By Int’l law a manslaughter investigation will transpire. As to when?….hopefully soon.
@Rand
How busy would he have to be before making IGARI. I’m supposing the co-p & flt eng., were offed by then. Are the transponder & comm breakers that available? (when having the time, please tell me why any pilot would turn the transponder off & why). This was a very busy cockpit, a lot going on to proceed to..??? The nagging question. WTF happened..Nothing at all makes sense…
Chris – I’m leaning towards the Curtin acoustic event being the MH370 hitting the water – this means the rings are wrong I’m prepared to speculate. It puts the plane well on the way to the mid east potentially in the Arabian Sea. Maybe not even the worst place to ditch it if you could retrieve what you wanted and abandon a plane full of deceased passengers? More likely they fell short. Bad fuel management or mishap? A lot of what is known about the psyche of ISIS has crystallized in the last week.
Rand – That points further to more than one person being involved and I can’t go past that by-standing Flt Engineer. Looking fwd to the radar stuff.
Chris – Worth remembering that for the terror angle the passengers are totally irrelevant. They wouldn’t get any more consideration than than they got on 9/11.
@Rand
RE:As for Inmarsat, I don’t believe that they could be legally compelled to release anything. Air disasters and their processes are codified in international conventions that precisely outline whom is responsible for what and what information can be compelled.
If that is true, it’s BS. 239 souls and a 777 wide body missing & not codified to be compelled to release. Such legal BS sickens me. Not viewing others radars due to national security, sat intel agencies holding back, all very sickening & disappointing from a human standpoint.
Chris-Rand –
Sickening indeed. As far as I’m concerned it’s still effectively a missing persons situation until we get wreckage and we have private companies manipulating things. It’s getting out of hand but pleased to see Inmarsat pointing the finger at JACC the other day. It means the whole thing is getting off script and maybe transiting from good publicity to bad. They wanted a much quicker result.
@Matty
RE:Passengers – Esos Cristos…
The thought of it is……no words.
@Matty
Point well made…Yeah…you could get more cooperation out of an missing persons report than you can a 777 with 239 souls on board. Simply incredible, from a legal standpoint that is.
No telling what this incident affects travel, but no wait, two Iranians boarding with two fake passports, ok….I’m back to reality.
@Rand
RE:On the IGARI waypoint: the flight deck Flight Management System allows the addition of optional waypoints that are not on the filed course of flight. This is to allow the pilot to make adjustments for weather, heavy traffic, no go zones and emergencies – and apparently emergencies.
I’ve run the emergency theory again & again. While I’m not a pilot, what emergency could have taken 6-7 hours? Eye witnesses that saw a plane on fire. The flight up the straights…while on fire? You try to give the flight deck the benefit of the doubt, and you come up empty every time. Flight management, timing, way points, and empty of the only thoughts we have. Taken…
@Rand, re:IGARI:the BBC documentary was worded a bit dubious. They said one minute into the flight, the waypoint SID was replaced by IGARI. That sounded to me like an overlooked bombshell. But when I checked the possible flight routes, I realized, that ALL routes from KL to Beijing include IGARI, and SID is apparently an additional waypoint they skip sometimes. That’s what happened here. They were simply told last minute to skip SID. IGARI was always on the menue, but now they must’ve touched it earlier than originally planned.
That said, it still might be relevant re: the timing. An outsider couldn’t know, that IGARI would be reached earlier. How then could a highjacker without the help of the cabin crew get the exact timing of the handover to Vietnam at the purportedly radar blind spot IGARI. That, amongst many other things, like the disabling of the contact systems point strongly to the involvement of the catain or the copilot – if the plane was abducted, that is.
