UPDATED 1/29/16: Here’s an image from Victor Iannello showing how EY440 diverted from its normal flight path about two minutes after takeoff on January 7, when it was still climbing and at an altitude of 5000 feet:
Just to clear up any potential confusion, it seems most likely that this incident does not have anything to do with MH370, but it’s very interesting in its own right. What is the dynamic at work here? Is it part of a trend? If so, does it potentially represent a system-wide vulnerability?
Here’s another image from Victor showing the plane’s continued path over Malay Peninsula. He writes: “I re-examined the FlightAware ADS-B data and noticed that there is a gap starting at BIBAN and ending at Kota Bharu. The FlightRadar24 coverage looks more comprehensive than the FlightAware data, especially in the South China Sea (SCS). I have re-plotted the flight path such that each underlying FlightAware data point is shown, and estimated the path in the SCS from the FlightRadar24 video. The path does indeed seem to follow airways across the SCS. (It would be helpful to have the underlying FR24 data.) The route seems to be ANHOA-L637-BIBAN-L637-BITOD-M765-IGARI-M765-Kota Bharu-B219-Penang-G468-GUNIP-HOLD-Langkawi-B579-Phuket.”
ORIGINAL POST:
The case of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is an incredible strange one, as we all know. But what only the true obsessives know is that orbiting around the giant mystery is an Oort Cloud of lesser enigmas. I’d like to briefly diverge from this blog’s main line of inquiry to cast a glance at some of these issues.
My first installment concerns Etihad Airways Flight 440, which took off on January 7 for Ho Chi Minh City bound for Abu Dhabi. Scheduled to depart at 20:10 UTC, it actually left 13 minutes early. Then, instead of flying along its normal route, to the northwest, it flew almost due south, crossed waypoint IGARI, then flew along the Thai/Malaysia border to the Malacca Straits, where it flew in circles for an hour before finally heading off in the direction of Abu Dhabi. By this point, however, the plane no longer had the fuel to reach Abu Dhabi, so it stopped to refuel in Bombay and reached its destination many hours late, leaving some passengers irate. (Special thanks to reader @Sajid UK for bringing this to our collective attention via the comment section.)
This is all very strange, but what makes it interesting to the MH370 crowd is the fact that a portion of its bizarre route was an exact match with that taken by the Malaysian 777 when it initially took a runner. Had EY440 been taking part in some kind of experiment to recreate MH370’s route, perhaps to get a better understanding of the Inmarsat data or the radar data?
We may never know. Katie Connell, who heads up Etihad’s media relations for North America, was very friendly when I called her and asked her what had happened. She said she’d check with her colleagues at the head office in Abu Dhabi. “It was simply a scheduling decision by ops that was later adjusted,” she wrote me in a text earlier today. I wrote back, asking if her contacts had been able to explain why the plane had flown south instead of northwest, and why it had flown a holding pattern over the Malacca Strait. She answered: “No; I did not get into that level of detail. I go with what my folks said.”
So there you have it. Make of it what you will.
UPDATE: I should have pointed out that this topic has been discussed for quite a while in the comments section of “Free the Flaperon!” and “A Couple of MH370 Things.” One of the ideas mooted there was that the flight crew inadvertently entered the wrong route into the Flight Management System, somehow overlooked the fact that they were heading in the wrong direction (scary!) and then circled for an hour until they could get the proper flight plane figured out, filed and cleared. This would be embarrassing enough to the airline that they would prefer to call it a “scheduling decision that was later adjusted.”
UPDATE #2, 27 Jan 2016: I’ve received a clarification from Etihad via Katie Connell, who writes: “The standard route flown by Flight EY440 from Ho Chi Minh City to Abu Dhabi on January 7, 2016 was automatically amended by the Flight Planning System which calculated and filed an alternative route as the most favorable, due to high winds. Shortly after takeoff, a new route was re-plotted which required Flight EY440 to fly through Thai airspace. While awaiting the overflight clearances the aircraft went into a holding pattern which resulted in the aircraft needing to refuel in Mumbai prior to continuing its journey to Abu Dhabi.”
So it sounds like the problem was not a human mis-entry, but a faulty flight-plan solution by a computer, which then had to be fixed while in transit. Software bug? Non-optimal algorithm? It will be worth keeping an eye out for more incidents like this one. Here’s one that took place in December involving a Malaysia Airlines flight from Auckland to Kuala Lumpur.
UPDATE #3: Victor Iannello has directed my attention to a Wired article suggesting that hackers have disrupted flight plans in the past and could do so again.
