Earlier this week the indomitable Brock McEwen completed a much-anticipated statistical analysis of where MH370 debris would most likely wash ashore given a presumptive start point within the current seabed search zone. It’s definitely worth a look, but for the moment I’ll stick to the punch line, which is that while it is quite possible for Indian Ocean currents to carry debris from the search zone to the discovery locations in the western Indian Ocean within the appropriate time frame, Brock was not able to run any simulations in which debris turned up in Africa/Madagascar/Réunion but not in Western Australia. No matter how he changed the parameters, the result came back the same: debris should have washed up in Western Australia long before it washed up anywhere else.
The gap between Brock’s simulations and the actual state of affairs—five pieces of debris in the western Indian Ocean, and none in Australia—indicates, as Brock points out, that “either something’s wrong with the model, or something’s wrong with the search.”
A similar conclusion was reached by a different set of researchers using a different methodology. According to an article in the German newspaper Kieler Nachrichten, scientists from the GEOMAR-Helmholtz Institute for Ocean Research in Kiel (above) have completed a detailed drift analysis of their own in collaboration with colleagues in Great Britain. Simulating the course of two million pieces on a supercomputer, the researchers found that the locations of all five pieces found so far are compatible not with a point of origin in the current search area but instead “the plane, which had 239 people on board, must have crashed a lot further north.” (Hat tip to reader @MuOne for alerting me to this.)
It has long been clear that the wreckage of MH370 will not likely be found in the current search area. This, in turn, means that the “ghost ship” scenario can be ruled out: MH370 did not fly south on autopilot until fuel exhaustion and then plunge into the sea without human intervention. As this fact has become increasingly clear, the most popular backup scenario has been that a suicidal pilot flew the plane southward until it ran out of fuel, then held it in a glide so that it flew further south beyond the search zone. Both of these new drift analyses, however, suggest that this scenario is not correct, either. If the debris originated north of the search area, then the plane must have taken a slow, curving flight under pilot control.
Meanwhile, no further light has been shed on the obviously problematic absence of marine fouling on the African debris pieces. Neither Australian nor Malaysian officials have released any information based on the analysis that the Australians say they have carried out. This state of affairs should be troubling for everyone interested in the mystery of MH370, but naturally it is particularly difficult for the families of the flight’s missing crew and passengers. After I published my last piece on this topic, Chinese next-of-kin issued a statement which read, in part:
Following aviation writer Jeff Wise’s recent article questioning debris found near the coast of Africa, MH370 China families have restated their assertion the missing may still be alive and call for an offer of amnesty in exchange for the release of the missing… An extensive surface search and ocean floor search have found no supporting evidence MH370 crashed in the Southern Indian Ocean.… The sum of this is that there is no reason to believe MH370 crashed in the Southern Indian Ocean and reason to believe in a wholesale attempt at deception. We believe our missing loved ones may still be alive.
I understand that not everyone is ready to accept that the absence of marine life can only mean that the debris was planted. However, I take issue with the implication (made most publicly in a piece in the IBTimes ) that raising questions about the provenance of these crucial pieces amounts to a “conspiracy theory” or that it unjustifiably raises the next-of-kins’ hopes that their loved ones might be alive. If we want to solve this mystery, then we must deal in facts, not sling innuendo. Anyone who is legitimately concerned about solving this mystery will no doubt hope that authorities in Australia and Malaysia will respond forthrightly to the troubling questions that have arisen. It is not acceptable for this information to be buried.
UPDATE 5/1/16: After rereading the above it occurs to me that a very reasonable question concerning the GEOMAR research would be, “how much farther north must it have crashed?” The following diagram put out by the team in 2015 shows the results of the reverse-drift modeling for the the Réunion modeling, which they say is only reinforced by the inclusion of the locations of the debris found this year.
@Oleksandr
“…the first pairs in both the sequences were absolutely normal
…the very first BFO in 18:25 cluster roughly corresponds to the estimated BFO at IGARI”
I acknowledge that it looks alright, and certainly appears possible / plausible / probable in isolation, yet ’tis tied to an immediately subsequent value, obviously & wildly anomalous. Why are we so swift to accept the first fully, and reject the next equally categorically?
