The above graph is taken from the DSTG book “Bayesian Methods in the Search for MH370, ” page 90. It shows the probability distribution of MH370’s endpoint in the southern Indian Ocean based on analysis of the different autopilot modes available to whoever was in charge of the plane during its final six hours. It was published earlier this year and so represents contemporary understanding of these issues. As you can see, the DSTG estimated that the probability that the plane hit the 7th arc north of 34 degrees south longitude is effectively zero.
I interviewed Neil Gordon, lead author of the paper, on August 11. At that time, he told me that experts within the official search had already determined that the BFO values at 0:19 indicated that the plane was in a steep descent, on the order of 15,000 feet per minute.
Such a rate of descent would necessarily indicate that the plane could not have hit the ocean very far from the 7th arc. Nevertheless, Fugro Equator, which was still conducting its broad towfish scan of the search area at the time, spent most of its time searching the area on the inside edge of the search zone in the main area, between 37.5 and 35 degrees south latitude, about 25 nautical miles inside the 7th arc. At no point between the time of our interview and the end of the towfish scan in October did Equator scan anywhere north of 34 degrees south.
Shortly thereafter, the ATSB hosted a meeting of the experts it had consulted in the course of the investigation, and the result of their discussion was published on December 20 of this year as “MH370 – First Principles Review.” This document confirms what Gordon told me, that the group believed that the BFO data meant that the plane had to have been in a steep dive at the time of the final ping. What’s more, the report specified that this implied that the plane could not have flown more than 25 nautical miles from the 7th arc, and indeed most likely impacted the sea within 15 nautical miles.
By the analysis presented above, a conclusion is fairly obvious: the plane must have come to rest somewhere south of 34 degrees south, within 25 nautical miles of the seventh arc. Since this area has already been thoroughly scanned, then the implication is that the plane did not come to rest on the Indian Ocean seabed where the Inmarsat signals indicate it should have.
I would suggest that at this point the search should have been considered completed.
Nevertheless, the “First Principles Review” states on page 15 that the experts’ renewed analysis of the 777 autopilot dynamics indicates that the plane could have crossed the 7th arc “up to 33°S in latitude along the 7th arc.”
Then in the Conclusions section on page 23 the authors describe “a remaining area of high probability between latitudes 32.5°S and 36°S along the 7th arc,” while the accompanying illustration depicts a northern limit at 32.25 degrees south.
In other words, without any explanation, the northern limit of the aircraft’s possible impact point has moved from 34 degrees south in the Bayesian Methods paper in early 2016 to 33 degrees south on page 15 in the “First Principles Review” released at the end of the year. Then eight pages later within the same report the northern limit has moved, again without explanation, a half a degree further north. And half a page later it has moved a quarter of a degree further still.
Is the ATSB sincere in moving the northern limit in this way? If so, I wonder why they did not further search out this area when they had the chance, instead of continuing to scan an area that they apparently had already concluded the plane could not plausibly have reached.
I should point out at this point that the area between 34 south and 35.5 south has been scanned to a total widtch of 37 nautical miles, and the area between 32.5 and 34 has been searched to a total width 23 nautical miles. Thus even if the ATSB’s new northern limits are correct, they still should have found the plane.
As a result of the above I would suggest that:
a) Even though most recent report describes “the need to search an additional area representing approximately 25,000 km²,” the conduct of the ATSB’s search does not suggest that they earnestly believe that the plane could lie in this area. If they did, they could have searched out the highest-probability portions of this area with the time and resources at their disposal. Indeed, they could be searching it right now, as I write this. Obviously they are not.
b) The ATSB knew, in issuing the report, that Malaysia and China would not agree to search the newly suggested area, because it fails to meet the agreed-upon criteria for an extension (“credible new information… that can be used to identify the specific location of the aircraft”). Thus mooting this area would allow them to claim that there remained areas of significant probability that they had been forced to leave unsearched. This, in effect, would allow them to claim that their analysis had been correct but that they had fallen victim to bad luck.
c) The ATSB’s sophisticated mathematical analysis of the Inmarsat data, combined with debris drift analysis and other factors, allowed them to define an area of the southern Indian Ocean in which the plane could plausibly have come to rest. A long, exhaustive and expensive search has determined that it is not there.
d) The ATSB did not fall victim to bad luck. On the contrary, they have demonstrated with great robustness that the Inmarsat data is not compatible with the physical facts of the case.
e) Something is wrong with the Inmarsat data.