Here’s a chart showing the path the flight took as it circled over the Malacca Strait, created by reader Oleksandr:
At some point past IGARI didn’t MH370 take a rapid decent thus it went off the radar screen(s)
OZ, thanks.
According to the original flightplan there was waypoint IKUKO before IGARI. However, IKUKO was skipped and mh370 proceeded directly towards IGARI.
Past IGARI the airplane turned onto the heading towards BITOD, the next waypoint on the planned route. AT 17:21:13 the secondary radar was lost. After that there is no reliable altitude information, because it cannot be determined with sufficient accuracy from the primary radar returns.
It is indeed likely that the primary radar returns were lost shortly afterwards due to the airplane exceeding the radar maximum range. Loss of radar data would explain the sharp drop in groundspeed shown in Fig. 4.2 of the “Bayesian Methods” report. In a steep descent the airspeed would increase.
BTW: The true track IGARI-BITOD is 58°. The last SSR transmission should have contained track information but the ‘smoothed’ track data in fig. 4.2 apparently ignore that information.
Hi Jeff,
Thanks for continuously updating on this topic! My biggest dilemma about the MH370 is centered around one main issue:
Why didn’t the Malaysian government scramble their jets and go after the MH370? Especially after it turned around and flew directly over the Malaysian mainland? Instead the Malaysians kept monitoring the plane as it detoured and flew over their mainland!
Along with that, I have read somewhere that Captain Shah may have actually been trying to get the attention of the air bases and therefore deliberately flew over two of those bases signally that something was wrong.
My other predicament has to do with that weird right turn and then an immediate left. Was someone trying to wrestle over control of the plane from Captain Shah in the cockpit? That weird little loop instead of a direct left turn makes me wonder if this is where someone was trying to take over….
Lastly, although some reports say that the plane did not have enough fuel to fly to Maldives, I somehow think I can trust those local Maldivians of witnessing a low flying huge jet with red and blue stripes that was so loud that they ran out of their homes to see what it was on that morning. What is unusual about their sighting is that they did not see such a low flying huge aircraft with red and blue stripes before nor after that early in the morning! I am sure the locals have seen their Maldivian airlines which also has blue and red colors but a totally different design and look to it.
To summarize, something about this whole incident is very weird! In my humble opinion, I don’t think there was a fire, nor an attempted suicide. The MH370 was flying to a specific destination and was on a mission. The flaperon that was found was just a ruse (although it is confirmed to be from the MH370) to let people think it crashed in the waters!
@DennisW
Posted January 22, 2016 at 11:43 AM
I also believe the Malays have flaperon forensic results from the French, and that they are sitting on that information. Maybe it will be provided in March.
Dennis,
Without a doubt, you are right, it is blatantly logical and makes no sense to see it any other way.
The 2nd tier insurance has no limit of liability if Malaysia cannot prove it was not at fault. Add another 20% payout of cost for “terrorist risk” if deemed an act of terrorism.
The insurance angle has never garnered much attention and not much available information on the consortium of insurers. The $300M they paid in March 2014 may actually be higher, and whether that money sits in trust and who benefits from the almost 2 years of interest of the money.
It is my understanding only a few have settled the $175k tier 1 insurance cap, but if all 239 pax and crew = $41,825,000, difference of $251,875,009.
If one were unscrupulous in nature, (big understatement for Najib and his cronies) and stayed within the loosey goosey guidelines of Annex 13, they would not distribute one iota of information benefiting the recovery and it is idiotic to think otherwise.
And they can, Malaysia has the power as the one who maintains overall authority of the investigation and full control over the release of information.
We have yet to determine what happened and who was responsible for the missing plane but Malaysia clearly has motive for impeding this investigation and has conducted itself in the manner that dictates.
@Susie
There is little doubt the forensics are complete both with respect to the damage and with respect to whatever information might be deduced from the barnacles. The question is why nothing has been disclosed to the public. It would be very hard for me to believe that if the Malaysians have flaperon information that they would not convey it to the Australians.
I see two possibilities. One is that the Malaysians have the information, and are sitting on it for some reason. Possibly related to payout liabilities as you suggest. Another possibility is that the French are withholding the information under the auspices of the criminal investigation, and are seeking some sort of informational quid pro quo from the Malaysians. There could well be additional possibilities that other folks might suggest.
It would certainly be fair to characterize the Malaysians as obstructionist relative to other aspects of the investigation. Something stinks for sure.
@DennisW
Hoping I could flush you out, noticed you have been incommunicado. It could be the flaperon is definitive enough to influence the search and for the reason I stated earlier, Malaysia is holding tight until obligated disclosure.
