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.
yes, I think 2.11, 3.11 and 4.11 were all basically the same distance from Inmarsat
that was me at “KW” above. But that’s *not* me in that random picture that posted with the comment…weird.
How do you know ACARS was turned off?
Just tried to check this out, got an “Error 404 – Page not found”
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/world/asia/a-routine-flight-till-both-routine-and-flight-vanish.html?referrer=
In this article of the NY Times, which refrains from drawing any conclusions, they insinuate almost casually, that at some point last week, the working hypothesis was,that the plane must’ve gone South. No explanation, how they reached that conclusion.
@airlandseaman, I like your analysis of what information we can technically expect to get from the ping handshakes.I agree with you, that the 7 pings are not enough for approximating the plane’s direction. If they are really sure of the plane having taken the Southern route, they must have other, secret sources of information, or they made a premature assumption. In all articles, I’ve read, this point is kind of skated over, and no explanation is given, except ‘the ping data contained more info than we expected’.
It is important to drill down with sources to find out more exactly which equipment they had installed, and which of the many Inmarsat service(s) MH370 had subsribed to. In particular, did they have the equipment and services needed to access the I3 S/C at 64E via global beam only, or could they communicate via one of the 7 spot beams?
See coverage maps and more here:
http://www.satcomdirect.com/connect/presentations09/Inmarsat%20101.pdf
If they switched from spot beam coverage to global beam coverage at some point, or switched from Beam 7 to 6 at some point, that would be a major clue as to the N/S ambiguity.
Thanks for a very enlightening piece. In particular, your explanations of difficult technical stuff are very good in their simplicity. The newspapers should copy and paste! 🙂 Found yr website in Guardian comments forum (where you also got a lot of praise). Looking forward to yr next text.
Folks : I believe the general assumption reached among those sitting around the ‘search-decision-making-table’ that 370 was most likely South and not North was based on the belief/assumption that countries along the northern arc-route WOULD HAVE seen something on their radars and WOULD HAVE SAID SOMETHING about it…nothing more. And those countries said “it didn’t come here, we’d have notices,’ ergo, 370 most likely went south. That’s taking the absence of evidence and citing it as ‘evidence.’ There was a lot of attention paid to the Southern track b/c it was someone of stature, the PM of AU who came forward breaking the news.
There IS the absence of any ELT on March 8 or 9th or anytime — and that’s something which should have been transmitting had 370 suffered a crash or landed in salt water… so one could ALSO cite that absence of evidence as evidence against the Southern route. And I believe any possible motive for a hijacking/commandeering (9/11 style attack, hostages for ransom/trade, theft of cargo) lends more support for an assumption of the Northern track.
This morning, we now have heard that another country, the French, have satellite imagery of something. Whether that looks more like aircraft-crash-debris, or another giant half-egg-carton like the Chinese imagery does, we’ll see.
We also heard yesterday one small mention of news that the Malaysians have asked K-Stan to do… something, take another look?. That’s interesting, coming on the day when a couple dozen countries are rushing assets worth billions to the S I Ocean off SW AU. We should hope someone has been re positioning satellites to look down over the Northern-arc corridor as well.
How hard to hide a 777?… even if you don’t have a hangar, if you have enough camouflage-netting, tarp, foliage to cut and lay over? Humans and animals would be seen by IR at night. What about a cold, powered-down aircraft?
Thoughtful comments from Gwiz. However, I would like to shed light on one notion that I hear expressed all too often that is simply wrong. I read and hear this everyday from “experts’ as well as news anchors, so it is not surprising that it gets repeated as fact. Here is the quote I reference here:
“We should hope someone has been re positioning satellites to look down over the Northern-arc corridor as well.”
The fact is that Low Earth Orbiting (LEO) spacecraft, whether imaging or communications satellites, have very limited ability to be “re-positioned”. It is a myth that the location of a satellite can be changed at will. Spacecraft are launched with a limited amount of “station keeping fuel”. It is by far the most precious “consumable” on the asset. It is rarely used to alter the orbit of imaging spacecraft to look for a specific target.
