If you were leading a high-profile international aircraft investigation, in command of the world’s most qualified technical experts and in possession of all the relevant data, would you bother listening to a rag-tag band of internet commenters, few of whom actually work in the space or aviation industry, and none of whom have access to all the data?
Most likely, you’d say: certainly not! But as time goes by, and the puzzle remains curiously impenetrable, you might find it worthwhile to pay a listen to what the amateurs were saying. You might even abandon some of your own conclusions and adopt theirs instead.
This appears to be the case in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing back in March. From the beginning, the authorities running the investigation — first, Malaysia’s Ministry of Transport, and later the Australian Transportation Safety Board (ATSB) — held their cards close to the chest, releasing very little information about the missing plane and maintaining a posture of absolute conviction. The investigators’ self-confidence reached its apex in April, when their methodology led them to an area of ocean where underwater accoustic signals seemed to be coming from pingers attached to the plane’s black boxes. Officials assured the press that the plane would be found in “days, if not hours.” But then it wasn’t. A scan of the seabed found nothing; the pingers were a red herring (perhaps literally!). Back to square one.
Meanwhile, on the internet, a group of amateur enthusiasts had come together from all around the world to trade ideas and information about the missing flight. The group, which came to call itself the Independent Group (IG), emerged from various online comment threads and eventually grew to about a dozen individuals. This was a truly spontaneous, self-assembling crowd: there was no vetting of credentials, no heirarchy of any kind. (Full disclosure: I count myself among this group.) Basically, if you seemed to know what you were talking about and could comport yourself in a collegial fashion, you were accepted into the crowd.
While the mainstream press was reporting the ATSB’s pronouncements as received wisdom, the IG was raising red flags. IG members were among the most vocal critics of the ATSB’s contention that the accoustic pings probably came from black-box pingers. And later, after a public outcry led Inmarsat to release a trove of data received from the aircraft, and the ATSB issued a report explaining how it had come to identify its current search ear, the IG dove into the new information with abandon, quickly identifying holes in the data and weaknesses in the official approach. In a pair of papers, the group recommended its own search area, hundreds of miles to the southwest of the ATSB’s officially designated zone.
Today, the ATSB has released an update to its earlier report, explaining why it has decided to reassess its conclusions and move its search zone to a new area — one that overlaps, as it turns out, with the IG’s recommended area. (In the graphic above, the white bracket shows the ATSB area; I’ve added a yellow dot to show the IG area.) Needless to say, this has caused elation within the ranks of the IG, who see the move as vindication of their methods, and indeed validation of their combined efforts over the last few months.
A few observations on the new report:
— One of the reasons the ATSB gives for the shifting of the search area is the recognition that Inmarsat data related to an unsuccessful ground-to-air telephone call attempted at 18:40 indicated that the plane had already turned south at that time. The IG had been basing its analyses on this data point for months.
— Since the June report, the ATSB has improved its BFO model by taking into account various factors — such as temperature shifts caused by the Inmarsat satellite passing through the Earth’s shadow and the mis-location of the Perth ground station in an important Inmarsat algorithm — that IG member Mike Exner has been working through in detail for months.
— The ATSB has fundamentally changed its approach in how it is assessing the plane’s likely path. In its June report, the focus was on what I call the “agnostic” approach: it generated a large number of flight paths based on as few initial assumptions as possible, then graded them based on how well they fit the timing and frequency data received by Inmarsat. This resulted in a population of potential flight paths that fit the data well, but did not make any sense in terms of how a plane might be flown. Some of the routes, for instance, involved multiple changes in heading and airspeed. Today’s report explicitly excludes such flight paths. The ATSB and the IG alike now assume that the last several hours of the flight were conducted without any human input — the crew were presumed to be incapacitated by hypoxia or other causes, so the plane flew on autopilot until it ran out of fuel and crashed. This has been the IG’s starting point for ages, and the fact that the ATSB has now adopted it is a major reason for why the two group’s search areas have now converged.
