By Victor Iannello
Don’t be fooled by claims of the red tape causing the delay in the determination of the provenance of the flaperon.
Boeing and the NTSB were parties to the investigation when the flaperon was first brought to Toulouse. It is very unlikely that the Spanish subcontractor ADS-SAU did not immediately turn over all documentation when requested by Boeing. The investigators had to know soon after the start of the investigation what the provenance of the part is, whether or not that determination was made public.
I have said before and continue to believe that there was an attempt to delay the release of the results of the investigation in parallel with planting a seed of doubt regarding the provenance of the part. Just look at the series of events this week. First the claim that Spanish vacation schedules have delayed the identification of the part. Then the claim that the identification was not possible. This was followed by the claim that the flaperon was certainly from MH370.
The pattern of leaking contradictory or false information to the media from off-the-record sources continued in full force this week. I believe this is a story in its own right that should be getting a lot of attention. Perhaps when enough journalists are made to look foolish by reporting contradicting statements, their “reputation instincts” will kick in and compel them to dig deeper.
We who are following this incident should demand that more facts be fully disclosed. Technical reports should be released so that we are not parsing statements from a judge-prosecutor to understand the true meaning of what was written. And journalists should not blindly report statements without attribution.
RetiredF4:
Re “The F106 had afaik a 3-axis stability augmentation system for dampening purposes.”
That was probably at least partly responsible for the wheat field fighter landing…that plus the pilot reset the elevator trim before ejection.
@all
Another wing-like part washed up in the Maldives. If this belongs to a drone or MH 370 then we have two parts of a flying machine to possibly help refine relavent drift models. Yes?
http://maldivesindependent.com/society/maldives-continues-to-report-plane-debris-117565
@CosmicAcademy let’s think, if VW case turns to be as part of fight for truth, then it can strike back finally as advantage
The new JACC update says that says that on this swing, Fugro Discovery will resurvey several new contacts that were identified as Classification 2. To date, more than 30 contacts have been put in this category. Unfortunately, Class 2 contacts are deemed to be “unlikely to be significant to the search”.
http://www.atsb.gov.au/mh370-pages/updates/operational-update.aspx
@Oleksandr; As one of the options, you said, “SDU was rebooted 18:25 due to some manipulations with it, and not because of the power interruption.”
I would rephrase your words as follows: “The log-on at 18:25 occurred due to some manipulation of the SATCOM, and not because of the power interruption of both AC transfer busses.”
We really can’t be sure that the log-on at 18:25 was caused by a reboot of the SDU. For instance, the AES might have been jammed with a strong, false P-channel signal, interrupting communications, and causing a log-on when the jamming signal was removed.
I don’t dispute your fundamental premise that a double power failure of the AC transfer busses should have resulted in the start of the APU, which should have been running for the rest of the flight.
@VictorI:
If the APU had been running for the ret of the flight, why the logon request at 00:19?
Victor,
Decisions on classification 1,2,3 must be quite challenging. It may be quite difficult for operators to say much about the character of sea bed debris based on what are likely to be quite low resolution initial survey images (see for example Figure 7 in the July fact sheet on sonar contacts in which the bright reflectors from subsequent higher resolution passes are barely visible).
http://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/2015/mh370-sonar-contacts.aspx
Fingers crossed that these new contacts are more towards class 1 than 2. We may shortly see discovery heading north in due course to the region of interest identified by Richard Cole which Discovery appraised on the last stint.
@VictorI, Oleksandr, Gysbreght,
There were discussions on reddit re APU start up reliability some time ago. The logs from an Egypt air (B777-200) accident report appear to indicate some high-ish level (13% failure rate) of un-reliability of the APU starting when commanded to do so.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MH370/comments/37rqwz/more_on_the_oxygen_system/
The logs in the linked accident report may indicate 8 failures to start out of 60 attempts to start the APU.
Cheers,
Will
@Gysbreght: Correct. The log-on at 00:19 is not consistent with the APU running from 18:25 and later. Hence there was not a power down of both AC transfer busses at 18:25. Hence the log-on at 18:25 was not caused by the start up of the APU.
