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.
The times don’t match, I agree. And when the plane was seen, it clearly hadn’t crashed, yet. IF the sonic boom was mh370, the plane they saw at the Maldives can’t have been it. But did the witnesses really have the exact time of the sighting? I can’t remember right now.
IF, it did land at some point it couldn’t afford to be up there pinging away any longer than it did? An endurance much longer than the approx 8 hours would mean it refueled. That SCL would need to be disconnected eventually to give the impression it went down. Or…would you program a certain number of responses into your plug in link only? When the last ping arrives there is no proper reply. Line goes dead.
Yes.
Thanks, Jeff.
So, Victor has a theory about the plane having landed in Banda Aceh, and the passengers were unloaded there? Dead or alive? If they were dead , why unload them, if the the plane was about to get disposed in the Indian Ocean anyway? If they were alive, where are they now? You cannot hide 200+ people for so long without anyone noticing. Did they extract some important passengers and disposed of the rest of them?
Sorry, if this sounds incredibly callous, but terrorism is just that. 🙁
Hmmmm…some pretty wild idea’s since last posting.
Landed at Banda Aceh. Then where do they start..let’s see. We’ll extort China first then move on to the next 14 countries. Sorry gents, just doesn’t add up. If a terrorist org., did this, the trophy is far too large not to announce. If it did land, the pax are certainly deceased or we would have heard demands by now, as they plan to use the plane as a weapon.
IMO…murder – suicide
Chris – we’ve covered some ground alright, on the serious side, there could be reasonable grounds to conclude someone had a go at the satcom link IMO. Means we won’t find it any time soon. If the plan was a plane as a weapon there is no trophy, unless on the bottom counts. It’s gone awry.
@ Chris, I think, we are just bouncing some idea around and see, if there’s anything which might stick.
If this was a criminal act by some faction, and not the lone mission of a disgruntled pilot in midlife crisis, which has gone awry, there might be many reasons not to announce this: If it was a failure you don’t announce it. If you stole something which was on the plane, you don’t announce it. This mystery might have it’s root in terrorism, but it cannot have been a simple terror act like bringing down a plane or crashing it into a building. There must’ve been more to it.
That said, I certainly have not completely given up on my idea that the captain did it for personal reasons. But Matty convinced me, that the sonic boom at the right time but allegedly wrong location, combined with the fact that there was no sonic boom at the allegedly right location, is a strong argument against the correctness of the ping ring calculations. If you follow this trail of thoughts, crazy speculations follow in the wake.
If the rings are stuffed it starts to look scary – hence the expansive thinking. Is anyone confident the SCL was working properly, in full integrity? Not me, not now. Something happened there.
@ Matty – Littlefoot
Indeed a lot of ground & some very impressive intelligence brought to this blog. Thats why I chime in at times. My knowledge of the eccentricities of a/c systems & radar systems are nil compared to the likes of y’all, Rand Tdm & Jeff.
When would the perp have the time to compromise the satcom link, on the way the the straights? One would think he had his hands full enough already.
@Littlefoot Returning to your comment re my references to location data: my point is that there isn’t any location data per se, I doubt very much whether any perp would include this in their diversionary calculus. i believe that you ended up referencing the same thing. Perhaps I am confused and not following the argument; I have been occupied with other things.
My basic point is that after deactivating the transponder and the ACARS system and intentionally not answering any radio or flight deck satcom calls, the aircraft was effiectively cloaked. Hacking the SCL in an attempt to inhibit the discovery of a terminal flight the southern Indian Ocean would not be necessary. Inhibiting the discovery of the flight path to elsewhere could serve a purpose, but then we are pushing the limits in therms allowing for this level of ‘diabolical awareness.’ The only grounds for supposing such manipulation of the SCL is that the aircraft has seemingly ‘disappeared’ and no noodle on this planet has yet proved able to figure out what actually happened and where the remains of the damn aircraft are located.
As for Victor’s Banda Aceh landing scenario, perhaps its intended purpose is to test Inmarsat’s testable hypothesis (and even Victor’s own southern Indian Ocean conclusion). If such an alternate model fits the data, then, well, present location hypotheses are to be questioned.
