This is happening late at night and will bear further discussion in the morning, but I wanted to get something up online quickly to explain the basic gist of the situation. A little over an hour ago, at 9.30pm EDT here in the US, the Australian government announced that it was abandoning the current search area and moving to a new one 11oo km to the northeast. The reason, they said, is:
The search area for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has been updated after a new credible lead was provided to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA)… The new information is based on continuing analysis of radar data between the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca before radar contact was lost. It indicated that the aircraft was travelling faster than previously estimated, resulting in increased fuel usage and reducing the possible distance the aircraft travelled south into the Indian Ocean.
This explanation really doesn’t make any sense. I want to quickly explain why, and give some context of where all this is happening geographically.
First, here’s a very crude chart I’ve made on Google Earth showing the old search area and the new search area (very roughly estimated). You’ll recall that earlier this week Inmarsat released an analysis of its “ping” data that plotted different routes the aircraft might have taken. The upshot was that if the plane was flying at 450 knots, it would have wound up at a spot on the 8.11am ping arc marked “450.” If it had flown at 400 knots, it would have wound up around the spot marked “400.” (click to enlarge)
As you can see, it appears that the old search area assumed a flying speed of a bit more than 450 knots, and the new search area assumes a flying speed of a bit more than 400 knots, with prevailing currents causing debris to drift to the southeast.
The shifting of the search area to the northeast would seem to stand at odds with the assertion of the press release, which implies that new radar analysis finds the plane was flying faster then originally estimated. In fact, it was flying slower than originally estimated.
At any rate, the abandoning of the old search area, after such significant assets had been lavished upon it, raises the question of why they were so confident about it that speed estimate in the first place. And then raises the obvious sequela: Why are they so confident in this one?
BTW, here’s that graphic from the Inmarsat, showing the 450 and 400 knot plots:
On Submarines: The decision by the British govt advertise the presence of HMS Tireless reeks of political opportunism and would not have gone down well. Submarine operations, and the mentality of the crews are normally paranoid about secrecy and stealth. When they leave a port or enter one you never really know where they are headed. So much so that an Australian sub commander I have met talks about slipping away from Perth via a canyon on the seabed just off the coast which they follow to the edge of the continental shelf, because “you can’t be detected down there.” They mask their departure because the respective intel agencies are always trying monitor sub movements. It’s indicative of how they do everything and as I have already mentioned points to other subs being involved in the search. The Australian subs are based here and the US nukes range widely. So here we most likely have long time defence allies using major defence assets to find a box? Not a normal crash investigation by any means. There is only one ingredient that could attract such a response and that is the possibility of an act of terrorism. I’ll stick to my tune – I don’t think they know where it is period, but they are dead keen to confirm the ocean as the resting place and they can’t rest unless they can.
Duncan Steel has a new , incredible useful post! Someone reverse engineered the other, earlier ping rings:
duncansteel.com/archives/549
If this info is to be trusted, one can contruct more exactly, where the plane went after it’s last known position. Unfortunately, this position is debatable. If we trust the info, that Malaysian military radar spotted it last at 18:15/18:22 UTC (you find conflicting reports) heading in a Northwestern direction over the Northern end of Malacca Straight, then you can make a good guess, in which area it could’ve been 9 minutes later (the time of the first ping), if you estimate the plane’s speed!
Apparently, it went further West, than we thought, and if it then went South, it still could’ve avoided Indonesian air space! That might corroborate Indonesia’s statement, that they’ve not spotted the plane on their radar
Someone correct me, if I’m completely misinterpreting this, but the plane must’ve been somewhere on the inner blue ring at 18:29! And it’s further West, than all routes, Inmarsat (and Duncan Steel) has shown us so far.
Maybe, I’m rash here, but that makes Goodfellow’s disaster theory even more unlikely: Why should the plane have gone so far West, and then suddenly turned South with incapacitated pilots? If, on the other hand, the pilot was trying to avoid Indonesian radar, this move makes perfect sense.
It all depends of course on the correctness of those calculations…
I have to correct myself re:Inmarsat. On their last published corrected route, they DO show the plane going a bit West of Sumatra (and not crossing it) from a position over the Northwestern end of Malacca straight. You can see the smallish, probably not very exact picture at
duncansteel.com/archives/526
The reconstructed ping rings seem to corroborate that.