@Matty, re: your statement: “Duncan Steel at al couldn’t beat Inmarsat, so they joined them”. Really??? Why should they? They set out to check, if Inmarsat could do, what they claimed: telling , if the plane went North or South. They concluded at first, that Inmarsat couldn’t do it solely with the info they had published so far. Then Inmarsat supplied additional info, and Duncan as well as many other independent experts concluded: Yep, ok, if it was done this way, it could work with the correct numbers. Totally normal process of evaluating incoming information. Whenever new info comes in, which supports Inmarsat’s claims, someone postulates something additional, which is totally unproven, like this statement about Duncan et al. Of course it would be nice to have more data and Inmarsat’s algorithms, and their caginess is deplorable, but for now we know at least, that theoretically it can be done.
Another thing: we really have to seperate the ping rings, which simply show the progress of the plane in relation to the distance of the satellite from the BFO charts. The ping rings are well understood and NO experts doubts them – unless Inmarsat made the numbers up out of thin air for some nefarious reason. It’s not even a new procedure. It was first used and eveluated in the process of finding the Air France plane. Inmarsat was involved, too. If we accept the ping rings – and all experts do, unless it can be demonstrated, that Inmarsat made up everything -, the sonic boom simply can’t have come from the plane. Unless Curtin scientists have the location wrong for some reason. Their findings are simply numbers derived from measurements as well.
As to Inmarsat’s caginess and deplorable lack of clarity about their calculations, I think I’ve found a possible reason for it in the comment section of Duncan’s blog. It might be, that by explicitly revealing how they’ve done it, they have to admit something, which is not to their advantage as a company with commercial interests. It’s like in a murder investigation, where you have to admit, you cheated on your spouse in order to establish someone’s alibi.
Despite my statement above, it’s worth pursuing, if there’s any residual doubts amongst experts re: ping ring calculations (note: ping rings – not BFO charts!).
@Jeff, have you heard anything supporting the notion, that the ping rings themselves could be misleading. This could only be the case, if the measured response time between satellite and the plane’s satcom was skewed or compromised for some reason.
Note: After all communication other than the handshakes was lost after the IGARI diversion, the plane was still tracked by Malaysian primary radar. So, Inmarsat had the possibility to check if their measurements after the diversion still corresponded with the actual position of the plane.
Littlefoot – The whole thing has zero scientific validity until it is revealed how they built the BFO numbers. Checking someone’s work is impossible until you know that, which is something they pointed out, but they ran their calculations anyway. The result is Inmarsat off the hook.
The rings as I understand them assume that the signal is mirrored back instantly every time, but as Arthur mentioned the satcom link isn’t a mirror. It’s connected to other stuff that was either malfunctioning or turned off, so there were some spanners in there. If the plane takes longer to respond to a ping it could give the impression that the plane was moving away from the satellite.
@Matty, even if we see things differently re: Inmarsat, I agree with you, that we shouldn’t totally discount the copilot. We know very little about him, but you’re right: he is in the right age group, if we’re looking for ‘ordinary’ terrorist acts. This link about technology smuggle through Malaysian transport ways really gave me pause. And I also agree with you: if we’re looking at a terrorist or smuggling act gone wrong, no organisation would claim responsibility.
To take out the passengers by depressurization of the cabin (IF that really happened) is a callous disregard of human life for the greater good of one’s fanatical persuation. Terrorists wouldn’t think twice and see it as a simple logical step in the procedure. It’s less easy to picture the captain doing this. But if he was responsible for abducting his own plane, something must’ve snapped in him, and many things are possible.
@Matty, you’re again confusing the ping rings with the BFO charts. The latter can only be deemed above any doubt, when their composition is revealed.
Not so with the ping rings.To throw doubt on them someone has to come up with a very good argument why they might be skewed. And it’s the ping rings, not the more dubious BFO charts, which rule out the sonic boom as the crash sound.
Again, Inmarsat had the possibilycto check their accurateness after the IGARI diversion against Malaysia’s radar positions of the plane.
So, if something happened to the satcom, which compromised the reaction time, it must’ve happened after Malaysia lost the plane from theif screen. I wouldn’t totallycrule that out, because something MUST HAVE HAPPENED there to the plane to send it off. I’d likecto hear a sat engineer’s opinion on that one.