I understand that if ALSM ever admits to any uncertainty, he acknowledges that the first 0x10 logon BFOs at 18:25 and 00:19 might be slightly errant, and that the 00:19 value would likely be MORE accurate, since the OCXO in the SDU had only been offline for a few minutes, not over an hour as at 18:25, and so the SDU would still be close to normal operating temperature, not freezing cold as at 18:25. So, if the first 00:19 value may be slightly off, and if slightly off is better than expectable at 18:25, then perhaps the initial 0x10 BFO value at 18:25 is more-than-slightly-off ?
Is there no way to argue, that, by 18:25, the electrical circuits of MH370 were configured unusually, w/ various miscellaneous CBs disengaged, such that power was flowing into the Left Main Bus & SDU, through a very circuitous route, from a single engine, say the right engine? Such that, after single engine flameout around 00:15, power to the SDU was interrupted, b/c the main generator of the other engine was not operating, and the backup engine generator doesn’t activate quickly? Something like that, anything like that??
Unusual configuration of electronics + single engine flame-out => power interrupt to SDU, even with other engine still providing thrust…
plane flies on one engine well past 7th arc ?
i guess you will say, that the lack of subsequent IFE logins at around 00:21 suggests that the SDU had been depowered again at around 00:20, which happens automatically during “power shedding” after the three main generators (L/R engine main generator + APU) are all offline…
but, is it absolutely impossible, for all of the main GENERATORS to be offline… yet still have one ENGINE TURBINE guzzling gas & providing thrust? We know that human interventions pulled CBs and stopped & rerouted power? So, perhaps, an ENGINE had become disconnected from its main electrical GENERATOR? Such that no electricity supplied the SDU, which went offline, even though “powered” flight still continued, well past the 7th arc?
i think i’m suggesting, that one engine had been ELECTRICALLY isolated, such that motive power & thrust had become disconnected from electrical power & voltages. Such that one engine was “electrically invisible”, and had no further effects on the SDU. Afterwards, the SDU only “knew” about the other engine, whose flameout around 00:15 de-energized the SDU, which came back to life either due to a brief re-light of the one electrical-power-providing engine, or due to the brief activation of a backup system…
But meanwhile the other engine was whirring away, providing motive power well past the 7th arc ?
Seems like if we could prolong powered flight past the 7th arc, then we could connect all of the most officially popular high-and-fast flight paths, southwards to the March 2014 satellite-imaged debris fields… Then everybody would have been more-than-less right from the start, best flight paths and best observations, already quite strikingly in agreement… bridgeable because…
extra-ordinary configuration of electrical power on the plane had isolated (say) the left engine, leaving it free to whir away well past the 7th arc, even while primary electrical power to the SDU did not continue (much) past the 7th arc ??
Once again, pulled CBs => loss of electrical power from both engines need NOT imply loss of MOTIVE power from both engines (one of which had become ELECTRICALLY isolated) ???
@Victorl
FMT was to port. Lower-and-slower SIO flight paths veer to port. Any scenario, like pilots faint in the middle of the FMT, and unconscious bodies slumped over controls impair AP, preventing complete flight-leveling, such that the a/c remains slightly banked and gradually keeps turning to port, for the next few hours ??
Probably off-topic:
News article from ABC today (1 May)
“French PM Manuel Valls headed to Australia for talks with Malcolm Turnbull after submarine deal”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-01/french-pm-heading-to-australia-after-mega-subs-contract/7373856
and from a Reuters article 2 Sep 2015
“France is confident it will sell 18 Dassault-built fighter jets to Malaysia after submitting a formal proposal, a senior diplomatic source said on Wednesday – extra firepower for one of China’s neighbours in the South China Sea.”
(Longtime lurker here.)
@DennisW
“a hijacking for cargo or pax has never occurred in the history of commercial aviation”
1) There’s a first time for everything (see: 9/11).
2) If you steal cargo on the ground, you then have to get it out of whatever country it is in at the time. If you steal it in the air, in particular precisely at the point of transfer from one country’s ATC to another’s, you’re halfway home, logistically speaking. Hiding under the cover of radar darkness is surprisingly effective.
First, please consider a Great Circle route around the earth. That’s almost 22,000nm, and even at 500kts, that would require over 44hr to fly.
