Yesterday, officials responsible for locating missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 announced that their two-year, $150 million search has come to an end. Having searched an area the size of Pennsylvania and three miles deep, they’ve found no trace of the plane.
The effort’s dismal conclusion stands in marked contrast to the optimism that officials displayed throughout earlier phases of the search. In August, 2015, Australia’s deputy prime minister Warren Truss declared, “The experts are telling us that there is a 97% possibility that it is in [the designated search] area.”
So why did the search come up empty? Did investigators get unlucky, and the plane happened to wind up in the unsearched 3 percent? Or did something more nefarious occur?
To sort it all out, we need to go back to why officials thought they knew where the plane went.
Early on the morning of March 8, 2014, MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing. Forty minutes passed the last navigational waypoint in Malaysian airspace. Six seconds after that it went electronically dark. In the brief gap between air-control zones, when no one was officially keeping an eye on it, the plane pulled a U-turn, crossed back through Malaysian airspace, and then vanished from military radar screens.
At that point the plane was completely invisible. Its hijackers could have flown it anywhere in the world without fear of discovery. But lo and behold, three minutes later a piece of equipment called the Satellite Data Unit, or SDU, rebooted and initiated a log-on with an Inmarsat communications satellite orbiting high overhead. An SDU reboot is not something that can happen accidentally, or that airline captains generally know how to do, or that indeed there would be any logical reason for anyone to carry out. Yet somehow it happened. Over the course of the next six hours, the SDU sent seven automated signals before going silent for good. Later, Inmarsat scientists poring over the data made a remarkable discovery: due to an unusual combination of peculiarities, a signal could be teased from this data that indicated where the plane went.
With much hard work, search officials were able to wring from the data quite a detailed picture of what must have happened. Soon after the SDU reboot, the plane turned south, flew fast and straight until in ran out of fuel, then dived into the sea. Using this information, officials were able to generate a probabilistic “heat map” of where the plane most likely ended up. The subsequent seabed search began under unprecedented circumstances. Never before had a plane been declared lost, and its location subsequently deduced, on the basis of mathematics alone.
Now, obviously, we know that that effort was doomed. The plane is not where the models said it would most likely be. Indeed, I would go further than that. Based on the signal data, aircraft performance parameters, and the available autopilot modes, there is a finite range of places where the plane could plausibly have fetched up. Search vessels have now scanned all of them. If the data is good, and the analysis is good, the plane should have been found.
I am convinced that the analysis is good. And the data? It seems to me that the scientists who defined the search area overlooked a step that even the greenest rookie of a criminal investigator would not have missed. They failed to ascertain whether the data could have been tampered with.
I’ve asked both Inmarsat scientists and the Australian mathematicians who defined the search area how they knew that the satellite communications system hadn’t been tampered with. Both teams told me that they worked with the data they were given. Neither viewed it as their job to question the soundness of their evidence.
This strikes me as a major oversight, since the very same peculiar set of coincidences that made it possible to tease a signal from the Inmarsat data also make it possible that a sophisticated hijacker could have entered the plane’s electronics bay (which lies beneath an unsecured hatch at the front of the business class cabin) and altered the data fed to the Satellite Data Unit.
A vulnerability existed.
The only question is: Was it exploited? If it was, then the plane did not fly south over the ocean, but north toward land. For search officials, this possibility was erased when a piece of aircraft debris washed ashore on Réunion Island in July of 2015. Subsequently, more pieces turned up elsewhere in the western Indian Ocean.
However, as with the satellite data, officials have failed to explore the provenance of the debris. If they did, they would have noticed some striking inconsistencies. Most notably, the Réunion debris was coated completely in goose barnacles, a species that grows only immersed in the water. When officials tested the debris in a flotation tank, they noted that it floated half out of the water. There’s no way barnacles could grow on the exposed areas—a conundrum officials have been unable to reconcile. The only conclusion I can reach is that the piece did not arrive on Réunion by natural means, a suspicion reinforced by a chemical analysis of one of the barnacles by Australian scientist Patrick DeDeckker, who found that the barnacle grew in water temperatures that no naturally drifting piece of debris would have encountered.
