Search crews in the remote southern Indian Ocean have completed a task so vast and technically ambitious that it once seemed impossible: to scan a three-mile-deep, 120,000 sq km swathe of seabed using a side-scan sonar “towfish” in hopes of finding the wreckage of missing Malayia Airlines 777 MH370. After considerable delay due to mechanical problems and bad weather, the final square miles were scanned on October 11 by the research vessel Fugro Equator. The $180 million project turned up no trace of the missing plane, though searchers did find several long-sunken sailing ships.
The Fugro Equator will next use an AUV, or autonomous sub, to scan selected areas where the rugged seabed topography was too rough for adequate imaging by the towfish. “The total combined area of the spots that will be surveyed with the AUV is very limited, but still required to ensure that no area has been missed,” says Fugro spokesman Rob Luijneburg.
The Australian National Transport Board (ATSB), which is overseeing the search, expects this fill-in work to be completed by the end of February.
The fact that that the Pennsylvania-sized towfish scan had been completed was first noticed by Richard Cole, a space scientist at University College London who has been meticulously logging the search ships’ movements via online tracking services and then posting charts of their progress on Twitter. “At the completion of Equator’s last swing in mid-October the target of 120,000 square kilometers had been achieved, at least as far as my calculations show,” Cole wrote me last week. Both Fugro and the ATSB subsequently confirmed Cole’s observation.
The 120,000 sq km area has special significance in the effort to find MH370, because ministers from the four countries responsible for the search have made it clear that if nothing turns up within it, the search will be suspended. Unless new evidence emerges, the mystery will be left unsolved.
Plans to search the seabed were first mooted during the summer of 2014, after officials realized that metadata recorded by satellite-communications provider Inmarsat contained clues indicating roughly where the plane had gone. At first, investigators were confident that the wreckage would be found within a 60,000 sq km area stretching along the 7th ping arc from which the plane is known to have sent its final automatic transmission. When nothing was found, ministers from the four governments responsible for the search declared that the search zone would be doubled in size.
In December, 2015, officials declared that the search would be completed by June, 2016. In July of 2016, Malaysia’s transport minister indicated that it would be finished by October; weeks later, a meeting of the four ministers pushed the completion back to December. Last week, the Australian Safety Transport Board announded that “searching the entire 120,000 square kilometre search area will be completed by around January/February 2017.”
In an email to me, ATSB communications officer Dan O’Malley said his organization will issue a report on the seabed search once the full scan is completed. Under ICAO guidelines, Malaysia will only be obligated to release a comprehensive final report on the investigation once it has been formally terminated; so far, Malaysia has only talked of suspending the search, not ending it.
The bulk of the work has been carried out by ships pulling a sidescan sonar device on a long cable. This so-called “towfish” uses reflected sound waves to create an image of the sea floor. By sweeping up and down the search zone in much the same way that a lawnmower goes back and forth across a lawn, searchers have been able to build up a comprehensive image of the search area’s bottom.
But, just as a landscaper might have to use a weedwhacker to clean up areas around rocks or stumps, searchers will have to fill in gaps in the scan where underwater mountains, volanoes and escarpments have prevented the towfish from getting a close enough look.
“A total area for search by the AUV is difficult to give because it concerns a number of relatively small spots that all are relatively difficult to reach and in difficult terrain,” Luijnenburg says.
The fill-in work will be carried out by an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle deployed from the Fugro Equator. The Kongsberg Hugin 100 is capable of diving to depths of up to 15,000 feet and can maintain a speed of 4 knots for up to 24 hours before being retrieved by the mothership. Whereas the side-scan sonar of the towfish has a resolution of 70 cm, the AUV’s sonar has a resolution of 10 cm, and so can image the seabed in much greater detail, as well as taking photographs when necessary.
Meanwhile, as the AUV work progresses, a Chinese vessel will deploy an Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) to take photographs of targets previously identified as being of interest. The ATSB has stated that none of these targets are “category one” targets, namely those likely to have come from MH370, however. Says Cole, “In the absence of category one targets there must be a list of targets from the sonar search that look the most interesting, so the question is how far down that list they are going to go.”
