The search isn’t officially over yet–the crew of the Fugro Equator still has a Christmas and New Year’s at sea to look forward to, as well as most of the month of January–but it looks like Australia is throwing in the towel on the current seabed search as it issues its First Principles Review looking at what it learned during the last three years and where it thinks the plane’s main wreckage still might be.
The upshot of the report is quite similar to the postmortem posted here in September entitled Commentary on Neil Gordon Interview. In short, the First Principles report argues that the debris most likely is located in a small (25,000 sq km) area to the northeast of the 120,000 sq km search area, and that if it isn’t there, the ATSB has no idea where it is.
Personally, I’d like to see them go ahead and search that area, but as I read the tea leaves Malaysian and China will not allow it. They’re done. (They’ve heard the “we’re absolutely certain it’s in this area but oops it’s not so we promise it’s in the next area” line before.)
So what did the report contain that was new?
What we didn’t learn, to my great dismay, was anything about the biofouling or anything more about the mechanical breakage of the debris, and what it could have told us about how the plane came apart. Patrick De Deckker’s findings might be buried forever.
There were, however, some interesting revelations:
- For the first time, the ATSB went into some detail explaining just how much of the seabed it might have missed because the seabed terrain was too steep or rough. They reckon this to amount to about one percent of the total.
- Search team members agreed that “the distance required to be searched from the arc could be reduced to 25 NM from the 7th arc.” At one time officials believed that the plane could have gone as far as 100 nm, so excluding that possibility greatly reduces the search zone size.
- For the first time, the ATSB has said that the quantity of debris collected in the western Indian Ocean by itself is useful in reducing the search area: “From the number and size of items found to date from MH370 there was definitely a surface debris field, so the fact that the sea surface search detected no wreckage argues quite strongly that the site where the aircraft entered the water was not between latitudes 32°S4 and 25°S along the 7th arc.”
For me, the most exciting part of the report is the section provided by the CSIRO discussing how the debris might have drifted. The piece de resistance is a photograph provided by the French showing how the actual Réunion flaperon floated when put in the test tank (above). There are two stable states, both of which require heavily-encrusted parts of the flaperon to stick out well clear of the water. This is clearly impossible–barnacles can not live high and dry.
In the past, during discussions of this topic on this forum, people have said, “but wave action might flip the flaperon over so the whole thing might stay wet.” I’ve pooh-poohed this, saying that the flaperon looked quite heavy, and riding low in the water it would be no meant feat for a wave to flip it over. But lo and behold, the report contains a fifteen second video of a replica flaperon being tossed around in a choppy sea by 20 knot winds, and by god if it isn’t flipping over all the time. And therefore I acknowledge that it’s easy to imagine a flaperon getting continually flipped over, so that no barnacle would stay out of the water for more than a few seconds. However, what I cannot imagine is that a state of 20 knot winds is going to persist for 15 months. At some point, the wind is going to die down, and all the barnacles on the high side are going to die. Then the wind will pick up, the flaperon will get flipped over, and the barnacles on the other side will die. The only barnacles that would be able to survive such flip-flopping would the those in the band between the two exposed “poles.”
This is a really obvious problem that the French addressed in their own original secret report (though as I’ve written they couldn’t reconcile it). I find it a little surprising that CSIRO didn’t engage in the topic at all. I wish they’d let me write the questions for their FAQ!
As it stands, I feel that the photograph above provides a huge clue as to what happened to MH370.
UPDATE 12/20/16: To clarify this “huge clue,” here are some pictures of the trailing edge, which according to the French tank test should have been sticking out of the water (right-click to expand). (You can see a video of a replica floating in this way here.)
@DennisW, @Ge Rijn, take a look at the CSIRO video of the replica bobbing in the water. (The calm, not the 20 knot breeze.) Real ocean. The trailing edge is high and dry.
@DennisW, Don’t look at everything from the lens of, “I already have my beliefs about what happened so anything that comes my way that runs contrary to those beliefs is going to have to be debunked.” There’s real information here. Engage with it!