Appreciate this: Once in LEO, you have enough station keeping fuel to nudge the orbit a tiny bit compared to the huge delta V it took to get into orbit. These LEO satellites orbit at an altitude of roughly 500 miles above the surface, with a high inclination angle and a speed over the ground of roughly 18,000 MPH. There is simply nothing that one can do from the ground to change this orbit significantly. The spacecraft is travelling in a circle, in an *inertial plane* fixed wrt the stars, not the earth. The earth is rotating at 1 rev per day under the orbit plane. It takes about 90 minutes for the satellite to make one revolution, while the earth moves about 22 degrees in longitude for each orbit. This repeats for the life of the spacecraft. The limited station keeping fuel is used, as the name implies, to offset tiny amounts of atmospheric friction, to keep the spacecraft in that highly repeatable orbit. It cannot be used to “drive the satellite” to a new location. The imaging satellites will see the nearly the entire earth surface about 2 times per day for the life of the satellite. You cannot “fly a satellite” like an airplane to a spot on the ground. Sorry to pop that bubble.
CNN is now reporting that the last ACARS transmission at 01:07 did NOT indicate any pre-planned change in the flight plan. This is a major change in the facts…again. It increases the possibility that there was a catastrophic depressurization or fire failure at ~01:20 and reduces the probability that the plane went north. At this point, I think we are back to equal odds on the north vs. south scenarios. It would be nice to know how the story got started and continued so long before the story was corrected.
I’ve posted the following but have not stimulated any rational response. Please consider it. The search for MH370 is too far south. The last radar contact with MH370 was at 2:15AM at N7.2 E98 and, according to NTSB analysis, at 5:11AM the aircraft was at S20 E90. If I am to believe Google Maps, the shortest distance between these is 2000 miles. To traverse this (unlikely) distance in 2.93 hours would require an average speed of 680 mph, far greater than the official max speed of 590 mph for the 777. Conclusion: MH370 was considerably north of S20 latitude at 5:11AM… or possibly Google Maps is bonkers.
@airlandseaman, that’s pretty incredible! That’s a change in one of the most important points, which made me believe above everything else, that the catastrophic scenario is wrong! The worst part is, that I feel, you can’t trust ANY information, even if they are presented as facts. Maybe, the plane wasn’t even zigzagging into a Northwestern direction, the other cornerstone of the ‘human perpetrator theory’. Who knows? So, have they made up their minds, if the changed flightplan was entered with a computer, or did they fly the plane manually after all?
One could of course argue, that a perpetrator, who wants to hide a highjacking or takeover from the captain, would’ve screwed up big time, if the changed flight plan was entered, before the last audio contact of the copilot, because that’s a dead giveaway.But again, are there ANY facts, we can still trust?
Jeff- I think actually if you flip the NTSB’s guesstimated southern route, the flight paths end up in Western China, not Kazakhstan. Thoughts?
There seems to be a lot of focus on a Bayesian statistical analysis for the current search parameters discounting the northern. And it is hard to argue against the logic of mathematics. However, the math is only good as the parameters fed into it. I am reminded of the example in Malcolm Gladwell’s book ‘Outliers’. There is one particular story about a war game , Millennium Challenge 2002, where a Marine general defeated all the mathematical predictions and probabilities by the second day of a two week war game simply by using unforeseen or discounted parameters.
So… WWIII if Russia was involved.
Watching Jeff on CNN now. I wish Don Lemmon would give him a little more airplay on the radar and satellite data. I agree with Jeff’s observations. There is a great deal of supposition beyond the basic evidence. If Southward is the case, then it would be nice to hear what other experts have to say, to address the Indonesian radar issue.
I also have trouble seeing how the revision on the ACORS flight plan, prior to “all right, goodnight”, changes or affects an evaluation of the South or North route, or of a deliberate act or an accident. If anything, it perhaps steers a possible explanation away from the “nefarious” pilot plan. In other words, there is “all right, good night”, and then 2 minutes later, the ACORS is turned off, and then the plane turns left, and all other facts are the same. The revision changes an assumption about ‘pre-meditation’, on the part of the cockpit, but for me, that’s about it. Everything else is still on the table.
Gene: I agree with you that we should not trust Bayesian statistics. I presume that we have very limited statistics on which way hijackers re-route Malaysian 777s anyway, particularly when there is not indication of their motivations.
AirLandSeaMan: I understood that the course change was inferred as being pre-programmed because it followed common IFR route segments as described here. This is the apparent hallmark of a plan under pre-programmed automatic control.