While the fill-in work must be carried out in order for the work to be declared 100 percent done, little prospect remains that the missing plane will be found in the southern Indian Ocean.
NOTE: This story was updated 10/26/2016 to include comments from Fugro spokesman Rob Luijnenburg.
@Keffertje:
Yes, and Brits were the first to try to bring it up, but failed. Let’s us not talk about that now… 🙂
I see your point with the “point of no return”, and maybe he had it all planned and figured but waited for the right opportunity, the right FO, or needed to “surprise himself” to some extent not to be destroyed by his own expectations.
I read some where before that ZS was not originally scheduled to be captain of that flight. He was a called in replacement for another captain. it would be difficult to bring together a disappearance at the last moment.
@DennisW, Of course Ami (Amy?) would know this! It was a beauty of a ship and am glad it was ultimately found and salvaged intact! Hopefully one day we can say the same for M9-MRO.
@MH
First you make a vague and unsubstantiated statement, and then you draw a Z defending conclusion from it. Please. Credit the people here with some intelligence.
@David
–“Which does not mean the work done by Stone and not just him was not outstanding, just that I do not see why you would suppose he would do this job better.”
I believe he’d do a better job because he has been for 30 years the world’s preeminent Bayesian search practitioner. His hardware guy, Rob McCallum (also in the doc) is of equal caliber and resume.
What was the prior experience of the DTSG/ATSB/FUGRO in forensic recovery based on Bayes? Not one of them can touch Stone’s credentials. In fact, I don’t think one of them had ever done it…ever.
Until he takes a shot at it, we’ll really never know if Larry Stone could do better. And the horrible part is, I think there are interests who are all too happy to keep it that way, maybe even right here in the good old USA.
@DennisW
“To say that a Metron result and a DSTG result would be the same is just plain wrong.”
Thank you!
@DennisW:
Communication troubles between the Majesty and the Dutch craftsmen? Without going into it again, I’d say the Royal orders to have it ready in time (to scare the Poles) may have been taken as an in Blanco insurance that no fault could be assigned to the shipbuilder. A dangerous contract, with a little majestic hubris? Like letting the painters in to your home before the party and relying on their good will to be done in time and charge you reasonably. The king got himself killed in the battlefield four years later, too. The grand symbol for northern European protestant rule, the turn of the tide in the Thirty Years’ War, and innovator of combined arms warfare. The latter is perhaps a good thing but apparently the king this time wanted to be on the scene to see that his orders were properly carried out. Damn, there is backside to everything.
@Keffertje:
Sometimes the beauty will be in the way of functionality. But who knows, Sweden had been in the business of building scary ships before, maybe Vasa (and this will be the first time you hear that) was built (finalised) first of all to satisfy spies and emissaries in Stockholm (that didn’t work), infuencing a strategic outcome before being put in actual use.
I fear the M9-MRO will need even more reconstruction than Vasa, once found.
@Matt Moriarty, @David, @DennisW:
On the face of it, David may seem to be in the right — there is theoretically not much that would suggest that another, single actor would do better where the authorities have failed. The allegiance to the same theories seems to suggest that.
But in reality, it may very well be that an investigation like the one we have seen, has had such a political bend to it (without anyone being able to get at that in a significant way) that any other actor with a brand name or an integrity to protect will definitely stand a chance to bring something to the party. This is admittedly not easy to judge from “outside”, and right now might be too soon, it depends, if you like, on whether the ones hiring him really want to find the plane or merely satisfy opinion.
Waiting too long will perhaps be a hazard too as the beaten paths, for better or worse, might be lost. It does seem as the present search has not taken the drift analyses in consideration (I take yo’al’s word for that), and that may be a good stepping stone to a new perspective.
Let’s assume that the Aussies have sold the seafloor (give and take) to the lowest bidder. Stranger things have happened. Then in principle someone else could contribute — under the condition that there will be any new data to add, any new angle to follow, that would significantly change the area or technique or method for searching the seafloor. It is not like we would end up in the Maldives, only further up the same old arc, broader or deeper, or similar. There might be others that would be better for the job, I don’t know, but some integrity is a must.