This conundrum re: the ping rings and the satcom antenna shows, that the crash site of the plane can’t be accurately determined without learning more about what exactly happened to the plane 🙁
I’ve got the rings and the modeled BFO numbers pretty well separate in my mind. The satcom link has to integrate with other systems except in this case it couldn’t transmit anything much, but it might have been trying? It could have been racking up errors. I reckon down there at JACC noone is in any great rush to inject any more doubt than they currently have.
Just the last couple of days the terror thing has come back and hit me between the eyes. It could be the elephant in the room, noone wants to believe it. But the last few times commercial jets went off course like this is it was the T word.
@Matty, as I said before, the satcom unit must’ve worked just fine after the IGARI diversion and the turnoff of the transponder, since Inmarsat could check their ping reaction times against the radar positioning of the plane.
So, if something has happened to the satcom unit, which didn’t take it out completely, but skewed the reaction times somehow, it must’ve happened at or after the infamous ping cluster around 18:25. You got me concerned about that, Matty, I admit that. Because, if the satcom wasn’t working correctly, you can forget Inmarsat’s data after the plane was lost from primary radar screens.
@Jeff, again, can you ask around, if there’s any reasonable doubt about the proper functioning of the satcom unit after the triple ping event?
If there was a problem with the rings the search collapses, it would have to be called off right there. But they could run that experiment any time, and get some real BFO numbers while they are at it. I think they might be too scared to open that box.
@Matty, sorry, that I accused you of mixing up the ping rings with the BFO charts. It’s just, bthat so many do exactly that. Can we agree, that the ping rings are not unproven scientific territory per se, but there is a possibility, that the satcom unit wasn’t working properly?
@littlefoot & Matty
At the top of the page, with the captioned photo.
“We can identify a path that matches exactly with all those frequency measurements and with the timing measurements and lands on the final arc at a particular location, which then gives us a sort of a hotspot area on the final arc where we believe the most likely area is,” said Mr Ashton.
Do they or don’t they have it figured out? Also, doesn’t this imply a simulation flight?
Chris – and the hotspot is …..drumroll…..very close to where we started!lol.
Littlefoot – it’s proven science when they pull the finger out and test it. Problem might be they are just so proud of these numbers they won’t part from safety. Reminds me of a certain climate professor who said – “why should I, why should I give you all my temperature data, I’ve spent 30 years on that and all you want to do is find something wrong with it.” True story. He is the official numbers man for the IPCC.
@Matty, the ping rings ARE tested. That’s my point. First, they’ve done it before with the Air France jet. It’s nothing new. Second, they checked, if their ping rings agreed with the positioning of the plane according to Malaysian primary radar. So, the satcom unit was apparently working just fine up to the point, where the plane was lost from primary radar.
The big question is, what happened next? Was the satcom unit still functioning or is there reason to believe, that it got compromised in any way after the plane was lost from primary radar.
The problem is, that scientists like Duncan Steel and most of his group refuse to contemplate what could’ve happened to the plane, since it’s all unproven speculation. Which is quite true, but unfortunately it ‘s also essential for evaluating the correctness of the measured values. IF something happened to the satcom unit, you can forget all calculations.
It’s like when they measured at CERN, that some particles moved faster than the speed of light. If correct, that would’ve caused a scientific revolution. There was nothing wrong with the methods or the calculations at all. But in the end it turned out, there was something wrong with their clock.
Confirmation bias: this is indeed the demon that will stalk the Inmarsat data set and its algorithm until the aircraft is raised from the ocean floor.
