When Australia called off the surface search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on April 28, Prime Minister Tony Abbot explained that “It is highly unlikely at this stage that we will find any aircraft debris on the ocean surface. By this stage, 52 days into the search, most material would have become waterlogged and sunk.”
But would the debris really have sunk? Modern aircraft are made of metal, composites, and plastic, materials that do not get waterlogged. If, as the Australian Transport Safety Board (ATSB) believes is most likely, MH370 ran out of fuel and then crashed, it would have been moving at hundreds of miles per hour when it hit the sea. Much of the resulting debris would have settled down through the water column, but innumerable pieces would have remained afloat. After Air France Flight 447 went down in the middle of the Atlantic in 2009, searchers found some 3,000 pieces of debris scattered across the surface.
With the passage of time, the absence of MH370 debris becomes increasingly puzzling. Recently Emirates Airlines CEO Tim Clarke expressed frustration over the ATSB analysis of the plane’s fate, saying: ”Our experience tells us that in water incidents, where the aircraft has gone down, there is always something.” This is true. As far as I know, there have been no cases where a commercial airliner has crashed into the sea and no parts were recovered, even if the crash occured in an unknown location far out in the middle of the ocean, as MH370’s presumably did.
Consider the fate of the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser “Clipper Romance of the Skies,” which disappeared on the first leg of a planned round-the-world flight somewhere between San Francisco and Hawaii in 1957. An aircraft carrier was dispatched and found floating debris six days later, halfway between its origin and destination and 90 miles from its planned track, some 1,000 miles from the nearest land.
The area where MH370 is now believed most likely to have gone down is a bit further out to sea, some 1,500 miles southwest of Perth. But far more assets were been deployed in the search, including satellite, ships, and land-based aircraft. Indeed, the area was one of the first to be searched for surface wreckage back in March.
Still, it’s easy to imagine that even pieces of debris might have been overlooked in the vastness of the sea, especially given the uncertainty surrounding the plane’s crash site. That’s why many have long thought that the first hard proof of the plane’s fate might well take the form of flotsam washing up on a beach somewhere.
Despite Tony Abbott’s assertion, the ATSB remains open to this possibility, stating on its website:
“The ATSB continues to receive messages from members of the public who have found material washed up on the Australian coastline and think it may be wreckage or debris from MH370. The ATSB reviews all of this correspondence carefully, but drift modelling undertaken by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority [AMSA] has suggested that if there were any floating debris, it is far more likely to have travelled west, away from the coastline of Australia. It is possible that some materials may have drifted to the coastline of Indonesia, and an alert has been issued in that country, requesting that the authorities be alerted to any possible debris from the aircraft.”
It’s not clear why the AMSA believes that the debris’ main landfall would be to the north of the presumed impact area. Pioneering ocean-current researcher Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a retired professor of oceanography at the University of Washington, says that the South Indian Current should have been carrying MH370’s wreckage eastward, at a rate of five to ten miles per day. That implies an arrival window on the beaches of Western Australia of between mid-June and late September.
Computer models of drift patterns suggest a similar conclusion. I created the animated gif below from the website Adrift.org.au. Another website that yields similar results is Ocean Motion (my thanks to Brock McEwen for turning me onto that one).
Ebbesmeyer says that if we assume that the impact generated a million fragments, and that one-tenth of one percent of the fragments reach the coast, “that would give 1000 objects on the shore, or one per mile of Australian coastline. Not too bad odds.” Especially considering that beachcombers have been especially vigilant about collecting the world’s most famous pieces of flotsam. Back in April, a hunk of aluminum that washed up on an Australian beach generated headlines for days, before experts from the ATSB determined that it had not come from an aircraft (the ATSB has yet to reveal what it actually came from).
As I write this, warm weather is coming to Western Australia, and with every passing weekend more and more people are going to the beach. Earlier this month, on October 11 and 12, a nonprofit organization called the Tangaroa Blue foundation held its annual Western Australia Beach Cleanup. Some 1500 volunteers combed 130 beaches up and down the western coast collecting plastic rubbish and other debris. The goal of the event is to keep the coastline litter-free clean, but this year volunteers were well aware that they might well stumble upon evidence that could help solve history’s most puzzling aviation mystery. “When [MH370] first happened, and they said where they thought it went down, I said to myself, ‘Oh crap,” because I knew this is where it would come,” says event organizer Renee Mouritz. With those drift patterns in mind, the organization set up an informal protocol to pass along reports of any suspected MH370 debris to the AMSA. But so far, Mouritz says, “nobody has fed anything back to us.”
There’s an old saw that’s oft quoted in discussions of MH370: “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” But from a Bayesian perspective, the absence of data is itself data. If the plane crashed into the Indian Ocean, it should have created many pieces of debris, and some of those pieces should have wound up on a shore by now. The more time passes without that happening, the greater the possibility that the plane did not go into the ocean.
