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?”
http://www.mh370site.com/ “A Solution to the Malaysian Flight 370 Mystery.” By Bruce Robertson, California airplane pilot and engineer. Says as a pilot flying for over 40 years,that he has experienced some events that MH370 may have encountered. Interesting read, many graphs and speculative narrative centered around the reaction of the large stock of lithium ion batteries in the hold and aftermath.
@Sk999
“DennisW – ??? I never attributed any analytical prowess to SITA.”
I never said you did.
AM2 – If they had a radar track from Jindalee there is no way they would reveal it I’d say no matter what you did. Been endless speculation on it. Their claims that they don’t have any data are plausible and then you have the way the search was jerked around south/north/south? That said to me that they didn’t really know much. If they did detect something heading south like that at any point I reckon they would have kept an eye on it? I know PM Abbott burnt himself on this one trying to milk it so my guess is no Australian data.
My back of the mind suspicion though: If something earnestly sinister has happened(plane not in the SIO) and certain countries knew about it then it may serve them to acquiesce with the SIO narrative? They aren’t responsible for it. I’m happy to be called a conspiricist because I just smell a rat. Ghylain Wattleros(France) has come to a similar conclusion by monitoring what his govt has said and done on this. He believes it all looks a bit strange and that they know something and I’ve always thought something was wrong with this picture overall. It went quiet so quickly.
I was never confident with the search but I still oscillate a bit: part of my head says the data points to the SIO – the other part says snap out of it dummy, there is nothing down there.
@Matty
Yes, agree there is probably no Jindalee data (but annoyed if we have that facility and its not being used 24/7). I didn’t spell this out before but my hunch is its the US that has data and may have shared something with Aus under strict conditions.
I’m not so much oscillating as to where I think it may be but my early view that it was in the SIO is steadily changing to “could be anywhere” more than anything because of the behaviour/actions/inactions of various govts and agencies etc.. So yes, I agree about the rat too.
Note the NTSB tracks going to the south
Note also 5 and 6 the radar tracks going rather northerly, and the subscript 5 (!)
AM2 – further to it, even if they did pull up some logs(Jindalee) and there was some plane heading through some surveillance zone they would at least have it in time and space. That could be tallied with the satellite data as we understand it and they should have avoided dragging the search so far north as they did only to head right back.
They went deep into the SIO with the expectation of finding plane wreckage and when the satellite leads came up empty it appeared they hit the calculators with some new assumptions and headed north.
@Sk999, DennisW, Nihonmama
@All
So thanks to those who contributed, I think I can summarize as follows:
* The ABC news article from March 13th states that there were indications that MH370 went into the IO. These indications could be based on:
– Extrapolation of (the now publicly known) radar data
– Very early analysis of BTO and BFO data
– other data
The fact that it was quickly followed up by a search near the east coast of India suggest extrapolation of radar data and/or other data.
* The WP article from 15th March clearly indicates that the focus on US side has been shifted to the SIO (to the surprise of many at that time, see the comments to the article).
This could be based on:
a. Very early analysis of BTO and BFO data
b. Other data
Now the key question: is it a) or b), or both?
Dennis correctly pointed out that the use of Doppler shifts is a know procedure in military object tracking. However, we all know it needs detailed and specific knowledge of the AES, satellite and GES system to translate BFO in Doppler residuals, and Doppler residuals in position/velocity information.
So the key question translates into: could this all be in place already at 14/15 March 2014?
@littlefoot
Chistmas Island (CI)
There was a early scenario by someone on reddit last year. he explained that the CI airport is closed over the weekends and guarded by some 3 or 4 guards only. If you make a landing there in the early morning, nobody would hear or see it except the guards, who would have to be in the plot. You can land there only in daylight, there is no ILS and no tower support on weekends. A Hijacker would have waited for the daylight to come, landed at CI, refueled and restarted with new flight ID to go whereever fit.
The strength of this scenario would be, that it allows for the Inmarsat data and includes a landing scenario, which would be the normal rationale of hijacking with criminal intent.
The weakness in this theory would be, why the hijacker left that data-trace of the Sat?
@Niels
When you talk about a) and b) you dig out the basic precondition for the use of the data:
We all had the impression last year, that the Inmarsat data were corroborated by additional intelligence , that could not be revealed because of secrecy considerations. The assumption of the existence of corroborating evidence was the only reason to take the Inmarsat data serious at all. This assumption was somehow suported by the fact that a respected member of the industry close to Inmarsat put his weight on the validity of those data in the IG and in this forum.
Now after one and a half year a possible intelligence source did not find a way to leak the respective corroborating evidence. This is strange, because in the MH17 incident we had classified military satellite imagery leaked within hours. Also it is strange, that the search is shifting between very distant termini. So we have to presume, that there is no such thing as any corroborating evidence.
This means: the data stand alone and only on their own feet. Inmarsat themselves put the reservation on the use of these data and said “… if not spoofed”. They were well aware about all kind of spoofing scenarios which might have been one of the reasons, the public got the logs so late. In addition, since it is very difficult to explain why an inflight logon happened and even more intriguing, why this logon happened so convenient as to the exact time, when the radar observations ended, the data are highly questionable.
From the behaviour of the Investigation and Inmarsat we have to exonerate them of any participation in a cover-up. Instead, Inmarsat and JACC might have fallen victim to perpetrators with insider knowledge of the use of BFO and BTO, and who could anticipate the reaction of the other players concerning the existence of data. So its a legitimate guess to say, that the data were fabricated to intentionally mislead a expected search and buy time to cover any traces of this event.
Since it seems that buying time was the urgent intent of the perpetrators from the first moment of the deviation (incredible speed after turn at IGARI, desinformation to HCM ATC with the consequence of delaying the declaration of an emergency for a couple of hours ! – and the abscence of due identification by RMAF even if crossing Butterworth), it is amazing what kind of assistance they might have had within the chain of command of the RMAF or MAS HQ.
Some history:
When Richard Cole first proposed that the AES frequency correction might be based on a geostationary model for the satellite, a number of us began to use this model to predict the BFO. It became apparent that an additional correction was necessary to match the measured data. Henrik proposed an additional frequency drift of one of the oscillators in the chain, and Yap noted that the measured data could be matched if only a fraction of the C-band Doppler shift was included in the model.
It was eventually leaked to some of us that the reason for the discrepancy is that the MITEQ pilot receiver in Perth had a software bug pertaining to the coordinates of the receiver. (The leak said the coordinate parameters were not properly entered. Later, another leak informed us that there was a software bug that caused this behavior, which was fixed in later versions of the firmware, but Inmarsat failed to update its firmware.) The leak also told us that this discrepancy is what caused Inmarsat to lose some days in analyzing and understanding the BFO. I imagine that Inmarsat struggled with this much the way some of us struggled when we first tried to duplicate Inmarsat’s prediction.
This anomaly became what is now referred to as the “partial compensation” of the C-band Doppler, and is acknowledged in the ATSB report of June 2014 (although the root cause–the failure to update firmware–is never mentioned).
I say this because I believe the ability to distinguish between north and south paths using the BFO was known to Inmarsat, and any delays in arriving at a conclusion relative to MH370 was due to the delay in understanding the partial compensation phenomenon, not due to the invention of “groundbreaking math(s)”, as Inmarsat’s Chris McLaughlin claimed. The prediction of the BFO, and the underlying effect of satellite inclination and plane trajectories, had to be well-known for Inmarsat to properly design and operate its network.
Landing Weight – FWIW, The FCOMM lists the maximum landing weight for a B777-200ER as 213,188 kg. Previous posts have the GW of MH370 as 210,000 kg at 18:22. Therefore, at typical burn rates the a/c would have met the maximum landing weigh about a half-hour before 18:22 or around 17:52 UTC. This is about a half-hour after the diversion or in the area of Penang.
@Niels – I think we’ve had this “what happened when discussion” before. Below is the text of the draft of a post I wrote mid-September 2014: (Not sure if I posted it or not.)
“@Matty – The quote from March 12 was not from a spokesman but a “senior Pentagon official.” However, as Rand pointed out, the White House announced that the US did not have “advanced or proprietary knowledge of the aircraft going down in the SIO.” I’ve checked further and it appears that the USS Kidd was directed to an area where the Andaman Sea meets the Indian Ocean around that time. I’m not sure exactly when the SIO was first considered but I think it was about a week after the Northern and Southern arcs were first revealed. All of this just means that my implication that US Intelligence had an indication of the plane going down in the SIO is incorrect.”
@CosmicAcademy
While your analysis is very extensive and interesting and deserves an extensive answer, a first short answer from my side is that you, through indirect arguments, say that you think currently it was a) only. Then the translated key question for me becomes even more urgent: (How) could the full BTO/BFO analysis already be in place at 14/15 March? Or are you not surprised by that at all?
Only when this question is answered properly IMO we could conclude that there is no corroborating evidence, and then start further speculations based on that conclusion.