Another correction: According to Duncan’s graphics. the plane was 18:29 UTC somewhere along the dark red ring, from where it must’ve travelled further West, at least until 19:40 UTC, when it hit a spot somewhere along the inner blue ring. Then, one hour later, it must’ve turned around, in order to hit a spot along the green ring.
To clarify my last comment: some time after hitting a spot along the blue line at 19:40 the plane must’ve turned around, in order to hit one hour later, at 20:40 a spot along the green line.
According to Duncan Steel, the statement, that the plane always moved away from the satellite still stands, which led to a few twists and turns in the early stages, when Duncan went to his simulator.
Can’t wait to see possible flight routes, which incorporate this new information. Quite a few routes can now probably get ruled out, due to time, fuel and speed restrictions.
…So in the last hours and days of potential battery life, and seemingly by divine providence, they find signs of the pingers and possible aircraft debris…Okay…When the movie comes out I’ll buy tickets…
If true, this would be most incredible stroke of luck in human history.
@Gene – my thoughts exactly. I’m actually wondering, now that every big kid on the military block is in the water, if maybe they are testing each other.
Somebody: “Hey, throw some debris in and see who finds it!”
China: “We found something!” (but quietly, they know exactly what game is being played.) “Oh, wait, our bad, it’s just nothing. But we still found it!”
Somebody: “Yep, they got satellites up there. Try a pinger next… See if their subs are any good.”
This could go on indefinitely. You might think it would upset people, but it really doesn’t. The governments know what the game is, and the public loses interest as soon as they say it’s not a plane. Nobody ever asks what the 45×75 foot piece of trash actually was.
So if that pinger doesn’t ping again, or if they say it’s just an underwater geiser blowing methane past the top of empty oceangoing beer bottles, my guess is that it’s just the world’s seaworthy militaries holding the first annual Great Indian Ocean Easter Egg Hunt.
In all seriousness, it would surprise no one that they are evaluating each other’s capabilities while they’ve got everybody together.
@JS – Looking like a false alarm at present but you’ll be dead right. It’s a good opportunity for the Chinese to throw their subs into the mix on the sly. Good practice in submarine ops with other subs in the area. Just so happens the abundance of 22 meter objects didn’t show up in numerous radar sweeps of the area and everyone just moved on to some other rubbish patch.
On Indonesian radar – I’m told they don’t really have any, or at least don’t have any reliable systems in place to monitor or enforce their airspace. No real air force, no real navy, just lots of soldiers who stand around. Even if they did it would be totally plausible that noone was watching. Very 3rd world and technically bereft.
Well I’m sure the radar in Bangladesh and Bhutan is up to snuff, yes? So we can rule out any northern routes on this alone, right?
@JS – It means the plane could have overflown Indonesia quite easily. My view always was that the great northern radar barrier was bullshit. It’s only the Chinese who would know what the hell they were doing. Most of these countries aren’t serious about radar because there isn’t much they can do about incursions anyway. It’s not like they have squadrons of Sukhois sitting there ready to scramble. They have next to nothing.
Well, apparently Australia’s vessel ‘Ocean Shield’ has another’credible’ ping lead, actually two of them, squaking for more than two hours at a time on the correct frequency. We’ll see, but if this isn’t it, the batteries will probably die, before they locate the Black Box.
And a clear statement from Malaysian authorities: The plane apparently tried to circumvent (successfully) Indonesian airspace. No matter, how up to snuff Indonesian military radar really is, the approximation of the ping rings, done at duncansteel.com, and resulting possible Southern routes of the plane, heavily suggest, that the plane really didn’t cross Indonesian air space… for whatever reason, intentionally or by chance. So,the Indonesian statements just might be true.#
On the other hand, if one looks at possible Northern routes, it must’ve violated any number of air spaces, heavily guarded or not.
#Jeff’s “grey area” where the plane couldn’t have gone to, apparently isn’t on anymore, since the reconstructed ping rings clearly show, that the plane, after 18:29 UTC, has moved eastwards, closer to the satellite. By 19:40, when the ping cosest to the satellite was recorded, it must’ve turned around, and has, at the times of the remaining pings, been moving away further and further from the satellite.
