The unsettling oddness was there from the first moment, on March 8, when Malaysia Airlines announced that a plane from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing, Flight 370, had disappeared over the South China Sea in the middle of the night. There had been no bad weather, no distress call, no wreckage, no eyewitness accounts of a fireball in the sky—just a plane that said good-bye to one air-traffic controller and, two minutes later, failed to say hello to the next. And the crash, if it was a crash, got stranger from there.
My yearlong detour to Planet MH370 began two days later, when I got an email from an editor at Slate asking if I’d write about the incident. I’m a private pilot and science writer, and I wrote about the last big mysterious crash, of Air France 447 in 2009. My story ran on the 12th. The following morning, I was invited to go on CNN. Soon, I was on-air up to six times a day as part of its nonstop MH370 coverage.
There was no intro course on how to be a cable-news expert. The Town Car would show up to take me to the studio, I’d sign in with reception, a guest-greeter would take me to makeup, I’d hang out in the greenroom, the sound guy would rig me with a mike and an earpiece, a producer would lead me onto the set, I’d plug in and sit in the seat, a producer would tell me what camera to look at during the introduction, we’d come back from break, the anchor would read the introduction to the story and then ask me a question or maybe two, I’d answer, then we’d go to break, I would unplug, wipe off my makeup, and take the car 43 blocks back uptown. Then a couple of hours later, I’d do it again. I was spending 18 hours a day doing six minutes of talking.
As time went by, CNN winnowed its expert pool down to a dozen or so regulars who earned the on-air title “CNN aviation analysts”: airline pilots, ex-government honchos, aviation lawyers, and me. We were paid by the week, with the length of our contracts dependent on how long the story seemed likely to play out. The first couple were seven-day, the next few were 14-day, and the last one was a month. We’d appear solo, or in pairs, or in larger groups for panel discussions—whatever it took to vary the rhythm of perpetual chatter.1
I soon realized the germ of every TV-news segment is: “Officials say X.” The validity of the story derives from the authority of the source. The expert, such as myself, is on hand to add dimension or clarity. Truth flowed one way: from the official source, through the anchor, past the expert, and onward into the great sea of viewerdom.
What made MH370 challenging to cover was, first, that the event was unprecedented and technically complex and, second, that the officials were remarkably untrustworthy. For instance, the search started over the South China Sea, naturally enough, but soon after, Malaysia opened up a new search area in the Andaman Sea, 400 miles away. Why? Rumors swirled that military radar had seen the plane pull a 180. The Malaysian government explicitly denied it, but after a week of letting other countries search the South China Sea, the officials admitted that they’d known about the U-turn from day one.
Of course, nothing turned up in the Andaman Sea, either. But in London, scientists for a British company called Inmarsat that provides telecommunications between ships and aircraft realized its database contained records of transmissions between MH370 and one of its satellites for the seven hours after the plane’s main communication system shut down. Seven hours! Maybe it wasn’t a crash after all—if it were, it would have been the slowest in history.
These electronic “handshakes” or “pings” contained no actual information, but by analyzing the delay between the transmission and reception of the signal— called the burst timing offset, or BTO—Inmarsat could tell how far the plane had been from the satellite and thereby plot an arc along which the plane must have been at the moment of the final ping.Fig. 3 That arc stretched some 6,000 miles, but if the plane was traveling at normal airliner speeds, it would most likely have wound up around the ends of the arc—either in Kazakhstan and China in the north or the Indian Ocean in the south. My money was on Central Asia. But CNN quoted unnamed U.S.-government sources saying that the plane had probably gone south, so that became the dominant view.
Other views were circulating, too, however.Fig. 5 A Canadian pilot named Chris Goodfellow went viral with his theory that MH370 suffered a fire that knocked out its communications gear and diverted from its planned route in order to attempt an emergency landing. Keith Ledgerwood, another pilot, proposed that hijackers had taken the plane and avoided detection by ducking into the radar shadow of another airliner. Amateur investigators pored over satellite images, insisting that wisps of cloud or patches of shrubbery were the lost plane. Courtney Love, posting on her Facebook time line a picture of the shimmering blue sea, wrote: “I’m no expert but up close this does look like a plane and an oil slick.”
Then: breaking news! On March 24, the Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak, announced that a new kind of mathematical analysis proved that the plane had in fact gone south. This new math involved another aspect of the handshakes called the burst frequency offset, or BFO, a measure of changes in the signal’s wavelength, which is partly determined by the relative motion of the airplane and the satellite. That the whole southern arc lay over the Indian Ocean meant that all the passengers and crew would certainly be dead by now. This was the first time in history that the families of missing passengers had been asked to accept that their loved ones were dead because a secret math equation said so. Fig. 7 Not all took it well. In Beijing, outraged next-of-kin marched to the Malaysian Embassy, where they hurled water bottles and faced down paramilitary soldiers in riot gear.
Guided by Inmarsat’s calculations, Australia, which was coordinating the investigation, moved the search area 685 miles to the northeast, to a 123,000-square-mile patch of ocean west of Perth. Ships and planes found much debris on the surface, provoking a frenzy of BREAKING NEWS banners, but all turned out to be junk. Adding to the drama was a ticking clock. The plane’s two black boxes had an ultrasonic sound beacon that sent out acoustic signals through the water. (Confusingly, these also were referred to as “pings,” though of a completely different nature. These new pings suddenly became the important ones.) If searchers could spot plane debris, they’d be able to figure out where the plane had most likely gone down, then trawl with underwater microphones to listen for the pings. The problem was that the pingers had a battery life of only 30 days.
On April 4, with only a few days’ pinger life remaining, an Australian ship lowered a special microphone called a towed pinger locator into the water.Fig. 8 Miraculously, the ship detected four pings. Search officials were jubilant, as was the CNN greenroom. Everyone was ready for an upbeat ending.
The only Debbie Downer was me. I pointed out that the pings were at the wrong frequency and too far apart to have been generated by stationary black boxes. For the next two weeks, I was the odd man out on Don Lemon’s six-guest panel blocks, gleefully savaged on-air by my co-experts.
The Australians lowered an underwater robotFig. 9 to scan the seabed for the source of the pings. There was nothing. Of course, by the rules of TV news, the game wasn’t over until an official said so. But things were stretching thin. One night, an underwater-search veteran taking part in a Don Lemon panel agreed with me that the so-called acoustic-ping detections had to be false. Backstage after the show, he and another aviation analyst nearly came to blows. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! I’ve done extensive research!” the analyst shouted. “There’s nothing else those pings could be!”