@Johan
Jeff has a number of past SDU articles, but this one seems very good:
http://jeffwise.net/2016/05/16/the-sdu-re-logon-a-small-detail-that-tells-us-so-much-about-the-fate-of-mh370/comment-page-1/#comments
In the article, Jeff gives a list of services that the left main bus controls, including the SDU and IFE and CVR. Victor chimes in with a comment about a number of reasons for turning SDU back on.
Hope this helps, it predates my participation … my personal interest was re-kindled by Blaine Gibson’s finds of debris.
@JW you say that spoofing the bto is ‘not important’ or ‘relevant’ to a potential spoofer. Respectfully, I disagree – it absolutely depends on who the spoofer is. You yourself repeatedly mentioned that a spoof would make it appear likely that a state actor was involved / responsible, due to such an actor’s capabilities (a spoof being fairly complicated). Personally, I’ve been wondering quite a while who might have the relevant capabilities – frankly the simplest answer to the question of ‘who could have spoofed the sat data’ is not the Russians, but ‘the Americans’. (Sorry.) All it would have taken the Pentagon would have been a friendly trip to Inmarsat’s headquarters. When you think about it, the main thing the sat data say is ‘after the plane had made a huge, risky, complicated detour all the way back to the Indian Ocean, on a more-or-less straight heading to a certain little island, oh look!! Here’s Highly Scientific Data proving that the plane went either ‘left’ or ‘right’, but not continuing ‘straight on”. I’m not saying this is what happened, but it certainly is easily possible to come up with a theory why the bto data would be important to a spoofer. Namely, if they had wanted to deflect attention from ‘straight ahead’
@Havelock
I think you make an interesting point, not that I am endorsing it. The BTO could be spoofed by relatively knowledgeable amateurs much less a state actor. Personally, I am inclined to think the ISAT data has not been spoofed. There is plenty of room for alternative terminal locations without a spoof.
@all
Would someone please clarify if the pings from the 2 ground to air calls were more or less helpful considering they reset the timer. Explain the different outcome if there had been dozens of ground to air calls instead of 2.
@Havelock
Spoofing the BTO is dead easy, all you have to do is use a variable delay line. Think about it. “Your” mythical “island” is near the SSP. If the aircraft went there, the BTO’s would steadily reduce. To make it “appear” to fly a near orthagonal route (north or south), it is necessary for the BTO’s to get longer, which thay are. The BFO’s are only a secondary consideration.
It is simple enough to do the calculations to work out the required BTO delay for any given “ping”, and either program a delay line, or periodically manually set it accordingly.
Jeff – I think you missed my point re Putin but I tried to be brief. At risk of being accused of spouting gibberish again I’ll try again.
Putin doesn’t need to destroy the EU-Europe, it is destroying itself. Militarily declined and politically impotent. Even bastions of rationality and economic powerhouses like Germany stand paralyzed while their borders are overrun by hostile people. They say border controls are not “European values”. Well well. So why would Putin allow Ukraine for instance to drift towards Europe at the moment? Due to crazy policies even Sweden is now a pea soup for Sunni Islamists to swim in. Putin is trying to pull Europe and others his way with some tenderizing, he is not at war with them and has no future in having one(I believe), but he does take the view that the West has lost the plot. He sees them pursuing a social vision that is increasingly disconnected from reality, and unable to even properly monitor let alone control what goes on inside their borders. I actually believe he shot down MH17 – I just don’t know exactly why, but his home land Islamist issues are uniquely different to most places in that they are not just dealing with crazy Arabs, they are dealing with people who bear the handprints of the Soviet era and that is why they became integral to the operational success of IS – handprints he would recognize and he wants Europe on his song-sheet.
And I have to query – how does MH17 constitute a war on the West? Have you conflated some factors here?
And this year I will predict he moves a lot closer to that with a host of elections there with a spectrum of right of centre movements flourishing. Julian Assange will be peering out of that Ecuadorian embassy window a lot this year, and future govts of European states will be looking to Putin, as rank and file people already are. Who would have thought….but he has filled Obama’s void and we could be staring at one very tumultuous transition in the political landscape. So many moving parts.
Re: Turkey,
“The use of a central Asian attacker — if that suspicion turns out to be true — is also significant.