Inmarsat’s statement, that the Doppler data, derived from the pings, always show the plane moving away from the satellite, simply mean just that: At the time of the ping, the plane had a moving direction away from the satellite.That doesn’t exclude at all, that at other times the plane moved eastwards and closer to the satellite (apparently, it has done just that between 18:29 and 19:40). Thus, it’s perfectly possible, that the plane went South , without violating Indonesian air space.
The misinterpretation of Inmarsat’s statement, that the pings always show the plane moving away from the satellite, was induced by Inmarsat’s published burst frequency offset charta, which connected the dots, and thus suggested a steady travelling line. This is wrong, of course. The ping derived data just reflect a moment in time. In between, the plane could’ve done all sorts of directional changes, which brought it closer to the satellite for a while.
I’m very skeptical of the “ping rings” that Duncan Steel is touting. They seem to have been derived by an anonymous person from the map on page three of Annex 1 of the Inmarsat report. As Mike Exley has pointed out, that chart seems to be really little more than a cartoon. It seems that the more experts look at the Inmarsat report, the more the data looks fudged; though many of us had hoped to extract from it the key data from which possible airplane routes can be derived (ping timing, distance, and doppler shift), it seems increasingly likely that the information of the report was deliberately presented in such a way as to make this impossible.
@Jeff, the person, who constructed the ping rings, had apparently private communication with Duncan Steel.
But I said in my earlier comments here, that we don’t know yet, how trustworthy this info is. The problem is of course, that all these calculations are based on Inmarsat’s few published data, and we don’t know, how trustworthy that is in the first place.
Nevertheless, Inmarsat’s spokesman’s remark, that the plane was always moving away from the satellite can really only mean, it moved away from the satellite at the time of the pings. In between, it can have done all sorts of things. Inmarsat promoted this misunderstanding by connecting the dots in their charta, suggesting an unbroken line of data. but they really only have recorded a moment in time with each completed handshake.
Why do you think, they ‘fudged’ data? While they may be imprecise (making all calculations based on them imprecise as well), I can’t see a motive for intentionally fudging them, since they didn’t have to publish them in the first place. They just could’ve cited confidentiality, as they do now, when further questioned.
We’ll, Jeff’s last appraisal certainly opens up things a bit. He must remain circumspect, but I don’t have such a requirement.
The authorities either know the general location of the aircraft and garnered this knowledge via means other than through an analysis of the Inmarsat data set; or the authorities actually have no idea where the aircraft is presently located; or Inmarsat overplayed its hand, discovered errors with further analysis and decided to clam up and stand pat.
So, what the heck happened to MH 370? Are a couple of parties in cahoots and obfuscating the facts to head off one mother of a shit storm (e.g., a possibility if someone actually shot it down), or is it a crazy face-saving scramble where the people that are supposed to be in the know are actually finding themselves quite literally clueless? Whichever, we now have signals from a Chinese dolphin hydrophone leading the search. Nothing pejorative in terms of the Chinese reference and I love dolphins – but, really?
@Rand Mayer, at the moment, they’re not pursuing pings of a dolphin hydrophone, but signals, picked up by Australia’s ‘Ocean Shield’, which is said to have really sophisticated equipment, and has actually picked up two signals of the correct frequency for more than two hours, but as always, we have to wait for a more detailed or certain announcement.
You’re quite right, Littlefoot, that in between pings the plane could have moved toward the satellite. So that opens the range of possible routes quite a bit.
As to why Inmarsat fudged the data, I have no idea. The part of the report that is most difficult to make sense of is the chart on p2 of Annex 1 labled “northern route.” At first glance it seems stark evidence that the Doppler returns fot a plane heading north would look very different from those of a plane heading south. But the experts I’ve talked to have been unable to make sense of how MH370 could have produced returns that look anything like that. In fact, we’d expect a plane traveling north to have very similar returns to a south-bound plane, as the contribution of the satellite’s motion relative to the aircraft is very small. (Mike Exley’s analysis makes this very clear).
Bear in mind that their report is really the only reason anyone has been able to cite as to why the authorities are convinced that the plane took the southern rather than northern route.
@Jeff, thanks for answering.
