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:
@sk999: In August 2014, I analyzed the radar data and found that the curved path close to Kota Bharu can be explained by radar slant. I also noted that the final two segments of the PSR traces are outside the range of the radar head at Kota Bharu, although I do not think I was the first to see this. I followed this analysis with a list of questions, including asking whether the Butterworth radar captured the final two segments of the PSR trace.
Analysis: https://www.dropboxDOTcom/s/zh9rfqa6rxy582m/2015-08-18%20Radar%20Data%20for%20MH370.pdf?dl=0
Questions (see Q9):
https://www.dropboxDOTcom/s/aeuh0xvfav6nqip/2015-09-24%20Questions%20about%20Radar%20Data%20for%20MH370.pdf?dl=0
(replace “DOT” with “.”)
Gysbreght,
Those 3 irregularities you mentioned, the repetition of maintaining FL350, the incomplete HCM handover, and the overflying IGARI could signify someone not thinking clearly when you group them all together like that?
Cheryl,
Yes, or preoccupied/distracted by something other than the assigned duty. The first two are actions of the pilot-monitoring, the third of the pilot-flying.
@sk999: Those papers were written in 2015, not 2014.
Cheryl, Oleksandr
The FI log for SITA ACARS communications shows that VHF datalink was deselected/made unavailable to the ACARS Manager during the pre-flight activity (around 15:55-16:00). Hence, satcom was the only datalink available. A reason for this action is the poor VHF ACARS datalink coverage in south east Asia, predominantly ‘plain old ACARS’ remote ground stations and sparse VDL (VHF digital link) RGS. China, on the other hand, modernised its datalink coverage with VDL, so it was routine to make an ACARS Manager datalink selection to enable VHF when entering Chinese airspace. Satcom utilisation is expensive,.
The process I have described above simply pre-empts the automatic ACARS Manager datalink selection.
There is no need for any intervention directly with the SDU status: voice and other data services (in MRO’s case there was a second service, the IFE/passenger messaging service) still require access to the satcom network. The GES & region selection is automatic. Note that POR would below the horizon for an aircraft west of a longitude coinciding with Penang.
As MRO travelled east of Malaysia the AES would select Inmarsat-3’s Pacific Ocean Region service (its GES also located in Perth teleport) at some point.
The normal operation of the AES is to select a region/GES that is defined in its SDU Owner Requirements Table. It’s understood that MRO’s ORT defined the four Inmarsat-3 regions and their GES (IOR, POR, AOR-W and AOR-E). If the AES loses contact with a GES and cannot re-establish Log-On (P-ch sync) with an ORT defined, ie preferred, satellite its selection criteria defaults to include all the regions/GES defined in the network System Table. The AMSS network comprises 8 regions, the four I-3 regions above, MT-SAT operated by Japan, and the three Inmarsat-4 regions. The AMSS (branded by Inmarsat as Classic Aero) is compatible across all the GES of all 8 regions, minor differences in packet data rate/voice codec options on the I-4 GES offers more efficient use of bandwidth.
It’s been advised that MT-SAT didn’t record a Log On from MRO during the incident flight and Inmarsat stated they searched their GES logs and found that MRO only completed Log On with IOR.
A full disclosure of all fields in the R-ch Log-On Request Signal Unit transmitted by MRO’s AES prior to and throughout the incident flight would evidence the previous Log-On GES.
:Don
@GuardedDon: Do we know for sure that the AES was not constrained to log-on to IOR? In that case, independent of its ORT, it would not try to log-on to other satellites if it lost the P-channel sync to IOR.
VictorI,
Thanks, those papers cover the radar data thoroughly. The one new bit of information that we now have is the apparent slowing of the plane by the time of last radar contact. The pieces of the puzzle are making more sense.
@Oleksandr,
@DennisW,
All BFOs become consistent with aircraft physical capabilities if:
1. The OXCO temperature stabilizes during AES power- up period, producing small frequency errors for all transmissions, including the first two.
2. The second transmission after power-up uses the same frequency compensation value as the first transmission.
The power-up at the gate at 16:00 shows no change between the first two BFOs. That is because the aircraft is static with no bearing or speed changes.
The next power-up at 18:25 shows a large BFO difference because the aircraft was in a turn at the time, producing a frequency compensation error. This turn is also implied by the shorter than expected distance between the last radar contact and the 1st BTO after power-up.
sk999:
re: “The one new bit of information that we now have is the apparent slowing of the plane by the time of last radar contact.”