— You can see in the graphic above how an emphasis on matching the Inmarsat data will tend to lead you in one area (“Data error optimisation”) while an emphasis on routes that comport with real-world autopilot functioning will lead you to another (“Constrained autopilot dynamics”). To be sure, they overlap, but the peak area of one is far from the peak area of another. I think it’s important to realize this, because it helps us to understand why it has been so hard to get a handle on where MH370 went, why the official search area keeps moving, and why knowledgeable people have been furiously debating possible flight paths for months: the BFO and BTO data just do not match up that well. In order to arrive at its recommended area, the IG has been willing to accept much wider deviations from Inmarsat data points than the ATSB has been comfortable with.
— Finally, it’s worth nothing that the ATSB approach is superior to the IG’s in one important regard: it is at heart statistical, looking at families of potential routes rather than proposing and assessing one at a time. There is a tendency, as an individual–and I have fallen into this myself–to cook up a solution, run an analysis, and to be so impressed with the result that one wants to shout about it from the rooftops. (Ask me about RUNUT some time.) The IG has come up with a search area essentially by pooling together a bunch of individual solutions, each of which is generated by a different set of procedures and different set of assumptions. It’s a herd of cats. To really move the ball forward a more rigorous approach is needed, one that takes each procedure and sees how it would play out if the assumptions are methodically modified.
The upshot is that, since the early days of the investigation, the attitude of search officials has changed radically. Once dismissive of amateurs’ efforts to understand the incident, they have clearly begun to listen to the IG and to turn to it for insight and ideas. Indeed, you could say that since the release of Inmarsat data and the issuance of the ATSB report in June, the search for MH370 has become effectively crowdsourced: a de facto collaboration between the professionals and a spontaneous assemblage of knowledgeable experts.
UPDATE:
The overlap between the ATSB’s analysis and the IG’s is more evident in the image below, courtesy of Don Thompson. It shows the fan of values calculated by ATSB to match likely autopilot settings.
Excellent summary of the ATSB report, Jeff. I am, of course, very happy to see that the ATSB has finally arrived at the same assessment we did 4 months ago, but disappointed that they do not acknowledge the major role we played in shifting their focus to a more enlightened understanding of the data.
For those wishing to use Table 1, which is the updated values for the downlink correction, I believe there is an error in the value reported at 16:42. The value should be 27.6 Hz, not 26.7 Hz. I believe the value was incorrectly updated from the value reported in the June ATSB report. I believe this is an error in documentation, not technical results, and this should not affect their path predictions.
Crowdsourced review and critique can be useful, especially when authorities act as if position and prestige trumps accountability and transparency. The recent Nature STAP stem cell debacle is a case in point. Crowdsourced “science” is another matter entirely.
@JeffWise
“IG members were among the most vocal critics of the ATSB’s contention that the accoustic pings probably came from black-box pingers.”
Jeff, would you be so kind as to post some of the IG members comments on this topic (with dates provided) or provide the proper URL’s where we can all read about this?
Thank You
Richard(from previous post) – I think placing the idea of spoofing outside the realms of possibility would be a lot more dangerous than placing it within. About a year and a half ago an Iranian nuke plane was cyber attacked very successfully – their screens went blank, their speakers began playing thunderstruck, and the centrifuges went haywire. The damage was immense. Can you imagine for a moment the sophistication required to breach all that security in a facility that would have been designed to prevent such a thing? This is the coalface where the brightest are hard at work, and have been at it for years. The SDU coming back on is what has me suspicious.
And sorry about lumping you in with the IG.
@ALL
Please see comment section of Jeff’s previous article for questions and answers from Inmarsat
jf
@John Fiorentino: You challenged Jeff before on the matter of the acoustic pings and the questioning by IG members. I responded last time to your challenge. I will respond again by pointing you to my tweet to David Soucie on May 3 challenging him for the acoustic data and then in a follow up tweet pointing him to the Sonotronic pingers for tracking fish. The pingers have a frequency down to 32 kHz and a once-per-second ping rate.
https://twitter.com/RadiantPhysics/status/463679196485914625 .
Mr. Soucie never responded to my tweet.
There were also tweets by others and posts on Duncan’s website dismissing the acoustic pings or at least asking for the raw data. I was not alone.
@VictorI
Yes, Victor, and I congratulated you at the time.
I’m looking for a little more than 1 IG member (that’s not unreasonable I should think if they were “among the most vocal)
Anyone can post these vocalizations, with date communicated……..preferably not close to a month after the event when it was becoming increasingly clear to even the Villiage Idiot that something was amiss.
