One of the most misunderstood insights into the riddle of MH370 is how the plane’s final path can be derived from Inmarsat BTO data alone.
Recall that the data, which was generated after someone on board caused the Satellite Data Unit (SDU) to re-logon to the Inmarsat Satellite 3F-1 over the Indian Ocean at 18:25, comes in two flavors. The first, the Burst Timing Offset (BTO) data, reveals how far the plane is from the satellite at a given time. This can be mathematically converted into a set of “ping rings” along which the plane must have been at a given time. The BTO data is very well understood and fairly precise, providing an accuracy of within 10 km.
The second, the Burst Frequency Offset (BFO) data, is more more complicated and much fuzzier than the BTO data; its inherent uncertainties are equivalent to a position error of hundreds of miles. It doesn’t have a single physical correlate but is related to how fast a plane is going, what direction it is headed, and where it is located.
For a time after MH370 disappeared, searchers hoped that they could combine these two data sets to identify the area where the plane issued its final ping. After months of work, however, they determined that this would be impossible. The BFO data is just too vague. However, along with the bad news came some good: it turned out that by the clever use of statistics they could figure out where the plane went using the BTO data alone. The methodology developed by Australia’s Defense Science and Technology Group (DSTG) and explained in an ATSB report entitled “MH370 – Definition of Underwater Search Areas” released last December.
Many independent researchers do not understand the technique and believe that it is invalid. For instance, reader DennisW recently opined that “The ISAT data cannot, by itself, be used to determine a flight path. One has to invoke additional constraints to derive a terminus.” But I believe that the DSTG position is correct, and that one does not need to invoke arbitrary additional assumptions in order to calculate the plane’s track. I’ll explain why.
First, some basics. Imagine that you have two ping rings, one created an hour after the other. For the sake of simplicity, let’s say the rings are concentric, with the later ring’s radius 300 nautical miles bigger than the earlier one’s. Let’s further assume that the plane crossed some arbitrary point on the innermost ring. If that’s all we know, then the plane could have taken any of an infinite number of routes from the first to the second. It could have travelled radially directly outward at 300 knots. Or, if traveling straight at 400 knots, it could have turned left or right at an angle. Or, it could have traveled faster than 300 knots on any number of meandering paths. So, the fact of the matter is that this simple understanding of the plane’s situation indicates that it could have traveled by wide number of paths and speeds to a wide range of points on the second arc.
However, there are some pecularities of commercial aviation that narrow the possibilities considerably. The most important is that planes can only travel in straight lines. They can turn, but in between turns they will fly straight. Knowing this vastly reduces the number of paths that MH370 could have taken between 19:41 and 0:11. It could not of simply meandered around the sky; it must have followed a path of one, two, three, four, or more straight segments.
Through the marvels of modern computing, researchers can generate a huge number of random routes and test them to see which fit the observed data. It turns out that if the plane flew straight in a single segment, the only routes that match the data are those that are fast, around the speed that commercial jets normally fly, and end up over the current search area. If you assume that the flight involved two straight segments, it turns out the ones that fit best are those in which the two segments are nearly in a straight line and are also fast and wind up over the current search area.
If you suppose that the flight after 19:41 involved a larger number of segments, your computer’s random generation process will be able to come up with valid routes that are neither straight nor fast, and do not end up in the current search area. But to come up with such routes, the computer will have to generate many, many others that do not fit. So it is extremely unlikely that by random chance the plane would have happened to travel a slow, curving route that just happened to “look like” a straight, fast route.
“Well,” you might object, “presumably whoever was in control didn’t fly randomly, they had a plan, so modeling by random paths isn’t appropriate.” But a plan of unknown characteristics is equivalent for our purposes to a random one. After all, there is no imaginable reason for someone to fly a plane over empty ocean in the dark at a slower-than-usual rate, making slight turns every hour or so. (Before you say that they might have done it to throw searchers off their trail after the fact, bear in mind that whoever took the plane would have had no way to know that Inmarsat had started logging BTO values a few months before, let alone imagine that they would be able to conduct this kind of analysis.)
When DSTG ran the math, they came up with a probability distribution along the arc that looks like the image at top.
Worth noting that the peak of the curve, and the lion’s share of the area under it, lie in the southern half of the search box, but it also has tails that extend past the box in either direction.
When the search of the seabed began, many expected that the plane would be found in short order. When it wasn’t, the burning question then became: how far out from the 7th arc should we search? A one-dimensional question had now become a two-dimensional one. Based on past loss-of-control accidents and flight simulations, the ATSB decided that an out-of-fuel 777 with no pilot would enter a spiral dive and impact the surface within 20 nautical miles. Mapping the two probability distributions (i.e., where the plane crossed the 7th arc, and where/how far it flew after that) yielded the following probability distribution:
I believe that we have to take the image above with a grain of salt, as I don’t think it is really possible for a plane to fly more than 40 km by itself. It’s generally agreed that the only way the plane could have plausbily gone further than that is if the pilot was conscious and actively holding the plane steady in a glide, in which case it might have gone as far as 100 nm.