@M Pat
If the area around 93E, 35S was a useful contact at all, it will probably have already been scanned at hi-res since there were a number of Discovery passes through the area. If they are rescanning contacts to compile a list for a later AUV mission then Discovery will not return there.
More S-AIS data on Discovery’s progress at 16.30UT.
The following graph shows the speeds (IAS, TAS & M) for the transcription of one of ALSM’s simulator tests:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/locuoz8quibm44w/ALSM_speeds.jpg?dl=0
The graph shows that during 5.5 minutes after the 2nd engine flame-out the indicated airspeed is almost constant at about 200 kts, a few knots below the minimum maneuver speed of 206 kIAS. In these minutes the airplane is descending at 2000 ft/min, turning at 1.8 deg/min with 35 degrees of bank, and probably some sideslip.
The suddenly something happens:
0:11:12 Bank angle starting to increase rapidly
0:11:23 Now nose dropping below horizon
0:11:44 Nose now far below horizon
0:11:56 Nose now far below horizon
0:12:13 Nose back on the horizon
At 0:13:19 the airplane hits the surface at 22,500 fpm and a speed of 659 knots or somewhat less What on earth could have upset the airplane so much at that point?
Airlandseaman posted November 10, 2014 at 3:11 PM “In addition, we observed that the aircraft usually attempts an auto restart of at least one engine, after the APU comes on. Usually the attempt failed. But in one case (simultaneous flameout case), the left engine restarted for about 2 seconds. When that happened, the aircraft reacted violently. I mean, we felt a huge jerk in the cockpit and observed a lock to lock aileron transient lasting ~1 second.”
And on November 15, 2014 at 5:05 PM: “For case 3, we set the fuel imbalance to zero and the manual rudder trim to zero. After both engines flamed out, a turn started, but more slowly than in cases 1&2, but it did start turning right away. 01:26 minutes later, there was a successful left engine restart that only lasted about 2 seconds. This caused a huge transient, and the aircraft rolled into a very steep right turn. Somehow, it recovered from the steep turn and entered several Phugoids with wild up/dn speeds up to Mack 0.9, and descent rates >>10,000 ft/min (off scale). In this case 3, the flight ended north bound 13 minutes after the engines flamed out.”
Please note that this is a different test than the one in the transcription. But I wonder whether a similar event might have occurred in that test also. Was there a failed auto restart in that test and at which time? How were the auto restart attempts observed when they failed?
What else could have caused the upset at 11 minutes after the first flame-out?
Apologies: “turning at 1.8 deg/min” should read “turning at 1.8 deg/second”.
Gysbreght,
My guess is that approximately 2 minutes after the second engine flameout APU started (between 00:07 and 00:08 in your plot). Then FMC and/or the stability system attempted to intervene (descent/plugoid until 00:11 in your plot). Then APU flameout occurred. Does this explanation sound reasonable?
“…stability system attempted to intervene…” There is no envelope protection or “stability system” after fuel exhaustion.
MuOne,
Yes, it seems I also saw notes on the unreliability of APU start in the B777 manual, or elsewhere. But the glitch was supposed to be fixed.
Either way, if APU cannot start when both IDGs are down, then two backup generators provide power to both buses. However, after 18:25 either IDG or APU provided power because otherwise SATCOM would be down. But APU could not provide power because of the 00:29 log-on (it would not happen). That means one of the possibilities I listed above.
Interestingly, if both IDGs and APU were down during the period 17:22 – 18:25, there would not be ACARS messages, as it was observed. There is also a strange note in the B777 manual that once IDGs switched off from the cockpit, it requires maintenance on the ground to switch them on again. Can IDGs be restarted in the air by restarting both the engines at the same time while keeping APU off? I.e. an attempt to restart the whole electrical system in the air?