Let’s see some real write ups, some communications with the JACC, ATSB, etc. Let’s see them in a realtime environment, not stale dated by the brilliance of hindsight.
Thanks for responding
@Matty – Perth. The breach in Iranian security came about because Iran was using commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) Siemens PLCs for controlling the centrifuges. The PC-based software that is used to program the PLCs had the “malicious” virus. If COTS hardware and software was used for avionics systems, it would be vulnerable to the same kind of virus. However, this is simply not the case. Unless there was a group within Honeywell/Thales, it would be practically impossible to hack the SDU in the manner you suggest. The specialized hardware and software tool sets would be practically impossible to obtain or develop without the help of the vendor.
Let’s see something like this in APRIL, MAY or thereafter……..
CNN Ignores Evidence of Possible Alternate Sources For the “Pings” Detected in the Flight 370 Investigation
By johnfiorentino-1
Sat Apr 12, 2014 12:54 PM
cnn
world-news
aviation-disasters
mh370
flight370
Article Photo
Malaysia Flight 370
April 12, 2014
By: John E. Fiorentino
Over the past several days I have tried to relay information to CNN regarding possible alternate sources for the “pings” allegedly detected in the Flight 370 Investigation.
more……on my column on Newsvine
@VictorI
APRIL, MAY or thereafter……
should real APRIL *NOT* MAY or thereafter…..
@John Fiorentino:
Does Duncan Steel count as an additional IG member that doubted the acoustic pings?
http://www.duncansteel.com/archives/701#comment-2666
Does Jeff Wise count as an additional IG member that doubted the acoustic pings? Read the first paragraph at:
http://jeffwise.net/2014/04/18/slate-why-inmarsats-mh370-report-is-a-smokescreen/comment-page-5/
By the way, there was no IG back in April and May. We were just individual contributors questioning things on Duncan’s blog. In hindsight, we got some things correct and other things wrong as we were working with so little data and so little knowledge about that data.
@John Fiorentino: Here are two links showing IG members questioning the acoustic pings in April:
Duncan Steel (and me):
http://www.duncansteel.com/archives/701#comment-2666
Jeff Wise (first paragraph)
http://jeffwise.net/2014/04/18/slate-why-inmarsats-mh370-report-is-a-smokescreen/comment-page-5/
There were many throughout the world questioning the acoustic pings in April.
By the way, the IG had not formed in April or May. We were individual contributors to Duncan’s website that were questioning the official story line. In hindsight, we were right about some things and wrong about other things. We were working with a scant amount of data and a scant amount of understanding of that data. So much more has been released now.
@VictorI
A little meager Victor and several weeks down the road.
In any event, I know about Jeff as we have discussed some of these things before. In fact, he really was the only talking head on CNN who didn’t poo-hoo the idea. I think Jeff and I basically have a good relationship.
As to Duncan, he also was extremely dismissive as to any importance at all to the acoustic impulses. In fact, he dissuaded and cutoff discussion of the subject. Are you aware of that??
And, since we can’t get personal here, I’ll just say that he dissuaded and cut me off also. Saying there was nothing scientific about researching the acoustics.
As to when the IG formed, if they weren’t around in April for instance, then they’d be incapable of being “vocal” wouldn’t you say?
I think I’m done with this. Thank you for your time.
@ALL
Perhaps now some will understand why, as a physicist, I banned further comments and discussions here about the purported acoustic ping detections. I considered them all to be a bad joke.
Duncan Steel
@John Fiorentino. You are disproving your own assertions. Duncan banned discussion about the acoustic pings because he did not believe they were actually from MH370. In retrospect, he was correct. As I have shown, a number of us felt this way, including but certainly not limited to current members of the IG.
I agree it is time to move on. No more, please.
The key question is not whether IG members – in real-time – publicly rejected the authenticity of those acoustic pings.