A few months before the ATSB publlshed this analysis, a further set of information about the impact point of MH370 became availalble: the plane’s right-hand flaperon washed up on Réunion Island. Reverse-drift analysis was performed by several independent groups to determine where the flaperon might have started its journey. The German institute GEOMAR came up with the following results:
As you can see, the probability distribution hardly overlaps at all with the probability distribution derived from the BTO data; it only touches at the northeastern corner of the search box. Drift analysis performed by other groups reached a similar conclusion. Using a branch of mathematics called Bayesian analysis, it’s possible to take two probability distributions and merge them into a single one. I’m not a mathematician myself, but intuitively one would surmise that given both the BTO and the drift-model data sets, the new peak probability are should lie somewhere between the northern end of the current search box and Broken Ridge.
The ATSB report disagreed, arguing that the drift analysis
… made no meaningful changes to the ATSB search area due to the relative weighting of the significance of the drift analysis in comparison with the analysis based on the satellite data. While this debris find is consistent with the current search area it does not provide sufficient information to refine it.
What this means is that the ATSB considers the BTO data and its analysis “hard” and the reverse-drift analysis “soft,” because the random motion of ocean currents introduces a large amount of uncertainty. However, the reported also noted that “if additional debris is identified it will be included in the analysis to provide further information on the location of source areas.” Indeed, after the report came out other pieces of debris were found, and drift modeling of these pieces be used to refine the search area. Indeed, after I published last week’s guest post by MPat, reader Ge Rijn pointed out:
Over those 20 years in MPat’s model only 7 out of 177 buoys landed in Australia. Those 7 all passed the search box under 36S… [this] points clearly to the trend the more south you go under ~36S the more likely it becomes buoys (debris) will land on Australia and the more north you go above 36S the less likely it becomes buoys~(debris) will land on Australia. This is also because the more south you go under ~36 the currents tend to go further east and the more north you go around 36S the currents tend to bend stronger to the north avoiding Australia. And this is exacly what the facts about found debris shows us till now.
Note that 36 degrees south is just shy of the northern end of the current search area; as Ge Rijn observes, historical drift data suggests that if the plane had crashed south of this latitude, debris should have been found in Australia, which it obviously hasn’t.
The size and species mix of barnacles growing on ocean debris could provide clues as to which waters it floated through; oxygen isotope analysis can provide information about the temperature of the waters that it floated through. As far as I know, no such analyses have been conducted. For a long while now, the ATSB’s weekly update reports have included the phrase “In the absence of credible new information that leads to the identification of a specific location of the aircraft, Governments have agreed that there will be no further expansion of the search area.” The fact is, though, that further information is available, and it could be used to determine which of the two possible explanations is more likely: that the plane passed over the current search area and was held in a glide, or crossed the seventh arc further (but not too much further) to the northeast.
Re anutypru downloads, ‘Item 3 pdf (24th April) (434MB)’
If you have low bandwidth or limited download, you could give this
download a miss. Nothing apparent that would be identifable as from
9M-MRO. Couple of possible retangular pallets, an upperdeck frame &
mast (with possible lowest hull frame nearby), series of pictures of
sea surface with whatever is in frame so obscure that I cant see it.
Jeff,
Nice post. I found it to be a nice summary of the use of BTO data, and also a concise explanation as to why the debris finds have helped to shift the probable impact zone closer to Broken Ridge along the 7th arc.
Couple of questions for you:
1) I’ve noticed a not so subtle shift in your recent posts and replies that seems to indicate you may be leaning away from your spoofed BTO theory, and that you may be coming around to the idea that the plane impacted to the North of the current ATSB Priority Search Area. Is this an accurate reading of where you sit as of today? Does this also imply that you are leaning towards a scenario in which the pilot was in control to the very end?
2) What do you make of the fact that the Malaysians are showing no interest in collecting Blaine’s debris? Personally, I’m somewhat stunned. From the jump, I’ve felt that the Malaysians were simply “in over their heads” but I’ve always felt that attempts to paint them as malevolent or deliberately dishonest were a bit of a stretch. That said, their reactions to all of the debris finds, and to Blaine’s recent finds in particular, are hard to make sense of. The way I see it, there are 3 possibilities:
a) The Malaysians don’t want to find the wreckage, and are intentionally stalling in the hopes that the search will be called off before “new evidence” is found that would warrant a move to the North of the Priority Search Zone.
b) The Malaysians are essentially throwing their hands-up, admitting defeat, and moving on.
c) The Malaysians believe that they already know enough from existing evidence (presumably much of which we haven’t seen) therefore they see additional debris as superfluous.
