Survey conducted by @Jay (Joel Kaye) via the comments section of “Guest Post: Northern Routes and Burst Frequency Offset for MH370.”
635 thoughts on “Where Do We Think MH370 Went?”
@Spencer
Imploring the IG is a waste of time. They probably have a dropbox url for such queries.
@Dennis
Yeah, I know. It’s just very frustrating that this AP assumption has been the working the model. It’s been rooted in the poorest of logic. I too was shouted off of DS when I dared to question the fallacy this assumption was based on.
When I dared point the finger at one of the pilots (god forbid) I was shown my way to the door.
Of course, this was the ONLY thing that made any sense at all.
Now on this forum, one of the last remaining to still be discussing the incident, we have had to contend with BFO spoofs, Russians, Chinese, Israelis, Somalia, gold bullion, the murder of an Inmarsat employee, smearing of Fariq, decoy airplanes, desolate Uzbek airfields, underwater demolition FSB trained special forces, Putin power projection, Kate Tee’s of the world, Diego Garcia, the Maldives, shoot downs by the USA, all the GRAND conspiracists (you know who you are), the pilot protectors (you know who you are as well), the convolutionists (coined word) and the rest. It never ends, really.
And it’s ALL a bunch of CRAP.
Feel awful for the NOK.
@DennisW
Well, I did not say no one is to blaim in the overall accident/crime investigation. I think most of us agree on what is missing.
In defence of the Australian structure:
The fact that NTSB is contributing (charged by the congress), not to mention the early contributions by FBI (charged by attorney general) and the CIA (not clear if they ever account for their actions), apparently did not help much to the investigations.
Oh, lest I forget: drummers claiming to be audio experts, LANL analysis conspiracy, other ‘linguists’ offering up clearly agenda driven opinions, the ‘all great and mystifying’ SAT reboot (LOL), wedding rings (good god), Fariq’s wife (really, Jay…that’s good of you), positive lightening strikes, compromised wing due to ground incident, the plane ON FIRE, wheel well explosions, stowaways being perps, ‘suspicious’ pax seat arrangement, Freescale (of course), mangosteens, lithium batteries, this BS ethan hunt tall tale of no pax activity post boarding, the EE bay falsehood, Banda Aceh landings, Kota Barhu landings, Indonesian guys ‘spoofing’ BFO during integrity tests as told by Gerry Soajetman a full year and some months later (the same guy who titled his story in essence “WHY THE CAPTAIN DIDN’T DO IT’. What a farce!
Yes, I’m attacking Gerry Soajetman again. His credibility stinks, though some here feel quite to contrary. 🙁
@Victor
You seem like a great guy. FWIW, I sense you are sincerely interested in ONLY the truth, despite your tendency to vacillate between the voice of reason and odd excursions that IMO take you much further afield, This is from my perspective, and only from my perspective of course.
Anyways, I just hope that you will consider investing your considerable talents into the scenario that you know I favor. The NOK could potentially benefit from your energies being expended in such a manner, IMHO.
Good luck everyone. I’m out of here…been fun but just too much asinine bs.
@matty
My working hypothesis is that Fugro have a lot of say in how the search is carried out, inside the overall search box defined by ATSB. There may be risk sharing in the contract and as a consequence Fugro can decide that the Western end of the zone has lower average availability (due to weather) and hence should be searched whenever accessible. They don’t want to get to a point (say by ordering the search some other way) where all the search area is finished except some part of the far West, and have to stand-down because that area is not available due to poor weather. Hence, when the larger search area was declared, the Western part of that then became the priority or rather the emphasis on the West continued.
Stepping on your turf, the worse-case politically is that the search of the total area will be unsuccessful and there will be an unpleasant task of explaining to the Australian voters where their money went. If I was the Government I would want to do that sooner rather than later so an unsuccessful search should finish as soon as possible. In that respect the practical and political priorities are the same.
@Spencer
Ya missed the alien abduction theory. Oh…& the flock of birds blasting through the windshield, sucking the pilots out of the cockpit, turning it into a ghost flight. No wait….was it Vladimir Putin or Vlad the Impaler…can’t remember. I think that about rounds it up on the BS.
@Chris Butler
LOL. One can only endure so much. Good luck man! If the discussion here should ever refocus on Zaharie, Hishammuddin and Malaysia, that would be wonderful. Won’t happen however.
Now Bradley West has jumped on the JW beyond preposterous scenario by claiming it was the Chinese!! Jesus Christ…there is no shame.
The best part is that he attempts to put pilot mass murder to rest by claiming the following : “Pilot mass murder is the simplest explanation that would work, but only if inconvenient facts are ignored starting with the need for two people to have been involved”.
WTF! This is sooo much bs. Two people? Huh? Say again?
Way to exploit the deaths of 239 people. Truly sad.