FTR…This is not new information. Over 10 months ago, I demonstrated that the 1825-1840 BTO arcs and post 18:22:12 extrapolated radar speed showed slowing and/or altitude and directional changes. The data was published here:
https://goo.gl/b6gH0O
Richard, Victor, Sid, Barry, Bobby and others have generated numerous models attempting to decipher the path most consistent with this fundamental observation. I don’t think any of the analysis is dipositive, but there is little doubt some maneuvering took place, and that implies someone was alive at the controls during that period.
Cheryl,
With regard to the absence of ID, AES has to remember somehow that a logon took place. It must be some kind of storage, rather than transient kind of memory, such as RAM in computers. Otherwise AES would not know after reboot that it is already logged on, and it would submit ID again. But why would current logon status be written on a hard disk instead of keeping it in computer memory?
The other distinctive possibility is that AES could not obtain ID after reboot.
So we need answers from AES software developers instead of guessing.
With regard to 18:25 I have nothing new worth of discussion ): …yet.
Jeff,
That is interesting observation by Susie. Basically it is a sort of complaint that Thai and Indonesian military are not very collaborative with Malaysians, though they do have data. As expected.
RetiredF4,
I agree: 10 seconds intervals are likely resampling (interpolation).
Don,
Thanks for this info. As a matter of fact, IGARI is almost exactly in the middle between the two Inmarsat satellites covering the Indian and Pacific Ocean regions. I recall the full names of these satellites differ only in a single digit.
—
Cheryl,
I don’t see how misidentification of transmitting satellite could happen. In addition, Inmarsat-3 ping ring 18:25 is consistent with radar data, while 18:25 ping ring for Inmarsat-4 would not be.
Re-reading VictoI’s excellent paper on the radar data made me remember from the earlier discussion that the timing ‘offset’ of 35 seconds that Victor noticed is entirely due to the odd shape of the trace depicted in ATSB’s figure 2 and “Bayesian Methods” figure 4.1. At the time I observed that the offset disappears if the two right angles are replaced by a single steady turn at constant 25° bank and constant airspeed.
That makes the speeds in the “Bayesian Methods” Fig.4.2 even more enigmatic:
What “high acceleration manoeuvre” did they see and why did it produce a mismatch with the assumed linear Kalman filter model?
Bobby,
Welcome back.
Can you elaborate a bit more on your idea? I am not sure if you read all the previous discussions on this topic, so either you have a fresh idea, or we are running into another loop of discussions of the same things:
Re: “The power-up at the gate at 16:00 shows no change between the first two BFOs. That is because the aircraft is static with no bearing or speed changes.”
No. 18:25 and 00:19 logon sequences are identical. But 16:00 is different. Either logons were abnormal, or Inmarsat did not publish the whole log (if I am not mistaken Don suggested the latter). Either way your statement receives no support.
Re: “next power-up at 18:25 shows a large BFO difference because the aircraft was in a turn at the time, producing a frequency compensation error”.
It is very unlikely. The update frequency is less than 1 second, while the interval was about 7 seconds or so if I recall correctly. The other question is whether you succeeded in the modelling of BFO according to your idea, or you just guessing?
Re: “This turn is also implied by the shorter than expected distance between the last radar contact and the 1st BTO after power-up.”
No, not really. The next ping ring is even further from the satellite, which implies either accuracy/rounding issue, or dive.
Additional questions:
– Why the associated BTOs were abnormal if everything was functioning normally?
– What would be your explanation for 00:19 logon BFOs?
Two successive radar returns produce a groundspeed and a track angle. Obviously these values vary considerably due to measurement errors that must be filtered out. But were those un-filtered values anywhere near to the curves shown in Figure 4.2 of the Bayesian report?
@Oleksandr,
The details of my BFO/BTO work, and the answers to most of your questions, are here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzOIIFNlx2aUVjZrTkVpc3Fpa1U/view?usp=sharing
I have been reading all the previous relevant discussions. The other theories I have heard all seem to have some holes. My model fits all BFO and all BTO data.