Soon after, the story ended the way most news stories do: We just stopped talking about it. A month later, long after the caravan had moved on, a U.S. Navy officer said publicly that the pings had not come from MH370. The saga fizzled out with as much satisfying closure as the final episode of Lost.
Once the surface search was called off, it was the rabble’s turn. In late March, New Zealand–based space scientist Duncan Steel began posting a series of essays on Inmarsat orbital mechanics on his website.Fig. 10 The comments section quickly grew into a busy forum in which technically sophisticated MH370 obsessives answered one another’s questions and pitched ideas. The open platform attracted a varied crew, from the mostly intelligent and often helpful to the deranged and abusive. Eventually, Steel declared that he was sick of all the insults and shut down his comments section. The party migrated over to my blog, jeffwise.net.
Meanwhile, a core of engineers and scientists had split off via group email and included me. We called ourselves the Independent Group,11 or IG. If you found yourself wondering how a satellite with geosynchronous orbit responds to a shortage of hydrazine, all you had to do was ask.12 The IG’s first big break came in late May, when the Malaysians finally released the raw Inmarsat data. By combining the data with other reliable information, we were able to put together a time line of the plane’s final hours: Forty minutes after the plane took off from Kuala Lumpur, MH370 went electronically dark. For about an hour after that, the plane was tracked on radar following a zigzag course and traveling fast. Then it disappeared from military radar. Three minutes later, the communications system logged back onto the satellite. This was a major revelation. It hadn’t stayed connected, as we’d always assumed. This event corresponded with the first satellite ping. Over the course of the next six hours, the plane generated six more handshakes as it moved away from the satellite.
The final handshake wasn’t completed. This led to speculation that MH370 had run out of fuel and lost power, causing the plane to lose its connection to the satellite. An emergency power system would have come on, providing enough electricity for the satcom to start reconnecting before the plane crashed. Where exactly it would have gone down down was still unknown—the speed of the plane, its direction, and how fast it was climbing were all sources of uncertainty.
The MH370 obsessives continued attacking the problem. Since I was the proprietor of the major web forum, it fell on me to protect the fragile cocoon of civility that nurtured the conversation. A single troll could easily derail everything. The worst offenders were the ones who seemed intelligent but soon revealed themselves as Believers. They’d seized on a few pieces of faulty data and convinced themselves that they’d discovered the truth. One was sure the plane had been hit by lightning and then floated in the South China Sea, transmitting to the satellite on battery power. When I kicked him out, he came back under aliases. I wound up banning anyone who used the word “lightning.”
By October, officials from the Australian Transport Safety Board had begun an ambitiously scaled scan of the ocean bottom, and, in a surprising turn, it would include the area suspected by the IG.13 For those who’d been a part of the months-long effort, it was a thrilling denouement. The authorities, perhaps only coincidentally, had landed on the same conclusion as had a bunch of randos from the internet. Now everyone was in agreement about where to look.
While jubilation rang through the email threads, I nursed a guilty secret: I wasn’t really in agreement. For one, I was bothered by the lack of plane debris. And then there was the data. To fit both the BTO and BFO data well, the plane would need to have flown slowly, likely in a curving path. But the more plausible autopilot settings and known performance constraints would have kept the plane flying faster and more nearly straight south. I began to suspect that the problem was with the BFO numbers—that they hadn’t been generated in the way we believed.14 If that were the case, perhaps the flight had gone north after all.
For a long time, I resisted even considering the possibility that someone might have tampered with the data. That would require an almost inconceivably sophisticated hijack operation, one so complicated and technically demanding that it would almost certainly need state-level backing. This was true conspiracy-theory material.
And yet, once I started looking for evidence, I found it. One of the commenters on my blog had learned that the compartment on 777s called the electronics-and-equipment bay, or E/E bay, can be accessed via a hatch in the front of the first-class cabin.15 If perpetrators got in there, a long shot, they would have access to equipment that could be used to change the BFO value of its satellite transmissions. They could even take over the flight controls.16
I realized that I already had a clue that hijackers had been in the E/E bay. Remember the satcom system disconnected and then rebooted three minutes after the plane left military radar behind. I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out how a person could physically turn the satcom off and on. The only way, apart from turning off half the entire electrical system, would be to go into the E/E bay and pull three particular circuit breakers. It is a maneuver that only a sophisticated operator would know how to execute, and the only reason I could think for wanting to do this was so that Inmarsat would find the records and misinterpret them. They turned on the satcom in order to provide a false trail of bread crumbs leading away from the plane’s true route.
It’s not possible to spoof the BFO data on just any plane. The plane must be of a certain make and model, 17equipped with a certain make and model of satellite-communications equipment,18 and flying a certain kind of route19 in a region covered by a certain kind of Inmarsat satellite.20 If you put all the conditions together, it seemed unlikely that any aircraft would satisfy them. Yet MH370 did.
I imagine everyone who comes up with a new theory, even a complicated one, must experience one particularly delicious moment, like a perfect chord change, when disorder gives way to order. This was that moment for me. Once I threw out the troublesome BFO data, all the inexplicable coincidences and mismatched data went away. The answer became wonderfully simple. The plane must have gone north.
Using the BTO data set alone, I was able to chart the plane’s speed and general path, which happened to fall along national borders.Fig. 21 Flying along borders, a military navigator told me, is a good way to avoid being spotted on radar. A Russian intelligence plane nearly collided with a Swedish airliner while doing it over the Baltic Sea in December. If I was right, it would have wound up in Kazakhstan, just as search officials recognized early on.
There aren’t a lot of places to land a plane as big as the 777, but, as luck would have it, I found one: a place just past the last handshake ring called Baikonur Cosmodrome.Fig. 22 Baikonur is leased from Kazakhstan by Russia. A long runway there called Yubileyniy was built for a Russian version of the Space Shuttle. If the final Inmarsat ping rang at the start of MH370’s descent, it would have set up nicely for an approach to Yubileyniy’s runway 24.
Whether the plane went to Baikonur or elsewhere in Kazakhstan, my suspicion fell on Russia. With technically advanced satellite, avionics, and aircraft-manufacturing industries, Russia was a paranoid fantasist’s dream.24 (The Russians, or at least Russian-backed militia, were also suspected in the downing of Malaysia Flight 17 in July.) Why, exactly, would Putin want to steal a Malaysian passenger plane? I had no idea. Maybe he wanted to demonstrate to the United States, which had imposed the first punitive sanctions on Russia the day before, that he could hurt the West and its allies anywhere in the world. Maybe what he was really after were the secrets of one of the plane’s passengers.25 Maybe there was something strategically crucial in the hold. Or maybe he wanted the plane to show up unexpectedly somewhere someday, packed with explosives. There’s no way to know. That’s the thing about MH370 theory-making: It’s hard to come up with a plausible motive for an act that has no apparent beneficiaries.