It could be that nobody actually knows where the plane is located. It could be the keen desire to realize the location of the aircraft in the face of a truly transcendent set of circumstances is driving everyone to realize whichever location, despite the simple reality of what was originally labeled “a puacity of data.” Perhaps the search is simply stuffed and only blind luck or a whistle blower will yield clues to the ultimate fate of the aircraft and its location.
Regardless, I keep dwelling on Matty’s intuitive sense that there is something quite significant missing here, whether it be a terrorist plot, bureacratic momentum creeating self delusion at Inmarsat or the silence of the authorities. On my end, I have been drawn into assisting peeps in Malaysia in their efforts to investigate whether there is anything other than incompetence to be hidden away and suppressed. Meanwhile, each morning I am drawn to my iPad to check whether there is any sort of ‘holy shit’ event on the verge of solving the mysteries of where and how. Matty is correct: something fundamental is out of our awareness, and rings and push pins depicted on maps and backed by data and analysis provide me with little confidence. In deeper moments of doubt, I ask myself, what if the revelatory bit of information never comes? Creepy, and to imagine the NOK forever in pergatory, heartbreaking.
It is the subtle, existential nature of this thing that is drawing us all in close in contemplation.
@Rand, a very philosophical comment of yours. It’s quite possible that the plane will never be found.
I agree with you:if the plane ended up in the Southern Indian Ocean, there’s no need for faked pings. And your argument against ‘spoof pinging’ in order to mask a flight elsewhere (maybe the Maldive archipelago) is well founded. It raises the following questions:
Were the perps even aware of the ongoing handshakes, and is it technically possible to fake or at least distort them?
And if it is possible, why would they do it? People started to question the accident theory immediately. If they wanted the world to believe it was an accident, they failed. The only reasons to fake pings, I can see, is, to make sure of the plane and it’black boxes never getting found. The Southern Indian Ocean is deep and big. If it doesn’t get found there, most people won’t be too surprised. Most wouldn’t start to question if it is even there. But maybe it wasn’t so much about the plane not being found, but about to make sure nobody is looking for the plane in the correct area? Because this area doesn’t want scrutiny and attention? That could indeed be true for the Maldives. Nobody is supposed to know, who’s behind the abduction and what other activities are there. Another reason to make people believe the plane is on the bottom of the Ocean, could be, that it was at least planned to use it for other nefarious purposes This last argument is probably the weakest, since one can probably get planes easier than that.
I run out of ideas. Maybe someone else has additional ones.
It sounds wild and not totally convincing. But I simply cannot get over a boom at the right time but, according to the ping rings, wrong area, as well as a missing boom in the correct area. Especially the missing boom started to raise my doubt. True, the Air France plane crash wasn’t recorded either, but that was in a different area with more masking background noise. If Curtin U. could pick up this one boom, THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN ABLE TO PICK UP ANOTHER ONE IN THE ALLEDGEDLY CORRECT AREA AS WELL. But they haven’t. And I simply can’t wrap my head around this. So, if I consider the recorded sonic boom to have come from mh 370 after all, the ping rings must be false. Simple as that. And since this part of Inmarsat’s data analysis is well understood and pretty straight forward, I cannot imagine that Inmarsat screwed up the calculations. Which leaves the instruments to be at fault. The satcom unit could’ve gotten damaged or intentionally screwed with. Since it seemed to work just fine after the IGARI diversion (it could be checked, because until 18:20 the whereabouts of the plane was known through Malaysia’s primary radar), it must’ve gone awry just after Malaysia lost the plane from their screens. If this was just because of external damage, that would be another incredible coincidence. That it indicated a loss of the plane in the remotest corner of the earth would be another coincidence. And at this point it is easier for me to believe in intentional manipulation, however wild that might seem.
Matty – Littlefoot
Indeed a lot of ground has been covered & a lot ideas bounced around. I only chime in when doubting other ideas. My knowledge of a/c, radar systems is nil compared to y’all, Rand, Tdm & Jeff. This is when I become a thankful spectator.
Rand – Blind luck or whistle blower. With all of the what if’s, crossed wires & misleading info., or lack of it. It may just come down to that. Even when looking for AF-447, they nearly tripped over it twice, before finding it with side scanning sonar. An if mh-370 hit a deep silt barrier, will sonar still pick it up?