I’m really curious to get your take on this, because frankly their behavior has me stumped.
@Victorl @Barry Carlton @buyerninety
‘aussie500’ states the photos-serie was taken on 26th of march including this photo.
I assume you also saw the white rectangled white piece in the left underside.
It doesn’t look a wooden pallet to me (are those ever white?) but anyway the photo is too less detailed to be of much use I suppose. Maybe it could be usefull if @Barry Carlton also applied his animation on this piece for comparison of dimensions.
@buyerninety
Also the ‘item 6’ file shows very little that can be usefull IMO. Overall the photo’s are of very poor quality. Many are unsharp by movement. It kind of amazes me such high-tech search planes with professionals on board take such poor qualtity photos.
Google Earth satelites do a better job from space distance. I can clearly recoqnize my on car on those..
@jeffwise , Re your introduction in this blog topic,
“because the random motion of ocean currents introduces a large amount
of certainty”
You meant ‘uncertainty’ , didn’t you?
Something else;
Line of reasoning ending with;
…”Or, it could have traveled faster than 300 knots on any number of
meandering paths.”
I can understand a ‘long period’ phugoid flight not being considered
of high enough probability to mention it, but do you recall anyone
considering it or does the timeframe data implicitly rule it out (in
you or anyones math figuring)?
@BigMac, Great questions.
1) I continue to think that there really are only two interpretations of the data in hand: one, Zaharie staged a very elaborate suicide-murder flight to the SIO, and was under control until the end, and two, that sophisticated hijackers spoofed the BFO and took it north. They are so utterly mutually exclusive that you have to treat them as completely separate ideas; obviously for today’s post I’m starting from the assumption that Zaharie was the culprit. As to which is actually true, my gut feeling switches back and forth as new data arrives. Lately, it’s been shifting toward Zaharie, but there’s still so much that doesn’t make sense.
2) I don’t know if I’m just failing to read these articles carefully enough, but I can’t quite figure out whether the Malaysians are failing to pick up Blaine’s most recent three aircraft parts, or the shoes and bags that he found around the same time. If they’re blowing off the aircraft parts, that’s really worrisome. If they’re blowing off the shoes and bags, I’m all in favor — there’s absolutely no reason to think that these have anything to do with MH370.
The larger question remains: do the Malaysians really want to solve the case? In both Egyptair 990 and Silkair 185, the carrier’s home country accident investigation boards fought tooth and nail against the conclusion that the pilot intentionally crashed the plane. I suspect we’re seeing a similar dynamic here.
@Jeff,
What about the scenario of sophisticated highjackers ditching the plane in the SIO and escaping via boat/sub/aircraft?
@jeffwise – There is additional information available to the official search team to which we do not have access: Fuel Burn Rate
Based on the other early March 2014 flights of 9M-MRO, Boeing and/or Rolls Royce should know precisely the PDA of each engine as well as the burn rates at various combinations of weight, speed, temperature and altitude. Here, in the peanut gallery, the best we can do is to use the data from the FCOM to get a SWAG at these values. The point is, certain flight dynamics can be eliminated because they do not meet the BTO along with the endurance and range of 9M-MRO.
@Ge Rijn
?Ah, are you referring to picture(s) of the ‘blue panel’?
There was some possibility that there was an airfoil shape under
the South West edge, but VictorLs’ additional picture showed it
was in fact a rectangular shape. Also, on the NW edge, not only
was there a light coloured patch at the edge’s midpoint, but
also at its’ 2/3rd up point and probably at it 1/3rd point.
That made it high probably to me that it is a plastic pallet/tub.
(Not wooden, because wooden are identifiable by parallel
deckboards.)
@all @MPat @oriondt
I was thinking it could be usefull to repeat the model @MPat made but then generated in Adrift with a lot more virtual undroged buoys divided evenly among the current search box between 32S and 39S.
I would suggest; put 500 in starting in march 2014 and see what comes out.
If this confirms the tendencies in MPat’s and CSIRO’s current models you could repeat the same for a box between 32S and 25S.
And than compare the outcomes with the actual places where debris was found.
I assume an expiriment like this could limit a possible crash area on sound statistical data.
Maybe @MPat or @oriondt wants to give it a try?
@Ge Rijn,
What are virtual undrogued buoys? How would you go back to 2014 (even virtually) – is there a software program that I’m unaware of?
@LaurenH, I believe this turns out to be less of an issue than one might expect, because even with very precise knowledge of 9M-MRO’s historical engine performance, there are inherent uncertainties around how how fast and how high the plane might have flown. As described in the ATSB paper, the DSTG’s probability distribution along the 7th arc did not take fuel burn into account (or did so only in very general terms.)
