New York: The Search for MH370 Seems to Be Over. What Now?

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Australian officials have concluded that the $180 million search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has failed. In a report timed to coincide with the wind-down of the two-year-long inspection of the southern Indian Ocean, a panel of experts convened by the Australian Transport Safety Board opined that the plane most likely lies somewhere in a zone of open ocean about the size of New Hampshire to the northeast of the current search area.

This new zone probably won’t be examined. The three countries responsible for the search — Australia, Malaysia, and China — have already stated that no further attempts to find the plane will be undertaken, unless compelling new evidence emerges.

In short, the biggest mystery in the history of modern aviation doesn’t look like it will be solved anytime soon. So it’s a good moment to take stock about what we know and what to expect in the future as we try to make sense of frustrating and tragic irresolution:

The investigators now say they have a pretty good handle on how the plane went down.

Ironically, while admitting failure, the Australian report reflects the experts’ increased confidence that they understand more or less what happened the night of the vanishing.

Based on automatic signals — “pings” — exchanged between the plane and a navigation satellite during the final six hours MH370 was in the air, investigators believe that after the airliner vanished from radar screens over the Malacca Strait it must have taken a final turn to the left and flown south on a magnetic compass heading (one of several possible navigational modes a plane can use). It then flew straight until it ran out of fuel and dived into the ocean at high speed, smashing apart into small fragments.

The scenario would be consistent with pilot suicide, but the report does not mention the secret Malaysian police report leaked earlier this year that revealed that captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah had saved a set of points on his home flight simulator in which he flew with zero fuel in the remote southern Indian Ocean. The simulator data could reasonably be interpreted as evidence he planned a suicide flight, or it could be a freak coincidence. The ATSB has long maintained silence regarding the possible identity of the perpetrator, saying that its job is to figure where MH370 went, not why it went there.

The plane is almost certainly not in the huge patch of ocean investigators spent two years searching.

The investigators long believed that the plane’s impact point lay within a nearly 50,000-square-mile rectangle calculated by Australia’s Defense Science Technology Group. But this high-probability zone has now been searched out using towed side-scan sonar arrays and autonomous underwater vehicles. Apparently, the plane isn’t there.

Some observers have speculated that the wreckage might have been missed by the sonar scan, perhaps falling into the shadow of a seamount or the depths of a ravine. The report, however, throws cold water on this idea, explaining that the technology is capable of searching all but the most rugged 1.2 percent of the search area, and therefore, “There is a high degree of confidence that the previously identified underwater area searched to date does not contain the missing aircraft.”

The new proposed search area probably won’t be examined.

If the plane isn’t in the priority search area, then it must be somewhere else. But the range of possibilities is limited. If it crashed any farther north, the debris field would have been spotted during the massive aerial search conducted just after the disappearance. If it crashed south of the current search area, debris would have been swept to the coast of Australia and likely been discovered by beachcombers. By a process of elimination, then, the endpoint could only be in a fairly tightly constrained area, about one eighth the size of the current search zone and adjacent to its northeastern edge.

“The participants of the First Principles Review were in agreement on the need to search [this] additional area,” the report states. But this extra area is large — about 10,000 square miles — and it would take months and tens of millions of dollars to scan. In its previous agreement with China and Malaysia, Australia stipulated that the search would only continue if “credible new evidence leading to the identification of a specific location of the aircraft” were found. This new analysis will not likely fit that bill.

What if the new area is searched and the plane still isn’t found?

That, the report states, “would exhaust all prospective areas for the presence of MH370.” That is to say, if the plane isn’t there, then the searchers weren’t just unlucky, their analysis was altogether wrong, and something else entirely must have happened to the plane.
But what? One possibility is that they misinterpreted one of the satellite pings. For instance, the ATSB has long puzzled over the value of the final ping but recently became convinced it must indicate that the plane was plummeting in a steep, fatal dive. If this conclusion is wrong, and the plane was instead being held in a long Sullenberger-esque glide by a suicidal pilot, then the plane’s endpoint could lie anywhere in a much larger swath of ocean.