You also have to remember that according to Gerry S attempts to spoof the Doppler had been well under way for some years – independently of Inmarsat’s new policy of logging the BTOs as well. The idea behind spoofing the Doppler was of course to create confusion about the direction a plane had taken – which implies that it was well known at the time to extract the direction from the Doppler data.
Then there is the fact that no Northern country admitted a breach of it’s airspace. While this is only a weak clue, since it depends on the veracity and alertness of said countries, it was seen at the time as another hint that the plane could’ve gone only South.
@Niels, aren’t there – as has been brought forward here – many hints that the full sat data analysis didn’t have to be in place at the date you mentioned for directing the search into the SIO?
We have debated hotly at the time if there might’ve been additional data. We deemed it to be inconclusive and probably unanswerable back then. But today – after more than a year of fruitless search I’m inclined to think that that there are no additional data. Otherwise the search wouldn’t have been so erratic at times. And they should probably have produced at least a scrap of the plane.
You also have to remember the farce with the false black box pings. If they had additional data would they have spent weeks searching in a completely wrong area?
@Niels
If the US had the ability to intercept the satellite downlink independent of Inmarsat, you can be sure they did not have a bug relative to the partial compensation of C-band Doppler. As Victor and I (and others) speculated earlier, the source timing needed for the BTO measurement would need some noodling to resolve.
I have little doubt that US intel knows all about how an AES works, the dither of the satellite, and other nuances. They have an army of people doing this type of work every day of the week, and virtually unlimited computational resources.
While I do not believe that US intel knows where MH370 is, I do believe they know the general direction of the flight, and knew it very early in the game.
Another possibility to consider: there was indeed additional knowledge – maybe gleened by the secret service of one or more countries. And this additional knowledge pointed North rather than South. Could there have been political reasons for directing the search into the SIO anyway at that early date?
It’s not a scenario I necessarily subscribe to, but it has been brought forward by many and can’t be excluded categorically.
There can be completely non-nefarious reasons for acting that way: if there was early suspicion that there might be a hostage situation it would make sense to direct the early search into the opposite direction in order to facilitate quiet negotiations.
Again, after more than a year I’m doubtful of this otherwise logical idea. Would they really have continued this search for so long if certain factions knew it would be fruitless? Who knows…
@Littlefoot
The fact that the US dispatched assets, a destroyer, to the SIO very early speaks volumes. This independent decision, based on the humanitarian consideration of locating potential survivors before they perished in the ocean, tells us they knew darn well which way the plane went.
@Dennis, from my pov I’d say the US probably thought they knew the general direction the plane had taken 😉
But back some more to your Xmas Island theory: Have you investigated properly how well guarded it is by the Australians? I read some reports over the years that this place has been a notorious haven for refugees who try to reach Australian territory with whatever vessels they can lay their hands on or pay for. How to handle this situation has been a bone of contention for the Australian government for a long time. You know probably more about it than I do. But is it likely that they missed a lowly and slowly approaching airliner? I’m asking neutrally here since I don’t know.
While Xmas Island makes indeed a compelling destination for mh370, I rereiterate: the weakest point is that the jet’s complete vanishing act is very hard to explain with that theory. Unless you subscribe to the idea that the jet landed quietly, was completely refuelled and flown far away to another destination. That seems to be logistically very challenging, because where should this amount of fuel have come from without anyone noticing?
US and allied intelligence agencies will have access to military and other radars that monitor at least partially traffic leaving (and hence entering) Russia, China and related regions. Also, military and ATC radio communications in those areas would be monitored. Early on, US intelligence could have taken a view that the radars showed no unidentified traffic crossing the borders and that there was no elevated chatter on military frequencies that could indicate that the locals had seen anything.
That would not be definitive but enough to say on an intelligence level that if the choice (based on a simple BTO analysis, which is trivial) had to be North or South, then it was South. I doubt that BFO analysis (by anyone) at that stage would be advanced enough (and proven on other flights) to be used as a basis for comment and decision.
The search areas defined in the ATSB reports can be derived from the models therein and the public data. There isn’t much room for secret data that affects the detail of the search.
USS Kidd never left the Straits of Malacca and ended its search around March 20th so was never committed to any SIO search.
@VictorI
Victor, with the background you have given, in particular the GES position bug, do you think it was possible for Inmarsat to distinguish N or S as early as 14/15 March?
@Richard Cole, I agree with you here.
You say that the USS Kid has never dashed into the SIO. However exactly that argument has been brought forward many times as a clue for the US’s early knowledge of where the plane went. I haven’t followed the ship’s movements. So how did this idea come about?
I don’t believe MH370 made it to Christmas Island. Nor do I believe there was an intent to refuel there clandestinely and take off again.
Lack of debris is a big hole in my theory. As Victor pointed out, running out of fuel before landing creates questions relative to a pilot with Shah’s pedigree, but I can live with the human error explanation. Lack of debris is as devastating for the CI scenario as it is for the SIO scenario. One could postulate that the calmer waters around CI would make a controlled ditching more likely, but still??
@littlefoot
I’m not sure if we understand each other correctly. I think that one should have been able to predict BFO for given path
to choose between N/S. They other way round (predict path from BTO/BFO) not yet.
@Niels
While I certainly have no “inside” knowledge of the workings of US intel relative to MH370, I do know that a casual query from the director to a department head – “what do your guys think about this?”, would generate 24/7 activity replete with lots of pizza cartons and coke cans.
Dennis, littlefoot.
The Andaman Sea is North Indian Ocean, not South.
Kidd responded to the then new radar data that showed MH370 has overflown Malaysia and the Straits. When the search moved to the South its role was ended.
@Richard
By the time the search moved to the South, and by that I mean roughly West of Perth, the likelihood of survivors was nil. There was no longer a sense of urgency in that regard.
I interpret the lack of apparent US continued participation in the search to be largely the result of continued refinement of the aircraft trajectory by US intel, and a conviction that the aircraft did not present a threat to US interests.
Just an opinion, mind you.
@Richard, I know that the Andamans aren’t in the SIO 🙂
I just wanted to get a clear understanding why this info is flying around in the net that the USS Kidd dashed into the SIO at a time when the sat data analysis can’t have been completed. That false information is used by many for claiming that the US had additional early knowledge about the plane having ended up in the SIO for sure.
@littlefoot
I hadn’t detected that thread of argument. I think the sequence is that Kidd was barely deployed in the Straits when the Inmarsat data was first announced on the 14th March. By the 17th there were press reports that Kidd was being shortly withdrawn as it was not suited to searching large areas (as in the SIO), so how far North it got is debatable – the published size of the area searched (which may be incorrect of course) is small.
Possibly it was use of the words ‘Indian Ocean’ in the area to be covered by Kidd that caused the confusion – it’s all Indian Ocean.
@All
So in addition to my 6:08 am posting there are two new options for the early southerly orientation by US:
c. US was collecting their own BTO/BFO data and could therefore do their own analysis (rapidly). (Dennis)
d. Based on a lack of intelligence pointing north, they adviced to look south. (Richard)
I think it is not very useful to discuss probabilities. Nevertheless: much clarifying. It allows me to make my operational assumptions for the near future. Thanks a lot!
To clarify a bit my position: I have little doubt about the intentions of Inmarsat as a company or Australia/ATSB in this story.
It does not mean there is no problem with the Isat data: there is no proper chain of custody and we are still looking at a summary made by God knows who.
Psychology is not an exact science.
There are two telephone calls in the Inmarsat data, one early on and one near the end of the flight. Would a company, whose plane is missing, actually try to call only twice? This alone indicates that something is wrong with the data. They were either fabricated afterwards or they are a spoof. The phone calls might simply be triggers to set the clock. When to produce the last handshake was fairly clear: when fuel ran out, had the plane actually flown until this point and this far.
I could imagine a straight path is easier to fabricate, either afterwards in a very short time, or as a part of a well prepared spoof. Has anybody looked into the possibility of spoofing the data from a stationary plane or some stationary equipment on the ground? To me, the plan was to direct the search to the far south and thus end itquickly, as was what they tried on March 24, when the Malaysian PM declared the plane lost after only 16 days.
@DL, the two telephone calls are very suspicious IMO.
First, it’s completely incomprehensible that there are only two calls for the whole length of the flight. That’s absolutely unusual and unheard of.
Then the timing of the first call is somewhat suspicious as well. It might have set the clock for the pings – as you said. But it also produced a reliable BFO over the Strait which hinted apparently South. Just 20 minutes after the plane was lost from all radar screens. So no independent verification of the plane’s direction was possible.
I’m still grappling with the second call. It could have been genuine concern of course. Or it had to be done eventually in order to not look suspicious. But it could also have fulfilled a function, since it certainly interrupted the hourly handshakes. There’s a gap of one and a half hours between the 22:40 and the 00:11 handshake. That was effected by the 23:14 call. As a consequence no BTO was logged for one and a half hour, since the calls produced only BFOs – but not BTOs.
I don’t think it’s possible that the handshakes were spoofed from someone outside of mh370 since it was determined that the same AES/SDU must’ve answered the handshakes during the whole journey of the plane.
