Further MH370 Drift Analysis Casts Added Doubt on Current Search Area

Brock McEwen has released a new reverse-drift analysis of the MH370 debris that has been found in the western Indian Ocean. The executive summary is below.

Broadly speaking, Brock’s new paper supports the conclusion of his earlier work on the subject, and also parallels the findings of GEOMAR and Météo France, as I’ve written about earlier–namely, that reverse drift analysis suggests that the debris did not originate within the current search zone.

In conducting his analysis, Brock has erroneously included objects found in the Maldives which did not come from MH370, but my understanding is that the inclusion of this bad data did not materially change his results.

The Australian is reporting that “Despite finishing his term as the head of the ATSB without finding MH370, [Martin] Dolan said he remained hopeful the aircraft would be found” and believes the search should continue. The full story is behind a paywall but Amanda Rose has provided a screenshot here. Also of interest in the article is the assertion that, due to bad weather, the search might stretch on through October.

Meanwhile the New Straits Times says that “The ministerial tripartite meeting on the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 will be held on July 19, Transport Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai said Friday… Liow reportedly said that the meeting would deliberate on the next course of action regarding the search for the aircraft, which went off radar on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board while on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.” China, Malaysia and Australia have long said that the search will end after the current 120,000 sq km search area has been scanned, but some observers hold out hope that the rash of recent debris finds will encourage officials to press on.

Screen Shot 2016-07-01 at 7.16.39 AM

210 thoughts on “Further MH370 Drift Analysis Casts Added Doubt on Current Search Area”

  1. Dear Brock,

    Your analysis is bang on.

    Of note, GEOMAR gave The ASOVE Team a 95% probability of accuracy with the soft ditch site we identified to Interpol “before” the flaperon was found on Reunion Island.

    Of note, evidence related to the tip received at asove.net “before” the UAV debris was discovered in the Maldives confirms the UAV debris from the Maldives is associated with MH370.

    Of note, evidence related to the tip received at asove.net “before” the UAV debris was discovered on Kangaroo Island confirms the UAV debris on Kangaroo Island is associated with MH370.

    Of note, reverse examination of the limited evidence associated with the Mauritius debris confirms said debris is not associated with MH370

    I reiterate the following claims;

    – MH370 will not be found in the SIO.

    – The Curtin detections are UAV(s)

    – The BOB site is relevant to MH370

    Thank you kindly Brock and have a great Canada Day.!

    Respect,

    Andre Milne
    Unicorn Aerospace
    Military Technology Development
    unicornaerospace.com

    ASOVE – Director of Investigations
    asove.net

  2. May like it or not I read this drift study as an anti drift study regarding the usefullness of drift studies in general.

    If only conclusions are the debris does not come from the current search area nothing new is said and when the debris can come from almost anywhere in the IO it’s not usefull in the investigation of trying to narrow a possible new search area IMO.

    Further @Brock McEwen has included Maldives debris which is not supported by any evidence or taken serious by official (and most unofficial) investigators.

    It suggests to remove possible search areas far from the 7th arc and with that suggests to dismiss the ISAT data and stear the direction of a possible search area in the direction of areas in which the Maldives debris can be made more credible.
    A view he currently supports himself.
    It therefore also casts some shadow on the objectiveness of this study IMO.

    Summerizing: this study is only helpfull in once again confirming the conclusion of other studies the search area must be north of the current search area IMO.

  3. @Brock
    Thanks for the model. What do yellow and red dots indicate? It would be helpful to show 7th arc on diagram.

  4. @Trip if you re-read you will see that there is a clear key for the yellow and red points. 7th arc is indicated (blocked out area with diagonal “fuzzy bit”)

  5. thx for the analysis Brock, you have strengthened the case for moving search to the north however I doubt officials would listen…they are stuck

  6. @Brock McEwen

    It might seem by being so critical on this study I don’t respect your work.
    That’s surely not the case for I truly do.

  7. @DrBobby – I did a 2D layout on google maps and found your 4D point to be within about 10nm of a line from NIXUL to OLPUS.

  8. @Brock

    I will reiterate that you have provided a nice piece of work. However, I am reminded of a remark made at a meeting I was in with Dr. Spilker (founder of Stanford Telecom and a legend of status similar to Dr. Viterbi). One of the attendees remarked that some result or other was even better than the theory predicted. Spilker glibly remarked that if that were the case, then the theory is wrong.

    So it goes with your analytics. If the most probably areas do not coincide with locations on the 7th arc, they are most likely not correct or not properly framed. The 7th arc is virtually unassailable relative to a terminus.

