UPDATED: See end for description of possible northern route
On Saturday, March 15, Malaysian authorities released an analysis of satellite data that dramatically narrowed the possibilities for where missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 had gone after it disappeared from radar on March 8. Over the course of the following week, Inmarsat released further information that not only showed where the plane went, but also indicated how it got there. The results are shown on this chart. We still don’t know if the plane headed north or south, but if it went north, it made landfall near the western India-Bangladesh border and proceeded along the Himalayas to Central Asia. If it went south, it passed over western Indonesia and out over the southern Indian Ocean.
How are we able to determine this? The procedure requires a bit of explanation. Inmarsat is a communications satellite in geosynchronous orbit over the Indian ocean. That means it remains in the same place in the sky, like it’s sitting on top of an invisible pole. Because it’s so high up, it has a straight line-of-sight to virtually the entire eastern hemisphere. That’s great for radio communications: if you can see it, you can send it a message, and it can send that message along to anyone else in the eastern hemisphere, or to a base station that can then relay it to anywhere in the whole world.
Every hour, Inmarsat sends out a short electronic message to subscribers that says, “Hey, are you out there?” The message contains no information as such; the satellite just wants to find out if that particular subscriber is out there in case it wants to talk. Kind of like picking up your telephone just to see if there’s a dial tone. On the morning of Saturday, March 8, MH370 replied seven times to these pings, saying, in effect, “Yup, I’m here.” The line was open for the plane to communicate with the outside world. But the system that generates the messages themselves, called ACARS, had been shut off. So nothing else was communicated between the satellite and the plane.
All the same, those pings tell us something important about MH370: they allow us to narrow down its location. Because light travels at a certain speed, and electronics take a certain amount of time to generate a signal, there’s always a length of time between the satellite’s “Hey!” and the airplane’s “Yo!” The further away the plane is, the longer it takes to say “Yo!,” because it has to wait for the signal from the satellite to travel that extra distance.
Imagine you and I are in a darkened room. You have no idea where I am, except you know that I’m holding one end of a taut, 20-foot rope, and you’re holding the other. Therefore I must be 20 feet away. You don’t know where I am, exactly, but you know that I must like somewhere along a circle that’s 20 feet in radius, with you at the center:
Now, it happens that in this room there are walls and pieces of furniture, so you’re able to rule out certain spots based on that, so instead of a whole circle, you have pieces of circle, or arcs.
MH370 was in an analogous situation. When Inmarsat pinged it at 8.11am, the amount of time it took the plane to reply allow us to calculate its distance from the satellite, just as if it was holding a taut piece of string. Instead of furniture, factors such as speed and fuel capacity provide other limitations of where it could be, so its range of possible locations is also not a circle but a series of arcs:
Note that these arcs do not represent the path that the plane took, but the range of possible locations at 8.11am. That particular ping tells us nothing at all about how the plane got to wherever it happened to be. So at this point all we know is where it started (it disappeared from Malaysian military radar at 2.15am at a spot between the Malay Peninsula and the Andaman Islands) and where it ended up. It could have taken any of a zillion routes to get from its start point to to its final recorded location somewhere on that last arc.
Remember, however, that Inmarsat received six earlier pings as well, and from them we can narrow down the range of possibilities dramatically. The first was received at 2.11am, just before MH370 disappeared from Malaysian military. Its length indicates that the plane must have been somewhere on the green circle at that moment:
Of course, thanks to radar we happen to know in this case pretty much where the plane really was at this time — around the area of the pink dot.