@DennisW
I wanted to point out the observed barnacle growth doesn’t conflict the situations the flaperon shows in the tank IMO (according to those pictures).
I agree all kinds of situations could have happened to that flaperon in those 15 months but that’s only speculating.
Here is something factual we can actualy try to compare with eachother.
Maybe nice to watch. Rowing solo across the Pacific. Dutchman Ralph Tuijn did this (and the Atlantic). He also attempted the Indian Ocean but got shipwrecked by a passing tanker near Cocos Island:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsNfQn4OfLY
@DH, I believe that the flaperon, and all of the other 777 debris that’s been found so far, almost certainly comes from 9M-MRO. What this means is that it was planted by people who have 9M-MRO. Which I would expect, anyway.
Sounds crazy, but don’t forget, we live in a world in which people destroy perfectly good MAS 777’s filled with innocent civilians for no apparent reason. This is a known fact.
@Gysbreght, It was put in a crate and airfreighted to Toulouse, so probably in transit a few days or a week before it got in the tank. If you’re thinking that maybe a whole lot of water drained out before the French put it in the tank, I think they would have thought of that–based on the secret report, they couldn’t reconcile how it floated with how the Lepas population was distributed. So this isn’t all just a figment of my imagination.
@Jeff
I did view the video. My experience in the ocean is just very different.
Also I am very skeptical of CSIRO and the DSTG. I truly believe they are under orders from the “home office” to bury the search activity with as few embarrassing questions as possible. Basically I don’t believe a thing the ATSB, CSIRO, or the DSTG says, and the ATSB is the only party doing the talking right now.
The back to basics report was an embarrassment to anyone with a brain for reasons I already elaborated. The politics surrounding this whole endeavor are disgusting.
@CosmicAcademy, You’ve wonderfully expressed the nature of the situation we are in. I, too, feel frustrated but I remain optimistic that we can mutually engage respectfully and curiously with one another’s areas of expertise for forge a collective understanding.
@DennisW,
“I did view the video. My experience in the ocean is just very different.”
That’s the thing. You just can’t extrapolate your experience in the ocean to “all ocean, all the time”. Think of the Doldrums.
I have sat on a milk pond in the roaring fourties for a couple of days. That’s contrary to many people’s experience at those latitudes.
Gonna do it again in a couple of days. M2H, here we come…
Have a great break everyone.
@SusieC, What happened to MH370 should never happen again and parties to this should take responsibility in all respects so that the truth may prevail. The sad truth is, MY wants this to go away, CN doesn’t really care and Australia is taking the brunt for a wrongly defined search area and not switching gears when they still had the chance. Their last statement on redefining the search area is “mustard after the meal” as we say here in the Netherlands. It is hard to imagine any other country stepping up to the plate or another benefactor digging deep to enable a new search. For the NOK, I am hoping it will happen because they are entitled to know the truth and may then be able to close this chapter of hell in their lives.
@Jeff Wise: “If you’re thinking that maybe a whole lot of water drained out before the French put it in the tank, I think they would have thought of that–based on the secret report, …”.
Yes, that’s what I’m thinking, and they did not. Was the Meteo France report really secret?
Another question: Does the recent ‘seamonster’ in NZ have a waterline?
The flaperon-copy in the movie shows the same attitude as in the tank floating bottom up, top down.
I assume that if the French didn’t think of letting the flaperon first fill with water (which you can expect they thought of as professional researchers) than at least the ATSB did.
Two professional research-teams wouldn’t make such an obvious silly mistake twice IMO.
Also in the movie you can see the top side trailing edge is completely submerged all the time (towards the flaperons inboard side) or in contact with the water most of the time (the flaperons outboard side).
I assume the floating attitude in the movie is the preferred attitude in which the flaperon floated; top side down.
This makes sence because point of gravity would lay towards the leading edge top side for there is the most of the mass concentrated.
Generaly also the ocean is reletively calm for considerable lenghts of time without curling, breaking waves that would force the flaperon to flip over.
The occasional storms would cause that to happen several times though but in general the flaperon would return to its preferred attitude and drift like is shown in the movie IMO.