@ Tom Levine, you are right, of course. The change of timeline doesn’t affect the possibility of the human intervention scenario.You could even argue, an intelligent perpetrator wouldn’t change the flightplan before the last audio contact of the crew with ground control, because it’s a dead giveaway of premeditaton, and raises the possibility of failure because someone might smell a rat. I’m upset about this change of narration, because the premeditated change of the flight plan seemed to be a smoking gun, pointing strongly into the right direction. Now it isn’t there any longer.And the backpaddling also shows, apparently you cannot trust any given information. How do we even know, this amended time line is the correct one?
Of course, in the end, this isn’t about being right or wrong, it’s about discovering the truth, whatever it may be. But I can’t help thinking, this truth could’ve been discovered a lot earlier without these disastrous information bloopers.
140323_1910edt
@jeffwise
Posted March 23, 2014 at 1:07 AM
Hi Jeff,
“I think” has caused a lot of confusion and wasted a lot of time in the 16 days since 08Mar.
How can “we” most quickly replace “I think” vs “We know per x&x source reference” get all seven (7) PING arcs accurately plotted on a hemisphere map asap?
If there’s anything I (or the vast number of people all trying to help find the plane) can do to help get that done, please advise.
Thanks
Steveg722
@Steveg722 on TWITTER
And now they are “updating” the radar data, saying now that MH370 turned back “sharply” at ~01:20 as previously reported, but descended to 12,000 feet, consistent with a smoke, fire or pressurization problem. But before we go chasing yet another vector, I think we need to factor in the 7 Inmarsat hourly LOPs, which should be relatively hard facts unless they just made it all up, or screwed up the math. Inmarsat ping derived LOPs (though one dimensional info) should be far more accurate than radar altitude at max range, especially since near contemporaneous Phuket radiosonde soundings indicate that there were three upper level temperature inversions in the neighborhood. These commonly cause microwave “ducting”, resulting in erroneous altitude calculations.
No. It’s flipped along an axis that runs from the point on the ground underneath the satellite to the last observed location. You wind up going further than Western China. Which is not to say that Western China isn’t where it went; the NTSB route is based on assumptions, which could easily be wrong.
Jeff, if you have inmarsat ping data, can you share with @chadmyerscnn ? He has had nice graphics and explanation of satellite pings over the past weeks. He does a nice graphic with the arcs and circles etc and most importantly CNN actually lets him talk. Maybe you two could get a segment together with the two of you and producers would let it go.
@Lee_in_MA
Thanks, Lee. I don’t have the inmarsat ping data, though I’ve asked for it.
Oh maybe my mistake, thought you said on CNN you had it. You do say here “an Inmarsat spokesman told (you) that ‘the ping timings got longer,’ meaning that the distance between MH370 and the satellite grew increasingly bigger, and never smaller.” – so it doesn’t like MH370 could shadow the Singapore Air flight they are talking about. Good luck getting the ping data, obviously key here. Can only assume some govt has asked them not to release it. frustrating.
Well, we sort of do have it — if you look at the Washington Post graphic at the bottom of the post, it shows the ping arcs. What’s clear is that from 2.11 to 5.11am, MH370 was remaining at the same distance from the satellite, meaning it was traveling along the inner green line in my illustration. Then it moves progressively further away, in a tangent to the original circle. We don’t have the original data but we can infer a lot from what the NTSB made of it. I’m going to see what I can get from them tomorrow.
140323_2100edt
@Lee Schlenger
Posted March 23, 2014 at 8:33 PM
Recently watched Chad on CNN showing graphics with PING response point? (recall he said his prop would support MH370 flying hiding under some other flight headed NW)
He did get in some sort of “disclaimer” re “of course this is based on MH370 ping data assumptions yet to be confirmed; if not, the whole concept is bunk”.
He said “go to his website for more info; looked for it but haven’t found it.
So, now 1hr+ of Chad on TV you’re just now seeking data to back him up??????
Just wow!
IMHO, another nail in CNN’s (& most MEDIA’s) journalism coffing.
For most, its getting way too time consuming to figure out “who do you trust?”
For “we the U.S.”, the 4th estate is gasping.
I’d be interested in your response.
IF I missed something, sorry, pls advise.