On Friday, March 21, an Inmarsat spokesman told me that “the ping timings got longer,” meaning that the distance between MH370 and the satellite grew increasingly bigger, and never smaller. That means that at no point during its subsequent travels did MH370 travel any closer to Inmarsat. So from the 2.11am ping data alone, we can rule out every spot within the green arc:
MH370 never traveled anywhere in the shaded area. (Of if it did, didn’t stay there for long; by the end of the hour it had to be outside.) We also know that it never was further away from the satellite than it was at 8.11am, so we can exclude everything east of that, as well. Finally, we can rule out some chunks close to its starting point for other reasons:
So just from the 2.11am and the 8.11am pings, we know that MH370’s route of flight must lie within either of these two broad swaths — one lying to the north, and the other to the south. Bear in mind, the reasoning that we’ve just gone through doesn’t tell us anything about whether the plane went to the north or two the south. Because of the symmetry of a circle, the possible paths are mirror images of one another. However, we’ve vastly reduced the range of flight routes that MH370 could have taken. For instance, a popular theory circulating on the internet posits that MH370 tucked in close behind a Singapore Airlines flight, “SIA68,” in order to hide in its radar shadow:
This new Inmarsat data rules out that possibility. It also rules out the idea that MH370 flew south through the middle of the Indian Ocean to avoid military radar. If the flight went south, it would have had to have gone through Indonesian radar coverage.
Interestingly, on March 19, the website Antara News reported that “Indonesian Defense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro said the Indonesian military radar placed in the country’s western-most city of Sabang did not detect an airplane flying over Indonesian territory.”
On March 22, 2014, CNN reported that China, India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Laos, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan have told investigators that “based on preliminary information, their nations had no radar sightings of missing jetliner.”
So far, we haven’t talked about what we can deduce from the remaining five Inmarsat pings, the ones received at 3.11, 4.11, 5.11, 6.11, and 7.11. It should be possible, based on the presumed speed of the plane and the distance between the successive arcs, to make some reasoned guesses about how the plane traveled from one to the other. I haven’t seen the data yet—I’m working on it—but earlier this week the Washington Post published a map that showed what appeared to be the results of just such analysis as applied to the southern route, carried out by the NTSB:
This appears to be why the nations assisting the investigation have poured so many assets into searching that particular stretch of southern ocean. If MH370 took the southern route, it would have had nowhere to land, so it must have crashed and its debris must still be floating somewhere in this area.
Of course, the information we glean from Inmarsat data about MH370’s flight route is, by itself, symmetrical around an axis that runs from the spot on the ground underneath Inmarsat to the point where the aircraft was last observed. So assuming that the NTSB’s interpretation of the southern route was only based on factors of speed and arc spacing, it should be applicable in mirror form to the northern route as well. I’m working on that right now.
UPDATED 3-23-14: Okay, I feel a little slow on the uptake on this one, but it turns out that if you flip the NTSB’s guesstimated southern route, you come up with a northern route that looks pretty much like this one published in the Daily Mail (I know, I know):
Basically, you make landfall in the vicinity of Bangladesh, skirt along the border between India and Nepal, then cut across northeastern Pakistan and Afghanistan before winding up in Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan. This may be why Malaysia recently asked Kazakhstan if it could set up a search center there.
Kazakhstan would not be a bad place to try to hide an airplane. It is larger than Western Europe with a population of just 17.7 million. Its expansive, sparsely populated steppe and desert terrain make it perfectly suited as a touchdown spot for Soyuz space capsules. The country gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 but its communist-era ruler, Nursultan Nazarbayev, remains in power. He is a close ally of Putin, and two days after MH370 disappeared told the Russian premier “that he understands the logic of Russia’s actions in Ukraine,” according to Reuters.
Great article. Frustrating that everyone’s assuming (1) that penetrating Burmese / Bangladeshi / western Chinese radar impossible, and (2) that the northern arc route requires the plane to have landed somewhere. A crash into remote mountains following an attempted terrorist attack is a possibility.
Your reasoning, why the plane can’t have been in the inner grey shadowed circle for a significant amount of time, is sound and precise.
