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.
@Bobby: I would be surprised if the satellite working group that contributed to that part of the ATSB report did not have access to all the Inmarsat data and assumptions.
In my opinion, the jury is still out as to whether the last BFO value is valid. An in-flight restart of the SDU while it is still warm is probably not often studied. Since the major cause of the oscillator drift is temperature related, one would expect little error if the start up occurred while the SDU (and the OCXO) was still warm.
One of the odd aspects of the Inmarsat paper is Inmarsat states they do not include the effect of rate-of-climb (ROC) in their BFO model. Yet, this effect is known to be strong and it is not difficult to include. Because they neglect this effect, their BFO match is poor at 16:43 and 16:56, when we know the plane was ascending, and at 00:19:29, when we suspect the plane was descending.
Perhaps this is the reason they have not closely studied the last value at 00:19:37 and why they discount it.
Inmarsat has been wrong about things in the past. Here is a quick list off the top of my head:
1. Did not attribute the BFO values between 18:25 and 18:28 to the power up of the SDU.
2. Did not include the C-channel BFO values (due to the attempted satellite calls) as valid.
3. Did not use the C-channel BFO at 18:40 as evidence of southerly track at that time.
4. Did not acknowledge that their search area around 30S latitude implied a “loitering” around Sumatra due to “missing time”.
I would not be surprised if in the coming weeks we learn that the ATSB team has updated their models to include the effect of ROC, further studied the handshakes at the end of the flight, and determined that the plane was in a steep descent of greater than 15,000 fpm 00:19:37, much the way they made an announcement when the satellite calls were suddenly “discovered” and they admitted the turn south was sooner than they had thought.
As a side note, if you observe Appendices C and D in the June ATSB report, you will see examples of accidents in which control of the plane was lost and descents exceeded 15,000 fpm.
Victor
Test
VictorI,
Thanks for a copy of your BFO simulator you sent me a few days ago.
I have some questions that I would like to ask you via email.
If OK with you – please send me an email at,
gregyorke@shaw.ca
Thanks.
@VictorI & Bobby
“As a side note, if you observe Appendices C and D in the June ATSB report, you will see examples of accidents in which control of the plane was lost and descents exceeded 15,000 fpm.”
That’s simply inaccurate, there isn’t one example in either Appendix which even comes close to the postulated end of MH370.
Examples of other aircraft, inflight break-ups, etc. are apples and oranges.
There’s also no relevant examples in the BEA report.
@VictorI,
Perhaps you misunderstood my comments on the BFO data. I also believe that ATSB has intimate access to all Inmarsat findings. That is why I thought it odd that the ATSB did not repeat Inmarsat’s BFO findings in the ATSB report issued on the same day.
The Inmarsat wording is unclear in its meaning, and I have asked Chris Ashton whether they were saying those BFO points were definitely bad, or perhaps simply that they could not prove they were good. If Inmarsat meant the latter, they you could be right that the last BFO may eventually make a comeback.
Although no definite reason is given in the Inmarsat paper, it appears that they are saying that similar units on other flights gave BFOs (sent as a result of a Log-On sequence) that were unreliable except for the very first BFO value.
A strong argument against the theory that thermal warm-up is the cause of initially bad BFO data after a power-up is that Inmarsat accepts the 18:25:27 value as being good, but rejects the ones immediately following. I suspect the actual cause of the unpredictability has something to do with system timing, not with thermal effects. Similarly, Inmarsat accepts the 00:19:29 BFO but reject the one 8 seconds later. Thermal warm-up?? I don’t think so. Inmarsat is simply saying that empirical evidence from other flights led to their conclusion. They gave no theory as to cause.
Regarding your Point #1: The ATSB June report attributes the signals at 18:25 and 00:19 to power cycling (page 55).
@John Fiorentino:
From the ATSB report:
Appendix C: Loss of Control Accidents
Appendix D: Unresponsive Crew/Hypoxia Accidents
You have no idea whether or not the rapid descent caused an inflight breakup.
You also have no idea what the exact conditions are to simulate or how accurate your simulator will perform under these extreme circumstances.
As I said in a previous prediction, we will soon enter into the war of the simulations, with different people choosing differing conditions, differing assumptions, and different simulators, and getting different results. I will excuse myself from this exercise.