There are times when apparently disconnected events reveals interesting insights regarding the validity of certain assumptions. And two recent events seems to illustrate this vis a vis 370 ( more on this later)….
I have shown elsewhere in this blog that missing radar data from Indonesia, absence of radar sightings by both RAAF Exmouth Australia and the ultra sensitive JORN plus the near total absence of debris ( excepting the towelette maybe) cum contradictory statements from Malaysian military, all combine to preclude a flight south not to mention one north. In other words, the ISAT data is suspect and seemingly appears to be a product of afterthought to support a fictional narrative .
In addition I have argued elsewhere too that the absence of biofouling especially barnacles hint at debris planting so as to bolster the case that the plane crashed in the SIO when it didn’t .
Further I have speculated that the jet actually crashed off Vietnam based on sudden , total and inexplicable termination of flight data at precisely ATC changeover time and supported that assumption by highlighting reportedveyewitness accounts both from an oil rig and sightings from fisherfolk in the flight paths vicinity over the SCS. I have also cited reports from the press regarding the early search efforts that seem to indicate that the plane did end up in the SCS. Having arrived there, my next conjecture is that the plane went down in either one of two different fashions I.e brought down by a projectile or by an onboard explosion attributable to lithion batteries in the cargo bay or a terrorist bomb.
Today I discount the terrorist angle based on this two recent events seemingly disparate but indicative of the thought processes at work in Malaysian aviation security circles :
http://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2016/07/15/zahid-well-set-up-system-to-screen-for-militants/
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/malaysia-mulls-over/2959502.html
To surmise, if a terrorist bomb was to be blamed the above measures would have been immediately instituted back in 2014 given that there were illegal stoways onboard that flight. That they werent is telling in that they probably found that there was evidently no terror links back then in March 2014 to justifiably warrant the considerstion of such measures . That they are being considered now is tragically due to Brussels, Nice and particularly to a recent episode in KL itself .
Thus having eliminated the terror angle, I am left with two possibilities, exploding batteries( very unlikely) or a projectile fired to probably prevent sensitive military tech onboard from reaching a certain destination in this age of geopolitical brinksmanship …,., but then I would be a poor mans Tom Clancy xD …….
Suffice to say, I do remember that an erstwhile commenter here once opined in another thread that the striae marks on one of the recovered debris could probably be due to shrapnel from a projectile……….now if that were true someone could have been slipshod with the pieces he/she put out for the planting season ; D
All the above purely conjectural but probably highly plausible
@CliffG, By “sophisticated” I mean smart enough to understand how to hack the plane’s control and communications systems. I don’t think anyone that smart would cook up a plan that required ditching a 777 survivably in the SIO. Given the size of the fragments found so far, the ditching didn’t go very well.
The phugoid period is a simple function of the airplane’s true air speed. For example, at 450 kt TAS the period is 105 seconds.
@Wazir, That is one of the most meritless notions I have ever seen floated in this forum. There is absolutely zero credible evidence pointing to that conclusion and a great deal of evidence ruling it out.
@BigMac
I’m not exactly aware of software-programs that make this possible but I thought the Adrift-program used by @oriondt could.
With ‘virtual udroged buoys’ I mean the ‘ducks’ used in that program. They resemble drifting plastic which could be compared with undroged buoys or better with flat drifting debris.
I don’t know if you can track back from a point in time in Adrift. I assume it can for they use a 10 years database of drifters.
I opened their site but can not enter their program.
I give you the link @oriondt provided:
http://imgur.com/a/3rsLD
@buyerninety @Victorl
Yes, I assume that piece will remain unidentified. I agree with you it cann’t be a wooden pallet. Then maybe a light-weight aircraft pallet?:
http://greenoxpallets.com/air-freight-pallets/
Still to me it remains an unlikely coincidence a piece like this was floating there so close to the search area at that time in such a remote area of the SIO if it wasn’t related.
@Ge Rijn: In the months after the disappearance, debris was found in many places, some by air search and some by satellite images. It all can’t be from the same plane. Which means that it is fairly common to find things like floating pallets in the ocean. I wouldn’t put too much weight on any particular piece of debris unless it can be tracked back to MH370.
Lauren H. Posted July 14, 2016 at 2:35 PM wrote “……When I make a left turn in my car, the right wheels cover a longer distance than the left wheels and since the car stays together one could say the right wheels travel faster than the left wheels.
Does this mean that when an a/c is turning to the left (at a bank angle of less than 90°), the air speed over the right wing is faster than the air speed over the left wing? If true, this could be one explanation why the large, relatively undamaged pieces came from the right wing due very high speed air over only the right wing.”
Yes and No.
Yes, the air speed over the right wing is faster than the air speed over the left wing during a turn to the left with the airplane making a coordinated turn. The differential of the two wings air speeds will be proportional to the ratio of the radius the two wings describe during the turn. This is the same as the left and the right car wheel ratio of the radius they describe.