Dr Karasik said it was clear Islamic State saw central Asia, much of which is controlled by hardline secular dictatorships, as a place where it could spread its message.”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/the-times/jihadists-stay-alive-to-fight-again/news-story/fb300394ef334eeb0f28739d36497b50
Crushing IS became an imperative for VP and how far this endeavor extends we can’t see, but I feel there is enough on the MH370 pilot to take it out of Putin’s realm.
And sincerely, kudos with the blog, if new info does leap out this year you will definitely be best placed and the rough and tumble of this place has been fruitful for sure.
@Jeff. I think that is a fair answer regarding BFO/BTO spoofing. I also appreciate JS’s statements.
I would like to add that one must be careful when drawing conclusions about the behavior of objects floating at sea. I have probably almost as much time at sea as that flaperon. The state of the sea is not determined only by the wind waves – there are also swells, currents and tides (tides not so much in the area in question) that can act at various angle to each other to produce very unexpected rough conditions. It is probably safe to say that anything floating in the ocean can be tipped over eventually, and it doesn’t take a storm to do it. Probably you are aware of all this already.
Another anomaly that can be seen out on the water is that buoyancy is often not as simple as Archimedes would have us believe. The basic principle is of course sound by I have seen objects float just beneath the surface for some time, then float with some 10+ cm above the surface, then submerge again and repeat the cycle. Temperature, salinity, currents (upwelling), marine life, trapped air …. It’s a tough call to say where that flaperon came from. Even tougher are the apparently pristine objects that have been found.
I do appreciate your work (and that of others) to keep this forum useful. You are an excellent writer and we should be grateful for that. Did the plane go North or South – for my part, I need more facts.
Could the SDU reboot at 18:xx be a “copycat/impersonator” flight just spooling up the engines after an airport tug pushed them back? It would be very interesting to see if there is such a flight over Africa with the correct data; especially where it took off and landed. It might even be that MH370 ‘s SDU never came back on. Wonder if a POR mirror image path was also possible?
@ventus,
I would also question whether an external signal could cause a spoof, for example, by fooling the SDU into responding on the wrong time interval. Likewise, I would question whether whatever mechanism the SDU had for keeping time was able to stay in synch. It can’t simply rely on the incoming signal – it must have either its own clock or a separate timekeeping signal, but in either case there must be ways the synch could be off and yet still be within tolerance.
Not an expert on this subject though and the experts are busy searching the SIO…
@MH – the closest to a mirror flight is Jeddah-Johannesburg. There were no scheduled flights that night but it is a 777 route very close in length and nearly symmetrical. However, there’s no good explanation other than ISAT subscription piracy that would support its involvement.
@VictorI
–“I suspect that ZS believed that after he disabled ACARS, there would be no incriminating data associated with the SATCOM. He turned off the CVR around IGARI to prevent further recording. He turned it on again around NILAM to erase the residual content and to put the electrical system in a more normal configuration.”
Couldn’t agree more. Nobody on 08Mar14 knew about BTO/BFO, including, clearly, Z. XPDR off and ACARS being disabled would have been plenty of peace of mind, enough to allow for pushing breakers back in for creature comfort (or further peace of mind on any level, mechanical or otherwise) and if the SDU came back with it, who knew or cared?
But what about the timeline with respect to the FO? I’ve always felt Z killed him during the 6 minute silence between 17:01-17:08. But listening to the ATC audio again, I wonder if there’s an argument for depressurization occurring before 17:01 – during the climb from FL25-350 – and that the final three transmissions were made wearing the mask? I’ve always based my thinking on the fact that the final three transmissions sound basically the same – not one or two clean and another from inside the mask, all three sounding like a distant aircraft at high altitude.
There is a noticeable change in both tone and ambient noise in Z’s transmissions between the readback of the assigned altitude at 16:50:09 and the subsequent announcement of “Level at 350” at 17:01:14. In the past, I’d always chalked this up to VHF performance given the change in distance between the two reports. 16:50:09 was somewhere near PIBOS and 17:01:14 was 125nm further away.
But if Malaysia had ARTCC antennas spread out on the same frequency the way we do in the States, it’s possible the change had nothing to do with range and everything to do with Z being on the mask for all three final transmissions.
A guy named George Fetter did an amazing interactive map of US antenna sites and their frequencies. http://air2airshare.com/milaircomms/artcc_transmitter_locations.html
Is there one for Malaysia?
@JS
My understanding is that the BTO is a stimulus/response mechanism. I do not believe it depends on any time keeping in the AES. If the AES in the aircraft were in an unresponsive state, then a spoofer AES located well inside the 19:40 range ring, could insert whatever delay it wanted to. This would not be a huge science project.
