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.
Marc – SCL is one of our abbreviations for satcom link.
@Chris. And to where was he so evasively flying? Every aircraft takes off with a destination in the mind of the pilot…
@Rand
Where?
Thats why we’re all here isn’t it. From IGARI, down the straights,parallel with Penang, flip the co-p,s cell on & off, proceeds to do a short dance in the face of Malay radar while crossing over the peninsula. Final destination in mind?…History. From our vantage point,the only eye witnesses being radar and Imarsat pings. IMO…he was very tedious, as to where “His” final destination was.
Adding to that.
We all don’t want to believe it was intentional, but bare in mind, that single individuals have planned and orchestrated far greater crimes against humanity in broad daylight. This was brought to us on a new level of his own design.
@Chris OK, now tease out the difference from the present location of the aircraft as compared its intended destination upon diversion at IGARI. The two are not necessarily the same.
What if the intended destination was not the southern Indian Ocean, while it is, perhaps, it’s present location?
If the southern Indian Ocean was not the intended destination, then perhaps we could say that there would not be any reason for the aircraft to elusively avoid Australian (or any other) radar.
The conflation of the intended destination of the aircraft with its present location could perhaps be an error of perception; realizing that they are distinct can be revelatory. My personal view is that the intended destination is that which is simplest and of the highest probability: the aircraft turned back towards Malaysia because Malaysia was the intended destination for the diversion.
You can choose amongst Malaysia, the southern Indian Ocean, the Maldives, Diego Garcia, Xinjiang or Tibet as a destination; add a few more, if you like. Then, assign a probability to each potential destination, and then choose that associated with the highest probability.
Incidentally, (Littlefoot and Matty and perhaps Jeff will be interested to hear of this), today I spoke with Saikat Datta, the National Security Editor of the Hindustan Times. He confirmed to me that the radar installations at Port Blair and on Nicobar in the Andaman Nicobar Islands were not active and manned during the time that MH370 exited the Straights of Malacca. He shared that these installations are generally only in operation when there is activity in the Myanmar Coco Islands, where the Chinese maintain a leased naval base. This does not mean that MH370 did not fly over the A&Ns; this means that, as far as Indian radar installations are concerned, they did not and could not have detected MH370.
@Rand,
“His” destination was being quit general.
The SIO will be it. As to it’s whereabouts in his vast SIO final destination, we only have the fuzzy “eye witnesses” we’ve been relying on. Radar & Imarsat.
@Gang
After doing some reading in regards to Jindalee & Pine Gap. Sounds as if they could pickup a drunken gnat fly by. Zero & Zilch from these folks also?…..Hard to believe.
@ Chris ,
it was not captain shah on a pre planded suicide mission according to this .
I think its clear who let this mh370 plane disappear .
http://www.ecumenicalnews.com/article/malaysia-airlines-mh370-update-roundup-airline-found-to-have-contacted-the-missing-flight-370-only-twice-power-outage-search-to-resume-in-august-25354
“The report eliminated the suspicion that the plane’s pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, programmed the plane beforehand to crash, as it showed no one had used waypoints to direct the course of the Boeing 777 jet to a possible doom.
However, this does not remove the suspicion that someone used auto-pilot to steer the plane southward.
It also appeared that emergency procedures were not immediately applied when contact with the flight was lost.
Richard Woodward, a pilot who served Qantas flying Airbus A380s, but with a test-pilot background on the Boeing 777, said if the ground-based air-traffic control had made contact attempts to MH370, there would have hints as to where the aircraft went down.
Hypothetically, if we subtracted the ping rings for a moment then I reckon that the Curtin oomph would be the focus of the search, and not the SIO. So I’m glad a few journo’s out there are writing about the cockpit tampering at last. The entire search is based on a scenario where we trust that whoever cut the transponder and ACARS, and switched the SCL off for a period, did not in any way interfere with it. The pilots whoever they were acted with intent, so weigh the nature of that intent and stand back and look at the SCL issue for a moment. When I detach from MH370 for a few days and look back on it, it always walks and quacks like a duck, and the duck to me is terrorism.
Chris – Pine Gap is part of a global electronic eavesdropping network, and Jindalee doesn’t provide real time surveillance over that vast swath of territory, it has to be targeted onto an area they call a “tile.” The potential field of view is broken into a mosaic of such tiles and the apparatus is trained on that. In conventional radar terms to monitor that whole area would require many thousands of operators and a lot more infrastructure as well. It’s possible as well as likely that Jindalee was not covering that area on that evening.
Tdm and Matty: In my view, the logic doesn’t substantiate a flight with human input from 18:25 to the terminus; the journalists have it dead wrong. The flight did behave as if it was under human control at the point of diversion. Then, some event altered this behavior. The 18:25 ping is more likely the result of damage to the SDU or the power system than tampering, just as a mechanical failure at IGARI would be more likely than an intentional diversion were it not for the other elements in the mix that raise the probability of an intentional diversion.