The key question is whether IG members – in retrospect – privately question the authenticity of the entire middle 6 months of the search, given the following indisputable facts:
1) JIT lying about why search moved 600nmi NE March 28 (could not possibly have been “flew faster in tracked phase”)
2) JIT moving search 750nmi further NE April 1 – well N of what any plausible best estimate should have been
3) JIT then declaring (through its PM) the authenticity of acoustic pings which were “obviously (to a physicist) not from the MH370 emergency locator beacon”
4) several weeks later, retracting 3)
5) several weeks after that, retracting rationale for 1)
6) several weeks after that, retracting (retroactively backfilled) rationale for 2)
7) the sum of the above is six months, but zero distance – the search meandered 2,700nmi in total, only to end up exactly where both the IG and the ATSB had it after only a few days’ analysis (people forget that the ATSB was smack dab on top of the IG’s suggested location back on March 17 – and that the IG couldn’t really START its analysis until the more detailed Inmarsat data was finally released).
If the answer to that question is “yes – I do have private concerns”, the follow-up is obvious: why are you keeping them to yourself?
If it helps: initially, I was afraid to speak out as well; like you, I have a lot to lose. It just felt like the right thing to do, is all.
Do we have any clear explanation yet why data from the abortive satellite phone call was not integrated into the ATSB’s model for six months? It’s not like they were drowning in data.
Again, the absence of any further call attempts to the flight deck during the last several hours of the flight seems much more mysterious than the much-remarked absence of wreckage, given that the plane went down in the middle of nowhere.
IG members, Bobby, Richard Cole and others,
I have followed these discussions in depth since day 1 on pprune, TMF, Steel’s site and elsewhere. It is easy to forget how much dedicated digging, creative thinking, bouncing of ideas and detailed and thorough analysis was required for you to arrive at the deep understanding of the parameters of this problem that you now have.
There was always the suspicion that ATSB might have access to information that could not be made public that was biasing their analysis in some way, and that you would always be playing catch-up. This may yet be the case, but appears less and less likely. While they clearly held the cards on many of the finer elements of their satcom system, your crowd sourced effort has brought much to the table in terms of data sifting and logical application. Your nudging has had a clear impact in widening the search south. Even if the plane is never found, it will have been worthwhile. Well done.
There seem to be some sour grapes posts around. Ignore them. Rather childish ego-flapping with apparently nothing of substance to contribute whatsoever, just noise. I think most people will see them for what they are.
Keep up the good work and the spirit of collaboration, and here’s hoping for a successful survey outcome in the coming weeks and months.
Hi Jeff,
The only reason the IG and the ATSB end-points match fairly closely is because they both use the same type model with the same optimization function and the same or equivalent assumptions. That demonstrates consistency, not accuracy. In other words, they have independently followed the same process and gotten the same answer.
That doesn’t prove, or even imply, that the answer is correct.
In addition, anyone familiar with government bureaucracy understands that the ATSB knew what they were going to do and where they were going to do it many weeks ago. I doubt that they were drawn to the new search area by anything anyone outside their process did in the meantime. The combined JACC/ATSB/INMARSAT/BOEING/MDCA/NTSB/FUGRO bureaucracy is incapable of responding rapidly.
@John
What, exactly, made you speculate that the acoustic pings were not from the black boxes of 370? Was it a unfounded guess or did you have anything at all to support your, at the time, conspiratorial,beyond the pale and unpopular rantings/ravings?
I have just seen this posted at pprune it may be of interest .
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/535538-malaysian-airlines-mh370-contact-lost-579.html
Megan
8th Oct 2014, 22:58
Satellite communications company Inmarsat has written a “clear language” analysis in the Royal Institute of Navigation’s peer-reviewed journal on the high-tech detective work that went into establishing the current search area for Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370. The download available at http://journals.cambridge.org/downlo…32fec41a70bb64
Victor – regarding hacking, this of any interest? My point with the Iranians was that it was a secure facility with plenty of layers/barriers.
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/satcom-terminals-ripe-for-malware-exploitation/
@DDT
Yes, there were many things, one was the frequencies reported (except for the Chinese) which supposedly was at 37.5kHz.
But the main point was, almost universally the thought (and certainly the news reporting and statements of the TV talking heads/analysts)was that they (recorded impulses) “couldn’t be anything else”
You can read about most of it here:
http://research-investigations.newsvine.com/
Regards
@BobbyUlich
Agreed Bobby!
I think the IG would just like to believe that ATSB, et al is somehow following after their ideas.