@Havelock @JS
If we assume state actor spoof, it is essential that “MH-370 flew totally dark”, and “did not” play any role in the spoof.
The spoof has to be “generated externally”.
A state actor could do that very easily, from any fixed or mobile place/platform/ship or aircraft, provided it is within the required “minimum BTO” range ring from the SSP.
You can “add” delay, but you can’t reduce it.
All you have to do, is “impersonate” (M-MRO’s SDU ident codes (and let’s face it, that would be easily known by a state actor), and then simply use (for example) something like this:
http://emcore.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/RF-MW-Delay-Line-System.pdf
@Havelock @JS
The possibility is real. A quick google shows that the necessary equipment components and systems are definitely readily available.
https://channelsim.rtlogic.com/?gclid=CM-Nz4amp9ECFUYKKgodhYQAFw
@JeffWise, @KarenK
–“the police concluded that there was no evidence that Zaharie planned to abscond with the plane;”
Evidence as extraordinarily incriminating as the deleted sim files was clearly known by the Malaysians but then deliberately excluded from the official interim report and, by extension, the official sense of Z as a character.
That fact – the fact that this data had to be leaked in order for us to ever know it existed – is, in itself, a smoking gun found in the hands of the MY gov’t, if you ask me.
And yet everybody takes their psychological profile of the man as gospel? Did they interview psychiatrists on the matter of what kind of person simulates flight into the SIO that ends in a dead stick glide and then just so happens to be Captain of a plane that disappears there? Did their psychological experts discard that as mere coincidence, or did they just simply make damned good and sure that no psychological experts ever weighed in on that?
We should probably reach a consensus that the RMP most likely does what their corrupt leadership tells them to do. We should also reach a consensus that MY clearly had a substantial financial interest in not incriminating Z and, as I have whined many times, pursue that angle with all the vigor we have afforded to spreadsheets and .flt files for the last three years.
It baffles me.
@JS – if one was to take the mirror of Jeddah of the IOR, I think I get something like Mandalay in Myanmar. Can anyone else get any other locations better fitted as mirror of Jeddah?
@ventus45 – so at about IGARI someone goes into the ee-bay, installs these components while the left AC bus is turned off?
then if its back on the aircraft is disappeared from tracking.
@MH – Johannesburg gives you a similar north-south component and BFO.
@ventus and Dennis – my understanding, which seemed prone to enraging members of the IG, was that the response was sent in the next slot, not immediately. The BTO was the offset from the slot boundary.
If true, you can add or subtract delay because you can send the response slightly before or after the beginning of the slot, causing it to arrive sooner than it otherwise would based on its distance.
If not true, (I.e. as Dennis states, it’s an instant response) then it’s not really a slotted protocol.
I agree that some variants of the spoof theory require an out-of-commission AES. That’s known to the spoofer if the spoofer just shot the plane down.
@MH
No, you did not read what I said.
The spoof is NOT DONE ABOARD MH-370.
MH-370 simply “goes dark”, and is flown to “wherever” in a “total EMCON blackout”.
The spoof is done EXTERNALLY.
@ventus45 – thank you for clarifying … makes good sense !
(Test. Previous two posts did not appear.)
At a time when there was no recovered debris, and we did not know of the sim data, a number of us considered how a spoof of the satellite data might occur. In many ways, the simplest way is to spoof both the BFO and BTO of the AES with a station on the ground, preferably close to the subsatellite position to ensure you are adding delays at all times.
The BTO has a peculiarity that several of us have noticed, but for which I have yet to see a good explanation: There is a strong correlation between BTO and satellite declination after the log-on. For example, the point of maximum declination (latitude)of the satellite is nearly the same time as the point of minimum BTO.
Some have tried to explain why the BTO correlates with satellite declination. Unfortunately, the change in range due to the change in declination of the satellite produces an effect much smaller than the observed change in BTO, so the explanations could not be reconciled with physical phenomenon.
One explanation is the BTO data is fake, and somebody tried to include the effect of satellite inclination, but did it wrong, and amplified the effect in the created data.
When debris started arriving in Africa, and I became aware of the sim data, the path to the SIO became, in my opinion, by far the most likely scenario.