This idea makes some people extremely uncomfortable. Indeed, some people insist that we know that the plane is in the southern ocean because Inmarsat’s frequency data tells us that it must be. They argue that there are any number of reasons why the debris cannot be found. One is that the plane might have ditched gently enough to have remained intact, a sort of deepwater Miracle on the Hudson, though this obviously could not be the case if the ATSB’s default flew-south-on-autopilot-until-it-ran-out-of-gas scenario is correct.
Tim Clarke, for his part, appears less than completely convinced by the frequency data. As he puts it, “We have not seen a single thing that suggests categorically that this aircraft is where they say it is.” As time goes by without debris turning up, we can expect sentiments like Clarke’s to become increasingly common.
UPDATE: My assertion that no commercial plane crash at sea prompted Twitter use @fxnighttrader to alert me to the case of the Varig Boeing 707-323C freighter which disappeared off the coast of Japan in 1979. The plane had taken off from Narita and was 30 minutes into a planned flight to Rio de Janeiro when it ceased radio contact and was never heard from again. Intriguingly, among the cargo were 153 paintings by contemporary artist Manabu Mabe, which were valued at $1.24 million, or about $4 million in today’s money. @fxnighttrader writes, “This plane went into the ocean less than 200 miles from Japan and no piece was ever found,” but I think it would be more accurate to say that the plane vanished and no one ever figured out why.
UPDATE 2: Brock McEwan reports, “The ATSB seems to have just removed from their site all reference to the AMSA drift analysis.”
Using the (way cool) site Jeff linked us to, I extracted wind speeds for the IG site for the few days prior to March 8. I clicked on as close to this coordinate as possible (s37.75, e88.63), and then just changed the date/time in the address. The coordinate-specific data automatically updated. Here are the results:
(Date, Time, Lat, Long, Dir, kph, kts)
Mar.5, 0000Z, 37.75°S, 88.63°E, NW, 27, 15
Mar.5, 1200Z, 37.75°S, 88.63°E, NW, 32, 17
Mar.6, 0000Z, 37.75°S, 88.63°E, NW, 42, 23
Mar.6, 1200Z, 37.75°S, 88.63°E, SW, 42, 23
Mar.7, 0000Z, 37.75°S, 88.63°E, SW, 35, 19
Mar.7, 1200Z, 37.75°S, 88.63°E, SW, 30, 16
Mar.8, 0000Z, 37.75°S, 88.63°E, SW, 26, 14
(MuOne: your region of dead calm is there, but too far west.)
Implied waves: (never-wrong) Wikipedia tells me 20kt winds sustained for 10 hours builds waves from 0 to 5′. If true, 5′ is a very conservative estimate of wave height at that location and time.
I leave it to the pilots to confirm my suspicion re: feasibility of landing intact.
While corroborating data with more gravitas will surely be welcomed, I for one consider the matter settled: if the Inmarsat data is authentic, debris would almost certainly be created REGARDLESS of end-flight pilot scenario.
@Luigi:
Re your question:
“What is the relationship between altitude and maximum attainable true air speed for a 777 airliner under manual control?”
What my cousin just told me is to try to get your hands on a 777 performance manual – which would have some of the charts you’re looking for. He said he’d have to see more details re total take-off weight and other to have a better answer, because what’s possible in terms of manual control at what speed and altitude would depend on the specific circumstances. He has a manual somewhere but doesn’t believe it would be that useful – it’s a little older and the 777’s he’s flown were outfitted with Pratt & Whitney engines, not RR.
This may not be relevant for you, but he said something else interesting: when the 747 was stress tested, Boeing engineers put the aircraft into a full acrobatic roll – and the plane held up like a champ. He didn’t know if the same had been done for the 777 – and although not advisable, he doesn’t believe acrobatic maneuvers with the 777 would be impossible.
I believe your cousin is referring to the roll done by test pilot Tex Johnson back in the 1950’s on a 707 prototype, not a 747:
http://www.aviationexplorer.com/707_roll_video.htm
@Phil:
Thanks.
They may have done it with the 707 too. But he talked specifically about the 747.
@Nihonmama
Thanks for asking about the speed question. I tried to find the info in the Emirates 777 flight manual but didn’t come up with anything (it’s a huge document so maybe I missed it). From what little I’ve been able to find on this topic, my suspicion is that the maximum attainable mach would be pretty constant over a wide range of altitudes, with the corresponding TAS varying only slightly and actually increasing at some lower altitudes. If that’s correct (again, I’m not sure) and the plane’s speed were set to constant mach during the return/retreat phase, changes in altitude would have only minor influence on the TAS. I believe the same would be true if the plane was being “red-lined” under manual control. Of course, this would not be the most economical or the safest way to fly the plane — which strikes me as being completely irrelevant. To the best of our information, the plane was being flown by a guy whose self-described “obsession” was piloting a 777 on a home simulator. I doubt that he spent all those hours on the sim just keying in waypoints.
