Two weeks ago, I wrote a couple of posts about the strange reboot of MH370’s satcom system that occurred shortly after the plane disappeared from primary radar, and asked if anyone could come up with a reasonable explanation. I drew attention in particular to the left AC bus, which the satcom equipment is connected to. This bus can be electrically isolated using controls located in the cockpit, and this appears to be the only way to recycle the satcom without leaving the flight deck. I suggested that there might be some other piece of equipment that the perpetrator wanted to turn off and on again by using the left AC bus, thereby causing the satcom to be recycled as an unintended side effect.
The readers rose to the occasion. Gysbreght pointed out that paragraph 1.11.2 of Factual Information states that “The SSCVR [Solid State Cockpit Voice Recorder] operates any time power is available on the Left AC transfer bus. This bus is not powered from batteries or the Ram Air Turbine (RAT).”
This is an incredibly interesting observation. Reader Oz fleshed out Gysbreght’s insight, writing to me via email:
We could isolate the Left Main AC by selecting the generator control switch to OFF and the Bus Tie switches to OFF; SATCOM is now dead. What else happens……….the Backup generator kicks in automatically to supply the Left Transfer bus. Here’s what’s so spine chilling; if you now simply reach up and select the Backup Generator switch to OFF………..you now lose Left transfer as well. The CVR is gone! I couldn’t believe how easy the CVR was to isolate!
To recap;
Left Gen Control to OFF
Bus Ties to OFF (Isolate)
Left Backup Gen to OFF.
I now firmly believe your mystery reboot was Left AC power being switched back ON……….. after something that had occurred that the perp or perps didn’t want any possible evidence of on the CVR……whatever was being hidden was done by around 1822; AC back to normal.
Gysbreght notes that the Factual Information also identifies the location of the CVR as Electronic Equipment Rack, E7, in the aft cabin above the ceiling, and suggests: “Later [the perp] could have opened Electronic Equipment Rack E7, physically pulled the SSCVR power supply plug from its socket, and then gone back to the MEC to restore power to the Left AC bus.”
Oz has his own theory: “If you are thinking why the hell you would turn Left AC/Left transfer back on? Flight deck temperature control comes from these…”
There’s a precedent for a suicidal airline pilot depowering the black boxes before flying a plane into the ocean: the pilot of Silkair Flight 185 appears to have done just that before pointing the nose down and crashing in December, 1997. It’s easy to imagine Zaharie reading the accident reports and realizing he should also figure out a way to disable the CVR before implementing his suicide plan. When the moment came, near IGARI, one can imagine the veteran 777 pilot suddenly flipping various switches while the baffled newbie, Fariq, looked on.
It’s certainly an intriguing scenario, but it is not without its flaws. As Gysbreght notes, “I would expect the Captain to know that the CVR only retains the last two hours and overwrites older recordings.” So if Zaharie planned to commit suicide by flying the plane for hours into the remotest reaches of the southern ocean, he wouldn’t have needed to turn the CVR off: the portion between 17:07 and 18:25 would have been erased anyway. This is not in insurmountable problem, however. Maybe he orginally intended to crash right away, a la Silkair, but then lost his nerve.
I’m not quite ready to declare, as Gysbreght has, “Case closed,” but I have to admit that the CVR idea is fascinating. Great work, Gysbreght and Oz!
For SCS/GoT drift to Reunion please refer to
https://twitter.com/felinenut/status/627737327020953600
@Stevan, the argument is, that if the plane had crashed further North, the debris wouldn’t have shown up at the Australian beaches – as you say correctly – but somewhere else by now. And as far as we know, no debris has shown up anywhere at all – except at La Reunion.