If the plane didn’t go south, then where did it go? Not all the Inmarsat data, it turns out, was susceptible to spoofing. From the portion that wasn’t, it’s able to generate a narrow band of possible flight paths; they all terminate in Kazakhstan, a close ally of Russia. Intriguingly, three ethnic Russians were aboard MH370, including one who was sitting mere feet from the electronics bay hatch. Four and a half months later, a mobile launcher from a Russian anti-aircraft unit shot down another Malaysia Airlines 777-200ER, MH17. A year after that, the majority of pieces of debris wind up being discovered by a man who had spent the last three decades intimately involved with Russia.
Whether or not the Russians are responsible for MH370, the failure of the seabed search and the inconsistencies in the aircraft debris should undermine complacency about the official narrative. When MH370 disappeared, it possessed an obscure vulnerability that left its Inmarsat data open to tampering. Having spent $150 million and two years on a fruitless investigation, search officials have an obligation to investigate whether or not that vulnerability was exploited.
“the Kalman filter applied by the DSTG, has distorted the speed and track data that were graphically reported in the DSTG report.”
An anti-smoothing filter? Great!
@DennisW
Perfect example demonstrating your random walk….
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/26/robot_goldfish_tank/
@Gysbreght
As Victori states it is only during the normal mode that the yoke commands roll rate and maintains bank angle when the yoke is centered. The secondary and direct modes do not command roll rate, and do not hold bank angle. Without this closed loop performance the aircraft would not hold an exact bank angle when the controls were centered.
In normal mode the pilot could fly hands free without autopilot. The heading would drift due to turbulence, but the aircraft would be stable and not enter a spiral dive.
There is no reason to assume the system faulted into the secondary or direct mode.
The crew could have engaged the AP and AT. I was only allowing that the plane could have flown for seven hours in normal FBW mode with unconscious pilots and this was ignored by ATSB/DSTG.
@BigMac
The flight path is well known from radar from IGARI to the last radar fix. But it is unknown how MH370 flew that path. Someone may have programmed the entire flight and engaged the autopilot in LNAV after IGARI. Someone could have manually flown the route. Just because the aircraft may have tracked toward waypoints does not mean that the aircraft was not just keeping wings level and the path is just random. You can always debate which is more likely, but it is feasible for an aircraft just trying to keep wings level to fly the route.
@Hank: “As Victori states it is only during the normal mode that the yoke commands roll rate and maintains bank angle when the yoke is centered. The secondary and direct modes do not command roll rate, and do not hold bank angle. Without this closed loop performance the aircraft would not hold an exact bank angle when the controls were centered.”
I remember that when we discussed this some time ago, VictorI stated that the FBW normal mode does not keep the wings level. In secondary mode the yoke commands roll rate as in normal mode. The main difference between normal mode and secondary mode is in pitch. When the airplane rolls in normal mode, the turn compensation increases the pitch attitude as required to maintain altitude. In secondary mode that compensation is not provided and the airplane descends, speed increases and the airplane enters a spiral dive.
@Hank:
“Why was Inmarsat thrown down the stairs. Inmarsat was vert polite in their article. Must be hard not to smile when ATSB is now suggesting a search where Inmarsat predicted using their “unsophisticated” method.”
Yes, I found this strange at the time and also the apparent lack of reaction in public by Inmarsat to the change after all the work they had put into it. My conclusion was that perhaps Inmarsat had low confidence in their result and felt they would avoid some odium if, as has happened, the search failed.
The Mercury, subscriber article by Robyn Ironside, “Boeing backs decision to halt MH 370 search and rules out going it alone.” Excerpts:
“BOEING has ruled out speculation it will mount its own search for MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean following the suspension of the official mission.”
“A Boeing spokeswoman said they “accepted the conclusion of government authorities leading the investigation and search, that in the absence of credible new information that leads to identification of a specific location of the aircraft there will be no further expansion of the area”.
“Over the past three years Boeing has been fully dedicated to supporting the MH370 search and investigation,” said the spokeswoman.””
@Ge Rijn
“I’m also concerned about your deleting of @StefanG’s comment in this regard.”
luckily I’m used to 🙂
I really don’t mind it and understand where he is coming from however the discussion tends to be more productive when we don’t stray into politics which is a must if you include Russians or any other superpower.
now that elections&inauguration are (finally) over I hope those pesky commies won’t be mentioned so often 🙂
@VictorI
“@TBill: Isolating the left bus has no effect on navigation, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Yeah thanks I was curious if the GPS knows lat/long and waypoints with SDU off, but I was afraid to ask.