@Brock
>Inmarsat data is authentic, debris would almost certainly be created REGARDLESS of end-flight pilot scenario.
Your declaration of near cerrtainty is utterly specious. First, let’s be clear: It was daylight at this hour, this location.
Many pilots I have spoken to (including several of whom participated in a discussion on a.net which had them changing their tunes in regard to the t7 landing relatively intact once daylight was PROVEN, including Pihero, of pedastal fire infamy) believe a ditching of the a/c with an intact outcome to be well within the realm of possibility.
THE consensus was contrary to what you assert. If executed with great skill (as would have been the case), you MAY lose an engine. The conditions at the time would NOT have been prohibitive of an intact ditching.
YOU may consider the matter settled. I suggest you move along, then.
Unfortunately Brock McEwen, the large floating debris field sighted >23 March by French and Chinese satellites was not located at 37.75°S, 88.63°E.
The debris field containing one object 22mx13m was at 43.5834S, 90.5737E and further south.
The other issue is that there is a very long fetch at these latitudes therefore an estimate that might apply to the Atlantic wave height will not necessarily apply in the Southern Ocean.
This location is below the latitude of Tasmania and on a par with Fiordland New Zealand. I live in this country and have sailed the seas around NZ. You have no idea how huge the seas can be and the wind is not called the “Roaring Forties” for no reason.
A large storm bore down on this debris location on 26 March and presumably scattered or sank the largest debris.
Incidentally the Southern Arc seabed area which Fugro Discovery is searching is 320 nautical miles away from that debris field near 43.5834S, 90.5737E.
Why waste another $60 million not looking where the debris was?
Simon – I had always presumed that they headed north after the satellite debris fields turned up nothing? So did Inmarsat jerk it up there? Why walk away from a debris field? And then head right back to where it was?
@Nihonmama – a Boeing test pilot put a 707 in a barrel roll in a demonstration. He was told never to do it again. For that reason I doubt it was ever done on a 747 or a 777, but it should be possible nevertheless.
For other real-world stresses, see the approach of flight 175 towards WTC2. The last turn at that speed was well beyond the 767’s performance envelope. Also see the 777’s destructive wing testing.
On the other hand, see the runway breakup of the Asiana flight, and the relatively low speed water crash of Ethiopa 961, either of which should leave no doubt that the plane broke up if it indeed went into the SIO.
Hey JS:
Appreciate your comment.
I’ll simply say this: I think he knows the difference between a 747 and a 707. Actually, we both do. He said it was the former. I even asked him if there was a video anywhere – he said he hadn’t seen one, but there could be. He may have gotten that story from people at Boeing – or fellow pilots. He specifically said “Boeing engineers”. I didn’t have a chance to drill into it because it was late (for him) when we spoke, it was towards the end of the convo, and he had an early call for an international flight today. People are free to conclude that he was mistaken – or not.
And FWIW, we also talked about the lack of debris again. And because of the materials used in modern commercial aircraft, he (still) doesn’t buy that a 777 went into the SIO and nothing from that aircraft has popped up. An older, heavy aircraft comprised of different materials? Maybe. But not this one.
So did MH370 (and everything on it) vaporize upon impact? Or did it go into the SIO, leave debris and the debris surfaced but was missed because the search was in the wrong place? Or did it not go into the SIO (or at least, that part of it) at all?
Let’s see what hard-working Fugro & Co. turn up.
>Inmarsat data is authentic, debris would almost certainly be created REGARDLESS of end-flight pilot scenario.
> I for one consider the matter settled:
Settled? Funny that all the pilots I’ve spoken to, when made aware of the fact that daylight was indeed shining down upon the ‘glassy’ SIO water that morning, in that location, ALL said they could probably set the the ‘built like a brick shit house’ t7 down losing nothing, MAYBE an engine.
Glad to see you with such clarity.
Discovery has made an unexpected, unexplained turn to the NW.
https://twitter.com/Airlandseaman/status/528339150865317888/photo/1
Turning into the wind, for whatever reason?
http://earth.nullschool.net/#2014/11/01/0000Z/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-270.14,-19.23,621/grid=on
Mike – have they decided to chase after some of the leads that the survey has thrown up?
Whatever it is, it isn’t much of a look, but the bland frigid seabed isn’t much of a look either. Hopefully they are onto something?
Discovery probably lost the towfish while turning around and is now chasing it.
Spencer – if it went down in one large piece then it would be on the bottom rather like a shipwreck? And those aren’t all that hard to spot, even without the latest and best. They turn up all the time during surveys, but not this survey?
Confirmed: Turn to NW was due to local weather condx.
@Spencer: we don’t disagree on logic; we disagree on the basic facts.