I have two questions: Why were we told a couple of days ago, when the first satellite picture of possible debris, located southwest of Perth, was published, that, based on the pings, a new and better calculation of the plane’s location and route had been made, and it could be said with certainty, that it took the route somewhere along the southern arc. You made a short post about it at Slate two days ago.How can they know, that the southern route was probably taken,by merely looking at the available sat ping data? RollsRoyce even leaked, that they had known that already two days after the plane went missing, and had subsequently informed Malaysian Airlines. But Malaysia’s officials had chosen, to keep that knowledge from getting published. Thus, valuable search time in the presumed corrected sector was lost.
My other question: You didn’t state that in this article, but in your last post for Slate and at ‘Don Lenon’ you hinted at the possibilty, that the plane might’ve taken the northern route after all, because it wasn’t spotted by the Indonesian military radar(I agree with your conclusion, that the plane must’ve crossed Indonesian airspace, if it had taken the southern route).What makes you fairly confident, that the Indonesians haven’t simply missed it? Or the plane might’ve literally flown under the radar, a scenario, that was widely discussed in connections with other areas.
For what it’s worth, I still believe, that many hard facts in this strange conundrum point to deliberate actions of one or more knowledgeable, highly intelligent and organized human perpetrators, The captain of the plane remains my prime suspect.
Just a small typo. In the article the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th references to the flight number say MH350 when it should be MH370. All the remaining refs correctly say MH370.
Thanks — corrected.
I don’t know if the northern route has been excluded, or is just considered less likely.
I think the SQ68 scenario is still a significant possibility. The fact that the two planes were in the same place at the same time and altitude and headed in the same direction around 2:15 is compelling, even if only circumstantial evidence. The 2:11 green arc in the graphic is very close to the actual SQ68 flight plan. How accurate are the graphics? These are fairly simple maps. If MH370 did not shadow SQ68, then it probably flew north a little east of India and took a left once north of the Himalayas. The southern route just has too many unexplained inconsistencies.
I’m guessing the focus on the southern route has been due to unwarranted certainty that a northern route would mean (1) detection and/or interception by Bangladesh, Burma, and/or China, and (2) an improbable safe landing and camouflage. Why is a crash on land following terrorist attempt not possible, especially with recent Uighur separatist activity/terrorism in that area? Shah’s hero Ibrahim has denounced China in the past for its actions against Uighurs, and Shah had just seen Ibrahim convicted before the flight. Also, the Malaysians would not be expected to “search” the northern corridor because it is foreign sovereign territory, so the criticism might have been that Malaysia wasn’t searching the likely location available to them to search, i.e., the southern corridor.
Also, even though Indonesian radar might have missed it on a southerly route, the Indonesians say they checked and it didn’t pass through even their Sabang radar range. Statements by Bangladesh, Burma, and China have been more nuanced on that topic, suggesting they might not be certain. Also, the northern Burma / southwestern China region is extremely mountainous and remote, making it more likely something could have been missed on radar, I would think.
The southern route just doesn’t make sense to me given the controlled turns following waypoints in the Malacca Strait before the plane was lost on Malaysia radar, not to mention the generally northwestern route being followed at the time.
I realize there may be more evidence not available to me that makes the southern corridor more likely, but it only makes sense in a “passed out/dead” scenario, to me, but that scenario seems inconsistent with earlier parts of the flight.
Richie Graham’s logic resonates. If not SQ68, probably north through Bangladesh, then west. Maybe the hijacking did fail due to being shot down somewhere along this path. If it was shot down, it might make sense for the responsible part to try to hide it once they realized what they did. Russia tried that, but the truth came out.
I’d be very skeptical of shootdown/coverup by China. I think it’s more likely they don’t know where it is, suspect it may be in their territory, and are searching, but it’s not in their interest to dispel the notion that their airspace could’ve been penetrated until they’re forced to by finding the plane.
Thanks Jeff! Great article, makes sense. Based on the radar data, and the INMARSAT data, it’s pretty clear that if the plane went Southward, it would have had to fly through Indonesian airspace.