Example: If the car makes a turn with the inside wheel making a 15 foot radius and the right wheel making a 20 foot radius the ration will be 15 to 20. So if the left wheel of the car is moving at 15 miles per hour the right wheel will be moving at 20 miles per hour with the resulting car averaging (15 + 20) / 2 = 17.5 miles per hour and staying together.
You will get a similar result with an airplane. However; an airplane makes a much larger radius turn. Something like 1.5 miles at a bank angle of 45 degrees for the large 777. My guess!! The radius is much larger at lower bank angles. The wing span of a 777 is ~200 feet. If we use a 45 degree bank angle the radial distance between wing tips is 200 / 2^1/2 = 141.4 feet because of the bank angle. The ratio of the radius of the left wing tip to the right wing tip will be: The radius described by the inboard (left) wing say 1.5 miles using 5280 feet / mile = 7920 feet. The radius described by the outboard (right) wing tip will be 7920 + 141.4 = 8061.4 feet. If the left wing tip is moving at 300 knots per hour the right wing tip will be moving at 8061.4 / 7920 times 300 knots or 305.36 knots. A 5.36 knot difference. The speed difference of the left and right engines will be about 1/3 that. The impact difference will thus be negligible.
Note: 45 degrees is a ridiculous bank angle for a large jet transport. 45 degrees produces a 1.7 G turn. 15 degree is more like it.
Right answer: The plane was probably turning right with the right wing lower to the water on impact or a big wave hit the right engine. Thus more debris from right wing. Maybe. Could always have been high speed impact with left wing impacting first and destroyed and only parts of right wing floating. Anything can happen in a crash.
I tried to use the adrift.org.au model, but I didn’t find any way to enter the latitude and longitude of the start position. All I seemed to be able to do was to click on the map to start the rubber duck.
My thought is to use the positions and dates of satellite, aircraft and ship “possible debris” sightings from March and April of 2014 as starting points for a forward drift model. There are quite a few referenced in the Duncan Steel posting “Some Comments on the Missing (or Missed) Floating Debris Field from MH370”.
Any guidance or help someone can give me would be appreciated.
@Victorl
Yes I assume now there’s no way to prove anymore this or other floating debris back then was related to MH370.
There seem to be no other or better pictures available (if there are any). Then there’s no point in keep going into this further.
@Jeff,
Thanks for the insight. Always appreciated. The article below seems to indicate that they aren’t picking up anything (debris or random luggage).
http://www.ibtimes.com/flight-mh370-update-authorities-ignoring-debris-say-victims-families-2391840
Blaine’s finds that included the seat-back were from early June 2016, and the article states that Malaysia originally planned to pick up those pieces on the 16th. They pushed it back to the 21st, and then cancelled altogether. I believe that Blaine didn’t announce the luggage finds until ~June 20th, which would mean that the Malaysians have not collected anything. Maybe I’m missing something in this story, but it certainly sounds as though the Malaysians don’t want to recover any more evidence. Do we know if they even collected the wing piece from Tanzania?
The more I think about this, the more absurd it becomes. Malaysia, with a GDP of $313,000,000,000 refuses to organize a coastline search of Africa. So Blaine Gibson sells his family home and initiates the search alone. And when his search proves successful, rather than announce plans to aide or expand his search, they don’t even bother to collect his findings. How is there anyway for them to defend their “investigation” at this point?
Jeff, how much validity do you give the Maldives/Diego Garcia theory? The timing of when the islanders saw the plane matches when it would’ve been over the island chain. There’s so many things that point to this being a coverup. 1.) When the plane turned around it was right in between the ATC checkpoints. This bought 30 mins of time before anyone knew what was going on, and suggests that whoever did this had foreknowledge of the flight plan and new that it was the perfect time to take the plane. 2.) Ive read multiple articles stating the presence of 20 Freescale scientists onboard the plane, but the MSM never even mentions this. Jeff, I’m sure you remember how much coverage CNN put into the MH370 mystery…they had Don lemon on with his panel of Soucie, Schiavo, Gallo, and others. They entertained viewer questions about black holes and aliens, but never once brought up Diego Garcia or maldives or the scientists on board. 3.)The ACARS coming back on after being turned off. How? Why just the ACARS? I could go on. What are your thoughts?
@Wazir, I agree with you. We have lot of evidence that MH370 come down in SCS. Mike McKay sightings of burning “object” about 50 to 70 km along the compass bearing 265 degrees to 275 from the oil rig. This position is 8.33112, 108.16046.
“At Hong Kong time 15:10 on 10 Mar 2014, HKCAD received a report from Cathay Pacific Airways that pilots of CX725 while en-route from Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur… had sighted ‘large solid debris’ over the surface of the sea at position 09.54.3N 107.25.0E within Ho Chi Minh Flight Information Region,” the aviation department said.
