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.
@Hank,
I think you misunderstand Susie’s question – yes, Hypoxia would be an issue that can be negated by the Pilot’s Oxygen mask, however, a decompression at altitude also brings the problem of a very low temperature. For example, at 33,000ft it will drop to -44 degrees C.
http://www.theairlinepilots.com/forumarchive/aeromedical/decompressionandhypoxia.php
How would the pilot survive at that temperature for the 15-20 minutes it would take to ensure that all the passenger oxygen masks are depleted and passengers unconscious?
Jeff – I could add that despite some popular narratives going around, only 1.4% of IS personnel come from Iraq. They have plenty of fodder coming in from Saudi Arabia, Europe, Uighurs, Philippines, you name it, but they could simply have not done without the expert input from members from the former USSR. Putin did not anticipate he would need to actually need to get in there and do it himself. I don’t believe he is actively stalking the west; more like looking for allies.
There is a Australian based scribe who not long ago remarked that “Islamism will be the communism of the 21st century.” You might even detect some parallels in the modes of operation between the two, something probably not lost on VP.
@Matty – Perth, Putin has blown up his own citizens (Moscow apartment buildings), bombed civilian hospitals and Red Crescent convoys in Aleppo, assassinated journalists and dissidents, and supported a phalanx of nativist groups determined to demolish the European Union. He is at war with the West, and having a great deal of success, using hybrid warfare techniques to intimidate neighbors and poison rational discourse around the world. The kind of gibberish you are spouting here is exactly the kind of disorienting fog that Putin uses to disable his enemies. For a truly dismaying example of how Russia has bamboozled the West, look no further than MH17, which was a cold-blooded mass murder that Russia spun into a fog of counter-narratives that fooled every expert that I spoke to.
In the case of MH17, Russia created a narrative that was plausible (drunk militiamen had accidently gotten their hands on a Buk and fired it without knowing what they were doing), and the experts, to a man, embraced it and looked no further. Very cleverly, Russia also created a rat’s nest of alternative, outrageous theories that made the main narrative seem all the more sensible. I emphasize that all these narratives were fictional constructs. What really happened is that a regular Russian army unit, the Kursk-based 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, shot the plane down point-blank. Yet whenever I contacted a respected political analyst, they all said some version of the same thing: “What would be the motive?”
The parallels to MH370 are so glaring that I hardly need point them out. We have a main narrative that sounds plausible but doesn’t pan out (flight to the SIO), a flood of absurd counternarratives (Simon Gunson, a million others), and a tacit agreement between search officials and their independent supporters (the IG, etc) not to examine evidence that points in another direction (SDU reboot, impossible barnacles).
Meanwhile, the GRU collaborates with the Republican nominee to sway a US presidential election. Strange world.
Here’s a prediction for 2017: More evidence will come in on MH370 that will make the picture–already clear to anyone who is willing to look beyond their preconceived ideas–strikingly clearer, as has already happened to MH17. And it will become clear who has been actively suppressing the truth.
The arms race of truths — aka the war of fictions — is one that I look particularly little forward to. It is easy to navigate in, but the whole stale sea reeks of oncoming death.
@DennisW
“All a smoke screen. The Malaysian government knew what happened from the get-go.”
to me they didn’t leave such an impression
also there is a pretty big chance foreign intelligence would find out whether they really knew or not
@JW
“look no further than MH17, which was a cold-blooded mass murder that Russia spun into a fog of counter-narratives that fooled every expert that I spoke to.”
why would Russia intentionally down a civilian airliner?! I can’t see a single positive consequence for them. It’s like intentionally shooting your foot.
Back to reality…
Richard Godfrey has studied the temperature history of drifters that have passed from the 7th arc and drifted towards Africa. He then compared this temperature history with the data obtained by Prof de Decker, who deduced the temperature history of a barnacle from the flaperon by studying the ratio of magnesium to calcium along a growth plane on the shell. Richard finds that there are indeed drifters with temperature histories that match the results of de Decker.
Richard concludes that “There are a number of GPD buoys that generally fit the temperature cycle expected for the growth
of the barnacles on the MH370 Flaperon.”