Steveg722
There appears to be confusion about the “line of symmetry” associated with the Inmarsat ping derived slant ranges. In reality, the arcs are really complete circles centered on the subsatellite point, with no other symmetry implied. It is only by adding additional constraints (assumptions or facts) that we can reduce the circles to arcs on the east side of the satellite. The primary constraints are the starting point and assumed speed. At 500 kts it would take 5 hours to get from the 01:30 position (103E, 7N)to the sub satellite point (64E, 0N) flying directly toward it. But the 5:11, 6:11, 7:11 and 8:11 slant ranges all produce circles much closer to the starting point, and heading away from the subsatellite point. If the speed was ~500 kts, that could only happen if the average tangential speed was much greater than the radial speed relative to the subsatellite point. This in turn means the MH370 must have turned north or south if it was traveling at ~500 kts generally in one direction. However, it should be noted that I have not seen any slant data from 2:11, 3:11 or 4:11 pings. If the first three circles were monotonically decreasing in diameter, and then reversed to increase in diameter for the last 4, the results could be consistent with a completely different path. In that case, MH370 could have headed more westerly and turned around and headed back to the east at a slower speed, ending up slightly east of Malaysia on or near the 08:11 circle. I don’t think this is likely, but I offer it as an example to explain the limitations of the symmetry notion.
Lacking other information, and assuming a generally constant speed and direction, MH370 must have taken a north or south route to fit the speed assumption to the increasing diameter rings. If the south path NTSB points for 05:11-08:11 are flipped about the line from the subsatellite point to the last known position at 2:40, you get a straight line on the polar projection map, ending up at 08:11 on the southern border of Kazakhstan near the Aral Sea.
It may be worth noting that the US operates Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan. While I don’t know what it’s radar capabilities are, if you check out Kyrgyzstan on Wikipedia the map will show that it could fairly be called the gateway to Central Asia for any flight originating in Malaysia. I just find it hard to believe that the Indians, Pakis, US and China–at least as facing toward India–would have missed a 777 flying toward Central Asia on the south side of the Himalayas.
It should be added that I don’t mean to suggest that MH370 ended up on the southern border of Kazakhstan near the Aral Sea. I’m just saying, that is where it would have ended up if the NTSB assumptions were correct except for the hemisphere flip.
If the image linked below from Jonathan Langdale purporting to be of the military radar returns of MH370 is authentic, then doesn’t it indicate that the pink dot on Jeff’s map (last radar contact position) should be farther south on the green circle, closer to Sumatra? One of his three images of the same trace indicates that where the radar track ends, roughly 40 mi NE of Sebang, the time is 02:22 Malaysian. Not sure that makes much of a difference on whether a northerly or southerly track was taken thereafter, but nevertheless…
https://plus.google.com/+JonathanLangdale/posts/eccAphLQqhg
Also, assuming a Swissair 111 smoke/fire scenario that disabled communications (which I’m not convinced of), and assuming the initial diversion from the Beijing track was an attempt to make Langkawi that failed, either due to increasing smoke (such that they couldn’t see to make the airport) or some other complication, is it possible the pilots then just kept entering waypoints that would keep them out over water while they battled the problem? Could this explain the generally WNW heading after passing Penang? The biggest problem I have with this fire/smoke scenario is the sharp turn north or even sharper turn south that must have occurred immediately after last radar contact if the Inmarsat ping data is to be believed. Even so, if that scenario is correct, might they have been in the middle of an attempt to turn back toward Malaysia when they were finally overcome, leaving the the plane to continue in the northerly or southerly heading?
This turn north or south right after leaving radar is the biggest problem I have with every scenario that assumes the pilots were overcome and incapacitated. I’m just trying to re-evaluate and challenge my gut feeling there must have been an intentional act to take the plane toward the northern arc for some reason.
Don Lemon and the others seemed to reject the northern route as being impossible. My curiosity in the northern route was triggered by comments made by earlier experts on CNN. Bob Baer remarked that in his days with CIA they had flown C141’s into central Asia evading Russian radar. In fairness he did also say that they were flying nap of the earth using night vision as well. Within a couple of days of that, I believe it was retired General “Spider” Marks, made comment that the radar in the region was “weak”. The interviewer didn’t follow up on his comment. I would say these statements allow for reasonable doubt in the impossibility of the northern route.