Now, please consider the arc-to-arc-on-the-ground distances, and the arc-to-arc times, and the implied minimum-perpendicular-to-the-rings ground speeds, i.e. the slowest speed required to reach from one ring to the next. If you plot those speeds vs. time, on the “ghost flight” leg (19:41 to 00:11), then you observe that they increase sinusoidally from -150kts or so (19:41 ring inside of 18:38 ring) to +330kts (23:15 to 00:11).
Thus, the perpendicular-to-the-rings component of the a/c speed zeroed out around 20:00-20:30, and the best-fit curves predict maximum of ~350kts near 00:30-01:00. And so, the best-fit sinusoids have a quarter-period (0 to max) of 4-5 hours, implying a full-period (0 to max to 0 to min to 0) of under 20 hours.
Whereas, even if MH370 had maintained 500kts ground speed the entire flight time, to circumnavigate the globe on a Great Circle would require almost 2 days, twice as long or more as the periodicity actually observed in the a/c BTO-data-derived velocities (perpendicular to the rings) on the southern leg.
If the a/c flew on a Great Circle track, all the way around the world every 45+ hours, then you would expect to see that 45+ hour periodicity in the velocity data — the a/c would slowly veer away from tangential to the ping rings, about 20:00, until it was flying most directly away from the satellite, somewhere near earth’s south pole, no less than 11 hours later.
Instead, the a/c veered away from a Great Circle track, veering eastwards “against” the ping rings more perpendicularly, more quickly.
i feel reasonably confident, that the a/c did NOT fly on a GC route, but instead must have veered progressively eastwards, on a track with a “tighter” turning radius, so resembling something more like a loxodrome constant-angular-heading rhumbline or a constant-magnetic-heading or some other (very) gradual veering to port.
Tangentially relatedly, if the FMT and onset of “ghost flight” occurred at almost the same time, perhaps they actually were precisely simultaneous ? Perhaps they are causally related ? Perhaps pilots succumbed to hypoxia and/or hypothermia, so slumping onto the control yokes, and so pushing the a/c into a maneuver, which happened to be a turn to port? Inadvertent unintentional pilot input scenario?? This hypothesis is slightly marginally testable / verifiable / refutable, in-so-far as slumping onto the yoke and (say) sliding off slightly to the (left) side, could only cause the plane to turn and descend, and so would be incompatible with any subsequent climb… might say something about pilots wearing / not wearing safety harnesses…
Anyway, hypoxia / hypothermia CAUSED the FMT & ghost flight, is the basic idea.
Is it possible that no one was at the wheel?
@Dennis
“The overarching problem I have with a spoof is why? As I have said before, a hijacking for cargo or pax has never occurred in the history of commercial aviation. The obvious reason being that PAX and cargo can be much more easily snatched on the ground. The spoof is simply not credible with respect to motive.”
You should at least aknowledge, that there are always first’s in live. As we do not know yet which pax or which part of the cargo was of interest to the yet unknown culprit it looks far fetched to rigorously discard any motive including cargo or pax as target. Especially as we meanwhile seem to run out of other better plausible motives. The disappearance part of the aircraft and all passengers as part of a hijacking could point to the utmost importance, that no trace could be followed back to the culprits. Criminal action on the ground is always asociated with lots of fallout in witnesses and traces and problems concerning safe extraction.
The way the present investigation is run with snippets of public information and holding back with important information points to more than a rouge pilot looking for a distant grave with 239 people he didn’t know.
@Dennis,
no preference I assure you – basic problem as I’m too thick to understand any of it really, so I just try and ask relevant questions. I sort of understand that it (triangulation/Christmas Island)might be an important find by the person who figured it out, or it might not. That’s as far as my comprehension extends.
I suppose I had in my head a sighting a long while ago by a chap who was flying over that region and thought he saw a plane in the water, with one remaining wing.
I expect everyone has looked into that as well. It looks to have been South East of Nusa Penida which is an island South East of Bali.
I don’t know if that would be too far away – sighting took place on March 12th.
http://www.ibtimes.co.in/exclusive-mh370-australian-businessman-claims-he-saw-white-plane-image-under-water-while-flying-from-melbourne-to-bali-549895
Geomar say the final position of MH370 is a lot further North
This assumes the aircraft is under control and not a ghost flight.
Why are there still suggestions the plane was just flown into oblivion at say 20S to 30S, this is no different to flying into oblivion down where ATSB have been searching.