I have posed the question of the repeated frequency compensation to both ATSB and to Inmarsat. ATSB (after several communications to clarify the matter) says I need to submit a FOIA request. Boy, that is certainly helpful. Inmarsat (Chris Ashton) says “. . . they are working on it.” Interestingly, I did not get back (so far) any negative response indicating the AES does not work the way I proposed. I may be wrong, but I don’t think either one of them knew the answer when I asked the question. Just an impression I had.
At 1600 (when stationary at the gate) the change in the “pair” of BFOs (i.e., between the “log-on request” and the log-on/log-off acknowledge” is 0 Hz. At 1825 the shift is +136 Hz. At 00:19 the shift is -184 Hz. See Table 1 in my paper referenced above. It gives all the times and BFO values. What is different about the 1600 log-on sequence from the later ones is that two “log-on request” messages were sent.
The frequency compensation calculation is probably not updated every second in the AES. There is no need. It is probably computed asynchronously with navigation data, and then only when it is needed.
You left out the simplest interpretation of an “increasing” BTO from 1825 to 1827. The simplest, and in my opinion the most-likely explanation, is that a double turn was in progress. See Figures 4 and 10. Also the “dive” you suggested won’t increase the BTO when the aircraft is moving generally toward the satellite, so that cannot explain it.
For an explanation of the 00:19 BFOs, see Figure 18. The BFO shift in this case depends on both the (left) turn rate and on the ROC. You can assume one and then calculate the other. The ROC at 00:19:37 seems to be between -4,000 and -15,000 fpm, depending on the assumed turn rate.
I’m not sure what you mean by the “abnormal” BTOs. The three “log-on/log-off acknowledge” values after power-ups are: 14,820 at 00:16:13, 12,600 at 18:25:34, and 18,380 at 00:19:37. For a derivation of the last two values, see Section 2 in:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzOIIFNlx2aUQUt3c3hhQ09Edzg/view?usp=sharing
The “log-on/log-off acknowledge” BTO values are quite close to the “log-on request” values a few seconds earlier, so I would not say the derived “values” are abnormal. Some time corrections were applied by Inmarsat to generate those values, and perhaps that is what you meant. It does not seem surprising to me for this to occur in the log-on process, but I cannot shed any new light on what Inmarsat did. All I can say is that the resulting values appear quite reasonable to me.
@alsm
“FTR…This is not new information. Over 10 months ago, I demonstrated that the 1825-1840 BTO arcs and post 18:22:12 extrapolated radar speed showed slowing and/or altitude and directional changes.”
I remember that and I have repeated it several times here, but how is that motivationally consistent with predicted straight autopilot path through SIO?!
http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/staff-editorials/15766/peanut-gallery-independent-group-malaysia-airlines-mh370/
An enjoyable read, thanks Jeff!
The first time I saw the word “spoof” it was explained as a falsification of the BFO & BTO data received. During the EY440 discussion someone mentioned the possibility of blocking the MH370 communications and then sending incorrect GPS data to the plane.
I cannot explain what happened from 17:21 to 18:25 but is it possible that after the 18:25 reboot, the instruments showed a left turn was to the north i.e., from 18:40 on, the the instruments showed the PIC he was traveling north?
StevanG:
Re: “…extrapolated radar speed showed slowing and/or altitude and directional changes” and “…straight autopilot path through SIO”
They are independent observations, and both true. There are many possible motivations, including a variety of possible accident responses and a variety deliberate acts. It is very unlikely that will know what happened inside the plane until we find the boxes.
I am not super confident the boxes will help. The FDR may simply tell us the plane was flown to where it was found, and the VDR may be blank. That would be consistent with how this event has unfolded. 🙂
I am still hopeful that a whistle blower will come forward, more debris will be found, and/or some conventional detective work will turn something up. More debris being the most likely of the three.
@Jeff
Nice jocular approach Jeff. Thank you for providing a place to embolden the hard work of many people
@DennisW
One of my greatest fears is if the cockpit voice recorder is *not* be blank. The FDR should at least show pilot inputs and system health.
@Susie, @Ed, thanks guys.
@Lauren H,
Is there still a non-electronic compass on the plane? Interesting theory, though it seems like it’d be a lot easier to spoof the sole hourly signal going out than the many instruments on the flight deck and possibly elsewhere on the plane.
A variant would be that the GPS was spoofed and nobody awake knew how to read any other instruments.
For that matter, if the IFE was spoofed, nobody in the cabin would raise an alarm. But spoofing only the IFE would suggest a plan that didn’t go right unless the plan really was to head to the SIO.