@Susie
Yeah, I don’t have anything to say beyond what I have already said relative to the things that have been discussed over the last 20+ months. People are pretty polarized in their views relative to the way they think this problem can be solved. As I mentioned to someone in a private email, I doubt we could agree on what the facts are much less on how to use them.
When we get some flaperon news or find additional debris perhaps that will shake things up a bit.
My feeling until their PM is replaced, nothing will come out.
A few things on EY440:
– It appears that ICAO dictates max speed of 0.83M in holding mode for FL>FL340. Thus airspeed was OK.
– For expected long waiting it is recommended to extend hold pattern legs to, say 4 minutes, as opposite to standard 1 or 1.5 minutes (depending on FL). There are two reasons for this: frequent turns result in higher fuel consumption and also make it less comfortable for crew and passengers. Why did the crew of EY440 opt to burn more fuel?
– GUNIP is used as an important navigation waypoint for approach to KL. Why this point? Why not some other waypoint, where traffic is less congested?
With regard to MH370EY440:
– It appears that B777 allows for specifying the length of legs in either minutes or miles. The respective display shows 2 integer and one decimal digits for minutes and miles. Does this mean that the length of legs is limited by 99.9 minutes/99.9 miles?
– Given minor variation in EY440 pattern, what is a reason for them? Is heading in a leg phase kept constant by AP to control wind influence? Or pattern is automatically distorted to account for wind?
– How wind is accounted by hardware to keep the patern?
– It appears turn rate can also be adjusted in a “holding mode”. Can it be set to a very small value, or even zero, as opposite to the standard turn rates? So that AP would not automatically revert to “heading hold” etc?
@all
Published today.
“At this stage we’ve not heard anything from the French that would enable us to form a view about what position the flaperon was in when it separated from the aircraft which is the key question for us,” Dolan reportedly said. “It’s quite possible we won’t get anything definitive on that.”
http://www.ibtimes.com/flight-mh370-update-search-vessels-may-have-missed-malaysia-airlines-plane-atsb-chief-2287410
@DennisW
Veely interesting. Nice to see ATSB once again stand for itself.
It appears we now have 2 possibilities, (1) either the French judiciary has chosen to submit the report to Malaysia only within the requisite ICAO time period of which there is still time (2) Malaysia has received the report and chosen to do the same regarding disclosure.
Either way, it is a travesty that Australia, the country given authority to conduct the search has been denied by absentia, the report of forensics for the only piece of evidence in this massively mysterious disappearance. Unless, there is another reason(s)
@DennisW
I basically said the same as you did earlier, excuse the redundancy, maybe twice said for emphasis
RE: Deviation from planned route near IGARI: this graph compares the radar tracks as shown in the ATSB report of 18 October 2014, Figure2 (in blue), and the track based on the ‘smoothed’ radar data in the “Bayesian Methods” report Fig. 4.2. (in green), to the planned route (in red) direct to IGARI, then IGARI-BITOD.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/l9sdn0cx1ipkvnd/IGARItracks.jpg?dl=0
@Gysbreght: You have a typo in the title (MH340 instead of MH370).
Your graphic illustrates a fundamental problem with the radar data. When a model is used which forces the flight path to match the plane’s performance characteristics, the path that is generated significantly deviates from what was presented as the captured path. Until we see the raw radar captures, we can only guess at what is going on. But anybody that has studies this in detail understands that there is an unexplained discrepancy.
Malaysia says it will address this in the FI in March. We’ll see.
@VictorI: thanks for the correction.
The graph below is from the A330 FCOM. The B777 may have a similar function. Does it tell us anything about how the “direct to IGARI” was flown?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/l8ynyd7443rpwee/OverflyFn.jpg?dl=0
DennisW, all
Same article published at news.com.au, perthnow.com.au and now ibtimes. No attribution for time nor place of Dolan’s remarks.
Ben Sandilands suggests that the reports may be a regurgitation of year old comments.
Exactly a year ago we had the McKay rig sightings regurgitated in news outlets from UK to NZ.
I may have commented previously, that one might construe these articles as noise intended to fatique the wider readership who will then simply react with, ‘meh, whatevs’, when Malaysia’s second interim report is published.
:Don
@Don
It cannot be a year old in this case since the flaperon finding is not that old. Still, the “essence” of your admonition rings true. There is no way to know for sure when Dolan’s statement was made. I tend to think it was very recently since he (Dolan) also mentions the upcoming Malay report in March.
Just a passing shot at Sandilands – he has never allowed one of my comments to be published. There is a very strong pro ATSB bias associated with his reporting. I have put him pretty far down on my list of reliable sources of information.