@spencer
“The proposition is a simple one. You either believe Shah was alive post FMT, or he was not.”
it’s not about our beliefs as it would turn to be religion
now estimations are another thing, and mine is that it was 70/30 that he was alive rather than not
btw I also agree with you that it was most likely because of political motive but I don’t agree with your final assumption about mass murder as it doesn’t make any sense and doesn’t benefit anyone politically
I think his intention was something totally different but he didn’t succeed, unfortunately
I guess we’ll all agree to disagree to the agreement of us all.
@All
I’AM by no means looking to minimize nor deflate one’s concerns,nor ordinary beliefs. BUT…When taking the FIRST major turn (IGARI) like a broken record….no cell calls or texts? Like a broken record…the AGARIE run….no communications!!!! IT flies in the face of obvious. PAX were expired by then. AGARI was the starting point, planned & executed, to what end??? Something went wrong leading up to this horrific crime and we’ll never get the whole story. The Maylays will shove the “Accident” theory. Why? B/C of 1.Convenience (by that…put it to bed)
2. As an “accident” w/o the B-boxes..nothing can be proved in international court to prove otherwise. {Hurry hurry it’s an accident}
To say it’s non-political is to say it’s ??????. For whatever reason this flight took a BAD turn. The BIG WHY question will always remain. I side with Spencer.. With that said, we have to push back the 7th arch search area, not due to fuel exhaustion, but to control. Full control.
Chris it was the middle of the night and passengers were mainly asleep, it’s quite possible noone noticed the slow turn and some of them if not all survived till the crash.
StevanG
Your really to pressed to gather reality. Go to sleep & join us later/
StevanG
REALLY…..at the Agari turn? Asleep? Are you joking? Guess your with Gov’t passing this on.
What Govt?
Yes it’s quite possible pilot could manage the turn without passengers noticing, especially at night.
StevanG
What Govt? Any..in your case.
You sound so much as a Govt., employee making up excuses for the obvious. Uhhh…they could have turned around and flown for eight hours w/o anyone noticing. Uhhhh…it really was an eight hour accident. Uhhh….We’ve never considered it a suicide….then we would be faced with too many suits…better to call it an “Accident” with nobody to blame. Keep it simple.
I have a better job sorry 🙂 I was talking about the turn taking couple of minutes not about whole flight, they sure noticed but too late.
[And a quick word on my own comedy of errors. I started posting as AM to remain fairly AnonyMous and anyway someone else here shares my initials. Then found another person posting as AM so I moved on to PM. But now the other AM isn’t posting any more and PM has an unintended meaning I am changing to AM2]
Richard Cole posted June 20, 2015 at 12:21 PM: “@victorI: Not sure I following your reasoning. I think we can agree that unit area by unit area, the extra 60000sq.km. has lower probability than the first 60000sq.km. (on the ATSB criteria) – how much lower can be argued. Therefore, there is lower statistical credit from searching the lower probability area (by unit area), (…)
”
A very strange use of statistics, if I may say so. I would say that it is almost 100% certain that the airplane is not in the area that has been searched. Therefore there is a high probability that the airplane is in an area that has not been searched.
I think what I said is consistent. The probability density (probability per sq.km.) is arguably larger for the original 60000sq.km. search area (I refer here to the originally designated area, not the area that has actually been searched to date) than the additional 60000sq.km.
The integral of probability density across the additional 60000sq.km. may indeed be larger than the same integral across the unsearched part of the original designated area since there is more area to integrate across.
@Richard Cole:
I would say that the probability distribution changes as the search progresses. Don’t you agree?
A probability distribution is based on facts and assumptions. In this case mostly assumptions, such as hypoxia and inactivity of the occupants. Every sweep of the towfish adds facts.
@AM2
There was no such Maldivian flight to be seen on flight radar. The flight number mentioned in le Monde is from a flight going S to N. I’m sorry but like this people are only increasing the mess. Can someone please at least show some record of the flight that allegedly landed at 6:33 am at the new airport just S of the 6:15 am sighting location?
@Niels. Thanks for that flight info – I wasn’t aware of that. Agree, this is a mess and am not confident we’ll ever get the truth. Perhaps I shouldn’t have highlighted that article but as both The Australian newspaper and the ABC TV program Media Watch are both highly regarded here they will have quite an influence on us down under, so I thought it was of interest.
@Gysbreght
The probability of finding an aircraft if it is there is around 90% as articulated in the references relative to the AF447 search.
Yes, of course, searching an area changes the probability density. That fact was used to great advantage searching for German submarines in WWII. The Bayesian search algorithm is very well known, and has been used extensively. I think Richard’s point is that it might make more sense to search higher probability areas again rather than shift the search to lower probability areas. Of course, assigning any probabilities at all relative to the “zombie” hypothesis is quite a leap in an of itself, and certainly well outside my comfort zone.
@Niels
It is unclear what, if any, involvement the NTSB, FBI, and CIA have had. Virtually all the comments in the popular press have come from “former” members of the NTSB. Certainly I have never seen a formal statement from any of these agencies. Maybe I missed them. I tend to put their contribution in the hearsay category.
As far as “blame” is concerned my only complaint is the lack of transparency on virtually everyone’s part.