I find that argument somewhat flawed, though. First of all we have no idea how much debris a crash into the IO really produced. Depends all on the crash scenario. We have heard many detailed scenarios lately – some of them coming from IG members – why the crash might not have produced any debris at all, or at least not much. Then we also don’t know if there was really no debris on the East African coast or Madagascar. Nobody has been looking there and the coastline is huge and not frequented heavily everywhere or cleaned regularly. We don’t even know how long the flap remained undiscovered at La Reunion. And lastly we don’t even know when the flap separated from the plane. Could have been at the crash location. But it could also have been earlier – even if the plane flew ultimately into the SIO. The crash investigation in Toulouse might be able to shed some light on that.
And let’s not forget Erik van Sebille’da statement that the IO ocean currents have a great randomizing potential. He said something about it being a flipper machine. After almost 18 month debris originating from the same location could show up almost everywhere, which is also due to different floating behavior of different objects. He also said he would deem it highly unlikely that this tiny island would attract more than one substantial piece of debris.
I paraphrased his words because the interview was printed in German.
@Henrik
Very interesting approach. Frankly, it would never have occurred to me to constrain the problem in that manner. I will sulk a bit, but I will get over it.
Of course, it does rely on no debris being deposited elsewhere which, in itself, has a difficult to estimate “probability of being found”. Still, that is a nit-pick, that one could probably put in a “background noise” category i.e. all starting locations are corrupted by this “probability noise”, and whatever the probability of being found might be it would not alter the shape of your distributions.
I found this informative graphic on an Australian Govt site showing the Leeuwin current and also the Indonesian flowthrough > South Equatorial current. http://www.environment.gov.au/science/soe/2011-report/6-marine/1-introduction/1-3-ocean-structure
Professor Pattiaratchi’s very recent drift model (I linked to before) factors in the Leeuwin current and does not indicate that debris would almost immediately deposit on the WA coast, whereas his model from last year (in ALSM’s paper) does suggest that quite strongly (to me anyway). It is apparent that this drift modelling is a complex business and a reverse model (a “come from” model) may be near impossible. I still wonder if there is debris on the southern WA shore in remote areas not yet found and/or whether the Leeuwin current would be a reason that debris was unlikely to end up there (assuming the current search area contains the crash site). That article showing a boat drifting from WA to Madagascar was the clearest evidence of the S. Equatorial gyre I have seen. It also seems to me that the possibility of debris drifting from the ocean far NW of Australia to Reunion and nearby shores should be taken very seriously.
@dennis
Thank you, yes, that is precisely the good thing about it.
The raw drift model tries to estimate how much of the two-dimensional oceanic distribution that will hit a certain area. The numbers get susceptible to total amount of injected debris, drift speed, deposit transfer probabilities, etc. Moreover, there is no simple place to add the information obtained from debris observations.
The present model instead estimates how much of the one-dimensional coastline distribution that hits the target area. Since this is a relative number, most of the uncertain factors cancel out, and we are left with a distribution that largerly depends on the intrinsic drift patterns and the geometry of the problem. It is not perfect, but it stands to reason that the coastline distribution is more robust and more suitable for backtracking to a point of origin. It only requires a fair estimate of the coastline distribution, which can be aquired over time through debris observations. Each new observation, positive or negative, will add to the accuracy of the coastline distribution estimate, and ultimately to the point of origin estimate. This is the essence of Bayesian search, really.
@oleksandr
Thanks for spotting the typo, it has been corrected.
Regarding the accuracy and reference to chaotic behavior of particle trajectories, you lost me, since the present approach concerns time evolution of probability distributions.
@littlefoot spot on, however 18 months is too much here, we should use figures from 10-14 months, it’s confirmed the wreckage has been discovered on Reunion in May and something has sure washed ashore even before
Henrik’s model would be OK if we could be sure there was a lot of debris and it washed up only on Reunion, but we can’t.
I would be interested in hearing how Henrik squares his analysis with Erik van Sebille’s statements about the import of his drift model. Here’s one from a recent article:
Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer at Imperial College London, said that, if the debris on Reunion was indeed from MH370, his modeling suggested the aircraft went down in the north of the search zone.
“This westward drift from near Australia all the way across the Indian Ocean can really only happen if the plane went into the water relatively close to the equator,” he said.