@Victor – I believe I was the one that suggested the correlation and then suggested an R value (which was wrong, FWIW). The peculiarity boiled down to the fact that the plane was closest to the satellite as the satellite was at its northernmost, and almost any flight path that was either linear or a conic section would create a similar correlation.
That meant that the “peculiarity” was either a coincidence, or the BTO had a component of the satellite position baked into it. The IG went the route of coincidence, I believe. I suggested that the BTO might have been flawed, which pissed a few people off, especially considering the only other backer of that idea was Mr. Siew, who had a magical way of de-friending people.
I still think it’s an area that could use more scrutiny, given that $200 million couldn’t find a beer can, let alone a plane.
(Test – posts not appearing)
Operational Update. https://www.atsb.gov.au/mh370-pages/updates/operational-update/
One change.
On 21st December it read, “..Currently it is expected the search operations of the current area will be completed in January
2017.”
In place of “will”, this now reads “may”. Presumably weather.
@Susie Crowe. You asked a similar question to one I asked before. “Would someone please clarify if the pings from the 2 ground to air calls were more or less helpful considering they reset the timer. Explain the different outcome if there had been dozens of ground to air calls instead of 2.” I think I now understand the answer but if I have it wrong please someone correct me.
Assuming the ISAT data are not corrupt/altered: with a 4 1/2 hour gap between calls we luckily obtained sufficient ~hourly pings so that the route to the SIO would be able to be more or less defined (if flight assumptions were correctly guessed). Theoretically, in cases where the ISAT data were spoofed in realtime or were hacked later etc., it would be necessary to have a very big gap between calls (despite the fact that would raise a lot of eyebrows as to why MY didn’t call) otherwise we wouldn’t have got those necessary BFOs and BTOs.
On a different topic: I am very grateful to those out there still searching, through Christmas and the New Year.
@Matt M, I agree that the SIM data is definitely a smoking gun (or ZS was framed). You are spot-on as it relates to the RMP report and MY deciding its contents. They are crooks and they lie. Also, we don’t know what was really on the ATC tapes since it was doctored. I don’t have blinders on as it relates to ZS as the potential criminal in this event. But other than the SIM data, ZS does not match the profile of a mass murderer (from what we know today). I also take interviews with his direct family members with a grain of salt, simply because thats what family would do; blindly defend if needed. What would be interesting is to read the interviews held with his wife in the wake of this event. Nothing has been released on that, nor have we heard from her which I find odd, especially if she were convinced he is innocent. But from what we can deduce from his videos (including the numerous videos posted by his sister) he doesn’t come accross as an unstable lunatic let alone a mass murderer of innocent people.
@VictorI, For some reason, especially Muslim countries (no pun intended) vehemently deny pilot murder/suicide events. Silkair is a good example, same as Egypt denying pilot suicide of Egypt Air flight 990. Malaysia will also deny it, regardless of data that yet has to surface. Even if 1 day the fuselage is found, it is very doubtful anything can be gleaned from it. I hope I am wrong.
@DennisW
…found a proposed “successful negotiation” flight path I was looking for (in the above May_2015 SDU thread):
BEDAX ISBIX YPCC YPXN IPKON…to Jakarta from Xmas Island and Cocos. Believe ping times are semi-worked out. Somewhat similar to your proposed path but you are showing the suggested “failed negotiation” path to SIO instead of Jakarta.
Disconcerting that both paths may fit the pings, but such is the nature of the 7th Arc.
@Matt Moriarty
With all due respect, I don’t think Z would have been at concerned about the CVR. He wasn’t planning for it to be read back any time soon.
He switched off the SDU (by isolating LH AC bus) in order to prevent any MAS telephone calls making contact in the first hour, and getting the impression that the aircraft was still airborne. If the SDU is off, it would result in a dead line, as if the hmaircraft had exploded or crashed. If the SDU is on, there would be a ringing tone, showing the aircraft was still airborne. Once he was out of potential primary radar range, he could put the AC bus, and consequently the SDU, back on line. He regarded it critical that he shouldn’t be tracked by primary during the first hour, and fighters sent to intercept him. Once out of range of radar, he thought he was safe, and no one would know which direction he had taken. He didn’t anticipate the BTO/BFO, though. If the authorities checked the radar record in the coming hours, and noticed his track, it wouldn’t matter, because by then he would be in the far reaches of the SIO.