  9. @DennisW
    “So it goes with your analytics. If the most probably areas do not coincide with locations on the 7th arc, they are most likely not correct or not properly framed. The 7th arc is virtually unassailable relative to a terminus.”

    At best analytics only get you in the neighborhood…

    All of the proposed tracks remind me of the squiggly lines the weather forecasters give us for a hurricane path (cyclone in the southern hemisphere). They even average the outputs of the models and still miss the mark…

  10. As an aside I found this from the New Straits Times IRO the Tanzanian piece, quite amusing:

    ‘Fishermen who found the suspected wing fragment last month refused to hand it over until they were given two million Tanzanian shillings ($909; 816 euros) as a reward from aviation officials.’

    What was it we were saying here about offering a reward for debris? Seems it may not be necessary! : )

  11. @George

    True, but the “neighborhood” defined by the BTO’s is manageably small relative to being very close to the arcs. To me the problem is “where on the arc”, not “if on the arc”.

  12. I suggest lets get real on this.
    The Maldives ‘flap’ was compared with an Airbus outboard flap. As we know now a B777 outboard flap is not at all like this. Besides this piece is not available for investigation anymore for it is burnt and gone. So of no use at all anymore.
    The fire bottle found is not from a B777 so also not of any use.
    The small honeycomb piece is impossible to relate to any specific aircraft or otherwise to something else. So also without any use.

    Acoustic events like the ‘Curtin boom’ are so random and often occuring and the event of a plane impacting a watersurface so very low on the Richter scale that it’s only measurable within a short distance of ~fifthy miles or so from a hydrophone, it’s not of any use also.

    This unusefull ‘evidence’ is only distracting from what the debris, the drift studies and the Inmarsat data are obviously telling us now:

    -MH370 crashed/ditched somewhere around the 7th arc north of the current search zone

    -MH370 did not impacted with a very high speed

    -MH370 was probable controlled with human input till the end of its flight or at least a part of it after FMT

    IMO you can choose to ignore the facts that are available now but it won’t lead to anything usefull in the light of a possible better defined new search area.

  13. @Ge Rijn

    Agree with what you say above except for the nature of the impact. While I think you are right, I would prefer to base that conclusion on expert forensics. I don’t have any qualifications to offer an opinion in that domain. Having said that, I am disappointed that nothing that I know of has been made public by the forensic analysts.

  14. @Ge Rijn – How can you say it did not impact at high speed? We do not know how it impacted, but using information from China Airlines 006 and Silk Air 185 and comparing it with the debris found from MH370 it would appear that the MH370 impact was very violent.

  15. @DennisW

    “To me the problem is “where on the arc”, not “if on the arc”.”

    Exactly

  16. @DennisW @Lauren H

    It’s just my opinion maybe I had to state that more clearly.

    Offcourse we have to wait for expert forensics but with no information from that side coming through I think it’s obliged and usefull to investigate on our own.
    In this way we allready identified the Tanzania piece and are able to work on that further before official conformation and put pressure on the official investigation showing them people are still alert and watching every step they make with critical views and own investigations.

    @Lauren H

    As I pointed out before to you with arguments I don’t agree. Debris from that accidents is not comparable IMO. Also like MS804 this debris is much more shattered, wrinkled almost beyound recoqnition.
    Non of the MH370 debris so far is like this.
    The outboard flap piece rules out a seperation by flutter so also a high speed impact IMO. It’s just my opinion based on what I see and deduce from it. Time will tell.

  17. @Ge Rijn

    I agree. Just trying to be as sanitary as possible. No harm in suspecting a controlled ditch so long as you remain open minded about it.

  18. Hello to all of you. I am an avid follower of this site. I check it regularly. Most of what you all list is far over my head (so technical!), but I always try to understand. I am asking today for someone, anyone, to explain to me what ‘ditching’ is. Please! Is it something like trying to land on water, gently, hoping it will float or is it diving in! Thank you. Please excuse my ignorance. Ps, I wish there was a ‘like’ button, for I have had a good laugh at some remarks here. Regards, Linda.

  19. Hi Linda,

    Google is your friend most of the time. Cut-paste below from a Google search on “ditching”.

    —————————————————————–
    The phrase “water landing” is also used as a euphemism for crash-landing into water an aircraft not designed for the purpose, an event formally termed ditching. In this case, the flight crew knowingly make a controlled emergency landing in water. Ditching of commercial aircraft are a rare occurrence.
    —————————————————————–

    Personally, I would be inclined to call any controlled landing attempt on a surface not specifically designed for that purpose to be categorized as ditching. Also many posters here disambiguate the term by using the phrase “controlled ditch”.