@Gysbreght: Yes, in Normal mode, it is roll rate that is commanded. It is not like the A/P mode on a B737 called Control Wheel Steering (CWS), which maintains the bank angle based on yoke angular position. In Normal mode, a disturbance of finite duration that causes roll will be rejected to bring the roll rate to zero. However, the net effect of the disturbance will be a new bank angle that will not be corrected.
I also do wonder how well the constant track modes work for TRK HLD and TRK SEL A/P modes. Again, if there is a disturbance of finite duration that changes the track, the disturbance will be rejected and the track will be brought back to the target track. But the net effect of the disturbance would be to create an offset in the path that will probably not be corrected, and that can result in cumulative error relative to a pure constant track path. Really, only in LNAV mode is there any requirement for the navigation system to maintain a particular path.
@Gysbreht
It is my understanding that in normal mode the yoke commands a roll rate and when returned to neutral the systems hold the bank angle. If the pilot commanded a roll at 5 degrees per second and centered the yoke ar 15 degrees, the system holds the 15 degree bank. If a gust upsets the bank to 20 degrees the system rolls it back to 15. This is not a wing leveler because if the pilot put the aircraft in the 15 degree bank and releases the yoke, it does not roll back to zero. But if the plane is set to zero bank it should hold it at zero.
I do not know how FSX 777 models implement the normal roll mode.
@Hank: Do you have a reference that states that in Normal mode a bank angle may be maintained by keeping the yoke centered?
Boris Tabaksplatt
ATSB owned the search and they picked DTSG to lead the team to define the zone. I don’t know whether Inmarsat technically accepted DSTG method as superior or just stepped aside and let the Australians do whatever they wanted. They provided the BTO and BFO data.
I do not know how Dr. Gordon engages with others but I would have kept open alternative approaches. There was no reconciliation of the huge difference between methods. And many of the aircraft dynamics assumptions made by DSTG look just stupid to me and not challenged. I suspect technical arrogance at play – classic lab-rat problem and no strong management to keep alternatives open.
That is why I think there is a real story about how this team actually worked and committed $200m Aus to search in the wrong place. I know others think the zone was perfect for the data and the data was spoofed. But it seems to me that the process for defining the zone was dysfunctional.
I don’t think nefarious intent – just some strong egos at play.
@Victori
Search for “An Analysis of the Boeing 777 Fly-by-Wire System” by Jamie Beneyto. 2016. Simple but not authoratative.
I am looking for a more authorative source on the software of the FCS.
@JeffWise. Barnacles surviving on the flaperon rear.
The below in its middle sections suggests that moisture diffusion into composites can be appreciable given time. Microcracks, mentioned as affecting penetration (and subsequent drying out?) surely would have resulted from the bashing the flaperon would have received.
Possibly loss of buoyancy from this has been dismissed in earlier discussion but you might give it a thought if not.
https://depts.washington.edu/amtas/events/jams_16/presentations/8.Tuttle.pdf
@Rob. I understand about the left flaperon not separating in the event of a right wing down piloted ditching and it could be argued that its absence supports that theory. If that did not happen though its sinking could be another reason; in which case the prospects of any more flotsam being beached are the less.
I mentioned the ‘flaperon schedule’. This is separate to the ‘flaperon droop logic’, the two being added/subtracted within the overall movement limits.
@Hank: I am familiar with this paper and the accompanying video. However, in truth, it describes PMDG’s implementation of the B777 FBW. We don’t know how accurately the FSX model corresponds to the actual plane. I have already identified deficiencies.
…whereas PMDG 777 is the best 777 simulator for FSX. FSX actually has no internal Microsoft 777 airplane choice, but various 3rd party 777 supplier versions can be added on.
All this time people (myself included) have said they were looking in the wrong place. And now it turns out to be true.
Great point @Matt. Whatever operating hypothesis was being worked on is clearly wrong…yet instead of forming a new one they just decided to give up.
@Gysbreght. You quoted from FCOM, “Roll control in the secondary and direct modes is very similar to roll control in the
normal mode.”
@VictorI. “I guess it comes down to what the definition of “similar” is.”
Yes, from the AMM, in Normal, ailerons are locked out by speed, height dependent. In Secondary (and Direct) there is no aileron control except with flaps down. With no flaps, the ailerons are hydraulically locked in secondary and will be in Direct also if there is a PFC operative. (Thus with flaps lowered, in secondary and direct the ailerons will not droop with the flaps and flaperons).