@Gysbreght
Clearly the probability density of unsearched areas increases as the searched area increases since the integral of the remaining probability has to remain one at each stage. I am dubious that the detail of the distribution (i.e. its structure) in the unsearched area directly changes as a result of other areas being cleared, all other things being equal, but perhaps I am missing something. Of course, ideas will have moved on in the meantime.
@DennisW
I wasn’t advocating re-searching areas but it is certainly true that if the search has a 10% random chance of missing wreckage (rather than a systematic reason like it being in a trench) then re-searching high probability areas is better than covering new area with a relatively low probability.
“Clearly the probability density of unsearched areas increases as the searched area increases since the integral of the remaining probability has to remain one at each stage.”
would be so if they were sure the plane is there…but they are not, it could still be anywhere around the 7th arc in SIO
@DennisW
Actually the degree of involvement of NTSB is the most interesting one in the context we were discussing:
Either we are considering an accident (with possible technical cause) or we are not. If it is an accident with significant loss of American lives and/or involving an aircraft of US fabric they should be investigating.
So if they are not, it would indicate this case is not considered an accident. But why then use the “zombie” flight scenario as the working hypothesis for defining the search area?
Maybe you can find more on the role of NTSB?
@AM2
No problem you brought it up. Good to discuss it here. For most of the French and Australian public the Maladives sighting will be a closed book now. But for those interested in serious research I would say any concrete evidence for the “turboprop” twist of the story is still missing.
In contrary, while other Maldivian flights with similar ac could be seen on flightradar this one has not been visible. It is not a final proof it did not exist (it could have been flying low all the way),
but all together it is not a pretty picture for those who really want this point to be settled.
@Niels “But why then use the “zombie” flight scenario as the working hypothesis for defining the search area?”
it best fits the Inmarsat data, however that fitting could be only a coincidence…e.g. there is all sorts of other scenarios that could fit the data if you changed an assumption or two
@StevanG
The constant track constant speed assumption in fact does not fit so well with the Inmarsat data if you assume an early turn south. So we are trying to “repair” by small correction to the data. I seriously doubt that’s the correct way to go; it’s perhaps better to question the early turn south. A different picture emerges when the turn south occured just after the first phone call attempt. I’ll come back with simulations to explain this further in a couple of days (hoping time will permit)
Back to the point of discussion: A theoretical option which takes away the apparent contradictions in the approach by investigating authorities, is a hijack which was somehow turned into a “zombie” flight (around the FMT)
Yupp I know that, my theory is that with later turn south it could finish in northern part of SIO but that’s of course just a possibility.
YesI know that, my t-h-e-o-r-y is that with later turn s-o-u-t-h it could finish in n-o-r-t-h-e-r-n part of S-I-O but thats of course just a possibility.
@AM2, thanks for your contribution re: the Maldive sighting. I find the Le Monde story plausible and it’s good to know that there is a new airport nearby. That makes the sighting of an airplane near Kudahuvadhoo a lot less perplexing. As to the flight not having shown on flightradar24 – well, not all flights do show on those sites, but considering the impact this sighting had on the public perception it would be nice if all questions could’ve been answered as precisely as possible. I doubt that this will happen now.
Niels – mess indeed. Why does this plane jump to light 15 months later if it was a known flight? A twin turbo prop?? They went nuts over that? We’re not talking about some lost Amazon tribe here, they are people with TV’s and internet – who are used to seeing propeller planes.
@Matty-Perth
Yes and what about the people on board, they don’t read newspapers etc., so no one would have stepped forward to dissolve the mystery in an early stage?
For those who have access to historic flight data (I don’t have it back to 2014): please check flight times for DQA149 / Q2149 as well as DQA162 / Q2162
The nr162 at least goes in the right direction.
The nr149 is the one mentioned by leMonde; it (currently) goes from Gan to Male.
@Matty, Rand Meyer did some investigating back in December and concluded that the eye witness description of the plane’s size were terribly imprecise and that thetranslations from the local dialect into English left a lot to be desired.
Considering how close the plane was I’m more puzzled about the failure to see that the plane’s color scheme corresponded with the local airline Maldivian. They should know that. And the color scheme of that airline isn’t all that similar to MAS planes. No stripes for starters.
@Littlefoot
I never felt too perplexed by the Maldives report. The sighting was in an impossible place (relative to the BTO data), the plane was flying in the wrong direction, and the time of the sighting was long after the calculated fuel exhaustion. It was a non-starter from the get-go. I am OK with taking it off the table without additional information.
@Matty
Eye witness accounts are notoriously unreliable. The effect may even be aggravated by TV and internet connectivity.
Dennis – As another psych on the blog I’m pretty aware of how patchy testimonies can get. But apply it to yourself – twin turbo prop seats 50 or 777 seats over 300? Could you make that mistake? Could a bunch of people at the same time make that mistake? If there was another bunch of witnesses saying it was a local 50 seater I would cave in on this, but there isn’t?
@Matty, Littlefoot, Dennis:
Re Maldives, please read this FB post by Blaine Gibson four days ago:
All I can say is that if people think that this story has been put to rest, they should stay tuned.