As it happened, there were three ethnically Russian men aboard MH370, two of them Ukrainian-passport holders from Odessa.26 Could any of these men, I wondered, be special forces or covert operatives? As I looked at the few pictures available on the internet, they definitely struck me as the sort who might battle Liam Neeson in midair.
About the two Ukrainians, almost nothing was available online.Fig. 27 I was able to find out a great deal about the Russian,Fig. 28 who was sitting in first class about 15 feet from the E/E-bay hatch.Fig. 29 He ran a lumber company in Irkutsk, and his hobby was technical diving under the ice of Lake Baikal.30 I hired Russian speakers from Columbia University to make calls to Odessa and Irkutsk, then hired researchers on the ground.
The more I discovered, the more coherent the story seemed to me.32 I found a peculiar euphoria in thinking about my theory, which I thought about all the time. One of the diagnostic questions used to determine whether you’re an alcoholic is whether your drinking has interfered with your work. By that measure, I definitely had a problem. Once the CNN checks stopped coming, I entered a long period of intense activity that earned me not a cent. Instead, I was forking out my own money for translators and researchers and satellite photos. And yet I was happy.
Still, it occurred to me that, for all the passion I had for my theory, I might be the only person in the world who felt this way. Neurobiologist Robert A. Burton points out in his book On Being Certain that the sensation of being sure about one’s beliefs is an emotional response separate from the processing of those beliefs. It’s something that the brain does subconsciously to protect itself from wasting unnecessary processing power on problems for which you’ve already found a solution that’s good enough. “ ‘That’s right’ is a feeling you get so that you can move on,” Burton told me. It’s a kind of subconscious laziness. Just as it’s harder to go for a run than to plop onto the sofa, it’s harder to reexamine one’s assumptions than it is to embrace certainty. At one end of the spectrum of skeptics are scientists, who by disposition or training resist the easy path; at the other end are conspiracy theorists, who’ll leap effortlessly into the sweet bosom of certainty. So where did that put me?
Propounding some new detail of my scenario to my wife over dinner one night, I noticed a certain glassiness in her expression. “You don’t seem entirely convinced,” I suggested.
She shrugged.
“Okay,” I said. “What do you think is the percentage chance that I’m right?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Five percent?”33
Springtime came to the southern ocean, and search vessels began their methodical cruise along the area jointly identified by the IG and the ATSB, dragging behind it a sonar rig that imaged the seabed in photographic detail. Within the IG, spirits were high. The discovery of the plane would be the triumphant final act of a remarkable underdog story.
By December, when the ships had still not found a thing, I felt it was finally time to go public. In six sequentially linked pages that readers could only get to by clicking through—to avoid anyone reading the part where I suggest Putin masterminded the hijack without first hearing how I got there—I laid out my argument. I called it “The Spoof.”
I got a respectful hearing but no converts among the IG. A few sites wrote summaries of my post. The International Business Times headlined its story “MH370: Russia’s Grand Plan to Provoke World War III, Says Independent Investigator” and linked directly to the Putin part. Somehow, the airing of my theory helped quell my obsession. My gut still tells me I’m right, but my brain knows better than to trust my gut.
Last month, the Malaysian government declared that the aircraft is considered to have crashed and all those aboard are presumed dead. Malaysia’s transport minister told a local television station that a key factor in the decision was the fact that the search mission for the aircraft failed to achieve its objective. Meanwhile, new theories are still being hatched. One, by French writer Marc Dugain, states that the plane was shot down by the U.S. because it was headed toward the military bases on the islands of Diego Garcia as a flying bomb.34
The search failed to deliver the airplane, but it has accomplished some other things: It occupied several thousand hours of worldwide airtime; it filled my wallet and then drained it; it torpedoed the idea that the application of rationality to plane disasters would inevitably yield ever-safer air travel. And it left behind a faint, lingering itch in the back of my mind, which I believe will quite likely never go away.
*This article appears in the February 23, 2015 issue of New York Magazine.
Coming back on my posting from yesterday about Inmarsat shareholders:
To be more explicit there has been a party who made an estimated 60 million USdollars profit over the past year on Inmarsat shares and recently sold 23 million shares from a position which was taken on: 6 March 2014
If you are interested follow the link in yesterday’s posting.
Niels.
Harbinger Capital Fund
@niels @peter norton
All Details in respect of the disappearance seem to Need extra and extra cross checking. I Fell a little bit victim to a BBC Report on “before its news” dated 27 may 2014 titled “Inside Inmarsat ….”
There it was stated that harbinger actually owns those shares, which to the contrary indeed have been sold in 2 packages end 2010 and early 2011. This was after the Fund decided to focus on its broadband Wireless activities with “lightsquared”
However, this Säle did Not mein an end to the interest of harbinger Capital in Inmarsat, because they secured the Services of Inmarsat needed for lightsquared with a major deal that gets inmarsat about 110 Million $ per anno. So these players are still married to each other.
Harbinger Capital is Not very famous with the SEC for quite ruthless practices and got some punishment. They are critically Short of Money, because FCC stopped the broadband activities of Lightsquared
@Matty – agreed.
@Peter – I don’t have an answer on the motive or cause of the plane’s initial turn. I am simply suggesting that a relatively small inaccuracy in the data could lead the search in the wrong direction, with or without a spoof. I’m then wondering if such an inaccuracy could arise from the software.
We don’t know what the delay bias is for the plane, after the reboot. We’re told it’s consistent during the first leg, and presumably on other trips.
This doesn’t even have to be a technical “malfunction,” so to speak. It simply has to be a change in the bias large enough to misdirect the search.
That change could come from a spoof or a terminal swap. But my point here is that perhaps the bias changes over time by an infinitesimal amount, or that it changes between one reboot and another.
Recall that the BTOs are rounded to the nearest 20us. So even the shift between values rounded up and values rounded down moves the plane 10 miles.
A year ago there were reports that, shortly after the “turn-back,” MH370 climbed to 45,000 feet and then dropped down to 12,000 feet or something like that. Soon after these reports, experts said that, without a transponder, Radar could not accurately predict altitude
However, para., 1.1.3 of the FI report says the altitude fluctuated between 35,700 feet and 31,100 feet between 17:30 and 17:40. Could these values be accurate? If so, could that indicate the a/c was being hand flown?