But the plan mightcertainly been – as you say – to direct the search to the far South under most inconvenient conditions in the hope that it would be given up eventually and nobody would be surprised if nothing was found. If that was the goal it hasn’t quite worked just yet.
@Matty
“if China was to detain and ransack commercial aircraft at their airports there would be a major stink. If you don’t see that we better disagree, finish the debate and move on.”
OK but even if we ignore that part, don’t you think that any technological secret on the plane would be known to foreign intelligence? They would suspect China anyway and consider China having it even if they didn’t have a single proof it was in China.
@littlefoot
“I was countering your argument that mh370 could only land on it after having burnt more fuel than it already had by flying extra miles which could then have to lead to the plane running out of fuel. That chain of events is simply not plausible.”
but what if Z was flying at very low altitude after FMT as to not appear on indonesian radar? He would have to fly a lot slower and he had enough fuel to reach CI.
“Or, if it broke up, why it should subsequently make a complete vanishing act. The complete absence of any debris can be better explained with a SIO crash.”
It’s a lot easier to ditch the aircraft wihtout debris south of CI, it’s a lake compared to southern SIO 😉
@DL, littlefoot
Would be interesting to reconstruct how the phonecall BFOs came into play. In both my current most likely scenarios the turn south occurs after the phone call. So, yes, in a sense I have the same impression. Also interesting to know who (in the JIT) dragged the search North around April 1st with the hint about a NW limit at 1912 near Car Nicobar. As I mentioned before this turn point is more or less consistent (in timing) with the sailoress being roughly disturbed from doing nothing during middle watch, and leads to the S20-S21 search area.
@littlefoot
“Then there is the fact that no Northern country admitted a breach of it’s airspace. While this is only a weak clue, since it depends on the veracity and alertness of said countries, it was seen at the time as another hint that the plane could’ve gone only South.”
actually it’s a very strong clue, unless they all turned off their radars a transponerless 777 would sure be noticed, if not immediately then after reviewing radar logs
@DennisW
“The fact that the US dispatched assets, a destroyer, to the SIO very early speaks volumes. This independent decision, based on the humanitarian consideration of locating potential survivors before they perished in the ocean, tells us they knew darn well which way the plane went.”
they might have caught him doing the south turn
“While Xmas Island makes indeed a compelling destination for mh370, I rereiterate: the weakest point is that the jet’s complete vanishing act is very hard to explain with that theory. Unless you subscribe to the idea that the jet landed quietly, was completely refuelled and flown far away to another destination. That seems to be logistically very challenging, because where should this amount of fuel have come from without anyone noticing?”
Ditching. While I agree with you it’s very hard to come up with a plausible consequence of events that led to it, if he came in situation to ditch it there was a good chance he would ditch it “properly”, unlike in southern SIO.
@DL
1st fon call
A wild private guess of mine was, that this first call was to check wehther the meanwhile spoofed equipment was working as desired. It came following only 10 min in the strange logon
At 18:03 UTC MAS Ops sent an URGENT REQUEST via ACARS to the airplane to contact HCM ATC. The message was automatically repeated many times – no reply.
At 18:40 UTC MAS Ops tried to reach the airplane by SAT phone. For all they knew, the phone kept ringing a full minute – still no reply.
At 22:23:00 UTC KL ARCC issued a DETRESFA message. That could have been the trigger for a final, now desperate, phonecall attempt at 22:40 UTC.
Corrction: 2nd phone call attempt was at 23:13 UTC
@ Niels
Car Nicobar came into play maybe because Chris McLaughlin, Inmarsat, said that the plane went back west over the Andaman Islands and then went south.
If the plane went as far as the Andaman islands, then it could not have flown to the deepest south, I would guess. I could imagine that was why they shifted the search to the north. The point of the major turn was later set elsewhere, however, albeit McLaughlin had stated otherwise. He knew the plane went south, probably because of analyzing the data. One should think he would also know the location of the major turn. According to his statement, he did.
@DL
Interesting to bring back this interview under attention! But how could he know about a late turn south? It is not in the data that we have, at least not that I’m aware of.
Some thoughts about the MAS phone calls.
Assume I wanted to redirect a flight to the SIO “ex post”. I would certainly not fabricate the data from scratch, since that would be fairly error prone. I would rather copy’n’paste from a real flight which went in the desired direction, i.e. between 18:25 und 0:19 UTC southwards or, with 12 hours time offset, to the north (but not necessarily on the same day). Using data from a real flight guarantees the overall integrity of the data. However, I would probably nevertheless only publish what is absolutely necessary, for safety reasons.
The disadvantage of this method is that I cannot alter the chronological structure of the communication. If there was an incoming phone call at 18:39, I cannot remove it from the data, since it did affect the timing of the subsequent pings. In the same manner, I cannot insert additional phone calls without running into danger of leaving telltale traces by mistake.
@Niels: To answer your question, I do believe it is possible that Inmarsat could have used the BTO/BFO data to distinguish N v S as early as March 14/15.
On the subject of the satellite calls, I always thought it was strange that ATSB/Inmarsat did not initially use the call at 18:40 to bound the time of the apparent turn to the South. It was not until the IG published a statement questioning this did the ATSB come out with a new analysis which used an earlier turn south based on this phone call. The news was released as if it was a new revelation, when amongst us analysts, the timing of the apparent turn south was well-established months before.
If Malaysian factions were in on some kind of deception, then I do not think ATC in Kuala Lumpur was involved. But MAS, their actions are highly suspicious to me.
As Gysbreght pointed out they were responsible for the only two satphone calls to the plane, which could have been potentially very useful for the perps. And they were also running this strange simulation program which placed the plane over Cambodia of all places when it had already turned around at IGARI. Cambodia was never in the original flight plan for mh370, so it’s beyond me how a simulation program could place the plane on it’s virtual path over Cambodi. But this false info delayed all kinds of activities for more than 2 hours. I simply refuse to accept that this was just a lucky break for the perps. This gave them quite a head start! When it was finally acknowledged that the plane was missing the perps had already safely crossed the Malaysian peninsula.
@Niels, this interview with Chris Mclaughlin always gave me headaches. He talks as if he had SEEN personally mh370 reaching the Andamans and then making a Southern turn – or at least seen data which seemed to suggest just that. He seems to be more than a bit sure.
I still don’t quite know what to make of it.
@DennisW,
“If the US had the ability to intercept the satellite downlink independent of Inmarsat, you can be sure they did not have a bug relative to the partial compensation of C-band Doppler. As Victor and I (and others) speculated earlier, the source timing needed for the BTO measurement would need some noodling to resolve.”
As Richard remarked recently, the interception of signal data is the very reason for the existence of military listening posts. I don’t think it is a big IF in your question above.
With respect to BTO source timing requiring “some noodling”, I agree that it would be the case, if one wanted to replicate the Perth GES numbers. However, I believe that it is not required to do that. Any SIGINT post would easily be able to create their own reference time for a local BTO measurement, by intercepting the incoming uplink signal and accurately time it, then intercept the incoming downlink signal and time as well.
In essence, all the modelling that was done by ISAT, ATSB, IG and others for the Perth-Sat-Plane geometry and back again does equally apply to any other listening post location, with the appropriate mods for the new location of course.
Yes, I know and credit the IG contribution to the use of the additional BFO’s, however it was poor Occam again who had to make the final call about their interpretation.
@MuOne
Yes, I just have more difficulty understanding how the uplink signal might be intercepted. It is a big dish (narrow beam) signal near the surface of the earth. Not saying it was not done somehow, just don’t have an opinion of how. The downlink signal is much easier to intercept.
@Cosmic:
“Inmarsat themselves put the reservation on the use of these data and said ‘… if not spoofed’. They were well aware about all kind of spoofing scenarios which might have been one of the reasons, the public got the logs so late. In addition, since it is very difficult to explain why an inflight logon happened and even more intriguing, why this logon happened so convenient as to the exact time, when the radar observations ended, the data are highly questionable.”
THANK YOU.
“it is amazing what kind of assistance they might have had within the chain of command of the RMAF or MAS HQ.”
The three operative words are CHAIN OF COMMAND. Which begs the question (the mere mention of which induces a stony silence on this board): WHERE WAS WARREN LUDIWG — the Australian Air Vice Marshall who was based at Butterworth and at the TOP of that chain (FPDA/IADS) — the night MH370 allegedly flew back over peninsular Malaysia? Malaysia Air Force chief Rodzali Daud has been mentioned in numerous articles since MH370 vanished — but NOT Ludwig?
@ AM2
“could be anywhere” more than anything because of the behaviour/actions/inactions of various govts and agencies etc.. So yes, I agree about the rat too.”
BEHAVIOUR. In TOTALITY.
@Niels, @sk999:
Thanks for the Mar 15, 2014 WaPo article.
So:
Mar 8, 2014 MH370 vanishes
Mar 11: Inmarsat turns its data over to SITA (WSJ Mar 20)
(What analysis or other did SITA do?)
Mar 12 or 13: Inmarsat receives the data (WSJ Mar 20)
(Presumably from SITA?