There does not appear to be any more logic in a 20S to 30S destination than further South, particularly if under control.
There were suggestions early on the plane could have intended landing at Banda Aceh.
The ISAT data clearly shows, unless the plane took of again soon after landing, this could not have happened.
Surely the logical conclusion is if an Indonesian landed was being contemplated such as was considered for Banda Aceh then somewhere on the 7th arc somewhere over water just to the South of a whole range of airports would be where the plane ended up.
If we accept there was a ditching then the plane would have had to go round close to the South coast of Indonesia.
This appears to be what Geomar is saying.
Ìf a plane would land at Banda Aceh, I would think it would take off on remote control afterwards. No jumping pilots then. As said, it would have to be planned very well.
Just trying to include or discard several thinkable scenarios:
– Would there be scenarios thinkable,in which the pilot absolutely needed daylight before a landing could be made or attempted?
If so,would it be a logical thing to follow Indonesia’s coast line low and slow for a good location near an airport at dawn?
– What keeps bugging me is the sighting of several people for the coast of Malaysia who describe a very low flying airplane or even one descending very rapidly/ plummiting out of the sky. http://mh370.bookofresearch.com/witnessclaimsmh370.htm
If I understand correctly, the current opinion is that there were no big leaps in altitude until the FMT.
Which IMO contradicts the earliest reports that did claim low altitude/ ‘ to avoid radar detection’.
DO we know if there has been seriously looked into these eyewitness acounts? Blaine Gibson??
Just for the record: If I’d have to pick a suspect between Hamid an Zaharie, the first one would seem to me to be the most unreliable. Girls in the cockpit? Really.
@Carla
Re Zaharie versus Hamid: I think Hamid was in the wrong place at the wrong time, no more than that. And he was planning to get married.
But I agree with you about girls in the cockpit, absolutely disgraceful!
“And he was planning to get married.”
What if he wasn’t?
@Gysbreght
Bit of a extreme way of avoiding matrimony, if I understand you correctly?
Please consider BFOs after first reboot:
6:25:27 PM 142
6:25:34 PM 273
6:27:04 PM 176
6:27:05 PM 175
6:27:08 PM 172
6:28:06 PM 144
6:28:15 PM 143
If you plot those BFO(t) vs. t, the curve looks like a smooth, exponential decay. As if something kicked the BFO up 130-points to 273, and that anomalous boost slowly decayed away, over the next couple of minutes, until the BFOs were back on nominal trend near 140 or so.
If so, then the high BFOs at 18:27 suffer from a “residual relic anomaly” from the super-high 0x15 BFO at 18:25:34, and are “partly anomalous”. Slow decay to baseline over several minutes sounds like temperature effects within the OCXO oscillator of the SDU.
If true, somewhat-high 170Hz BFOs at 18:27 indicate an additional source of error, i.e temperature effects within the SDU, and do not imply any RoC.
ALSM demands that one accept the initial 0x10 logon BFO as (almost) perfectly accurate, and a simple plot of BFO(t) vs. t appears to immediately imply that, and that it’s actually the next few BFOs over the next couple of minutes that are suspect, as something looking alot like temperature effects appears to slowly subside.
If so, then the initial 0x10 logon at 00:19 is (almost) valid as well, implying the canon picture of rapid descent at ~3000fpm after second engine flameout. Hypothetically, had further BFOs been generated, they would have been moderately anomalous as well (perhaps -50 to -100Hz too low). Something may destabilize the OCXO initially, all three 0x15 logon acknowledgements were “farther from baseline” than the preceding 0x10s (103 vs. 99, 273 vs. 142, -2 vs. 182).
@Erik Nelson
Are you saying that the 00:19 BFO figures might not indicate a rate of descent?
@ROB: “Bit of a extreme way of avoiding matrimony, if I understand you correctly?”
No, you miss the point entirely. In fact it is the opposite. Remember that italian pilot who threatened his ex-wife that he would crash a plane if she didn’t return to him?
Hamid’s fiancé is reported to be a pilot with another Malaysian carrier. To achieve that in a muslim country requires some guts and brains. Suppose the engagement was arranged between their parents, and she had decided not to go through with it?
After all, what do we know about that couple?
@Gysbreght
Sorry if I misunderstood you.