I am afraid the things could be a lot more trivial with regard to the Flaperon than some imagine: French simply have nothing conclusive to say about the flaperon, i.e. whether it was detached due to fluttering, due to water impact, or due to inertia upon the impact.
@Oleksandr
And what would be the reason or purpose be to keep such a result of the flaperon investigation secret?
I cannot see any advantage in such a behaviour.
@Oleksandr
I echo RetF4 here. What could be possibly be gained by not simply stating the lack of a conclusion thereby removing speculation?
@VictorI:
“Until we see the raw radar captures, we can only guess at what is going on. ”
Figure 2 of ATSB’s report of 18-10-2014 actually shows what I believe to be the ‘raw radar captures’ as small white dots about 10 seconds apart along the continuous path traced by the plotting software. There are no dots along the V-shaped corner, suggesting a time segment without radar returns, which the plot software ‘bridged’ with extrapolations of the last and the first track angle. That would explain the ‘dip’ in the “Bayesian Methods” speeds.
RetiredF4,
To include it into the next FI report. Any disadvantage?
Dennis,
What speculations would absence of conclusions remove?
@Oleksandr
Strange question.
It would soften my speculation that the Malaysians are deliberately obstructing the search by withholding information.
Additional speculations (ambiguity removal):
Flutter damage would support a narrow search range on the 7th arc.
Impact damage while extended would support a wider search on the 7th arc associated with a much longer glide and controlled ditch.
Barnacle pedigree might well reveal information relative to the drift path of the flaperon.
If there is no additional information come out and say so. How hard is that?
The value of information is perishable The longer it is withheld the less value it has.
@Gysbreght: I think you mean Fig 2 of the ATSB report from Jun 26, 2014.
Others such as @Ron have tried to extract the raw data points. It is hard for me to distinguish compression artefacts from raw data points. If you have a way to do this, it would be helpful.
@DennisW
The media outlets, to which I referred, related Dolan’s remarks concerning the seabed search & that they may need to re-visit some areas to get their assurance of no false negatives. Not flaperon comment.
Sandilands, yes, filter required: anyone continues to talk, at this stage, of ‘the engines’ sending messages isn’t paying attention.
Dennis,
Frankly I have some doubts it would soften your speculations about Malaysians. Perhaps it would have exactly opposite effect: you would conclude that Malaysians and French are certainly hiding some information.
With regard to the second part of your answer, I am not sure how it relates to my question. You are answering what the flaperon analysis could potentially clarify, which is clear, while I was asking what you are going to do if the conducted analysis did not reveal any new detail.
@VictorI:
Well, yes and no. October should have been August:
MH370 – Definition of Underwater Search Areas
AE-2014-054 26 June 2014 (updated 18 August 2014)
I digitized the continuous trace, and estimated the spacing of the dots. The dots don’t tell you the time they were painted by the radar, that element is added by the “Bayesian” report. The point is that (a) there are no dots along the V-shaped corner and its legs are tangent to the dotted parts, and (b) that without the dip in the “Bayesian” speeds the airplane would have travelled about 20 NM more in the same time, about a full orbit at 45° of bank.
@VictorI:
P.S. How do “the plane’s performance characteristics” enter into Fig. 4.2 of the Bayesian report? As far as I can make out, is is ‘smoothed’ radar data, nothing else.
@Oleksandr
I think you are correct about having an opposite effect. The very fact that nothing has been said is suspicious to me. Maybe a cultural thing on my part.
Dolan’s words – we may not get anything definitive on that – suggests to me that they have sought assistance from the Australian govt regarding access to the findings(as you would expect) and have been advised as such. Extraordinary.
@DennisW,
“Just a passing shot at Sandilands – he has never allowed one of my comments to be published. There is a very strong pro ATSB bias associated with his reporting.”
I don’t think you’ve read too many of Sandiland’s articles on the ATSB……..he definitely isn’t PRO.
He does get his facts muddled sometimes as GuargedDon has indicated.
OZ
@Gysbreght: They claim they are using a “simplified almost constant velocity model and applying a Kalman filter”, which I suspect smooths the speed and heading profile and attempts to incorporate the likely behavior of the aircraft into the prediction.
Sounding like the data is not fitting performance turn back characteristics of this flight. Maybe there was another aircraft that caused data crosstalk?
@OZ
I probably formed that opinion based on my rejected comments which were critical of the search activity, and on his recent postings relative to Bailey.
@DennisW,
That’s understandable. But what I find interesting is his reaction to Bailey.
Bailey’s articles have errors, but so does his.