I’ve read that a plane can fly below 5k feet to avoid radar, but I would think folks in Indonesia would have likely seen or heard it. (Wiki indicates the island of Sumatra has a population of 50 million)
I’ve read that there is the possibility that the Indonesians are either not telling the truth about their radar data, or, their radar data is unreliable, but I don’t see a reasonable motive, nor does it seem likely that their data would be so archaic, that it couldn’t spot a Boeing 777.
Anything is possible, but if we are examining the measurable radar and satellite data, and nothing else, especially within an hour of the last known radar contact, the northern direction, over and around the Andaman Sea, seems like the path of least resistance.
Coupled with the lack of debris to the south, which is beginning to seem more like finding a face on mars.
The Washington Post map you illustrated shows arcs of the 5:11 circle of position nearly coincident with (or even inside) those of the 2:11 ping. This makes even more important to show the 3:11 and 4:11 results and/or check plots of the others. In addition, it will narrow the possible routes somewhat.
Excellent coverage.
Saw you last night on CNN – it woke me up. I went searching for corroborating information about the previous pings, and the map that you only got to show very briefly on the program.
It woke me up because until then, I was so frustrated that for 2 weeks it seemed that nobody was talking about those previous pings, other than to speculate that mabye the SAT didn’t retain those, or the ground station that received the SAT data didn’t retain those…absurd.
Thankfully, now we know there are more ping data points. It also means there’s a lot more data out there that we don’t know, but someone else does. (Ahem, Rolls Royce?)
Some questions in my mind: what makes the ping stop? Is it only a crash, or does simply “turning off” (parking?) the aircraft after landing turn off the pings?
Also, seems to me we can’t simply look at the last ping-ring. The plane COULD have flown (or been landing) during the up-to-59-minutes after the last ping (pings are an hour apart, right?)
So, did the plane crash sometime between 8:11 and 9:10? Or did it land? and how much further distance-wise could it have gone with the fuel it had?
Surely there MUST be more truly relevant information out there in someone’s possession, and they’re just not sharing.
Last question: Surely there were multiple SATs that picked up the ping, right? Aren’t there like 10 Inmarsats up there, each seeing about 1/3 of the world at a time?
Thanks Jeff for keeping up this part of the conversation!
Sorry – did my comment post? Might be a dupe. No confirmation.
Saw you last night on CNN – it woke me up. I went searching for corroborating information about the previous pings, and the map that you only got to show very briefly on the program.
It woke me up because until then, I was so frustrated that for 2 weeks it seemed that nobody was talking about those previous pings, other than to speculate that mabye the SAT didn’t retain those, or the ground station that received the SAT data didn’t retain those…absurd.
Thankfully, now we know there are more ping data points. It also means there’s a lot more data out there that we don’t know, but someone else does. (Ahem, Rolls Royce?)
Some questions in my mind: what makes the ping stop? Is it only a crash, or does simply “turning off” (parking?) the aircraft after landing turn off the pings?
Also, seems to me we can’t simply look at the last ping-ring. The plane COULD have flown (or been landing) during the up-to-59-minutes after the last ping (pings are an hour apart, right?)
So, did the plane crash sometime between 8:11 and 9:10? Or did it land? and how much further distance-wise could it have gone with the fuel it had?
Surely there MUST be more truly relevant information out there in someone’s possession, and they’re just not sharing.
Last question: Surely there were multiple SATs that picked up the ping, right? Aren’t there like 10 Inmarsats up there, each seeing about 1/3 of the world at a time?
Thanks Jeff for keeping up this part of the conversation!
Thanks Jeff – I was wondering when someone would ask about the other pings. Nice sleuthing. I wonder if the answer “the ping timings got longer” that you got from Inmarsat really excludes the Singapore Airlines radar shadow theory. Did Inmarsat clearly state that “the ping timings got monotonically longer” or is there room to wonder whether they meant “the general trend was for the timings to get longer.” The NTSB/Washington Post map that you show (which is very informative!) seems to require that the aircraft flew farther West before heading South, in which case the timing would have to have shortened early in the flight. I wish they would show all the ping timings so us armchair sleuths had more to go on.