In the event of an intentional diversion, uou MUST answer the questions: to where was the aircraft being diverted?
From here, how did the aircraft end up in the southern Indian Ocean?You MUST answer this question, and it must make sense. Tampering with the SCL to ensure that the aircraft could fly ‘cloaked’ into the southern Indian Ocean does not make any sense.
Auto-pilot does not require human input; the aircraft could quite easily have lost human input way back around 18:20 and continued on to its demise.
Matty: terrorism is still on the table in terms of a plot foiled, I would think. Nothing else fits, unless the Inmarsat data set is totally upended.
Check out Brian’s post on dsteel.com: he did the math and found the aircraft circling back to KL International Airport! I have not read of any replies from Duncan or others at this point, but it got me thinking of Plato’s cave once again. Imagine if the Inmarsat data set is rather a projection of the flight management system, than the actual flight pattern, where the FMS had been programmed to return the aircraft to KL. This is silly, of course, but I, like you, have the barest of faith in the data set.
Rand – if there was SCL tampering it didn’t go into the SIO at all I say, it went out into the direction of the oomph. From day one, from the very 1st moment Inmarsat entered the fray with their handfull of numbers I thought that it smelt. Outlandish faith was being placed in it and I’m on record somewhere way back there saying once this is all run and won whenever that is some of the basic assumptions may be in the bin.
Matty – OK, if we work with a hypothesis that the aircraft actually flew in the direction of the oomph, then fine. Yet we are validating the data associated with the oomph and assigning it a high probability to the exclusion of other data/evidence.
The working assumptions, then, include the Inmarsat data set being misrepresentative of what actually transpired; and that it is only confirmation bias creating the illusion that the formal search is on the right track.
As for any hypothesis that REQUIRES tampering with the SCL at 18:25, I would discount it heavily. For starters, ACRAS was deactivated and the aircraft already cloaked at the point of diversion at IGARI. I don’t believe anyone would have the foresight to tamper with the SCL further in attempt to foil an attempt to locate the aircraft via the present algorithm guiding the search.
If you choose intentional tampering with the SCL at 18:25, you must yet choose a destination for the diversion. You may also want to consider the relative probability of power being restored to the SCL buses versus their being tampered with at 18:25.
A brief landing is too weird. Tampering is far-fetched and misplaced. That only leaves some on board event that interrupted power for a period, but what would this be? Regardless, this is the where the transition to a flight without human input occurred; what are the range of events that could have transpired to deny the SCL power? Engine failure is ridiculous.
It all smells bad, Marty.
SCL tampering is plausible in my mind, since AF447 ping bounce data is caught for this reason. Pilots very intensely follow all crash investigations and are briefed even if they didn’t. If someone did away with MH370 they knew the SCL was leaving tracks if left on. If cutting the transponder and ACARS was intended to cloak the flight it was pointless without dealing with the SCL. And looks like they might have. If it was terror west makes sense and I have it hitting the water past India somewhere at approx 8.25am local time. What they were intending we don’t know.
@Gang
What do we agree upon? Let’s take it point on point.
1. The IGARI turn. Intentional? (IMO..when the plan begins)
2. The flight down the straights: (Obviously under human flight) Why make the pass w/o trying to land during an emergency? All comm systems down. Not a single cell burst but the co-p.
3. Third turn & into auto-p? Destination unknown. Unknown to us….
@Matty Ok, so if the SDU/SCL was tampered with, the 18:25 handshake signifies that power to the SDU was initiated after having been interrupted. This, then, would perhaps indicate that any ‘tampering’ had been intended to restore satcomms, rather than disable them.
14 minutes later, at 18:39, we have the first ground-to-air satellite phone call to the flight deck that went unanswered. The reboot at 18:25 would again indicate that the call should have been able to be received at 18:39, yet nobody would seem to have picked up the handset. This, then, means that anyone on the flight deck either could not answer or they declined to answer the call from MAS ops. Either way, we can assume that the sat phone system was enabled, given the reboot at 18:25.
Why did not anyone answer the call after the SDU/SCL/satcomms system rebooted?
The implication, if I understand the matter correctly, is that someone deliberately re-enabled the satcom system at 18:22, just before the “Final Major Turn.” The burning question: what for? What capabilities did they want to make use of? No phone calls were made (or received). What other systems came online at 18:25?
Jeff: if the SDU was rebooted with human intention at 18:25, then there would have had to have been a purpose, as you have so stated/queried. That purpose would only be to activate the satellite phone in order to make a call. But then there was no call and likewise no answer. Given that there was no attempt at communication (the only reason to reboot the system), the system, then, was not intentionally rebooted. It rather simply rebooted itself, perhaps after power was restored.
In short, the fact that the SDU rebooted at 18:25 while there were no sat phone calls either initiated or received could lead us to conclusion that perhaps the flight deck was not occupied at 18:25 or shortly thereafter.