For me, until I have reason to believe otherwise, I will use the last BFO value to calculate the descent rate, regardless if Inmarsat advises to disregard it out of prudence. (I think we are all past the point of prudent assumptions.)
I won’t further engage you in the discussion. My comment regarding the descent rates was addressed to Bobby. We’ve been through this before. I am done.
@Bobby Ulich: “Regarding your Point #1: The ATSB June report attributes the signals at 18:25 and 00:19 to power cycling (page 55).”
Yes, in the June report they clearly said this. However, previous to that report, they attributed the erratic BFO values to turning without any mention of a power up.
Getting the clarification from Chris Ashton regarding the meaning of his words would be helpful.
I share your concerns about other possible effects causing the erratic BFO. I proposed temperature overshoot leading to a good and then bad value, but I was told that the oven controller is critically damped. (I have not yet rejected this explanation.) I also proposed thermal gradients in the crystal causing transient effects and erratic behavior. I just don’t know. I don’t see how timing could affect the BFO.
That said, I would be very surprised if the ATSB had many in-flight, loss-of-power transients of similar duration with which to compare. Hence their ambiguous language about prudence.
@VictorI & Bobby
I can’t see why you’re so upset. You obviously didn’t understand my post.
I didn’t suggest an in-flight break-up I was pointing out that in those 2 Appendices there is an example of an in-flight break-up with a descent rate greater than 15,000ft/min.
That is apples and oranges.
None of those examples are relevant. We simply have idea what was happening on MH370 in the final moments.
You’re certainly welcome to number-crunch as you see fit.
Regards
So some of the pings are crap? But the rest are all good. Like sand through the hour glass – these are the days of our lives.
@jeffwise, @MuOne, @Bobby Ulich,@D Hatfield
I guess I just can’t keep up with the pace here. I posted messages to you on the “What We Know” thread around the same time that this thread was being created. In case you missed the messages, rather than repost, which is poor forum etiquette, check the end of page 7 of that thread:
http://jeffwise.net/2014/09/29/mh370-what-we-know-now/comment-page-7/#comments
@Matty:
That is hilarious.
Jeff,
This is a very good article and a good read. You have a great style of writing. I too think this is a good summary of how the ATSB came to be in line with the IG in determining the new search area. It is also a nice tribute to the IG itself. This is well written, detailed, yet is easy enough to understand for us laypersons who are neither aviation experts nor scientists.
Hats off to the IG. I think they are a great team of brilliant men, all 13 or so of them. There aren’t many people in this world ruled by greed today that are worthy of the title of humanitarian, such is not the case with the IG. They deserve the title.
Hats off too to the “peanut gallery helpers” (all the bloggers from all the IG’s sites) who have tirelessly gathered internet information working on the “why” and “how” of MH370 in hopes it may trigger something with the IG on the “where.”
I did not have the opportunity to catch the CNN special on MH370 the other night. Does anyone have a link to it to watch it or will it be repeated this weekend on CNN does anyone know?
Cheryl,
Are you talking about Miles O’Brien’s doc “Why Planes Vanish”? The full episode is available here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/why-planes-vanish.html
Hey Matty,
Day’s of Our Lives is right…
BTO – BFO + Speculation = Deaf/Daft Reckoning
Miles O’Brien TRIED to do a good job. A Jeff inspired angle/special would have been better served. Again…my hat is of to the Australians for all of their efforts.
Adios,
Chris
Haxi,
Hi Haxi! Nice to hear from you. Thanks so much for the link. I am assuming this is the one that CNN aired two nights ago.
Thanks again.
Cheryl
@Cheryl
…how the ATSB came to be in line with the IG in determining the new search area”
I should think this is likely a misinterpretation of the ATSB’s activities, which information should be posted shortly.
Regards
It is worth noting that the ATSB and IG path models (not results) have been in substantial agreement for months. Both groups have been fine tuning, but the main reason that the latest ATSB path predictions, released October 8th, have come into alignment with the IG prediction is that ATSB took a second look at the 3 scenarios the IG identified in its September 9th Update, and recognized the need to weigh “human factors” more heavily in the analysis. As a direct result, they added the “constrained autopilot dynamics method”, or what the IG labelled “Normal Cruise Scenario” in our September 9th Search Area Recommendation.