Dennis, heck you are wannabe prospector. What would you charge? Or do you prefer a running tab?
@dennisW – just following as you do often
But here you go for your interest:
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/MH370/comments/20mlxq/mh_370_pilot_captain_zaharie_might_have_been/?client=safari
It was the wife of the pilot being thankful but sorry her husband didn’t fly mh370.
@MH
Hearsay denied by MAS as any roster change.
@DennisW- this is the wife’s post:
http://i.imgur.com/U5KCw7N.png
@Johan
I am happily retired. No way I would get back in the game. You have no idea how much my health has improved since getting out of it.
The stress of running such an undertaking or even a modest P&L is simply not worth the money.
Having said that, no way is Metron going to toss in a freebie. They are in the business, and it would be a huge mistake to cave in to altruism.
@MH
I’ve seen that material…I am not seeing anything new to rule out that Z might have been able to select a flight in advance that met his possible moonless night requirements. Note he could have maybe gone moonless on 9-March by delaying take-off 45 mins.
In fact, it also reminds me he was on leave to Australia before the flight, so I wonder what waypoints he took to get there and back.
Not sure how a moonless night makes any difference on factors for a successful disappearance. It seems more difficult task to fly back over My.
@DennisW:
Good to hear you are home free. You take care of you Ami (or I’ll hold you to it). Health beats money any day.
I don’t believe in altruism, but there are degrees also in hell. Altruism is an accident waiting to happen. Every craftsman should be reasonably paid in relation to effort and risk. But someone like Metron could have an interest in delivering that others wouldn’t have, if held to a wisely thought-out contract. There could be a surplus value for him that would make him meet a lower pay or differently shaped task. But he would need to reach a point where he could claim he would be successful, and that would take some effort in this case, I am afraid. It is not like there will be a lot of forgotten sources laying around. The hope will perhaps initially stand to weaknesses in the present investigation that has been left without being scrutinized to full extent.
@Jeff Wise
It’s Fugro Equator, not Fugro Explorer.
@MH
MAS has told NOKs that Z was scheduled for the flight two weeks before the accident.
(Or 20 days, can’t remember accurately)
@haxi, Thank you. Very embarrassing.
@MH, The links you posted, the pilot in question was not a captain but a FO. MAS denied her husband was scheduled for that flight.
@TBill, It seems Z was rostered for that flight a few weeks before. Would a moonless night have been shere luck in that case? Perhaps it holds a deeper meaning? Z was not religious but hijackers could have been.
@Keffertje
Just knowing when Z was scheduled does not really tell us behind the scenes how Z got scheduled. I would be wondering if he had some elective control over dates. Was NH370 a daily flight?
@TBill, On Wikipedia : “Flight 370 was a scheduled flight in the early morning hours of 8 March 2014 from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Beijing, China. It was one of two daily flights operated by Malaysia Airlines from its hub at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) to Beijing Capital International Airport”. So basically, there were 2 daily flights. Whether Z voluntered for this flight or not will be tough to ascertain. It was Fariq’s final training flight before being examined on the next flight. Maybe MAS used certain flights at certain hours for training, idk. The other FO (MH posts above)may have been scheduled initially, though MAS denied that (can this denial be trusted?). Why would this FO’s wife lie about something like that on facebook, on March 9th? Apparently the FB page was taken down soon after she stated it (March 9th).
@Keffertje
I read before Fariq was not on training anymore but this was his first flight as a licenced B777 pilot.
I read there was no need anymore for this third pilot Anaz Mazlin that was sheduled in as back-up pilot and he was taken off the flight. Cann’t find the referrence anymore.
MAS later stated they had a pilot named Anaz Mazlin but he was never sheduled on this flight according to MAS.
Contradicting information between this pilot’s wife and MAS. What’s the truth?
As far as I know there has never been a statement from this pilot cq. he was not questioned about it by anyone (journalist f.i.).