This results obviously conflicts with the claim that there is no drifter data which supports the temperature history of the barnacle from the flaperon.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xijqnc5zk05vizi/Barnacles%20Temperature%20Path.pdf?dl=0
@StevanG
The Russians are consumate experts at spinning counter narratives. They ran rings around the Obama administration, and look like doing the same to Trump. The Russians can and do get away with murder. In the coming years, they will become the preeminent bullies in the western political arena.
@Will
Thank you,, that is exactly what I meant
@Hank
The supplemental oxygen is designed to keep you alive during an immediate descent to again pressurize the plane, not to remain at that altitude for an extended period of time.
Many other issues accompany a lack of oxygen which obviously become greater the higher you fly, one being the outside temperature which at FL340 is roughly -52•F. http://meteorologytraining.tpub.com/14269/css/14269_75.htm
To maintain in this environment while waiting for the passengers and crew to deplete their oxygen and succumb to hypoxia would be extremely difficult.
@Hank
I forgot to include this:
. “As the pressure falls the cabin air temperature may also plummet to the ambient outside temperature with a danger of hypothermia or frostbite”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabin_pressurization
“On top of that, the cockpit fills with a cold mist that freezes the skin.”
@VictorI
In the Godfrey paper presumably the dotted curved line represents the 7th arc. What is the meaning of the black dots crossing the arc generally at a latitude below the drifter trajectories? If it was mentioned in the paper, I missed it.
Why do you suppose de Decker has not published his results? I tend to put statements (essentially made to a journalist in an interview) in the hearsay category. Statements like started at this temperature, spent time at another temperature, finally ended at yet a third temperature are vague and ambiguous. Who knows what de Decker actually said?
@SusieC @Hank @Will
While depressurization does cause rapid “adiabatic” cooling (of the cabin air only), the heat exchange with the surroundings (which remain warm) heats the air back up, so I am not thinking hypothermia is the immediate life issue.
@Susie Crow: On a B777, the pilot and co-pilot have heaters they can independently control at shoulder and foot levels.
Am I the only one who finds this strange?
After the plane falls off radar at 1:21AM, it allegedly is never seen or heard from again by the ones tasked the responsibility for it, the military radar and Inmarsat data are irrelevant at that time.
When the plane has been missing for 1 hour 11 minutes, there is an attempt by ATC to call the cockpit.
This just happens to coincide within 14 minutes of the plane leaving primary radar and establishing a satellite connection, both allegedly completely unknown to those making the call.
The timing of the 2nd call is interesting as well.
@DennisW: I asked Richard to respond to your first question. For the second question, I don’t know the answer.
@VictorI
The recent Popular Mechanics article was excellent, thank you. It addressed what I am trying to say about cultural differences impacting how we view aircraft crash investigations.
@all
Regarding possible aircraft design changes due to MH370, Ben Sandilands had an artlce that said the FAA has already blocked as infeasible any changes to cockpit door accessibility and also FAA says no feasible way to make ACARS/transponder more tamper proof. But I found two people thinking more like me: Emirates CEO Sir Tim Clark and MY PM Razak.
@TBill
I am not thinking “hypothermia is the immediate life issue” either, merely trying to show that based on what I have read, it is no picnic being in an airplane at 30k+ ft that is not pressurized and remaining there awhile. Even with oxygen and heaters it is dangerous and hard to believe it was not chaotic.
@DennisW asked, “In the Godfrey paper…[w]hat is the meaning of the black dots crossing the arc generally at a latitude below the drifter trajectories?
Response: Broken Ridge.
Other than the pilot and co-pilot, the 10 crew members on MH370 totalled over 213 years of experience. These veterans would have amassed great abilitiy for responding to danger.
•They were also collectively parents of 24 children•
@Susie Crow: What exactly do you think the experienced crew could have done if they were locked out of the cockpit and fighting for life in a depressurized cabin?
I keep having this cognitive dissonance confusion with the outboard flap section..sorry..
This piece is floating in my mind with that hinge all the time..
Though they should have chosen this real piece they had possesion of to conduct drift-analyses with IMO.
The flaperon was never available for real to the ATSB.
So my opinions about this stay the same.
Happy New Year everyone!
Let cognitive dissonance diminishe 😉
@SusieC, TUC at FL350 is 1.5 minutes at best. At FL370 its 15 seconds. Pilots have pressurized breathing apparatus, cabin crew and PAX do not.
@VictorI
Perhaps similar action as passengers and crew from the flight United Airlines 93
@VictorI
I jumped the gun by not reading your question completely, in that moment they would have no chance.