In the September 9th IG Recommendation, we focused on the fact that there were many possible routes, all ending on the 7th arc. The ATSB June 26th Report attempted to identify the most likely of the many routes based primarily on pure statistical analysis, with little weight given to “human factors”. In the IG September 9 report, we noted that, while ATSB’s analysis was probably correct for the assumptions used, it was unlikely that MH370 would have been flying at 400 kts, an assumed TAS that ATSB found to minimize BFO errors. Once ATSB gave weight to the human factors we identified, their results (“autopilot dynamics mode”) matched the IG results (Normal Cruise Scenario”) almost exactly. Thus, it was the human factors analysis that led us both to the same conclusion: base the path on the most likely autopilot modes, not BFO residual errors.
That we have both come to this awareness and agree now is an important event. I have confidence that MH370 will be found sooner than later as a result of this convergence. Hopefully, ATSB won’t waste any more time on the “data error optimization method”. It made complete sense from a pure mathematical standpoint, but none whatsoever from a human factors standpoint.
It is a step in the right direction that the ATSB publicly admitted yesterday that the data they had on file six and a half months ago demonstrates clearly that [where they chose to search for FDR signals] and [what MH370 had the fuel to physically reach] were separated by over 400nmi (distance from 7th arc @s21 to 7th arc @s27).
I hope the media and outside experts are as curious as I am as to why it took them six and a half months to figure this out, when dummies like me figured it out in April (and have been shouting at the top of our lungs ever since).
I hope in particular that the media and outside experts attempt to recreate the magical flight path that was the ATSB’s “best estimate” from April 2-28, and challenge them with their findings.
@airlandseaman
And I explain in my response to the IG that while I agree with the concept of “human factors” the IG’s application of that principle was flawed.
Your assertion that the ATSB is somehow following your lead is simply your opinion.
Information should be posted shortly which will show that you are misinterpreting this issue.
@airlandseaman: From my perspective, it doesn’t matter whether or not the ATSB is following the IG’s lead. What is important is the search is moving to a more promising location. If we (or some other outside person or persons) helped to move them there, so much the better. I think there were two factors in moving the search area:
1. Better consideration of auto pilot modes and likely flight conditions, as you state.
2. An earlier turn south due to the BFO at 18:40.
In fact, in some ways, I hope the ATSB is NOT following our lead and independently came to similar conclusions. That increases the probability of the present search area being correct.
Victor
@ALL
I think it’s a good point to consider that the original air search covered the IG’s current projected location.
Victor:
I agree completely. I would just note that, as of Sept 9, ATSB had already adopted our July 17th recommendation about the 1840 turn to the south, so that was not new as of October 8th. The new breakthrough was ATSB’s addition of the “constrained autopilot dynamics mode”.
I also agree that it does not matter whether ATSB reached the same conclusions based on our recommendation, or an independent reassessment. What matters is that we are all, to a greater degree now than at any time in the previous 6 months, more or less on the same page, and Equator has made 6 passes within 10NM of our recommended “hot spot”. Hopefully, Phoenix will keep going southwest to 37.71S.
Victor and airlandseaman: I have great respect for your shared perspective that it was increasingly robust scientific processes that led both the IG and the ATSB to the virtually the same conclusion as to a probable location. Afterall, the aircraft is presently located at discrete coordinates, and one would thus hope that the location science itself reveal them, independent of the people involved. Well done!
@Rand: Thanks for your thoughts, although no congratulations are in order until the plane is found. Hopefully we get some indication in the coming weeks.
John:
Nice to see something we can agree on. It is definitely worth reminding ourselves that NTSB recommended essentially the same search area way back in March, and the aerial search started there. But bogus acoustic pings and purist math diverted the search far to the northeast for months. It is very reminiscent of the search for soaring friend Steve Fossett (who was a member of the Soaring Society of Boulder). The search for Steve’s plane was close to success in the first weeks, but then a bogus eye witness observation diverted the search off into the weeds for a year before a hiker stumbled upon Steve’s plane, close to where the early search was centered.
Back to rampant speculation…
On the E/E bay, I can’t recall whether I posted here, but on a recent flight from Shanghai to Tokyo as a passenger aboard a Korean Air 777 airframe, I caught site of the Captain standing in the galley with a hatch open at his feet. I knew, of course, exactly to where this hatch provided access. I recall that I could make out a bit of daylight reflecting off the sides of the sub-floor compartment; the external hatch was likewise open. The remained standing there with a tad bit of vigilance while chatting up the flight attendants until exchanging a few words with someone below, the daylight was no longer visible and he closed the galley floor hatch.