@Chris, most of us started out with little knowledge, and now we learned more than we ever wanted to know about all sorts of aviation techniques. We still probably know too little about many things.
I realized, that in my last and longish comment I tried a Sherlock Holmesian kind of argument. Wasn’t there something in the ‘Hound Of Baskerville’ about the hound which should’ve howled but didn’t? Anyway, I prefer this line of arguing: ‘If one eliminated the impossible solutions, what’s left, however unlikely has to be true’. And atm it seems impossible to me, that the plane crashed into the Southern Indian Ocean, and Curtin U’s hydrophones didn’t pick up a thing, WHILE AT THE SAME TIME THEY PICKED UP A SUITABLE NOISE, WHICH WAS MUCH FURTHER AWAY. So, I have to contemplate the possibility, that the ping rings are wrong, bowever unlikely that may seem.
I’m sure, researchers would tell me, it’s not impossible, that the plane crashed without making a recordable sound, but still…
@ Littlefoot & gang
If the acoustic equip., is that sensitive, wouldn’t there be two signatures? Ya got around 700,000 pounds hitting the surface, then ocean’s floor.
@Chris, exactly. That’s my point. The hydrophones picked up a faint sound, that could’ve been a crash in the area of the central Indian Ocean at a time when the crash could’ve happened, but failed to pick up something in the allegedly correct area, which is much closer to the location of the hydrophones. That doesn’t make sense to me. Hadn’t they picked up anything at all, I wouldn’t smart so much over this. I would just say, apparently the conditions were not right for some reason,
Everybody – Since AF447 ping bounce times are kept for this reason. It’s a policy adopted, and pilots, or anyone who researched/planned a hijack would know it. A westerly track takes you right under the satellite and out the other side you would need to mask this unless you wanted them to know which way you went. I think they knew what the SCL was and where it was and what it was for and that it was on. It also looks like it was off at some stage. How summarily and quickly did the Maldivian govt can the story? Noone wants association with the missing plane.
If it was terror the MH370 episode may have only been the build up or an instance of technology theft in which case there is nothing to crow about. Suspicion falls pretty quickly. Imagine what kind of search and investigation we would have had if it was understood from the beginning that it ended up in the Arabian Sea? Lots of finger pointing, lots of denial.
An Arabian Sea scenario is what the FBI might be investigating behind the scenes?? The investigation and the search seem to be on different planets atm. Nothing leaking out at all.
To me at least it’s no great technical feat to construct ping responses by way of a program. Especially if there is a port right there for the link. Your laptop just has to talk the talk with the cockpit computer and you can deal with that as well, many ways, especially a flight engineer.
@Matty, I think we agree, if this was really linked to terrorism, the copilot fits the profile of an inside man much better than the captain. Since he just got his licence for the B 777, he didn’t have the flight experience of the captain, BUT he would know everything about the technology, software, security and problems of this bird. He would be completely up to date. He could’ve researched and asked around without raising the least bit suspicion.
On the SCL and its integrity: if we back up a bit and simply state that the SCL could have been damaged at point in the flight, then all that is derived from the Inmarsat data set could be in error. Whether there was a secondary, post-diversion event or a catastrophic failure at IGARI makes no difference in terms of the relative weight virtually all have attached to the assumption that te SCL was not compromised.
Perhaps I am only stating explicitly what several have already alluded to: if virtually all hypotheses assume that various systems from cabim or flight deck oxygen to te ACARS system were compromised either intentionally or due to a spontaneous failure (fire, etc.). Yet, as both Littlefoot (ladies first) and Matty pave pointed out, if the SCL was compromised in any way, then we have nothing but mirages of ping rings produced from a bad data set.
So, let’s assume that the SCL was compromised and visualize how this alters the larger picture. For example, Jeff has pointed out that aircraft on auto pilot, as far as is known, generally follow waypoints and do not fly around willy-nilly. To include a straight line to nowhere. Likewise, whichever hypothesis/model has yet to reconcile the statistical unlikelihood of a critically damaged aircraft remaining aloft for 7 hours. The lack of a corresponding acoustic event detected by Curtin or the CTBTO. The shifting sands of the Inmarsat analysis and their projected org behavior, which does not instill confidence. The lack of any other form of corroborating evidence, whether it be a seat cushion or an a verifiable eye-witness account of the plane heading to or crashing in the southern Indian Ocean… All can be reconciled with one simple statement:
There is a significant probability that the SCL was compromised at one point in the course of the flight and that the conclusion that the aircraft flew south for seven hours following a straight line path is erroneous.