I can’t recall if I raised this previously, but the brief period just prior to 18:22 where the aircraft was not detectable by the radar installation at Butterworth could be congruent with a post-diversion, secondary event that compromised the flight deck and initiated the disabling of the pilot(s). The aircraft descended to a lower FL in response to internal or external stimuli and later partially recovered under human control, the state in which it remained until 18:25 with the cluster of three pings. The ping cluster (initiated by the aircraft) was in effect a distress call; something had gone horribly wrong. Somewhere in the process and at or around the time of this distress call, a new state of homeostasis was achieved. This new state was a pilotless aircraft that droned itself out to sea on quite literally a mindless mission to the point of fuel exhaustion, out to a very lonely place in the wilderness.
So, what are the possible circumstances/sequence of events that transformed a human piloted aircraft into a mindless, pilotless drone?
I never really considered this before. It’s a 777: it’s not sentient or even close to being fully autonomous, but if there is an aircraft that would approach being able to fly and navigate itself in a rudimentary way, a 777 would be a solid candidate for the task. Commercial aviation is already on the trajectory where pilotless commercial aircraft will one day be realized. No doubt a 777, crafted by designers who have a clearer vision of this aviation omega point than most, includes some highly evolved yet nascent-stage technology that is congruent with this vision. There is nothing subjective about its parts; yet certainly there are bits of fuzzy logic built into its systems that begin to approach the human subjective domain, if even vaguely.
Which leads me to wonder: does anyone really know what is to be expected of 777 when it left to its own devices? I doubt it, but perhaps we have recently witnessed the ultimate experiment of capabilities that nobody ever really wanted to fathom. One thing is certain: man, can a 777 fly…
…apologies for the poetry. It’s late here in Shanghai; I’m going to bed.
Jeff any word on these packets of data .seems the first place to start to look for problems would be maintenance records and these acars reports ,to your knowledge have these been released?
http://www.theguardian.com/world/blog/2014/mar/13/mh370-no-sign-of-debris-detected-by-chinese-satellite-live-updates
“The missing Malaysia Airlines jet sent at least two bursts of technical data back to the airline before it disappeared, New Scientist has learned.
To aid maintenance, most airlines use the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), which automatically collates and files four technical reports during every flight so that engineers can spot problems. These reports are sent via VHF radio or satellite at takeoff, during the climb, at some point while cruising, and on landing.”
Now Malaysia Airlines has told Sky News that the Roll-Royce engines stopped transmitting updates when the plane lost contact, according to its correspondent Mark Stone. He did not elaborate.
Was mh 370 internal electronics security flawed and ready for exploitation ?read it twice!
https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2013/11/18/2013-27343/special-conditions-boeing-model-777-200–300-and–300er-series-airplanes-aircraft-electronic-system#h-15
“The integrated network configurations in the Boeing Model 777-200, -300, and -300ER series airplanes may enable increased connectivity with external network sources and will have more interconnected networks and systems, such as passenger entertainment and information services than previous airplane models. This may enable the exploitation of network security vulnerabilities and increased risks potentially resulting in unsafe conditions for the airplanes and occupants. This potential exploitation of security vulnerabilities may result in intentional or unintentional destruction, disruption, degradation, or exploitation of data and systems critical to the safety and maintenance of the airplane. The existing regulations and guidance material did not anticipate these types of system architectures. Furthermore, 14 CFR regulations and current system safety assessment policy and techniques do not address potential security vulnerabilities which could be exploited by unauthorized access to airplane networks and servers. Therefore, these special conditions are being issued to ensure that the security (i.e., confidentiality, integrity, and availability) of airplane systems is not compromised by unauthorized wired orwireless electronic connections between the airplane information services domain, aircraft control domain, and the passenger entertainment services.
For the reasons discussed above, these special conditions contain the additional safety standards that the Administrator considers necessary to establish a level of safety equivalent to that established by the existing airworthiness standards.
@Rand, the idea that the triple ping event around 18:25 was some sort of distress signal was discussed at duncansteel.com.
But they abandonned this idea after they had scrutinized the new set of ‘raw data’ from Inmarsat. Apparently the data aren’t compatible with a distress signal.