@Keffertje:
As I suggested a while back, the not scheduled FO might have had extra-familiar pastimes.
@Johan. Thank you for your explanation of how his actions might be consistent with an unattributable suicide. I prefer their consistency also with other than suicide but I see what you mean. However there is such suspicion that he did it, particularly amongst professional pilots (though one has changed his mind (John Cox, 14000 flying hours US Airways, http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/2016/10/25/mh370-windshield-theory/ …)) that if he followed the line you explain he might not have succeeded in sparing his reputation or his nearest and dearest from opprobrium, in other words he was only partially successful.
Johan and MH. As to where I got the there-for-training from, it was my deduction from FI. Adding to Boris Tabaksplatt, Jiazijian, Keffertje, “The Captain, an authorised examiner for the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA), Malaysia, was conducting line training for the First Officer, who was transitioning to the Boeing 777 (B777) aircraft type from the Airbus A330”.
@DennisW. OK thanks.
Dennis, Matt and Johan. Along the general lines as to whether the weightings by the ATSB were sound, I daresay that will remain argued, though a successful outcome or not can be a different measure. It can be the outcome of luck and, associated, the prospects that the wreckage has been missed even though in the search area. My speculation as to the logic of not going for an independent review is that there is complete confidence amongst the SSWG/DSTG/Others that their solution to the search area, which has been both moved and adjusted as information changed/studies progressed – and kept under review – would match or encompass alternatives. Because the wreckage has not been found does not necessarily falsify such a conclusion and if it is not seen as falsified then there is no logic in going for a second opinion now.
I appreciate that appearing to defend the status quo is not all the rage at present and being Australian I could be seen as partisan but I call it as I see it, without outside influence. But I would say that wouldn’t I?
@Matt. Thanks for your response. About an earlier query, you might have had it in mind that I was a colleague of Mick Gilbert. I do live near him I have discovered, maybe 25 miles away. I would rather you didn’t go into the probability of that. We have not met, or communicated other than by posting under articles in The Australian.
Returning to the above, David Mearns (US born, UK resident) found HMAS Sydney by correctly weighting evidence (my summary).
A higher weighting for drift analysis data would be attractive to at least several here. Perhaps that will be done once the data are more robust (confidence level) and less dependent on (my opinion) assumptions in using buoy drift data from the Global Drifter Program. Some now use tethered buoy data, which is mostly current integrated with time. Others use untethered, which then may allow too much for wind and wave action. Another alternative (Griffin, CSIRO) is to allocate a constant figure between them though debris may slow due to tumbling, barnacle growth, gradual submergence etc. Associated with this, the whole to me is also very subject to initial conditions and individual items’ reaction to those, leading to how quickly the individual items escape the nearby gyre, this much affecting transit durations.
And as to searches being successful with the application to evidence of (what prove to be) correct weightings, finding the USS Indiana remains a challenge even with the information available.
Ge Rijn and DennisW. On the CSIRO (as distinct from Geomar) drift analytics being included in the Dec 2015 search area definition, CSIRO drift study support for the flaperon’s SIO start was announced in August 2015. I mention it because in the same announcement the Minister said that an ATSB rep would attend the ‘examination’ of the flaperon, post-identification, though so far as I know no outcome of that has been made public by the ATSB. http://minister.infrastructure.gov.au/wt/releases/2015/August/wt235_2015.aspx
@Johan and DennisW. Warning to others: Off topic.