Para 1.6.5 says MH370 had 43,800 kg fuel remaining when it reached its 35,000 ft cruising altitude at 17:07:29 and an estimated 41,500 kg when it overflew IGARI around 17:20:31. That means it burned 2,300 kg of fuel over about 13 min 2 sec giving a burn rate of 10.6 Mt/hr. That’s much higher than the tables indicate for cruising at 35,000 feet. This would also indicate a burn rate of 6.015 Mt/hr for the time between 17:21 and 00:15.
One more challenge for the number crunchers:
Many of the calculations show a constant 35,000 ft altitude for the last 6 hours of the flight. That could be because the submitted flight plan shows an altitude 35,000 ft on the northeast path to Beijing. However, I’ll bet that when the flight was diverted to the west and then to the south, whoever was flying the plane would have chosen an even number for the ‘000’s of feet such as either 34,000 ft., 36,000 ft., 38,000 ft., or 40,000 or possibly 42,000 ft. I see that Dr. Ulich used 40,000 ft for a couple of his trials and Mr. Godfrey used 39,000 ft., in his latest spreadsheet.
@JS:
“We’re talking about two possible scenarios here – that there was a spoof, or that the data is accurate.”
Actually, there’s a third possibility: that the data was manipulated to hide an event — namely that 370 was taken down.
@Oleksandr:
“But how could they know this in advance? And even they knew, what is to do with this specific MH370? Of course, the next level of conspiracy would be that Malay military on purpose switched off Butterworth radars to let MH370 pass by.”
The scenario raised in your statement (may) prove to be one of the KEY elements in untangling the mystery of this missing plane.
Do you recall the conversation I had (posted here previously) with the 370 NoK ‘John’ — who is also a heavy pilot?
“I asked John several times whether the US Navy exercises he mentioned (“between Indonesia and Malaysia”) were occurring in the Gulf of Thailand or the Malacca Strait. He finally answered that the exercises were in Malacca Strait. He said he has a copy of the “notice to airmen” about those exercises, which he’ll provide when he gets back to China. I told him that if 370 was flying KL to Beijing it makes no sense that they would have been “advised” about naval exercises in the Malacca Strait. He agreed and said that’s the question he’s been asking – why would 370 have gotten a notification about US naval exercises in the Malacca Strait?” http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1skbadj
This part of the conversation stopped me cold — because if true, it implied the following:
– An insider (MAS or KLIA ATC) who had KNEW that MH370 was going to divert and head toward the Malacca Strait. And that insider provided the NOTAM ‘John’ mentioned.
OR
– An intelligence-related entity that knew or had reason to know that 370 might divert and head toward the Malacca Strait. Headed to where? Back to Kuala Lumpur?
Recall Sir Tim Clark’s interview with Spiegel:
[Nihonmama November 22, 2014 at 12:23 AM
MH370 and the Mystery of Indonesian Radar]:
“Moreover, that what if Petronas Towers scenario he poses (I believe Rand mentioned the same on more than one occasion) is intriguing. Why did Clark mention THAT scenario in an interview that is being released NOW? And please note how it was reported (or I should say, transcribed):
“What would have happened if the aircraft would have turned back to fly into the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur?”
That’s a hypothetical question.
“But we identified it as as ‘friendly.’”
Clark’s repeating what the Malaysians say happened.
Now look at this sentence:
“But what was done?”
That’s NOT a hypothetical question.
“What would have been done” or “What would have happened” would have been a hypothetical question. But asking “What was done?” sounds like the scenario Clark described HAPPENED — so he asked WHAT WAS DONE? in response to it.”
Ponder that.
Here’s what else is interesting.
Exercise Malapura (between the Republic of Singapore Navy and the Royal Malaysian Navy) was reported to have taken place from Feb. 25th to Mar. 6th, 2014 – in the Malacca Straits.
But this is what ‘John’ told me privately:
“US Navy exercises were on that night closed airspace was 10,000 feet to FL350 35,000 feet, and 60 square miles happen that night.”
What US exercises were those?
Also recall Kate Tee’s account. She reported seeing ‘bright white’ lights from her boat (which would have been south of her, in the direction of the Malacca Strait) on the night of March 7. But Exercises Malapura reportedly ended on Mar 6.
IF his information is true, was that NOTAM ‘John’ claims the MH370 pilots received actually ASSISTANCE material to execution of a hijacking plot?
Or, was there a set-up (read contingency) put in place based on information that MH370 might be hijacked? If so, was that contingency acted upon and could that now be the reason for the obfuscation and withholding of radar data — because there was an INTERDICTION of MH370 — and a downing in the Malacca Strait — and that is what’s being covered-up?
As also noted here previously, ‘John’ promised to provide that NOTAM to MH370 (re Malacca Straits) when he returned to China, but no further communication from him has occurred. No NOTAM either. But I received a message from aviation lawyer Jerry Skinner at LHD lawyers in Sydney, confirming that ‘John’ is a real person, is a pilot and is being represented by the Skinner and LHD.
It may be the case that ‘John’ has answered your question.
Jeff,
In the 18:40 timeframe, it is possible that MH370 was descending at ~ 1500 ft/min.
There are many possible interpretations (path re-constructions) of the BFOs at this time.
The following interpretation is important.
I have found that the BFOs (~ 18:26 – 18:40) are approximately equal for,
MH370 continuing North (~ 300 deg) and descending at 1500 ft/min (at the time of the communication)
and
MH370 turning South (to ~ 190 deg) while maintaining altitude.
I am not saying that MH370 definitely continued flying North at ~ 300 deg,
but that it cannot be definitely concluded from the BFOs that ‘only the south turn occurred’.
or in other words – the BFOs do not
definitely say that MH370 turned south at 18:40.
This should eliminate all resistance for any and all of your continue-North route scenarios.
The above interpretation does not involve any spoofing or faked data BFO or BTO data.
Malaysia should now be ‘forced’ to release the March 8, 2014 BTO data and all the redactions since that time.
Nihonmama,
Thanks for your comment. With regard to the latter case, my point was that if the purpose was to steal cargo or people carried by this MH370, then the Butterworth radar was disabled on purpose. Otherwise flying over Khoh Samui and Langkawi would be a preferable option.
—————
Greg Yorke,
That is what I was arguing with IG members for a long while. 18:40 BFO seems to be “in line” with other BFOs, which is a main supporting reason to think that the last mode of the flight began before 18:40. But what if not? What if 18:40 BFO is coincidently “in line”? The problem is that one would need a hypothesis with regard to what was going on between 18:22 and 19:41.
Btw, if I am not mistaken, ~300 deg and descending at 1500 ft/min roughly leads to Car Nikobar.
—————
Another thought with regard to a technical failure:
Why Penang? May be the idea was to fly over Butterworth to attract military attention? If all communication means were knocked down, while successful landing was not deemed to be possible, it would be a brilliant idea to establish visual contact with pilots of interceptors.