  20. Thanks, Jeff.

    A couple of minor corrections:

    – the study may have the practical effect of a “reverse” analysis, but I would not want readers to get the impression that this was a ranking of 745 Indian Ocean candidates, based on reverse drifts from a dozen or so pieces of debris. It is in fact the converse: I ran 745 forward drifts, and ranked each based on how well each explained a dozen or so pieces of debris. The advantage of the latter is that all runs can be properly adjusted to reflect seasonality in current patterns.

    – it is not “erroneous” merely to consider the possibility that the Maldives debris is authentic, and to explore the implications of including them in the analysis. Because I still believe we can all rally around the principle that holding search leaders accountable is worthwhile – regardless of pet perp or plot – I worked hard to respect the (to me, perplexing) view that the Maldives debris should be ignored, by showing results both with and without those items included. The key exec summary chart above, for example, excludes them. Anyone determined not to consider the Maldives debris and its potential implications can do so merely by skipping slides 22-25.

  21. @Brock
    Well said. Although I haven’t had time to digest your paper fully I was just about to post a comment that it was based on forward drift, like Richard Godfrey’s June 2 paper and also you have provided results with and without including the Maldives debris. Thanks for your hard work.

    I don’t agree with many here that ISAT data is sacrosanct; IMO it may be partly or totally wrong. Ditto the radar data. I know these thoughts are completely unpalatable to many here. In fact I agree at this stage with completing the current search and going no further unless really good evidence comes to light which can inform a new search. Not holding my breath. I have great respect for all those who have calculated possible flight paths and also those folks actually out there in the harsh seas searching.

    @all
    Someone recently (Ron?) made a comment about a cover-up which could in fact be justified… maybe that poster can provide some background this?

  22. Thank you Brock for your excellent report. As a fellow Canuck, I value your input in this case.

    I’m not technical in the least, except being a frequent flyer. But in light of events of the past couple years, I’m not so inclined to get in another plane any time soon.

    I do tip my hat to all the great minds on this forum whom have input into this case. Math & numbers were never my thing, still aren’t. So to me its all mumbo jumbo but I will not question anyone’s calculations because I do not know or understand it. I leave that to the experts.

    Here’s hoping that they will extend the search further north. Its becoming blatantly obvious that Malaysia doesn’t want to search for the plane nor do they want it found IMO. If they did they would’ve started searches on the islands around reunion when the flaperon was first found. Instead, it has been up to regular citizens to search and find these items, some looking, others just finding.
    All the debris that has been found thus far is indicative of a more northern area for the crash site (just my opinion again in light of areas of debris finds).

    Now isn’t it strange that exiting ATSB head honcho Dolan now stating the search should continue further north…. hmmmmm Is that because he is free to speak now or is it just blowing hot air, hope it’s not the latter.

    Bugsy

  23. Dennis:

    Ditching refers to landing on water specifically. When a pilot lands on solid earth, other than at an airport, it is called an “off field landing”. Off course, if an attempted ditch or off field landing goes badly, it is a crash.

  24. @airsealandman
    “He tracked down one of the military people involved with maneuvers
    in that general area at that time”
    Thanks – just a query, when you report ‘maneuvers’, do you understand
    that was said as meant in the most general sense of the word, or was
    it perhaps in reference to some military exercise occuring in the
    region in the days or weeks prior to MH370 disappearance?

    @DennisW
    If we accept the Cyclone Gillian Wiki as correct, the storm cell
    associated with pre-Cyclone Gillian was in fact located in the
    Gulf of Carpentaria circa 8th March, and passed eastwards from
    there until much later moving westwards. It had an effect on the
    search for 9M-MRO but would not have affected 9M-MRO, if you take
    as a given that 9M-MRO flew within the area bounded by the 7th Arc
    (& even allowing for a hundred or so additional km beyond the Arc).

    (@Ge Rijn
    I don’t regard it as discourteous to discuss it, however I move on
    to salute your underlaying line of reasoning, that 9M-MRO flew much
    slower than any of the various steady-state cruise modes.)

  25. @Ken Goodwin:

    “Controlled landing just above stall speed would be a perfect ditching.”

    There is more to it than that, as discussed in the NTSB’s report on the Hudson river ditching.

  26. @Brock,

    Great piece of work. Thanks.

    @all. Has Blaine already visited Christmas Island :-)?

  27. @buyerninety

    I suppose you mean my ‘one engine flight after FMT’ suggestion?
    My underlaying reasoning was/is not a much slower flight as all other steady state cruise modes. I don’t know how fast the plane could have flow on one engine during cruise. I read somewhere ~400kt at 25000ft. I read @airlandseeman mention ~480kt. The last figure won’t be that much slower as other cruise modes?