Those fellows have and will continue to do it their way. (Not to say they are completely unswayed by outside input)
But at the end of the day, they are going to search for the plane, not the IG, you or me.
Regards
@ALL
DUNCAN STEEL GETS “TOUGH”……well, maybe just shrill.
Duncan’s latest blasts the ATSB and their “cronies” and mentions the “human factors” (which I analyzed in my response to the IG)
Things seem to be getting a little testy.
From Duncan………..
Note also that the ATSB (and their cronies) have at last realised and accepted that the IG was correct that the final BFO values can be interpreted in terms of a plunge into the sea from high altitude: we have previously given the speed with which the aircraft hit the sea (near 300 kph). As of yet the ATSB is still not interpreting the final BFOs correctly, in our opinion.
M P
Posted October 9, 2014 at 3:13 AM
Hi M P ~
Thank you so much for your poignant comment. I think I’ll print it out and frame it!
~LG~
I hope many of you saw the (US) PBS Nova episode on MH370. Jeff and Miles O’Brien (a producer and narrator) were important contributors to the show. Notably, the possibility of human intervention was discussed and proposed as a likely cause for the disappearance. The vulnerability presented by access to the E/E bay was also discussed, I think for the first time by the mainstream media. This will certainly raise some eyebrows.
Miles did a CNN interview in which he discusses the Nova show and in particular the vulnerability of the E/E bay. It can be seen here:
http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/bestoftv/2014/10/08/mh370-miles-obrien-update-newday.cnn&video_referrer=
I’d like to thank Jeff and Miles for the courage to speak candidly on these issues.
@ALL
The Search for MH370
Chris Ashton, Alan Shuster Bruce, Gary Colledge and Mark Dickinson
(Inmarsat)
THE JOURNAL OF NAVIGATION
© The Royal Institute of Navigation 2014
5.3. Refinement of BFO Samples. Detailed analysis of BFO samples taken from other flights showed a high degree of consistency for the signalling message frequencies, with the exception of those that were performed immediately after the nitial logon process. This called into question the BFO measurements after the log-on sequences at 18:25 and 00:19. However it was also determined (by the same method)
that the first message transmitted by the aircraft in the logon sequence, the Logon Request message, did provide a consistent and accurate BFO measurement. This means that we can use the Logon Request message information from 18:25:27 and 00:19:29, but it is prudent to discount the measurements between 18:25:34 and 18:28:15 inclusive, and the one at 00:19:37.
jf
Thanks, Victor! That footage of the E/E bay was something that I’d alerted Miles to, after having been alerted by someone either via email or in the comment thread somewhere — possibly Duncan’s site? If I could remember I’d give them credit. Anyway, Miles’ show was deeply informed by the ongoing discussion that I’ve had with yourself and the others of this impromptu community that has formed, including and beyond the Independent Group. I’ve never experienced a story before in which, as I posted yesterday, the peanut gallery really led the way. It’s the distributed knowledge and enthusiasm of the crowd, not the concentrated power of authority, that is moving the ball forward.
@ALL
5.3. Refinement of BFO Samples. Detailed analysis of BFO samples taken from other flights showed a high degree of consistency for the signalling message frequencies, with the exception of those that were performed immediately after the nitial logon process. This called into question the BFO measurements after the log-on sequences at 18:25 and 00:19. However it was also determined (by the same method)
that the first message transmitted by the aircraft in the logon sequence, the Logon Request message, did provide a consistent and accurate BFO measurement. This means that we can use the Logon Request message information from 18:25:27 and 00:19:29, but it is prudent to discount the measurements between 18:25:34 and 18:28:15 inclusive, and the one at 00:19:37.
The Search for MH370
Chris Ashton, Alan Shuster Bruce, Gary Colledge
and Mark Dickinson
(Inmarsat)
THE JOURNAL OF NAVIGATION
© The Royal Institute of Navigation 2014
jf
@jeffwise: The link to the E/E bay video was included in my Banda Aceh scenario that you posted on your site.
@jeffwise: As you know, Miles interviewed me for background information for the show. We spoke at length about the vulnerability of the E/E bay. I was happy to see that the issue was given the attention it deserves. I have been talking about that video for months.
M P: agree 100% the probability is now near zero that “secret information” biased the search way off to the northeast.