About Vasa we saw her in ’62 I would say, under water spray. Others have told me of the new museum Johan. I have removed the brochure I came away with from its frame. On the back it says, “Divers of the seventeenth century made sensational efforts and succeeded in salvaging…many of Wasa’s (sic) cannons….the ship was rediscovered in 1956….the unique salvage undertaking …was commenced in 1956…” It is an elegant, quality single page pamphlet with her hull and rigging in profile. There was a descriptive board somewhere nearby the vessel which said that the boatswain had been aware that she lacked stability. As I remember it was because her beam was too narrow. The Dutch built the Batavia (a major vessel also) in the same year Wasa foundered. She got to the WA coast on her maiden voyage, on her way to the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) and hit the rocks in moonlight when the fellow at the masthead mistook what he was seeing. She had come too far before turning north, there being no worthwhile chronometers then; and she was far from the only Dutch vessel to end up on that WA shore. It was gory subsequently with a fellow called Jeronimus Cornelius and some cohorts dominating and murdering on the reef’s nearby island. The short story is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeronimus_Cornelisz. The remains of the Batavia wreck (stern, port side) are in the WA maritime museum. The Dutch have built a replica which came out here a few years ago and I went aboard. Nicely done.
Now if the Dutch could build a vessel which sailed across the SIO waters, why would Wasa have too little beam? The pamphlet does not mention the Dutch by the way. Maybe they were politically nobbled by the Poles or intent on maintaining a regional balance of power? This obviously is a conspiracy which really needs going into. Not too late and justice must be done. Not (of course) that I want to start anything amongst our northern European blog contributors….
The boatswain had a bunch of sailors run from side to side when she was alongside being completed. She rolled badly. This was reported (my memory again) to the King, Gustavus Adolphus, who paid it no attention. (If you are unaware of the elementaries of ship stability and have an interest, look up metacentric height.)
I do not suppose he would have ordered an investigation afterwards therefore and indeed may have rewarded the boatswain not be clapping him but doing so in irons.. (my imagination). She rolled and sank a few hundred metres after leaving alongside when a gust came, families aboard. I think lower gun ports might have been open, a contributor to the end also of the English Mary Rose a century before, in battle against the French, north of the Isle of Wight. She was raised recently too. These were major vessels of the time so a heavy hit on the budget and defence (and offence) capability and of course the loss of life was not funny at all.
@DennisW
You were right about the GEOMAR drift studies. They were reverse/back-wards drift studies based on the flaperon only using ocean-current data first without wind-data or Stokes-data (and no drifter-data).
They updated their study in March 2016 and later in May 2016 bringing in wind-effects and Stokes-drift effect.
http://www.geomar.de/fileadmin/content/service/presse/Pressemitteilungen/2016/MH370_Report_May2016.pdf
@Johan, Matt Moriarty. John Cox resumé https://www.halldale.com/files/halldale/attachments/Cox%20Bio.pdf
@Matt Moriarty. What would be interesting with Stone’s Central America work would be to reverse engineer it. He found it in a very low probability area. Shift the weightings until the prediction ends up where it was found and learn what the optimum weightings would have been. Having done that put that into the experience basket.
Next time, trot that out as putting you in a better position to take on the next job, ie the total package is not just skill but experience. Otherwise experience does not count count for much or at least cannot be demonstrated as doing so. I wonder if he did that?
@David
The CSIRO drift analytics did not change the search area as did not GEOMAR or other later drift-analytics. Or any other new information later on IMO.
As far as I know the search area was not changed after the doubling to 120.000km2 in May 2015.
I think your suggestion of shifting the weightings to the ones that lead to Stone’s finding and use this information in a new Bayesian analytics together with bringing in all latest drift-data and other information now available could lead to a better defined new search area.
@David, Thankyou for the OT post:), was a fun read!
@Ge Rijn, In his interview with me Neil Gordon implied that since the release of the first draft of “Bayesian Methods” the search team had modified their probability distribution model. This accords with the fact that Richard Cole’s plotting of the seabed search efforts showed that toward the end the Fugro Equator was scanning beyond the northeast boundary of the original DSTG-defined search area.
I think that many people on this forum are attracted to the idea that the plane might have crashed significantly further to the northeast, at or beyond Broken Ridge, but attempts to explain how this might have happened run up hard against the constraints of the BTO analysis.
@Ge Rijn, …”there has never been a statement from this pilot”. No doubt MAS probably encouraged him not to. It could be his wife made an honest mistake, but then why not correct her facebook statement? Would have been no big deal. Instead, her page was removed. Another one of those things where one gets a strong feeling we are being lied to or information is kept from the public.