That is partly correct and partly incorrect. After loss of generated electrical power (both engines flamed out, APU and RAT not yet online) the Primary Flight Computers (PFC’s) automatically revert to secondary mode. In secondary mode the A/P, envelope protection, TAC and Yaw Damping are lost. The PFCs use simplified
computations to process pilot control inputs. The elevator and rudder are more sensitive at some airspeeds. In the absence of pilot inputs, the PFCs verify information from other airplane systems in order to compute control surface commands. The basic control laws are incorporated in the PFCs. The longitudinal control law (known as C*U law) provides speed stability. The lateral control law is conventional and commands roll rate in response to pilot input, or zero roll rate in the absence of pilot inputs.The PFCs send commands to the Actuator Control Electronics (ACEs). The four ACEs send enhanced signals the flight control surface actuators to move.
@Oleksandr
In my understanding, the IDG’s can be electrically disconnected from the main buses, and reconnected.
However, if the gearbox drives to the IDG’s are disconnected, then these can only be reconnected by maintenance crew when the motors are not turning.
One interesting possibility for the AES to be disconnected, could be to avoid 1st class customers using the system’s Sat Phones to get a message out:
http://www.seatmaestro.com/airplanes-seat-maps/malaysia-airlines-boeing-777-200-1.html
“Both first class and Golden Club class passengers will have a 10.4” screen in the armrest, satellite telephone facilities and individual fibre optic reading lights.”
Oleksandr/RetiredF4 – on gut feelings crystal balls and tea leaves. So far the search resources have been totally focused on the data and when that phase is done I think that’s the end of the search resources altogether so there can be no claim of flaky dilution. But to mount a search at all the data has been coupled with….gut feelings?? My gut feeling early on was that there would be no plane in the search area because there was too much wrong with the overall picture and I shared it freely. My guts now says the French will hold it close indefinitely, but that’s the problem of trying to solve the disappearance when not everyone’s on the same sheet – my way of saying it’s not a straight forward plane crash, or even a straight forward hijack.
airlandseaman, Gysbreght,
May I suggest differentiating between “fuel exhaustion” and “power lost” in the context of this discussion?
———–
airlandseaman,
What did keep the aircraft stable for roughly 5 minutes in the case selected by Gysbreght? If just by a chance, why couldn’t gliding up to the water surface occur also by a chance? Also, if a pilot can keep an aircraft gliding after the flameout, why software cannot do the same (assuming FMC is powered)? Btw, what were APU settings in this case (off/on)? Was there any difference in your tests if APU was ‘on’ during flameout?
———–
Gysbreght,
What happens after APU comes back, but engines do not? Will PFC revert back to the primary mode? For the given weight of the aircraft APU consumes roughly 200 kg of fuel per hour; thus 3.3 kg per minute. APU could still have some remaining fuel in pipes, pumps, etc, which would allow it be running for a few minutes after the flameout of the second engine.
Gavin – NZ,
“interesting possibility for the AES to be disconnected”
More exactly reason, not possibility. I suggested it a while ago – it falls under “hijacking” scenario if a target was to kill all the passengers by cutting oxygen and preventing any communication from the cabin at the same time (i.e. perps did not need passengers; they needed only aircraft or its cargo).
Note that “Both first class and Golden Club…” statement is not accurate. Phone facility was advertised by MAS, but not actually provided. It was available only from the cockpit. However, e-mail and sms service were provided to the cabin. This was a subject of my arguing with Dennis against his CI scenario. FI states that these services were available again from the cabin after 18:27.
@Oleksandr
Do you know if the live map component of the IFE was or was not provided?
@everyone:
A big hello to everyone! First post here, having followed this excellent forum for quite a while now. I like to keep an open mind and don’t disregard anyone’s opinions/theories, but I do have my own which I just wanted to share. I hope its not too speculative. Nonetheless, I’ve never read anything similar anywhere to what I’m about to say, so it I feel it would be good to put it out there.