@Bruce
My guess is you don’t have to worry too much about that eventuality (blank voice recorder). I don’t think the aircraft is anywhere the current search area. It seems that the path this drama will follow is a termination of the search efforts in June as planned.
I am surprised that more debris has not shown up either on the East coast of Africa or on Madagascar. This leads me to believe a gentle ditch was successfully executed by a conscious pilot. It may also be that those areas are so remote that debris finds would go unreported.
It will be disappointing to me if the plane is not found, but it was a tough nut going in both in terms of the (under constrained) analytics as well as the difficulty of the area being searched. I don’t think anyone needs to hang their heads down. While I would have done things much differently, the net result (no aircraft found to date) would be the same.
@Lauren@JS
GPs is easy to jam, but relatively difficult to spoof (even the unencrypted CA code variety used in commercial aircraft) – much more difficult to spoof than the ISAT data, for example.
The inertial sensors on board the aircraft cannot be spoofed. They are stand-alone, and do not rely on external signals (other than a blending with GPS data to correct drift). “Off-the-wall” GPS inputs would be rejected by the blending algorithm. Bottom line is that there is probably no conceivable way to steer the aircraft navigation systems off course.
@DennisW, As Victor Iannello has pointed out, the simplest way to carry out a BFO spoof would be to simply change a single parameter in the table of values that the MCS-6000 SDU uses to calculate the Doppler precompensation. Doing so wouldn’t, by itself, affect the IFE or anything else.
@Jeff
Yep. However, spoofing ISAT data has nothing to do with navigation.
@JS – I believe that someone posted to say that there is a simple magnetic compass on the flight deck.
@Dennis – Thanks for the correction. I wondered if the FMT to the south was not intentional could the PIC have somehow been tricked into thinking he was flying north.
@anyone – I saw a photo that looked like it came from the Lido Hotel presentation. It showed that after the right turn toward BITOD, instead of making two left turns to go back over the Malay peninsula, it made a 270° right turn before making a single left turn over the peninsula. Has this possibility been eliminated?
Lauren H: That photo comes from a slide that was shown at the Lido Hotel on March 22, 2014. After the Malaysian officials presented to the NOK, they left the room without taking questions as there was an angry mood in the room. The slide showing the path with the loopy turn around IGARI was shown as part of this question and answer period. The slide was actually a frame from the following video, which was created by Chinese media and was aired on television.
https://www.zhuatieba.com/video/XNjg1ODM0ODUy
The slide enraged the NOK as it differed from the Malacca Strait radar data that was shown the day before on March 21.
I have captured the timeline of events for March 21 and March 22 in a series of tweets. I will provide the link in my next post.
Lauren H: Here is the timeline of events as captured by a photographer named Kim Kyung-Hoon (KKH), who contributes to Reuters. There are a series of 4 tweets.
https://twitter.com/RadiantPhysics/status/648198994276012034
When I first researched these events, I found that KKH’s photographs were all archived in the Corbis Images repository. About a month ago, I noticed that the photos from March 22, 2014, were no longer there. A couple of days ago I noticed that ALL of KKH’s were deleted from the archive.
But it gets even more interesting. As I need to reference another link, I will create another post.
@Lauren H: In the past month, Corbis which was owned by Bill Gates, was sold to a Chinese company amidst fears of censorship of important photographs, such as the Tiananman Square protests.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/business/media/with-corbis-sale-tiananmen-protest-images-go-to-chinese-media-company.html?_r=0
As part of the deal, Getty Images is marketing the Corbis images outside of China.
I was not able to find KKH’s photos in the Getty Image archive. However, I was able to find some (but not all) of KKH’s photos in the Reuters photo archive. The radar data photo, for instance, is in the Reuters archive. The photos from March 22 are not.
It may be that the decision to remove some of the important photos that document meetings between the Chinese NOK and the Malaysians was made for business reasons. Or, it may be due to Chinese censorship.
LaurenH:
If the times and locations shown in Factual Information 1.1.3(b) Figures 1.1E and 1.1F are correct, there is not enough time for a 270 degree turn right, not even enough time to fly the two left turns shown in ATSB’s figure 2. The plane must have turned earlier, approximately as shown as “steady turn” (just added) in the chart IGARItracks I posted 31 Januari at 8:44 AM.