One thought occurs, however: if the SDU took a shot back at 17:21 near IGARI where it apparently went offline, would this not effect the Flight Management System and its ability to navigate waypoints, as it would not be being served up with the necessary location data? Does the FMS simply utilize a digital ‘map’ cross referenced with real-time flight data or is it in fact reliant upon data from the SDU?
Exerpt.
“It is Mas procedure to switch ACARS, VHF, and High Frequency selection off but this is only for flights to China as the service provider for Mas does not cover China. Some if not all pilots switch them all off for a while and then later switch SATCOMM back on to force the system into SATCOMM mode.”
Full article: http://www.malaysia-chronicle.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=247061:acars-cannot-be-fully-disabled&Itemid=2#ixzz36WJCccSn
Follow us: @MsiaChronicle on Twitter
Rand, Jeff:
A few questions re the whole satcom phone business:
1). What is the source for the assertion that there were only two calls to the flight deck via the satcom link and no outbound calls post-diversion? How explicit is the source that this an exhaustive list of inbound and outbound calls? How confident are we that the source for the information is independent and objective, given that if there was any previously-undisclosed communication between the person(s) who commandeered the plane and Malaysian authorities, those contacts would presumably be highly sensitive politically.
2). If there were only two attempts to contact the flight deck via satcom in the hours following the diversion, that seems rather surprising. Is that indeed what is being asserted, and should we be surprised?
3). How feasible or otherwise would it have been for the perpetrator(s) to make outbound calls from either a cellular or satellite-based personal mobile phone post-diversion, including during the period when the plane was flying low over the Strait of Malacca and/or the mainland?
4). Would it be feasible to change the phone number of the flight deck satcom post-reboot, and would that offer any advantage in terms of establishing or maintaining private, station-to-station phone contact with parties on the ground, e.g., decision-makers?
Hi all – been a while since I’ve jumped in on this thread.
A few of us “contrarians” have been discussing the BTOs on the TMF blog. What we find interesting is the near-perfect correlation of the BTOs, the BFOs, and the proposed straight-line, due south heading of the aircraft with the satellite’s own movement.
The satellite’s northernmost point occurs at approximately the same time the plane is closest to it. The plane’s proposed heading 180 south after 19:41 is also approximately the satellite’s heading.
Meanwhile, the correlation between the datapoints on page 54-55 of the ATSB report is nearly non-existent. Based solely on what has been provided, nobody in their right mind would conclude that this data can be used to approximate an aircraft position. (Admittedly, the report hints that different data was used in the actual calculations. Also compounding the problem are some significant rounding liberties – for example, using satellite position at 5 minute intervals rather than at exact ping times, and rounding the latitude of KLIA to 2.7N, a 5km error.)
If you are looking for reasons to dump the BTOs altogether, perhaps this helps. Of course, if you disregard the BTOs, the BFOs become something of a one-legged man in an a$$-kicking contest and you can throw them out as well, and start looking for booms instead.
Rand – I’ve borrowed your words here – “if the SDU was rebooted with human intention at 18:25, then there would have had to have been a purpose, as you have so stated/queried. That purpose would only be to activate the satellite phone in order to make a call.”
I think that’s an assumption that doesn’t fit the terror angle very well. The 9/11 guys didn’t call anyone, and if it was discretion you were after, no need. For a qualified person there is only one way to do off with a jet and that is properly. Cutting the SCL is no simple matter I read. If it disappears off radar with no distress signal, heading west and is never detected from then on, the obvious conclusion would be that it has headed across the ocean in that direction, and suspicion immediately falls on some likely suspects just past India. An ocean route with no radar to avoid. We would have an entirely different search. I think it crashed but that wasn’t the plan. Standing back for a moment – you can’t viably steal a 777 without some counter measures. You can’t have too much scrutiny of what you actually did. Simply disappearing won’t do it. What if you did manage to send the search down to the roaring forties with a crude bit of malware? You would be pretty chuffed – until you hit the water.
I think it’s forgotten along the way that the search is based on a pretty crude delineation – did it go towards or away from the satellite? The means of establishing that looks badly compromised.
It’s late, will be quick…
From Don Thompson’s Evidence Evaluation Matrix dated May 29, we can grossly summarize the activity of the SDU as follows:
17:07 last ACARS transmission was received
18:03 failed datalink uplink to aircraft attempt (i.e., no handshake)
18:25-18:28 AES performs successful login to GES, Perth. Observation – login process takes 2m47s
18:39 Ground initiated satphone call setup: unsuccessful;
19:41, 20:41, 21:41, 22:41 GES initiated datalink log-in verification check: all successful
23:14 Ground initiated satphone call setup: unsuccessful
Note: I ended the summary here, as the activity within this timeframe is that which we have specifically been addressing.
From the above, we can make several observations:
1. The SDU was perhaps deactivated sometime after the 17:07 ACARS report. It wasn’t simply that ACARS was ‘switched off’, as we have the uplink failure at 18:03.
If we assume that the SDU deactivation was the result of a power interruption, either the SDU power busses were pulled in order to deliberate deactivate ACARS data and text messaging, as well as the sat phone systems; or the SDU power buses were damaged as a result of some sort of mechanical/structural failure.