Looking forward to the results of your next analysis.
By the way, I forgot to say, great article and great analysis.
Hi Jeff.
The 2:11 ping arcs you show appear coincident with (or even outside of the 5:11 ping arcs in the Washington Post map you reference. This makes it critical to include the arcs for the 3:11 and 4:11 pings and very the other plotting. It may alter your exclusion of the possible SIA68 shadowing. It will also further narrow the route possibilities.
Excellent work including your CNN appearance Friday night (despite its being shut down before you got to your punch line).
I read inan articles, published online by, I think, it was ABC News( I will try to find it again), that RolRoyce had made a statement, that the ping data yielded much more info, than previously thought, and that they had known since March 9/10, that the plane had taken the Southern route. Of course they were asked, why they didn’t go public with that knowledge, and thus waisted precious time and searching possibilities. They said, that they DID inform Malaysian Airlines immediately, because they are their customer. If the Malaysian officials choose to hold back that crucial info, it was their decision, and RollsRoyce had no right to meddle. Of course, this statement enraged many people, because the possibility of survivors couldn’t be ruled out, if the plane went gently into the sea.
I deduced from that article (and there were others with the same drift), that somehow the sat data contained information, which favored the Southern Route, or even excluded the Northern route.
I will try to find the sources again.
I wonder if the statement “…the ping data yielded much more info, than previously thought…” could be slightly misstated. Could RR have been referring to the final ACARS message (not a ping) which has been reported to contain flight plan changes? Or, could it mean RR knew about all 7 ping derived LOPs at a time when only the 08:11 LOP had been reveled publicly?
What do we expect these nations to say?
“Yeah, we saw it, but didn’t think it was important, sorry we didn’t tell you immediately,” or “No, it didn’t come here, we’re always vigilant, we would have seen it” or “ah… we don’t know if it came here, we’re not always paying attention.”
There WAS NEWS on Weds 3/19 eve that ‘a’ nation, wishing to remain un-named, had shared it’s radar-data with the Malaysians. This bit of news was overshadowed by the news which broke after 11 pm (EDT) from the Aussies of their satellite detection. The only way the Southern track makes sense is if this was a hijack/commandeering which went wrong, struggle in the cockpit for control, all are horribly wounded and incapacitated, and the plane flew on. But prior to loss of contact there was a generally NNW track, and motives of using the craft as a weapon, or to deliver one, or passengers for hostages/ransom, or theft of cargo, all point more plausibly to the northern track. Would Chinese radar-operators be any more ‘on their game’ at 6 , 7 , 8 am than Malaysian or Thai or Burmese operators?… debatable. Could China have detected it, sent up interceptors, shot it down … and then realized it was the missing MH370 with 150 of their own citizens on board? Would they admit it?
Here’s my pondering:
1.Very early on Barbara Starr of CNN reported that the US thought it was “very likely” that the plane went down in the southern Indian Ocean. Did they see something classified that we don’t know about?
2.I thought technology could see great detail from satellites. Again, is it possible that some country knows that the debris west of Australia is definitely from the plane?
3. If it is an accident, how many things had to go wrong on the plane? (Did Malaysia cut corners to save money?)
Ok, I found one half of the info:
http://americablog.com/2014/3/abc-search-
drastically-narrowed.html
There are link to ABC’s article. They suggest, that the ping data allowed to reduce the search to an area southwest of Perth with 2 possible routes. Maps are included.
Tom Levine :
Coupled with the lack of debris to the south, which is beginning to seem more like finding a face on mars.”
Made me laugh reading that — My thought this morning, turning on CNN and seeing the radar imagery from China, was that that object was the ‘Viking-face-on-Mars.’