Nihonmama: A NOTAM is a general advisory, usually relating to a particular area. It is not usually something that is provided specifically to particular flights. Rather it would be picked up during the flight planning process as something applicable in the general area, and checked at the time of lodgement of a flight plan. I see nothing wrong with the possibility that a NOTAM was in existence for that time, and the MH370 crew were aware of that NOTAM.
I suspect that Mike Chillit reads contributions to this blog. I wonder if we could persuade Mr Chillit to stick to his knitting. His charts showing progress of the underwater search are very useful. His surrounding comments are a complete nonsense.
He cas criticised Inmarsat for not knowing their own satellite ephemeris, and ATSB ad IG likewise. They were all wrong, according to him, but he is right.
He now uses the Inmarsat ephemeris but superimposes [rather than projects] the I-3F1 track, at a distance from the earth’s surface of something like 36,000 km onto the surface of the earth. Then goes on to conclude that the satellite moved this far.
Of course, everyone including Inmarsat, ATSB, the IG and others who have plotted the ping rings got it wrong, but he has it right.
Now he concludes that the aircraft was not moving after about 18:40, as a result of his dodgy “covariance” calculations.
Clearly Mr Chillit’s mathematical skills are woeful and his understanding of geometry, spherical and otherwise, likewise.
His standard reaction will now be to call me a troll I suppose.Water off a duck’s back actually, and I don’t have a twitter account for him to block.
It’s a pity really, because his charts of the search patterns are indeed useful.
So Mr Chillit, how about sticking to you knitting, and stop criticising others whose mathematical skills are clearly better than yours.
@Flitzer_Flyer:
Aware of what a NOTAM is. The point of the post was not that the NOTAM was “wrong” but that it was curious — if 370’s flight path took it in the opposite direction from the Malacca Strait. ‘John’, who said he’s got 15 years flying heavy aircraft, also thought it was odd for that same reason.
@ Oleksandr, you provided counter-arguments for all my points I raised against technical failure. I think I could refute most of them, but even if all were valid, they are not mutually compatible (e.g. you say the crew was incapacitated, but later you say the crew “repaired” the AES, I am not even asking how) … or can you find a single scenario which would explain all points ? That would be really interesting.
@ Niels, you are referring to BlackRock Investment Management (UK) -22.99m, right ? Where did you find the date of 6 March 2014 ? I couldn’t find it in the link you provided.
Can someone please enlighten me: what manoeuvre? The military manoeuvre referenced in recent postings? What would a military manoeuvre have to do with Inmarsat’s satellite orbits?
And if it was a satellite manoeuvre, why was it done and was it really just by coincidence ?
Both cases seem odd to me.
@peter norton
Please look under tab “Top Holders”
The dates are written directly underneath the names of the institutional shareholders.
Niels.
Excellent work. That’s what I was trying to say (and surely others before me) by “BFO-spoofing by adjusting in-flight altitude as needed would not require such a box. The perpetrators could calculate the required RoC changes for their desired flight path comfortably at home in their couch, and on 8 March they just feed the resulting 3D flight path into the FMC”. … meaning that it was possible for the perpetrators to chose a northern flight path and calculate RoC changes for that northern route in such a manner that the resulting BFO values would correspond to a straight flight down south at constant altitude. This would not require spoofing, just the same maths that you just did and enough fuel to change altitudes.
Alternatively, it could also be just a (very unlikely) coincidence that a randomly chosen northern path would have altitude changes that – by chance – correspond perfectly to a straight flight down the SIO.
@Niels: The way I read “as of 6 march 2014” is that that was the date of their last transaction. That doesn’t say how much was sold on that day (could have been a tiny amount). Where do you see that BlackRock sold $23m on 6 march 2014?
On the “movers” tab it says the “Data is from 31 Dec 2014 – 02 Mar 2015” and when you hover on the -23m transaction, it says “recent activity: 07 mar 2013 – 31 dec 2014”. It’s not quite clear :/
@Peter, @Greg:
“BFO-spoofing by adjusting in-flight altitude as needed would not require such a box.”
this is what I think too; FMT direction was somehow tactically masked, as smart pilot with knowledge of (radio)electronics has enough time between hourly pings to prepare situation which affects BFO; question is, if pilots knows somehow when exactly such handshake pings occurs next – is there access to SATCOM log entries also from cocpit of plane to detect where will be hourly window to play??
@Peter Norton
A possible northern path would be a high threat path, requiring flying on different tracks, altitudes and speeds asociated with climbs and descents for minimum exposure to ATC and air defence radars. It would not be a max range path like the computed south path based on fixed altitude, speed and track. Therefore imho it is more probable that the recorded BFO datas for a northern path are the result of such a threat avoidance routing instead of a planned inflight spoofing by performing precomputed maneuvers.
@Oleksander
The routing from IGARI to Penang was to attract not much attention, and that is the way it turned out.
To disappear from secondary radar at IGARI was a time buyer, but would not prevent detection by primary radar. MH 370 continuing off track in foreign airspace would raise suspicion and some action, a turn back to the country of origin and heading to the longest available runway with an severe electrical problem would be a normal expected routing. Even a turn to the northwest if observed could be initially interpreted as maneuvering for an approach to landing. When the flight continued to the northwest and left primary radar coverage, it was too late for air defence measures.
The routing from IGARI to Penang can be seen as the low risk route over friendly territory, the routing to MEKAR as the one to disappear from Primary radar by flying out of range and or descending below the radar horizon without interfering with neighbouring countries, which would explain the descent for the 1840 BFO fit.
We can assume something else from this routing, that the final destination was not in the northeast or southeast and was not a vast empty sea.
Planes disappearing from Radar across Europe.
I bring to your attention the disappearance of thirteen planes from Multiple ATC Centres on two seperate occasions in June 2014, just three months after MH370..
ATC believe maybe hack..
I can’t find any updates on the said pending investigation into this.
Peter/Retiredf4 – About a week back Victor remarked “It baffles me that so many believe that our understanding of the BFO data is nearly absolute. In fact, we don’t know what we don’t know.”
I fully believe his version as opposed to some who talk BFO as if it was some Newtonian law. From early on it was said that a northern path could be made to fit if it did turns/ descents etc. So it was south on AP or north flying the thing. Back then I popped up in my own wet-eared fashion and suggested that it went north with a continuation of the evasive tactics that it had exhibited up until then – using borders etc. The northern route went out of fashion faster than abba but at least it made some sense. The plunge on the southern route was driven mainly by Inmarsat and Barack Obama’s only statement on the matter. ???