@Rob He was planning to get married so he wouldn’t be inviting girls into the cockpit. ;-).
http://mh370.bookofresearch.com/witnessclaimsmh370.htm
This is the link to picture of the Original (2015)Geomar drift study once more. They state in their latest article that it still fits the newest debris finds nicely.
Interesting to see how much this points to a point of impact that is WAY off the curent search area. It does not explain MAdagascar lack of debris IMO.
@Carla
Thank you for explaining 🙂
http://s32.postimg.org/lnnu54c7p/BTOs_radar_track.png
estimated BTOs along military radar track from Penang to last radar contact, fit almost perfectly onto known BTOs from 18:25-28, consistent with no maneuvering, course changes, accelerations / decelerations…
especially if you attribute all of the BFOs above 145Hz to the anomalous initial frequency spike most obviously attributable to some kind of temperature fluctuation within the SDU crystal oscillator…
According to this picture, the plane made no major maneuvers out of Penang…
It navigated from waypoint to waypoint (VAMPI to MEKAR to NILAM)…
until the FMT, which _was_ a major maneuver and _was not_ directed towards a waypoint (at least not ultimately, no waypoints on 7th arc)…
so i perceive a major change in flight profile, from mostly straight and level via waypoints, to major turn >100deg to nowhere…
about the time that everyone aboard succumbed to hypoxia / hypothermia and the a/c became a “ghost flight”…
so i perceive that hypoxia / hypothermia incapacitated the acting crew, whose lapse into unconsciousness correlates with a major maneuver off-previous-prior-course, to the middle of nowhere…
i offer that N571, at least to IGOGU, was the original plan…
and that (sudden?) incapacitation of the acting pilots (suddenly??) re-diverted the a/c off-planned-course to the SIO
@RetF4
Yes, logically there is a first time for everything. A plane has never been snatched by aliens (that we know of) either. In the face of the unknown all one can do is go with probabilities as best we can characterize them.
@DennisW: Surely you don’t assign equivalent probabilities to a scenario that includes a hijack for cargo/people and a scenario that includes alien capture.
@Brock McEwen: Do you believe there is any point along the 7th arc that is consistent with the discovery and non-discovery of debris to date?
Ron
How deep is oceon from Chrimbo Island at 183NM NE at Bearing 70 Degrees?
http://s32.postimg.org/7ln3y1rz9/FMT_at_IGOGU.png
Pure BTO only plot shows that one “Penang to FMT” track plus one “FMT to SIO” track accurately accounts for all BTO data. It predicts that the estimated BTO at 18:38 was approx. 11900, and that that satellite phone call came hard on the heels of the FMT, immediately prior, almost coincident.
Of course you are always able to hypothesize almost any number & combo of maneuvers, but parsimony implies one straight-and-level, high-and-fast track out of Penang to FMT near IGOGU, whereat the plane (re-)diverted 110 degrees to port, onto a new track arcing out into the SIO.
KLIA -> IGARI (40 min)
Penang -> IGOGU (40-50 min)
SIO
2nd major sharp turn near IGOGU coincides with incapacitation of passengers crew occupants of the aircraft. IGOGU too is an FIR boundary, and another 115 deg to port turn would send the a/c almost due south, along the border, thru waypoints ANOKO and NOPEK.
@Victor
Re: aliens, no. I was speaking metaphorically, but I do believe a hijacking for people or cargo is close to being as improbably as alien abduction. We have not even identified anything the least bit remarkable on the aircraft much less any motivation for an intricate diversion to get to it. People proposing that scenario have a lot of unconnected dots to deal with. The diversion for political motives is much easier to digest – whether against Malaysia or China. Both are easily assimilated candidates.
@DennisW: Nobody doubts that are groups that had a motivation to make a political statement. However, if the abduction was for political reasons, they failed miserably at making their statement, or for that matter, even inferring a link between the disappearance and their political cause. It is hard for me to imagine that such a precisely planned hijacking would have the intended result so ill-conceived.
“I actually know what actually happened”
Something that the Malaysian police doesn’t want to reveal publicly, but doesn’t sound like a political cause or a conspiracy between super powers.
Sorry, posted wrong link last time. Her comes the right one.
http://www.geomar.de/en/news/article/wo-ist-mh370/
This is the link to picture of the Original (2015)Geomar drift study They state in their latest article that it still fits the newest debris finds nicely.