I was puzzled, too, about the differences between the ‘predicted’ Northern route vs. the ‘predicted’ Southern route. So far, as to my knowledge, no one has come up with a persuasive answer. Inmarsat said, they compared the predicted flight paths with those of other commercial planes on comparable routes. But that explanation seems to have holes…
The ping rings, however, produced at duncansteel.com, were, according to Duncan Steel, calculated from the time, the signal took, to travel between satellite and plane. The further the plane was away from the satellite, the longer the handshake took to be completed. That has nothing to do with Doppler effect, burst frequency offset chart, or predicting a Northern vs. a Southern route. The presented ping rings can’t be used for making such a prediction. Theoretically, the Northern route is still possible. But, if one decides to trust this, one can rule out areas and routes, due to plane speed, fuel considerations etc. The commenter AndRand has presented a few viable Northern and Southern routes. The Southern routes all skirt Indonesian airspace. Interestingly, a day or so, after Duncan published the ping ring estimation, the Malaysian authorities announced, that the plane circumvented Indonesian air space. Have they followed Duncan Steel’s site? 😉
Something ‘beefy’ for conspiracy theorists to sink their teeth into….
Satellites began giving imagery over the general search area since about Mar 15th – 17th. Aircraft have been over-flying the area since a few days after that (Mar 17 – 20th). No piece of debris – not one – has been detected and identified floating on the surface, anywhere , as being associated with MH370. No seat-cushion, no luggage, no ‘designed-to-be-floatables.’ And also we remember no ELT was detected on Mar 8th or 9th.
The Ocean Shield with TPD arrives in the area with not a moment to spare, calendar running out, a roll-the-dice-and-hope-for-luck deployment, and within twenty-four hours, ‘zing,’ signal acquired (and we’re not talking about a small body of water here, not a lake, or a bay, but the Indian flipping Ocean).
Did Tom Clancy write this?…
If the Ocean Shield has detected a ping from an aircraft’s black box:
1) How did a black box get to the bottom with no debris found after more than weeks of searching the surface?
2) How did Ocean Shield locate it in such a vast search area after only 24 hours?
3) How come no ELT was ever detected?
(I’m NOT a conspiracy-theorist, but I have heard it said, “if something sounds too good to be true….”)
I think your point is well taken. For the moment I’m assuming that Ocean Shield will not be able to re-acquire the target — and that if they do, it will turn out to be something else.
The ping detector towed by Ocean Shield belongs to the US Navy and works with a one mile radius, I read. Odd that you could have it for two hours and lose it?? And the Chinese one was 60 miles away.
Northern route radar – including Indonesia.
Living next to South East Asia, having been there a lot, and knowing people based there since the 80’s, noone I speak to has any confidence in the radar. These countries are chaotic, corrupt, and it’s in the DNA. To quote one person – “I’d be surprised if the Thai’s knew the coordinates to Bangkok.” You need the right cultural lens to look at it. You might have some old towers and screens but you don’t have a bunch of drilled Germans with spectacles sitting in front of them. And the guy in charge will be on his mobile to the manager of the bar he owns. The media doesn’t get this. North from there it goes pretty Bhuddist and that’s another world again. They just wouldn’t know what the hell flew over half the time. And not even used to caring because it has never mattered in anyone’s memory. These are countries where you negotiate with the firecrew what you intend to pay them before they stop your house from burning down. You get pulled up speeding you go for your wallet, and not the license. NGO’s who operate there say it takes a particular knowledge and understanding to get anything to happen, and it goes right through. Boatlods of illegal mide-east immigrants wait in their thousands in Indonesia, clogging up whole towns for a trip to Australia. They are escorted to their departure points in broad daylight under the watch of the Army because money is being made and that’s how everything works really. There are no solid institutions and the military is a crime syndicate.
Right, that three-hour ping duration starts to sound funny if you think that the ship is traveling at a couple of knots, but can only detect a pinger within a mile or two…
@ Matty in Perth ; @ jeffwise :
Matt I think you might be a bit off with you numbers. The FDR and CVR pingers are supposed to have a range of 2.5 to 3 miles, and the sensitivity of the Towed Pinger Detector is supposed to be just a little less than that, 2.5 at best. So yes, being towed at 2 to 2.5 miles per hour, it could hold the signal for 2 hrs 20 minutes. (but the Chinese ‘acquisition-event’ was over 300 miles away, so who knows what they think they heard).