@ALL
The search is going to wind up this month. The obvious next place to look is downrange of the DSTO hotspot, between longitudes E87.5 and E 89.5. Regrettably, as shown by the recent, farcical First Principles Review, a misnomer if ever there was one, the ATSB are unable to cross the Rubicon, and entertain the possibility the pilot could have glided beyond the current search area. Instead, they have switched their attention back to the E36 to E31 zone, an area of the 7th arc that was never likely to be where the aircraft could have ended up. Let’s be honest, an aircraft flying untended, locked in constant heading mode, is as likely as finding a B52 on the moon! But they have to go through the motions of this ridiculous charade, because as someone has just pointed out, the Malaysians will never admit that the pilot could have done this deliberately, as a grotesque, obscene political act, and committed suicide in the process.
@ROB @others
The Malaysians very eary on where the first to declare that the disappearence must have been a deliberate act and the Captain was called the prime suspect.
If they had the intention to cover up possible responsability from the Captain they would have avoided such suggestive bold statements.
Data/evidence as they stand now (however you wish to interpret or reject them) show a flight into the SIO not beyond 36S and most probably not North of ~30S (i.e. lack of debris sightings in the early stages, drift analysis, debris finds, Isat data).
If those combined data/evidence was obviously conflicting eachother at some important point you would have a serious reason to doubt all the data alltogether.
But this is not the case. All data/evidence more or less contributes to eachothers validity.
If someone can shoot a clear hole in this consistent fabric of data/evidence with fullproof evidence that important parts of it are conflicting eachother this problem would be solved and all current data/evidence could been thrown overboard as invalid.
I haven’t seen any fullproof evidence like this yet. Only half suggestions based on incomplete data or pure speculating based on no proven data or facts at all.
With the result that some people are falling back on confirmation biases they already had more than a year ago asif nothing happened since.
VictorI, I previously asked you to quote the actual words that someone
has written so you do not mislead readers of this forum. Where did I say
the sim data was from FSX? I did not. Therefore your spiel about what FSX
‘stores’ is irrelevant.
You said;
“As for recovered file fragmentsBin the Shadow Volume, the data were last
accessed or modified on Feb 3, 2014.”
What did the RMP report actually say? This;
“All coordinates were found in a file Volume Shadow Information (VSI) named
{OOd7ef6c-8bcb-1Ie3-b3f7-ee8a9181afad} {3808876bc176- 4e48-b7ae-04046e6cc752}
dated February 3, 2014.”
I said;
“the simulation data files on MK25 are NOT from inside the FS9 installation
on MK25. The simulation data files on MK25 are from inside a VOLUME SHADOW
Copy, that Volume Shadow Copy dated 3rd February 2014″…
“Therefore the date of 3rd February 2014 is the latest date that the
simulation data files could have been created. Note that each simulation
data file itself is not specifically dated, therefore it is possible the
actual dates of these simulation data files could be months prior to
3rd February 2014.”
Readers of this forum may conclude which statement is closest to reality.
@JS: In my two posts that didn’t appear, I named two individuals who were proponents of the theory that the BTO was correlated to the satellite declination. I suspect that one or both of the names did not get past this blog’s spam filter. I removed the names, and the post was accepted. The individuals have initials PS and AS. I have corresponded with PS by email and with AS on Reddit.
@all, Here is the text of Victor’s post that got stuck in the spam filter:
@buyerninety: I have no idea what you are trying to prove. Here are the facts: The sim data is from FS9. There is no evidence that the sim data was used under FSX at a later time, nor do I see how this is relevant to understanding the sim data. And those that have tried to run the PSS 777 model under FSX have failed to achieve useful simulations without either encountering bizarre behavior or a program crash.
@JeffWise
Wasn’t username Alex Siew banned on your blog in the past?
Maybe it’s because of that?
@JeffWise
Wasn’t username Al*x Si*w banned on your blog in the past?
Maybe it rejected to Spam from that?
@buyerninety, Yes, Victor’s post went into moderation because it contained the character string “siew”
“MH370 debris contradiction; new report raises questions”
http://www.emirates247.com/news/mh370-debris-contradiction-new-report-raises-questions-2017-01-04-1.645837
It’s interesting that emirates247.com chose to run this story.
It’s a verbatim reposting of a press release put out by a group called MH370 China Families at 5.33am EST this morning.
@jeffwise: Do you have a link to the press release?