2. Power was restored to the SDU and the AIRCRAFT logged in successfully to the satcom network after 2min, 47sec.
3. Power supply to the SDU was apparently uninterrupted from 18:25 for the remaining duration of the flight to the terminus (i.e., there weren’t any additional AES login attempts that accompany a “reboot” as associated with 18:25-18:28.
Returning to Jeff’s question, why would power be restored to the SDU? In order to enable communication would appear to be the only purpose, yet there were no ground or air initiated successful sat phone calls, or ACARS text messages reported.
If power was restored intentionally (and this goes towards answering some of Luigi’s questions), and we assume that power would only be restored intentionally to enable communications, there is only one out…
We know that neither a satellite phone will not work from inside the fuselage; a sat phone requires a clear line of sight to the satellite. If someone wanted to communicate from the aircraft while not using the onboard systems, the ONLY way would be to connect their sat phone to the flight deck sat phone terminal via cabling from the phone’s antennae jack to that of the terminal. A call from such a phone would not be associated with the aircraft, IF the antennae jack had a hard line to the antennae and bypassed the SDU.
Matty, I have no idea whether the flight deck satellite phone terminal has an external antennae jack, but if it did, this would easily be discoverable through a little desk top research. If their is in fact such hardware, you could then have your hijacked aircraft with a satcom link and a very good reason to restore power to the aircraft after ensuring that it ‘disappeared’ from 17:07 to 18:25.
I noodled this for some time, and this is the only scenario I found where one would intentionally restoring power to the communication systems while denying picking up on two sat phone calls. It should be noted, however, that we don’t really know if the calls went through, as there was also a failed ACARS (one assumes a text message) at 18:39. Regardless, if power was intentionally restored to the system no attempts to make a sat phone call from the flight deck were made.
So, power could have been restored to the system to enable a handset hardwired to the external antennae to communicate.
Incidentally, JS’s contrarian view regarding the behavior of the auto-pilot had me considering whether a general power failure would have resulted in the auto-pilot, once power was restored, assuming a 180 degree south heading.
Regardless, here we still are: if power to the SDU was intentionally interrupted and the aircraft was intentionally diverted at IGARI only to transition to a flight devoid of human input as it departed the Straights of Malacca, why the heck would power be restored to the SDU? If we want to hang on to this frame, the only thing that works is that the aircraft or the flight deck suffered damage over the straights of Malacca and that there was some recovery of systems by the flight crew (i.e., they replaced the SDU buses/fuses) with the intent to get out a distress call, but they succumbed to hypoxia before they could execute.
Damn it, need to go to bed. Nighty night.
Rand,
Very interesting suggestion about using the satcom as an external antenna for a personal mobile. I hope someone familiar with these systems can speak more to the feasibility of that. If it is in fact possible, Zaharie could surely have figured it out — the guy was clearly a problem solver and an uber-geek. If that’s what happened, NSA would presumably have the call data. If it was to a senior official (which would be the obvious scenario), they probably would have homed in on it pretty quickly once the disappearance became known. Recall, we still don’t know why US military intel seemed so confident the plane ended up in the water long before the whole ping analysis was released.
Great work, Rand. I would add another possibility for why someone might want to turn back on the SDU, without using it to communicate. (Warning — outlandish hypothesizing ahead.) If one had just managed to slip out of primary radar coverage, and was diabolically clever and technically sophisticated, one might feed the newly turned on SDU while feeding it spoofed position information so that it would provide Inmarsat detectives with misleading BFO clues as to which direction the plane had headed.
I think this level of sophistication would probably be beyond the capability of an airline captain acting alone but could conceivably be within the grasp of an organization or state.
(Hat tip to Littlefoot for bringing this train of thought to my attention.)
1.Rand:
FYI: archived page from the MAS website (removed since the plane disappeared) – which shows that every business class seat comes equipped with a satellite phone http://t.co/427fMjI5uB
2. Jeff:
In the wake of 9/11 (and other), what constitutes ‘outlandish’?
SATCOM terminals ripe for malware exploitation http://t.co/oAibQSGwIA
Jeff – one thing for sure, there is every conceivable kind of malware out there and the stuff you’re alluding to might already exist in a military sense. Combat aircraft use “hardened” comms that are very hard to intercept, but the enemy still knows you are transmitting. If it was possible to reliably track planes on the basis of such data(BTO-BFO) then a military application would be there, and the countermeasures also.
could it not have been simple like the comms in drop down masks in cockpit were non functional ?thats why there was no contact made and no mayday issued ..one thing that I find if they had a diversion destination why would mh370 not enter a holding pattern like air Helios did. could they not see ?were the instruments failing . those data recorders ……
—————-
Aircraft expert Ian Black previously worked as a fighter weapons instructor for the Malaysian Air Force, and is the author of two Haynes Manuals for aircraft, the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom Manual and the RAF Tornado Manual. He flew the Tornado ADV in the first Gulf War and over Kosovo. He is now an A340 Airbus captain with Virgin Atlantic.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/could-mah730-have-been–swapped–mid-air–haynes-manual-plane-expert-offers-his-theories-135928312.html
“Why did the Malaysian air force not scramble their fighters?