The earth.nullschool.net site (see Jeff’s link, p.1 of this thread) says the “landing pad” (s38,e89 for this discussion) was subject to continuous winds averaging nearly 20 knots for the week leading up to the “landing”.
If you disagree with that data – or its (to me) clear indication of a sizeable swell on an open ocean – please bring to this forum your better data.
@Brock @spencer
The s38/e89 “landing pad” is merely a guess derived from a model constrained by hopeful assumptions which don’t hold if the plane was controlled to the end. If absence of debris is problematic then that suggests those (weak) assumptions are defective. There’s no need to throw the SIO baby out with the bathwater. Just because you don’t find your keys under a street lamp, it doesn’t mean they’ve been spirited away.
Personally I’m not convinced the failure to find debris tells us anything at all. In any case, assumptions are not the same thing as evidence, and the reality is we actually know very little about the last hours of this flight.
Luigi re: Altitude vs. Speed
I believe it’s the other way around. Depending on the settings, as the altitude increases, the speed increases and the fuel burn rate actually decreases a bit. If you look at figures 2 and 3 of the October 8 ATSB report, you will see significant increases in the distance traveled at increasing altitudes. And because their travel time is constant (19:41 to 00:19 in the ATSB report) the speed had to increase to cover the greater distance at each of the specified altitudes.
Also, the Delta manual lists a maximum cruising speed of 520KTAS for a B777-200ER w/RR 892 engines.
I think the people working on this at the ATSB and the IG are a whole lot smarter than I and the ATSB group has access to better MRC/Burn Rate data too, but using the posted burn rates along with Dr. Ulich’s calculated 6.13mt/hr burn rate, I found the following bits of information:
At FL400 a speed of 522KTAS is necessary to burn MH370’s average of 6.13mt/hr. This speed is slightly higher than the listed maximum cruising speed. Depending on the location of the “turn south,” this speed would put the impact point even further south than the IG’s location
6.13mt/hr is consistent with an average speed of 499kts at a constant FL360. These values put the impact at Dr. Ulich’s predicted location.
IF I understood Gysbreght correctly,and IF the AP was set to the MRC mode so the pitch would remain relatively constant, and IF the posted burn rates are more reliable than those in the Delta manual, the a/c’s speed and altitude would increase as fuel is burned. I mention this is because I believe that setting the AP to MRC is more probable than a constant speed and constant altitude setting. I am curious to learn if anyone evaluated an increasing speed against the BFO and BTO values?
@LaurenH,
I have previously looked at routes that best fit an increasing speed with time. The results are shown in Section 3 in my Addendum 3:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzOIIFNlx2aUMjhBWmk4ZlBBNEk/view?usp=sharing
I looked at all slopes between -5 knots per hour and +5 knots per hour. The best fits for any given slope in this range (for a great circle route) all fall very close to 192 degrees initial bearing (and thus end near 40.2 S.
@LaurenH: I don’t think that the speed would increase if the plane were following a stepped-climb to reduce fuel consumption.
When I look at Boeing’s Flight Planning and Performance Manual for a B777 with GE90 engines (not RR, but all we have), and in particular the Long Range Cruise (LRC) tables (not MRC, but again all we have), the LRC speed and fuel rate vary with weight for a given altitude. For a weight of 220,000 kg (the approximate weight at 17:07), the optimum TAS and altitude is 481 knots (M=0.838)@ 37,000 ft. For a weight of 170,000 kg (the approximate zero fuel weight), the optimum TAS and altitude is 481 knots @ 42,000 ft. The fuel rate (per engine) would vary between 3,185 and 2,550 kg/hr over that weight range. So, as the plane burns fuel, it climbs but the TAS does not change over this weight range.
If, on the other hand, the plane were flying at a constant 35,000 ft, the optimum TAS would vary between 481 knots (M=0.834) and 451 knots (M=0.782), and the fuel rate (per engine) would vary between 3,204 and 2,544 kg/hr over that weight range. So, if the altitude is held constant, the plane slows as it burns fuel.
I have not included the effects of temperature offset from standard conditions, which would increase both the TAS (by holding Mach number constant) and the fuel rate and result in a lower range.
The bottom line is that I do not believe there is a flight mode in which the TAS increases as fuel is burned. Of course, the ground speed may increase if there is either a tail wind or temperature field that increases as the plane proceeds on its path. However, MH370 traveled into higher head winds and lower temperature offsets with time.
Further to the unlikelihood of debris washing ashore from a remote ocean crash, see the below account from the San Jose Mercury News:
Not long after a massive earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan in 2011, washing whole towns out to sea, concerns grew that huge amounts of debris could wash up on California’s coast.
But as an estimated 70,000 Californians prepare to participate Saturday in the state’s annual coastal cleanup, the question remains: Where is it?
Very little tsunami trash has reached California, or other Pacific coastal states, even though the disaster happened 2 1/2 years ago.