In that attitude the barnacle distribution is not conflicting but still confirming the original images of the flaperon IMO.
I notice there is one big difference in the flaperon-copy and the test-tank flaperon situation with the original situation of the flaperon:
The big metal hinge on the outboard side is not attached.
IMO this would surely influence the flaperons floating attitude and behaviour with different results.
I doubt this.
Is that your assumption (in which case it would be helpful to word it as such) or something you know for a fact ?
Can you please link to your source to back up your claim ?
Here is a source contradicting your claim:
“Some barnacles can survive long peroids out of the water. For example, Balanoides balanoides can go 6 weeks out of the water, and Cthamalus stellatus has been known to live for 3 years(!) with only brief submergence one or two days a month.”
http://www.mitchellspublications.com/guides/shells/articles/0059/
There was only one specimen on the flaperon.
Jeff said: “Sounds crazy, but don’t forget, we live in a world in which people destroy perfectly good MAS 777’s filled with innocent civilians for no apparent reason. This is a known fact.”
This!
@RetiredF4
Excellent and very informative post a previous articles back regarding potential DG capabilities!
@all
There’s just so much info swirling around MH370 that its easy to forget something you came across at another time.
While googling DG I remembered an old bit of info – Z’s purported sim landing/s on DG.
Would be very interesting to know if this was close to time of his simulated SIO journey/s…
(Sorry, I’m not intentionally trying to veer the discussion to DG – just something that got me thinking at the time).
If that outboard hinge was attached during those tests it would have pushed or pulled (depending on which side was up during floating) that outboard edge and surroundings a bit deeper into the water and the opposit side a bit more out of the water.
If they didn’t compensate for the weight of that hinge this test can not be fully comparable with the original flaperon floating situation IMO.
@Peter Norton, Acorn barnacles (which are adapted to the intertidal zone and so are adapted to resist dessication) are a completely different thing from goose barnacles (which raft on floating debris and so spend their entire lives immersed).
Since you’re starting from square one I suggest that you read my post about Lepas barnacles, floating debris, waterlines, etc: http://jeffwise.net/2015/10/09/the-flaperon-flotation-riddle/
@Peter Norton
There is some minor evidence backing up Jeffs reply to you;
http://plymsea.ac.uk/2090/1/The_influence_of_temperature_on_the_breeding_and_the_moulting_activities_of_some_warm-water_species_of_operculate_barnacles.pdf
“The operculate barnacles, unlike Lepas however, could live without food
for long periods.” (Other text makes it clear that it is Lepas Anatifera
that is being referred to.)
@Gysbreght
The flaperon arrived at Balma, Toulouse (more than 100km from any sea) on
05 AUG 2015. The authorization for Pierre Daniel to conduct his testing was
given on 04 SEP 2015. Pierre Daniel produced his report dated 08 Feb 2016.
The Pierre Daniel report does not state that any attempt was made to waterlog
the flaperon (by e.g. rotating it & holding it under the water surface for a
day {what I would consider the minimum necessary}).
The flaperon is made of materials, some of which are of composite honeycomb
structure, and it may have sealed compartments which require time for water
to leak into;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KlTuhHGq44&t=140
The French report also did not state that any attempt was made to simulate
the weight of any Lepas Anatifera that could be expected to attach to the
flaperon whilst journeying over deep water, or even the weight of the Lepas
Anatifera that were seen in the Réunion photographs of the flaperon.
Jeff has previously written “Inspection of the flaperon by (Joseph)Poupin
revealed that the entire surface was covered in Lepas” – (presumably Mr
Poupin deduced this from minûte residues on the surface of the flaperon
that Lepas cause when they adhere to a surface). Joseph Poupin is a French
marine biologist who wrote a non-public report that Jeff states he has seen.
Therefore, the Pierre Daniel report should be viewed as seriously flawed as
regards buoyancy.