Here are some technical details of the Indonesian military radar and good maps of its coverage:
http://alert5.com/2014/03/16/could-tni-au-radar-unit-231-shed-light-on-the-fate-mh370/
The Indonesians say they didn’t detect an aircraft where the Malaysian military radar last saw it. If the Malaysian report is correct that means you can’t put any weight on the Indonesian radar for arguing against the Southern arc.
Standard radar is line-of-sight, so the minimum altitude at which a plane is detectable must increase with distance from the radar. Can you find someone to do the calculations to see if there is some height at the last Malaysian observation that would be visible from Malaysia and invisible from Indonesia?
As you say, the satellite arcs are symmetrical so you should just turn the latitudes of the southern NTSB estimates from South to North. However, I think I saw somewhere a comment that they assumed constant heading and speed, which makes sense for a southern zombie flight but not for a northern radar-evading flight.
It might be helpful to calculate the distance from each point on the northern 08:11 arc to the last known location and divide by the time difference to give the average speed to reach that point on the arc. That should rule out very northerly points as faster than the plane can fly. If low and slow is neede for radar evasion then you may be able to narrow it down to the southern end of the northern arc.
I forgot to suggest: you have multiple arcs, so join the points implying constant average speed to get possible flight paths. (You need someone with good GIS skills.)
@airlandseaman, the spokesman from RR was definitely talking about the 7 hourly pings, and not the earlier data from ACAR. He was critized for holding back the info, that the plane had most likely taken the Southern route for over a week.He defended himself by saying, they told Malaysian Airlines promptly, and the rest was nor their business.That seems to be pretty clear, but I wouldn’t exclude, that there was some misunderstanding. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised, if the 7 ping handshakes yielded more info than publicly admitted.
I will find the source for that info as well, since there was more than one article in the net. But since cyberworld is swamped with mystery airplane posts right now, it will take some time. This tidbit came out at 3/19/ 2014.
In regards to the northern route there are many questions to be asked about radar coverage. Were they on or off? Were they manned or unmanned? How closely would the operators be watching in the middle of the night on a weekend? Apparently the Indian site in the Andaman and Nicobar islands was not operating or not being monitored. The Malay and Thai military didn’t perceive the signals they received as warranting investigation. Could this be true for the nations further north? If there are no current regional threats, then how closely do they monitor unidentified aircraft? In mountainous terrain such as the Himalayas how effective is radar coverage and would an aircraft necessarily have to fly nap of the earth to not draw attention? In other words if a signal was intermittent or otherwise unremarkable would it raise any red flags? I don’t know if these are valid questions, but I think it says that the northern route may not be impossible to consider.
On a side note there was an earlier mention of there not being any places to land and hide an aircraft of that size. Not exactly true. On the extreme end of the pings and fuel available there is at least one site. It is an abandoned Soviet era airfield in Sary Shagan, Kazakhstan. Most buildings are either dismantled or destroyed. However there are two large hangars and if my scale ruler is correct one may be just large enough to house a 777. Could there be other such sites?
I can’t speculate as to who or why. I was only curious to see if I could figure out a how and where.
Nice article, Jeff. Very clear. You state:
1) “This new Inmarsat data…also rules out the idea that MH370 flew south through the middle of the Indian Ocean to avoid military radar.”
Since you haven’t obtained the new Inmarsat data, how can you say that it rules out anything? The answer is that you can’t. If Inmarsat says so, then what’s the holdup with the data? Hmmm.
BTW, Inmarsat is a profit maximizing business in a competitive market. They aren’t naive. Getting their name in front of potential customers because of the current disaster has value. Sure, sure, they want to help. Don’t we all? But let’s not ignore the ulterior motives of EVERYONE involved this affair. It may skew conclusions.
2) You also state: “If the flight went south, it would have had to have gone through Indonesian radar coverage.”