Federal officials have confirmed only 35 objects from the tsunami that have come ashore in the United States and British Columbia, ranging from two large chunks of docks that washed up in Oregon and Washington state last year to a soccer ball found off an Alaskan island and traced back to a Japanese schoolboy.
“It’s possible that a great deal of it sank or broke up,” said Dianna Parker, a spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“Marine debris can become waterlogged and sink or be damaged by storms and wave action,” she said. “It’s also possible that we’ve seen the majority of it wash ashore that we’re going to get. If more continues to wash ashore, we’re prepared.”
The magnitude 9.0 Tohoku earthquake in March 2011 was the largest recorded in Japanese history. It killed 15,833 people, destroyed 129,000 buildings and triggered a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant.
Afterward, the Japanese Ministry of the Environment estimated that 5 million tons of debris — everything from smashed homes to drums of chemicals to tires to millions of plastic toys, bottles and pieces of furniture — ended up in the ocean, but that 70 percent of it sank in the first few weeks.
Computer models produced by NOAA scientists based on winds and currents show that the largest concentration of debris could still be floating in the ocean between Hawaii and Alaska, about 750 miles off California.
VictorI,
“The bottom line is that I do not believe there is a flight mode in which the TAS increases as fuel is burned.”
With the AP in ALT HOLD, the A/T off, thrust levers in fixed position, TAS, CAS & Mach increase as fuel is burned. I’m not suggesting that occurred.
@Gysbreght. Yes, you are right. I should have been more precise. My point was that a stepped climb does not cause the speed to increase. For the case in which the altitude is held constant, I am assuming the autothrottle is enabled so that Mach number (or TAS) is constant.
@Luigi: from my same source, here are winds at Inmarsat’s best estimate (s34.7, e93.0):
Mar.6, 0000Z, 34.76°S, 93.02°E, NW, 30, 16
Mar.6, 1200Z, 34.76°S, 93.02°E, WNW, 33, 18
Mar.7, 0000Z, 34.76°S, 93.02°E, SSW, 34, 18
Mar.7, 1200Z, 34.76°S, 93.02°E, SSW, 28, 15
Mar.8, 0000Z, 34.76°S, 93.02°E, SSW, 28, 15
(A visual inspection suggested no points of dead (or even relative) calm in between the IG (s38) and Inmarsat (s36) locations.)
This would produce waves. Here’s a site that has (scroll halfway down) a chart that helped me understand wave height as a function of wind speed, duration, and fetch (learned a new word yesterday):
http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/oceanography/courses_html/OCN201/laboratory/waves.html
36 hours at 15-18kts produces (to my eye) 6′ waves (72 hours at 20kts at the IG’s s38: closer to 10′). Do you disagree?
@anyone with different pet coordinates: I recommend you work the site yourself (or find a better source), and find out what wave conditions actually were at your location before advancing theories requiring Hudson-like conditions.
Folks, it’d beat anything Hollywood had to offer if zero debris was due to someone pulling a Sully out in the middle of an ocean – I get how hard it is to let go of this scenario. But it seems to me to be hitting the brick wall of science.
I’d much rather focus on AMSA’s odd assertion that debris drifted WEST. (My request to AMSA for details on their analysis is now 5 days old; no response so far. I’m as shocked as you.)
@Bruce: you always raise good points. But adrift.org.au seems to predict BOTH
1) LOTS of MH370 debris at AU shores after 8mo, AND
2) LACK of Japan debris at NA shores after 34mo.
I can tweet screenshots if need be (water next to AU = bright red; next to NA = blue + a few green dots). But I encourage you to try it yourself.
I’d guess it has a lot to do with the drift distance being tripled.
Bruce – I’d say that the prediction of masses of tsunami debris essentially migrating from coastal Japanese waters to west coast USA was maybe largely speculative to begin with? Claims are made all the time.
If MH370 left a debris field down there then we most likely photographed it from space along with the other rubbish patches. But litter fields that are there and gone on the satellite are also consistent with a passing ship tossing out the garbage as they do unfortunately.
And at any time there are X number of upturned hulls and shipping containers bobbing around out there which eventually go to the bottom, hopefully before someone runs into one.
A disintegrating 777 though would characteristically produce a floaties of various kinds.
Flying down there to see a glassy sea would be like winning the lottery.
And if it didn’t disintegrate it’s sitting on the bottom a la Titanic and it would stick out like dogs balls.
Bruce – tsunami debris – The more you look at the map it’s amazing by itself. Items like soccerballs and portions of pier are designed to float and some made it all that way, so buoyant materials have a long drift life? The search area to the Australian coast is a fraction of the distance.
Hitting a chunk of sumberged pier in the catamaran would mess up a days cruising?
OK 5th post in a row and I’m off for the day: If, it was a high speed crash as many favour then potentially hundreds of bright orange life jackets would have been dispersed with or without people in them. They are almost guaranteed to show up?