——-
The flaperon as found by Johnny Bègue was “Pose sur le Sab(le)” , Laying on
the Sand, at the waters edge. Given the normal circumstance of waves running
onto a beach and returning back down it, an item at the waters edge would be
expected to settle several centimetres into the sand, not necessarily being
‘buried’ in the sand. The sand was black (volcanic) sand mixed with pebbles of
various sizes.
https://cdn.theguardian.tv/webM/2015/07/31/150731MH370_1_synd_768k_vp8-1.webm
SKyNews reporter David Bowden spoke with other people on Réunion that thought
they had seen the flaperon a week before Johnny Bègue sighted & reported it;
http://video.news.sky.com/video/h264/vod/700/2015/07/DIGI183441FRMH370BowdenAsLiveOnBe150731183525481438364175823700.mp4
Therefore, any theory based on the paucity of Lepas Anatifera on the flaperon,
fails to take into account that the flaperon could simply have been in the
surf zone at Réunion for a week or weeks, prior to July 28th or 29th 2015.
@RetiredF4
I think it’s still an interesting thought.
Combined with Jeff’s spoof scenario, the SIM ‘FMT’-turn ending towards the ~direction of DG and a selected 9M-MRO debris planted scenario (which also obviously is still on Jeff’s table) it could fit.
But then MH370 was shot down by the American military when it entered DG’s critical airspace and the cover-up was totally an American affair.
That would be a hard one to swallow by Americans I pressume..
@Sajid UK
I do not recall any DG sim flights mentioned.
Re: FS2004 Trying to match VictorI’s paper about 180S magnetic heading, at first I could not match Victor because the FS2004 magnetic variation was off. Via Google found a patch to update FS2004 to 2017 heading corrections and now my magnetic headings are much better. I am trying to understand if a McMurdo waypoint could have been a quick and dirty substitute for a better 180S magnetic heading in FS2004.
@buyerninety, You’ve got it reversed, the problem is the abundance of Lepas, not the paucity. They are quite readily visible in photographs taken on the beach in Réunion, and they go all the way around the flaperon.
I would point out that I highlighted the impossibility of the flaperon’s flotation in this blog long before I saw the secret French report which revealed that they’d reached the same conclusion on direct examination. Now we have photographs and videos in which we can see the problem with our own eyes. The trailing edge, which is positively thick with fat happy Lepas, sticks right up out of the water!!!
I keep giving you more and more direct evidence and it’s never enough.
There will be a meeting to consider next steps:
http://www.nst.com.my/news/2016/12/198523/mh370-malaysia-hold-talks-china-australia-determine-next-step-search
Seems to me ATSB has just made a fairly solid case for further checking the 32.5 to 36S area. So I’d probably say to go ahead do that step (easy for me to say that of course).
For those of us with pins in the 31.5 to 32.5 S Broken Ridge mountainous area, it still looks a lot like somebody is avoiding looking there due to the difficult mountains, but that is “sour grapes” not scientific argument.
@DennisW @all
Comprehensible motive
In a scenario that is different from the official narrative there was still very difficult to search for a comprehensible motive. Well, you might always consider if its about money and infights about the share of trillions of dlrs:
1) 9/11 showed a cynical behaviour of the perpetrators traders speculation against certain stock, that suffered from the attack. Now it may appear that there was no special freight in the cargo hold, but that the target was the disappearance itself, to
(a) demonstrate to what length a foe would go to impose his rule on a situation and
(b) to make a horrible lot of money by stock exchange tradings against malaysian stock
(c) to show malaysia that it can be economically destroyed.
This motive is sure comprehensible and if MH17 is connected in any way to the MH370 disapearance, it might have been the same motive: make Malaysia suffer and cash in on the falling stock on a real big scale.
I admit that we need economic business expertise about it, but it was never wrong to follow the trail of the money …
2) A Scenario that would fit the known facts would be a fight between some oligarchs in russia against the Kazachstan/Malaysia connection, which would explain a northern route for the disappearance.
3) The way the plane was taken might have been by an electronic attack. German hackers demonstrated the possible hack of the IFE the year before and others, like the russian hacking factories who are very excellent, might have improved that idea in a very sophisticated way. May that be realistic or not: My contacts in the sphere of those german IT specialists said immediately after the disappearance in march 2014, that it was probably electronic hijacking … Just think about, that most of those successful hacking operations are being sold afterwards to maybe banks or companies on the pretense of improving security…
@TBill
You want 2014 heading corrections…the magnetic declination at 35S 93E changes ~ 0.22 degrees per year.