So that out the way, I would like to fast forward to the turn at BITOD, when the plane became ‘invisible’ to ATC. From this point onwards (though invisible to civilian radar), the plane still remained visible the military. So we can safely assume the Malaysian military may well have been keeping an eye on the aircraft, in real time, as it used different waypoints to orientate itself in darkness. How would the Malaysian miltary have reacted? At the very least with alarm at what was unfolding over their skies. An invisible plane attempting to use the ‘no-mans land’ between borders to slip through unnoticed. Join the dots and the immediate reaction of Malaysia’s military would’ve been that this was possibly another 9/11 type scenario, the target as yet unknown. And in such a case, would the Malaysian military have made attempts to contact or intercept the aircraft? Possibly, but in the end it didn’t matter. 30 minutes later the plane had already passed Penang. In the next 30, it had reached IGREX, and the Malaysians could sit back a little.
If the Malaysians did attempt to contact MH370, they may just have been met with radio silence (no demands, no message, the hijacker/s not wanting to give the game away).
But as the plane reached IGREX, possibly edging ever-closer to US interests, USCENTCOM may have decided to spring into action. Until now, the Americans would’ve quietly monitored events, not being overly concerned, more or less letting the Malaysians get on with it. But once the plane reached IGREX they could no longer afford to sit idly by. I believe they too, like the Malaysians, may have tried to make contact to rule out anything sinister, yet again to be met with radio silence. As the clock ticked down, direct lines of communication may have been opened up between USCENTCOM, Beijing and Kuala Lumpur (at the very least). All options would’ve been discussed with a general consensus reached to let the Americans handle it with their expertise.
A decision may have been taken, by the American military (with Boeing’s assistance?) to attempt a remote hack of onboard systems, effectively turning MH370 into a zombie jet. And the purpose of this? To force the aircraft to ditch (in one piece), in the safest location possible – the wide open ocean, away from any form of habitation, neutralizing any potential threat to American or Malaysian interests but also avoiding a greater loss of life than if the same had been attempted over land. The second most obvious advantage of this would be that evidence could be efficiently disposed of (plane sinks intact) as opposed to a large debris field over land.
Senior military officials from all three nations – China, Malaysia, the US, (and possibly others) may been kept ‘in the loop’ throughout, with the Chinese and Malaysians giving a passive nod (if not tacit approval) to this course of action. As the aircraft flew towards the Andamans , the remote hack may have initiated and the hijacker/s taken completely by surprise (the hijackers being unaware of such a capability of course). The plane, forced to turn south into the Indian Ocean, flew like a ghost jet in a straight line for 7/8 hours without disruption, the hijacker/s by now having accepted his/their fate. Of course, all this would suggest that Malaysian military and INMARSAT data is quite accurate, and the reboot could’ve been down to the hack being in progress. If this is what transpired that night, the ‘operation’ unfolded more smoothly than anyone could’ve anticipated. Once the plane came to the end of its journey, it ditched as planned, and sank, largely intact, into the ocean, bar a few pieces breaking off (such as the flaperon).
Without a doubt, the US, Chinese, and Malaysians (and possibly the Australians?), basically, any party that was privy to such an event, would’ve given it a ‘highly classified’ status within their respective militaries.
Susie,
FI says that there was a problem with IFE: it did not show arrival time / time to destination. Nothing special about map.
But the flight was much longer than it was supposed to be, and also passengers would notice sunrise at the other side – just in case if you think nobody noticed that something was wrong.
@Oleksandr
Only a possible correlation between the IFE shutdown regarding passenger ability to watch plane’s progress with live map and the perceived turn at IGARI
@Sajid UK
That is an amazing hypothetical, seems deserving of discussion and offers an explanation for the strange relationships and reactions these countries have displayed.
@Sajid,
So interestingly enough, this is precisely the theory I had in mind some time ago. I suggested it here, and it was met mainly with silence, with a few disgruntled grumblings. There is a beauty to this theory as well as a downfall. The beauty of it is that it precisely would fit every single known fact available. The downfall, as I laid out when I suggested the theory, was that I have no way of knowing whether this sort of remote takeover is possible. I did think about it quite a bit, and concluded that although it may sound a bit far fetched, It’s really not out of the realm of reality that this technology exists. As a matter of fact, it would be in situations precisely like the one I, and you as well, put forth, where this technology would be of the utmost benefit–which, over course led me to conclude that in all likelihood, especially after 9./11, this technology probably does indeed exist. I commend you on your imagination as well as your writing skill. Bravo.