A vessel in the area confirmed material was floating in the ocean about 92 kilometres off the southeasterncoast of Vietnam in the South China Sea. The debris is located about 520 kilometres northeast of a missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370’s last known radar position.
But the location of the debris does not match the path expected to have been taken by Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which should have flown over Ho Chi Minh City.
They never searched area near Vietnam coast… Ocean stream took debris away from Vietnam coast through Sunda Strait and equatorial stream to Reunion, Madagascar and South Africa coast.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/951252171610482/permalink/1038011026267929/?comment_id=1038295896239442¬if_t=group_comment¬if_id=1468543232236330
@Ge Rijn. My earlier answer successfully mangled my principle.
If one periodically released batches of drifters together (time and place) evenly over an area, what difference in spread probabilities (eg east vs west) would there be to releasing them one at a time randomly over the same area over time? Butterfly effect? Doubtless only experimentation would tell. I leave this for now.
@Barry Carlson. I scratch my head trying to reconcile your comparison of the photos with the flaperon shape and the contra indications. Do you think image distortion, by the camera (for example) would explain the evident taper(s) or has that been discounted?
@Jeff
You said:
“However, there are some pecularities of commercial aviation that narrow the possibilities considerably. The most important is that planes can only travel in straight lines. They can turn, but in between turns they will fly straight.”
RetF4 pointed out some time ago that a properly trimmed aircraft will maintain a turn quite well without pilot or AP input.
You said (and quoted me):
Many independent researchers do not understand the technique and believe that it is invalid. For instance, reader DennisW recently opined that “The ISAT data cannot, by itself, be used to determine a flight path. One has to invoke additional constraints to derive a terminus.”
The ISAT data represents a classically under-constrained system. You must invoke additional constraints, which you then proceed to do, to conclude the DSTG position is correct.
The reality is a pilot can speed up and slow down, he can turn left, right, or go straight. He can ascend and descend. I am sure that Shah had sufficient flight time to know how to do any of these things any time he wanted to. The fact that a “straight” path that satisfies the ISAT data can found does not imply that it is the “anointed” path. Making this choice is at the root of the occasional swipes I take at the IG and the other analysts involved in this unfortunate episode.
The other frequent criticism I have repeatably leveled at the straight path advocates is the lack of any motive or causality. Why would someone fly a perfectly good airplane to the current search area until fuel exhaustion? Your latest narrative avoids this issue entirely as well.
We are basically back to the fall of 2014 – a straight path to the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason. The only difference is we now have several pieces of debris that cannot be reconciled with that scenario.
@DennisW, I must confess that I wrote this piece largely with you in mind, because I think you are mistaken in your belief that the fast-and-straight solution is arbitrary. If I haven’t convinced you in the course of this blog post, then I doubt I can do better in this comment, but suffice to say that the more twists and turns a pilot decides to make, the less likely his subsequent path is to match the BTO ring-radius ratios of a straight-and-fast flight.
I understand your frustration with the lack of motive of flying into the remote Indian Ocean, but no curving path fits with a motive either — I acknowledge that you tried to find one with your Christmas Island scenario but I think even you have admitted that it didn’t really work.
@Dan Richter & @Wazir, I’m calling shenanigans on both you lunks.
@Jay Teague, I know that Maldives/Diego Garcia is a popular alternative idea but I don’t give it any credence at all. Eyewitnesses have historically had very little value in air crash investigations, and I am very comfortable in ignoring the Maldive islanders, the Saucy Sailoress, and the oil-platform guy. Believe me, this issue has been hashed out here to death, it is a dead end. As for the Freescale connection, it has received a lot of attention, including in this forum just a few days ago, but it’s one of those details that’s interesting but no one’s made it fit into a compelling larger narrative. I agree with those here who’ve said that, if someone wanted to steal technology, hijacking a plane would be the most cumbersome way to obtain it.
@Jeff
I am not evangelizing CI as you know. It is not because of the physics, it is because I cannot reconcile various human factor behaviors with that terminus.
At the end of day humans (with the exception of whackos) do things for a reason. I have been struggling with that aspect for some time now.
@DennisW, Well, I do appreciate your contributions over the years.
Only if the search team(s) give us reasons for the SIO instead of sending out so much misinformation. Most of anything of this mystery really make no sense.
I have become such a dictator and love censorship and thought-suppression so much, that I have decided to ban myself.
@Gysbreght
The context in which my comment was made related to jeffs introductory
post about the flight dynamics of MH370 i.e. rationalizations about
its direction and speed.
My query therefore was addressing what affect such motion would have
upon the range of the flight – or even if such a flight with such
motion is possible within the timing parameters required to hit each
ping ring.