@Dennis, yes, eyewitnesses are unreliable and the information that there is actually a new airport nearby makes the whole story more plausible to me.
But Niels might be right not to remove the question mark just yet. The difference in size between a turboprop and a 777 and the apparent perception of the plane’s size is not that puzzling to me. If the plane was very close and made a lot of noise it might’ve seemed to be bigger than it actually was – especially if the Kudahuvadhooans were only used to “flying boats” as they call it. But considering the plane’s close proximity I don’t understand how none of the witnesses realized that the plane was from the national airline Maldivian. It’s a bit like Malaysians failing to reckognize one of their own iconic planes or a whole bunch of Germans not recognizing a plane with the famous Lufthansa design.
While I never believed that the Maldivian plane was mh370, I’m still not completely excluding that the sighting had some connection to mh370’s disappearance. Besides the question which flight it really was, there’s also the question of Rand Meyer’s findings which seemed to imply that people from other islands saw an unusual plane, too and that the reported sightings covered a time span of over two hours. Would be interesting to know where those other islands are located.
Possible misinformation being discredited by disinformation turns into information. I agree it will most likely not lead us to the wreckage, but it is getting only more interesting. It is all recorded. The internet is a mighty miracle 🙂
I’ve put in a request to ABC Media Watch for more information on the flight supposedly arriving at 6:33am etc. and we’ll see if they come up with anything. [the flight record on their video is not readable.]
@Niels:
You said:
“Possible misinformation being discredited by disinformation turns into information.”
That is brilliant. 😉
From the Media Watch English translation of Florence de Changy’s article in Le Monde “The Plane That Wasn’t 370”:
“According to the civil aviation authority’s official record of flights across the zone, there was a flight on March 8, 2014-domestic flight number DQA149 from Malé to Veymandhoo, operated by the airline company Maldivian – which landed at 6.33am at Thimarafushi airport, on the neighbouring Thaa Atoll, some 50 kilometres south-south-east of Kuda Huvadhoo. The aircraft was a DHC-8 twin-engine 50-seater model that is notoriously noisy. According to a professional expert we consulted [UNNAMED], the pilot of flight DQA149 could have made an unusual approach due to unfamiliarity with the route (the airport had only been in operation for a few months)or on account of the unusually strong wind. Since Thimarafushi airport has no control tower, and the radar systems in the capital are not powerful enough to cover this zone, no-one noticed this aberration which would have been perfectly justifiable in the context of adjusting to the weather conditions. No-one, that is, except for a few
Kudahuvadhoo islanders…”
Um, really?
Well, there appears to be a teeny problem:
DQA149 flew in the OPPOSITE DIRECTION of the plane seen in Maldives.
A number of us have claimed that there was not enough fuel onboard MH370 to endure until the potential 1:50 – 1:30 UTC sighting in the Maldives. I no longer believe this is true based on some scoping calculations I performed.
I assumed that at 18:28, the plane is just north of airway N571 at 7.0527, 95.8172 with 34.77 MT of fuel. From this point, the (great circle) distance to Kudahuvadhoo, based on Goggle Earth, is 1,398 nm. I assume that from this point to fuel exhaustion, the average weight of the plane is about 190 MT.
If the plane flew at FL200 and at Holding speed, the average fuel flow rate from the performance tables for Holding, Flaps Up, would be about 5,057 kg/hr at 287 KTAS. The tanks would go dry in 6.8753 hours after 18:28, or at 1:20 UTC, and the plane could cover about 1,973 (air) nm, which is greater than the straight line distance of 1,398 nm. Even with a stiff headwind, the distance is easily covered at this air speed.
The bottom line is that it is possible that there was sufficient fuel to reach the Maldives and still be airborne after 1:15 UTC.
A more precise calculation, such as I have performed in the past for northern and southern paths, would include the effects of temperature deviation from standard conditions, performance degradation allowance (PDA) for the engines, wind, weight variation with time, etc. Even with these improvements in the model, I do not think the conclusions would change.
Of course, the flight to the Maldives is still not allowed by the satellite data. Nonetheless, I thought it was important to state that preliminary calculations suggest that the flight to the Maldives cannot be dismissed based on fuel considerations.
Correction: The first line should read “1:15 – 1:30 UTC”.
Somebody asked me, based on my last post, whether I now thought the Maldives is a possible end point for MH370.
I still think it is unlikely that MH370 was in the Maldives because this path does not match the BTO satellite data, there is no place to land the plane undetected, and there was no debris found. However, I can no longer add fuel exhaustion to the list of reasons why I think the Maldives sighting was not MH370.
Hi Victor,
Glad you also discovered what I posted ages ago (forgot which of the various threads), that at holding speed and optimum altitudes the plane could fly 7 hours after 18:22, but nobody took any interest.
@Gysbreght: I apologize for not referencing (or remembering) your previous work, or similar work by others. Mostly, I wanted to correct previous statements that I had made about fuel exhaustion and the Maldives. I am glad your calculations agree with mine.