I actually trained the Malaysian air Force at Kuantan Air Base on the east coast of Malaysia and they have two MIG 29 fighter aircraft sat on alert 24/7 ready to scramble should an unknown aircraft enter their airspace – why were they not scrambled?
Jeff: would you mind querying a 777 pilot or otherwise check one your reference manuals for information regarding an antenna jack on the flight deck sat phone terminal? References online are, somewhat ironically, crowded with cross-references to MH370. Apologies for the sloth.
Nihonmana: I read that page on the MAS website weeks ago and find it interesting that the page has been removed. I am certain that the flight deck (or even the cabin crew control panel) would enable the crew to deactivate this function. Also, we can safely assume that the in-seat terminals do not have an antenna jack and thus could not bypass the SDU. However, could the system provide access to the SDU from a passenger seat?
Luigi: We could write off the fact that there only being two attempts to contact the aircraft largely due to that, at the time, MAS ops was apparently wrongly aware that the aircraft was then in Cambodian airspace. Then again, do YOU ever only try someone on their cell phone twice and then give up the goose? I have used sat phones on several occasions: they are about as a reliable as an old college girlfriend that I am reminded of (bless her heart, along with the rest of her). Surely, one would expect them to have assigned someone to try the aircraft repeatedly, given that they were dealing with a ‘missing’ aircraft. You can discount this lack of activity to the fact that aircraft generally do not go missing and thus nobody would have had the presence of mind to think that it was, in fact, missing, but still…how much effort does it take to hit redial? Coupled with the fact, however, that the web page has been removed; the process of the calls (were they received by the SDU but not answered?) has not been clearly expressed; the general lack of transparency on the part of the Malaysian authorities; AND the fact that there hasn’t been any revelations regarding ACARS text messages sent to the aircraft (!), one can’t help but question whether there isn’t more to be known regarding attempts to contact the aircraft that is not being disclosed.
Back to the electronic hijacking hypothesis: I would agree with Matty that the required stuff is probably out there (I know a guy who can hack every credit card in your possession just by placing his cell phone on top of your wallet), I would likewise agree with Jeff that it would require an organization or state to pull off such a caper. Yet even if we imagine that this is possible, we still must deal with the issue of how probable. Such a frame involves an elaborate plot from successfully boarding an aircraft with weapons sufficient to take control of the flight deck to having the technical ability to hack the aircraft’s systems. Deliberately reframing the BFO/BTO data sets to create the ‘Plato’s shadow’ requires a cognitive previewing process beyond diabolical and really bordering on singular genius. That said, as I have mentioned previously, there is a significant possibility that the algorithm for tracking the aircraft was previously developed post 9/11 by US intelligence assets, as one can assume that the NSA already has their fingers in all satellite comms traffic. Likewise, Matty has previously referred to a similar analysis of satcom data in the wake of AF447). So, conceivably someone could have trained themselves up to the task.
But again, how probable is it that the SDU was reactivated with the single purpose of disclosing the aircraft’s destination? We must reconcile this choice in the probability tree with the fact that the aircraft has not been sighted or used or otherwise reported on (as far as we know). If you look at it holistically and multiply across each node in the probability tree, the scenario of a malware hack to cloak the plane and fly it elsewhere for later use is incredibly small. In the end, yes, possible – but how probable?
JS’s highlighted problems with the Inmarsat data set and Matty’s skepticism regarding the same are more of a concern in my eyes, as this particular hole could in actuality contain nothing much more than rabbit pellets. Humans crave certainty, while certainty is largely a farce to cover the anxiety associated with the reality of uncertainty set within larger frames of time and space that are beyond our cognition. Science has its wonderful gifts; for promises, one need look elsewhere into more subjective realms. The data set and its analysis may be nothing more than crap to cling to when there is nothing else.
As for the trainer of the MIG 29 pilots wondering why they weren’t scrambled, take this bit of info and then watch once again Razak with Richard Quest and Hishammuddin in the Four Corners piece. Notice how each repeats “non-hostile” or “commerical” twice and then in a similar way; Hishammuddin even preempts the questioning. They are both clearly going from a script, and there eyes reveal that they are referencing material not from memory rather creative visualization. It is perfectly plausible that they not fully communicating the involvement of the military concerning the loss of MH370, as we now have a clear picture of missed intercept procedures, incomplete information on satcoms, incomplete descriptions of communications between primary and secondary radar units while they are housed in the same building at KLIA, no references to the military in the Preliminary Report, no reporting on the criminal investigation, etc.
All in all, it is more probable that the mystery is housed with Malaysia than anyone else; we can’t escape this aspect of the mix. If MH370 was murdered, the victim was most likely at least somewhat familiar with its assailant. If it was an accidental death, then criminal negligence remains on the table, and the stewards of Malaysia thus remain culpable. Regardless, all points to Malaysia.