I’ve always wanted to put forth the question to @ALSM, what are the chances that this type of remote takeover technology exists?
Everybody should take a look at the INMARSAT coverage map for the F3 Satellites which connect with the SDU.
http://www.inmarsat.com/service/aviation-safety/
There is something very interesting: every ocean in the world is covered by at least 2 satellites except for the Mid to Southern Indian Ocean, and Mid to Southern Pacific Ocean.
Here’s the breakdown in detail:
– Eastern Pacific : 2-3 satellites
– North & South Atlantic: 2-3 satellites
– Western Indian Ocean (Yemen and westward): 2 satellites
– Eastern Indian Ocean (Malaysia and eastward): 2 satellites
– Western Pacific (Japan/Papua to Malaysia): 2 satellites
– Middle-Southern Indian Ocean: 1 satellite
– Middle-Southern Pacific Ocean: 1 satellite
Most oceans of the world have at least 2 satellites with overlapping coverage, which means that any East-West movement could result in the SDU on board connecting with both satellites during the flight thus revealing it’s approximate location via triangulation.
Only the Mid-Sth Indian, and Mid-Sth Pacific Oceans have single satellite coverage.
The middle to southern pacific ocean can be discounted because the majority of flights will have enough Americans (and Aussies/Kiwis) on board to put the fear of God on the perps.
…….That leaves only the Middle-Southern Indian Ocean as the ONLY OCEAN where the aircraft could leave behind a trail of SDU pings without any posibility of being located via Triangulation!
To understand the significance of this, check out this video of the Inmarsat press conference Q&A.
The very first question is related to this possibility of triangulation via satellite pings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdJHbUgimUQ
The perps certainly must have known about this reduced Satellite coverage area, plus the reduced Subscription service of MH370.
Sajid UK,
That is all very interesting but you are saying that MH370 was originally hijacked only then to be remotely hijacked (hijack #2) in the Straits and sent 6 hours to neverneverland in the SIO? Why wait 6 hours then to fuel exhaustion, why not 2, 3, or 4 hours in the IO or SIO where it would still be far away from humanity? I have a problem with the turn after IGARI/BITOD, where it is unclear whether the RMAF saw MH370 in real time or “CYA” time. Per Hishamuddin Hussein it (MH370) was declared “not hostile” during the traversing of Malaysia, and when questioned if jets were sent up in the 4 Corners piece, he said, “this is M-I-L-I-T-A-R-Y,” suggesting that if they were sent up it would have been taken down then and there because he said we would have, meaning the U.S. So Malaysia is letting it go because they deem it commercial and don’t have a 911 mentality, yet when it gets to the Straits MAS is still calling on satphones before the FMT, and then you say the cyber hijack occurs initiated by Boeing and the U.S.? It all sounds far fetched if you ask me and the stuff of fiction novels, and too many nations involved, possibly wrongly accused in the coverup. That is just my opinion.
Jay – We can do similar things to missiles after they have been launched so it’s a case of is it do able with a civilian aircraft. The capability if it was there would not be an on the table thing though if that’s what happened. It would be up the sleeve. You certainly can’t be everywhere in the case of interception if you are relying fighter planes and what has been war-gamed since 9/11 is a rogue airliner with a dirty/WMD device.
Does the lack of ELT transmissions provide any clues, or eliminate some possibilities?
The primary ELT has a “G” switch that must comply with TSO C126. It must operate with a sudden deceleration of 2.3+/-0.3G. It can also be triggered from the flight deck [but once triggered it cannot be turned off].
There is also an ELT accessible by the crew, which will also operate with the G switch, or manually.
The fact that no ELT transmissions were received seems to suggest:
1. There was no successful controlled ditch, since any ditch would result in a deceleration of greater than 2.3G.
2. If a ditching occurred both ELTs were sufficiently damaged to make a successful transmission impossible, or alternatively the ELTs were under water in less than 50 seconds.