Van Sebille also recently tweeted a simulation posted on You Tube that illustrates his model’s predictions of a crash site northwest of Australia.
http://www.independent.co.uk/video/?videoid=4389417195001
why people like this couldn’t lead this search?
Benaiahu – pretty much what I thought. The engines are designed to detach without wrecking the whole structure. Plausible to me that this plane might skate right over a separated engine. If? I recall right the Hudson plane was raised missing one engine?
JS – Interesting one about the vertical stabilizer – could a flaperon take it out? If it’s a yes the mind goes to that Japanese flight in 85 that stayed up with no stabilizer at all for quite a while, erratically before crashing? Just an outside chance? I suppose the X-ray will be telling.
Littlefoot – I agree with many of your comments re debris.
Henrik – nice work, but I am rather uncomfortable with the conclusion. It is critically dependent on your stated assumptions and I don’t think any of the first four hold up. In particular, I doubt the accuracy of the drift model. Not only will other models likely give different results, but even if they don’t I suspect none of them are calibrated to high resolution observational data (since such data does not seem to exist) to the degree required for the sort of analysis you have attempted. I would imagine that forward extrapolation over such large distances and times will carry very large uncertainty, and be strongly affected by the inability of such coarse models to accurately incorporate the local fine resolution interplay of currents and wind at early times in the debris migration. As you inch your way up the 7th arc with injected debris, are you really testing anything meaningful?
Lack of discovered surface debris was never diagnostic of lack of a SIO crash. For similar reasons, reverse engineering a crash location to within 120km2 from this single Reunion data point seems impossible.
Dennis – I’m still not a big fan of your motive driven approach. There are thousands of combinations of imagined motivations and events en route that would lead to thousands of possible terminal locations. How do we choose one? I agree that the plane could possibly be anywhere on a large sector of the SIO 7th arc (e.g. the ATSB wide search zone grey box). To define a priority search area within that, they have both simple model-driven solutions and data-driven solutions, with the powerful narrative that the final partial handshake was due to fuel exhaustion based on fuel performance expectations. I don’t see this integration of fuel/partial handshake in your scenario, simply a vague speculation that Zaharie may have wanted to make a political statement, and that Christmas Island is a haven for Chinese refugees. These two points are hardly the basis to justify a search?
Victor – The simulator story – I said a while back that the US either knew exactly what happened and filed it as a non-problem(domestic Malaysian politics) or they were genuinely in the dark. If Miles is on the money there then I begin to wonder why this was withheld for Malaysia’s sake. There was clear public interest in divulging that.
@M Pat
I would not characterize my approach as motive driven. I just insist on a plausible motive as a prerequisite for a terminus. Plausibility is a very broad constraint.
@Matty – Perth,
Yes I think you are right on US Air 1549 (2009), but it was an Airbus 320. (I personally feel more comfortable flying Boeing aircraft but that’s an entirely different discussion meant for other blogs…)
Airbus engine mount strategy appears to differ from Boeing. In 1993 Airbus official stated, Airbus “never bought into breakaway engines. If an Airbus crash-lands, the plane can even skid on its engines without their falling off. “Our philosophy is: Whatever happens, the engines stay strongly attached,” says an Airbus official in Paris.
Apparently ‘whatever’ didn’t cover landing on Hudson River.
@matty & Victor Re: SIO flight path in simulator — most likely already known destination is DG. Nothing new
@Henrik: thank you for this paper. Three initial questions:
1) What is your formal training and/or experience in wielding drift models? I’m certainly not denying untrained investigators the right to use expert tools to seek the truth – heck, I’ve done it myself – I’m just trying to decide how much weight to put on the statement on which rests much of your thesis: that other models are not expected to yield materially different results.