@Susie Crowe: To my knowledge, the cabin was not depressurized in UA93. The depressurization gives the passengers and crew little time to take action.
@VictorI, Richard Godfrey is notorious for mis-representing his findings– he has a particular affinity for trying to cloud evidence that undercuts the (now-discredited) IG narrative — but I will download the NOAA data and see if what he says holds up. Since his paper doesn’t mention seasonality I suspect that the factor he has overlooked is the time of year the drifters passed through the particular stretches of ocean. But I’m willing to keep an open mind.
@TBill @Victori @Susie Crowe
Thanks for discussion on hypothermia. Cabins do stabilize at low temperature, but this lags the outside. There is latent heat in the people, seats, etc.
This could be a suicide. This could be a fire or other mechanical.
A hijack to Kazakastan is fantasy to hide plane and people for 3 years. Airliners are sometimes recovered by special operators from debtors – why deal with passengers? Just steal one. It is easy to buy used airliners and flip the titles – drug cartels do it. Why such an elaborate plot just to acquire an airplane?
My intention is only to question feasibility.
When and how was he supposed to get rid of Fariq? Please do not suggest the bathroom option, it is too difficult to accept thie master plan hinging on the co-pilot having to use the restroom.
What approximate time was depressurization?
My point being, it is one thing to accuse Z and another to back it up with a plausible scenario for the flight
@DennisW, De Deckker has not published his results because the work was undertaken as part of the ATSB investigation. You’ll note that none of the experts called on to render their professional opion have made their insights public unless it was made public by officials themselves. The remarkable (and in my eyes) great thing about the Robyn Ironsides interview is that he broke with protocol and, franky, said too much.
If a professional journalist conducts an interview, I wouldn’t consider that “hearsay.” I agree that there is more vagueness in his statement than I would like, but he is not vague about his temperature numbers.
@StevanG, You wrote, “why would Russia intentionally down a civilian airliner?! I can’t see a single positive consequence for them.” Exactly. Which just proves a very important point: that to try to judge whether or not someone has done something, based on your assessment of whether or not you think they have a motive, is an impossible task.
This is a crucial point as it relates to MH370.
Jeff:
Richard is known and widely respected for the high quality and value of his work. Your assertions are nothing more than pathetic disinformation, and you know it.
The “IG narrative”, as you call it, has never been discredited. It has often been misrepresented by you and others to have been a prediction of where the plane is located. It was never that, as you and I discussed by phone a few days ago, and you acknowledged.
You will find the relavent NOAA drift data here:
https://goo.gl/15QKys
@Hank, It does indeed seem an implausible scenario until you look at the actual evidence. To restate a point I just made to @StevenG, your naive assumptions about possible motive are a poor basis for ruling a scenario in or out.
@Jeff
My understanding is that the work of de Decker was not funded by the ATSB. Under that circumstance de Decker owns the result unless he signed up to some sort of non-disclosure agreement in exchange for getting the barnacle.
de Decker also mentions that his results differ from the results of the French. Tantalizing statement there.
Hearsay (definition below):
information received from other people that one cannot adequately substantiate
the report of another person’s words by a witness, usually disallowed as evidence in a court of law.
@DennisW, I guess I can’t figure out whether you’re being deliberately or inadvertantly offensive when you describe the sourcing of De Deckker’s statement as inadequately substantiated. Both Ironsides and myself are professional journalists.
Some believe that the capability exists to track a dark aircraft in real time anywhere in the world and that MH370 was watched from the time that its transponder stopped until it entered the SIO. Deemed not a threat. No survivors. This capability can never be disclosed.
A digital airplane imay be electrically dim but never really dark.
Happy 2017!
@Hank, Some believe the pyramids were used to store grain.
@Jeff
I am not being deliberately or inadvertently offensive (or offensive at all, for that matter).
You are reacting negatively to what hearsay literally means. Read the definition. There is nothing intrinsically offensive about saying something is hearsay. It is what it is. A lot of people have similar issues with “circumstantial evidence” i.e. attributing a negative interpretation to what is a simply a category definition.
An authored paper is far different than the notes of a third party relative to the reliability of the information.