Ping rings and push pins depicted in google maps projections and NTSB charts do indeed give one confidence and the JAAC something to do. But perhaps arll are but shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave. The flight to the southern Indian Ocean did not actually occur.
Mr. Lam of REFSA in Malaysia has asked me to look into the (ACARS, I believe) transmission anomaly at 17:05. I have yet to do so, but if anyone can share some perspective on the 17:05 data, it would be appreciated.
Do we trust this, after everything. More about the simulator, Indian Ocean landings?
http://www.watoday.com.au/world/mh370-pilot-the-chief-suspect-in-case-of-foul-play-20140622-zshu4.html
Ugh, what I meant to state was that the aircraft could still not have headed to the SIO or at least that a small measurement error could be producing erroneous location information.
As for our testable hypothesis, would a damaged SCL support or erode it?
Rand – what I know for sure: If the Curtin boom is MH370, Inmarsat’s Chris – that plane went south McLaughlin – is going to be tap-dancing. Not for being wrong, but for not sharing.
A damaged SCL could mean anything.
A better link
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/aviation/suspicion-falls-again-on-malaysia-airlines-flight-370s-captain-zaharie-shah/story-e6frg95x-1226962734150
The investigators found that Zaharie had programmed a flight simulator in his home with drills rehearsing a flight far out into the southern Indian Ocean and a landing on an island with a short runway. These were deleted but computer experts were able to retrieve them.
What’s wrong with this paragraph? There ARE no remote airstrips out in the SIO. All you have really is the Maldives. Woe betide any person who says it didn’t head south!!! And he had no social commitments lined up.
Littlefoot,
Last week Matty and I were suggesting that the handshake responses from the plane may be delayed by the fact, recently revealed, that the transmitter adjusts its frequecy to conpensate for the plane’s velocity so that the sattelite receives a signal within its frequency band. We do not know how this is programed. Does it make an adjustment every minute, every millisecond, or does it wait for a request before it updates the data it needs from the flight control system? A delay as little as a fraction of a millisecond will throw the distance calculation way off.
Now, to my great suprise, it is being suggested that the satcom system can be tampered with from the flight deck, and you have gone in a few days from saying we are wasting our time trying to challenge the ping ring calculations to seriously thinking the data has been compromised. And I think of you as a very sober individual! Even Jeff is now reconsidering alternatives to the southern wipeout.
We really need someone with sufficient technical knowledge to step in here and say if it is really possible to reprogram, in flight, the handshake responses.
If it is possible, the pilot would have know how to do it. He was obsessed with flyng. He knew everything about a triple seven down to the smallest detail.( I have a feeling that the regular contributors to this forum know quite a lot about obsession. You just keep digging.)
There was a report in the Malaysian press a while back quoting an airport security officer saying that when the pilot arrived at the airport he was not his usual cheery self. He was very formal and saluted the officer, which he never did before. He arrived in his BMW, not his custom, which his wife drove back home. So something was in his head that night. But what?
It is very important that the pilot, and copilot, be assumed innocent of any malfeasance until and unless a strong case can be made against them.
I was taught a bitter moral lesson in Saudi Arabia back in 1969 when I lent my voice to the defaming of a hapless Jordanian who was running a supermarket in Dhahran. He was accused, by the mother, of kidnapping a small infant. He was arresred and tortured. It turned out he was innocent and there was no kidnapping. (It’s a long story.) Of all the regrets in my life, this is the only one I deeply regret.
A recent article in The New York Times, June 18, from Canberra, quotes McLaughlin as saying the Inmarsat data was given to four independent groups for analysis: Boeing, the french Thales corp, a group in Mayaysia and one in Australia. I assume they only gave them enough information to check their calculations given their assumptions but not enough to check their assumptions. Boeing would be in the best position to evaluate the data, but they have no interest in rocking the boat. Best for them if the plane is never found, given the enormous potential liability issues. And Boeing is not free of incompetence. How they could decide to use lithium batteries on the new Dreamliner, and insist on continuing to use them after two fires, is beyond me. They solved the problem by putting a fire shield over the battery, with a vent pipe !