@Jeff Wise
I didn’t knew that. I never saw an official change to the search area since May 2015.
Regarding contraints of the BTO analysis I like to referre back to those ‘data error optimisation’ and ‘constrained autopilot dynamics’.
Those flight paths under ‘data error optimisation’ reach nearly 30S:
http://thehuntformh370.info/content/flight-path-analysis-update
What do you think about those?
@David:
That was a day’s worth of contribution. I’ll to set off time to get back to you.
“1962”, I’ll say. You could have waited for the seawater to pour out of the ship. 🙂 You may visit the web pages of museum in the meantime. The main problem there being that it is hard to catch the whole ship in one picture, it is 54 x 54 m or in the vicinity (with masts). The Vasa was early with two gun decks (and actually had cannons in all directions) — at a point in time when strategy was drifting from boarding to broadsiding. Another questionable success, recently found off Öland, exploded and sank after being captured and boarded in its first major battle, against a Danish-Lübeckian coalition in 1564 with some 800–1000 souls perishing. It was bigger than Vasa, named Mars or the Astounding (aka the Danehater).
The seabed search: I assume many in here knows perfectly well how the seabed search has been conducted technically. Are several techniques used parallell or is it mainly an optic scan (digital photography)? Are there instrument that indicate metal? How is it done? Is the photage analysed by computers afterwards?
I ask because I saw a suggestion somewhere (perhaps here) that an aircraft dismembered in many parts spread over the bottom would be easier to locate than a single hull laying in an unfavourble place. So it would be metal against size — would it not?
Grateful for any reference.
@Keffertje:
It could be as simple as a (thought to be) harmless attempt at getting attention. The psychology being that they (the family) came pretty close (by way of the husbands employment) to a tragedy, if not fate had struck differently. So they became “involved”, to the point where sheer coincidence made the difference between the truth and what could have been. So she bettered the strike of fate a little, to make a thing of it to her friends and relatives reading her FB page. These things happen all the time (cf the Helios Airlines 522). It needen’t be fishy.
@Keffertje:
And it is hard for me to see how a co-pilot not showing up could affect our equation. If not Z knew him and asked him to take a sick-leave. Or someone else who knew the plane would be hijacked — but that sounds like something too difficult for us to dig into. Or that MAS relied more on Fariq for some intelligence stunt that were to go down, but there is little indication of such.
I think it may well safely be defenestrated.
@Keffertje @Johan
IMO it’s one of those things that were denied by MAS but never checked out in depth afterwards.
I assume no journalist ever tried to contact this MAS pilot Anaz Mazlin?
Maybe something for Jeff Wise to undertake?
@Johan, The scan is being done by sidescan sonar, which produces “images” using soundwaves in much the same fashion as ultrasound. Because each pass overlaps the one beside it, there is >100% coverage. Not only Fugro, but several layers of other parties including the ATSB are also looking at the data, and the ATSB has said that the data will ultimately be released to the public, as well, so that anyone will be able to look over it. The towfish has a resolution of 70 cm, so small pieces could get missed, but the engines are expected to be 3.5 by 3.5 meters even after an extremely high-speed impact. (And the debris field itself should register itself as a large object, though comprised of smaller ones.) Basically, they’re very confident that the plane isn’t anywhere they’ve scanned. That still leaves a few spots within the 120,000 sq km search area.
@Jeff:
Much obliged, Jeff. Sonar, that makes sense. I shiver a little in the face of the feat being accomplished and all the deep sea terrain they must have grazed. I hope they have some kind of computer/indicator aid while going through all photage.
Related to new and old reasons for human dissent, and the theaters for them, Swedish media reported today that Putin claimed that European reactions to the two missile launchers that entered the Baltic Sea yesterday as indication of a greater threat of war were exaggerated:
Putin: We plan no attack
Russia’s President Putin said in a
statement today that the Russian threat is
exaggerated and that the country has
no plans to attack any foreign power.
He said reports that
Russia was a threat to the world
had been made to justify higher
defence budgets in other countries.