@Spencer
Imploring the IG is a waste of time. They probably have a dropbox url for such queries.
@Dennis
Yeah, I know. It’s just very frustrating that this AP assumption has been the working the model. It’s been rooted in the poorest of logic. I too was shouted off of DS when I dared to question the fallacy this assumption was based on.
When I dared point the finger at one of the pilots (god forbid) I was shown my way to the door.
Of course, this was the ONLY thing that made any sense at all.
Now on this forum, one of the last remaining to still be discussing the incident, we have had to contend with BFO spoofs, Russians, Chinese, Israelis, Somalia, gold bullion, the murder of an Inmarsat employee, smearing of Fariq, decoy airplanes, desolate Uzbek airfields, underwater demolition FSB trained special forces, Putin power projection, Kate Tee’s of the world, Diego Garcia, the Maldives, shoot downs by the USA, all the GRAND conspiracists (you know who you are), the pilot protectors (you know who you are as well), the convolutionists (coined word) and the rest. It never ends, really.
And it’s ALL a bunch of CRAP.
Feel awful for the NOK.
@DennisW
Well, I did not say no one is to blaim in the overall accident/crime investigation. I think most of us agree on what is missing.
In defence of the Australian structure:
The fact that NTSB is contributing (charged by the congress), not to mention the early contributions by FBI (charged by attorney general) and the CIA (not clear if they ever account for their actions), apparently did not help much to the investigations.
Oh, lest I forget: drummers claiming to be audio experts, LANL analysis conspiracy, other ‘linguists’ offering up clearly agenda driven opinions, the ‘all great and mystifying’ SAT reboot (LOL), wedding rings (good god), Fariq’s wife (really, Jay…that’s good of you), positive lightening strikes, compromised wing due to ground incident, the plane ON FIRE, wheel well explosions, stowaways being perps, ‘suspicious’ pax seat arrangement, Freescale (of course), mangosteens, lithium batteries, this BS ethan hunt tall tale of no pax activity post boarding, the EE bay falsehood, Banda Aceh landings, Kota Barhu landings, Indonesian guys ‘spoofing’ BFO during integrity tests as told by Gerry Soajetman a full year and some months later (the same guy who titled his story in essence “WHY THE CAPTAIN DIDN’T DO IT’. What a farce!
Yes, I’m attacking Gerry Soajetman again. His credibility stinks, though some here feel quite to contrary. 🙁
@Victor
You seem like a great guy. FWIW, I sense you are sincerely interested in ONLY the truth, despite your tendency to vacillate between the voice of reason and odd excursions that IMO take you much further afield, This is from my perspective, and only from my perspective of course.
Anyways, I just hope that you will consider investing your considerable talents into the scenario that you know I favor. The NOK could potentially benefit from your energies being expended in such a manner, IMHO.
Good luck everyone. I’m out of here…been fun but just too much asinine bs.
@matty
My working hypothesis is that Fugro have a lot of say in how the search is carried out, inside the overall search box defined by ATSB. There may be risk sharing in the contract and as a consequence Fugro can decide that the Western end of the zone has lower average availability (due to weather) and hence should be searched whenever accessible. They don’t want to get to a point (say by ordering the search some other way) where all the search area is finished except some part of the far West, and have to stand-down because that area is not available due to poor weather. Hence, when the larger search area was declared, the Western part of that then became the priority or rather the emphasis on the West continued.
Stepping on your turf, the worse-case politically is that the search of the total area will be unsuccessful and there will be an unpleasant task of explaining to the Australian voters where their money went. If I was the Government I would want to do that sooner rather than later so an unsuccessful search should finish as soon as possible. In that respect the practical and political priorities are the same.
@Spencer
Ya missed the alien abduction theory. Oh…& the flock of birds blasting through the windshield, sucking the pilots out of the cockpit, turning it into a ghost flight. No wait….was it Vladimir Putin or Vlad the Impaler…can’t remember. I think that about rounds it up on the BS.
@Chris Butler
LOL. One can only endure so much. Good luck man! If the discussion here should ever refocus on Zaharie, Hishammuddin and Malaysia, that would be wonderful. Won’t happen however.
Now Bradley West has jumped on the JW beyond preposterous scenario by claiming it was the Chinese!! Jesus Christ…there is no shame.
The best part is that he attempts to put pilot mass murder to rest by claiming the following : “Pilot mass murder is the simplest explanation that would work, but only if inconvenient facts are ignored starting with the need for two people to have been involved”.
WTF! This is sooo much bs. Two people? Huh? Say again?
Way to exploit the deaths of 239 people. Truly sad.
@spencer
“The proposition is a simple one. You either believe Shah was alive post FMT, or he was not.”
it’s not about our beliefs as it would turn to be religion
now estimations are another thing, and mine is that it was 70/30 that he was alive rather than not
btw I also agree with you that it was most likely because of political motive but I don’t agree with your final assumption about mass murder as it doesn’t make any sense and doesn’t benefit anyone politically
I think his intention was something totally different but he didn’t succeed, unfortunately
I guess we’ll all agree to disagree to the agreement of us all.