The article also says the official search area is being moved southwest, to an area that has already been carefully searched for debris. This is south of the area suggested by Duncan and Company, and far from the Curtin sonic boom area. A private company, Fugro Survey, will do a three month survey of the ocean floor, and that’s it. I think the absence of debris, after so much effort to find some, is a big issue. There are parts of the aircraft which will never sink.
I recommend everyone reread Rand Mayer’s post on June 20, 10:35am. It is a beautifully written summary of why Inmarsat’s data cannot be trusted. I have been arguing since my first post on April 1, when I discussed geostationary satellite orbits and frames of reference, that a good Doppler analysis is near impossible. Now it looks like everything needs to be thrown out the window.
As Matty has said, why was this circus allowed to develope ? It smells all wrong. Boeing 777s just don’t disappear.
Let’s hope Rand’s prediction of a leak from The Royal Malaysian Air Force is correct.
And new radar information is forthcoming.
None of us wants to believe that this aircraft flew south into oblivion.
Arthur T – In the case of the rings they are measuring millionths of a second. Nothing much needs to go wrong there. Littlefoot’s excellent link back there outlines the hackability of most SCL’s. I just reckon it would be easier to substitute the unit altogether. We have had planes go missing without trace before but we haven’t itemized every rubbish patch from space before.
The story above just out today is odd also. It contains stuff that has been denied before but now it’s back. They seem to be throwing Shah under the bus? Is there about to be some big disclosure? If it had been confirmed that he was messing around with short Indian Ocean landing strips on his simulator before now – instead of rumoured? But I’m sure the tech savvy Shah would know what to do in the event of the SCL and covering the tracks.
The search has been mindbending. A wobbly satellite, cockpit shenanigans, manipulation of publicity, politics – it might be finally heading somewhere.
Arthur,
thanks for calling me sober. I started to doubt that the last couple of days. But we all keep trying 😉
I’m in Amsterdam atm on my way to NY.
Hopefully our plane will make it safely.
Great talking to you guys.
Sabine
Malaysian police deny latest media reports – in a way. “We have not made any statement.”
Sunday reading ——obviously Inmarsat doesn’t trust someone and is giving themselves an out actually very clever…..
http://www.runwaygirlnetwork.com/2014/05/27/inmarsat-confident-mh370-data-correct-assuming-it-hasnt-been-spoofed/
“Inmarsat confident MH370 data correct assuming it wasn’t spoofed
Inmarsat says it is confident the satellite communications data it submitted to Malaysian authorities probing the disappearance of MH370 is accurate assuming that the data was not “spoofed”.
“We are very confident that this data is correct assuming that there is no other way this data has been spoofed in any way”, said Inmarsat VP Aviation David Coiley at a recent APEX Technology Committee meeting in California. He stressed that Inmarsat strongly believes that spoofing did not occur.
http://www.runwaygirlnetwork.com/2014/05/27/inmarsat-confident-mh370-data-correct-assuming-it-hasnt-been-spoofed/
Matty,
Do you have an example of a commercial aircraft that crashed in the ocean without leaving a debris field? A small plane yes, but a 270 ton giant with a wing span of 200ft?
I supppose it is possible to land a 777, under power and control, on a dead calm sea and have it sink without breaking up.
A while back I asked if anyone knew the ocean conditions in the focus area of the South Indian Ocean on the morning of March 8, but nobody replied.
Arthur – the further south you go the worse it gets. If they are heading back down there I reckon we could forget any thought of a smooth belly. Where the pings were, in March, you do get some calm weather as the search footage suggested.
Only from a bit of reading I happened on a couple of claimed episodes of no wreckage but they were ages ago and there was nowhere near the intensity of searching. Also plausible that they were cases where the crash location was never really known.
These latest media reports are a quandry. Malaysians haven’t said it’s untrue, only that it’s not official. It’s either a good leak or a bad one, but the remote airstrip aspect has always been floating around. Interesting part is the Maldives have about a dozen airports for about 300,00 people and they are generally deserted and most on the short side for a 777 – definitely something you would practice. If the simulator thing is accurate it’s ominous as the Curtin boom would be right in focus.