Would one of you confirm please that loss of pitot heat necessarily causes reversion to Secondary rather than speed being taken from the ADIRU, ie inertia?
@VictorI. “Also, I have seen different statements about whether or not yaw damping is lost going from Normal to Secondary mode. If you have found a definitive reference, I would be interested.”
Butting in, “The PFC has a degraded yaw damper function in secondary mode. It uses available air and inertial data to supply rudder commands. If some of the air or inertial data is not available, the function filters the yaw damper rate and reduces its gain.”
Degraded from what? Normal; “The yaw damper function controls the rudder to dampen the dutch roll sensitivity of the airplane. The yaw damper function also controls the turn coordination.”
Other Normal rudder functions; TAC, wheel-rudder cross tie, gust suppression, modal suppression, hydraulic pressure control and rudder trim, are absent from Secondary though some (rudder ratio changer (degraded), force fight equalisation) are retained. Direct differs again.
About the elevator, the speed stability function in Normal mode does not operate during autopilot operation and neither does it in Secondary, as you say, and there is no stall or overspeed protection. Further though, there is no elevator offload function in secondary. This of course reads across also to the stabiliser functions in Secondary.
In case of use.
@David: “Would one of you confirm please that loss of pitot heat necessarily causes reversion to Secondary rather than speed being taken from the ADIRU, ie inertia? ”
My reference is the Non-Normal Checklist DUAL ENG FAIL/STALL. It describes main engine restart procedure, Ram Air Turbine deployment, APU start, and ends with the following:
Loss of Pitot Heat does not, by itself, cause loss of airspeed information. However, when encountering icing conditions, the pitot tubes may be obstructed by ice accretions, and the indicated airspeed may be erroneous. Apparently the system logic considers the airspeed information to be unreliable after loss of pitot heat.
@Gysbreght. Thanks
@David: That’s helpful. Thank you.
@David
Iro the flaperon schedule and flaperon droop logic, I would think the flaperon is only extended 31deg (or more) down when the flaps are fully extended. I accept I might be wrong, though. The ATSB examined the outboard flap and decided it appears to have been retracted at time of impact. I am in no position to disagree, in fact I would expect flaps to be retracted at the time of impact, because even in the piloted scenario , it’s difficult to envisage the pilot wanting to lower flaps, imo.
So possibly the flaperon T/E sustaining more damage or erosion than the directly adjacent outboard flap T/E may be due to differing materials and construction: the flaperon is GRP while the flap is carbon, and not necessarily an indication that the flaperon was commanded down.
Two flaperon leading edge sealing panels are among the recovered items (each flaperon has three of these panels) My interpretation is that the panels were separated from the wing as the flaperon was displaced upwards after being sheared from its hinges.
In the unpiloted scenario, we have the intriguingly implausible situation of a plane flying at 35,000ft at upwards of 450kts TAS, running out of fuel and then plunging into the ocean, shattering its RH engine cowling and ripping off RH wing trailing edge components (while apparently sparing the inboard flap) but little else.
@Hank
“That is why I think there is a real story about how this team actually worked and committed $200m Aus to search in the wrong place. I know others think the zone was perfect for the data and the data was spoofed. But it seems to me that the process for defining the zone was dysfunctional.
I don’t think nefarious intent – just some strong egos at play.”
When I reflect on the sequence of events surrounding the search, they seem to play out with consistency except for the DSTG input. Inmarsat, SSWG, IG, and a whole bunch of other very qualified people i.e. Dr. Bobby, Dr. Cole, sk999,… all had analytics that generally supported the primary search area. Frankly, it was a very easy and sensible choice to make. The DSTG came to the party very late (after the flaperon was found). The ASTB was quite far along in their search when the DSTG paper came out. My only heartburn with the choice of search area was that it was by no means a slam dunk. Meaning that other terminal locations could not be ruled out. However, if you were going to start a search, the area suggested by the prevalent analytics was the best place. No question about that.
So my reaction to the DSTG paper was in the WTF? category. Why come out with something like that now? It almost seemed like the ASTB wanted something to reinforce their earlier decision to search where they were already searching. Basically the DSTG paper added zero informational value with the exception of the BFO data from previous flights that none of us had access to. What that data showed was that, if anything, we were over-constraining the “acceptable” flight paths.