Recall what Stephane Berthomet said: Inmarsat-> SITA-> MAS)
Mar 15: Wapo: NTSB “then mapped a likely route based on the pings”
(Did NTSB get the data from SITA or Malaysia?
And sk999 said: “Mar 15 is also the first date I have found for first publication of the final arc (which I think was actually the 6th arc) and the two corridors.)
Mar 20: WSJ:
“Malaysia’s government, concerned about corroborating the data and dealing with internal disagreements about how much information to release, didn’t publicly acknowledge Inmarsat’s information until March 15, during a news conference with Prime Minister Najib Razak.
…Mr. Najib said Malaysia ‘worked hand in hand with our international partners, including neighboring countries’ and ‘shared information in real time with authorities who have the necessary experience to interpret the data.’
U.S. national-security officials haven’t commented on information-sharing issues.”
Mar 21: PRESS STATEMENT by Hishammudin Hussein, the then Minister of Defence and Acting Minister of Transport:
“Upon receiving the RAW DATA (CAPS mine), the Malaysian authorities immediately discussed with the US team how this information might be used.”
AND
June 17: BBC Horizon documentary: “The sensitive information Inmarsat used to work out the arcs came from top-secret radar data” (start at 28:00) http://bit.ly/1PMSXDG
Niels, you said:
“So the key question translates into: could this all be in place already at 14/15 March 2014?”
PING. And let me ask: does “in place” mean ANALYZED — or SANITIZED?
@Matty:
“My back of the mind suspicion though: If something earnestly sinister has happened (plane not in the SIO) and certain countries knew about it then it may serve them to acquiesce with the SIO narrative?”
Not only acquiesced to the SIO narrative, but helped serve it up.
THE NARRATIVE IS A STORY.
Disinformation masquerading as information. All over the place. That is the recurring theme here. And it’s not just coming from Malaysia.
Consider the most recent from Le Monde, wherein it put out a theory-as-fact story (which came from an unnamed “expert”, whom the writer, when asked about it by me on Twitter, said was pilot(s) at a big airline) that Maldivian Airlines flight DQA149, a turbo-prop, flew over Kudahuvadhoo (west of and way off its normal path, due to “winds”) en route to Thimarafushi Airport and therefore THAT plane was the one the villagers saw, not MH370.
It smelled like bulls*** from the beginning.
1. DQA149’s flight path goes way EAST OF KUDAHUVADHOO AND NOT REMOTELY OVER IT and travels in the OPPOSITE direction (North) from the direction of the plane the Kudahuvadhoo witnesses reported seeing (S-SE)
2.NOT ONE of the Kudahuvadhoo witnesses in the original Haveeru story ever mentioned seeing a PROPELLER plane. Ever.
3. No legitimate flight would have been flying LOW, 50 KILOMETERS from its destination.
And then, with the great help of @Niels, Juanda (@mingalababya) — a pilot based in Indonesia, and Blaine Gibson, we showed that:
There was NO Maldivian Airlines flight arriving at Thimarafushi on 03.08 (or 09).14. Maldivian Airlines Flight 149 left Kaadedhdhoo at 5:20 am, flew NORTH and landed at Male at 6:30. It did not, as Le Monde reported, leave Male and land at Thiramafushi at 6:33 am.
Juanda: “First of all, the aircraft they use for this particular flight is a Twin Otter and not a Dash 8. A Twin Otter is a much smaller aircraft carrying only 19 passengers and has a MTOW of 5.7 tonnes.
My screen capture of the flight shows that it’s at 800 feet on descent to the runway at Thimarafushi. This is how close the aircraft is to its destination when at 800 feet. It’s hard to believe the Le Monde article that this flight was over Kudahuvadhoo at about the same height as this, since Kudahuvdhoo is 50 km away further to the north west. At a distance of 50km (27 NM), basic airmanship dictates that you should be about 8000 feet altitude, not 800 feet.”
So Florence de Changy not only did not do even the most basic research, but Le Monde published a FABRICATION AS FACT (easily proved), right about the same time that Hedley Thomas, an award-winning journalist for The Australian, WITHDREW his story about the Kudahuvadhoo witnesses. WHY did he?
And my last comment to de Changy (June 25) — “Perhaps you’ll be able to share the flight data/records that the Maldivian Civil Aviation authority provided.” — has gone unanswered. Now, complete silence from she and Le Monde.
So why would LE MONDE, one of France’s two major newspapers of record, engage in a poorly-disguised attempt (which backfired) to discredit THESE witnesses? And note that ABC MediaWatch (Australia) also played a key role disseminating that tripe. Is all of THAT a coincidence too?
As someone said to me last night “Le Monde does not usually disseminate information from fundamentalist Islamic governments. Whatever happened to Je Suis charlie ????”
Now remember, Marc Dugain? He said the same thing: the Maldives witnesses were IGNORED. He also said that he was threatened by “English” foreign intelligence agents.
But all those who dismissed Dugain as not credible just kept repeating: “because Paris Match”.
Well, can someone explain Le Monde’s right-out-there-in-the-open lie?
ALL of the relevant governments and agencies in the MH370 story should be viewed as suspects. Until someone proves they’re not.
Brock McEwen
Posted February 26, 2015 at 3:38 PM
What Was Going On at Yubileyniy?
“@Nihonmama, @littlefoot:
The “caused by seismic activity” was, to my knowledge, never more than a hypothesis. Geologically active Carlsberg Ridge runs NEAR this spot, and thus was deemed a plausible source – and the reading had a low-amplitude tail often associated with seismic events. However, it seems odd to me that such a seismic event would be localised more than 200nmi EAST of the Ridge’s nearest point. Also, I have learned that the implosion of a fuselage at depth WOULD be consistent with such a frequency profile. While Curtin’s location estimate lies almost equidistant from each of the horn of Africa, the tip of India, and Diego Garcia (roughly 600nmi from each), the CLOSEST land to the refined best-estimate – by FAR, at a mere 215nmi – is Kuda Huvadhoo, Maldives – home of the multiple eyewitness accounts.”
@DL,little foot
Actually when you listen carefully to McLaughlin in the video he is speaking about radar data showing it went over the Andamans and then turned south. In addition to the fact that the pings indicated it did not go north. Whose radar could that be?
Pfff, what a mess.
@Niels: It is funny. When I read that article, I come to a different conclusion about when north v south was determined. Part of it is the challenge of trying to assign a technical meaning to words from a non-technical spokesperson (McLaughlin).
McLaughlin said:
*****
“We looked at the Doppler effect, which is the change in frequency due to the movement of a satellite in its orbit. What that then gave us was a predicted path for the northerly route and a predicted path the southerly route,” explained Chris McLaughlin, senior vice president of external affairs at Inmarsat. “That’s never been done before; our engineers came up with it as a unique contribution.”
This information was relayed to Malaysian officials by 12 March, but Malaysia’s government did not publicly acknowledge it until 15 March, according to the Wall Street Journal. Malaysia began to redirect the search effort that day, to focus on the areas the information described. However, some officials involved with the probe warned that the lost days and wasted resources could impede the investigation.
******
I interpret this to mean that by March 12, both the BTO and BFO analyses were completed. As you know, Doppler has nothing to do with the BTO data, so using the Doppler effect to predict the BFO for northern and southern paths would have to point the investigators to the south. However, because of the Perth EAFC bug, the agreement was not excellent, more refinement was necessary, and the results were not yet “definitive”.
Next the article says:
*****
Meanwhile, Inmarsat’s engineers carried out further analysis of the pings and came up with a much more detailed Doppler effect model for the northern and southern paths. By comparing these models with the trajectory of other aircraft on similar routes, they were able to establish an “extraordinary matching” between Inmarsat’s predicted path to the south and the readings from other planes on that route.
“By yesterday they were able to definitively say that the plane had undoubtedly taken the southern route,” said McLaughlin.
*****
My interpretation is that after the discovery of the bug in the EAFC receiver at Perth, close agreement (as opposed to general agreement) was determined for the southern path, and the southern prediction was now “definitive”. Before this time, the group was struggling to get close agreement the same way we analysts struggled to get close agreement before we knew about the Perth bug.
I will also say that in a confidential conversation it was disclosed to me that the Perth bug cost the teams about 5 days of effort to get the excellent agreement. That is consistent with the article’s claim that the general results were known by March 12, but the search area was narrowed to 3% of the southern corridor by March 18.
Relative to using the BFO from the first call to bound the timing of the apparent turn to the south, I was not trying to credit the IG, as many analysts recognized this within days of the publishing of the data logs on May 27, 2014, in which the satellite call data was very presented in a very obvious way. Yet, the ATSB report from June 26, 2014, did not use this result in the path reconstructions presented therein. The IG only publicly and formally stated what was known to anybody that was analyzing the BFO.
http://www.mh370site.com/ “A Solution to the Malaysian Flight 370 Mystery.” By Bruce Robertson, California airplane pilot and engineer. Says as a pilot flying for over 40 years,that he has experienced some events that MH370 may have encountered. Interesting read, many graphs and speculative narrative centered around the reaction of the large stock of lithium ion batteries in the hold and aftermath.