Another possibility is that the ATSB misinterpreted all the satellite data. After MH370 disappeared from radar over the Malacca Strait, it was electronically invisible, flying over empty ocean in the dark of a moonless night. It could have gone anywhere in the world and no one would have been the wiser. Then, mysteriously, just three minutes later, its satellite communication system switched back on. This is not something that happens accidentally, or that most pilots know how to do. And yet, it is this baffling event that provided everything investigators know about the plane’s final hours. Could this strange satcom behavior have been the result of tampering by sophisticated hijackers, in order to feed investigators misleading clues? Twice I’ve asked teams within the investigation whether the satcom data could have been altered; both times they told me that they assumed that it was good.

Now that the ATSB has thrown in the towel, such questions will remain in limbo. The search will not be officially ended, only suspended. This means that according to international aviation treaties search officials will not have to issue a comprehensive final report. And so potentially vital clues about the fate of the airplane will remain hidden away indefinitely.

The mystery will endure.

(This article originally ran on December 21, 2016, in New York magazine.)

166 thoughts on “New York: The Search for MH370 Seems to Be Over. What Now?”

  1. @VictorI: “The pitch doesn’t change when a value in the MAP window changes, so we have high confidence in its validity.”

    I’m referring to the increase in pitch attitude between 45S1 and 45S2. It is much greater than the 1.5 degrees expected for the 20-odd knots IAS reduction in the 27 seconds it took to traverse the distance between these points. Did you look at that in your experiments?

  2. @Rob,

    “Assuming FMT at ANOKO occurs at 18:36, and ISBIX is overflown at 19:28:30”

    That portion of the track crosses the 19:41 arc from outside to inside well before ISBIX. [.. and therefore before 19:41]. Hence we can say immediately that the path you hypothesise is invalid.

  3. @Gysbreght: The quick answer is yes. We recreated the flight between 45S1 and 45S2 by building a flight file from the 45S1 data set and using that as an initial condition. The final value of pitch, heading, bank, and position could be recreated in the 27-second interval by manually working the yoke to level the bank from 11 deg and maintaining altitude, as I’ve said before. There is no mystery about this.

    Perhaps if I have time at some point I will make a video showing this 27-second flight, although it would not be remarkable.

    Regarding your specific question about pitch, the pitch of 1 deg at 45S1 is determined by the conditions of the plane BEFORE data set 45S1 was created. We don’t know the speed or flight path angle before the MAP variables were changed and the flight file was created. My guess is the plane was descending. You can’t take the pitch at 45S1 and 45S2 and use level flight assumptions to back out speeds as you are trying to do.

  4. @Rob: I’ll add one other comment that I believe is true although I can’t definitively prove it: I do believe that when in LNAV mode and there is a route discontinuity, the plane remains in LNAV mode but follows a constant true track path.

    In the FSX/PMDG B777, when in LNAV mode and flying between waypoints, the MFD displays the value of magnetic track. The label for TRK continues to show in the MFD after a discontinuity, even if the TRK/HDG switch is toggled. Similarly, the label LNAV continues to show in the PFD. However, after the plane flies a distance, the displayed value of magnetic track changes in a way that is consistent with flying a true track path.

    Once in LNAV mode, the only way I can envision for the plane to change to a constant magnetic heading path is for a pilot to hit the heading HLD button, which would maintain the current value of magnetic heading (or magnetic track in the less likely event that the HDG/TRK toggle switch was selecting TRK), or if the pilot pressed the heading SEL knob and (optionally) rotated the knob to the desired heading.

    I simply don’t see an obvious way for the plane to follow a constant magnetic heading after hitting a route discontinuity without pilot input.

    Again, I acknowledge that my understanding is biased by my experience with the FSX/PMDG B777. However, I’ll also add that this model has been tested and improved using input from actual B777 pilots so I do have some level of confidence in the fidelity of the model for events like this.

  5. @Brian Anderson

    I accept the path crosses the 19:41 arc from outside to inside, well before ISBIX, but then does it not cross the arc from inside to outside at approx S01.50, E93.5 at 19:41?