Brock, Matty: +10
Bruce: a big reason that much of the debris from the Fukushima earthquake has not hit our CA shores as predicted (yet) is because (at least) some of it got caught in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — between Cali and Hawaii:
http://bit.ly/1DICdFY
NB, from the same article:
“If the Malaysian Boeing 777 crashed into the zone off the west coast of Australia where searchers are now looking, and if some of that debris remains undiscovered, it is already on its journey west toward Madagascar to join the rest of the junk in the Indian Ocean garbage patch, arriving in about a year.”
@LaurenH
>> Luigi re: Altitude vs. Speed
>> I believe it’s the other way around. Depending on the settings, as the altitude
>> increases, the speed increases and the fuel burn rate actually decreases a bit.
I don’t doubt that if you fly below standard cruise altitude at the same TAS or the same mach, your fuel consumption will increase. That was not the issue. The discussion re speed-vs-altitude was sparked by the claim that the plane must have flown at a level altitude (35000 ft) — contradicting multiple lines of evidence — during the return to Malaysia. I have asked several times here for someone to back that up with some data, and so far I haven’t found any takers. Again, what little I have been able to find online on the question of max speed vs. aircraft altitude tends to suggest that this argument is bogus. I am quite open to any evidence to the contrary — such as doghouse plot for the 777 showing a significant reduction in max TAS below standard cruise — but, again, I have yet to see any.
@Brock
I don’t have a favored “landing pad” because I don’t have a favored model for the southward leg of the flight. Without a constraining model we’re just left with a huge area the size of Wales or Texas or California or whatever is the comparison du jour. Incidentally, there’s nothing particularly far-fetched about the pilot attempting to avoid a breakup — that’s compatible with the pilot deliberately trying to entomb the plane, or instinctively trying to maximize the chance of survivors. And, there is no data to indicate that the pilot was dead or incapacitated at the end of the flight.
I am not picking favorites on the end-game here, because the evidence is lacking to do so. If the absence of debris is a problem, as our host has suggested, then it’s perfectly possible that the plane hit the water relatively softly, broke into a couple of large pieces and rapidly sank to the bottom of the deep ocean. Alternatively, maybe the lack of debris just isn’t remarkable, as others here have suggested. Personally, I’m quite drawn to the interpretation that the final BFO, suggestive of a near-vertical dive at 15000 fpm, reflects physical motion rather than electronic gremlins. But, Immarsat casts doubt on that interpretation in their paper, and the 5000 fpm descent suggested by the penultimate BFO does not rule out a last-minute attempt to ditch the plane by the pilot.
@Luigi
> don’t have a favored “landing pad” because I don’t have a favored model for the southward leg of the flight.
Nor do I, particularly. However, to contend that even a relatively intact t7 is ‘hitting the brick wall of science’ as Mr. McEwen does is the true fiction being woven (not surprising coming from inimitable mouthpiece of GRAND conspiracy).
If one is to accept that MH370 was a deliberate and intentional deviation (of a nefarious nature), and that Zaharie was the lone responsible party (as I do, absolutely and unequivocally), then one must also conclude that the MOST likely scenario accompanying the southern leg is a pilot in command of his aircraft.
For it to be otherwise, one would have to accept that he either killed himself around the time of the turn south (or in the ensuing 4 hours), or a successful/unsuccessful interdiction was launched by pax and/or crew. This latter scenario is quite improbable.
Whether Z put the plane into a high speed dive or set it down niftily in the SIO remains to be seen, but to consider the matter ‘settled’ (yes, Mr. McEwen) is just foolish.
@Luigi: at what altitude(s) do YOU think the plane flew on its westward leg?
Simon Gunson,
I read with great interest your comments re the debris field. I have previously posted here my observation of a great amount of large aircraft flying over my house, flying south.. I live just east of Hobart Tasmania, and this is not a flight path, except for the odd small plane flying tourists to the far South Cape and it’s even unusual for these in winter…. With the risk of looking a complete fool again as this is probably not related, but it’s just that the activity started with the Mh370 search and finished a few weeks ago.. South Cape is 43 degrees south… Anyway I hope I haven’t wasted your time…jacq
In response to comments on Jeff’s previous post…
@Bruce Lamon, RADAR
There are two references to RADAR data in MH370 communications from “the authorities”: a) figure 2, page 3, of the ATSB Search Area Report [1]; and b) the ‘Beijing Lido’ image.
a) I tend to regard the ATSB fig 2 image as purely illustrative and note that the image is attributed to the ‘JIT’, not the ATSB. There’s no indication for the source of the data used to create the path as illustrated. JIT appears to be the “joint invisible international independent investigation team” established by Malaysia.
b) The ‘Beijing Lido’ image was presented during a NoK briefing by a Malaysian delegation and it appears to convey machine logged data: time stamps and location points. It remains my opinion that the data was sourced from the Thai air defence surveillance, RTADS-III, installations at Khok Muang and Phuket.