@Sk999
“DennisW – ??? I never attributed any analytical prowess to SITA.”
I never said you did.
AM2 – If they had a radar track from Jindalee there is no way they would reveal it I’d say no matter what you did. Been endless speculation on it. Their claims that they don’t have any data are plausible and then you have the way the search was jerked around south/north/south? That said to me that they didn’t really know much. If they did detect something heading south like that at any point I reckon they would have kept an eye on it? I know PM Abbott burnt himself on this one trying to milk it so my guess is no Australian data.
My back of the mind suspicion though: If something earnestly sinister has happened(plane not in the SIO) and certain countries knew about it then it may serve them to acquiesce with the SIO narrative? They aren’t responsible for it. I’m happy to be called a conspiricist because I just smell a rat. Ghylain Wattleros(France) has come to a similar conclusion by monitoring what his govt has said and done on this. He believes it all looks a bit strange and that they know something and I’ve always thought something was wrong with this picture overall. It went quiet so quickly.
I was never confident with the search but I still oscillate a bit: part of my head says the data points to the SIO – the other part says snap out of it dummy, there is nothing down there.
@Matty
Yes, agree there is probably no Jindalee data (but annoyed if we have that facility and its not being used 24/7). I didn’t spell this out before but my hunch is its the US that has data and may have shared something with Aus under strict conditions.
I’m not so much oscillating as to where I think it may be but my early view that it was in the SIO is steadily changing to “could be anywhere” more than anything because of the behaviour/actions/inactions of various govts and agencies etc.. So yes, I agree about the rat too.
@Sk999, Nihonmama
This is an interesting link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/satellite-locates-malaysian-flight-370-still-flying-seven-hours-after-takeoff/2014/03/15/96627a24-ac86-11e3-a06a-e3230a43d6cb_graphic.html
Dated 15 March 2014
Note the NTSB tracks going to the south
Note also 5 and 6 the radar tracks going rather northerly, and the subscript 5 (!)
AM2 – further to it, even if they did pull up some logs(Jindalee) and there was some plane heading through some surveillance zone they would at least have it in time and space. That could be tallied with the satellite data as we understand it and they should have avoided dragging the search so far north as they did only to head right back.
They went deep into the SIO with the expectation of finding plane wreckage and when the satellite leads came up empty it appeared they hit the calculators with some new assumptions and headed north.
@Sk999, DennisW, Nihonmama
@All
So thanks to those who contributed, I think I can summarize as follows:
* The ABC news article from March 13th states that there were indications that MH370 went into the IO. These indications could be based on:
– Extrapolation of (the now publicly known) radar data
– Very early analysis of BTO and BFO data
– other data
The fact that it was quickly followed up by a search near the east coast of India suggest extrapolation of radar data and/or other data.
* The WP article from 15th March clearly indicates that the focus on US side has been shifted to the SIO (to the surprise of many at that time, see the comments to the article).
This could be based on:
a. Very early analysis of BTO and BFO data
b. Other data
Now the key question: is it a) or b), or both?
Dennis correctly pointed out that the use of Doppler shifts is a know procedure in military object tracking. However, we all know it needs detailed and specific knowledge of the AES, satellite and GES system to translate BFO in Doppler residuals, and Doppler residuals in position/velocity information.
So the key question translates into: could this all be in place already at 14/15 March 2014?
@littlefoot
Chistmas Island (CI)
There was a early scenario by someone on reddit last year. he explained that the CI airport is closed over the weekends and guarded by some 3 or 4 guards only. If you make a landing there in the early morning, nobody would hear or see it except the guards, who would have to be in the plot. You can land there only in daylight, there is no ILS and no tower support on weekends. A Hijacker would have waited for the daylight to come, landed at CI, refueled and restarted with new flight ID to go whereever fit.
The strength of this scenario would be, that it allows for the Inmarsat data and includes a landing scenario, which would be the normal rationale of hijacking with criminal intent.
The weakness in this theory would be, why the hijacker left that data-trace of the Sat?
@Niels
When you talk about a) and b) you dig out the basic precondition for the use of the data:
We all had the impression last year, that the Inmarsat data were corroborated by additional intelligence , that could not be revealed because of secrecy considerations. The assumption of the existence of corroborating evidence was the only reason to take the Inmarsat data serious at all. This assumption was somehow suported by the fact that a respected member of the industry close to Inmarsat put his weight on the validity of those data in the IG and in this forum.
Now after one and a half year a possible intelligence source did not find a way to leak the respective corroborating evidence. This is strange, because in the MH17 incident we had classified military satellite imagery leaked within hours. Also it is strange, that the search is shifting between very distant termini. So we have to presume, that there is no such thing as any corroborating evidence.
This means: the data stand alone and only on their own feet. Inmarsat themselves put the reservation on the use of these data and said “… if not spoofed”. They were well aware about all kind of spoofing scenarios which might have been one of the reasons, the public got the logs so late. In addition, since it is very difficult to explain why an inflight logon happened and even more intriguing, why this logon happened so convenient as to the exact time, when the radar observations ended, the data are highly questionable.
From the behaviour of the Investigation and Inmarsat we have to exonerate them of any participation in a cover-up. Instead, Inmarsat and JACC might have fallen victim to perpetrators with insider knowledge of the use of BFO and BTO, and who could anticipate the reaction of the other players concerning the existence of data. So its a legitimate guess to say, that the data were fabricated to intentionally mislead a expected search and buy time to cover any traces of this event.
Since it seems that buying time was the urgent intent of the perpetrators from the first moment of the deviation (incredible speed after turn at IGARI, desinformation to HCM ATC with the consequence of delaying the declaration of an emergency for a couple of hours ! – and the abscence of due identification by RMAF even if crossing Butterworth), it is amazing what kind of assistance they might have had within the chain of command of the RMAF or MAS HQ.
Some history:
When Richard Cole first proposed that the AES frequency correction might be based on a geostationary model for the satellite, a number of us began to use this model to predict the BFO. It became apparent that an additional correction was necessary to match the measured data. Henrik proposed an additional frequency drift of one of the oscillators in the chain, and Yap noted that the measured data could be matched if only a fraction of the C-band Doppler shift was included in the model.
It was eventually leaked to some of us that the reason for the discrepancy is that the MITEQ pilot receiver in Perth had a software bug pertaining to the coordinates of the receiver. (The leak said the coordinate parameters were not properly entered. Later, another leak informed us that there was a software bug that caused this behavior, which was fixed in later versions of the firmware, but Inmarsat failed to update its firmware.) The leak also told us that this discrepancy is what caused Inmarsat to lose some days in analyzing and understanding the BFO. I imagine that Inmarsat struggled with this much the way some of us struggled when we first tried to duplicate Inmarsat’s prediction.
This anomaly became what is now referred to as the “partial compensation” of the C-band Doppler, and is acknowledged in the ATSB report of June 2014 (although the root cause–the failure to update firmware–is never mentioned).
I say this because I believe the ability to distinguish between north and south paths using the BFO was known to Inmarsat, and any delays in arriving at a conclusion relative to MH370 was due to the delay in understanding the partial compensation phenomenon, not due to the invention of “groundbreaking math(s)”, as Inmarsat’s Chris McLaughlin claimed. The prediction of the BFO, and the underlying effect of satellite inclination and plane trajectories, had to be well-known for Inmarsat to properly design and operate its network.
Landing Weight – FWIW, The FCOMM lists the maximum landing weight for a B777-200ER as 213,188 kg. Previous posts have the GW of MH370 as 210,000 kg at 18:22. Therefore, at typical burn rates the a/c would have met the maximum landing weigh about a half-hour before 18:22 or around 17:52 UTC. This is about a half-hour after the diversion or in the area of Penang.
@Niels – I think we’ve had this “what happened when discussion” before. Below is the text of the draft of a post I wrote mid-September 2014: (Not sure if I posted it or not.)
“@Matty – The quote from March 12 was not from a spokesman but a “senior Pentagon official.” However, as Rand pointed out, the White House announced that the US did not have “advanced or proprietary knowledge of the aircraft going down in the SIO.” I’ve checked further and it appears that the USS Kidd was directed to an area where the Andaman Sea meets the Indian Ocean around that time. I’m not sure exactly when the SIO was first considered but I think it was about a week after the Northern and Southern arcs were first revealed. All of this just means that my implication that US Intelligence had an indication of the plane going down in the SIO is incorrect.”
@CosmicAcademy
While your analysis is very extensive and interesting and deserves an extensive answer, a first short answer from my side is that you, through indirect arguments, say that you think currently it was a) only. Then the translated key question for me becomes even more urgent: (How) could the full BTO/BFO analysis already be in place at 14/15 March? Or are you not surprised by that at all?
Only when this question is answered properly IMO we could conclude that there is no corroborating evidence, and then start further speculations based on that conclusion.