That would fit the description of the military radar observation in F.I. 1.1.3(a): “At 1721:13 UTC [0121:13 MYT] the Military radar showed the radar return of MH370
turning right but almost immediately making a constant left turn to a South Westerly direction.”
If the plane did turn right 270 degrees, then all of the above must be very wrong.
VictorI,
Thanks for that link to the video – I had not seen it before and was not aware that is was the source of what I have called the “corkscrew turn” picture. It would be interesting to know how it was created, because it gets the overall path of the diversion correct (as least as far as we know, given that we have not had access to any raw data), but the details and timing (which is shown in the clock in the upper left) are off. E.G., the path from KL to IGARI is close but not correct.
@sk999: It looks as though the video was made based on statements on March 15, 2014, from a Malaysian Air Force officer who said:
– Around 17:30 UTC, the plane began flying low to avoid radar
– Around 17:30 UTC, the plane was in a circle in a clockwise direction
– The plane flew north and passed over a drilling platform (Note: It looks as though the platform was in the vicinity of the Malaysia-Thailand Joint Development Area)
– The plane flew over Kota Bharu and along the Malaysian-Thai border towards Penang
– At Penang, the plane turned towards Pulau Perak
– The radar signal disappeared just after Pulau Perak
– The radar signal reappeared briefly at waypoint VAMPI
– After that, the radar coverage of other countries is poor
– After VAMPI, there are two possible headings: west into Somalia, or north into Mongolia through either Thailand or Myanmar.
– Somalia is possible because the country is in a state of anarchy. Southern Mongolia is possible because there are airports used by smugglers.
(On March 12, AF Chief General Rodzali Daud had stated that the plane was last seen at 18:40 UTC. This might explain where the times in the videos originated.)
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh-CN&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.soulu365.com%2Fa%2Fnews%2F32582.html
@all
Things are slow, so forgive me for a bit of humor.
If one were to Google “MH370 Christmas Island” the very first link is “Sense and Nonsense in MH370 Coverage” by our very own Jeff Wise.
Jeff is very cool, IMO. We have had a tense moment or two, but it is all good now.
I think it is clear that the MH370 terminus is far to the North of the current search area. How far is anyone’s guess. For my part, I am liking my pin in the map.
It is interesting to note that Gen Rodzali Daud was forced into early retirement shortly after his MH370 statements. Obviously what he said annoyed his superiors in some way.
@lucy
Thank you for that.
Dennis,
Everyone likes the location, in which he invested most of the time:
Jeff – Baikonur;
ALSM and DS – around 38S;
Bobby – around 40S;
Sk999 – around 31S;
you – around CI;
I – around 28S.
All,
Earlier I forgot to mention that I looked through both Alec Duncan’s reports, and identified the following issues:
1. The signal magnitude at Scott Reef station is of order 7.5 Pa, while at RCS it is of order 1.2 Pa, and 0.7 Pa at HA01. Given there are no apparent features that could amplify signal at Scott Reef, I doubt the event recorded at Scott Reef is related to the event recorded at RCS and HA01.
2. Should the source of signal be at ~28S, the arrival time to Scott Reef would be when the instrument was not recording.
3. In the first report Dr Duncan mentioned that no signal was recorded at HA08s. That is weird because HA08s is located relatively close to the estimated source location. Dr Duncan has explained this effect by “shaddow” due to Chagos Archipelago. However, it is weird to me that signals at RCS, HA01 and especially Scott Reef, which are also in the “shaddow”, were unaffected.
4. My triangulation using RCS, HA01 and Scott Reef ends up at Omani-Yemen coast, but exact location is getting very sensitive to the input, such as delay and assumed sound speed. In his paper Dr. Duncan also used bearing at HA01, which might be the source of discrepancy.
5. As I mentioned earlier, there is a second “triangulation” solution. But the location falls onto Australian mainland; thus it can be discarded.
6. Recently found ship wreck shows that apparently there is no 10m-thick layer of mud covering the seabed, as stated before. Thus there are zones with relatively hard seabed to generate sound on the impact.
I have not received any comments from Curtin University with regard to my points #1 to 4.
Good thing for the preservation of General Daud’s
statements were preserved and brought forward to compare to the official story. There is a narrow section of Thailand which it shares with Myanmar. It could be the escape route out of the GoT MH370 took heading north.