@jeffwise said, “Richard Godfrey is notorious for mis-representing his findings– he has a particular affinity for trying to cloud evidence that undercuts the (now-discredited) IG narrative”
If you think that attacking Richard Godfrey helps the credibility of your Kazakhstan theory, you are wrong. I know of NOBODY that believes that he misrepresents his findings except you, so his notoriety in this regard is an idea dancing only in your mind. I’ve collaborated with Richard for years now, and I found him to be diligent, honest, and smart. The amount of analytical work he is able to generate is astounding. Of course in your mind, that just makes him even more suspicious of being a propaganda operative.
Why you chose to attack Richard before even investigating the content of his work is quite revealing about your current state of mind. Why not simply disagree with him (or not) based on the technical merits of his work?
Of course, I know these words fall on deaf ears because you have also accused me of deliberately misrepresenting the facts.
Your obsession with Putin is reaching very scary levels. Not everybody that disagrees with your theory that the plane was hijacked to Kazakhstan is an agent of Russia. That includes me, the rest of the IG, and Blaine Gibson.
@susie
At altitude you dont just need Oxygen
You need pressurized breathing masks to use it!
without pressure you are dead in less than 3 minutes
Only the Cockpit has pressurized masks
Pls mind karenk comment 1.5 minutes tuc
@ Jeff. If Putin was behind the downing of both planes, then what was his motive? MH17 was possibly to divert attention from the annexing of Crimea, but what was the purpose of MH370? If my question has been answered before, or is just stupid, then please ignore it.
@ed, It’s not a stupid question at all. The answer is, we don’t really know what his motive was, but it’s worth noting that Russia annexed Crimea the day before.
@VictorI, You wrote, “Your obsession with Putin is reaching very scary levels.” As well it should. In three weeks a Putin collaborator is going to be handed the launch codes to the US nuclear arsenal. This is no joke.
You also wrote, “Not everybody that disagrees with your theory that the plane was hijacked to Kazakhstan is an agent of Russia.” That is true.
@DennisW, I will not take offence.
Happy New Year to all those on the 7th Arc, parts of which just rang in 2017. I hope you are found this year, and closure can be brought to your loved ones.
I just want to underscore Jeff’s point about the parallels to MH17 being so glaring. Yet, I find it troubling that we haven’t explored the connection between these two events anywhere nearly as robustly as we should be. Two planes of the same model from the same carrier are obliterated within 3000 hours of each other…but nah, you’re crazy if you think it went north and Putin had anything to do with it. Face it guys, Vladimir is a scary mofo. Couple that with the fact that Blaine made lots of $$ in Russia and has significant ties to its government, and yet he’s the one human on this vast planet to find most of the wreckage. I may not have a Ph.D. like you guys and I may not be well versed in analyzing BTO and BFO data, but I know that a rational brain ought not accept everything we know as coincidence.
@Jeff
Good. Seriously none was intended relative to you Ironsides, or journalists as a category.
@Jeff Wise,
“professional journalists”.
How does one distinguish a “professional journalist” from the great majority who have been thoroughly discredited in recent times?
Here is an example of some professionalism, and research, and investigation which illustrates the parlous state of the MSM and their “fake news”.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-31/russian-hackers-said-penetrate-us-electricity-grid-using-outdated-ukrainian-malware
If it wasn’t so sad it would be amusing to sit back and watch the wave of anti-Russian propaganda that the MSM are trying to spread across the whole of the US.
How professional is that?
@JW
“Which just proves a very important point: that to try to judge whether or not someone has done something, based on your assessment of whether or not you think they have a motive, is an impossible task.
This is a crucial point as it relates to MH370.”
Finding a motive is actually a very important step in every investigation. Things happen for a reason.
@Brian Anderson, I’m delighted that you’ve shown your true colors.
@all: A prediction for 2017: This story is going to get BANANAS.
@Jeff
No grain? The fly by wire system is always sending messages to the actuators and engines with a pattern. Weak emissions but moving at 500 mph. You can start looking where the transponder stops. A sat array with wide spacing might follow. Weak IR signature also moving at 500 mph. This would be a useful capability to have after 9/11. Maybe this is not possible?? Maybe it is?
The drift is that it’s known as Project GRITS – Ghost Riders in the Sky.
@Hank: “The fly by wire system is always sending messages to the actuators and engines with a pattern.”
To make it easier for you: The AIMS is constantly sending position, speed, and heading messages to the SDU. That’s all you need.