I wonder: what is the current view of the head of MAS on this mess? I am thinking that he would be an insider more likely than most to sing. Have any journalists attempted to sit him down for a long chat? Is he compelled by international convention not to chat? Maybe his bonus is keeping him mum.
Not to beat the monkey, but we really can’t undervalue the relative importance of the the SDU re-initializing for whatever reason at 18:25, given that it does appear that it was not enabled from sometime after 17:07.
There is a huge clue to be found within the event of the SDU rebooting, and it is the single most important behavioral aspect of the flight post diversion. As Jeff has pointed out, it also just so happens to precede the aircraft’s last major turn to the south.
I wonder what a general power failure aboard the aircraft would look like. Is there precedent for such an event? A 777 has a back-up generator for auxiliary power; this is basically all I know, while we also know that the engines remained viable for 7 hours. There are also battery systems and the beast is designed to be idiot proof for us monkeys, so perhaps we can safely assume that there wasn’t a general power failure. Hmm…it is more likely that power to the SDU was intentionally restored, just as it appears that it was intentionally removed.
Also, TDM: it is a bit of a misconception that pilots immediately radio for help when they run into trouble; they do not. Aviate, navigate and then communicate; this is beaten into their heads in training. Think of driving along the highway when fireworks suddenly combust in your car: the last thing you would do is immediately make a call for help. The lack of any radio communications at IGARI actually does not necessarily support an intentional diversion for this very reason.
I just read of the 2004 Pinnacle Airlines crash. The crash was a result of compound pilot air, but what is revealing is that the pilots, after experiencing engine failure, attempted rapid descents on several occasions to establish an airspeed of 300 knots and ‘windmill’ the engines to a restart. They even glided several minutes – all before contacting ATC to inform whomever that they had a flameout.
Rand – weighing probability is tricky when the probability of this situation developing was next to zero to begin with. It’s all uncharted but people generally want to attribute such anomalous stuff to something that causes the least angst/cognitive disequilibrium, hence the chorus early on making the case for an accident.
But me, if it quacks like a duck….
Matty: I hear you, but really what we are doing here is fishing around, assigning probability to this likelihood or that. I really don’t see other way then to formalize the process somewhat.
The aircraft was likely intentionally diverted and thus hijacked. If the remains of the aircraft are indeed in the southern Indian Ocean, it is doubtful that this was the intended destination. Therefore, the plot, whatever it was, was foiled either by way of an internal or external intervention. The question as to why power was restored to the SDU is a key question, given the possibility that this event was a hallmark of the transition. The SDU was, in fact, enabled shortly before the plane flew off into nowheresville.
Rand:
“could the system provide access to the SDU from a passenger seat?”
Not a communications (or other) engineer, but have been thinking for some time that this a logical possibility.
“how probable is it that the SDU was reactivated with the single purpose of disclosing the aircraft’s destination”
Do we know that that was the intended purpose?
Matty:
“It’s all uncharted but people generally want to attribute such anomalous stuff to something that causes the least angst/cognitive disequilibrium, hence the chorus early on making the case for an accident.”
+100
Nihonmana: I think the probability that the SDU was activated to disclose the location of the aircraft is extremely low to non-existent. I think that it was either spontaneously reactivated by way of a 777s redundant systems or it was manually reactivated for the purposes of communication. It may also have been reactivated collaterally in the interest of reactivating other systems, but the probability that it was intentionally deactivated looms large.
I have never given the ‘Payne Stewart’ scenario of an accident from start to finish much credence, as the dots don’t line up. Somebody hijacked the aircraft, but they did not hijack the aircraft to sink it in the southern Indian Ocean. Meanwhile, I have joined the chorus, so to speak, for it actually being in the SIO in a leap of faith that there are those more in the know than we with access to primary radar data or other cross-referencing intelligence that put it there. I do not exclude the possibility that the Inmarsat analysis is wholly BS, but for the moment I buy it, while entertaining doubts such as that highlighted by JS. The fact remains that we do have an SDU that was in off mode suddenly reactivating at a critical juncture, and then suddenly a handful of data points that are indicated as reliable; it should, therefore, remain open to rigorous questioning, as now being pursued at dsteel.com and TMF.
So at 18.25 they either pulled a complex swifty or the wheels flew off for some reason or another? It might be very indicative to learn just how many “oomphs” the Curtin hydrophones have recorded since that morning. If it’s very few or none in that range? Then we could start to assign probability, but as time goes by that bit of data come into better focus.
Matty: yep, a complex swifty or the wheels came off at 18:25, and that’s about it. As for the swifty, a software glitch is just as likely to cause a reboot of the SDU; the swifty version of events has that to smoke on, too. Regardless, it is apparently quite rare for an aircraft to initiate a reboot of the SDU and go through the log-in process; we can add this to the mix of changes exhibited by the aircraft. Whether by man, fowl, reptile or a long-forgotten redundant process routine programmed into a 777, something went down, the SDU was powered up and the log-in sequence completed.