If General Daud’s early retirement has anyting to do with his early statements concerning the MH370, then it would indicate that his statements contained information which was not intended for the public. He had no clearance from higher ranks or political leadership to go in such detail.
Imho that is an indicator, that the early statements concerning the flightpath as recorded by military radars was not manipulated and can be connsidered as a narrative of the raw radar data. They may not have been 100% confirmed, double checked and true, but sure they were not intentionally tempered with. There are errors in the observations or the narrative of them like the turn back at IGARI, which can be explained with an early attempt to correlate the observed data with the performance data of an airliner.
Bottom line would be, the aircraft was observed turning back, changing altitude wich resulted in dropping low out of radar range and later on climbing back to higher altitudes. This observation was not necessarily a life observation, it most probably was discovered when examining the tapes later. And General Daud’s conclusion is pretty clear, he saw those maneuvers as suitable and as intention to avoid radar coverage. To make such observations and conclusions altitude readouts to the exact numbers like some claim are not necessary.
As these data did support human intervention it soon became inappropriate to stick to those data, and his forced retirement was a necessary step to get him out of the public view and away from the oficial investigation.
The interesting question is, what kind of motive is there to make the disappearance of MH370 to look like an accident rather than what it really is, an act of crime.
If we doubt those early radar informations completely because they do not fit the standard constant altitude / constant mach autopilot models, general Daud’s forced early retirement has served its purpose.
Oleksandr – nice catch regarding the seabed. A factor in annual sea level rise(normal in an intergalacial period) is the gradual sedimentation of the oceans. Where the search is occurring appears relatively stable given the distance from land? At both poles where ice melt has been observed they have in the last decade discovered vast ridge lines of active volcanoes with thick layers of basalt even at depths of 4000 mts – from recent eruptions. I had never heard of mud volcanoes until they crashed the towfish into one but looking at their distribution and general size it would be stunningly unfortunate to crash a plane on top of one.
I was pleased to hear that Fugro are revisiting some of the more challenging areas before the funds run out because I know what the claims will be if it all winds up empty and we are already seeing that. In the beginning it was a case of – this shouldn’t take long – this will be over sooner rather than later etc. These days Fugro are useless – gaps everywhere – no confidence in the search etc.
It may well be that Dr Duncan has a much better understanding of this seabed now than he did in March 2014. Would be interesting indeed to have him relaxed and open on the subject because I always felt he felt he was in a minefield.
Victor, thanks for the links to the early reports attributed to the KKH photos and Daud’s statements. As Retired F4 says, there was clearly a range of things said early on before the political “message control” machinery kicked in. I remain intrigued by the early Thai report. Original seems to be AP, but no transcript that I have been able to lay hands on. No matter what kind of turn was made, Thai radar should have seen it pretty soon thereafter and on its way back SW. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/thailand-gives-radar-data-10-days-after-plane-lost
I remain convinced that there is a lot more radar data not yet disclosed and that it will shed significant light on what happened.
@jeff @all
great article, congrats; in the army now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLf9q36UsBk
18:40 UTC (2:40 local time) is the original time given by Malaysia Airlines for the loss of contact.
“SEPANG: Malaysia Airlines (MAS) confirms that flight MH370 is missing. MAS says Subang Air Traffic Control lost contact with the aircraft at 2.40am, Saturday.”
http://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2014/03/08/missing-plane-mas/
@sk999: (1/2) I suspect that the 18:40 UTC time is related to when a particular phase of the SAR was declared and not to when radar contact was lost by the ATC. ICAO has specific definitions for the following phases: Uncertainty, Alert, and Distress
http://www.icao.int/APAC/Meetings/2014%20ATMSG2/AI6%20WP33%20Efficient%20SAR%20Actions%20-%20Review%20of%20Annex%2011%20Provisions%20(India).pdf
@Oleksandr
“Everyone likes the location, in which he invested most of the time:”
it’s not about the time, it’s about the approach…both Dennis and me chose motivational approach so our most likely location had to be basically same(although I’m open to anything down to your 28S, depending on degree of navigational confusion) and time invested can’t change anything there unless we get some new facts which is unlikely at the moment
@sk999: (2/2) In the case of MH370, the declaration of “Uncertainty” was delayed by 38 minutes and the declaration of “Alert” or “Distress” was delayed by 7h 21m.
http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/air-transport/2015-11-05/civil-aviation-search-and-rescue-worldwide