Anyway, I don’t think anybody on the analytical side screwed up. It was and is very solid stuff. If there was a mistake, I would lay the blame squarely on the shoulders of the ATSB for deciding to search when they did. A prudent course of action would have been to hold off until other information became available to remove some of the ambiguity latent in the ISAT data.
RE: “How Crazy Am I to Think I Actually Know Where That Malaysia Airlines Plane Is?”
@Jeff: It was intriguing to see so many story arcs all fitting together and converging at this one point.
Have you ever tried to go there and see for yourself ?
If not, why not ?
Maybe you can find traces or circumstantial evidence there ? Or even the plane ?!
For someone who self-describes as “unusually obsessed with MH370” wouldn’t that be an absolute must-do ? Especially now, that the official search has come to an end ?
If you ask me, it would surely be a better investment of time than sitting here and blogging for years to come. (Not that the latter doesn’t have its merits.)
@DennisW
I think a prudent course of action would have been to take a break in the search after the flaperon was found.
First the intact state and kind of damage of the flaperon suggested a relatively low speed horizontal, level impact, possibly a glide.
Second, the first drift studies involving the flaperon already pointed to a more Northern impact area.
When new debris was starting to show up since december 2015 refined drifter based drift analyzis made it more and more clear the crash area had to be North of the search area.
The find of the Pemba outboard flap section settled this IMO. And also this piece indicated a relatively low speed, horizontal impact.
IMO early 2016 this new information was already so clear that a re-evaluation of the search area was justified. Shifting the search to the North.
The ATSB never did when time was still plenty and all evidence was already there.
They did it finally end of last year when they knew time had run out.
IMO the ATSB (and with them Australia) just gave the hot potato they had in their hands for a year already (their conviction the crash area had to be more North) to Malaysia and China to decide what to do with it.
@Ge Rijn
I don’t disagree with anything you said. I will add a point that annoyed me greatly after the flaperon finding. That point is the CSIRO statement that the location of the flaperon did not contradict the ATSB search area.
What a BS thing to say. Sure, the flaperon could have come from the search area. That is a great example of a very poorly phrased question. The question should have where is the most probable place the flaperon could have come from? The Geomar study was spot on target relative to that as subsequent analytics have reinforced. I have a very low regard for CSIRO for this reason. They decided to play nice with the ATSB rather than doing something useful. I can say the same thing about the DSTG. All birds of a feather, IMO.
@Perfect Storm, Do you mean why didn’t I go to Kazakhstan? Or Ukraine? Same answer either way: money.
@Jeff
“Any problem you can write a check to solve is not a problem; it is an expense.” – dennisw
@Nederland
I notice your proposed flight path is somewhat similar to VictorI’s 180S magnetic path:
https://t.co/7qjAJL0Ukp
One “weakness” of your path and to lesser extent Victor’s 180S mag path is that those paths discount the alleged location near LAGOG/CarNicobar 19:12
Per Victor, from p46 of the June 2014 (ATSB) report: “The aircraft passed close to a NW point at 1912.” From an email from the ATSB to researcher Niels Tas: “The NW point at 1912 was an assumed theoretical location at 8° 35.719’N, 92° 35.145’E initially chosen to provide clearance from the known radar sources (mainly Singapore {AWACS plane}).”
@DennisW, That’s why journalists have so many problems.
ROB posted January 27, 2017 at 9:28 AM:
What is so implausible about that? About half of the BOEING simulations ended with a turn radius of greater than 7 NM, i.e. less than 5° of bank at a typical end speed of 200 kt. Now consider the impact condition of the video VictorI posted for his simulation starting at the condition of 45°S, 4000 ft altitude from Z’s Flight files, also at 200 kt (IIRC).
@DennisW
Maybe you are confusing the Defense Science and Technology Organization (DSTO)and the Defense Science and Technology Group (DTSG) – just a name change. DSTO has been part of the team since the beginning and are listed in the June 6, 2014 ATSB report. Many of the figures shown in the various ATSB reports are the same as those in the book. The 12/3/2015 ATSB report provides a link to the draft book. This ATSB report clearly shows the search area being defined by DSTG.
The likely locations changed with the reports. The Inmarsat most likely spot was at S34.7, E93.0. The first ATSB reports were at S34, E95. The 12/3/2015 ATSB had it at S38, E88.5. So all of the early reports including the zone for the surface areas where northeast of the final zone.
And it was DSTO/G that pushed it south. I could find no charts in any of the ATSB reports before 12/3/2015 that had the zone this far southwest.