@DennisW, @Ge Rijn, @JeffWise
The location of the CSIRO video Jeff asked you to view is unclear.
I believe it would also have been filmed in North West Bay, or the
shelted waters of the D’Entrecasteaux Channel (rather than out in
the ocean).
https://www.google.com/maps/place/shelted-dentrecasteaux-channel/@-43.0431576,146.8790084,9z
Actual size of ocean waves, the swells you would experience out in the
Tasman Sea, are several times greater than those seen in that video.
————–
In regard to the Indian Ocean, you may care to confirm for yourselves
that average height of waves are about 5 to 7 metres.
http://thefreeresource.com/ocean-waves-how-theyre-formed-facts-and-resources/
“The Indian Ocean is where the largest waves tend to occur with
an average height of 7 meters. They have also been noted to double that
and measure up to 14 meters. The reason for this is that the wind in
this area tends to blow consistently in the same direction.”
(Note; Someone will probably chime in about the largest wave measured
in waters off Scotland – I am not suggesting that the largest wave that
ever occurred was in the Indian Ocean…)
@TBill, The subtext of the report is clearly that the ATSB wants to continue the search — they’ve made this clear for some time — but the Malaysians and Chinese have also been making their position very clear for a long time, that they don’t want to go on any longer. Every one of the weekly operational search updates issued since July has included the following language: “At a meeting of Ministers from Malaysia, Australia and the People’s Republic of China held on 22 July 2016, it was agreed that should the aircraft not be located in the current search area, and in the absence of credible new evidence leading to the identification of a specific location of the aircraft, the search would be suspended upon completion of the 120,000 square-kilometre search area.”
The current report does not introduce any significant new evidence, so I don’t think a plausible case could be made that this standard has been met. Yes, the Australians are saying that they strongly believe it’s in this new area, but they said that about the last area too. I went back and looked it up — on August 3, 2015 Warren Truss said: ““The experts are telling us that there is a 97% possibility that it is in that area.” (http://www.nst.com.my/news/2016/12/198523/mh370-malaysia-hold-talks-china-australia-determine-next-step-search)
@buyerninety, Here’s a current map of global wave height here: http://www.nhweatherdata.com/waveheight.html. As you can see, waves come and go. Sometimes it’s rough, sometimes it’s calm. Sometimes it’s windy, sometimes it’s not. Take a look at @MuOne’s comment, he’s actually spent some time at sea in another notoriously rough stretch of ocean.
A general note: I’m puzzled by the response that some readers seem to have to my posts, when I try to move the ball forward — I’ll talk to a lot of scientist, read academic papers, sometimes spend weeks or months trying to nail down what I feel could be an important lead, and then when I lay it all out, their response is, “Nope, here’s a link to a Fun Facts for Kids website, your whole premise is wrong.” Open your mind a little.
@jeffwise
From your previous comment
“The current report does not introduce any significant new evidence, so I don’t think a plausible case could be made that this standard has been met. Yes, the Australians are saying that they strongly believe it’s in this new area, but they said that about the last area too. I went back and looked it up — on August 3, 2015 Warren Truss said: ““The experts are telling us that there is a 97% possibility that it is in that area.” (http://www.nst.com.my/news/2016/12/198523/mh370-malaysia-hold-talks-china-australia-determine-next-step-search)”
Very true, it also sounds as if based on added drift models included in their recent report, that the Bayesian area derived by ATSB and assosiates is now highly unlikely, even thought that, as seen in Richard Cole updates that there are areas of Bayesian left un-Bathyscanned, would it be correct for ATSB if funding is made available to fulfil this method and complete the un-scanned Bayesian areas, no matter how small that probability is, before moving elsewhere.