You also have to remember that according to Gerry S attempts to spoof the Doppler had been well under way for some years – independently of Inmarsat’s new policy of logging the BTOs as well. The idea behind spoofing the Doppler was of course to create confusion about the direction a plane had taken – which implies that it was well known at the time to extract the direction from the Doppler data.
Then there is the fact that no Northern country admitted a breach of it’s airspace. While this is only a weak clue, since it depends on the veracity and alertness of said countries, it was seen at the time as another hint that the plane could’ve gone only South.
@Niels, aren’t there – as has been brought forward here – many hints that the full sat data analysis didn’t have to be in place at the date you mentioned for directing the search into the SIO?
We have debated hotly at the time if there might’ve been additional data. We deemed it to be inconclusive and probably unanswerable back then. But today – after more than a year of fruitless search I’m inclined to think that that there are no additional data. Otherwise the search wouldn’t have been so erratic at times. And they should probably have produced at least a scrap of the plane.
You also have to remember the farce with the false black box pings. If they had additional data would they have spent weeks searching in a completely wrong area?
@Niels
If the US had the ability to intercept the satellite downlink independent of Inmarsat, you can be sure they did not have a bug relative to the partial compensation of C-band Doppler. As Victor and I (and others) speculated earlier, the source timing needed for the BTO measurement would need some noodling to resolve.
I have little doubt that US intel knows all about how an AES works, the dither of the satellite, and other nuances. They have an army of people doing this type of work every day of the week, and virtually unlimited computational resources.
While I do not believe that US intel knows where MH370 is, I do believe they know the general direction of the flight, and knew it very early in the game.
Another possibility to consider: there was indeed additional knowledge – maybe gleened by the secret service of one or more countries. And this additional knowledge pointed North rather than South. Could there have been political reasons for directing the search into the SIO anyway at that early date?
It’s not a scenario I necessarily subscribe to, but it has been brought forward by many and can’t be excluded categorically.
There can be completely non-nefarious reasons for acting that way: if there was early suspicion that there might be a hostage situation it would make sense to direct the early search into the opposite direction in order to facilitate quiet negotiations.
Again, after more than a year I’m doubtful of this otherwise logical idea. Would they really have continued this search for so long if certain factions knew it would be fruitless? Who knows…
@Littlefoot
The fact that the US dispatched assets, a destroyer, to the SIO very early speaks volumes. This independent decision, based on the humanitarian consideration of locating potential survivors before they perished in the ocean, tells us they knew darn well which way the plane went.
@Dennis, from my pov I’d say the US probably thought they knew the general direction the plane had taken 😉
But back some more to your Xmas Island theory: Have you investigated properly how well guarded it is by the Australians? I read some reports over the years that this place has been a notorious haven for refugees who try to reach Australian territory with whatever vessels they can lay their hands on or pay for. How to handle this situation has been a bone of contention for the Australian government for a long time. You know probably more about it than I do. But is it likely that they missed a lowly and slowly approaching airliner? I’m asking neutrally here since I don’t know.
While Xmas Island makes indeed a compelling destination for mh370, I rereiterate: the weakest point is that the jet’s complete vanishing act is very hard to explain with that theory. Unless you subscribe to the idea that the jet landed quietly, was completely refuelled and flown far away to another destination. That seems to be logistically very challenging, because where should this amount of fuel have come from without anyone noticing?
US and allied intelligence agencies will have access to military and other radars that monitor at least partially traffic leaving (and hence entering) Russia, China and related regions. Also, military and ATC radio communications in those areas would be monitored. Early on, US intelligence could have taken a view that the radars showed no unidentified traffic crossing the borders and that there was no elevated chatter on military frequencies that could indicate that the locals had seen anything.
That would not be definitive but enough to say on an intelligence level that if the choice (based on a simple BTO analysis, which is trivial) had to be North or South, then it was South. I doubt that BFO analysis (by anyone) at that stage would be advanced enough (and proven on other flights) to be used as a basis for comment and decision.
The search areas defined in the ATSB reports can be derived from the models therein and the public data. There isn’t much room for secret data that affects the detail of the search.
USS Kidd never left the Straits of Malacca and ended its search around March 20th so was never committed to any SIO search.
@VictorI
Victor, with the background you have given, in particular the GES position bug, do you think it was possible for Inmarsat to distinguish N or S as early as 14/15 March?
@Richard Cole, I agree with you here.
You say that the USS Kid has never dashed into the SIO. However exactly that argument has been brought forward many times as a clue for the US’s early knowledge of where the plane went. I haven’t followed the ship’s movements. So how did this idea come about?
@Richard
http://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=79693
@Littlefoot
I don’t believe MH370 made it to Christmas Island. Nor do I believe there was an intent to refuel there clandestinely and take off again.
Lack of debris is a big hole in my theory. As Victor pointed out, running out of fuel before landing creates questions relative to a pilot with Shah’s pedigree, but I can live with the human error explanation. Lack of debris is as devastating for the CI scenario as it is for the SIO scenario. One could postulate that the calmer waters around CI would make a controlled ditching more likely, but still??
@littlefoot
I’m not sure if we understand each other correctly. I think that one should have been able to predict BFO for given path
to choose between N/S. They other way round (predict path from BTO/BFO) not yet.
@Niels
While I certainly have no “inside” knowledge of the workings of US intel relative to MH370, I do know that a casual query from the director to a department head – “what do your guys think about this?”, would generate 24/7 activity replete with lots of pizza cartons and coke cans.
Dennis, littlefoot.
The Andaman Sea is North Indian Ocean, not South.
Kidd responded to the then new radar data that showed MH370 has overflown Malaysia and the Straits. When the search moved to the South its role was ended.
@Richard
By the time the search moved to the South, and by that I mean roughly West of Perth, the likelihood of survivors was nil. There was no longer a sense of urgency in that regard.
I interpret the lack of apparent US continued participation in the search to be largely the result of continued refinement of the aircraft trajectory by US intel, and a conviction that the aircraft did not present a threat to US interests.
Just an opinion, mind you.
@Richard, I know that the Andamans aren’t in the SIO 🙂
I just wanted to get a clear understanding why this info is flying around in the net that the USS Kidd dashed into the SIO at a time when the sat data analysis can’t have been completed. That false information is used by many for claiming that the US had additional early knowledge about the plane having ended up in the SIO for sure.
@littlefoot
I hadn’t detected that thread of argument. I think the sequence is that Kidd was barely deployed in the Straits when the Inmarsat data was first announced on the 14th March. By the 17th there were press reports that Kidd was being shortly withdrawn as it was not suited to searching large areas (as in the SIO), so how far North it got is debatable – the published size of the area searched (which may be incorrect of course) is small.
Possibly it was use of the words ‘Indian Ocean’ in the area to be covered by Kidd that caused the confusion – it’s all Indian Ocean.
@All
So in addition to my 6:08 am posting there are two new options for the early southerly orientation by US:
c. US was collecting their own BTO/BFO data and could therefore do their own analysis (rapidly). (Dennis)
d. Based on a lack of intelligence pointing north, they adviced to look south. (Richard)
I think it is not very useful to discuss probabilities. Nevertheless: much clarifying. It allows me to make my operational assumptions for the near future. Thanks a lot!
To clarify a bit my position: I have little doubt about the intentions of Inmarsat as a company or Australia/ATSB in this story.
It does not mean there is no problem with the Isat data: there is no proper chain of custody and we are still looking at a summary made by God knows who.
Psychology is not an exact science.
There are two telephone calls in the Inmarsat data, one early on and one near the end of the flight. Would a company, whose plane is missing, actually try to call only twice? This alone indicates that something is wrong with the data. They were either fabricated afterwards or they are a spoof. The phone calls might simply be triggers to set the clock. When to produce the last handshake was fairly clear: when fuel ran out, had the plane actually flown until this point and this far.
I could imagine a straight path is easier to fabricate, either afterwards in a very short time, or as a part of a well prepared spoof. Has anybody looked into the possibility of spoofing the data from a stationary plane or some stationary equipment on the ground? To me, the plan was to direct the search to the far south and thus end itquickly, as was what they tried on March 24, when the Malaysian PM declared the plane lost after only 16 days.
@DL, the two telephone calls are very suspicious IMO.
First, it’s completely incomprehensible that there are only two calls for the whole length of the flight. That’s absolutely unusual and unheard of.
Then the timing of the first call is somewhat suspicious as well. It might have set the clock for the pings – as you said. But it also produced a reliable BFO over the Strait which hinted apparently South. Just 20 minutes after the plane was lost from all radar screens. So no independent verification of the plane’s direction was possible.
I’m still grappling with the second call. It could have been genuine concern of course. Or it had to be done eventually in order to not look suspicious. But it could also have fulfilled a function, since it certainly interrupted the hourly handshakes. There’s a gap of one and a half hours between the 22:40 and the 00:11 handshake. That was effected by the 23:14 call. As a consequence no BTO was logged for one and a half hour, since the calls produced only BFOs – but not BTOs.
I don’t think it’s possible that the handshakes were spoofed from someone outside of mh370 since it was determined that the same AES/SDU must’ve answered the handshakes during the whole journey of the plane.