It has been mentioned before: it is now believed, that the triple ping was a system reboot. While it could’ve happened, we cannot conclude from the triple ping, that the plane or the flight deck got compromised in any way.
Ok, this is really worrying:
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/satcom-terminals-ripe-for-malware-exploitation/
In the BBC documentary an Inmarsat engineer said, when he first heard about the ongoing pings, he contemplated a possible spoof.
According to the article I linked above, that and many more things are possible. Inmarsat is mentioned, too.
Question: Could someone in the cockpit have manipulated the satcom unit through the terminal in the plane? Can Inmarsat distingush between real and spoofed data? Would there be inconsistencies between different sets of data as a give-away?
In the documentary it isn’t explained, how Inmarsat came to the conclusion, the data were for real.
Anyone knowledgeable around? Or someone, who knows someone knowledgeable?
An expert from reddit:
‘The satcom terminal was sitting in the cockpit without having power cut-off. That’s how there were pings.’
I said earlier, that a possible perpetrator probably wouldn ‘t know about the ongoing pings. I’m inclined to take that back. A tech- and aviation savy perpetrator might know about them, since it was used and discussed in connection with the Air France investigation. Is it possible, that such a knowledeable perpetrator would try to generate spoof pings by manipulating the satcom unit through the terminal in the cockpit?
I know, it’s a wild idea, but is there someone around, who can discount this possibility immediately?
I simply cannot get the sonic boom out of my head, since it was at ths right time and at a location, which would make a lot of sense – if there weren’t the ping ring data, which would rule the boom out – if we can trust them.
Tdm – great scoop! Does that make the 777-200 a candidate for cyber attack? Seems so.
Littlefoot – I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. I reckon at least, it’s well within the bounds of possibility that the funny business didn’t stop at the transponder and the acars unit. What has bothered me all along though is Inmarsat. These guys are a long way from stupid, but if it was your data on the line wouldn’t you test it against a 777 that was known to be working properly? Houston needs to order them out of the tent and into a plane. Would these young tech savvy ISIS punks extend their malevolence to the satcom link as well? They would be remiss if they didn’t.
It’s bothered me as well that this circus was allowed to develop. Somewhere back there it’s as if the big boys detached and walked away and it’s been degenerating ever since. We have self interest abound while a retired Air Marshall tries to herd the cats.
If the rings are out then manipulation is a more likely cause – I reckon. If it’s terror, and slick terror, the rings might be useless. Maybe Iranian terror, as they are doing absolutely anything to get US nuclear technology atm and Malaysia is the gateway. That’s been the Israeli hunch all along, and as Chris reminded us yesterday, Iranians without legit passports on the plane. Tdm’s article opens the cyber angle up again. Imagine being in the cockpit of a plane that wouldn’t let you do anything? No distress call, nothing. Like a magical mystery tour as long as the fuel holds out. Curtin?
What sayeth Jeff?? Could the next article right here? When the respective govts went quiet and Inmarsat took the limelight I felt something was wrong.
@Matty and Tdm, cyber attacks have been discussed and rejected from day 1. Most experts don’t think it’s possible. It has been discussed a long time before mh370. And the Boeings all have manual overrides. You can’t cyberjack those planes against the crew.
I’m more worried about the manipulations now, which might be possible from within the cockpit. Spoof pings are apparently very possible. Inmarsat even mentioned them in the documentary. The question is, could Inmarsat tell the difference?
How do you manually override a fly by wire plane? The stick is connected to a computer – just asking here? The Iranians probably didn’t think it was possible to sabotage their centrifuges either. But if it’s terror it was flown from the cockpit.
@Matty, I had to consult Wikipedia here (‘fly-by-wire’). Apparently the big difference between Airbus’ system and Boeing’s system is, that in a Boeing cockpit the pilot can ‘completely override’ the system, while in an Airbus the computer system always retains control. Didn’t have time to look up, how exactly it’s technically done.