It’s conceivable either or both FDR and CVR are not laying at the ‘flat’ bottom of an open seabed, but in a ravine or ditch, masked by terrain, or partially covered by other debris, so their ping(s) are not audible for 360 degrees in all directions but in a narrow arc only, and the Shield just happened to be in the optimum spot for her initial acquisition, and hasn’t been back in that same spot since.
@GWiz –
Well you know what they say, believe half of what you read and none of what you hear. They keep reporting here that the locator needs to be within a mile of the box. What I find odd is that with technology now we can know precise locations anywhere and there is no impediment to that ship literally returning to “the” spot. Modern artillery uses the same methods to know where the targets are precisely and they aim themself to within metres.
It is interesting (and pleasing) to see that Jeff (with Mike Exley), in his 8:32am post today, has come to the conclusion I have been urging in my posts (April 1, 2:42am), namely that the Inmarsat analysis has been ‘fudged’. I came to the conclusion from a mathematical perspective – the problem is much too complicated for such a glib analysis. (The inclusion of the apparent small wobble of the satellite in their analysis was a real red flag to me.) Jeff has concluded that the published data makes no sense.
It is increasingly obvious that US intelligence has been guiding (misguiding ?) Inmarsat to their conclusions. They have radar and satellite capabilities that remain highly classified.
So what is going on ? The Ocean Shield has picked up pings from a black box beacon. But is there a plane down there ? Did someone drop a beacon in the ocean?
I hate conspiracy theories, because they can never be proved, but the behavior of the Chinese has been very odd. First they give out bogus satellite images, and now they offer us bogus ping signals. I have never thought of the Chinese as incompetent.
And the complete absense of a debris field. Was the ocean dead calm that morning ? Could a 777 be landed, under power, on a flat ocean, without breaking up ?
As reported, Ocean Shield maintained a steady course for over 2 hours, plotting bearings on the pings. If the ship moved 4 miles, and passed within a couple of miles of the pinger, that should produce a pretty good fix on the pinger’s location. One would think that subsurface assets could resolve this “relatively quickly.”
inmarsat’s 6 “handshake”calculations are only a theory as admitted in there statement. As websters definition of a theory states: (an idea that is suggested or presented as possibly true but that is not known or proven to be true).
So a theory topped with “Comparison data “.I would like to know if they blind tested their ” theory ” vs “comparison data “? What I am asking is did they calculate correct landing of these other 6 similar 777 ‘s flights blind or just compare .i am not impressed …
http://www.inmarsat.com/news/malaysian-government-publishes-mh370-details-uk-aaib/
From the local press today:
The Ocean Shield is dragging a ping locator at a depth of 3 kilometres. It is designed to detect signals at a range of 1.8 kilometres, meaning it would need to be almost on top of the recorders to detect them if they were on the ocean floor, which is about 4.5 kilometres deep.
If that is correct the job is much harder than I realized.
@ Arthur T – You’d be right I reckon if you didn’t see the Chinese as incompetent. But what they are instead are skilled exponents at manufacturing propaganda for the masses back home. It’s all gold for the crooks who run the Peoples Republic.
ALTITUDE? From early on, airspeed estimates were based upon an assumed altitude of about 35,000 Ft. yielding 450 knots true airspeed.
Later, it was decided to assume 400 kts. TAS.
Ocean Shield’s current search area would seem to indicate an even slower speed for MH370.
I thought that it was widely accepted that the aircraft was at 12,000, over Malacca Strait, when radar contact was lost (Malaysia and Thai Military). Does it not seem more likely that MH370 descended, probably to avoid radar tracking?
From duncansteel.com/archives/507; agamenon,4/3/14,8:03a.m: …low & slow, 200 kts.(or so), squaking 1200 (VFR), MH370 would have looked like many private flights in the area, not causing particular concern to Indonesian radar controllers. This makes sense to me, but agamenon and I seem to be in the minority.
If MH370 was down near “wave-top” level, for a significant portion of the flight, should not the search datum be even farther north than we are now looking?