3. If the aircraft crashed into the sea catastrophically then one would not expect a successful ELT transmission to occur.
4. The primary ELT was not triggered manually at some earlier time in the flight. In an emergency situation triggering the ELT would not necessarily be top of mind, so perhaps this possibility doesn’t lead to a conclusion.
5. The secondary ELT was not triggered manually at some earlier time in the flight. All the crew would know how to trigger the ELT, and would surely have considered this possibility if they were capable of doing so.
In my view it certainly eliminates the possibility of a soft “controlled” ditching. I think it also makes a number of other possible scenarios much less likely, particularly those where any crew were considered to be still alive after say 18.xx utc.
Everyone should take a look at Inmarsat coverage map. Only the S.I.O & S.Pacific have single satellite coverage.
All other oceans have 2 satellites. So the flight can be located by triangulation.
S.Pacific can be discounted because most flights have Americans.
So the SIO is the ONLY OCEAN where the perps could have risked accidental SDU pings.
If there is a remote take-over capability in a Boeing aircraft, it seems unlikely that it would have been used in this case, as the thread to US interests was not imminent.
If there is ever another aircraft that disappears under similar circumstances, it would cause very serious problems for Boeing. So they would not be wise to use this trick unless absolutely necessary and the danger is clear.
CliffG,
“Accidental SDU pings?” How? To me that would involve some industrial espionage or industrial theft of the Inmarsat identifier number assigned to MH370 AES or satcom that communicates to satellite IOR/ground station. Or some kind of a spoof of the AES or satcom or said data. Or a novice is fiddling with left AC bus and unaware of reconnecting SDU would make the “pings” accidental or AES unjams itself and reconnects to satellite without knowledge or intention of pilots or perps.
@Sajid UK
Thank’s for jumping in.
Remote control of flying machines is possible and done routinely, but that such technology is installed in comercial aircraft is an unsubstantiated assumption. If such a system would be installed than the primary task would not be to destroy the aircraft and kill all humans on board, but to save them somehow. Post 911 there had been lots of discussions in the political leadership of the military how to handle such an event and in the military pilot comunity these discussions centered around the probable task, to kill a load full of passengers by shooting down that aircraft by fighter intervention when intentions of the hijackers where yet unknown. It was and still is a painfull discussion for those possibly involved when the bell rings.
But let us assume for a moment that such an uninterruptable outside autopilot existed, was installed on 9M-MRO and was brought into action like your post says. In that case a lot of people from military and political leadership would know about it and would have to be on the same page and remain on the same page until now. The executing part, the ground operator of such a autopilot, would not consist of one person, but of a team of persons with a leader and operators, either working together or at least having the same knowledge base. The involvement and knowledge about the execution of such a plan in your post would include multiple nations and involve multiple government agencies. To keep such an opperation and the following multi million bucks search under the carpet for that long time is frankly speaking not possible.
From the beginning the discussion centered around the role of the Malaysian military air defence system. For me it is crystal clear that the Malaysian military was neither asleep against the rules nor incompetent, but was working like many military defense systems work in peace time. The US and NATO uses the DEFCON classification from stage 1-5, where 1 represents war action and 5 represents peace. Under peace conditions the military works like any company, it has to conserve their resources, soldiers and equipment, to the most extent possible. Most if not all military airports are closed at midnight, and if no military traffic is airborne or is expected to depart or arrive most military radars are shut down as well, only few will run unmonitored with a crew in some kind of readiness state. Basically the civil Air Traffic control is running the show of the airspace and alerts the military if something unusual happens. We know that something unusual happened, but like we can see in the FI report the reaction of the responsible ATC stations and MAS operations was plainly wrong and late. Therefore nobody of the military made a direct observation of an unidentified aircraft at least during the initial stages until MH370 tracked outbound to MEKAR.
The published military radar information is a summary of the available information replayed later from different sources, even different countries, and morphed into one picture. I do not think that they hold back information, they just got no more.