2) why did you not list as one of your assumptions that you ASSUME debris is injected smack dab on the 7th arc? The “local maximum” you claim this model discovered is being compared only to its brethren up and down a very narrow arc of the SIO (under which there has been found, after a massive and diligent search, nothing). Disclosing this would put your claim that the Reunion debris “further corroborates” the ATSB priority area into proper context: your paper boils down to “if the ATSB is right, then the ATSB is right.”
3) But is THIS even true? It is not yet clear to me how Sebille’s model treats debris once it first hits a shore: is it absorbed, and held in that shoreline position in perpetuity, or does it “bounce” off, and continue to drift with prevailing currents. If the latter, you may be grossly misstating the probability distribution at 17 months: most of the density at Reunion could well represent hypothetical wreckage that already hit W Australia months ago.
Thanks in advance for your time.
@M Pat
BTW, my scenario satisfies the BTO, BFO and fuel exhaustion constraints to the same extent as any other theory. IMO that is an absolutely necessity unless you postulate a spoof.
I personally think that it’s potentially flawed to reverse-calculate drift models based on this washed up flaperon. It’s conceivable that this piece of debris actually reached Reunion Island as early as 5 months ago, maybe even more. There are reports about this piece being first spotted back in May (no way to know whether this is indeed true or not). However, this gives credence to the notion that it could have reached the island weeks even prior to the sighting in May. So, there is an unknown time frame here that could put this flaperon hitting Reunion Island anywhere from a few weeks ago to 5 months ago, and this time gap can undoubtedly greatly affect any calculations currently being done. Just a thought.
@Jay
I think time is important to the extent that the debris could not arrive sooner than some shortest plausible time of travel. However, we don’t have that information relative to this particular piece of debris. What we do have is the absence of debris, for whatever reason, at places where debris should have been deposited by a fragmentation event at other locations.
Granted, one piece of debris is not compelling. Meaning that there are a virtual infinity of places where this flaperon could have started its journey. The utility of the model is that as more debris is found (or not found) it is easy to incorporate that information into this model framework.
The absolute fastest mean I can find looks like about 44km per day. That could get debris from the ATSB SIO location to Reunion as the crow flies in 120 days or so, or on a circular route in maybe 180 days.
Anecdotally, I’ve never heard of an object washing off a beach and coming back to the same beach months later. I’m not saying it’s impossible, just highly unlikely. With that in mind, it looks like the flaperon too it’s good old time reaching Reunion.
That would lead me to question any drift study, because the longer it takes, the less defined the current must be. Or, the location is further than thought.
But perhaps another topic should be considered. Was the flaperon even floating this whole time? Could it have broken free from a submerged wreck?
@JS
I think we will get a lot of info once the French get started with the flaperon. A fair number of people believe it is not from MH370, but was planted. You have to be pretty hard core to hold that view, but it is certainly possible.
If it is from MH370, the forensics should be able to tell us a great deal. I am pretty much treading water until that happens.
DennisW
Nobody thinks that it’s planted. Enough with even mentioning that, I beg of you.
Folks, Anyone have plausible explanation(s) for the apparent impacts to top surface of Flaperon? Types of impact and angle is interesting.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ikvf2d0u0k411qc/New4%20f-mh-e-20150801%20Annotated.tif?dl=0
Benaiahu – that looks awfully like the shrapnel holes found in MH17. What caused the holes is wide open I guess. Hopefully whatever did has left some fingerprints in there.
Benaiahu – rolling around in the surf on sharp rocks for 3 months?
I believe the finder also used it as a table for a while, may have tried chopping things on it.
Some of the damage looks pretty shallow.
M Pat – they are puncture marks alright and they are all different and grouped and happened at the same moment is my guess.
@M Pat
“There are thousands of combinations of imagined motivations and events en route that would lead to thousands of possible terminal locations. How do we choose one?”
We should first choose one that ends (or should end) at the airfield of sorts. The nearest one to the 7th arc is Christmas Island.
interesting video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0W7tcObbEw
@Brian Anderson,
Not sure what you’re smoking but it’s time to change the water!