He also said that the alleged Russian
involvement in the U.S. elections
is false.
– Russia attempts in no way to
interfere with the U.S. elections.
Besides the reassuring news, I can’t for my life figure out to the benefit of what side Russia would interfere in the U.S. elections.
@Keffertje @Johan @all
Because of the difficult industry issue of the rouge pilot, airlines really should have 3 pilots on a flight like this, that way we have 2 in the cockpit at all times.
In one sense we cannot legally blame a potential rouge pilot who had a lapse of judgement and used the tools the airline industry gave him (Fort Knox door and ability to shut all communications etc).
Endorsed by me as the MH370 “truth as best we know right now” is Ewan Wilson’s book Goodnight Malaysian 370, where he discusses the difficult issue of pilot suicide in some depth.
@Jeff Wise said;
” the engines are expected to be 3.5 by 3.5 meters even after an extremely
high-speed impact.”
_________
Compare with;
http://www.aph.gov.au/~/media/Committees/rrat_ctte/estimates/sup_1516/infra/answers/08ATSB.pdf
“The SOR”(Statement of Requirememnts)”defined the standards against which
all search tenders were assessed including vessels, personnel, systems and
equipment”(.)
“Key points to note in the SOR relating to the search method and equipment are:
the feature detection capability, or resolution, of 2 cubic metres which
must be achieved by the search system which was conservatively selected on
the basis that the B777 engines (which may well be some of the largest
pieces of debris) are approximately 3 m x 3 m x 4 m with the aerodynamic
cowlings in place. If just the core of the engine remains this can be
further reduced to 1 m x 1 m x 2 m.”
(Note; 1 m x 1 m x 2 m = 2 cubic metres.)
@TBill
I certainly agree a 3 pilots or at least 3 crew members in the cockpit could have prevented earlier suicide-flights. And maybe this one.
The first airliner who would implement a third crew member into the cockpit again would certainly have an advantage above others IMO.
I would definitely choose that airliner.
Airliners could differentiate themselves on safety with a lot of public and commercial reward as far as I’m concerned when they put a crew of three in the cockpit again.
The costs of that extra crew-member would be peanuts compared to the benefits and risks.
Good point you made.
@Ge Rijn
Thank you but I suspect I am just plagiarizing what Ewan Wilson wrote in his book
@TBill
If it’s your own opinion too (as it seems) there’s no problem with that IMO.
@Jeff Wise
Considering your latest views the flight must have been actively piloted (controlled) till the end I wonder about your opinion now about those ‘constrained autopilot dynamics’ the current search area was mostly based on and those ‘data error optimisation’ flight paths that where not based on autopilot dynamics.
IMO the latter leave room till ~30S not compromising the BTO/BFO data.
@David:
unattributable suicide: I think it is safe to say today that Z would have had no clue that he could be followed by way of the satellite handshakes, which means that he would have thought that by all likelihood ground could have seen him disappear northwesterly and then perhaps notice by way of pings and calling the plane that it was airborne for the following hours (but without being spotted over land in that direction). To his knowledge, the turn south would have remained unnoticed. That would have made it much harder to say with some confidence that he planned it. So his act to hide, which should have been unwitnessed, betrays him. Whether he knew about the IO currents, and planned for a slower or faster discovery in that respect, is impossible to say. Being apparently a romantic, he may have wanted some debris to wash up on the west coast of WA, offering faster closure, but the longer wait we are experiencing might have been a safer bet. This is all speculation of course.
You are not necessarily partisan for being Australian.
The Batavia was a beauty! (Of course, Rembrandt van Rijn’s The Oath of the Batavians (De samenzwering van de Bataven onder Claudius Civilis) is in the National Gallery (Stockholm). Sweden did, as a first, not sail much outside the Baltic Sea but had our hands full fencing off Russians, Poles, Lithuanians, Danes, Holstein-Gottorpians, Hamburgers, Lybians, Prussians and whatnot for centuries. We managed to dominate the Baltic Sea for a while, but then less so. “Acquiring” Skåne (Scania) from Denmark finally made it a bit easier to slip through Öresund without getting a load of brick in your head, and that may have eased our tensions a bit. 🙂 And letting the Finns take the blows from Russia themselves made life still a bit easier.