Maybe it’s Bailey’s affiliation with the Australian newspaper.
OZ
@VictorI:
Did you compare the decelerations and accelerations in the speed dip to the airplane’s performance capabilities?
On the other hand, if the airplane spent some time outside the radar’s horizon, and the analysis treated the recorded data as continuous, the unfiltered speed and heading values would show step changes at the times of exit and re-entry, and filtering and smoothing would produce the curves of Fig. 4.2.
@MH:
“Sounding like the data is not fitting performance turn back characteristics of this flight.”
The groundspeed of 193 knots at the bottom of the dip is well below the 1-g stall speed of about 300 kTAS at 216 tonnes, FL350, ISA+10.
The report states that the derived speed obtained from this filter during
the first turn is not an accurate representation of the aircraft speed at this time. So what does it represent?
@Gysbreght, maybe the pilot flying was able to get it into a glider characteristics or it just dropped out of the sky.
@Gysbreght: I looked at the calculated speed profile in the DSTG report, saw how ridiculous it was, and did no further analysis.
The discrepancy in speed can only be resolved by using a different path or allowing a “time discontinuity” as I have previously proposed. As the raw radar data would have position and time information, it is critical that the raw data be made publicly available. The fact that the DSTG had what they believed were the raw data and yet produced such non-sensical results should be red flag for anybody paying attention.
The case for associating the radar capture with MH370 rests on the continuity of the primary and secondary radar tracks. If there is a discontinuity in position and/or time, the possibility that the radar target was not MH370 has to be considered.
In the days after the disappearance, the Malaysians were very careful to associate the radar track with MH370 using ambiguous language. There might have been political reasons for this equivocation. Or, they were truly not sure that the targets were MH370 because of discrepancies in position and speed.
We have been through this all before. I have prepared my list of questions regarding the radar captures and submitted them to the Malaysian authorities. They have “assured” me that the questions would be addressed in the next report due out in March. We’ll see.
What would be best would be that Malaysia releases the raw data and then we can make our own conclusions. Frankly, I am tired of guessing about the raw data and I am tired of inconsistent explanations such as right angle turns and impossibly low speeds.
@VictorI:
“Frankly, I am tired of guessing”
Fair enough.
@anyone
I am not at all a ground based “radar guy”. My only past experience has been with side-looking aircraft radar (Goodyear Aerospace). What would the “raw” radar data actually look like in this case? Is it in a tabular format? Screen capture? I really have no idea.
@DennisW: The ATC data would be digitally stored using a protocol such as ASTERIX which records all targets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASTERIX_(ATC_standard)
The military radar sites might have their own proprietary protocol for digitally storing targets.
@Victor,
Thanks, I think. Looks to be a substantial learning curve assuming this type of data is actually provided.
Personally, I would be more interested in radar data after the aircraft passed over the Malay peninsula. I am not very confident that the data around IGARI will be all that useful.
Let’s push for full disclosure of radar data, fuel limit calcs, flaperon buoyancy test results, and signal data logs and secondary research (eg raw data behind all published BTO and BFO adjustments Inmarsat provided). The families continue to suffer, many of us continue to work in the dark trying to help narrow the search area, and the general public continues to receive absolutely zero assurance that it is safe to fly.
Yet all we ever receive from search leaders is an increasing degree of ambiguity. The latest: the French and Australians apparently see no value in sharing flaperon buoyancy and/or barnacle test results (Dennis: your list left out a possibility: suppressed results create ambiguity), and a fairly transparent attempt to manufacture a reduction in public confidence in the search equipment’s detection efficacy. I noted that the “volcano” depicted by the ATSB’s photogenic graphic overplayed the vertical axis by a factor of 4; I wondered why they’d do this – until yesterday’s story referencing savage terrain, that is. Ah, sweet, delicious ambiguity: to anyone attempting to maintain a cover-up, it is the nectar of the gods.
I see no reason to wait before making a concerted, public effort to shame search leaders into full disclosure. As many have pointed out, evidence abounds of an attempt to delay key aspects of the search; waiting for the 2-year anniversary report strikes me as playing into their hands.
@DennisW: There are tools available to interpret the Asterix data so I don’t there would be a steep learning curve.
The data around IGARI is extremely useful in verifying that the radar did indeed capture MH370 because it is the link between the targets captured by military radar and the SSR. It is not helpful in determining the flight path after 18:22.
@dennisW: the radar data must be consistent at IGARI, the turn around, and back towards Malaysia in that it does not show a likely crash scenario. Maybe those across Malaysia hits are from other aircraft bogies. even still those go outside B777 performance characteristics.