The B777 flaperons follow a specific schedule (droop schedule) as pointed out by Matty some days ago.
“The flaperons droop to 10 degrees TED when the flaps are at the 5 position. They droop to 20 degrees TED when the flaps are at the 15 or 20 position. They droop to 31 degrees TED when the flaps are at the landing position (25 or 30)”.
Unlike the B767, the B777 has a hinge arm which pivots about an arc (as apposed to the surface hinge line in the B767) creating a fowler flap (the only bit you got right). B767 is by the way a plain flap.
OZ
@Matty,
Some food for thought; most commercial aircraft I know of have shear points to let the engines separate to protect the fuel cells (wings) from rupture. Normal terrra firma impact projects them over the wing.
Have a look at the Ethiopian B767 attempting to ditch; does the engine go over or under?
OZ
@StevanG
Yes, that is interesting. It certainly differs substantially from the “adrift.org” model. As I feared, there will be many competing models to chose from. At the end of the day we will be left to pick the model that supports our theory of the incident. sigh…
it doesn’t differ that much, maybe adrift.org model shows couple of months less for reaching Reunion
@Matty – Perth,
The main impacts look like a person on Reunion Island took two or three swings at it with a slitting axe. I’ve not scaled for dimensions…
The barnacles seemed to attach on broken composite edges, these have no barnacles so I’m leaning towards relatively fresh impacts…
By the looks of the bio film scrapings it also appears that there could have been incidental human interaction while on beach. One guy claimed to use it as a fishing table. If so, investigators will identify and take under consideration.
Splitting axe
@Benaiahu, I agree with your analysis. The sharp edged holes look pretty recent. But then again the shells would attach themselves more readily at the larger surface of the more rugged edges.
It is all armchair speculation from us right now.
I said “no barnacles”, however the ‘slice’ style impact appears to have some type of small debris imbedded or growth?? Photos can be deceiving so no 100% sure… But the main impacts appear relatively cleaner of barnacles.
Barnacle growth may help determine original damage and new damage…
It is difficult to see. There is definitely something big passing over the left wing, but that is probably the left wingtip. The left engine probably separated and passed under the wing, without causing much damage to the wing itself. That would probably also have been the case in a wings-level attitude, at the same low pitch angle and very low vertical speed.
The engine(s) would pass over the wing if the rate of descent had been higher at a low pitch attitude, i.e. high angle of attack.
Sorta OT. There is some confusion on other internet sites regarding Right wing vs. Left.
Keep in mind, most news graphics/videos are incorrectly represented. Maybe this can help folks understand.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/g4kjoyeq9p5xgxt/Flaperon%20Slotted%20End%20Definition.pdf?dl=0
(For those promoting the MH17 conspiracies claiming it’s the Left wing, RELAX, breath in, aluminum foil will be on sale this weekend.)
The French are being very French relative to the urgency of examining the flaperon.
I smell a bit of a rat here. Mayasia may be requesting custody of the flaperon under the auspices of international salvage laws. These laws generally say that flotsam – items discarded accidentally, belong to the original owner. Whereas jetsam, items discarded voluntarily belong to the finder.
What a disaster it would be if the flaperon were returned to Malay custody or even worse to the JACC.
@DennisW:
No need to worry. Before Malaysia has any claim at all, it must be established that the flaperon came from 9M-MRO.
A good thing is that the french judiciary have taken custody of the item, and they have no obligation at all to the Malaysian authorities. It would have been more complicated if BEA had had responsibility, because they are involved in Malaysia’s safety investigation, and would not have been free to release information.
@Gysbreght
Then why the delay in the examination? It is now estimated to begin on Wednesday.
Saw a report somewhere today that Boeing engineers will perform the examination, in Toulouse. Getting a fully-featured team from Seattle will take some days.
This is August. All of France is on vacation.