There’s no website link, here’s the full text of the email, to which was attached the CSIRO image shown in the Emirates247.com piece:
@JS: If you can prove that the correlation of satellite declination to BTO is more than a coincidence, that would be a very important discovery. In the end, I attributed the correlation to an innocent coincidence, but I have to admit that it does trouble me because it calls into question the validity of the BTO data. The more precise the timing of the extrema of the BTO and the declination data, the less likely this is an innocent coincidence.
@jeffwise: Since Blaine Gibson often speaks on behalf of the NOK, I wonder if he has a relationship with this group, and whether he has a comment on this group’s release.
@TBill:
Much obliged. Not completely easy to get a full grip on though. But not because of the author, but the technicalities. (A bit painful to read old comments now, though).
I wanted to look into the idea that he may have wanted to be spotted (a bit further on) from the ground/sea while still heading northwesterly — and thus needing to put on position lights/headlights and/or flying low. (He was behind another flight at that moment too, I recall.) Not conclusive in that regard to me. It admittedly feels a bit contra-intuitive, but then there’s the fact that he opened for incoming calls, suggesting that he was up to raising the stakes. And from that moment (the call) both he and ATC got confirmation that ATC/ground knew the plane was still in the air, (initially) assumedly either a ghost-flight or a rogue flight on a straight path to the north-west, is my hunch. (Or could the relogon even be meant to suggest a (-nother) crash-site? — if he knew how the antenna/SDU behaved?) Didn’t they search there early on?)
Anyway, his SDU familiarity would be of great value to know of.
@VictorI, Gibson is a divisive figure; if you follow some of the NOK/MH370 support groups you will see that some passionately defend Blaine and view any criticism of him or questioning of the debris provenance as slander, whereas others are suspicious of this attitude and have broken with him over his attempts to silence skeptics. I don’t know specifically about any dealings between him and this group but I cannot imagine they are amicable.
@ROB @others
I like to explain further. Like in your scenario of a glide to the South starting around ~38S towards ~39S debris should have landed before the end of 2014 or early 2015 on the South and/or Western shores of Australia.
This did not happen (at least nothing found to date).
We can conclude from this fact the plane did not end South of ~38S glide or no glide.
And if there was no glide the plane should have been found in the current search area.
The later gathered data and evidence is conflicting this scenario without a possible solution to overcome this.
So this scenario can be excluded.
Same if confirmed debris was found on the shores of Java and/or Sumatra and not on African shores.
This would have been proof conflicting unsolvable with the current search area and a crash in the SIO. Than the crash area must have been much more North towards the equator. This did not happen either. So crash areas in that latitudes can be ruled out also.
Finaly if debris on the Maldives/Sri Lanka/India shores would have been confirmed those finds would have conflicted the Inmarsat data unsolvable. This would be proof the Inmarsat data could not be right.
Also this did not happen. Nothing is found (confirmed) on those and other Northern shores in that area.
So IMO we can also delete scenarios where the plane flew to the West and crashed there somewhere.
Consistent though with the Inmarsat data, the found debris locations, the drift-analyzis and the confirmed debris finds is a crash area in the SIO between 36S and ~30S.
There are no unsolvable or proven conflicts yet with that area that allow someone to reject it.
Is the new ATSB search area sound?
Could be IMO. Anyway it’s not containing unresolvable conflicting data or evidence yet like other scenarios have.
IMO though with an extended attempt they should go at least as far as 30S and make sure there could not have been some kind of glide. For if this possibility is not excluded for 100% the change the plane is not found within 25 miles anywhere of the 7th arc is too great IMO.
@Jeff:
Congratulations to the impact of your work. Hopefully this puts some pressure on the right buttons.
@ROB
That is a very interesting insight on the sat phone dial tone as the reason for shutting down the SDU. Isn’t the implication that the final calls showed a dial tone, so whomever called should have known the plane was still flying? The other question I had, why would they only call one time each call? One would think they would make an immediate second call to make sure they did not accidentally dial a wrong number.
@Matt M
Re: Depressurization Timing
I do not know if depressurization happened, but one possibility would be like Helios just let the aircraft ascend with the valves partially open.
Let’s just assume an expert hijacker is on board from the China Martyr Brigades. They got on the plane in Beijing (on 7-March, 9M-MRO also went to Beijing and back). What are the possible ways to sabotage the flight?
We must view (1) crashing and (2) intentional depressurization as the two ways to conduct, sorry to say, mass murder by plane. Not saying it happened, just saying it could have happened, so now what is the fix? I gather from Helios that ACARS does not even report cabin temp and cabin pressure.