So glad you are talking about that northern route. This is exactly what I have been saying since the first news broke on the 811am ping. I sketched those very routes on google earth that day… Bangladesh, Nepal and along the Himalayas. The countries listed saying Radar doesnt show the plane still do not include those countries. Been waiting for something to exclude this possibility and nothing has including narrowing of the possible route.
Have to explore all possibilities but I really dont think it went south and I dont buy the sudden emergency ideas.
Right from the first day I say when they released radar in malacca strait I figured this was a very elaborate plan to play the odds to maximum efficiency with lots of practice. They would have people on the ground somewhere and I wonder how much of the crew was involved and think they should really look at who decided was on that plane that day. I imagine it probably isnt hard to get a couple people in place at key places along the route, particularly at a quiet airport destination at 4am if you can get the plane out of there safely. And they knew ACARS 2 couldnt be shut off but knew well enough that it would be way too little way too late. And if they didnt know before, they know now.
Firstly my prayers for the people on board the flight and for the families. I hope there is a positive ending. I have been hearing Jeff Wise and the CNN gang.
I feel one of the countries have not done a good job reading their Radar data. If the plane went north, then a host of countries like Myanmar, India, Pakistan and a whole host should have seen it appear. If it went south then Indonesia should have seen it. If it went east, then Malaysia or Thailand perhaps should have seen it. So which country has not done its job properly? Or am I wrong?
Why did the ELT(the stuff that is supposed to start beeping on hitting ocean/salt water) not go off?
My though is that while the South Indian Ocean is being investigated the world must look at other areas as well. Ask the Indians to look somewhere, the Kazaks in their area etc. It’s important, lives are at stake.
@steveg722
You said “He said ‘go to his website for more info’; looked for it but haven’t found it.”
I know its been a few hours since your post so maybe you have found this info already but….
Chad Myers said that the shadow theory was posted on twitter and online by Keith Ledgerwood and that he (Chad) was following him. if you follow Chad @chadmyerscnn you get the info that Keith is @keithledgerwood and has a web site http://mh370shadow.com/ .
I havent read keith’s site yet but if you look at the graphic Chad displays, it shows the theoretical pings (based on position of the singapore air flight) getting closer to the center of the circle (of coverage area by the satellite) at 3:11 and 4:11. Jeff Wise has said here on this site that Inmarsat indicates each ping for MH370 gets further away from the center of the circle. If that is true, then MH370 could not have shadows singapore air 68.
it doesnt rule out the shadow theory – just rules out that singapore flight. unless of course chad’s data for singapore air positions are wrong.
And none of this rules in or out the north or south direction. If the flight went south, maybe it went over Indonesia and they missed it or are lying. If it went north, they could have snuck north through bangladesh (cant imagine they are watching radar at 3am) and into who knows where by flying low, shadowing planes or whatever – like Jeff said on CNN tonight – Israel did this with the raid on entebbe but radar has to be better these days I guess.
As for a nail in the coffin of journalism, I do think yes we are getting way way too much talk with opinion and conjecture, etc but thats cable news. CNN is getting their highest ratings in a while. want real news, watch newshour on PBS.
Part of the issue though is the sources with the info are not sharing the info. I think reporters are asking the questions:
1) we need pings from inmarsat – they havent released it to press – but have to malaysia and/or US govt
2) we need reporter to ask malaysia air if copilot regular says “alright goodnight” and get recording of past flights
3) we need maintenance records for this plane
4) we need to know what was or wasnt found on the pilots flight simulator drive – but the FBI isnt going to comment on that publicly I am sure
5) And data seems to keep changing – NBC reported last week the turn was preprogrammed – today malaysia air says no. how did that happen?
meanwhile cnn now reporting chinese flights out of Perth have just seen more debris/objects in the water
@Lee_in_MA
lschlenger@comcast.net
We shouldn’t be too surprised to learn some what we’ve heard in the first week from the Malay’s now being corrected and refined now that more competent eyes and minds are going over the data.
I did not hear if it had been refuted — or affirmed, that 370 had made that ascent to 43+K ft as reported during the first week.