That’s precisely what makes the bias so much more curious, now. We are now down to 1) spectacular incompetence, and 2) intentionally searching where thay knew the plane was not.
I hope for 1), but fear 2).
No matter what your theory is on the parties directly responsible for MH370’s fate, it must be conceded that manipulation of the search suggests complicity.
Well, then I should have given you credit — my apologies.
@VictorI & ALL
I pretty much appreciate Jeff as he most times acts fairly and professionally.
As to Miles……well, a few excerpts from an article which can be accessed here:
http://research-investigations.newsvine.com/
The obviously antithetical statements by Malaysia and Inmarsat drew criticism from CNN aviation analyst Miles O’Brien.
Commenting on CNN’s “Outfront” with Erin Burnett O’Brien said; “I don’t know who to believe, but isn’t it awful that it’s quite evident somebody is lying here. Somebody is lying. We’re talking about something that involves a missing airliner, now 70 days, lives lost, families shattered, and there is people lying about this. This is absolutely reprehensible. I can’t even believe that it would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.”
What’s really “funny” here – in fact it’s tragic – is that all of this indignation is coming from Miles O’Brien of all people. This is the same Miles O’Brien who shook his head “no” for a month to the idea that the “pings” detected in the underwater search effort might have come from anything other than MH370’s black boxes.
Yes, while O’Brien shook his head no, I was pounding at the door trying to get CNN to break the news about information I had provided them regarding the underwater “pings.” It took a month for CNN to finally break the story which appeared on NEWDAY Saturday, May 10. Mr. O’Brien had no hand in breaking that story, nor has he even acknowledged it since.
Indeed, there is more than one way to lie, or engage in deceit. O’Brien for his part stonewalled, rebuffed and resisted the truth for a month. He stalled while the official investigation foundered expending huge sums of money and placing the lives of many brave souls in the military perhaps needlessly at risk.
Some may say, O’Brien is not a party to the official investigation and thus bears no responsibility for its conduct. While there may be some truth to that line of thought, it’s also true that O’Brien sells his wares as an aviation expert. His opinions are broadcast to the world to see and hear. As such, Mr. O’Brien has a responsibility both to the public trust and good journalism. He has not lived up to that responsibility to either.
Copyright 2014 – J.E. Fiorentino – All Rights Reserved
@jeffwise: I was not looking for credit. I was not the first to find that link. I am happy that you were receptive, as a media personality, to viewing it and understanding its importance. (See my email you received on 7/17.) That was the critical step.
@John Fiorentino. Please lighten up, John. You’re liable to stroke out.
There were many people wrong about the acoustic pings beyond Miles. I recall screaming at my TV as David Soucie persisted that a drop in frequency was possible for the pinger. (Jeff is rare in that he has always has been one to question the conventional wisdom in this incident. I suspect he was quietly working behind the scenes to open the minds of some of his colleagues.) There were also many that were correct in dismissing the detected acoustic pings. The media was being led by those they trusted to be technical experts. On-air personalities have reputations to protect. To go against the conventional wisdom in matters like this could make them either a hero or a fool. Most don’t want to take that chance.
Nobody in this incident has had a monopoly on the truth. Our opinions have evolved, including Miles’. I was once a strong supporter of not eliminating the northern paths. However, after more satellite data and system knowledge were released, I appropriately modified my view because I demonstrated to myself with my own mathematic analysis that the northern paths are highly unlikely.
So unless there is deliberate deceit, which I don’t believe Miles ever intended, you have to give a pass to those of us that have modified our views as we learned more. I have less sympathy for Malaysia’s handling of this incident, because from where I sit, there has been intentional deceit and withholding of information on many occasions.
Hi Jeff & Victor ~
I’m the culprit that brought the Varig E/E Bay video to Victor’s attention when I was investigating how hijackers may have gained access to the aircraft’s cabin. I also showed it to Mary Kirby and she shared it with Ben Sandilands. Both aviation journalists subsequently wrote about this security vulnerability in their blogs. I’m very pleased that we are all contributing to future aviation safety.
~LG~
OK…Issue resolved. LG gets full credit. Thank you, LG!
Thanks LG!
Thanks VARIG (Viação Aérea Rio-Grandense)!