Interesting to see how much this points to a point of impact that is WAY off the curent search area. It does not explain MAdagascar lack of debris IMO
@Victor
Yes, it was very ill-fated if it was a political statement. However, the Malay response in the hours and days after the disappearance strongly suggests people at high levels knew (and know) a lot more than they are telling us. Even ICAO criticized the Malay government for interference early in the search phase. Quite unusual.
I think suicide and mechanical issues can be placed far down on the scenario list. You already know what I think about hijacking. So you are left with the political angle which is what led me to investigate the flight path along the Southern Coast of Indonesia from almost the very beginning. I am still liking that hypothesis despite a couple of major flaws – no attempt to land and no attempt to communicate a terminus.
@VictorI – Two questions regarding the possibility of a flight in Africa being the source of the post 18:25 BTO & BFO data:
Doesn’t the apparent east-west drift of the satellite preclude a “mirror” flight over Africa?
If not, doesn’t the “mirror” flight end in the ocean too?
PS – I was once near fluent* in French but always had problems differentiating masculine objects from feminine ones so I would have never caught the “bon” versus “bonne” error. Good job!
*good enough to have a waiter say, “Vous avez une belle accent.”
I find the discussion on this blog quite interesting. The current discussion about delays in the BTO data and the confidence in the BFO data is quite encouraging. There are strong opinions all over.
I do think people are holding onto crash locations that are becoming less and less possible as various pieces of data mounts against those locations. Example: The South East Indian Ocean is one of those locations. This location is based on current Satellite data analysis. However; nothing was found on the sea floor in SIO with search almost complete. Further South locations do not fit debris being found. No confirmed MH370 debris found in the SIO. Land crash or landing sites can be ruled out unless the greatest conspiracy in modern time is true.
We do know that MH370 crashed in the water. Debris is being found in the Indian Ocean; assuming no planting of debris (no conspiracy).
Drift models do not support a South East Indian Ocean crash with debris not being found in Australia linked to MH370, some common towels being found with no link to MH370; but with debris being found in North West and West Indian Ocean that is linked to MH370. With no debris found in the East Indian Ocean; it does not support sites in the East or SE Indian Ocean. Current debris locations, all in the north west and west Indian ocean, would strongly support a drift model for a crash site in the West / North / Middle of the Indian Ocean; somewhere South of India. Key factors; Locations of debris and locations without debris; they play together. I am not a drift model expert. I have read about them and understand that there are lots of guesses made.
Acoustic data, from below web site, supports a crash site in the same location (somewhere South of India). They even pinpointed a position along a line from the Australian acoustic station to the North West across the Indian Ocean. That positon supports the somewhere South of India in the North Indian Ocean crash site.
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1q34obXJCMfjyCmbh9Sj648UJxg8
Eye witness sightings in the Maldives support a crash site in the same location. The eyewitnesses said the plane came from the north and flew to the South East towards the tip of the Maldives. You can draw a line SE from the Maldives to the acoustic best guess crash location. This web site has all the data in one place; The Acoustic data and the eye witness data fit the same location.
http://mh370.bookofresearch.com/indian-ocean.htm
Lack of much marine debris on the debris supports a crash site near the location of the found debris. This supports the same location; at least much better than places to the East and Southeast. Understand: Could be other reasons for low marine debris.
There are other locations that support the individual pieces of data but more fit the above location than anything else.
I strongly suggest a rethink of the satellite data to determine the cause of the BTO values that would support a crash site in the same location as the acoustic, debris and eyewitness data supports; specifically the last transmission that was cut short. If one can determine the reason for the delays in the BTO values that would fit that crash location they could then work backwards to determine the other true arcs that fit; and generate a flight path over the Indian Ocean. What caused the BTO data to be what it is? Rethink the data analysis.
Anything else will be looked at historically as a mistake.
I do support the low and slow flight theory. If there was smoke in the cockpit, due to a fire, I would think the pilot would drop the flight to a low altitude to allow them to get off oxygen. Might have dialed in an altitude for landing, 2-4k feet, but never was able to make the landing. Overcome by heat and smoke. Might not have; no data to support. The plane would be flying much slower due to altitude. Depends on power setting.
Erik Nelson,
“Why are we so swift to accept the first fully, and reject the next equally categorically?”