What does challenge our assumptions now, is if 370 was at 12 K feet for a long enough amount of time, and did not spend most flying time at 33K or higher, then it would not have had fuel enough to get all the way north to K-stan, or as far south as they are now searching SW of Perth. CNN’s guest 777 pilot Les (whos last name I forget, sorry) speculates that at 12 K altitude fuel consumption could be double… can we then assume range would be cut– by how much, 35 %, even 50 %? That would put it not SW of Perth, but NW of Perth if on the Southern arc, and overflying likely Bangladesh and Nepal into NW China on the Northern arc.
What I understand is that Inmarsat has hourly ping data from 2:11 to 8:11 that translates to circles of position (COPs). It is not clear to me how much of that primary data is publically available. I see various plots such as the now famous 8:11 arcs. Also, we see the 5:11 through 8:11 arcs on the “Washington Post” map. Now Jeff Wise has introduced a 2:11 plot, but he later says that he doesn’t yet have the original data. Based on a statement from Inmarsat, the COPs are increasing in time. However, that 2:11 COP appears to be outside the 5:11 COP and we still haven’t seen the 3:11 and 4:11 plots.
I cannot believe that the “authorities” don’t have the original along with that from the next satellite to the east. What is in this data that points to Perth?
My draft of this comment started with the assumption that the 2:11, 3:11, 4:11 (and, perhaps, the 5:11) COPs are very close together. I had no other options.
That assumption suggests that the projected path to the south should be further to the east than suggested by the “Washington Post” map. In addition, the course angle from the 5:11 to the 6:11 COP would require a speed over ground of close to 700 mph, which may be possible with the right wind. Recent reports indicate that MH370 descended rapidly to 12,000 feet, perhaps due to a pressurization problem. If it stayed at that altitude, then it would have had to flown considerably to the east to reach the 8:11 COP before running out of fuel, well north of where the current search is focused. I believe that this decent, if it indeed occurred as the latest radar analysis showed, was for tactical reasons and was not necessarily maintained for the duration of the flight, whether it was to north or south.
Why is there an apparent lack of transparently here? I find it unsettling to be looking south only because no countries to the north reported primary radar echoes that could be MH370. Perhaps other things are going on.
The most important ping hasn’t been discussed yet. It’s the 01:07 AM ping that occurred while the A/C’s location was still known. This would confirm the calibration of INMARSAT’s measurements and act as a “Start Point” to base the remaining measurements on. Until that ping is confirmed everything else is unverified.
Hello all,
New here, and really like Jeff’s analysis and pictures. Thanks Jeff! Also it’s good to see informed, rational discussion in the comments. Gene states that bayesian statistics are behind the inferences. Gene can you cite a source for that? I do bayesian analysis and just gave a talk in which I used alien abduction as a fanciful example to help people understand how bayesian analysis works. This case would be even better. As for accuracy, well even the best statistical model can only output probabilities. A probability is not a certainty until it condenses into fact. Someday we will know what happened to this plane.
Couple of questions for everyone. One of the CNN guests tonight (Les, I think) stated that at 12k feet the 777 would be consuming its gas at twice the rate. Could they have made it to the remote southern Indian Ocean? Also why do they assume the plane was flying 500 MPH? At 12k feet it seems like it might have to go slower. How fast do you have to go at 12k feet to prevent a stall?
One way to separate the N vs S tracks might be that the hemisphere situation is not symmetrical. The last known position was well north of the equator, so a southerly track starts out essentially flying a tangent to the Inmarsat arc for the first couple of hours. If it flew north, it would start crossing arcs a lot sooner.
BTW, I think that the constraints on the endpoints of the arcs may also have something to do with coverage from the other Inmarsats. If the aircraft was much further east or west, it would have been picked up by more than one satellite.
The fact is we have precedents for hijackings, mechanical failure and suicide. The facts only fit the last scenario. He went to 45000 feet to kill the passengers, turned off transponder and acars, possibly disabled elt’s. People will ask, “why didn’t he just ditch the plane right away?”. Because he didn’t want his family to know he committed suicide, so he found the most remote place he could so the fdr would never be found then ditched the plane gently so it sank in one piece.
I do hope you keep pushing for more information about the earlier “pings.” I can’t think of any good reason for them to be supressed, and given how poorly executed the search for this plane has been, it would go a long way towards tamping down all the conspiracy coverage if there were some more science introduced to the story line. Thanks for your work on this story.