The methodology in the book is exactly what ATSB used to define the search zone and all of the earlier work has the most likely spot to be northeast of that region.
The only materials I have are all of the published ATSB reports, the Inmarsat paper, and the DTSG book. You may have access to other materials that more clearly show the method used by ATSB to select the 120K km2 zone that was searched. None of the reports show a detailed zone – just nice Google Earth pictures.
We agree that the assumptions and approach taken in the book has some flaws. But it was the basis for the zone.
I can’t reconcile why the very specific pdf heat map in the 12/3/2015 ATSB report shifted from the 10/8/2014 ATSB flight path analysis update report. And none of the early reports clearly define a search zone.
You say that “Anyway, I don’t think anybody on the analytical side screwed up. It was and is very solid stuff.” But clearly ASTB relied on DSTG to define the zone using the method which was later published in the book.
I have not seen – although it might be there – what happened between the 10/8/2014 ATSB report and the 12/3/2015 ATSB report to shift the likely spot.
The trail of how the 60,000 km2 zone became the 120,000 km2 zone and why the most likely spot shifted to the empty southwest zone is a mystery to me.
It would be interesting to understand the ATSB decision making from the time they assumed control of the undersea search until it was ended.
@JeffWise @DennisW Followup
Jeff interviewed Neil Gordon of DTSG for a Popular Mechanics article 9/7/2016 “Top Mathematician Says MH370 Probably Crashed North of the Search Zone.” Good article.
From the article: “The current MH370 search area. The dark green box is the 120,000 sq km search area defined by
DSTG analysis. The light green area shows the portion of the seabed already scanned (an earlier portion of the search, guided by a slightly different analysis, searched further to the northeast).
Jeff would have more insight into why they searched north of the zone and then moved to the zone 2.
More Russian debris mischief…
http://www.avcom.co.za/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=185829
@Hank, If my memory serves, in the fall of 2014 there were two camps within the official investigation: one camp which wanted to search where the BFO values provided a better fit (the more northerly part) and others who wanted to ignore the BFO and just look at BTO values and autopilot modes. At the time, they couldn’t make up their minds so they drew a box that encompassed both.
Eventually it was realized that the BFO data was too imprecise to be used for the purpose of defining a search area, and Neil Gordon and his team applied the Bayesian technique to the BTO/autopilot data, and the rest is history.
@VictorI, That’s definitely been in the ocean!
@Hank: Some history…
In the ATSB report from June 2014, a priority search zone centered around 29S was published, as you know. But there were some interesting things missing in this report, which the IG highlighted in this statement from July 2014 (the figures were mine):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7zsl07n5yg4jkjw/2014-07-14%20Independent%20Investigation%20Team%20Interim%20Report.pdf?dl=0
For one, the path the satisfied the BTO and the search area required a position fairly far north. This had two implications:
a) There was the possibility of a circling pattern over the Andamans to account for 52 minutes that were “missing” if a straight path was assumed.
b) The BFO at 18:40 was completely ignored.
(Funny how we are still talking about these issues. Back then I thought these issues were quite important and not understood.)
On this basis of level flight and a single final major turn (FMT), the IG began recommending a search zone further south centered around 37.7S latitude.
Weeks later in August 2014, the ATSB came to the conclusion that the BFO from the call at 18:40 really does imply an earlier turn to the south, and the recommended search area shifted to the south, as the IG recommended. See this news report, for instance.
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/08/27/world/asia/australia-malaysia-mh370/index.html?hpt=hp_t3
And in September 2014, Inmarsat published its paper in which it reconstructed a possible flight path ending around 34S latitude. Inmarsat was careful to say that this was just one possible path, and made no recommendations regarding search area. The flight path was not rigorously constrained by the autopilot mode, and also neglected wind and temperature effects.
Then in Oct 2014, the ATSB released a new report entitled “MH370 – Flight Path Analysis Update” in which the reconstructed flight paths were tightly constrained by autopilot modes and the 18:40 BFO. The resulting paths were centered in the same general area as the IG recommendation, i.e., around 37.5S latitude.
It all comes down to modeling assumptions such as whether the plane is constrained to level flight at 18:40 and whether a holding pattern is allowed. Back in June 2014, they were considered possible by the ATSB. After Oct 2014, they were not. The DSTG Bayesian analysis was based on the same assumptions of level flight at 18:40 and no loiter, so the search area was now cemented in the minds of the ATSB.