@George Tilton
I agree if I could find FS2004 2014 magnetic correction that might help. Right now I am very close to VictorI’s path, so I may be good enough. Need to do more testing. At best FS2004 is weak on exact magnetic headings, someone says magnetic south is 800 miles off of reality. Some say you can’t land at McMurdo in FS2004 because the iceway moves as you try to land (due to the magnetic corrections). If you do land, you cannot stop due to the ice. But I have no interest in actually landing an airplane as yet in my studies.
@George Tilton
PS- re “the magnetic declination at 35S 93E changes ~ 0.22 degrees per year.”
see that’s an important number so FS2004 software is 2003 vintage, is probably by at least 10×0.22 = 2.2 degrees off for 2014 unless the user has manually updated the magnetic headings in the program file system. So that’s why I am wondering if using McMurdo waypoint could possibly be a substitute short cut to mimic 180S magnetic.
@Jeff
you said:
“A general note: I’m puzzled by the response that some readers seem to have to my posts, when I try to move the ball forward”
We have, in my view, only three pieces of information that are real relative to the disappearance.
1> Inmarsat data
2> debris findings
3> Simulator data points
You are asking people to discard all of them to consider a theory which has absolutely no factual basis. I am puzzled by your surprise relative to a lack of disciples except for the known fringe elements on this blog (I won’t name names, but I have had bizarre exchanges with many of them.) I cannot think of a single credible person inside or outside this investigation who embraces your theory.
Additionally no one has put forth any believable motive for why the aircraft would be abducted on a Northern path.
@DennisW, It’s true I’ve had a tough time convincing many people. But when government officials are saying they’ve got the situation locked down, it’s hard to convince anyone that there’s a bigger picture. It just takes patience and perseverence. Two years ago, I explained why the search in the southern ocean might be unsuccessful. I was ridiculed, it’s true. But I’m glad I made that call. Now it’s clear that the ATSB’s confidence was ill-founded and my critique was prescient.
Sometimes you have to be willing to stand alone for a while.
And BTW, if you feel that the simulator data points incontrovertibly point to Zaharie’s guilt, do me the favor of explaining in a sentence or two what the plane was doing at 45S2.
@Jeff
I’ve had the very same issues with the ATSB, the IG, and other independent analysts as you know. So you are definitely not alone in that regard. I made exactly the same call as you did albeit for different reasons – for an incorrect interpretation of the BFO data (failure to understand oscillator physics), and an underdetermined analytical framework. Not to mention the refusal of the main characters to even consider the notion of causality.
At this moment there are many areas that have not been searched that can be reconciled with the main observables I listed in my last post. Why discard those possibilities to embrace a theory that requires tossing the baby out with the bathwater?
As to your question about 45S, I don’t have an answer. I avoided getting embroiled in the detailed simulator discussions because I have no experience in that domain or in any form of aerodynamics, but I have followed along. The exact details of the simulated path are of less interest to me than is its very existence, and the details surrounding its erasure and discovery.
@JeffWise said;
“You’ve got it reversed, the problem is the abundance of Lepas, not the paucity.
They are quite readily visible in photographs taken on the beach in Réunion, and
they go all the way around the flaperon.”
?? OK, your line of argument is that there is too many, er, not too few
(in regard to the flaperon).
What I am asserting is that your quote of Joseph Poupin supports the view
that the flaperon had a great many Lepas on it (much more than seen
in the Reunion photos). Further, other persons saw the flaperon in the
Reunion surf zone a week prior to July 28th/29th, according to David Bowden.
Therefore, allowing for the flaperon to have actually arrived in the beach
zone some weeks before it was seen, adequately explains (for me) the
reduction in the level of infestation of Lepas seen in the Reunion photographs.
(All; yes, I’m aware of Reunion media reports that assert the flaperon was
seen in May at Reunion at the waterline – I just don’t feel those reports
are even necessary to explain what the photographs show.)
Perhaps I should simply state that what I see is virtually no Lepas on one
side (presumably the side that spent the majority of its time face down
towards the sand whilst it was at or near the beach), few Lepas on the side
that was presumably face up (majority time again, in sun & out of water),
and a smattering of hardy survivours around the edges of the flaperon,
(I think you’ve suggested the flaperon was attached to the side of a ship,
but I can’t understand how that would result in the edges, all around
the flaperon, having survivours, but not the flat faces).