Could the official bias for the southern route be due to closely guarded secret info about the Australian over the horizon long distance radar (like the Dew-line System)? Is this the mysterious radar data from an unnamed country we heard about a week ago?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jindalee_Operational_Radar_Network
@Hal: I can’t remember the specific reference, but I heard the term in the media and just googled it. After a quick check I see there are a few articles. However, given today’s latest information on debris found, maybe none of my speculation is relevant?
I am still skeptical about the Malaysian military derived radar altitudes, including the latest report that MH370 descended to 12K ft. The story has changed too many times, and we know atmospheric conditions at the time were consistent with the potential for microwave prorogation “ducting”, which can have a significant effect on the altitude observations and calculations. That said, IF MH370 did descend to 12K ft due to some emergency, and remained at that altitude, the assumed speed would probably have been 250-300 kts, not 475-500 kts TAS. As it turns out, the fuel burn at 12K ft and 300 kts is only slightly less (8-10% less) than what it is for normal cruise at 35K ft, thus the time in flight would be similar. If one is to believe the Washington Post southern trajectory data points (which assume 35K ft/500 kts), but scale the speed and altitude assumptions, the path would be close to due east from 05:11 to 08:11. Again, I don’t mean to suggest this actually happened, but it is instructive to illustrate how the assumptions can alter the scenarios, while remaining consistent with the Inmarsat “hard data”.
@airlandseaman – great link. you may be right. There have been a few allusions to radar from unnamed places – the one you reference from press conference a week ago most notably. And there has been a strong push & confidence by US early on and australia more recently.
My sense is there was a fire – I am guessing with the front landing gear. There has been issues with landing gear in past I think I heard. It smoldered since take off and eventually smoked up into the cockpit, either knocking out many electronics via flame in electronics bay (transponder, ACARSs) or the pilots mistakenly thought it was electrical fire and started disconnecting things in the electronics bay below. They turned and set course for Pulau Langkawi and dropping to 12000 ft to avoid potential air traffic. I can even believe they actually DID try to radio the condition but they FORGOT in the hectic situation that they had already changed frequencies to be on the Vietnam frequency. But they were overcome by smoke. Somewhere along the way the autopilot was re-engaged and they flew on for 6 more hours until they crashed into the indian ocean. I get that the turns and waystations dont point to the south indian but we dont know what transpired.
Now its all very coincidental that things happened just perfect to hide this plane. Issue started just at the handoff to vietnam but before they started with vietnam. the transponder and ACARS was off. They flew to the remotest and deep part of the indian ocean where things might not be recovered. maybe it was a dry run for a hijack, or cyber attack and perpetrators wanted to hide. Maybe it was a suicide on a long joy ride first (doubt it). In the end I think thats all coincidence.
I could maybe believe a combination – old 2001 plot of using a shoe bomb to breach cockpit door and the commotion caused pilot to turn, but plane depressurized but was able to fly on for 6 hrs – I dunno if that is possible and there has been no claims. Seems like an accident.
And Malaysia just announced that Inmarsat says the northern route is out and the plane ended in the india ocean far from land
Let’s recap again, why most posters here, including me, rejected Goodfellow’s initial scenario of a catastrophic event, which knocked out all communication systems, as well as the crew, who could just initiate one sharp turnaround aimed at Lankawi Airport, but were overcome then, and the plane kept flying until running out of fuel.
The biggest blow to this theory was the info, that the directional change was apparently entered per computer sometime before 01:07 am, at least 12 minutes BEFORE the copilot informed ground control, that everything was ok.That info alone seemed to bury Goodfellow’s theory for good, since it shows premeditation,but there was more: The plane was apparently navigated skillfully along known waypoints into a Northwest direction after the initial turn, which isn’t consistent with incapacitated pilots. The weakest argument against the disaster theory is, that at 01:19 the copilot said, everything was alright, yet at 01:21 the transponder was turned off or stopped working, and subsequently all communication was impossible, eaxactly at a point between Malaysian and Vietnamese airspace, which is a good point to get intentionally lost. That’s a highly unlikely chain of events, but not impossible.