I fly back to Shanghai on Sunday and will watch for any similar behavior on the part of the flight crew, if I am aboard a 777 airframe. Would there be anything else (other than Ebola warning signage) that anyone would like me to pay particular attention to? Probably not.
This is for my old partner in the speculative crime, Luigi: I had a ‘shower moment’ (anyone else frequently have epiphanies in the shower?) this morning, with the thought occurring to me that perhaps VHF radio communications did not end at 17:19 as stated in the official radio transcript. We do have indications from various independent (albeit media) sources that the actual voice recordings (released weeks later) had been edited, with one analyst claiming that they ‘sounded like’ they had perhaps been re-recorded. Perhaps they had, in fact, been re-recorded, with this recording ending at 17:19.
Perhaps voice communications only appear to end with the handoff to HCMATC in a neat and tidy way? Consider the brevity of the preliminary report once again, the redacted logs, etc.; an edited voice recording is not too far of a stretch in this context.
@airlandseaman: Mike, thanks to you (and all members of the IG (and all who work diligently on their own)) for your ongoing efforts to provide closure to passengers’ families. Please rest assured that, while I may appear most times to be on a very different tack, I share that fundamental goal.
I seem to recall you being the driving force behind the IG’s now-dropped “decompression scenario” (though I recall you may have said at one point it responded to outside requests).
I’d like to trace this decompression scenario back to its roots: can you please put me in touch with the one individual you would describe as the driving force behind getting it into the IG report?
Also: the three models the IG attached to their Sept. 9 paper did not, to my eye, include any that actually modeled the decompression scenario. Can the full version of that model please be made public?
Finally: step 1 in assessing the probability of a scenario is to determine fuel feasibility – if the plane lacks the fuel to reach its endpoint, probability is zero. By early September, it was common knowledge that…
1) the northern intersection of the 7th arc and the ATSB’s June 26 performance limit was “stretched” to accommodate the possibility of a VERY late (19:12 UTC) turn south
2) the decompression scenario contemplated no such path circuity
3) the ATSB had by then themselves publicly retracted the idea of a late turn south, and
4) the math required to adjust the performance limit to reflect an early turn south is trivial, and renders s21 infeasible by several degrees
Clearly, the IG thought long and hard about fuel feasibility before publishing their Sept.9 paper – the principle that the intersections were more likely than the midsections featured prominently in your argument. So what kind of sniff-test was applied to the fuel feasibility of this scenario before giving it equal billing in the paper’s flagship chart?
Many thanks, and kindest regards,
Brock
@MikeExner
Yes, it’s always good if the various parties can agree.
Unfortunate that there seems to be so little (agreement) in this case.
In any event, my own coordinates (if I can ever get my report completely formulated) should be released soon.
And, I was glad to receive an e-mail today from ATSB, (which may be posted soon) indicating (among other things) that ATSB has NO PLANS to “narrow the width of the search area” as suggested by the IG.
In fact, the opposite……..
“These widths will be extended if necessary as the search progresses.”
(Source: personal e-mail from ATSB)
Mike: to your 10:39am: I agree with you 100% that the acoustic pings were bogus. But they most certainly did not DIVERT the search NE. The bogus pings merely KEPT it there.
What actually DIVERTED it there are what I’ve been fighting for months – through mountains of obfuscation and deception – to find out.
@Brock
I guess you could say that I was the lead author of the September 9th report. Lead editor might be more accurate since the ideas were a certainly a consensus. Duncan took the lead on the September 26th report.
I have always felt that the decompression scenario needed to be kept on the table for a number of reasons. To this day, I believe it is more likely than the ATSB 400 kts scenario. Like the “Normal Cruise Scenario” (what ATSB calls the “constrained autopilot dynamics method”), the Decompression Scenario is one that is consistent with likely human factors. If there was a fire, smoke, decompression, etc., then the crew would have turned around exactly like MH370 did. If the conditions in the cockpit left the crew hypoxic or effected by toxic fumes, their behavior might very well have been “weird” from our perspective, but they certainly would have started by turning back, descending to 10,000 feet and cutting the TAS to something around 250-300 kts at 10,000 feet. Every 777 pilot I know says the same thing. At this lower altitude and TAS, the endurance is similar to the endurance at FL350 and 480 kts, but the path would end up far to the NE. But Victor et. al. have assured me that they have tried, but have not been able to find a “low and slow” path like this that has reasonably low residual BFO errors, like they do find for the “Normal Cruise Scenario”. Thus, I agree with my colleges that it is more likely that MH370 took the Normal Cruise Scenario path to ~37.7S.