Well, sure, but radar coverage doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have the radar TURNED ON. It’s like car seat belts. They may be required for every car, but you have to use them to get any benefit.
Did Indonesia have its military radar operating 24/7, even out in the hinterlands? You are ASSUMING so. That seems like a reach to me.
As Tom Levine (above) mentioned, countries (like India) have admitted (at least off the record) that it’s too costly to run radar 24/7. So they don’t. Is Indonesia doing the same? Has anyone asked them straight out? Probably not. They wouldn’t answer anyway. NO country wants to look weak or stupid. It encourages enemies. Avoiding that is the incentive for Indonesia etc. to lie or shade the truth in their responses. Hence, we get vague statements from government officials about “not detecting” the missing plane. No wonder the plane hasn’t been found yet.
3)The bottom line is that you’ve waved your magic wand a bit in your latest analysis. You haven’t ruled out the plane taking the southern route. I enjoyed your article, however, and look forward to more on the missing plane. Thx.
Hi, Jeff. Great site. I was wondering if you had taken into account the latest ACTUAL satellite data, which shows MH370 flying from waypoint VAMPI to MEKAR?
Here’s the data with a map:
https://plus.google.com/+JonathanLangdale/posts/eccAphLQqhg
And therefore, as you can easily see, here’s exactly the waypoints he was still using.
http://skyvector.com/?ll=6.324034189393608,97.96316528701121&chart=304&zoom=2&plan=V.WM.VKL:F.WS.IGARI:A.WM.WMKL:F.WM.VAMPI:F.WM.MEKAR
Two points:
1. Was technically headed back towards the satellite still.
2. I think *if* he was taking the southern arc, he was going to turn south just beyond that point, to avoid Indonesia.
3. More importantly, this invalidates the GIVAL waypoint and this map http://mothership.sg/v2/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/mh370-diverted-path.jpg
But I’ll tell you one thing- there’s just NO WAY he was “looking for a runway” with this new data. Interesting, huh?
Is there a comment delay or am I missing something?
Do we know where each passenger was sitting yet?
The news has gone quiet on the two with fake passports.
I don’t believe for one minute this was a mechanical issue – they never called out Mayday which only take a few seconds. Add in the course changes and I think that issue is done.
Could they (MH370) filed an IFR flight plan from the air? Perhaps claiming they had departed VFR from an uncontrolled airport.
Jeff, I agree with your theory. They should look on land up North or Indonesia. I think looking south it’s just too simple idea in my opinion makes no sense. This is like James Bond movie with no end yet. I also think that some government knows what is going on and maybe has involvement in it. Maybe somebody is waiting for the right moment to expose this or worst. I respect everybody’s expertise, but I’m surprised at some opinions that have been put out there. Hate to say that every thing is possible today. Anyway, Jeff keep your ideas up there.
great article!
(wouldn’t it be more correct to say “final recorded location” rather than “final location” in 7th graf? seems to imply endpoint rather than waypoint.)
@Littlefoot, “…According to the Journal report, engine data that includes altitude and speed but not direction or position..” IF true, this would mean without direction or position, the engines cannot differentiate the South or North potential trajectories.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/malaysia-airlines-data-transmissions-report-raises-questions/
Great article & info. Looking forward to the full analysis including pings for 3:11, 4:11, etc. Wish CNN would let you go into detail, with graphics etc. Why disbelieve the southern route? Indonesia could be mistaken or lying. And couldn’t the plane scoot around Indonesia, into the shaded area and back out before the next ping. true its not a straight line, but maybe whoever was flying intentionally tried to evade radar. Sinking in southern Indian Ocean is the perfect spot to disappear a plane either after a suicidal final “joy ride” or to hide a dry run of hijacking or cyber take over. And if you can believe Indonesia is mistaken or lying, then the path could be straight and it could just be a zombie plane at that point.
Would someone please comment on the info that reports say the flight climbed to 45k ft shortly after the last radio transmission.