Do you know the difference between a thing, which can be broken, and a thing, which can’t be broken? If a thing, which can’t be broken, is somehow broken, it will not be possible to repair it. This is in contrast to the thing, which can be broken.
Likewise about BFO. “Broken” BFO indicates something that never happened before. It does not fit conventional theories. Thus, it is easy to declare such a BFO unreliable, reject it categorically as you put it.
Re: “Such that no electricity supplied the SDU, which went offline, even though “powered” flight still continued, well past the 7th arc?”
This is very unlikely, if not impossible. If one IDG was disconnected, cross-IDG supplies power. When the respective engine flames out, APU would start. If APU went finally down 00:19 due to fuel starvation, how could the other engine continue working? And the timing is consistent with fuel starvation.
Re “i offer that N571, at least to IGOGU, was the original plan…”
I have a permanent problem with N571 and IGOGU… The original plan was Beijing, btw, and certainly not via IGOGU.
@Lauren H: “un bel accent”.
The path of the subsatellite position was primarily north-south. Sometimes it is shown in figures with a different scale for longitude and latitude so it appears more egg-shaped than it was. The variation in longitude is about 0.13 deg while the variation in latitude is about 3.3 deg.
There are mirror paths that terminate on land, especially recognizing that speed and heading changes are permitted since the flight was piloted.
Dennis,
“BTW, the water around CI gets very deep, very quickly. I would not be too quick to dismiss the propagation speed as being incompatible with water depth.”
It is indeed incompatible. The only “consistent” deep water of ~6.5 km is to the north of CI, in the Java trench. The depths to the south are in the typical range from 3 to 6 km, with the average around 4.5 km, shallower near Australia. And again, I can barely imagine how the impact could born such a long wave. You can safely dismiss the required propagation speed as incompatible with water depth.
@Ron
“This reminds me of the TV series “Lost” where a Boeing 777-200ER is dropped into the deepest point of Sunda/Java Trench (more than 7km) as a fake evidence. It’s just about 225nm east of Christmas Island. Would the TV script become a realty with the real MH370? A similar planting was probably done in the case of the submarine Dakar.”
wow…I didn’t watch Lost but after reading about it now I can see striking similarities, the exact same type of plane, falling right around 7th arc behind CI (where I suspect it most probably is)?!
Somebody count the odds…
@Oleksandr
“If one IDG was disconnected, cross-IDG supplies power”
Yes, but what if you pull out the bus-tie breaker ?
@VictorI said: “Regarding the possibility that the log-on to the GES at 18:25 was from another plane that was spoofing the ID to the west of the subsatellite position, it has been some time since we considered that scenario.”
That’s an interesting thought. Planning the exact synchronisation of the two flights would seem to be a difficulty though?
I was thinking more that the ISAT data for an African flight may have been retrieved (hacked) from the ISAT database, edited, and re-inserted with different times and ICAO24.
The problem in both scenarios (live spoof or database spoof) would seem to be the movement of the satellite and its effect on the data – eg. if the satellite was going north at the time of the African flight it would seem unlikely (?) to match later calculations made on the basis of the satellite going south as it was with MH370.
Retrieving a suitable set of data in advance would also indicate advance planning and foreknowledge of any ‘cargo’ on the flight (if that was the intention) rather than a spur of the moment event. Then there’s also the problem of inserting the two phone calls from MAS – and knowing the exact time they were made, and their duration – assuming MAS made them, ie. that the calls weren’t already part of the ‘spoof’ data.
One of the interesting things about the 18.25 logon is the lack of a flight ID. It seems the flight ID is entered as part of the flight plan before takeoff – and on later systems that ID seems to be automatically transferred from the flight plan to the ACARS / AES settings.
If the existing flight plan was deleted and a new flight plan entered that didn’t have the flight ID, that might explain why it wasn’t present at the 18.25 logon.
@VictorI – “bel accent” Now, I’m really embarrassed but, thank you for the correction.
@Lauren H: T’inquiètes! C’est pas grave.
Alien spaceship lying in the water between sweden and finland
http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/the-incredible-mystery-of-the-alien-spacecraft-that-lies-at-the-bottom-of-the-baltic-sea/news-story/acede86f29dcb06c40a89189411c034f
@VictorI
“……. recognizing that speed and heading changes are permitted since the flight was piloted”
If the flight was piloted I find the silence is deafening regarding a flight round to the South of Indonesia.