I would second Arthur T on the likelihood of US intelligence assets playing a role in determining the flight path of the aircraft and the search area(s). Given that the UK is the US’s closest ally, it could have shared information with the UK’s AAIB in line with appropriate and established security clearance protocols. Inmarsat would have most likely produced their data autonomously, given that it appeared that nobody else had anything to go on. The AAIB, then, informed as they were by the Americans, simply assumed the Inmarsat data set as a ‘cover’ for the more accurate picture provided by the US. This could tie up any number of loose ends with regards to Inmarsat going mum, discrepancies in the data set, etc.
If we accept the Indonesian’s statements to the effect that they did not detect MH 370 on primary radar while the Malaysians claim to have knowledge that the aircraft ‘flew around Indonesian airspace,’ this likewise provides for a tertiary party (i.e., the US) to have detected the aircraft along its flight path. The point here is that somebody is certain that it did not cross Indonesian airspace. The important question then is, who is so certain?
@Matty has quite obviously been poking around a bit regarding the capabilities of various nations in terms of primary radar, arriving at the conclusion that their systems are generally less than robust. If this is indeed the case (I could continue to argue to the contrary, but this is less important), then this again points to the US as the key supplier of information concerning the flight path of the aircraft and its present location. The US works quite closely in partnership with any number of countries in the areas of defense and intelligence with whom it does not have formal defense treaties, inclusive of the Chinese. This includes the provision/sale of primary radar systems, aircraft, and satellite sensing systems and data, not to mention general intelligence information.
Despite the fact that I presently live in China and have first hand knowledge of their balance of bungling and deliberateness from working extensively in Tibet in the 1980’s in my previous incarnation as a journalist, I really have yet to fully consider their role in the search for MH 370. Perhaps they are merely attempting to co-opt some good press on the search and placate their citizenry, producing their satellite images and their hydrophone signals to this end after being directed to the general location of the crash zone. What I do know is that educated Chinese are generally quite proud of their nation but deeply cynical regarding their government in terms of its motives and capabilities. This is a very real issue, and Beijing spends quite a bit of its time heading off the potential for any sort of mass wave of indignation that would threaten both national stability and the Party. Many view China as a country with a monolithic system of social control; it is actually a nation forever on the cusp of social chaos.
@Rand Mayer,
Thanks for your very interesting and, as always, balanced post.
To persons, knowledgeable in satellite-technology, the data don’t look ‘fudged’, but they are, of course, infuriatingly sparse. The one thing, that raises eyebrows,is the difference in the North/South prediction.
And that makes me think, that Rand Mayer’s scenario is a plausible one: Inmarsat came out with their Northern/Southern arc calculations,derived from the received pings in good faith, and these caluculations make a lot of sense. It’s simply based on the time needed, to complete a satellite-plane handshake. The longer it takes, the further away from the satellite is the plane. This simple idea is behind the reconstructed ping rings at duncansteel.com as well.The Doppler data derived direction of the plane in relation to the satellite at the time of the pings makes sense, too.
But all those calculations can’t differenciate between North and South routes. Here might well knowledge of SI character come into play. Inmarsat is told, that the plane has been on a nation’s military radar screen, and they are pretty confident, that it went South. But it cannot be made public, how this information was acquired. So they are asked to come up with an explanation, why the Big Search should take place in the Southern regions of the Indian Ocean. That’s the one point, where I could imagine some fudging. Making up everything, in order to be part of a Grand Conspiracy involving several nations in a big alliance of USA/China/Malaysia/Australia/Indonesia/India/ Great Britain/you name it, to cover up…what?,frankly doesn’t make sense to me. especially, since Inmarstat didn’t have to publish their findings in the first place. They could’ve just announced, the plane went into the Southern Indian Ocean, but the data and calculations cannot be made public. Instead, they come out first, then clam up. So, they might be part of a relative ‘benign’ cover up, to protect and keep secret some nation’s radar capabilities.
The Malaysian announcement, that the plane skirted Indonesian airspace, sounded like a factual statement, not a speculation. As Rand Mayer said: Someone seems to know, but we, the public are not to be let in, as to where this knowledge comes from.