Jeff says; “I highlighted the impossibility of the flaperon’s flotation”…
…”The trailing edge, which is positively thick with fat happy Lepas, sticks
right up out of the water”.
Simply put, there is no photograph that shows a waterlogged flaperon,
in the metre-multiples of wave swell encountered in the ocean, (& probably
eventually weighed down with an infestation of Lepas) ‘sticking up out of the
water’. Rather than continuously out of the water, it would be closer to real
conditions to say it was continuously awash.
I’d agree in high winds conditions the flaperon at the wave tops could be
caught, pushed somewhat down a wave and sometimes maybe flipped – no sand
or rocks, no seashore crabs or birds, plenty of ocean plankton – so sometimes
flipping is no big problem for Lepas. Yum says the Lepas. Flip me again, daddy.
@DennisW, It’s all in the details. That’s why I obsessively pore over these things. It all hangs on whether a bit of barnacle-encrusted flaperon pokes up out of the water or not, or whether the SDU can get rebooted by accident, or whether the sim data shows a glide or a power-off stall. We can’t know what any of the events you list mean until we can know, in a really granular way, exactly what they are.
“here’s a link to a Fun Facts for Kids website”
(Shrug) That simply the first return seen in when I
google “average wave height” “Indian Ocean”. Other
returns showed it to be about right, so it got the
job of being a reference.
(I didn’t forget you L.H. Wong… maybe another time.)
@Jeff
Yes. No bashing intended on my part. Just following my instincts snd training as are you.
@DennisW, Respect.
An overview of NOAA wave height predictions for the Indian Ocean in the coming week gives an impression of general wave heights in the IO between 1 and 3 meters except for the storm thats running through the Southern area now:
http://www.worldwavedata.com/animations/animation_indian_ocean_Hs.html
@JeffW @DennisW
“But when government officials are saying they’ve got the situation locked down, it’s hard to convince anyone that there’s a bigger picture.”
Ventus45 has a recent theory of all governments locking down the secrets of MH370 from public view.
http://auntypru.com/forum/-Australia-ATSB-and-MH-370?pid=6045#pid6045
I also feel this is at least partially true. As far as I know, for example, USA has neither confirmed nor denied that the US intercepted a mayday radio call from MH370 that night. But fundamentally I just feel if you run a country’s government such as Malaysia or any country, you are given the inherent right to control communications including aircraft crash investigations.
SilkAir (Indonesia) and Egypt never agreed with NSTB’s likely suicide or intentional grounding cause for those crashes.
Compared to those countries, at least MY Prime Minister Razak fell on his sword on 15-March-2014 when he said it looked like a deliberate act of some kind. So maybe NTSB is satisfied with that answer under the circumstances. Otherwise USA may have to step in a say what the U.S. thinks the cause was, but as long as MY is not blaming the aircraft, then maybe U.S. has no need to intervene or contradict MY.
If the search is called off, it sort of invites the need for someone to write a most likely cause(s) memo, and that could be an interesting exercise.
@TBill
“@Sajid UK – I do not recall any DG sim flights mentioned.”
TBill, apologies, you’re right there. However, news reports did note that DG was amongst the “top 5 locations” discovered on the sim.
Now I don’t know what “top 5” actually refers to. Amongst the “top 5” leads? Or “top 5” within the sim data itself?
Anyway, the Berita Harian Malay “quoted unnamed sources close to the investigation saying… the airport runways were Male (Maldives), Diego Garcia and three runways in India and Sri Lanka…”
So I suppose my slightly rephrased question would be, would DG and Male and the Indian runways have been stored around the same time of the SIO flight, or within a totally different timeframe?
http://english.astroawani.com/malaysia-news/mh370-diego-garcia-runway-found-captain-zaharies-flight-simulator-32034
Just a side comment…assassination of russian ambassador in Turkey shows that people do very strange things because of politics, taking the plane off regular route and trying to bring it into another country to inflict damage to the government you despise is a bit lower on the scale of insanity than this case.