Greg Long
If you have facts which you wish to present supporting your ‘2 plane’ (i.e. 1 UAV) theory, grab yourself another screen name &
present them. I believe you have had no additional facts to bring
to the blog in your several previous (removed) posts.
Please do not use a screen name so close to the screen name (used
on this blog) of the blog owner, as this suggests you intend
only to disrupt, not inform.
Cordially Yours, buyerninety
@ALL
Jeff’s recent posts are so uncharacteristic.
Does a tyrannical dictator/information manipulator normally allow himself the luxury of lampooning or satirizing himself? Can we really believe he’s had an epiphany, and fallen on his sword?
No, I’ve a new theory now: Jeff has been taken over by an alien force from the planet Zodap. We musn’t believe a word he says. Just humour him for now and see how things develop, but above all, be careful!
@Jeff
I think we all came to the conclusion, that the disappearance of MH370 was caused by an unlawfull intervention, either by the pilot/pilots, or by third party with or without the help of one or both pilots. I at least can’t see a plausible kind of technical fault. When we discuss the possible flightpath of MH370 after the FMT this observation is an important point, as a technical fault with the crew disabled would be the scenario with the highest probability for a straight path at a constant altitude after FMT.
If some live soal after the FMT was tending the ship Dennis rightfully points out, and I actually thought that most posters including you were on the same page, that there has to be a plausible motive and with it a final planned destination. The initially favoured “Shah did it for suicide and embarressment for rhe ruling party” seems to be the only case where a pilot would head south on a steaight line, switch on his walkman an d listen to Beethoven until running out of fuel.
Believing that a rouge pilot on whatever mission would continue to fly an air transport aircraft like on standard line operation, observing all rules and regs and using all available gadgets to observe fuel efficiency only to fly on a straight line to the south seems far fetched. You might then also expect him to file a flightplan and continue squaking and talking. It is like a criminal being followed in a car would stop on traffic lights.
I might understand your surprising move with this post better if you explain your updated position concerning possible motives and posible destinations. Or a hint, what led you to write rhis post. At the moment I’m at a loss.
Your dispute with Dennis has it’s causes, accepted. His comment to your new post is one without any personal attack and imho well placed. I’m sure he is not the only one who rolls his eyes upon your surprising and unexplained turnaround, but maybe the only one to speak up. Your reaction to his post is not understood. But agreed, it is your blog.
@RetiredF4 said; “I think we all came to the conclusion”
Kindly dis-include me from your “all”.
@Big Mac
@Wasir
Re the Malaysian attitude toward the debris finds: It’s been clear all along that the Malaysians were acting as if they had something to hide and of course, they have. One of their pilots hijacked a planeload of innocent people, and flew it into the remotest reaches of the SIO, in an act of political terrorism.
When the first pieces of debris were found on the African coast, the Malaysians announced they were sending a team of beachcombers to Mozambique. What happened to them? No beachcombers turned up. It was just a cynical ploy to quieten the NOK.
The ATSB have had the most difficult job throughout – to try and persuade the Malaysians to admit that one of their own committed this horrific act. The ATSB deserve our sympathy (I know Dennis won’t agree, but Dennis needs to shoot a few elephants, metaphorically speaking)
I have information that the outboard flap section is on its way to Canberra, for examination.
@RetiredF4, To be clear, I’m not trying in this post to advocate for a motive or a destination; I’m merely trying to explain why I think the DSTG is correct in concluding that it’s possible to derive a route from BTO values alone. A crucial point here is that this derivation does not require that the plane be flown “like on standard line operation.” A 777 flies in straight lines because of the way it’s built, not because of SOP. And, as I’ve just argued in my response to DennisW, I believe that the DSTG method will hold even if a pilot chooses to hand-fly. (I would also like to clarify that I am not having a dispute with DennisW, but a discussion–a rational and useful one, I would like to think.)
And though it may sounds strange, I don’t think I’ve had a change of heart. The reason I wrote this post was to try to clarify the general understanding about why the ATSB is searching where it is and where the plane might be if it isn’t there (but is still somewhere in the south.) I don’t necessarily believe that the plane actually did go south. I understand that this might be a confusing position.
I don’t think I understand your query. Possibly it does not address phugoid motion at all.
Just curious: Why Zaharie?
Is it plausible that a Zaharie with a plan would have hand-flown without automatics in the 40-odd minutes after IGARI, or that he would have let the airplane run out of fuel?
I read Jeff’s article as simple as this:
The drift data are not conflicting the ISAT data but support those.
Just staying to the facts without speculating if they are planted or spoofed, piloted or not piloted, suicide or hijacked by others, two planes or one, the facts all point now to a crash area somewhere near and along the 7th arc between ~36 and maybe as far north as 25S.