The main issue with the Vasa (without too much additional reading) was that it was commissioned and built during a long stretch of time, where particularities and chance affected the outcome. It was not “the” Dutch, but “a” Dutch that designed it, and it was ordered together as orgininally four ships, which became two when the Dutchman had found (and not found) the main oak timber and prepared it before the king, who was out battling, had a chance to have his say. So there was some “harmonica”-effect due to the mail communication. And then the Dutchman died, and Another Dutchman took over, and then this and that, while the king had his wishes but weren’t there to see them through completely, and the Swedish navy reps. were apparently unable to keep it all on an even keel.
The outline is apparently Dutch, with a comparatively flat bottom, and thus low below water, and little room for ballast, but with an extra gun deck that moves the centre of gravity considerably upwards. The stability test you are talking about was also done while waiting for the guns to be cast (go figure). In all, it appears the Dutchmen involved were inexperienced (they should have made the ship wider or deeper), and that no one oversaw it that could/dared go back or stop the construction. There was a great inquest, but no one accepted the blame, and the king had approved of the measures. One might add that it (perhaps) was accepted by the king as show-off boat that came to by some accident to replace ships lost in battle (there were many ships being built), and that the first intentions were to take it to the main outer naval base at Älvsnabben (still within the calmer archipelago waters of the still comparatively calm Baltic Sea). That would be a test for her and suffice as a show-off for Polish spies. Maybe they reckoned more ballast could be added at Älvsnabben and that that would be enough. (unfortunately, even if the archipelago is calm as to waves, there will be sudden gusts of wind between the islands). Oh, yes, the lower gun ports were open.
@Ge Rijn, As soon as Malaysia announced that Inmarsat had devised a way to use BFO values to determine that the plane had gone south, there was a great deal of excitement over the idea that taken together the BFO and BTO values could be used to derive an actual end point, and so an enormous amount of time was spent trying to figure out exactly how the BFO values were derived. The ATSB conducted its “data error optimisation” analysis along these lines. As you observe, it concluded that the optimal place to look would be around 30 degrees south.
However, upon further reflection, a different view emerged, and later became dominant: that the BFO values had enormous uncertainties built in, that meant they were not very useful for narrowing down a search location. Instead, it would be more productive to think about the ways that a plane would likely fly. This approach paralleled what the IG was doing independently, and when the ATSB decided to give it equal weight to error optimisation there was much rejoicing in the land.
When people suggest that the debris most likely originated at 30S, essentially what they’re saying is that the ATSB was probably right in the first place, and the whole “constrained autopilot dynamics” was a red herring. And expensive one, at that!
I look at it a different way. To me, what it means is that the BFO and the BTO values don’t really line up the way you’d expect them to do if they were generated normally. Add this together with the fact that the authorities (which include the people who built the SDU) can explain neither the 18:25 nor the 00:19 BFO values (the latter, because the wreckage didn’t turn up on the 7th arc, where it should have been if the plane had been in a hell-for-leather descent) and the fact that the SDU experienced some very unusual changes of state in the hour before 18:25, leads me to wonder if it might be worth at least considering the question, “Can we be sure that the BFO values haven’t been tampered with?”
@Jeff
Re : “Can we be sure that the BFO values haven’t been tampered with?”
To expand on your question :
Can we be sure the electrical system on the plane was providing stable power?
We know something happened to the electrical system (SDU reboot).
We know a link was established = the power was within operational limits.
BUT what would be the effects of over/under voltage (within operational limits)?
It seems that the BTO calculations are intrinsically linked to the processor clock speed stability. If too much power is fed to the processor, it will be over-clocked. The processor responds faster than anticipated and the arc is undersized.
A typical processor can be overclocked 10% quite safely without short term problems.
Would that have any measurable impact given the other error margins?