Fast fwd and we now know that when it was meant to be hitting the water off the coast here at M1 we have acoustic data of some ice cracking events and a minor tremor south of India, and that’s all. And not one bit of plane.
I know I’ve been an abrasive little shit to some pretty learned individuals here on this blog but the aggravation went both ways. BFO seemed to transition from a general indicator of north vs south to a precise forensic tool, so what was driving that? As one journalist said at the beginning – MH370 has become transcendent. It drew in a lot of people and a year later they are still there twisting their brains out and it has got the better of many of them. I think nearly everyone has belittled themselves at some point in tangling with MH370. It has turned gentlemen into snaky fist-shaking cranks intolerant of alternate opinion and some good scientists into ranters. No coincidence that a lot of the contributors here come from psychology.
@all
re/recap “hourly windows” between ground-originated handshake pings – yes, there is really exactly 60 minutes between first 4 of them them (19:41, 20:41, 21:41, 22:41) but there was also unanswered phone call at 18:39 (so just 2 minutes before first 1 hour window – some kind of notification/sync from somebody on ground??) before that, there was at 18:25 0x10 logon/restart from 777 and afther that, again, unanswered phone call at 23:13 which also somehow moves the next handshake time to 00:10?? after that at 00:19:29 next logon/restart from 777 and 8 seconds later final handshake (which just after restart might(?) report unreliable BFO/BTO ??)… may be next up-to-hour to land??
@Matty,
You’ve never been an abrasive little shit. You’ve been quite opinionated but you were always polite and mellow.
And you’re right: this case does twist our brains into knots. We’ve all belittled other people’s theories at some time while pursuing completely ridiculous ideas ourselves.
And yes, mh370 is a field day for psychologists. We try to make sense of the human input by different agents (crew, passengers,potential perps, investigators, officials) not knowing who’s the victim and who’s the villain. And it is interesting to see what this case does to people’s minds.
@Peter Norton
Hi Peter the way I read the FT tables is that the date under holders (as 06 mar 2014) is the date that they became shareholder, and the “movers” table contains transactions in the period 31 dec 2014 – 02 mar 2015, so the period in which the 22.9m shares were sold.
But I hadn’t figured out the option which you get when you hover over it. It would indicate that the selling occured somewhere in the period 07 mar 2013 – 31 dec 2014.
So it indeed it is not conclusive and needs a closer look.
@all: I apologize jumping to fast to conclusion there (the “about 60 million USD profit on Inmarsat shares”). It adds to the noise of which we have so much already. I’m really sorry about that.
The most important is to find out what is the meaning of “as of 06 mar 2014”, so was there indeed a transaction on 06 mar 2014 and what were the details of the transaction, as well as to find out when was this “recent activity” in which 22.9 million shares were sold exactly.
Who can help with this / has access to more detailed info on LSE transactions?
Niels.
Peter,
You said “I think I could refute most of them, but even if all were valid, they are not mutually compatible”
Please refute. A lot of folks here said they can refute, but so far nobody did it.
On contrary, my arguments are compatible. In my opinion all the crew and passengers could get incapacitated later. I would suggest the control could be finally lost by ~19:30.
@Matty:
your comments are most interesting, no worries
@RetiredF4 (or Franz :):
wow, just read your comprehensive post at 3/21 and I agree with every word; its too professional, but even in media since my “day one” (transporder off and turn published)
RetiredF4,
“The routing from IGARI to Penang was to attract not much attention, and that is the way it turned out.”
Is it a widespread hypothesis or established fact? In no way I am discarding it as a hypothesis. But I can bounce back with the same with regard to technical failure: the IGARI to Penang is the most logical path in case of a failure, and that is the way it turned out.
You say:
“a turn back to the country of origin and heading to the longest available runway with an severe electrical problem would be a normal expected routing. ”
This is exactly the case, isn’t it?
You say: “The routing from IGARI to Penang can be seen as the low risk route over friendly territory”.
What about Butterworth? The main question is why Penang, not Langkawi? 15 min in Thai airspace would change nothing. It would take Thai military a lot longer to liaise with Malaysians to find out that this aircraft is not heading to Langkawi as it could appear. In addition, the aircraft could also cross zig-zag border to cause confusion. Why not, if this path is shorter? If the fuel was a subject of concerns (landing at the 7th arc according to “BFO only” spoofing), flying over Penang is too risky trade-off.
I am not sure what you meant by “which would explain the descent for the 1840 BFO fit”.
@ Oleksandr
Fair remarks, which I’ll try to answer.
Nothing I stated is a fact, it is my assumption from the available information. If I would have had the task to get an airplane from IGARI to MEKAR without raising too much attention, that would be my routing. It is a perfect fit for that task. Simulate an emergency and then disappear when the right place is reached.
As you correctly state this track could also be a routing to get back to Malaysia for landing at a suitable airfield with some kind of emergency. But you raised the points against such a emergency flight yourself, there would have been other options too, continue to some place in Vietnam or Thailand, turn back direct to Kuala Lumpur, land at Penang International ir at Butterworth, turn to south at Penang for a landing at Kuala Lumpur, but it did neither one, it turned to MEKAR and disappeared from Radar.
Why not crossing borders and zig zaging to cause confusion?
Because staying low profile may cause to stay unobserved at all, whereas causing confusion by zig zaging higlights the aircraft due to its unnormal and unexpected behaviour.
We do not know if fuel was a concern for a northern routing, we have not yet discussed the possible routing to the northern arcs.
At 1840 ping the aircraft was according to the BFO either on a southerly track at FL 350 with cruise mach or was continueing on track 300 and descending with 1500 feet per minute. Or a more northerly heading with increased descent rate. Both would generate similar BFO. That is what others have been saying, quite frankly I do not know that much about the BFO data except what I read in the discussions in the IG group and other places. After 18:22 out of 21600 seconds of flighttime 7 seconds (the handshakes) are used to generate a routing. After MEKAR In my scenario MH 370 would still be descending to get out of the Malayan primary radar and to stay out of primary radar coverage of neighbouring nations as well.
@Retired F4,
Re: Return from IGARI to Penang.
As you might know I’m cautiously endorsing a Northern route scenario. But I’ve always tried to find an explanation why the plane went to Penang and then up the Strait. The Strait is the densest radar covered route in that whole area. Why didn’t mh370 adopt a more Northwestern course exclusively through Thai airspace and directly to the Andamans if it wanted to go North? It would’ve been shorter – and fuel IS a strong concern in that scenario – and the radar coverage would’ve been much less dense.