  6. @VictorI: “My guess is the plane was descending.” In that case Captain Zaharie would have demonstrated exceptional piloting skill to be at exactly the same altitude (within 1 ft) 27 seconds later. I’m looking forward to your video.

  7. @Victor

    I get what you are saying, however, being a doubting Thomas, I am not convinced. The issue was discussed here at length in the past. I cannot remember if a consensus was ever reached.

    However, leaving the matter of automatic reversion to magnetic heading at a discontinuity, to one side a moment, does the remaining part of the scenario pass muster? Can you say if the flight path would be valid, and cross the 7th arc in the zone in question, if a constant Mach airspeed was held until flameout?

  8. @Gysbreght: Actually, he is climbing when the simulation is restarted at 45S1, as indicated by the positive pitch. (Remember, pitch and FPA are aligned.) He stopped the simulation at 45S2 just as he was at his starting altitude. We believe that getting within 1 ft is a coincidence. Even with my inexperienced piloting skills, it’s not hard to get back to close to the same altitude, albeit with a loss of speed. There is no need for exceptional piloting skills.

  9. @VictorI: I can’t help thinking that ‘within 1 ft’ is remarkable. You wrote in the joint Victor/Yves report: “After making the change, the value can be returned to the original value”. Perhaps that’s what he did? Why did he save 45S1 anyway?

  10. @Rob,

    ” . . does it not cross the arc from inside to outside at approx S01.50, E93.5 at 19:41?”

    That is correct, however a number of issues arise:
    (i)I think it is generally understood that the closest approach to the sub-satellite location occurred at about 19:52
    (ii) the average groundspeed for your path to ISBIX is about 465 knots, but then if you assume the later crossing at 19:41, the average speed to the 20:41 arc drops.
    (iii) change to magnetic heading at ISBIX means path is subject to wind.

  11. The plane was shot down by an energy weapon when it was heading in a westerly direction. q=russian+plane+shot+down+by+energy+weapon&&view=detail&mid=164A6DAD7F431C5882A1164A6DAD7F431C5882A1&rvsmid=AEB363DDE642CEB85DF4AEB363DDE642CEB85DF4&fsscr=0&FORM=VDFSRV

  12. Here is a short video for the simulation that uses the 45S1 data set as the initial conditions and flies for another 27 s. Conditions were light winds of 25 knots. The plane initially starts at 37,654 ft and climbs due to the positive flight path angle imposed as the initial condition. I roll out of the bank and hold the altitude. As the speed continues to decrease, I allow the plane to start descending, reaching 700 fpm and 37,654 ft at the end of the video.

    The final altitude is almost exactly the same as the starting altitude, which shows that the result is not at all “remarkable”. After 27 s, the simulation is paused, the altitude manually changed from 37,654 ft to 4,000 ft in the MAP window, and a new flight file is created. The position, bank, heading, and pitch for this new flight file are similar to what is found in the 45S2 file. Considering that I was flying with manual inputs, it is not surprising that the match is not exact. However, the match shows that we can be quite sure that the pilot was manually flying between 45S1 and 45S2 in a very ordinary way and under very ordinary weather conditions.

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/6039dgo3hwy8sx6/2016-12-25%20After%20Flameout.wmv?dl=0

    Here are some variables from the flight file that was created after pausing and changing the altitude.

    Latitude=S045° 07′ 47.9993″
    Longitude=E104° 08′ 38.4000″
    Altitude=+003999.99
    Pitch=-4.3087744394544405
    Bank=-0.13368115784497478
    Heading=-174.0096132162906
    PVelBodyAxis=0
    BVelBodyAxis=0
    HVelBodyAxis=0
    XVelBodyAxis=0
    YVelBodyAxis=0
    ZVelBodyAxis=325.58327269368777
    DynPres=114.38446786895769
    AGL=37654.545100655138

  13. Closing comments here, please add your thoughts to the most recent post. Thank you!

    Victor, because I know a lot of us have been looking forward to the comment you just posted, I’m going to re-post it in the new thread.

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