As for the oomph, I wonder how certain they are as to the distance to its point of origin. I recall the google earth trace of the source corridor of the acoustic recording and even how it narrowed into a likely zone of origin, demarcated in red. Could it actually have occurred closer to the location of the hydrophones, or is Curtin’s triangulation fairly accurate? It was a depicted as a zone, rather than a location, thus the question.
Another thought: GeoResonance was quacking again last week. If I were in charge, I would give them something to do and have them chase down all high probability zones of impact and put their dowsing rod to work. Quack, quack, quack! I feel a bit mean (they are so earnest), but there you have it.
I concur with your comments regarding the idea that the SDU reboot related to an attempt to cloak the plane’s position. I think we can assign that scenario a very low order of probability, right down there with the “catastrophic accident” hypothesis. But, as you say, the reboot looks like it might offer a big clue as to what actually happened on that airplane.
Broadly the data seem consistent with the idea that Zaharie pulled a runner with this plane, first taking it back to Malaysia with the idea of staging some kind of personal political protest. He was rebuffed, then he made the plane disappear completely, which was presumably Plan B. The reboot might suggest that he wanted to keep a private channel open for the final suicide leg of the flight. If so, the suicide leg was probably also a chicken run with the authorities, and it’s hardly surprising that we are being kept in the dark on the details.
God, I feel like a blog hog, but something else just came to me as I was corresponding with Littlefoot…
There is actually a pattern of sorts:
17:07 Last ACARS transmission
17:19 Last radio comms
17:21 Last secondary radar contact
??? Transponder off
***SDU deactivated/aircraft changes heading dramatically
18:22 last primary radar contact
18:25 SDU rebooted; log-in successful, downlink restored
18:39 unanswered/unreceived sat phone call
***SDU activated/aircraft changes heading dramatically
I can’t fathom what it means, but there is a pattern with the aircraft making dramatic heading changes pivoting around on/off activity associated with the SDU. It’s nothing new, really, just an additional way of adding some contours to the general conceptualization of a ‘triple disappearing aircraft.’ Looking at it in terms of pattern, however, does provide the impression that these were both deliberate, intentional moves at specific points in the development of the flight.
This power modulation pattern is important, as who could then argue that the SDU being powered off c. IGARI was the result of a catastrophic accident when it was turned on again and followed by a second major change in heading? For there, not even I would argue that the reboot of the SDU was due to an ‘accident.’
Why would the SDU be rebooted?
I need to get back to my day job…
“Why would the SDU be rebooted?”
A big, big question indeed. It might have come on as a result of a bus being turned on that supplied power to some other desired piece of equipment, such as a radio, as Victor Iannello has suggested — it then would have been possible to contact a confederate on the ground via off-frequency VHF transmission. But this strikes me as a little careless.
Jeff: …sooo, can we enquire whether there is there the added redundancy of an antenna jack on the flight deck sat phone terminal? No carelessness would then be required, of course. Establishing VHF comms actually strikes me as a bit more likely, but then there is indeed the issue of carelessness and perhaps range limitations.
Do you mean, is there a jack in the cockpit panel, where you can plug in a mobile satellite phone? It seems unlikely, but I’m about to go meet with a 777 pilot for a flying lesson (J3 Cub, not 777), so I’ll ask.
Rand,
I just spoke to my friend the 777 captain. To disable the black boxes, you have to go down into the electronics bay. But to disable the satcom or VHF radio, all you have to do is toggle a selector in the FMS. So, it’s unlikely that the satcom was turned on as a consequence of something else being being turned on. It seems to have been turned on for its own purpose. But then not used… As for your question about the jack, no, there isn’t one. But my friend suggested that if you wanted to use a satcom, you might have luck just by holding close to a window, so that it had line-of-sight to the satellite.
Apologies if I sound like I’m trying to channel a Zen monk but to understand why the satcom was turned on you might first need to know why it was turned off. If you know one you know the other. Doesn’t look good to me.
Luigi – I reckon any pilot will know that misappropriating a 777 is a one way ride. There is no future in landing apart from an insanity plea.
Jeff, Rand
Even if there is no external jack, maybe there is a connector behind a panel that someone knowledgeable could access. The flight deck handset has to connect to the aircraft antenna somehow, after all.
Regarding the possibility of using a sat phone without jacking into the main antenna, there are plenty of external antenna cheaply available that could be fixed to the window or the “dash” to improve reception. But if I were a real aviation/computer/comms geek, I think I’d try and jack into the satcom system if I possibly could. Much nicer solution.
Here’s a couple of links I just googled up that might have relevant info if you want to dig further into the issue:
http://www.iridium.com/products/FlightCell-DZM2.aspx?productCategoryID=16
http://www.pprune.org/private-flying/328013-using-iridium-satphone-flight.html
Jeff, Rand
Even if there is no external jack, maybe there is a connector behind a panel that someone knowledgeable could access. The flight deck handset has to connect to the aircraft antenna somehow, after all.