@All
I’AM by no means looking to minimize nor deflate one’s concerns,nor ordinary beliefs. BUT…When taking the FIRST major turn (IGARI) like a broken record….no cell calls or texts? Like a broken record…the AGARIE run….no communications!!!! IT flies in the face of obvious. PAX were expired by then. AGARI was the starting point, planned & executed, to what end??? Something went wrong leading up to this horrific crime and we’ll never get the whole story. The Maylays will shove the “Accident” theory. Why? B/C of 1.Convenience (by that…put it to bed)
2. As an “accident” w/o the B-boxes..nothing can be proved in international court to prove otherwise. {Hurry hurry it’s an accident}
To say it’s non-political is to say it’s ??????. For whatever reason this flight took a BAD turn. The BIG WHY question will always remain. I side with Spencer.. With that said, we have to push back the 7th arch search area, not due to fuel exhaustion, but to control. Full control.
Chris it was the middle of the night and passengers were mainly asleep, it’s quite possible noone noticed the slow turn and some of them if not all survived till the crash.
StevanG
Your really to pressed to gather reality. Go to sleep & join us later/
StevanG
REALLY…..at the Agari turn? Asleep? Are you joking? Guess your with Gov’t passing this on.
What Govt?
Yes it’s quite possible pilot could manage the turn without passengers noticing, especially at night.
StevanG
What Govt? Any..in your case.
You sound so much as a Govt., employee making up excuses for the obvious. Uhhh…they could have turned around and flown for eight hours w/o anyone noticing. Uhhhh…it really was an eight hour accident. Uhhh….We’ve never considered it a suicide….then we would be faced with too many suits…better to call it an “Accident” with nobody to blame. Keep it simple.
I have a better job sorry 🙂 I was talking about the turn taking couple of minutes not about whole flight, they sure noticed but too late.
“MH370 Maldives theory debunked” See ABC Media Watch episode 22 June:
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s4259926.htm
including a link to an article published in Le Monde on 10 June 2015.
[And a quick word on my own comedy of errors. I started posting as AM to remain fairly AnonyMous and anyway someone else here shares my initials. Then found another person posting as AM so I moved on to PM. But now the other AM isn’t posting any more and PM has an unintended meaning I am changing to AM2]
A very strange use of statistics, if I may say so. I would say that it is almost 100% certain that the airplane is not in the area that has been searched. Therefore there is a high probability that the airplane is in an area that has not been searched.
I think what I said is consistent. The probability density (probability per sq.km.) is arguably larger for the original 60000sq.km. search area (I refer here to the originally designated area, not the area that has actually been searched to date) than the additional 60000sq.km.
The integral of probability density across the additional 60000sq.km. may indeed be larger than the same integral across the unsearched part of the original designated area since there is more area to integrate across.
@Richard Cole:
I would say that the probability distribution changes as the search progresses. Don’t you agree?
A probability distribution is based on facts and assumptions. In this case mostly assumptions, such as hypoxia and inactivity of the occupants. Every sweep of the towfish adds facts.
@AM2
There was no such Maldivian flight to be seen on flight radar. The flight number mentioned in le Monde is from a flight going S to N. I’m sorry but like this people are only increasing the mess. Can someone please at least show some record of the flight that allegedly landed at 6:33 am at the new airport just S of the 6:15 am sighting location?
@Niels. Thanks for that flight info – I wasn’t aware of that. Agree, this is a mess and am not confident we’ll ever get the truth. Perhaps I shouldn’t have highlighted that article but as both The Australian newspaper and the ABC TV program Media Watch are both highly regarded here they will have quite an influence on us down under, so I thought it was of interest.
@Gysbreght
The probability of finding an aircraft if it is there is around 90% as articulated in the references relative to the AF447 search.
Yes, of course, searching an area changes the probability density. That fact was used to great advantage searching for German submarines in WWII. The Bayesian search algorithm is very well known, and has been used extensively. I think Richard’s point is that it might make more sense to search higher probability areas again rather than shift the search to lower probability areas. Of course, assigning any probabilities at all relative to the “zombie” hypothesis is quite a leap in an of itself, and certainly well outside my comfort zone.
@Niels
It is unclear what, if any, involvement the NTSB, FBI, and CIA have had. Virtually all the comments in the popular press have come from “former” members of the NTSB. Certainly I have never seen a formal statement from any of these agencies. Maybe I missed them. I tend to put their contribution in the hearsay category.
As far as “blame” is concerned my only complaint is the lack of transparency on virtually everyone’s part.
@Gysbreght
Clearly the probability density of unsearched areas increases as the searched area increases since the integral of the remaining probability has to remain one at each stage. I am dubious that the detail of the distribution (i.e. its structure) in the unsearched area directly changes as a result of other areas being cleared, all other things being equal, but perhaps I am missing something. Of course, ideas will have moved on in the meantime.