But there is some truth in your explanation: a return to Penang was a risk if deemed hostile – but it could also be interpreted as non-hostile. Maybe the perps also had some info about laxness in Malaysian air space security matters.If they had gone straight over Thai airspace to the Andamans, they would’ve have avoided the Strait. But they would’ve intruded into foreign airspace. That could’ve had more serious consequences, and the Thais might’ve been more on the ball. By going up the Strait they were radar covered but they were in a kind of no-man’s-land. As long as the plane proceeded normally everybody might go into Douglas Adam’s SEP-mode. And after the Strait the plane was out of the frying pan.
Thank you for coming up with a convincing explanation. We don’t know if it really happened that way, but it’s plausible.
RetiredF4,
A mechanical failure scenario explains why they did not land. An initial intent could probably be the return to KLIA, but it was not safe to fly over mountains. In addition, the path from IGARI is nearly perpendicular to the east coast. But then the crew realized that without communication, but with ~35 tons of kerosene they were unable to land safely. Especially if the problem was with the nose landing gear (which is just under EE-bay). A logical thing would be to burn fuel first, or attempt landing where they would end up in water (Maimun Saleh, for example).
Regarding “At 1840 ping the aircraft was according to the BFO either on a southerly track at FL 350 with cruise mach or was continuing on track 300 and descending with 1500 feet per minute.”.
I am afraid you misunderstood this thing. There are infinite number of solutions that fit BFO 18:40; these two are just two examples. The 3rd example, btw, was suggested much earlier by Victor (Aceh landing). If you now consider possibility of different ground speed, you may get virtually any combination of the heading and descent/ascent rate (subject to the aircraft performance). But this needs some hypothesis: what was a goal?
It’s not noise. Research progresses through trial&error. Quite to the contrary, Niels, you are coming up with a very valuable thought here which would be worth pursuing with more detailed data, if someone knows where to find shareholder transaction data.
Olkesandr, I would be really interested in your technical failure scenario. The isolated points you raised may or may not explain the red flags I raised, but I cannot see how you could combine all of them in one scenario. Could you present it in a contiguous manner, explaining what may have happened from A-Z ?
@Oleksandr
What a mechanical failure does not explain are the following, particularly when viewed in totality. You would be well served to focus your considerable talents on matters that involve deliberate scenarios, imho:
The failure of frequency read back per final transmission, coupled with the a/c dropping off from SSR and diverting at IGARI. This takes place at the exact time of hand over. It is the PERFECT moment in flight to ‘disappear’ and buy time, sowing confusion. Chances of a coincidence? So remote it is hardly worth discussion given the following (see below):
Established flight path from IGARI to 18:25. This does NOT simulate an a/c in some sort of distress, unless, again, you believe in these astronomical ‘coincidences’.
The probable re-powering of the AES at 18:25. This has all the hallmarks of someone purposely bringing back on the left ac bus. We don’t know that this is definitively the reason for the 18:25 signal data, but, regardless, the timing coinciding with an a/c emerging from the staights and no longer with a need to be ‘dark’, when coupled with the ‘FMT’, is more than suggestive of a purposeful act and a wholly capable a/c.
Finally, the stonewalling, obfuscation and misinformation as perpetrated by the the Malaysian govt. It’s too elaborate and profuse to delve into on this thread.
Have you not been attuned to this? Their transparency has quite literally been laughable (if not so despicable). I think this is one point almost all posters here agree on…and it speaks loud, clearly and directly, putting to rest any idea of ‘malfunction’ (except in Zaharie’s head) with the a/c.
spencer
@Oleksandr
To fly over the mountains at Fl350 does not pose a problem, whichever emergency or technical failure there might be.
I fuel burn first would be atttempted, then in an adequate holding pattern,that is normal procedure and valid also for a radio out aircraft. There was no holding anywhere.
I think I understood the limitations of the BFO well enough, therefore my hint to the BFO evaluation based on 7 seconds f of a total 21600 seconds flighttime. But together with the BTO rings we know, that the most probable general direction was either south or north, and while the official version is the south path I just repeated the finding of others, that maintaining the known track and descending would correlate with the 1840 BFO value. I think that is not more far fetched than assuming that a maneuvering aircraft like being controlled by humans suddenly turns and flys on autopilot to the south until fuel exhaustion.
@spencer, we don’t know what was going on in Zaharie’s head except the symptoms he exhibit with communications seem to be lack of oxygen possibly from hypoxia if the aircraft had a mechanical failure. I see no reason to hang him yet.
the perpetrators would not know the exact time they would be contacted by the satellite (particularly in the case of the satphone calls), but that doesn’t matter, they wouldn’t need to. In case RoC changes were used to affect BFO values, the perpetrators would have calculated the required RoC changes for the whole route, so that BFO values would match (the straight, constant-altitude southern flight) at any point in time, regardless of when the BFO values are logged.
Matching only very short segments of the flight path would give them more leeway in choosing their altitude/heading but would of course also be much riskier (in case of incoming satphone calls or generally satellite pings not occurring within the expected time segments for whatever reason)
@Peter:
thanks, but my confirmation-bias is still unaffected; its curious why there wasnt more satphone call tries in fact (imagine, if you desperatelly want to call somebody, you might try it several times or not?) and if such sat-call (or ANY activity on the channels) always resets(???) 1hr timer for next handshake/ping then it can help to synchronize pilots actions, if that sat-call ringed into cockpit(???) – perpetrators too much for me yet; in fact inmarsat might be part of the “problem” but it seems suicidal for them if they arent under control of some bigger authorities; btw flying over india/china/kazachstan must be monitored by their military and russians must know everything from space too, the same as americans; somebody plays “catch me if you can” here
You are touching an IMO crucial point, which I failed to see at first glance. At first, when I read your comment, I thought: “What are the odds, that BFO values for a northbound radar-avoidance path would, by coincidence, match BFO values for a straight southbound altitude-constant path? The odds must be infinitesimal.”
But then I remembered that the BTO/BFO values (all arbitrary assumptions aside) don’t define just 1 possible southbound path, but a wide array of possible paths. This is a whole different story. I tried to convey this idea in my little essay “(12) The police officer at the petrol station”, in case someone read it (page 6).
When looking at things from this perspective, it’s actually not as impossible as at first glance, that 1 of all possible northbound paths has matching BFO values for 1 of all possible southbound paths (or even 1 of many possible straight southbound paths).
@ “its curious why there wasnt more satphone call tries in fact (imagine, if you desperatelly want to call somebody, you might try it several times or not?)”: completely agreed
@ “flying over india/china/kazachstan must be monitored by their military”: I think in practice monitoring has a lot more holes than countries pretend. I am not a radar expert, but I have heard quite some statements to that effect.