Regarding the possibility of using a sat phone without jacking into the main antenna, there are plenty of external antenna cheaply available that could be fixed to the window or the “dash” to improve reception. But if I were a real aviation/computer/comms geek, I think I’d try and jack into the satcom system if I possibly could. Much nicer solution.
In order for the reboot to be intentional, there must be a reason to use it that overcomes the reason it went off in the first place. In other words, they turned it off at 17:xx, but by 18:25 it was MORE important to have it back on.
That is critical, because if it was shut down for troubleshooting – fire, short, smoke, etc. – by 18:25, it was either so desperately needed, or there was absolutely no doubt that it was not the source of the problem.
That almost rules out an accidental shut-down followed by an intentional reboot, at least in my mind, because there doesn’t seem to be any need for the SDU if the crew is attempting an emergency landing. I could be wrong, though.
On the other hand, if it was shut down to “cloak,” then it could have conceivably been needed again for navigation once the aircraft left radar coverage again at 18:22 or so. That makes a little more sense – the reasons for the shut down and reboot are related to each other, and both are roughly keyed to the extents of various radar diameters.
If both shutdown and reboot were intentional, that strikes me as a hijacking followed by a recovery, in which perhaps the recovering party was unable to fully/properly operate the equipment. As a non-pilot, I’d certainly reach for the GPS first if the plane is in a stable flight.
As for spoofing, as crazy as it sounds, I’d go along with the shutdown, followed by a laptop hookup, followed by a restart, with the intention of shaking the satellite tracking of the plane. It’s not totally unthinkable to me – the SDU already has the ability to alter the frequency based on the FMS and its reported speed and location. The BTOs are another story – I don’t know how a delay could be hacked in, but again it does not strike me as impossible. The interesting thing is that the SDU came back up, but neither the ACARS nor the phone connected. So was it really the plane on the other end at that point, or could it have indeed been a laptop?
So that leaves me with 1) a failed hijacking ending in the SIO, 2) a shoot-down spoofed to look like it ended in the SIO, 3) a theft spoofed to look like it ended in the SIO, and still 4) the data is wrong.
Rand, Jeff:
First question: Has there been any explicit statement proclaiming the absence of all data traffic on the SDU post-reboot, not just telephone calls? There are many other ways that system could be used to communicate text or audio, including VoIP-type solutions (e.g., http://www.satcom1.com/airtime-services/satcom1-services/aviophone/). Presumably such traffic would normally be tagged as coming from MH370, although perhaps a tech wiz could subvert that by a reconfiguration-and-reboot, or by replacing or using an external SIM card, or by directly patching a terminal/laptop/handset into the antenna.
Second question: Would all satellite-based coms from the flight deck be geolocation-tagged, whether transmitted via the SDU or by line-of-site transmission from a mobile handset?
@JS – that’s bloody interesting. Here I was thinking that delaying the pings would be the easy bit. If the SDU can alter the frequency it’s a fait accompli. I’m reasonably sure that combat aircraft can transmit without giving up their location which is why they still use plain old radar. It’s probably not even hi-tech. The game is confuse whoever is trying to fix on it.
I have parsed the elements of JS’s excellent summation that I feel are the common denominators or kernel aspects of what most likely transpired in terms of the SDU.
“they turned it off at 17:xx, but by 18:25 it was MORE important to have it back on.
“That almost rules out an accidental shut-down followed by an intentional reboot, at least in my mind, because there doesn’t seem to be any need for the SDU if the crew is attempting an emergency landing.
I”f both shutdown and reboot were intentional, that strikes me as a hijacking followed by a recovery, in which perhaps the recovering party was unable to fully/properly operate the equipment…The interesting thing is that the SDU came back up, but neither the ACARS nor the phone connected.”
The conclusion is basically ditto the initial statement: The pilot(s) of the aircraft deactivated the SDU at 17:xx, but by 18:25 it was MORE important to reactivate it.”
Coupled with the fact that the data set and the present location of the aircraft hang on events occurring AFTER the reactivation of the SDU, we can assume that cracking the nut of the SDU power modulation is now a front and center issue.
Meanwhile, the SDU modulation dynamic was not featured prominently in either the Preliminary Report or the ATSB report – what the heck?
I want to go with Ari Schulman and his argument that more is not known about the flight than is known, but I am more with Matty here: there are some significant elements of the mix that are out of our awareness, while they are quite well known to others. It’s either this latter frame, or “the Inmarsat data set and its analysis is all that it is known, and the best we can do is describe the likely impact zone, map the sea bed and send down a video camera.” Well, how is that working for ya so far?
Rand –
“Meanwhile, the SDU modulation dynamic was not featured prominently in either the Preliminary Report or the ATSB report – what the heck?”
It’s funny isn’t it. Elephant in the room? Can of worms? Last thing they want is the media going creative on that. They can say it is unhelpful to speculate maybe?