With the failure of the underwater search, we should be re-visiting these assumptions. We are not.
There is also the mysterious “NW Radar Point” that if really a radar capture is more evidence of a much more northern terminus. I will have more to say about this point soon.
@jeffwise: Your memory fails you. While the autopilot constrained models ended further south than the data constrained models, the major shift to the south after the June 2014 ATSB report occurred when the BFO at 18:40 was included with the assumption of level flight, and the path only had one major turn. See dates from my previous post.
@Victori
Thanks for the background and links. I was not aware of the IG and the good work being done.
@Hank
I was not aware that the DSTG book was based on analytics done much earlier. I assumed it was a relatively “fresh” effort, and had the misunderstanding the the SSWG did all the early heavy lifting.
The inclusion of the flaperon (before and after heat maps) puzzled me. I could find virtually no difference. It seems that either the flaperon find was given little weight or that the DSTG regarded the flaperon find as reinforcing their ISAT only conclusions.
Fugro touting.
Ean Higgins, The Australian, 28/29 Jan
“Push to scour ‘highly likely’ MH370 zone as Boeing urged to pay
The leader of the just-ended underwater hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, Paul Kennedy, believes the aircraft can and will be found, saying he could quickly assemble a fresh operation to scour a new area deemed “highly likely” to contain the Boeing 777.
The comments come as pressure mounts on the Australian, Malaysian and Chinese governments to renew the search, and amid calls on US-based Boeing to shell out from its just-announced record annual profit to fund it.
Mr Kennedy, the project director of the $200 million survey of 120,000sq km of deep seabed in the southern Indian Ocean conducted by the Dutch Fugro marine survey group, said “we all feel sad” about the failure to find the plane.
“We hoped to find the debris on the first day, and just four days ago when we were in the search area we were still anticipating we would still find it,” Mr Kennedy told The Weekend Australian in Perth, where he is based.
The effort had involved 300 rotating staff members on Fugro ships and 1.5 million man hours.
MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, with 239 people on board. Its radar transponder was turned off and radio communications cut about 40 minutes into the flight when, primary radar and automatic satellite tracking shows, it doubled back over Malaysia to the Andaman Sea and then turned south.
While Malaysia has responsibility for the investigation into the lost aircraft because it was registered in that country, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau led the underwater search with the cost shared among the three governments.
On Monday, ATSB chief commissioner Greg Hood said it was “highly likely” the wreckage of the missing aircraft is in a new 25,000sq km area identified last month by a panel of international experts, but said any decision on whether to search it was “a question for governments”.
At the same press conference in Perth, Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said “we need more credible evidence before we move to the next search area”.
Mr Kennedy said should Fugro get a new commission to look for MH370, “it wouldn’t take us long at all” to marshal resources since the company had 350 staff in Perth and equipment stationed there including a $10m torpedo-like autonomous sonar imaging vehicle.
“She’ll be found, for sure,” Mr Kennedy said of MH370.
The ATSB has not costed a new search, but based on the cost per square kilometre of the search just ended, to cover the proposed 25,000sq km area to the north would have a price tag of $42m.
Boeing this week announced its 2016 annual results, reporting revenue of $US96.4 billion ($127bn), and record operating cashflow of $US10.5bn.
Danica Weeks, who lost her husband Paul on MH370 and now lives as a single mum in Queensland, called on Boeing to “come to the plate” to fund a new search, observing “it’s a Boeing plane”.
Last week Malaysian Deputy Transport Minister Abdul Aziz Kaprawi said “there’s been no funding from Boeing”.
Boeing has consistently refused to say whether it would consider sponsoring a renewed underwater search, but has observed the company provides expertise to agencies conducting air crash investigations.
Professionals in the aviation industry said it was essential the ¬proposed 25,000sq km hunting ground be covered.”
@David
Suggesting that Boeing fund the search is ridiculous. I can now add Fugro to the list of idiots – ATSB, CSIRO, DSTG.
How about Motorola? It was their batteries. Who owned the mangosteens?
@VictorI
Very nice summary thank you. So the $64000 question is why ATSB got so cemented on those assumptions. It seems to me either: (1) the search area was selected for political reasons; or (2) Indonesia admitted behind closed doors that a pathway right thru their backyard was possible (either they admitted they saw it, or they admitted they were not watching). Otherwise seems to me the PIC would have gone further out around Banda Aceh. I am unclear how those with proposed pathways near Banda Aceh rationalize the lack of radar sitings by Sabang.