@DennisW
I wasn’t advocating re-searching areas but it is certainly true that if the search has a 10% random chance of missing wreckage (rather than a systematic reason like it being in a trench) then re-searching high probability areas is better than covering new area with a relatively low probability.
“Clearly the probability density of unsearched areas increases as the searched area increases since the integral of the remaining probability has to remain one at each stage.”
would be so if they were sure the plane is there…but they are not, it could still be anywhere around the 7th arc in SIO
@DennisW
Actually the degree of involvement of NTSB is the most interesting one in the context we were discussing:
Either we are considering an accident (with possible technical cause) or we are not. If it is an accident with significant loss of American lives and/or involving an aircraft of US fabric they should be investigating.
So if they are not, it would indicate this case is not considered an accident. But why then use the “zombie” flight scenario as the working hypothesis for defining the search area?
Maybe you can find more on the role of NTSB?
@AM2
No problem you brought it up. Good to discuss it here. For most of the French and Australian public the Maladives sighting will be a closed book now. But for those interested in serious research I would say any concrete evidence for the “turboprop” twist of the story is still missing.
In contrary, while other Maldivian flights with similar ac could be seen on flightradar this one has not been visible. It is not a final proof it did not exist (it could have been flying low all the way),
but all together it is not a pretty picture for those who really want this point to be settled.
@Niels “But why then use the “zombie” flight scenario as the working hypothesis for defining the search area?”
it best fits the Inmarsat data, however that fitting could be only a coincidence…e.g. there is all sorts of other scenarios that could fit the data if you changed an assumption or two
@StevanG
The constant track constant speed assumption in fact does not fit so well with the Inmarsat data if you assume an early turn south. So we are trying to “repair” by small correction to the data. I seriously doubt that’s the correct way to go; it’s perhaps better to question the early turn south. A different picture emerges when the turn south occured just after the first phone call attempt. I’ll come back with simulations to explain this further in a couple of days (hoping time will permit)
Back to the point of discussion: A theoretical option which takes away the apparent contradictions in the approach by investigating authorities, is a hijack which was somehow turned into a “zombie” flight (around the FMT)
Yupp I know that, my theory is that with later turn south it could finish in northern part of SIO but that’s of course just a possibility.
YesI know that, my t-h-e-o-r-y is that with later turn s-o-u-t-h it could finish in n-o-r-t-h-e-r-n part of S-I-O but thats of course just a possibility.
@AM2, thanks for your contribution re: the Maldive sighting. I find the Le Monde story plausible and it’s good to know that there is a new airport nearby. That makes the sighting of an airplane near Kudahuvadhoo a lot less perplexing. As to the flight not having shown on flightradar24 – well, not all flights do show on those sites, but considering the impact this sighting had on the public perception it would be nice if all questions could’ve been answered as precisely as possible. I doubt that this will happen now.
Niels – mess indeed. Why does this plane jump to light 15 months later if it was a known flight? A twin turbo prop?? They went nuts over that? We’re not talking about some lost Amazon tribe here, they are people with TV’s and internet – who are used to seeing propeller planes.
@Matty-Perth
Yes and what about the people on board, they don’t read newspapers etc., so no one would have stepped forward to dissolve the mystery in an early stage?
For those who have access to historic flight data (I don’t have it back to 2014): please check flight times for DQA149 / Q2149 as well as DQA162 / Q2162
The nr162 at least goes in the right direction.
The nr149 is the one mentioned by leMonde; it (currently) goes from Gan to Male.
@Matty, Rand Meyer did some investigating back in December and concluded that the eye witness description of the plane’s size were terribly imprecise and that thetranslations from the local dialect into English left a lot to be desired.
Considering how close the plane was I’m more puzzled about the failure to see that the plane’s color scheme corresponded with the local airline Maldivian. They should know that. And the color scheme of that airline isn’t all that similar to MAS planes. No stripes for starters.
@Littlefoot
I never felt too perplexed by the Maldives report. The sighting was in an impossible place (relative to the BTO data), the plane was flying in the wrong direction, and the time of the sighting was long after the calculated fuel exhaustion. It was a non-starter from the get-go. I am OK with taking it off the table without additional information.
@Matty
Eye witness accounts are notoriously unreliable. The effect may even be aggravated by TV and internet connectivity.
Dennis – As another psych on the blog I’m pretty aware of how patchy testimonies can get. But apply it to yourself – twin turbo prop seats 50 or 777 seats over 300? Could you make that mistake? Could a bunch of people at the same time make that mistake? If there was another bunch of witnesses saying it was a local 50 seater I would cave in on this, but there isn’t?
@Matty, Littlefoot, Dennis:
Re Maldives, please read this FB post by Blaine Gibson four days ago:
https://twitter.com/nihonmama/status/611971390263070720
@Matty, Littlefoot, Dennis:
And here’s my earlier (FB) post re the Le Monde article ” The plane that wasn’t MH370″
https://twitter.com/nihonmama/status/613524162615771136
All I can say is that if people think that this story has been put to rest, they should stay tuned.
@Dennis, yes, eyewitnesses are unreliable and the information that there is actually a new airport nearby makes the whole story more plausible to me.