:Don
[1] MH370 – Definition of Underwater Search Areas; ATSB; 18 Aug 2014
and….
@Gysbrecht, Autopilot Flight Director System mode selection.
After transforming the ‘Beijing’ image, correcting the perspective distortion by re-aligning points to a map [2], it’s evident that there’s a turn at N0602.0E09800.0 and the subsequent leg coincides with waypoints VAMPI & MEKAR possibly continuing to ANOKO (the last point at 18:22 is not aligned with airway N571). In attempting to reason out the AFDS mode my conclusion is that an LNAV defined route is the simplest method to get to a destination: set & forget, no need to continuously check progress along a track to intercept a point before making another turn.
:Don
[2] For Google Earth, KML file for Beijing RADAR track
(continued, URL quoting limits..)
[2] For Google Earth, RADAR track segments vs RTADS-III sites.
@GuardedDon,
I’ve noted your opinion. Even if he did all the typing on the little keyboard to define a new LNAV route, he could still divert from it at any time, on autopilot or manually. The real question is: what is the last time he did that?
Don, thanks very much–your comments and maps give me more confidence in the validity of the 18:22 radar position, which to me has been the most questionable assumption in Bobby Ulich’s solution (and the ATSB/IG search area).
But really what I was asking was your opinion as to why the Malaysians, who (as you showed in your June paper) installed new primary radar in 2010 with a nominal range of 220 nm at three separate installations which could have tracked MH370 after 17:21, including Western Hill, which could have tracked MH370 to 18:22 at least–why is there no publication of Malaysian primary radar tracking of MH370?
I agree with you that the “national security” explanation makes no sense. I suspect there was an embarrassing malfunction that “forced” Hishamuddin to make up that ridiculous story that the military decided there was no threat.
@Brock
>> at what altitude(s) do YOU think the plane flew on its westward leg?
Early reporting (March 14) in the New York Times, presumably sourced to Malaysian military officials, indicates that the plane descended to 23,000 ft after the diversion.
A March 23 CNN report, citing Malaysian military sources, says the plane dropped as low as 12,000 ft at some point before disappearing off radar:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/23/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/
The accompanying CNN video report, which references the Kota Bharu eyewitnesses, is of interest.
An altitude of 23,000 ft does not seem low enough to prompt eyewitnesses to contact the police. A drop to 12,000 ft (IIRC, some reporting mentioned even lower altitudes of 5-10,000 ft) does seem low enough to attract attention. The lower number also seems more consistent with the cell tower reconnect to the co-pilot’s phone near Penang, initially reported in the Asian press and confirmed by US officials.
The seven-point 18:25-18:28 BFO data series associated with the satcom reboot/login appears to trace out a sudden, steep ascent during this 3-minute interval, featuring peak climb rate and acceleration values of at least 6000 fpm and 0.45g. The Immarsat paper casts doubt on a physical interpretation of the BFO deltas in this series as well as the very last BFO indicative of a 15,000 fpm descent at the SIO terminus. Per that paper, examination of the BFOs from satcom login messaging in other flights suggests that only the initial login packet gives a reliable BFO. However, the discussion of this issue in the paper is actually non-commital, suggestive of a lack of concensus within the team, and inspection of the data values makes me at least somewhat skeptical of the “gremlins” interpretation. Dr. Ulich, in his analysis of the 18:25-18:28 series (which takes the BFOs at face value) estimates a total altitude gain of about 5,000 ft during this interval. That’s probably a conservative estimate. The 18:25-18:28 message series is the only BFO data we have that might speak to the question of altitude during the return/retreat phase of the flight, since the satcom was disabled at the time of the diversion.
It certainly makes sense that the plane would descend on returning to the homeland on any of a variety of scenarios, sinister and otherwise. The plane seems to have maintained a high speed throughout the return/retreat (based on Dr. Ulich’s analysis), which is less compatible with non-sinister scenarios, but those are scenarios are mostly off the table now anyway for a multitude of other reasons. It would be more puzzling if the plane had remained at normal cruise altitude of 35,000 ft the whole time during the return and all the subsequent zigzag maneuvers, although some of the modeling enthusiasts seem to like that scenario — perhaps because it makes their enterprise tenable.
I suppose one could imagine a freak mechanical or electronics failure leaving the pilots with no control surfaces but the rudder, after which the plane just careens around at high altitude like a billiard ball for ~7 hours. That seems pretty implausible. Also, even in that unlikely circumstance, would not the logical response have been to throttle back and lose altitude gradually, in the hope of effecting a less-than-completely catastrophic ditching of the plane? I suppose we could add another extraordinary assumption to address that — the throttle froze up at the same time as all control surfaces but the rudder. Only, it appears that the plane accelerated to significantly higher than standard cruise speed after the diversion, so that doesn’t make much sense either… Of course, we could just accept that the evidence points to a vengeful pilot with a big grudge and an enthusiasm for flight sims snatching the plane during the Malaysia-Vietnam handoff and high-tailing it back to buzz the homeland at maximum mach. And, that’s certainly my preferred model.