@Lauren@Richard
Yeah, maybe, but when I see lawyers in suits meeting over the issue I get very concerned.
http://english.astroawani.com/world-news/malaysia-investigators-meet-french-officials-mh370-68330
Well, stay tuned. New drift modeling is coming now that they know where a piece of debris showed up. How can anyone be so naive as to believe a word that comes from the ATSB?
http://www.ihsmaritime360.com/article/18813/suspected-mh370-wreckage-found-near-africa
@DennisW: If the inspection requires destructive testing or examination, you have only one chance to get it right. It makes sense to assemble the appropriate group of experts, carefully develop a plan, follow the proper international protocols, and finally execute and report. If it takes an extra couple of days to get it right, it will be well worth the wait, even though as spectators we are all anxious for quick results.
@VictorI
Well, it only took a couple of days for a group of legal experts to assemble. Maybe engineering has become a more comfortable and laid back profession.
I understand what you are saying Victor. I am just very skeptical of anything involving the Malays or the Aussies. We have been misled and information withheld too many times. The trust is gone.
What happened to the plane?
Here are my four scenarios:
1. Mechanical problem.
2. Suicide/Revenge with an agenda.
3. Hijacking that went bad.
4. Sabotage by a technician with a possible agenda.
Further explanation:
1. To me saying the plane had a mechanical problem is my way of saying that the ‘mechanical problem’ scenario is the simplest explanation for what happen to the plane.
Example:
Question: Why the zig zag route?
Answer: When the plane experienced the mechanical problem the plane’s controls took over. Please remember the plane can fly itself.
Any question concerning the ‘mechanical problem’ scenario can have the following response—the plane can fly itself.
Now, you may say that the ‘mechanical problem’ scenario is too simplistic. You could be right. You could be thinking that ‘the plane can fly itself’ is just too simple. You could be right. But in my mind any other scenario drops you down a rabbit hole.
2. The pilot completed suicide and was out for revenge. You have two problems here. They are:
1. There is no suicide note.
2. There is no clear motive for revenge.
What is the agenda? The pilot was thinking the following—Find me if you can.
The pilot wanted to be a modern day Amelia Earhart. This could explain the hard left turn, the zig zag route, the reboot, and the plane‘s final resting place in the southern India Ocean. The pilot was playing peek-a-boo with the authorities.
What do I think of this scenario? Not much. You have to make too many assumptions because of the lack of hard evidence. With this scenario you are going down a rabbit hole.
3. I believe ‘Hijacking that went bad’ is self-explanatory. To make this work you will be going down a rabbit hole the size of a giant black hole
4. A technician could have sabotaged the plane by going down into the electrical bay and while there reprogram the plane’s controls to fly to the southern India Ocean. After the technician finished his/her work he/she would go home to watch the “fun”.
Is this possible? I do not have a clue. Boeing/contractors could tell me but then they would have to kill me. I am thinking (hoping) that the pilot would be able to override the autopilot and take control of the plane.
What would be the agenda? I do not know—maybe another ‘Amelia Earhart’.
In conclusion, I believe the simplest scenario is the one to pick. I thus pick the
‘Mechanical problem’ scenario. I am not using Occam’s Razor principle here. There are not enough facts to use the principle. I am picking the ‘Mechanical problem’ scenario because I do not want to go down a rabbit hole.
Comments are welcomed.
Thank you.
Someone should ask Mr. Truss to produce evidence his government (or an agency thereof) alerted Reunion Island (et al) to watch their shores for debris.
Which they of course would have done the moment their internal drift models showed this to be such a plausible scenario.
(It can’t be me, I’m afraid; I’ve worn out my welcome, what with my silly fixation on correcting, e.g. the false testimony the ATSB gave the Australian senate re: Curtin Boom. Nag, nag, nag…)
@Brock
The Reunion folks were not advised to look for debris. Came as a complete surprise to them. Of course, that was when the ATSB only had their “first pass” analysis which had the folks kicking rocks on the South Coast of Indonesia. You can be sure that the second pass refined drift model will point right at Reunion Island based on a starting point right where they have been looking.