But Niels might be right not to remove the question mark just yet. The difference in size between a turboprop and a 777 and the apparent perception of the plane’s size is not that puzzling to me. If the plane was very close and made a lot of noise it might’ve seemed to be bigger than it actually was – especially if the Kudahuvadhooans were only used to “flying boats” as they call it. But considering the plane’s close proximity I don’t understand how none of the witnesses realized that the plane was from the national airline Maldivian. It’s a bit like Malaysians failing to reckognize one of their own iconic planes or a whole bunch of Germans not recognizing a plane with the famous Lufthansa design.
While I never believed that the Maldivian plane was mh370, I’m still not completely excluding that the sighting had some connection to mh370’s disappearance. Besides the question which flight it really was, there’s also the question of Rand Meyer’s findings which seemed to imply that people from other islands saw an unusual plane, too and that the reported sightings covered a time span of over two hours. Would be interesting to know where those other islands are located.
Possible misinformation being discredited by disinformation turns into information. I agree it will most likely not lead us to the wreckage, but it is getting only more interesting. It is all recorded. The internet is a mighty miracle 🙂
I’ve put in a request to ABC Media Watch for more information on the flight supposedly arriving at 6:33am etc. and we’ll see if they come up with anything. [the flight record on their video is not readable.]
@Niels:
You said:
“Possible misinformation being discredited by disinformation turns into information.”
That is brilliant. 😉
From the Media Watch English translation of Florence de Changy’s article in Le Monde “The Plane That Wasn’t 370”:
“According to the civil aviation authority’s official record of flights across the zone, there was a flight on March 8, 2014-domestic flight number DQA149 from Malé to Veymandhoo, operated by the airline company Maldivian – which landed at 6.33am at Thimarafushi airport, on the neighbouring Thaa Atoll, some 50 kilometres south-south-east of Kuda Huvadhoo. The aircraft was a DHC-8 twin-engine 50-seater model that is notoriously noisy. According to a professional expert we consulted [UNNAMED], the pilot of flight DQA149 could have made an unusual approach due to unfamiliarity with the route (the airport had only been in operation for a few months)or on account of the unusually strong wind. Since Thimarafushi airport has no control tower, and the radar systems in the capital are not powerful enough to cover this zone, no-one noticed this aberration which would have been perfectly justifiable in the context of adjusting to the weather conditions. No-one, that is, except for a few
Kudahuvadhoo islanders…”
Um, really?
Well, there appears to be a teeny problem:
DQA149 flew in the OPPOSITE DIRECTION of the plane seen in Maldives.
https://twitter.com/alimhaider/status/613060194675732480
Somebody tell Le Monde.
A number of us have claimed that there was not enough fuel onboard MH370 to endure until the potential 1:50 – 1:30 UTC sighting in the Maldives. I no longer believe this is true based on some scoping calculations I performed.
I assumed that at 18:28, the plane is just north of airway N571 at 7.0527, 95.8172 with 34.77 MT of fuel. From this point, the (great circle) distance to Kudahuvadhoo, based on Goggle Earth, is 1,398 nm. I assume that from this point to fuel exhaustion, the average weight of the plane is about 190 MT.
If the plane flew at FL200 and at Holding speed, the average fuel flow rate from the performance tables for Holding, Flaps Up, would be about 5,057 kg/hr at 287 KTAS. The tanks would go dry in 6.8753 hours after 18:28, or at 1:20 UTC, and the plane could cover about 1,973 (air) nm, which is greater than the straight line distance of 1,398 nm. Even with a stiff headwind, the distance is easily covered at this air speed.
The bottom line is that it is possible that there was sufficient fuel to reach the Maldives and still be airborne after 1:15 UTC.
A more precise calculation, such as I have performed in the past for northern and southern paths, would include the effects of temperature deviation from standard conditions, performance degradation allowance (PDA) for the engines, wind, weight variation with time, etc. Even with these improvements in the model, I do not think the conclusions would change.
Of course, the flight to the Maldives is still not allowed by the satellite data. Nonetheless, I thought it was important to state that preliminary calculations suggest that the flight to the Maldives cannot be dismissed based on fuel considerations.
Correction: The first line should read “1:15 – 1:30 UTC”.
Somebody asked me, based on my last post, whether I now thought the Maldives is a possible end point for MH370.
I still think it is unlikely that MH370 was in the Maldives because this path does not match the BTO satellite data, there is no place to land the plane undetected, and there was no debris found. However, I can no longer add fuel exhaustion to the list of reasons why I think the Maldives sighting was not MH370.
Hi Victor,
Glad you also discovered what I posted ages ago (forgot which of the various threads), that at holding speed and optimum altitudes the plane could fly 7 hours after 18:22, but nobody took any interest.
@Gysbreght: I apologize for not referencing (or remembering) your previous work, or similar work by others. Mostly, I wanted to correct previous statements that I had made about fuel exhaustion and the Maldives. I am glad your calculations agree with mine.
@Gysbreght:
7 hours AFTER 18:22?!