Perhaps the leak concerning the focus of the RM police in Captain Zaharie is a prelude to a formal announcement. This does appear to be the MO of the Malaysian authorities, whether the leaks are orchestrated or the authorities simply have a pattern of attempting to get out in front of the leaks.
As for the relevant information provided in the media reports that were developed around the leaks, thus far I have only found that Captain Zaharie is considered a suspect based upon his having an air strip on an undisclosed island previously programmed into his flight simulator. I would suggest that this is not enough to confirm his as the perp for the diversion. Moreover, my guess would be that he yet remains a suspect and that the police pursued their investigation by way of contacting third parties attempting to corroborate the significance of what was found in the flight simulator. These third parties reported on the contact and thus did Captain Zaharie morph from being ‘a suspect’ into ‘the suspect.’ In other words, it is probably a line of investigation, rather than a conclusion; media outlets simply reported it as the latter.
On FMS systems and the issue of auto-pilot navigation, Brian Anderson, a commercial pilot whom I believe has 777 experience, stated on DSteel.com that aircraft continue on a straight line, great circle path when they exhaust programmed way points. If this is indeed the case, the fly by wire system would most likely have proved able to maintain a reasonable flight path to a terminus in the southern Indian Ocean.
Thanks, Arthur. Your strokes are appreciated, although my writing could always use another good edit.
All we really need from here is some additional data or information confirming an intentional diversion to get crowd-probing back on track. The elevation of the Investigation Group (IG), as it is now called on DSteel.com has increasingly more people going with a catastrophic malfunction at IGARI. I honor their work and do realize that it is purely data driven, and then focused on locating the aircraft; this is indeed essential and the most likely route to answers. That said, my contact with the Malaysians is providing me with the sense that, if the aircraft was intentionally diverted and there is additional information regarding ‘what happened’ in possession of various people in Malaysia, the decrease in pressure being applied to the authorities may encourage whomever not to step forward.
Incidentally, the internal line of inquiry in Malaysian appears to be now focused on deviations in standard operating procedure and identifying whom is responsible. This makes sense, as it will help to reveal whatever there is to reveal without engaging in accusations.
Rand – The guy who wrote it has a name for being less than adhered to the facts according to a journo I’m related to, but out of the blue like that after it had well and truly ebbed, some of it sounds kinda right. My first thought was are we about to get something formal soon.
Matty – I sure hope it falls that way and we do hear of new developments in the case, soon.
Also, thus far, we don’t have all that much in the way of evidentiary support of a two-event/two-phased flight path, other than it is impossible to reconcile an intentional diversion for reasons other than a mechanical failure with a ghost/fly-by-wire flight south. Nothing has yet emerged to discount this model, but then nothing substantial has confirmed it, either. Regardless, if someone in authority pulls the trigger on confirming an intentional diversion, then all hell should break loose and renewed focus will be brought to bear on the ‘how’ of the flight. As it is, my guess is that we will now see the two-phased flight path with its triple disappearing aircraft gaining considerable traction, regardless of whether Captain Zaharie is formally implicated as the chief suspect.
Perhaps our best social indicator in this regard will be the core of the IG at dsteel.com. If they flip over into processing events with a pivot around an intentional diversion, they would only do so with substantial supporting evidence.
I said the other day that the search and the investigation could be occurring on separate planets. If, the Island airstrip/simulations are legit, and the finger is on Shah, it tends to point west. Curious aspect to the story was the “southern indian ocean airstrips”. Where? That’s why they were all declared deceased in the 1st place. There was no prospect of the plane landing and I doubt very much it did either way but at least it’s a motive. If, there was a westerly track, announcing it will be interesting. Might want to tell JACC first – and of course Inmarsat.
I floated our boat at dsteel.com once again. This was in reply to Johan who advanced the reports appearing re Captain Zaharie where quite recently he argued for a mechanical failure at IGARI. The jury is still out, of course, on what happened at IGARI, but the process of considering the implications, likewise naturally, is informative.