The debris finds and drift data prove the plane did not fly to the north, west or east but to the south of the IO and crashed there somewhere in that area.
If the debris and drift data told a completely other story than the ISAT data show, there would be good reason to doubt those ISAT data.
This is just not the case. On the contrary the debris finds and drift data affirm the ISAT data in general.
The ISAT data where interpretated on the assumption the plane was not actively piloted after FMT. The most probable flighpaths where based on this assumption resulting in the current search area.
If it turns out the plane is not there then we have to assume this assumption was not correct IMO.
There are more complicated options left but the most less complicated and logical option is to assume the plane was piloted till the end. If the plane was piloted till FMT then there is no logical reason or fact at all to assume it wasn’t anymore after FMT.
I still don’t understand where this assumption was based on.
IMO there is no single fact that supports this.
If someone can give one I would be glad to hear.
@Gysbreght, In the simpler of the two scenarios, Zaharie makes the “Goodnight, Malaysia 370” call and a minute and a half later the plane’s communications shut down and the plane does a 180 six seconds after IGARI. I just don’t think there’s any way an intruder could get through the door of the cockpit in that amount of time, and get the timing just right, without the flight crew getting out some kind of distress call. And if one of the flight crew did it, the culprit almost certainly would have been Zaharie, as Hamid was a newbie so presumably wouldn’t have the experience. Finally, Victor has been making a powerful case that data retrieved from Zaharie’s flight simulator show that he had practiced flying a 777 into the remote SIO.
As for your question concerning whether the actions you describe are plausible: no, I don’t consider them particularly plausible, which is one of the reasons I have not yet completely discarded the “sophisticated hijacker” scenario.
As I’ve long said, there is no plausible, simple explanation.
@jeffwise:
If that’s all you have, it is a meagre basis for condemmning captain Zaharie.
There are many ways a take-over by an intruder could have taken place, we only know when the transponder was turned off, but regarding voice communications we only know that none were made.
First officer Hamid was not exactly a newbie. He had a B777 type rating and was fully qualified to pilot a B777. He may have had little experience on the B777, but his training on systems was recent and still fresh in his mind. Any unusual handling of those systems does not require ‘experience’. It needs to be figured out in advance from the books. He was undergoing line training.
I don’t agree that Victor has been making a powerful case for condemmning Zaharie.
I forgot to mention that a Zaharie alone in the cockpit according to plan would not have overflown IGARI before turning towards BITOD.
@Jeff Wise
Somewhat distracting this kind of messages.
It’s a bit like a spoild child not getting his candy. Quite unpleasant.
Hope you can settles this soon and make it stop.
@All
In a 2 plane diversion theory MH370 banks clockwise after IGARI and descends to low altiude, flying silent, with no communications, and evading radar as it flies West towards the Maldives being witnessed by 30+ witnesses.
At this time another aircraft ( a UAV decoy) appears on radar, two minutes later after MH370 disappears from radar and it is this plane which is being tracked on radar heading towards the Mayasian peninsula.
The purpose of the decoy was to create a diversion for the ATC controllers while MH370 was being hijacked and to also leave a trail of electronic breadcrumbs (pings) to mislead us into believeing that MH370 flew either North or South but no way did it go West. This diversion may explain why there was a 20 minute delay before ATC controllers realized MH370 was even hijacked because the ATC controllers were pre-occupied with this intruder aircraft entering their airspace which of course would cause them great concern.
In this scenario the Inmarsat data would be completely useless for finding the whereabouts of MH370 but would be useful for finding the impact location of the UAV decoy.
Although witness reports are often vague and inaccurate this does not mean that their reports are wrong and should be ignored. In fact if you study these reports collectively and map them out on a map and look at them in chronological order, by time of sightings, they clearly seem to be consistent with each other and seem to be telling us the truth about a low flying jet which to them looked like MH370.
By studying the timing and location of these sigtenings I was able to map out a potential flight path to the Maldives based on these sightings that is consistent with the fuel limits and performance limits of MH370. I find this would be an amazing coicidence if their stories were not true and it just happens to be a random coicidence, very unlikely in my opinion.
I believe the correct theory will explain why all the data is correct, why all the debris evidence is valid, and why all the witness reports are true.
Cheers
@weffjizz
If you’ve got some decency left you know this is far over the top.
If you want to stay a dick-tator I suggest start your own blog. Then you can dick-tate all you want without anoying others who can not choose to ban you.
I think somebody hijacked Jeff.
@JS, Yes, a troll posting as “Greg Long” first tried to disrupt the discussion, then after I banned him found a tricky way back in. I’ve been pretty loosy-goosy security wise because no one’s tried to take advantage before so I’ve had to figure out how to make things a little more difficult for him. Sorry for the interruption, and my thanks to buyerninety for spotting the problem and offering advice on how to deal with it.