While a hijacking scenario is already complex (motive+entry+onboard action+retreat+who did it) your scenario gets a lot more complex. It assumes not only very early knowledge of the hijacking by the military, but also cooperation and acceptance of killing passengers by multiple countries and their responsible leaderships. That is not realistic.
When the APU or the RAT generate electrical power, the pilot can reset the Primary Flight Computers and restore normal mode. He must wait until the HEAT PITOT L+C+R message is no longer displayed, and then he must move the PRIMARY FLIGHT COMPUTERS DISCONNECT switch from AUTO to DISC, then back to AUTO. That restores flight control normal mode following reversion to secondary mode caused by loss of pitot heat.
The autopilot can be re-engaged when flight control normal mode is restored.
(Reference: FCOM NNC.0.4. DUAL ENG FAIL/STALL)
Retiredf4 – The way I read it, Sajid was referring to the potential to hack in and divert the thing as opposed to using any installed facility on the plane – which currently isn’t present as you point out. You can’t cover an entire continent with fighter planes, you can use a missile but what if it has dirty materials on it? Have they ever played with the idea of sending it elsewhere in the case of such an emergency?
@Matty-Perth
To deliberately divert an aircraft by hacking into its software from ground or even from the cabin over a prolonged period of time without prior manipulation of hardware and installed software seems a far fetched and unrealistic probability.
You are absolutely right, there is no way to cover all parts of a country with air defence assets in equal strength and quality, and you cannot do it 24/7 in peace time, that’s what I basically said.
For unidentified threats fighter aircraft on alert are the primary means of air policing operations. Once a missile is launched, it is on a destroy mission. The identification friend or foe has to be done prior missile launch. The missile has a limited range and no loitering capability.
A fighter can be launched prior identification for the purpose to identify the target, to assess its state and intentions visually, to enforce a flightpath change or a landing, and in the last stage of uncooperative behaviour to shoot the hostile target down if necessary and politically correct. This is the more true in times of peace (DEFCON 5-2).
How would knowledge exists, what kind of material a rogue airliner like MH370 has on board? The perps would not declare it in advance. And if they declare it in some kind of threat over the radio while in flight, how would one know if the claim is for real? To kill human hostages without chance of survival due to an unconfirmed threat happens in the movies, but not lightly in real live.
What do you mean? Fuel exhaustion equates to flame-out, and that means losing a source for propulsive power, hydraulic power, electrical power, and bleed air for airconditioning and anti-icing.
@Sajid, @Mike, There’s a very simple way to rule out remote-takeover scenarios: the fact that the plane’s satellite communication system was offline during the first hour post-hijack.
@CliffG, You raise a very interesting point, one that I hadn’t thought of before, but which reinforces a point I’ve raised before: MH370 happened to be just the right kind of plane, with just the right kind of SDU and the right kind of ACARS subscription, and flying in the just the right part of the world, to make a spoof scenario possible. It may be that this is just a coincidence, but in combination with other amazing coincidences that abound in this case it starts to look suspicious.
@jeffwise
Nice to hear from you again Jeff!
Jeff, CliffG
“just the right kind of…”
The singular focus on 9M-MRO might appear to conflate many issues (aircraft, SDU, SITA/Inmarsat service) to produce a unique scenario but I don’t believe that’s the case. The “plague of false information” may exacerbate such a perception & risks myopia.
It’d be useful to look at many of the circumstances of the night of 7-th March & ask further questions:
While it may have been unusual for Inmarsat to record inflight Log-Ons from aircraft, was it unusual during the night of 7-8th March in the IOR service region? Did any other aircraft experience a SATCOM outage that night.
Concerning the various eye-witness reports (e.g. Kate Tee, McKay), were bright lights/apparently burning objects seen regularly on other nights?
Was it unusual for the DCA air traffic controllers to ignore unidentified targets reported via their primary RADAR (the Kota Bharu track?). Was it in any way commonplace to see unidentified traffic crossing the Malaysian peninsula?
:Don
Oleksandr/Gysbreght
With power generation from the RAT only, there is no heating to the air data probes. Therefore, the ADIRU/SAARU receive non-normal probe status signals & cause the PFCS to revert to direct.