Overall, the questions are: (1) What volunteer activities are helpful (new path designs?) and (2) what is a list of all the info we would like: Better Radar data disclosure, MH370 FMC info (waypoints, magnetic tables in use on 8-Mar-2014, etc), Boeing to say how discontinuity works, etc etc.
@DennisW
Boeing spending less then 0.001% of their 2016 profits on this new search would give them a cheap world-wide advertising campaign showing off their dedication to safety and concern for the passengers who step in their planes.
Their biggest competitor Airbus did everything to help find AF447.
They lose part of their good name and credibility if they refuse to step in seriously.
This reputation damage will linger on for years to come.
Even if the plane still won’t be found it will be an advertisement-bargain.
Then they at least showed their good will and restoring reputation damage they suffer now by their attitude.
IMO they are idiots if they let this opportunity pass.
Jeff, in my posting (see above) I was referring to your article “How Crazy Am I to Think I Actually Know Where That Malaysia Airlines Plane Is?” (which is about Kazakhstan if I am not mistaken), and in particular to the aerial photographs you published. If I were in your shoes, I guess it would tormenting for me not to go to where I suspect the plane is, I am investing so much time and mental energy to find.
Why do you mention Ukraine in this context?
Because of MH17?
Would going to Ukraine be possibly helpful for the search for MH370? And if so, why?
Then why don’t you use crowdfunding ?
(Don’t say it wouldn’t generate enough money. There is huge interest in MH370 worldwide and you are very well known in the MH370 world.)
@VictorI @all
Transkei-debris. Yet another big piece of likely control-surface related debris.
Most probably a flap fairing of some sort IMO. Must be MH370.
Yet another indication of a relatively low speed, horizontal/level impact on the water.
All this pieces separating by flutter cann’t be sustained.
And also exclude a very high energy, high speed dive impact on the water IMO.
Good chance the piece and its position can be identified soon.
@Ge Rijn
Darren Chester, Australian transport minister, said “it is not at all about the cost”. Like Chester says, why should Boeing be the one “giving false hope to the next of kin”. Are you doubting the word of the Australian transport minister? If it is not at all about the cost, why ask Boeing to write a check. The BA stockholders would regard that as just plain stupid.
In the case of AF447, the airline, the flight crew, and the aircraft were all French. Because Boeing sold an airplane to a third world country that cannot even conduct a crash investigation properly does not make them liable in any way. There is not a shred of evidence pointing to an aircraft failure.
From my perspective there is no one involved in this search that can be trusted to spend any funding in a responsible manner.
@Perfect Storm
“Then why don’t you use crowdfunding ?”
Because there is no crowd. The number of people endorsing JW’s theory can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and none of them is likely to have any money.
Regarding Boeing, Ge Rijn writes, “Their biggest competitor Airbus did everything to help find AF447.”
In the case of AF447, the ACARS data made clear that something had gone amiss, so it was in Airbus’ interest to find out what happened.
Although long forgotten, Boeing funded a similar search effort back in 1990 after a cargo door blew out on United 811, a Boeing 747. After the NTSB had submitted its final report, blaming United cargo handlers, Boeing cofunded a search effort to located the remains of the cargo door, even though it was at a depth of 14,200 feet. The effort was successful. A revised NTSB report was issued, which blamed now (among others) Boeing, for a deficient cargo door design.
The implication here is that there is no evidence of a deficiency in the aircraft, so there is nothing of interest to Boeing that would make it want to fund a continued search (aside from the general interest that we all have in knowing what happened to the plane.)
https://www.fss.aero/accident-reports/look.php?report_key=1332
@Ge Rijn
There are big differences between MH370 and AF447. First of all Air France knew they were having pitot tube icing issues. In this case there is no hint of a specific aircraft defect or issue. But more to the point, each Country has charge of their own aircraft investigations. The corollary to that is smaller countries will often be closed and defensive about it, unlike say a France, USA or Germany might be.
@Victor1
The recent beachings of “Russian debris” is SA suggests that there may be a lingering few chunks of meaningful debris from MH370 in addition to a doubtless large number that did come ashore in the past 2 years and since sunk or been buried.
The clock still ticks on any effort to find and maintain forensic usefulness. Much more to gain here than helping Fugro with their cash-flow, I think.