    My underlaying reasoning was/is just the suggestion to undertake a calculation on a steady state cruise mode on one engine after FMT and see what comes out.
    I don’t have the expertise to do it so I called upon the experts.

    If they -like you- choose to ignore it I have no problems with that.
    I assume then they probably have good reasons to do so at least for the moment.

  28. Ge Rijn Posted July 2, 2016 at 5:07 AM: ” I don’t know how fast the plane could have flow on one engine during cruise. I read somewhere ~400kt at 25000ft. ”

    I posted some information on the thread “Blaine Alan Gibson Finds 3 Possible MH370 Debris …”, Page 14, June 20 at 5:14 PM

  29. @Gysbreght

    Yes thank you. I think I took this info from your answer there with the diagram in dropbox.

    I still think it’s one of possible flight modes after FMT that would lead the plane to a more northern area. But I won’t push it further and leave the rest to others to judge.

  30. @Gysbreght

    One question for you to ask if I understood your diagram well:

    OEI (One Engine Inoperative) V/F (velocity versus fuel consumption) at 450kt/25000ft is 70 Nautical Miles per 1000kg fuel?

  31. There has been another round of ill informed discussion going around elsewhere re BFO values. Here is a quick reminder of how MH370 motion effects the BFO ITVO the search area.
    https://goo.gl/1ub30k

  32. @ GE Rijn:

    No, the two upper lines (full symbols) indicate Fuel Mileage (V/F) which must be read on the left scale. The two lower curves (open symbols) indicate TAS which must be read on the right scale.

    The OEI LRC speed at 180 tons, FL250, ISA is 386 kt TAS and the V/F is 70 NM/1000 kg of fuel (same as AEO).

  33. @airlandseaman:

    In your first two graphs the time is not stated. I take that to be 00:19:29 ?

  34. @ALSM

    Nice graphics, Mike. I think it is important to point out that the AES compensation is calculated with the assumption that the satellite is stationary over the equator. If the satellite was not “dithering” we would be left with nothing relative to BFO information. Likewise your plots would change if they were computed for the same aircraft parameters at a different time (different satellite position relative to the stationary assumption).

    Lots of moving parts here for sure. Pun intended.

    Of course, there is always the question of how good (and timely) the speed and heading information used for the AES compensation actually is. The “timely” part refers to the update rate of the sensors. If the aircraft were turning during a handshake event there will be small errors introduced by virtue of the fact that the heading information lags the true heading of the aircraft when the AES transmission actually takes place.

    Lastly, the BFO accuracy is highly dependent on the stability of the AES reference frequency. I thought one of the most valuable things to come out of the DSTG book was figure 5.4 which is representative of the frequency drift one might expect from the AES reference oscillator.

  35. @DennisW

    I was hesitating to reply to ALSM, fearing you would accuse me of nitpicking. So your reply is particularly welcome.

  36. @ALSM: To be precise, does the speed really represent true airspeed, or does it represent groundspeed? If airspeed, at what altitude, because wind varies with altitude.

  37. @Gysbreght

    Peace. I truly do appreciate your inputs. Please ignore the outbursts I have from time to time. Probably reflects my frustration with the “authorities” more than anything else.

  38. Gysbreght: Yes, of course, the time assumed for the location given was 00:19. I was trying to prove insight into the fundamental relationship of horizontal motion to BFO vs. vertical motion to BFO at a representative end point. Although the absolute numbers change, the main takeaway is the same for any location and time.

    DennisW: Yes, the “…AES compensation is calculated with the assumption that the satellite is stationary over the equator.” However, even if that wasn’t the case, again, the main takeaway is the same. There is no evidence to suggest the correct nav data was not sent to the SDU and BFN. I think that is a solid assumption. The BFO Bias accuracy is a function of OXCO drift, but the available data suggests the worst case drift is on the order of 10Hz. Even if there was a large change in temperature, the BFO Bias would not have changed more than ~30 Hz. These are small errors compared to a nearly 300 Hz change in BFO values at the end.

    Victor: Thank you for catching the label error. Yes, all the speeds should be ground speed, not TAS. And thank you for teaching me about this subject, and providing the software to generate all the graphs. Everyone including Inmarsat and ATSB owe you big time for spotting this important “feature” in the Inmarsat AES compensation very early. I’m pretty sure it was your work on the vertical Doppler effect that helped the ATSB SWG to make sense of the final BFO values. Before that, they were ready to dismiss them as unreliable.