But the plan mightcertainly been – as you say – to direct the search to the far South under most inconvenient conditions in the hope that it would be given up eventually and nobody would be surprised if nothing was found. If that was the goal it hasn’t quite worked just yet.
@Matty
“if China was to detain and ransack commercial aircraft at their airports there would be a major stink. If you don’t see that we better disagree, finish the debate and move on.”
OK but even if we ignore that part, don’t you think that any technological secret on the plane would be known to foreign intelligence? They would suspect China anyway and consider China having it even if they didn’t have a single proof it was in China.
@littlefoot
“I was countering your argument that mh370 could only land on it after having burnt more fuel than it already had by flying extra miles which could then have to lead to the plane running out of fuel. That chain of events is simply not plausible.”
but what if Z was flying at very low altitude after FMT as to not appear on indonesian radar? He would have to fly a lot slower and he had enough fuel to reach CI.
“Or, if it broke up, why it should subsequently make a complete vanishing act. The complete absence of any debris can be better explained with a SIO crash.”
It’s a lot easier to ditch the aircraft wihtout debris south of CI, it’s a lake compared to southern SIO 😉
@DL, littlefoot
Would be interesting to reconstruct how the phonecall BFOs came into play. In both my current most likely scenarios the turn south occurs after the phone call. So, yes, in a sense I have the same impression. Also interesting to know who (in the JIT) dragged the search North around April 1st with the hint about a NW limit at 1912 near Car Nicobar. As I mentioned before this turn point is more or less consistent (in timing) with the sailoress being roughly disturbed from doing nothing during middle watch, and leads to the S20-S21 search area.
@littlefoot
“Then there is the fact that no Northern country admitted a breach of it’s airspace. While this is only a weak clue, since it depends on the veracity and alertness of said countries, it was seen at the time as another hint that the plane could’ve gone only South.”
actually it’s a very strong clue, unless they all turned off their radars a transponerless 777 would sure be noticed, if not immediately then after reviewing radar logs
@DennisW
“The fact that the US dispatched assets, a destroyer, to the SIO very early speaks volumes. This independent decision, based on the humanitarian consideration of locating potential survivors before they perished in the ocean, tells us they knew darn well which way the plane went.”
they might have caught him doing the south turn
“While Xmas Island makes indeed a compelling destination for mh370, I rereiterate: the weakest point is that the jet’s complete vanishing act is very hard to explain with that theory. Unless you subscribe to the idea that the jet landed quietly, was completely refuelled and flown far away to another destination. That seems to be logistically very challenging, because where should this amount of fuel have come from without anyone noticing?”
Ditching. While I agree with you it’s very hard to come up with a plausible consequence of events that led to it, if he came in situation to ditch it there was a good chance he would ditch it “properly”, unlike in southern SIO.
@DL
1st fon call
A wild private guess of mine was, that this first call was to check wehther the meanwhile spoofed equipment was working as desired. It came following only 10 min in the strange logon
At 18:03 UTC MAS Ops sent an URGENT REQUEST via ACARS to the airplane to contact HCM ATC. The message was automatically repeated many times – no reply.
At 18:40 UTC MAS Ops tried to reach the airplane by SAT phone. For all they knew, the phone kept ringing a full minute – still no reply.
At 22:23:00 UTC KL ARCC issued a DETRESFA message. That could have been the trigger for a final, now desperate, phonecall attempt at 22:40 UTC.
Corrction: 2nd phone call attempt was at 23:13 UTC
@ Niels
Car Nicobar came into play maybe because Chris McLaughlin, Inmarsat, said that the plane went back west over the Andaman Islands and then went south.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhRO-0Lx_kQ
If the plane went as far as the Andaman islands, then it could not have flown to the deepest south, I would guess. I could imagine that was why they shifted the search to the north. The point of the major turn was later set elsewhere, however, albeit McLaughlin had stated otherwise. He knew the plane went south, probably because of analyzing the data. One should think he would also know the location of the major turn. According to his statement, he did.
@DL
Interesting to bring back this interview under attention! But how could he know about a late turn south? It is not in the data that we have, at least not that I’m aware of.
Some thoughts about the MAS phone calls.
Assume I wanted to redirect a flight to the SIO “ex post”. I would certainly not fabricate the data from scratch, since that would be fairly error prone. I would rather copy’n’paste from a real flight which went in the desired direction, i.e. between 18:25 und 0:19 UTC southwards or, with 12 hours time offset, to the north (but not necessarily on the same day). Using data from a real flight guarantees the overall integrity of the data. However, I would probably nevertheless only publish what is absolutely necessary, for safety reasons.
The disadvantage of this method is that I cannot alter the chronological structure of the communication. If there was an incoming phone call at 18:39, I cannot remove it from the data, since it did affect the timing of the subsequent pings. In the same manner, I cannot insert additional phone calls without running into danger of leaving telltale traces by mistake.
@Niels: To answer your question, I do believe it is possible that Inmarsat could have used the BTO/BFO data to distinguish N v S as early as March 14/15.
On the subject of the satellite calls, I always thought it was strange that ATSB/Inmarsat did not initially use the call at 18:40 to bound the time of the apparent turn to the South. It was not until the IG published a statement questioning this did the ATSB come out with a new analysis which used an earlier turn south based on this phone call. The news was released as if it was a new revelation, when amongst us analysts, the timing of the apparent turn south was well-established months before.
If Malaysian factions were in on some kind of deception, then I do not think ATC in Kuala Lumpur was involved. But MAS, their actions are highly suspicious to me.
As Gysbreght pointed out they were responsible for the only two satphone calls to the plane, which could have been potentially very useful for the perps. And they were also running this strange simulation program which placed the plane over Cambodia of all places when it had already turned around at IGARI. Cambodia was never in the original flight plan for mh370, so it’s beyond me how a simulation program could place the plane on it’s virtual path over Cambodi. But this false info delayed all kinds of activities for more than 2 hours. I simply refuse to accept that this was just a lucky break for the perps. This gave them quite a head start! When it was finally acknowledged that the plane was missing the perps had already safely crossed the Malaysian peninsula.
@Niels, this interview with Chris Mclaughlin always gave me headaches. He talks as if he had SEEN personally mh370 reaching the Andamans and then making a Southern turn – or at least seen data which seemed to suggest just that. He seems to be more than a bit sure.
I still don’t quite know what to make of it.
@DennisW,
“If the US had the ability to intercept the satellite downlink independent of Inmarsat, you can be sure they did not have a bug relative to the partial compensation of C-band Doppler. As Victor and I (and others) speculated earlier, the source timing needed for the BTO measurement would need some noodling to resolve.”
As Richard remarked recently, the interception of signal data is the very reason for the existence of military listening posts. I don’t think it is a big IF in your question above.
With respect to BTO source timing requiring “some noodling”, I agree that it would be the case, if one wanted to replicate the Perth GES numbers. However, I believe that it is not required to do that. Any SIGINT post would easily be able to create their own reference time for a local BTO measurement, by intercepting the incoming uplink signal and accurately time it, then intercept the incoming downlink signal and time as well.
In essence, all the modelling that was done by ISAT, ATSB, IG and others for the Perth-Sat-Plane geometry and back again does equally apply to any other listening post location, with the appropriate mods for the new location of course.
Cheers
Will
@VictorI
According to for example this report:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10719304/How-British-satellite-company-Inmarsat-tracked-down-MH370.html
It took them much longer.
Yes, I know and credit the IG contribution to the use of the additional BFO’s, however it was poor Occam again who had to make the final call about their interpretation.
@MuOne
Yes, I just have more difficulty understanding how the uplink signal might be intercepted. It is a big dish (narrow beam) signal near the surface of the earth. Not saying it was not done somehow, just don’t have an opinion of how. The downlink signal is much easier to intercept.
@Cosmic:
“Inmarsat themselves put the reservation on the use of these data and said ‘… if not spoofed’. They were well aware about all kind of spoofing scenarios which might have been one of the reasons, the public got the logs so late. In addition, since it is very difficult to explain why an inflight logon happened and even more intriguing, why this logon happened so convenient as to the exact time, when the radar observations ended, the data are highly questionable.”
THANK YOU.
“it is amazing what kind of assistance they might have had within the chain of command of the RMAF or MAS HQ.”
The three operative words are CHAIN OF COMMAND. Which begs the question (the mere mention of which induces a stony silence on this board): WHERE WAS WARREN LUDIWG — the Australian Air Vice Marshall who was based at Butterworth and at the TOP of that chain (FPDA/IADS) — the night MH370 allegedly flew back over peninsular Malaysia? Malaysia Air Force chief Rodzali Daud has been mentioned in numerous articles since MH370 vanished — but NOT Ludwig?
@ AM2
“could be anywhere” more than anything because of the behaviour/actions/inactions of various govts and agencies etc.. So yes, I agree about the rat too.”
BEHAVIOUR. In TOTALITY.
@Niels, @sk999:
Thanks for the Mar 15, 2014 WaPo article.