My Australian friends tell me that flying a constant speed and crossing each BTO after 19:41 onwards including 00:11, with a margin of ±3 nm, MH370 ends up to the North East of Christmas Island.
What I find particularly interesting is that to do this only three prominent waypoints are crossed with straight paths between.
Others are aware of this.
Should this not be seriously considered by the ATSB as a possibility.
VictorI: Ne t’inquiéte pas!
@Carla: sorry for the delayed response. Yes: if an impact ANYWHERE in the IO generated thousands of pieces – which then drifted freely with prevailing currents for 25.8 months – then absence of debris in Madagascar by now seems bizarre.
@Victor: re: “Do you believe there is any point along the 7th arc consistent with discovery & non-discovery of debris to date?”
It is impossible to answer that question definitively – not only are we talking about models which may not be right, but also inputs (number of pieces generated at impact, for instance) which remain hotly disputed.
But if my model was well-built, and well-fed with inputs, then: no, not really:
If impact was between 44 & 32 degrees S latitude, Australia should’ve been saturated by now.
If impact was between 32 & 10 degrees S latitude, Africa should’ve been saturated by now.
The rest of my response is not what you asked, but adds important (to me) context:
(Define “Arc7s” as “MH370 turned south, & hit Indian Ocean near or beyond 7th Inmarsat Arc”)
At least 3 NON-Arc7s theories (which I’ll list in random order, since they all have merit to me, at this point) do a much better job of explaining the debris record than ANY Arc7s impact point:
– NE impact (Sumatra & surrounding)*
– NW impact (Maldives & surrounding)*
– no impact (landing & planted SW debris)**
* particularly if a clean-up was attempted, and what we’re seeing is only what escaped contain
** I have ZERO suspicion of any FINDERS of SW debris – and admit that a planting scenario by “men in black” is a quintessential Extraordinary Claim Requiring Extraordinary Evidence. However, the flaperon in particular struck me as deeply theatrical in nature – a sense the ensuing silence on key elements (its buoyancy, for instance) has done little to assuage.
I’m now wondering whether the flaperon could have been meant merely to divert attention from elsewhere, such as debris piling up in the NW.
We need to drive a firm wedge between belief in a NW IMPACT, and belief in the authenticity of one or more pieces of NW DEBRIS. The latter suggests a NE impact nearly as strongly as it does a NW impact. The archipelago is a massively long set of shallows which runs orthogonal to prevailing currents, and would act as a “strainer” to catch debris from an impact almost anywhere north of the equator.
Finally: all 3 non-Arc7s theories also do a much better job of explaining the REST of the accumulated evidence (notably, the failure to date – and suspicious dysfunction/opacity – of the search effort).
Has this been discussed before as a possible motive: A hijacking for ransom? (Similar to freighters off of the coast of Somalia) To which the response was, “we do not negotiate with highjackers.” Then, to show they were serious, they did their best at making the a/c disappear while not being afraid to die for their cause.
@jeffwise – If I gave you a box full of B777 replacement parts how would you create the pieces to be planted? In other words, other than the flaperon how do you rip a honeycomb section apart without leaving clamp marks?
@Gysbreghth: C’est l’argot, mon pote.
@Brock McEwen: You say that a scenario involving a planting has merit, but then you say you have no suspicion of finders of debris and you believe the a claim that somebody else planted the debris is extraordinary and would require extraordinary evidence. You are trying to have it both ways. Either you believe the planting scenario is possible or you believe it is not possible. (I don’t begrudge people that believe either is true, so you won’t hurt my feelings either way.)
@Lauren H, I have absolutely no knowledge of this topic, unfortunately. But if they tore it apart as artlessly as they handled the marine life of the Africa debris, there probably are clamp marks.
@Oleksandr
Peer review is a wonderful thing, and it is literally the bedrock of true progress. I accept your conclusions (relative to the wave disturbance paper, the paper is not mine as you know), while not completely agreeing with them. I have looked at your stuff in some detail, and it is solid analytically. Your attempts to assign motive to it are pretty lame, however. I am not telling you something you do not already know. I would encourage you to develop a more complete scenario which includes how your flight path came to be flown.