Is this info accurate, reliable?
How long was it at that altitude.
How steep was that climb?
I have heard that this could only be done manually and even then difficult with a fully loaded plane.
Tom and Littlefoot: This is why I wanted to clarify exactly what info RR was accused of holding back. If it was only the fact that they were aware early-on of the existence of the hourly pings starting at 02:11, then they would have been correct to say there was no engine data after ~01:07. The engine data is only transmitted as part of the ACARS messages, not pings. My understanding of the ping response packet is that it contains no information other than what is transmitted to register and re-sync the TDMA aeronautical station with the NOC earth station, hourly (when other transmissions are off). If that is correct, then there is no way the ping-derived slant range information alone could be used to determine where on the LOP the aircraft was located, and thus no information about the north/south ambiguity. OTOH, if they actually did have some basis to believe the aircraft went south (or north) based only on the ping packet response, then the packet must contain more than raw timing information. If the ping packet contained GPS position data, used to calculate a Doppler correction or spot beam selection for example, then there would be no need to do the ranging calculation based on time delays, and they would know exactly where the aircraft was on the LOP. That can’t be the case given all the buzz about the LOP N-S ambiguity. So what else, short of an actual position, could the ping response packet contain that could possibly indicate a north vs. south direction? It could contain a locally derived slant range estimate from the GPS clock, or range-rate estimate used to adjust the outbound packet timing and frequency to the middle of the FDMA/TDMA slot. But that still would not resolve the N-S ambiguity. Based on this analysis, it is very hard to see how RR or anyone else could know, based on pings alone, which hemisphere MH370 was in. If the NTSB (or RR) believed there was a higher likely-hood that MH370 went south, then there must be more info in the packet than what they have admitted, or they are using other observations and/or assumptions to reach that conclusion. You simply cannot eliminate the N-S ambiguity from ping derived slant range estimates alone.
If littlefoot’s info is correct, it suggests that RR could decern a north or south orientation of the plane from the Inmarsat data, a very subtle Doppler effect, or something similar. Sounds untrustworthy.
As for China, why have they now dumped two obviously bogus plane debris satellite photos into the investigation? Do they not want us looking north?
(Very clear and well written Jeff. Keep going !)
Very, very interesting — obviously intelligent and well-informed analysis. I suspect that it is the case that, as you say, “they are using other observations and/or assumptions to reach that conclusion.” Whether those assumptions are solid or not is impossible to say.
Even Richard Quest isn’t buying this one.
Whoever did this is elite — suicide isn’t in their vocabulary. At any rate, we should bust out some graphics and better explanation on the Don Lemon show, tomorrow night at 5 and 10pm on CNN.
There was at least one other operational Inmarsat L band satellite in view of MH370 (Inmarsat 4-F1, located at 143.4 degrees East Longitude). It is not clear if this S/C is currently configured for MH370 compatible Aeronautical Mobile Satellite service and coverage. If it is, it could have been used with the IOR satellite at 64.4 degrees east (Inmarsat 3-F1) to triangulate hourly positions and track MH370. But it may not be configured for compatible Aeronautical Service now. It would be nice to know.
http://www.inmarsat.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Inmarsat_Classic_Aeronautical_Services.pdf
Interesting! If anyone has any thoughts I’d love to know.
Thanks, I’ve fixed it.
I (probably like most WordPress users) get a ton of spam so I have approval set to manual. I apologize — since MH370 I can barely attend to basic hygiene let alone stay on top of comments. I’m trying to catch up, though! I do appreciate your input.
The NTSB did this, that’s how they derived the southern ocean search area. It’s looking like something was wrong with their assumptions…
Cool reference, thanks.
I’m interpreting this to mean that 2.11, 3.11, and 4.11 were all on the same arc — meaning that MH370 was either moving northward across the Bay of Bengal and along the India/Bangladesh border, or south across Indonesia.
Thanks!