@Simon, @Jacques: if debris was at [s44.69, e90.42] on March 23, it MIGHT (depending on winds) have just missed Oz to the south, as it drifted east. Winds over the next couple of days WERE fairly strong out of the NNW, but nothing dramatic, or sustained.
If the debris DID pass Oz to the south, it would explain the lack of debris recovered, and MIGHT explain Jacques’ sightings.
While this theory is inconsistent with many aspects of the official story, my attempts to subject the official story to scientific scrutiny have apparently earned me quite a “grand” reputation, so you’d better hope I don’t ruin your credibility by endorsing it.
On the issue of Malaysia’s national security, the comments by former defense industry analyst and journo Peter La Franchi (http://au.linkedin.com/pub/peter-la-franchi/48/b5/659 comments) are quite interesting.
International Business Times
A.U. Edition
Thursday, May 22, 2014
MH370: Australia Seems Conspiring to Hide Something, Random Letter Sparks Questions on Au’s Security Radar
By Athena Yenko
A random letter from John Williams from Lemon Tree Passage posted to Newcastle Herald’s opinion section is now stirring interest from conspiracy theorists.
Mr William’s letter said that Australia’s security system is capable of tracking MH370 but why this system did not track the plane is such a perplexity.
“REGARDING missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: Australia has a very high-tech, early warning coastal security system formally called the Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN).It can track surface craft as well as aircraft the size of a Cessna 182 at 3000 kilometres. If an unidentified aircraft, as suggested, came down our north-west coast, automatic alarms should have activated. If an aircraft the size of Boeing 777 with no identity response got through, what next? Or did it not enter our airspace?”
Curiously, a journalist named Peter La Franchi commented in detail, expressing his opinion that Australia, clearly has a lot more explaining to do, and on a wide number of fronts.
According to Mr La Franchi JORN has a range of at least 12,300km. The capability of this system was shown to journalists, himself included, through the Laverton radar station and the central control station in Adelaide in September 1999. He said Defence had actually demonstrated JORN’s capability when the system was utilised by US to test its radar technology as was written in a press release dated July 27 2004. He implied that indeed, with JORN, MH370 should have been detected by Australian radar.
Mr La Franchi explained further that the Laverton, WA radar is aligned as a right angle, with the two array antenna extending from just west of north to due south west and due south east.
“This means this a permanent lobe of the radar facing across the Indian Ocean. The radar can be seen on Google Earth at -28.314032, 122.843153. If the radar is switched on, then the left lobe can only look directly into the Northwest, which is the identical direction the radar must look if it is to monitor the approaches to Australia’s island territories. If as Defence has claimed, in statements to a number of media on 17-18 March 2014, that JORN was monitoring the northwest shelf area out to the island territories, then the left lobe was clearly switched on,” he explained thoroughly.
With this, he explained that JORN can search most of the way to India.
“Given this, the only way for the radar not to have detected something like MH370 is for it to be switched off at the time, which raises its own questions.”
The most interesting detail the Mr La Franchi pointed out is that Australia, Malaysia, Singapore and the United Kingdom jointly operate the Five Power Defence Arrangement (FPDA) integrated air defence centre based in Malaysia.
He said that Australia had even funded the modernisation of the centre back in 1990. The modernisation entailed for the centre to be able to “recognised air picture” of all of Southeast Asian airspace using feeds from both civil and military radars.
“That centre has a live feed into the Australian Air Defence Ground Environment (ADGE) which underwent extensive modernisation across the 2000s. The FPDA integrated air defence data is fused with data from JORN in the ADGE, with this data available in real time at centres in Adelaide, Canberra and Newcastle,” he explained.
With this information at hand, Mr La Franchi could not understand why MH370 was never detected by Australian system.
“If the FPDA recognised air defence picture was operating – and it appears from Malaysian media claims that it was – then Australian defence force personnel would have been able to see that same data at the same time.”
Thanks, Luigi. Your sources and theories are already well-documented, as is my assessment of them; I was just asking for an actual altitude – which, to my knowledge, you had never supplied.
Are you saying 12,000 feet is the primary altitude at which you think MH370 flew west?
>> Are you saying 12,000 feet is the primary
>> altitude at which you think MH370 flew west?
No, I’m saying the evidence strongly suggests that the plane made major altitude changes during the return to Malaysia, and was not flying at a constant 35K standard cruise altitude as several people here including our host have claimed.
FWIW, there is Duncan Steel’s 2014/05/03 AT 10:03 comment on his site that cites his personal experience to dismiss JORN as a possible tracking source for MH370:
http://www.duncansteel.com/archives/743