Jimmy Buffett says “a good navigator is never sure where he is until he gets there, and then he is still not sure”. Victor continuously reminds me of this truth. We can only do our best to figure out the most likely positions for now, and remain open minded.
@rand
>> Perhaps voice communications only appear to end with the
>> handoff to HCMATC in a neat and tidy way?
An interesting possibility — could there have been an ongoing communication on a VHF channel not monitored by air traffic controllers, e.g., one reserved for military communications? I have no idea how these things work, but perhaps somebody knowledgeable could weigh in.
On that scenario, the Defense Minister is wakened from his slumbers to deal with a “situation,” and instructs Malaysia Airlines Ops to feed ATC a stall: the plane is safely cruising through Cambodian airspace, contact has been made, etc., while the matter is resolved. Unfortunately, the resolution is not a happy one and the stall takes on a life of its own.
There are any number of scenarios compatible with the basic model that someone running the show understood what was going on with the plane and started a cover-up in real time. For example, Zaharie may have already have been on H2O’s radar as a potential troublemaker. Or, they pulled his personnel file after the diversion, and the big picture clicked into place right away. Or, Zaharie delivered a threat by phone, text or email before the flight began (e.g., “Personal for H2O: Watch the skies, ****er! It’s going to be a long night,” etc.). Or, there could have been sensitive, undisclosed outbound communications from the plane by radio, flight deck satphone, VoIP, personal satphone, personal cellphone at low altitude, etc. There’s a smorgasbord of options. Perhaps someone in the media should press the point, but I guess the window has closed on that possibility.
What one has to decide is, do we really believe that the plane was deemed “not hostile” and allowed to re-enter Malaysian airspace unchallenged without someone in charge knowing what was going on? I know what I think — that’s BS.
Dear Luigi, Rand, — the fact that the pilot of the plane seemed very carefully to stay within KUL FIR, to me suggests that CPDLC was in use, and that the pilot was not afraid of being shot down by the RMAF–because the RMAF had been told to stand down by HH. It could also be seen as an unwillingness to be shot down by Thailand, India or Indonesia—but the official flight track, if correct, has this one curious characteristic–it ambles around within KUL FIR. If the full set of Inmarsat data was released, I suspect it would show evidence of CPDLC communication between pilot and HH.
@Mike: thanks for the response – much appreciated. Love the quote.
Only things I’d still love to hear from you on are…
1) (old) if/how I might lay hands on your detailed “decompression scenario” model
2) (old) whether you agree acoustic pings had nothing to do with MOVING search NE (just KEPT it there a good long while)
3) (new) re: “endurance is similar” – HOW similar? Do you have performance charts to which you could link me, to help me educate myself? Yesterday, the ATSB published their latest performance limits; they suggest that, as speed (and altitude) decrease, maximum endurance REDUCES – enough to make the 7th arc unreachable at speeds slower than around 350ktas.
@Mike: hogging your time, to be sure – apologies. But…
4) (new) how did you get the IG to accept that the decompression scenario’s required flight path (long, slow, spectacularly trigonometric curl) followed your abiding “consistent with likely human factors” principle? I would have thought any flight path through the arcs that wasn’t (a wind-blown version of) “straight” would struggle to survive Occam’s edits.
@Brock McEwen: Be careful to not confuse endurance (length of time) and range (distance). A slower plane might have a similar endurance but certainly lower range.
@Victor: Agreed. I have been talking about endurance – consistently and exclusively – since April.
I think of the Inmarsat arcs as “endurance isobars”. If ATSB has its performance limit crossing the 7th arc at s27, that is equivalent to saying “the ATSB thinks the plane won’t stay aloft until 00:19 if it goes any slower than the (roughly 350kt) speed of the path through that intersection point”.
Agreed?
Sounds good.
Wow – a post that wasn’t vaporized.
Lucy: stay on that road.
Thanks, Victor.
Hope that also clarifies what I’ve been on & on about: that the ATSB’s own models (as interpreted through Figure 3, Jun.26 report, re-affirmed Oct.8) should have told them that s21 was infeasible – not because MH370 lacked the range, but because it couldn’t stay aloft that long at 323kts.