So:
Mar 8, 2014 MH370 vanishes
Mar 11: Inmarsat turns its data over to SITA (WSJ Mar 20)
(What analysis or other did SITA do?)
Mar 12 or 13: Inmarsat receives the data (WSJ Mar 20)
(Presumably from SITA?
Recall what Stephane Berthomet said: Inmarsat-> SITA-> MAS)
Mar 15: Wapo: NTSB “then mapped a likely route based on the pings”
(Did NTSB get the data from SITA or Malaysia?
And sk999 said: “Mar 15 is also the first date I have found for first publication of the final arc (which I think was actually the 6th arc) and the two corridors.)
Mar 20: WSJ:
“Malaysia’s government, concerned about corroborating the data and dealing with internal disagreements about how much information to release, didn’t publicly acknowledge Inmarsat’s information until March 15, during a news conference with Prime Minister Najib Razak.
…Mr. Najib said Malaysia ‘worked hand in hand with our international partners, including neighboring countries’ and ‘shared information in real time with authorities who have the necessary experience to interpret the data.’
U.S. national-security officials haven’t commented on information-sharing issues.”
Mar 21: PRESS STATEMENT by Hishammudin Hussein, the then Minister of Defence and Acting Minister of Transport:
“Upon receiving the RAW DATA (CAPS mine), the Malaysian authorities immediately discussed with the US team how this information might be used.”
AND
June 17: BBC Horizon documentary: “The sensitive information Inmarsat used to work out the arcs came from top-secret radar data” (start at 28:00) http://bit.ly/1PMSXDG
Niels, you said:
“So the key question translates into: could this all be in place already at 14/15 March 2014?”
PING. And let me ask: does “in place” mean ANALYZED — or SANITIZED?
@Matty:
“My back of the mind suspicion though: If something earnestly sinister has happened (plane not in the SIO) and certain countries knew about it then it may serve them to acquiesce with the SIO narrative?”
Not only acquiesced to the SIO narrative, but helped serve it up.
THE NARRATIVE IS A STORY.
Disinformation masquerading as information. All over the place. That is the recurring theme here. And it’s not just coming from Malaysia.
Consider the most recent from Le Monde, wherein it put out a theory-as-fact story (which came from an unnamed “expert”, whom the writer, when asked about it by me on Twitter, said was pilot(s) at a big airline) that Maldivian Airlines flight DQA149, a turbo-prop, flew over Kudahuvadhoo (west of and way off its normal path, due to “winds”) en route to Thimarafushi Airport and therefore THAT plane was the one the villagers saw, not MH370.
It smelled like bulls*** from the beginning.
1. DQA149’s flight path goes way EAST OF KUDAHUVADHOO AND NOT REMOTELY OVER IT and travels in the OPPOSITE direction (North) from the direction of the plane the Kudahuvadhoo witnesses reported seeing (S-SE)
2.NOT ONE of the Kudahuvadhoo witnesses in the original Haveeru story ever mentioned seeing a PROPELLER plane. Ever.
3. No legitimate flight would have been flying LOW, 50 KILOMETERS from its destination.
And then, with the great help of @Niels, Juanda (@mingalababya) — a pilot based in Indonesia, and Blaine Gibson, we showed that:
There was NO Maldivian Airlines flight arriving at Thimarafushi on 03.08 (or 09).14. Maldivian Airlines Flight 149 left Kaadedhdhoo at 5:20 am, flew NORTH and landed at Male at 6:30. It did not, as Le Monde reported, leave Male and land at Thiramafushi at 6:33 am.
Juanda: “First of all, the aircraft they use for this particular flight is a Twin Otter and not a Dash 8. A Twin Otter is a much smaller aircraft carrying only 19 passengers and has a MTOW of 5.7 tonnes.
My screen capture of the flight shows that it’s at 800 feet on descent to the runway at Thimarafushi. This is how close the aircraft is to its destination when at 800 feet. It’s hard to believe the Le Monde article that this flight was over Kudahuvadhoo at about the same height as this, since Kudahuvdhoo is 50 km away further to the north west. At a distance of 50km (27 NM), basic airmanship dictates that you should be about 8000 feet altitude, not 800 feet.”
So Florence de Changy not only did not do even the most basic research, but Le Monde published a FABRICATION AS FACT (easily proved), right about the same time that Hedley Thomas, an award-winning journalist for The Australian, WITHDREW his story about the Kudahuvadhoo witnesses. WHY did he?
And my last comment to de Changy (June 25) — “Perhaps you’ll be able to share the flight data/records that the Maldivian Civil Aviation authority provided.” — has gone unanswered. Now, complete silence from she and Le Monde.
So why would LE MONDE, one of France’s two major newspapers of record, engage in a poorly-disguised attempt (which backfired) to discredit THESE witnesses? And note that ABC MediaWatch (Australia) also played a key role disseminating that tripe. Is all of THAT a coincidence too?
As someone said to me last night “Le Monde does not usually disseminate information from fundamentalist Islamic governments. Whatever happened to Je Suis charlie ????”
Now remember, Marc Dugain? He said the same thing: the Maldives witnesses were IGNORED. He also said that he was threatened by “English” foreign intelligence agents.
But all those who dismissed Dugain as not credible just kept repeating: “because Paris Match”.
Well, can someone explain Le Monde’s right-out-there-in-the-open lie?
ALL of the relevant governments and agencies in the MH370 story should be viewed as suspects. Until someone proves they’re not.
Brock McEwen
Posted February 26, 2015 at 3:38 PM
What Was Going On at Yubileyniy?
“@Nihonmama, @littlefoot:
The “caused by seismic activity” was, to my knowledge, never more than a hypothesis. Geologically active Carlsberg Ridge runs NEAR this spot, and thus was deemed a plausible source – and the reading had a low-amplitude tail often associated with seismic events. However, it seems odd to me that such a seismic event would be localised more than 200nmi EAST of the Ridge’s nearest point. Also, I have learned that the implosion of a fuselage at depth WOULD be consistent with such a frequency profile. While Curtin’s location estimate lies almost equidistant from each of the horn of Africa, the tip of India, and Diego Garcia (roughly 600nmi from each), the CLOSEST land to the refined best-estimate – by FAR, at a mere 215nmi – is Kuda Huvadhoo, Maldives – home of the multiple eyewitness accounts.”
@DL,little foot
Actually when you listen carefully to McLaughlin in the video he is speaking about radar data showing it went over the Andamans and then turned south. In addition to the fact that the pings indicated it did not go north. Whose radar could that be?
Pfff, what a mess.
@Niels: It is funny. When I read that article, I come to a different conclusion about when north v south was determined. Part of it is the challenge of trying to assign a technical meaning to words from a non-technical spokesperson (McLaughlin).
McLaughlin said:
*****
“We looked at the Doppler effect, which is the change in frequency due to the movement of a satellite in its orbit. What that then gave us was a predicted path for the northerly route and a predicted path the southerly route,” explained Chris McLaughlin, senior vice president of external affairs at Inmarsat. “That’s never been done before; our engineers came up with it as a unique contribution.”
This information was relayed to Malaysian officials by 12 March, but Malaysia’s government did not publicly acknowledge it until 15 March, according to the Wall Street Journal. Malaysia began to redirect the search effort that day, to focus on the areas the information described. However, some officials involved with the probe warned that the lost days and wasted resources could impede the investigation.
******
I interpret this to mean that by March 12, both the BTO and BFO analyses were completed. As you know, Doppler has nothing to do with the BTO data, so using the Doppler effect to predict the BFO for northern and southern paths would have to point the investigators to the south. However, because of the Perth EAFC bug, the agreement was not excellent, more refinement was necessary, and the results were not yet “definitive”.
Next the article says:
*****
Meanwhile, Inmarsat’s engineers carried out further analysis of the pings and came up with a much more detailed Doppler effect model for the northern and southern paths. By comparing these models with the trajectory of other aircraft on similar routes, they were able to establish an “extraordinary matching” between Inmarsat’s predicted path to the south and the readings from other planes on that route.
“By yesterday they were able to definitively say that the plane had undoubtedly taken the southern route,” said McLaughlin.
*****
My interpretation is that after the discovery of the bug in the EAFC receiver at Perth, close agreement (as opposed to general agreement) was determined for the southern path, and the southern prediction was now “definitive”. Before this time, the group was struggling to get close agreement the same way we analysts struggled to get close agreement before we knew about the Perth bug.
I will also say that in a confidential conversation it was disclosed to me that the Perth bug cost the teams about 5 days of effort to get the excellent agreement. That is consistent with the article’s claim that the general results were known by March 12, but the search area was narrowed to 3% of the southern corridor by March 18.
Relative to using the BFO from the first call to bound the timing of the apparent turn to the south, I was not trying to credit the IG, as many analysts recognized this within days of the publishing of the data logs on May 27, 2014, in which the satellite call data was very presented in a very obvious way. Yet, the ATSB report from June 26, 2014, did not use this result in the path reconstructions presented therein. The IG only publicly and formally stated what was known to anybody that was analyzing the BFO.