@all
Reflecting on the “First Principles Review” it should really have been called a Post Mortem Review, a standard term in the industry. From Wiki below:
begin cut-paste//
The term post-mortem is latin for “after death”, and originally referred to a medical examination of a corpse to determine the cause of death. The term has, more colloquially come to refer to any “after the fact” analysis and discussion of a recently completed process or event, to see what lessons we can learn from it.
end cut-paste//
It is clear that confidence is low that the aircraft will be found in the time allocated to the remaining search effort. A question can be phrased in two ways:
1> What should we do next?
2> What we would do differently if we could start over?
Both are valuable ways to examine an effort. The ATSB report has chosen to emphasize the former when my own meetings of this type tended to emphasize the latter. So, expanding on the second – what went wrong? The search will almost certainly be a failure, and the reasons for failure need to be articulated. Big boys cannot hide behind a “we did our best” explanation.
I will give my version.
1> The people making funding decisions were not capable of evaluating the strength of the data they were given. While I cannot look inside another person’s brain, the train of comments coming from the top officials of the ATSB as well as from government officials were far more optimistic than the analytics warranted. Now all that is left for them is the Nuremberg defense – we were only doing what we were told.
2> The underwater search was initiated too early. Had the ATSB waited until debris began showing up (and where debris was not showing up), I am quite sure the search area would have been adjusted to the North from the get-go. There was no urgency in starting the search. It was not a search and rescue mission.
3> The behavior of the Malay government should have been strongly challenged, and challenged early on. It was clear from the beginning that the Malays were behaving in an obstructionist manner. The Aussies were far too accommodating.
On @DennisW’s Post Mortem, i must say I do agree with everything he said.
#3 is most telling of the guilty party
@StevenG
You said, “Just a side comment…assassination of russian ambassador in Turkey shows that people do very strange things because of politics, taking the plane off regular route and trying to bring it into another country to inflict damage to the government you despise is a bit lower on the scale of insanity than this case.”
Allow for me to fix that for you. Murdering 238 pax and intentionally disappearing the airplane in the nether regions of the Indian Ocean to inflict damage on the govt. you despise is MUCH HIGHER on the scale of insanity than the cold-blooded assassination of Mr. Karlov.
But you’re correct when you assert that politics/ideology is for some worth dying for.
Some interesting comments on the CSIRO/ATSB conclusions below from Paul Howard.
http://www.paulhowardplays.com/blog
OZ
@OZ
Interesting but long time outdated arguments by Paul Howard IMO.
He only considers/argues Reunion and the flaperon as basis of the CSIRO drift studies while for a long time now the CSIRO studies are not only about the flaperon anymore.
Their later studies put in gradualy more debris finds and new data and with that give more acurate results and predictions.
Based on his outdated arguments he concludes the search should be suspended for possibly years till better data becomes available (which already has become available after Reunion and the flaperon).
In a way I feel he advocates the search should be canceled now and the 25.000km2 left unsearched. I question the real reason why he advocates this. Things are not going according to his own confirmation bias?
Anyway, based on his very little and outdated arguments I couldn’t disagree more with him.
@All, Once MH370 fades from the media, it will fade from people’s minds. It’s doubfull a new search will ever get a jumpstart from any organisation or nation. “from postponement comes annulment” as we say here. If the search is not continued after January, it will be very tough to pick up the ball a year or even years later. The chance to go back to the drawing board and change the search area after the recovery of the flaperon has come and gone. Even if MH370 is ever found a complete new (very expensive) chapter opens up with perhaps a high probability that the CVR and FDR contain no data at all. Gleaning any data from PAX cell phones, after all that time, will likely provide the same results. It’s evident the ATSB would like to continue, for their own selfish reasons, but MY and CN are not going to play.
@Ge Rijn,
His comments ARE in relation to the latest CSIRO study.
The CSIRO have indicated the selection of start band is based on the Flaperon arrival of July; reports at the time of the finding indicate it could have arrived in May.
This means the start band potentially moves further north.
OZ