“Re the media coverage that has emerged around a supposed leak concerning Captain Zaharie: there is no need for you to play whackaself and eat humble pie so soon. As Mark has so ably demonstrated, any “line of inquiry with a potential suspect” can very easily be translated by the media into “confirmation of a primary suspect”. That said, if an intentional diversion at or near IGARI is indicated, attentions will need to turn to reconciling the intentional diversion with the terminal flight to the southern Indian Ocean, that latter of which appears most likely to have been on auto-pilot without human input.
The central question arising, then, would be where and how was the flight deck compromised post diversion at IGARI and the terminal flight trajectory initiated?
Kudos to all of you here and especially the core members of the IG for your tenacity and dedication, as well as your personal service.
Regards,
Rand”
The data spoofing question has only been brought to light by Inmarsat to protect there interests, i surmise.I see this as a calculated decision by a corporation to protect there integrity .i am guessing it probably involved a meeting of Inmarsat execs. this mention of spoofing is not a off the cuff comment it’s calculated protection..
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http://www.runwaygirlnetwork.com/2014/05/27/inmarsat-confident-mh370-data-correct-assuming-it-hasnt-been-spoofed/
“We are very confident that this data is correct assuming that there is no other way this data has been spoofed in any way”, said Inmarsat VP Aviation David Coiley at a recent APEX Technology Committee meeting in California. He stressed that Inmarsat strongly believes that spoofing did not occur.
Looks like my comments about Captain Jaharie were timely.
If a reputation is defamed, it is virtually impossible to restore it. There are many many examples. If course the media doesn’t care, and neither does the Malaysian government if they need to throw Jaharie under the bus.
So he will go from ‘a suspect’ to ‘the suspect’ to ‘guilty’, in absentia, along with his aircraft.
Tdm – Inmarsat covering their bums alright. The possibility that there could be an issue with the data has obviously entered their head. As I understand the investigation holds the view that the ping cluster is a reboot. That means some kind of interference right? I could understand a clued up pilot turning it off(SCL) – but back on again? Be afraid.
Also – Littlefoot’s article – “Satcom terminals ripe for malware exploitation” – came out a few weeks earlier than the Inmarsat bum covering. They are banking on it not being the case – something about Pluto?
Arthur – In Malaysia throwing Zaharie Shah under the bus is purely logical – he’s an opponent of the govt.
Get this –
http://www.watoday.com.au/world/new-mh370-search-plan-is-based-on-farther-controlled-flying-20140624-zsjjv.html
Radar data under the bus too. It’s the Inmarsat express.
Presumably there is a preparedness to compare the radar data with actual flights. Why not do the same for Inmarsat? The politics of MH370 is very bothering.
@Matty I don’t really understand why MAS is not hosting a flight simulation, either. The only reason that I can think of is that they are in the dark regarding a holistic view of the Inmarsat analysis as anyone else. Inmarsat is keeping things to themselves, this is clear; perhaps its universal with only the NTSB, AAIB and the ATSB being fully privy to the algorithm. They have run simulated flights, so perhaps there is also a bit of hubris on the part of the Inmarsat engineers thrown in.
Your dogged persistence and that of Littlefoot’s got me noodling a satcom antennae or transmitter failure once again. What we know is that the Inmarsat data set was corroborated by Malaysian primary radar data and then some assumptions were developed that assisted in extrapolating the flight path from the Straights of Malacca straight through to the time of termination of any ping data.
Taking a step back, we could say that the last radar detection at 18:22 and the cluster of three pings beginning at 18:25 is either purely coincidental or perhaps an indication that there is more primary radar data available (either Malaysian or Indonesian). What if we simply take another step back and look at the larger picture as if either were irrelevant? What if we were to look at things rather as that there was radar data corroborating the Inmarsat data set during its progress over Malaysia, and then there wasn’t any such corroborating data. Meanwhile, we have the three-ping cluster, which for the moment is being looked upon as indicative of the satcom unit rebooting itself for whatever reason.
Thus, we have primary radar data corroborating the Inmarsat data set; followed by a period of instability in the satcom transceiver; followed by THE ASSUMPTION that the satcom transceiver was restored to proper working order and continued to enable the handshake signals to and from the aircraft.
Which begs the question: is this not a dangerous assumption? If there was a secondary event post-diversion that compromised the flight deck, likewise could not the satcom transceiver/antenna have sustained damage in the process? The end result would be data misinterpreted based upon the assumption of the alignment/performance of factory installed gear when in fact such had been compromised, either by accident or by design?