The “NW point at 1912” concept was a very murky, very late backfill that reeked of CYA. Counterintuitively, if you DON’T give MH370 extra distance (e.g. around NW tip Sumatra) – and then head for s21 – you run out of fuel well before 00:19, because the arcs force you to go too slow. So they invented that extra distance, to retroactively justify searching at an otherwise physically impossible flight endpoint.
The only reason the June 26-reported performance line reaches all the way up to[where they searched for FDR signals] is because of this invented extra distance. That is what I think journalists (and/or the IG), on behalf of the families, should ask the ATSB to explain.
Pointedly.
I apologize to anyone I’ve berated for not joining me in protest, without first checking to ensure they’ve grasped my point. The fault is mine for having assumed I’d fully explained it. (In my defense, it is FIENDISHLY counter-intuitive.)
@Victor: puts the suppression of radar and/or signal data at NW tip of Sumatra in a decidedly different light, doesn’t it? Either or both may have PROVEN an early turn – and thus the infeasibility of s21.
@ALL
ATSB WILL EXTEND WIDTH OF SEARCH AREA, NOT “NARROW” IT
The following is the text of an e-mail I received today from ATSB.
Much of the info, was in ATSB’s newest public report, but not all.
(For the map referred to in the e-mail, pls consult the most recent ATSB Update.
Dear Mr Fiorentino,
Thank you for your email. I have consulted with my colleagues and they have advised that the wide search area remains as defined previously (in the map below, as represented by the grey polygon). We still consider a 50NM width across the arc as reasonable in line with our June report. Our recent MH370 – Flight path analysis update advised:
‘Whilst the systems analysis and simulation activities are ongoing, based on the analysis to date, the search area width described in the June report (note that was -20NM and +30NM around the seventh arc) remains reasonable with the underwater search to commence at the 7th arc and progress outwards both easterly and westerly.
The underwater search areas on the map below are the areas that bathymetry will have been completed in initial preparation for the three (Go Phoenix, Fugro Discovery and Fugro Equator) underwater search assets. The southern area is approx. 36NM wide and the northern area 20NM wide with the width a consequence of deployment timings. These widths will be extended if necessary as the search progresses.
Regards,
(REDACTED
Australian Transport Safety Bureau
E ATSBinfo@atsb.gov.au / P 1800-020-606
John – that email suggests to me they think they are on the spot pretty much now and will spread out before they head north? So with each day those nails are going to get bitten down a bit further.
I think there are some “human factors” involved in the 370 community as well. I’m not dying to be right on this but I think the slavish devotion to a handful of suspect numbers could end in disappointment. If the numbers are crap I suppose the middle of nowhere is exactly where you might expect to end up? Miles O’Brien made a slightly crushing point the other night – Af447 left well over 3000 bits of debris that were showing up 2 years later. MH370…..zero.
@Matty-Perth
I’m not too sure they think they’re definitely “on the spot”..but maybe…..here’s the reasoning they present.
“36NM wide and the northern area 20NM wide with the width a consequence of deployment timings.”
I was most concerned with the IG recommendation to “narrow” that area. And their statement that they believed MH370 was within 1nm of the 7th arc.
That’s a little Annie Oakley for me.
They have MH350 dropping like an F-18 in a death spiral….That’s extremely unlikely. What would the causation be for a 777 at cruise for hrs and hrs, whose main problem is running out of fuel?
Widebodies don’t just drop out of the sky from cruise, unless they explode, or otherwise begin to disintegrate, or are intentionally put into a dive.
Plus all of that speculation is based on questionable BFO values that Inmarsat now publicly says we should disregard.
The rationale applied by the IG was to narrow the search area so funds would be available (in the event the plane wasn’t found) to continue crawling North up the arc looking for the plane based on some more info. from those who at that point would have already proven they were wrong about the plane’s location.
No thanks. I didn’t buy it, and thankfully neither did ATSB.