@John Fiorentino. Please lighten up, John. You’re liable to stroke out.
I bet you’d miss me ……… 🙂
I agree with you about Malaysia.
Soucie has some issues. I have his first telephone call to me via a computer program I have. You wouldn’t believe it, seriously!
All that was missing was a bright light and a rubber hose.
But seriously Victor, the frustration with this issue at the time was………here I am pleading and saying.don’t believe me, read this research……do your damn jobs!……Did I expect anyone really to be experts on “fish-pingers”…….no
I wasn’t one either, but now I am……and that’s the difference.
Do I exonerate ATSB in this……no
There’s circumstantial evidence they knew the impulses probably weren’t from MH370 very early on.
And of course they refuse to release the full recordings.
Here is the twitter thread on the video from LG. https://twitter.com/LGHamiltonUSA/status/490459485174239232
I was curious about the who and why surrounding this video. It was uploaded to YouTube by “Jack Jones” on March 18, his only upload, with no posted comments from him. It was entitled “777 E/E Bay”.
https://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=2S-Cggs1jOo
On June 11, 2012, Matthew Wuillemin posted the following video on YouTube which addresses research on this vulnerability. The research was performed for his MSc degree.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLmzvF2qkDY
And here is a submission in Jan 2014 to Australia’s Dept of Infrastructure and Transportation from Mr. Wuillemen in which discusses the vulnerabilities posed by access to the E/E hatch as well as offering solutions. Attached is his masters thesis on the subject. Mr. Wuillemen describes himself as a B777 captain.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CCYQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.infrastructure.gov.au%2Faviation%2Fasrr%2Fsubmissions%2Ffiles%2F033_m_wuillemin_11_jan_2014_redacted.pdf&ei=o6A2VMimN-bd8AGB_4DwDQ&usg=AFQjCNGaEOeP4v8cRieRL_TWELN8Y8cYfg
In his thesis, he claims the E/E bay vulnerability was identified in the aftermath of 9/11, yet never remedied. He includes the following statements from stakeholders he contacted relative to this vulnerability:
Boeing: “This matter has been considered and brought to operators for consideration in the past (FAA airworthiness directives do not require this hatch to be locked) hence no further action is required. This is an operator’s choice of configuration and concerns should be addressed to the operator.”
Australia Dept of Infrastructure and Transportation: “This matter was not considered to be one requiring further attention by the Department.”
Virgin Australia: “The OTS, and US TSA have assessed the risk of unlawful interference with aviation via the use of this avionics bay as low.”
The masters thesis is interesting and not difficult reading material and should be read by anybody seriously investigating this vulnerability.
So based on this, we know that:
1. The vulnerability was known after 9/11.
2. The vulnerability was researched by Matt Wuillemen in 2013 and presented to Australian authorities and Boeing as part of this research.
3. The vulnerability was deemed to be low risk by the authorities.
4. A video was posted just after the MH370’s disappearance by “Jack Jones”. I cannot find a previous reference to this video.
Miles purchased the rights to the use the video on air so he must have tracked down the mysterious Mr Jones
VictorI
Posted October 9, 2014 at 11:18 AM
Hi Victor ~
Yes! A walk down memory lane. And, I recall a couple days before that you mentioned to me that the two oxygen tanks caught your eye, how possible aircraft decompression could have been accomplished via the E/E bay and oxygen to the flight deck easily cut off from below. In addition, I remember Don Thompson and I discussing the idea of hijackers being able to gain access via the hatch if someone inside the cabin simply opened the latch to allow them to gain entry. I found Boeing documentation that the “Main Equipment Center Access Door 117AL” on the floor of the E/E bay was an external entry point only. However, you pointed out to me there was a third door between the E/E bay and the forward cargo hold. I discussed this with Grant Brophy last night. He advised me that the cargo holds are pressurized. However, I told him that if the forward cargo hold was loaded with ULDs the space between those and the fuselage is somewhat tight for hijacker stowaways to move around. Without MH370’s load instruction sheet we can’t be sure what space was available to possible hijackers.