I believe that this is what you have been driving at, is it not? I guess it is the gist of what I have been trying to convey, too.
An inexplicable three ping cluster acknowledged as a systems reboot, yet the assumption that ‘all be good’ with the data set post-ping cluster. Hmm…
Below, a garbled NYT article that basically claims (without a direct quote from anyone) that the aircraft flew with “controlled flight” all the way to the terminus. I don’t know if this is an actual assumption of the JAAC and perhaps it will only impact the search parameters by way of blocking off a few thousand extra kilometers to make room for a glide path. Regardless, one hopes that it does direct the investigation into biasing the investigation towards a suicide mission to the southern Indian Ocean – or an attempted landing on distant atoll. This are possibilities and are to be given their due, but Malaysian can better inform this mystery, and this would only provide them with the out of the “ultimately inexplicable,” with whatever crazy noodle at the controls. It IS the perfect out for them. I hope to god that they are not prioritizing such low probability crap and intentionally feeding it into the Messaging Mix, so as to, as you said, throw Zaharie under the bus and be done with the criminal investigation. Yikes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/24/world/asia/new-search-plan-for-malaysia-airlines-flight-370-is-based-on-farther-controlled-flying.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpHeadline&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
Rand – Back when I started to rebel against the rings the idea I had was some kind of malfunction with the SCL. If it was working away with a lot of the other comms apparatus switched off it may have been a bit confused. Presumably it isn’t used to be pinging away by itself. It’s meant to be conveying info from the flight system, and if there is none? Does it wait for a split second? Is it delayed? Does it have a minor spasm? Does it accumulate errors?
Then we eventually joined a few dots re the cluster. As Arthur points out the delay only has to be very minimal. The likelihood that it was indeed switched off though has me ready to ditch the rings. The SCL could have been corrupted quite easily, deliberately or otherwise. Computers don’t get faster, only slower.
Also, if you take the handshake and break it down to the various components – signal travel – cockpit processing – signal travel, how variable is the processing component anyway? I suspect noone even knows. It could fluctuate depending on a raft of factors. Ideally you want to be measuring the signal time only but that’s unlikely to be the case.
@Matty @Aruthur OK, I think we have quite clearly stated in a number of ways how the validity of the ping ring data and its analysis could have been compromised. Let’s see what happens here.
As for the “controlled flight” to a terminus in the southern Indian Ocean, it will be interesting to see if the JAAC has made this conclusion partially based being informed of evidence from the criminal investigation indicating that the aircraft was intentionally diverted. If so, then they may perhaps be incorrectly assuming that the aircraft was intentionally diverted and THEREFORE it remained under human-input flight control for the duration of the flight. They would still need to reconcile the diversion with a rather unlikely ‘destination’: the suspected location of its terminus in the southern Indian Ocean. The easiest route to resolving this bit of a fix? Whomever piloted the plane was crackers, either suicidal or diabolically evil, but insane.
Yet we know that a ‘loosely-bolted pilot’ conclusion could only amount to a rather lazy means of reconciling the diversion with the unlikely destination of the southern Indian Ocean.
If this is indeed the case, perhaps we could assist the official search by way of suggesting our hypothesis: “Hey, McLauglin, hey, Houston. Yes, the plane was intentionally diverted, and then some sort of external or internal intervention foiled the plot for the diversion. The aircraft did, in fact, fly south willy-nilly on nothing much more than auto pilot or even fly-by-wire until it exhausted its fuel supply – it did. Your’e looking in the right place – maybe – but no nutter pilot flew it down there intentionally. Come on, think about it. Something perhaps happened somewhere in the Straights of Malacca, right where all of the evidence points to it transitioning from a human piloted aircraft into a hunk of binary metal flying off alone, sadly, into the wilderness. Ask the Malaysians a bit more about what happened back up there in the Straights, near where they actually lost the aircraft, where it actually disappeared the second time. Planes don’t just actually ‘disappear’, you know, and this was a 777. Something may have happened after the diversion…and, no, I’m not crazy, that’s just what the view looks like from back here in the peanut gallery. I think you may want to speak with Jeff Wise; we just be his support group. And not everybody can simply be labeled ‘crazy,’ you know.”