    ALL: I would hope the main message here does not get lost in the quibbles about footnotes. The BFO data is far more sensitive to vertical motion than it is to horizontal motion, no matter where the airplane is, where the satellite is, or what time it is.

  39. @airlandseaman

    With the risk of being a bore asking things in this matter..I hope you don’t mind..

    Am I right in conluding a descent rate of ~1800ft/min between 00:11 and 00:19:27 from the last diagram?
    Wouldn’t that be close to the descent rate of a glide?

  40. @ALSM

    Yes, all true points. I knew where you were headed with the illustrations relative to the end of flight implications pretty much from the get-go. You could be quite right. I don’t really know. We all have dogs in different fights. Frankly, I have chosen to discard any BFO values after 00:11 simply because I don’t regard them as trustworthy.

    My own “hot button”, is not what happened in the 8 minutes or so between 00:11 and the water entry, but rather what happened in the time between the FMT and the water entry. It is over this extended time period where the accumulation of small errors gets integrated to produce much greater uncertainties in the terminal location than how fast the aircraft may have plunged into the ocean.

  41. If I do some simpel amature calculating and I take the diagram as I see it, the descent between 00:19:29 and 00:19:37 was ~10000ft.
    This comes to ~1550km/h. Far beyond the speed of sound. Is this right and possible?

  42. Ge Rijn:

    The descent did not start at 00:11. That was the time of the 6th arc. Fuel exhaustion did not occur until ~00:17:30. That is when it lost the autopilot and started turning to the left. The implied vertical acceleration between 00:19:29 and 00:19:37 is 0.68 Gs. That is not without precedent, as documented in the FI appendices. The increase in vertical speed was about 10,000 ft/min in 8 seconds. As crazy as it sounds, that can happen. We have seen it in real incidents, like China Air 006, descending at 30,000 ft/min (https://goo.gl/wQoipM) and many simulations. At 00:19:37, the implied vertical velocity component was about 15,000 feet/min, which is 148 kts. Of course, the total velocity was probably approaching Mach 1, where it is known that external surface components start coming off.

  43. @Ge Rijn

    A good “rule of thumb” is that ROC contributes about 3.7Hz per m/sec. This assumes a nominal satellite elevation angle of 45 degrees.

    dF = v*F*cos(45)/C

    where F~1.6 GHz and C ~ 3×10^8 m/sec v = vertical speed in m/sec

    dF ~ v*3.7Hz or ~ 3.7Hz per m/sec

    The difference in Doppler between 00:11 and 00:19:37 is some -254Hz. Assuming the plane was flying nearly level at 00:11 that means that 254Hz may be attributed to ROC.

    -254/3.7 ~ -70m/sec ~ -14000 fpm ~ -250 km/hr

    All approximate, of course, but accurate to better than 10% or so.

    So, if one assigns the change in Doppler near the end of the flight to ROC you can conclude the plane dropped out of the sky pretty darn fast.

  44. @all,

    In response to the discussion regarding One Engine Inoperative for the post-FMT route, my fuel model shows that for OEI Long-Range Cruise there do not appear to be any acceptable route solutions due to insufficient fuel. The PDAs for powered flight until 00:17 are all negative. The closest condition is at FL200 where the PDA is -0.2%.

    I expect PDA to be about 1.5-3.5% for used engines give or take the error in the fuel model and the (hopefully small) uncertainty in the fuel consumption from 17:21 until the FMT.

    For the case of OEI Holding, no acceptable route solutions are possible because of excess fuel. The PDAs for powered flight until 00:17 are very much too high. The smallest PDA I found was 14% at FL250.

    These are some of the many (~42) potential combinations of speed and roll mode control. I will publish a summary of my work on all these combinations once it is complete. Recently I have shown two possible routes ending outside the current search area, including the magnetic heading one ending at 27S. Its PDA is 2.3%, so it appears to be acceptable from a fuel perspective.

  45. @airlandseaman:

    In your Mach 1 experiment the airplane fell twice into a spiral dive.

    The first started about 5 minutes after the second engine flame-out or shut down. The bank angle increased quickly from 15° to 45°, the rate of descent increased from 2000 fpm to 12500 fpm in 44 seconds, average vertical acceleration 0.125 g.

    After a brief period of nearly level flight another dive started about 6.5 minutes after 2nd engine out, bank angle increased rapidly through 90° to inverted at 115°, and rate of descent increased from 3000 fpm to 13500 fpm in 16 seconds, average vertical acceleration 0.35 g.

    What could have caused 0.68 g vertical acceleration without pilot input?

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