The impact of hydraulic pressure loss needs to be considered also. Hydraulic systems status is monitored by the ACE computers. When only the Center system is pressurized by the RAT the ACEs will drop the PFCs out of the loop, reverting PFCS to direct mode.
With only the RAT standby electrical power & a single hydraulic system there are too many sensors and output channels inoperative for augmented control by PFCs. Huan-in-the-loop is necessary.
:Don
Even, human-in-the-loop is necessary.
@jeffwise said, “There’s a very simple way to rule out remote-takeover scenarios: the fact that the plane’s satellite communication system was offline during the first hour post-hijack.”
That rules out a hijack that takes place via the IOR satellite after 17:21 UTC. But there are other possibilities.
In a similar way that people have proposed spoofing the AES terminal to the GES, it is possible that the GES was spoofed to the AES. This may have occurred during the time that the AES was unavailable to the Inmarsat network between 17:21 and 18:25.
It is possible to change flight plans using ACARS via SATCOM. However, this would not be an effective method to hijack a plane because a pilot could simply disengage the LNAV mode of autopilot and manually set the desired track of the aircraft. That is the shortcoming of many scenarios in which the aircraft is commandeered by hacking into the FMS (with the assumption that BUAP has not been implemented in 9M-MRO).
Jamming of the true GES signal and spoofing of the GES may not be as hard as people have proposed, especially if there was an opportunity to load specialized equipment before the flight. For instance, Square Peg offers a GES emulator that could probably be used.
http://www.squarepeg.ca/index.php?page=aeronautical-ground-earth-station-ges-emulator
It is also possible that a simpler version of this equipment could have been used to jam the satellite signal after 17:21 until around 18:25. After log-on, the emulator could have temporarily overridden the true IOR signal and transmitted a Partial System Table with a higher revision number and with new satellite inclination parameters. In this way, the Doppler pre-compensation in the AES would function such that a northern path would look like a southern path, as I have described before.
Of course, the positive identification of the flaperon and the evidence that it separated from 9M-MRO in the SIO eliminates the possibility of a northern path, so this is purely hypothetical.
@VictorI, Very intriguing idea! To clarify: would jamming the IOR satellite signal require an onboard confederate? Or at least access to the plane before it took off?
As for your last sentence, I hesitate to even bring this up, but if one were to consider the possibility of a spoof followed by a hijack to the north, it would not be a very great leap from there to imagining the possibility of a planted flaperon.
@GuardedDon:
Thanks for the correction and additional information.
According to the FCOM (9.20.8) the ACEs automatically transition to direct mode when they detect the failure of all three PFCs or lose communication with the PFCs. If that occurred in the simulator test provided by ALSM, shouldn’t the crew have observed the EICAS caution message PRI FLIGHT COMPUTERS ?
RE: “The impact of hydraulic pressure loss needs to be considered also.” Would there be a temporary loss of hydraulic pressure between the time of 2nd flame-out and APU or RAT coming online?
For those who might not have seen it, here’s an article with some images of the “Classification 2” sites that are going to get a second look:
http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/worth-a-second-look-whats-being-revisited-in-mh370-search/story-fnizu68q-1227542497594
Also, there’s a video of a drift simulation that’s quite attractive, it’s not clear what the source. It shows a lot of debris washing up on southwestern Australia.
@jeffwise: There are a range of possibilities. The spoofed GES signal could have been generated onboard or in the vicinity of the aircraft. If onboard, the amount of equipment required would be dependent on the sophistication of the spoof. Jamming would not require much. GES emulation would require more. The more onboard equipment that is required, the increased need for prior planning and cooperation.
This is not the first time that I or others considered this. One of my points is that it is a leap to say the log-on of the AES equates to a power cycling of the SATCOM. There are other explanations, of which an interfered GES signal is one.
@Victor, @jeff: Could have the perps replaced the equipment with other comms gear giving the jamming/spoofing/power cycling/rebooting appearance? So other comms equipment was pre-loaded into the E/E bay and when it was the right time the perps went in and switched over to the other gear…