Now, where are we with the new infos, being presented to us yesterday? The biggest smoking gun against Goodfellow’s theory is eliminated, that is, if we can trust the new timeline: Apparently it is possible, that the first turn westwards could’ve been initiated AFTER 01:19. But what about the contiuing navigating after the first turn? It is well possible, that the pilots were NOT incapacitated after the first catastrophic event. They tried to reach Lankawi, but failed to land the plane there. There could be many reasons for that: Smoke in the cabin, they couldn’t contact Lankawi ground crew (standard procedure is, to contact the airport, if you plan an emergency landing), visibility was bad, etc. So they shot westwards over Lankawi and decided to to keep the plane flying along known waymarks, which took them into the documented Northwestern direction. Then, things deteriorated, and they made one last decision: To turn the plane around in a Southern direction, roughly back to Malaysia. Then, they couldn’t make any more moves, and the plane kept flying until the fuel ran out. The plane had to cross Indonesian airspace, and the Indonesians said, they were not aware of a plane, but so said all the countries, the plane might’ve crossed, if it took the Northern route. So one or more government must be wrong for some reason. Maybe, the plane was flying at a really low altitude by then, or the radar controllers didn’t pay attention, or someone isn’t telling the truth.
Conclusion: I think, we should be open to the possibility, that the disaster scenario is still possible. Sure, it would be an unlikely chain of events, not startlingly simple, as Chris Goodfellow claimed, but every scenario looks outlandish right now in this confounding case.And who knows, if the new time line, we got yesterday, and other so called facts are correct. Backpaddling seems to be the favorite sport of the investigators. Maybe, we will never know the full truth.
Jeff: Please push your Inmarsat contacts for information on Inmarsat 4-F1 pings. Did they see pings via I4-F1 or not? Have they looked? From the sketchy info available, it certainly looks like the gear on MH370 was compatible. MH370 was in the antenna coverage area of this satellite, and the flight path to Beijing was more consistent with the I4-F1 coverage area, so why haven’t they said anything about this? If I4-F1 ping derived circles could be produced and combined with the I3-F4 data, the path ambiguity could be resolved.
Less accurate than triangulation from 2 satellites, but still a potential tie breaker…Both the I3 and I4 spacecraft have spot beams. If MH370 was communicating pings via one (or more) of the spot beams, this would also shed a lot of light on the north vs. south question.
Just heard the 10 am press-statement from Malay PM. Surprised that PM’s statement involved data from Inmarsat (only) in UK, and nothing from S.I. Ocean. Inmarsat all along must have had engine-performance data which they’ve been analyzing from which they’ve been able do deduce ambient temp/relative humidity/etc which indicated to them Southern hemisphere rather than northern. Or else… what?
Inmarsat is going to have to at some time release some statement regarding how they’ve reached such a firm conclusion, in order to put to rest ‘alternative scenarios.’
I haven’t flown in 16 years. Not due to lack of desire, but due to lack of necessity. If i had to, I would gladly fly weekly. Some improvements must be made to data-collection. FDR’s and CVR’s have to be brought up to 2014 technology. If Inmarsat can collect for Rolls hourly data regarding engine performance, then FDR and CVR data can also be bounced off a satellite and collected and recorded somewhere at the airline. If MH370 did indeed go down over water, ditched, as Cpt. Sullenberger ditched 1549, and there were survivors, learning of that ditching within the hour or a couple hours could have brought timely search & rescue from Australia. Now, more than two weeks after going down, there could be no survivors to rescue and if indeed the CVR and FDR’s are ever recovered, and if a scenario involving catastrophic mech failure or fire is reconstructed, there will be meanwhile a lot of people flying on a lot of 777’s.
Southern route confirmed by inmarsat. Now we need to get the hourly pings released by inmarsat! (show us your data!)
And we need more info from indonesia (which we wont get).
If plane went across indonesia either they didnt see it on radar (they wont want to reveal that) or they didnt look at it (ditto) or they lied (ditto ditto).
If the plane scooted around indonesia and adjusted course thereafter – then it doesnt seem like a zombie flight. then its an intentional flight to remote ocean to hide perhaps.
The PM’s statement:
“They informed me that Inmarsat, the UK company that provided the satellite data which indicated the northern and southern corridors, has been performing further calculations on the data. Using a type of analysis never before used in an investigation of this sort, they have been able to shed more light on MH370’s flight path. Based on their new analysis, Inmarsat and the AAIB have concluded that MH370 flew along the southern corridor, and that its last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth.”
…surely means Inmarsat did check the spot beams or found the ping data from I4-F1.