~LG~
@All,
John Fiorentino previously provided a quote from yesterday’s Inmarsat paper that discounts all the satellite data between 18:25:27 and 18:40 and the data at 00:19:37. That Inmarsat revelation implies several things:
(1) the complex maneuvers (multiple turns or a climb) near the turn that the IG and I have been creating to fit the BFO data are no longer required,
(2) the BFO data cannot precisely determine the turn time, except that it occurred at some time between 18:25 and 18:40,
(3) the very high apparent descent rate at 00:19:37 is unreliable,and
(3) the high descent rate at 00:19:29 is reliable.
I can’t help but wonder why Inmarsat and the ATSB sat on this information for such a long time before releasing it. The ATSB didn’t even mention this in their October 8 report. If I wanted to be charitable, I could say that perhaps they did not convince themselves until recently that those data are not trustworthy, although they have had the data to make this determination since Day 1.
Duncan’s quote from yesterday was : “As of yet the ATSB is still not interpreting the final BFOs correctly, in our opinion.” Perhaps the ATSB is, in fact, correctly interpreting the final BFOs because they had information that the IG did not have until the Inmarsat paper was published (also yesterday).
@JeffWise:
“It’s the distributed knowledge and enthusiasm of the crowd, not the concentrated power of authority, that is moving the ball forward.”
You couldn’t be more right.
I brought the E/E hatch issue to Duncan Steel’s attention (via email) on April 24, and forwarded same to Victor on April 28.
To quote from that email:
“Easy accessibility of the E&E hatch is not something Boeing (or airlines) want the public to know.”
Many thanks again to you and Miles O’Brien for having the courage to mention it in the NOVA doc. To go “big” with this in a nationally televised program, when both of you make your living, in whole or in part, from covering the aviation industry, could not have been an easy decision.
We should also give credit to Ben Sandilands (@planetalking) and @RunwayGirl, both of whom were talking about this issue on their respective blogs back in July.
One of the great lessons I learned from studying the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) is that yesterday’s dissenting (minority) opinion often becomes the majority.
@nihonmama: My goodness! We have been talking about tampering in the E/E bay for a long time! I did find that email you sent to me on 4/24, prompted by this comment of mine on Duncan’s site:
http://www.duncansteel.com/archives/710#comment-2768
I don’t think I was aware of the video until LG’s message to me.
(I fortunately have had the advantage of input from intelligent women in formulating my thoughts!)
To be fair, very soon after the disappearance, posters on pprune and reddit were talking about this possibility of tampering in the E/E bay, although unknown to me at the time. It seems to be an idea that is often discussed and then dismissed.
It took the courage of Miles and Jeff to bring the issue to a much wider audience. And yes, Ben Sandilands and @RunwayGirl have not shied from this issue. Kudos to all!
Thanks again for jogging my memory!
Victor
Victor:
You’re welcome. The intelligence of the hive is an amazing thing. J2
From: j. judice
Date: Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 3:10 PM
Subject: Victorl’s comment today and E&E hatch
To: @duncansteel.com
Dear Duncan:
Have been a avid follower of the MH370 mystery from day one and got a tip from a Twitter friend about your blog and analysis, which has been simply superb, along with many of the informed comments there.
This comment by Victorl today (specifically #5) http://t.co/K7Ua8mPTyf
is, I believe, related to what can best be described as a flaw on the 777. Don’t know if you’ve seen this, but a video re the vulnerability of the electronics bay (aka E&E hatch) was posted on pprune shortly after MH370 vanished. It appears to have been moved or deleted, but here’s link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLmzvF2qkDY
One of my cousins, a long-time commercial pilot who also has much experience in the 777, shared the following with me a few weeks ago:
1. The 777 can be disconnected from SATCOM via E&E hatch.
2. Not every 777 pilot understands the intricacies of the satellite system (or knows how to disconnect it).
3. Easy accessibility of the E&E hatch is not something Boeing (or airlines) want the public to know.
Victorl’s point that removing the CPM would also prevent SATCOM from getting speed and position updates from the AIMS appears to be very the point my cousin was making.
The E&E hatch issue has been on my mind for weeks and given that we can’t yet rule out foul play, I just wanted to bring this to your attention.
Thanks for all of your fantastic work! I’ll continue to follow your updates. The only thing I regret in reading it all is that I never took physics. 😉 Maybe there’s still time…
All good things!
Julie