Human factors? You bet, but not the silliness relayed in the IG report. (See my responses)
The plane (most likely was headed to Perth) It was intentionally diverted. IMHO
John – I’m not interested in disparaging anyone’s work, particularly as I’m sort of from the Gen McTiernan school and put the numbers in the bin day one, but the 1nm thing looks like a bit of self hypnotism. The BTO-BFO thing became an intense hobby horse for a whole legion of over 50 guys with a bit of time and some math background. Although I think the IG are positively altruistic compared to Inmarsat. Keeping the dodgy pings up the sleeve when the IG thought there was good cooperation! Never trusted Inmarsat, Rand says I’m not the trusting type, but while the ATSB wears the hits, they intend to spring out triumphantly if they find it, and don’t expect any kudos to flow on from there – my tip.
John: I will be frank, if you don’t mind, while you can remain John.
I am fairly certain that you had an exchange with Exner not more than 72 hours previous regarding the semantics surrounding shared references to “1 nm within the 7th arc.” And now you misstate the IG’s meaning once again, continuing with references to ‘silliness,’ etc.
Really?
As a fellow rhetorician, I don’t believe you are doing yourself any favors by continuing to bait and otherwise needle members of the IG. Watch what happens next: Victor will most assuredly not reply to you, while with Exner I would guess that you have another chance or two before with him, too, you find yourself on the more staticy end of radio silence. As for Duncan tossing you off his blog, you shouldn’t be sore about it. If Jeff is a barkeep, then Duncan was a crotchedly game show host: part of his schtick was throwing people out on their ear simply for the entertainment value of it. You shouldn’t take it personally, while neither should you feel that you need to project toughness and armor up. Just let it go…
As for general practices, I would suggest that there is no need to gnaw continually on the skulls of the IG or anyone else in the peanut gallery; there are plenty of fatter, dumber or more sinister targets out there waiting for a good beating.
Regards,
Frank
@Matty-Perth
Oh, I’m under no illusions.
What was it Ronald Reagan said? “Trust but verify” or words to that effect.
I appreciate your concern and respect your opinions, but I’ve been over the hill and through the woods more than once….. 🙂
@John
Please stop misstating the IG recommendation. You know yours is not a true description of what we have recommended.
Again, we believe there is a good chance MH370 is in a curved “box” ~20NM X 200NM, centered on -37.71, 88.75. That’s a 4,000 NM^2 area. No one has *ever* claimed it is within 1NM of the IG center point, as you continue to say. That is absurd. So stop misstating our position please.
You are obviously not an experienced pilot. If you were, you would know that a spiral dive is not only possible, it is almost certain in this case. The significant rudder trim required to hold a B777 on a constant heading (or track) with one engine out (an automatic response of the autopilot when one engine flames out) results in a very large unopposed yaw force once the second engine flames out, and the autopilot disengages. This cause a turn that quickly turns into a very steep spiral dive. The -2 Hz BFO value at 001937 indicates a vertical speed of >150 kts at that time, consistent with 370 spiraling in very close to the 7th arc, and within +/-100 NM along the arc.
Equator has been surveying a band ~520 NM long X 18-22NM wide, not 50NM wide. Obviously, if they don’t find it inside that band, they will expand it, but ATSB and the IG agree it is likely to be within +/-10NM of the nominal 7th arc. And we also agree the arc is only known to ~5NM. ATSB has consistently reaffirmed all that. We agree with it. So knock off the misinformation non-sense. We are not, and never have recommended a 1NM search width as you claim.
@RAND
Yeah, but Franky, the problem is I NEVER said what you indicate……1 nm within the 7th arc.”
What I said was……”within 1nm of the 7th arc.” and that’s what the IG said.
See the difference??……I hope
“John”
John – as Mike says, this shouldn’t take too long. Then, if no plane, I guess it careens off into a distinctly more wild realm as indicated by this story –
http://www.smh.com.au/world/mh370-emirates-airlines-head-tim-clark-says-missing-plane-was-under-control-probably-until-the-very-end-20141011-114llv.html
If people are jumping ship now it will get a whole lot worse if this search is not successful.
And would I be right in saying that with AF447 they didn’t need satellites to find debris?
@ MikeExner
“We are not, and never have recommended a 1NM search width as you claim.”
O never said that and you know it Mike. If you don’t you need to re-read a few things.
From YOUR report…….“impacted the water within 1 NM of the 7th arc.”
So who’s zoomin who?
Furthermore your description here……
would mainly be for an aircraft without TAC. In my response there is a description of how this works.
The ATSB simulation gives no mention of a “spiral dive” but rather a low bank angle spiral descent…….the two are far from the same thing.
If you disagree about the sims you may want to take it up with ATSB.