@ “russians must know everything from space too, the same as americans”: this is a widespread misconception. The earth is a big place. It’s impossible to watch the whole planet at a high enough resolution to see an airliner. Imagine how many satellites you would need for such a task and how many billions of images you would need to capture and store each and every second ? It’s completely impossible. And neither Russia nor the US has radar stations tracking planes over Malaysia (why would they BTW?).
Peter – I’ve come up against this from the beginning. “Radar would have seen it”. Just because radar is a reality doesn’t mean entire nations are covered by it. If you were the size of Britain fair enough. They cover what they most need to, and how does it stack up over the Himalayas? What isn’t covered is never mentioned, disclosure of detections is also treated carefully. If less then 3% of the earth is covered, much of it over the sea, it leaves a bloody lot of land area.
For those who believe the US was somehow involved in diverting MH370 to Kazakhstan, there has been zero positive evidence to support such a conjecture, with one exception. Check out the waypoint near the following lat/long (closest city is Jezkazgan)
Latitude N46 02.2
Longitude E069 02.5
@sk999: very 38°21’12″N 76°40’15″W.
@ Matty: absolutely right.
Case in point: Not even Britain (since you brought them up) with one of the most advanced militaries in the world, seems to have solid radar surveillance. Remember when Putin tested Britain’s defences last year? His “fully armed warship came within 30 miles off Britain’s coast”:
http://dailym.ai/19gdEHy
“This was the second such incident in 2 years. In December 2011, the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, anti-submarine ship Admiral Chabanenko and escort ship Yaroslav Mudry sailed close to Scotland before being challenged by the Royal Navy.”
So if the UK fails to detect for a long time something far bigger, far slower and far more dangerous than a civil aircraft, until they are right at their coast, then it’s definitely within the realms of possibility that a passenger plane in Southeast Asia could fly through unhindered.
@sk999+Brock: What are those coordinates? Please clue me in :^)
As this struck me as odd, too, may I quote here the eerie telephone conversation between MAS Ops and KL ATC starting on page 295 of the MOT report, to facilitate access. There seems to be a language issue involved, but still … the MAS guy seems so indifferent. None of you finds this remarkable ?
@Peter Norton
MAS ops was flooded with officials from the PM’s office that morning. Source: Gerry Soejatman. Hmmm.
@Peter Norton
Regarding the telephone conversation between MAS Ops and KL ATC.
Yes this is indeed bothersome, but unfortunately likely explainable. The conversation appears to be another recorded occurrence of MAS gross incompetence. There are several general issues:
1.0 MAS mistakenly thought the ‘positioning message’ was ACTUAL when instead it was ESTIMATED. From the conversation I conclude that this blunder gave MAS the confidence (read arrogance) that MH370 was still in flight and that it was out of Malaysian airspace and therefor someone else’s problem. (Unbelievable, blunder, position and approach.)
2.0 Lack of professionalism by MAS. You are correct, there is no sense of urgency, alarm, or comprehension of the potential issue at hand. (MAS doesn’t even answer the phone by first identifying themselves, KL ATCC must extract the identification.)
3.0 Total lack of leadership. MAS limits their conversation to passively answering the questions in the shortest manner possible. On this call there is no rolling up of the sleeves to join KL ATCC and HCM resolve this critical issue. MAS and the neighboring nations have no contact with MH370! Even when MAS assumed ‘positioning message’ was correct they should have, for safety sake, assumed there was some type of communication issue and jumped all over it with a plan that included action and a promise to call back KL ATCC with results. Instead a lackluster “alright’.
I’m not convinced there was a language issue isn’t this conversation professional Malaysian to professional Malaysian?
@Benaihu
How would you explain away Hishammuddin telling 4corners that we knew it was “an aircraft” (not MH370 per se), then going on to say we KNEW it was friendly, and, more tellingly, we KNEW it FROM OUR AIRSPACE?
If you know it’s friendly (as he claims was the case), and you know it was from (i.e originated) your airspace (as he claims), then you clearly KNOW it was MH370, NOT ‘an aircraft’.
Incompetence? Not so much.
@Greg: you’ve been great at upbraiding folks who call me NAMES, so I’ll help POINT the WAY.
You already have sk999’s location; for saving me from sLANDer, I’ll even throw in a priMARY focus for mine.
@spencer
My comments above were specific to the MAS/KL ATCC conversation. This conversation is at the line level not at the top political level. Sure there is a possibility that the top political level applied restrictive directions to the line level members during the crisis, but I have no knowledge or data to support that theory.
Clearly there are issues with Hishammuddin Hussein’s answers, actions, and comments on Caro Meldrum-Hanna’s excellent Four Corners interview.
One question would be – How did the Malaysian military know that the radar return was a ‘commercial airline’ at the time of detection?
BTW, since it was deemed a friendly airline (presumably NOT equating to MH370 since they took no action), why would he get calls in real time from his Air Force? Does his Air Force call him every time they spot a commercial aircraft? None of this adds up. MH370 could have buzzed past Malaysia without them even noticing and the story he tells poorly is fabricated from Monday morning quarterbacking to make his military appear competent. (fail)
How did the Malaysian military know that the radar return was a ‘commercial airline’ at the time of detection?
I’m not familiar with the Malayan Military radar system implementation, therefore i post some general information below.
There are different ways how the military would know that the unknown target correlates with a former known target.
The task of the military in the surveillance mode is to detect unknown traffic. The easiest way to do it is to feed the computers with all known flightplans. Once those are activated (aircraft airborne) the primary radar return of such an aircraft is designated friendly. That flightplans are changed in flight by ATC is normal, therefore a deviation from the planned routing would not raise any alarm or attention. The system would also not react to a lost secondary radar contact, as long as the primary target can still be correlated with the former secondary target and is still marked friendly.
The controller at the screen has the choice to select differnt type of informations on his screen. He can have a blank screen if he choosemto see only unidentified targets, he could select to see all primary only targets, or all available targets, which would give a very cluttered scope. His main scope will be selected according to his SOP, which we do not know, but as he has no comtrolling duty during night there is no sense to stare at all known targets, so poitive identified friendly targets may be blanked out on the screen.
@Peter Norton
My opinion about the unanswered calls and MAS/KLATC communication:
KL ATC got misleading information and was overwhelmed by the situation, while MAS Operation Center really didnt’t worry at all.
It seems to me, that all involved Malaysian authorities in fact didn’t worry about the whereabouts of MH370 for whatever reason.
The first and also the second ground-to-air call only asked “Are you still there?”. And the answer was ‘Yes. I am’. That’s it – no further action required…
They did not expect that someone on board take the calls. I do not have another explanation for this strange behaviour.