The US seemed to be very comfortable with the idea, just days after the plane’s loss, that it is ‘somewhere at the bottom of the Indian Ocean’. So, maybe, they have some insider knowledge.
In the end, only recovered parts of the plane will be convincing evidence.
It occurs to me that if the suspected black box pings detected by Ocean Shield are real, then they never have been searching in the correct place to find debris. All the searching has been done up-current of the crash site, if that is what it is. That’s not to say that debris might not have been seen by satellite but it seems that that method is seriously hampered by the ‘noise’ of floating garbage.
@Chris, you’re probably right, they have so far never searched the right area, if those pings really indicate the plane’s whereabouts. And now, it might’ve floated away…. and mingled with the big pile of garbage, polluting our oceans.
Also several commenters at duncansteel.com, including a pilot of big passenger planes (or so he said… we can be all we want in the net, but he apparently posted under his real name), hinted at the possibility, that the plane might’ve been gently ditched onto the ocean surface, and then sank rather quickly. This scenario might explain the absence of a big debris area, as well as the fact, that no ELT signals were picked up: The ELT devices should start to signal, when they come into contact with water, but if the plane sinks quickly, they might be too deep under too fast, and their signals are never picked up. This is given as a general explanation, why those Elt devices might not do their job in case of a water crash or water landing.
This gentle ditching of the plane onto the surface is apparently possible, but difficult, and it depends on waves and weather.
It has been talked too little, IMHO, about the missing ELT signals. The plane was outfitted by Boeing with four of those devices, some of them at the back of the plane. Apparently, they cannot get deactivated manually, but they certainly can be switched ON by the crew. This is important, because it further weakens the disaster scenario: If all communication devices fail, a pilot would actively switch on the ELT devices, he can reach, immediately. Since they aren’t plugged into an electric circuit, they aren’t bothered by electronic failure. And since they are at several places, they can’t be all destroyed by a cockpit fire. Only, if the crew is completely incapacitated all at once very quickly, they wouldn’t be able to reach the other devices.
The chance of failure is quite high (around 20%), but not THAT high. Apparently, the chance, that they’ll work and signal, is around 80%. I haven’t been able to find out so far, if those numbers mean, that in 80% of crashes, at least one of them will work, or, if the chance, that a single device will work in case of a crash, is 80%. Obviously, two very different ways of interpretation. The latter would lead to a much lower overall chance, that ALL ELT devices fail.
Anyway, I wish, the experts would do a better job, and incorporate the missing ELT signals into their theories of what might’ve happened to the plane.
I’m bothered a lot by one thing: If, whoever piloted the plane, wanted the plane to be gone in remote parts of the Indian Ocean, he would’ve to make SURE, that those devices don’t start signalling, because, if they do, all his earlier travails could’ve been for nothing. And gently ditching the plane, if achieved at all, is certainly not a surefire way to stop those beacons from giving the plane’s location away.
So, is there really no way for a technical savvy person to deactivate them from within the plane? Could there be persons outside, who could’ve deactivated them, before the plane started? Would the crew notice such an intervention? Not only in the abduction-by-pilot scenario, but in all human-intervention theories, including highjacking, the perpetrators would want to make sure, that none of those devices starts squawking.
I think, this is very important:
After Jeff raised the possibility of ‘fudged’ data from Inmarsat, I had a comment exchange with Duncan Steel about the trustworthiness of Inmarsat’s published data.:
duncansteel.com/archives/587#comment-1395
He said, that he has now reasons to believe, that Inmarsat made a big mistake with their BFO charts. He adresses this in his new post, which is a bit explosive:
duncansteel.com/archives/621
He now believes, that not only Inmarsat’s conclusions might’ve been questionable, but,possibly, their numbers are, too. He especially questions their propagation of the Southern route, and examins possible Northern paths.
Which doesn’t mean at all, that he now believes, that the plane has gone North, but simply, that the available data don’t permit a North vs. South conclusion, and the Northern route shouldn’t be eliminated from being searched.
Which, of course, raises the question, why the authorities and their experts, who coordinate ( and pay for) the Big Search, haven’t seen this, too…. unless they have privileged knowledge, which is kept from the public for whatever reasons.
As earlier stated there was a great deal of confidence that the plane was at the bottom of the Indian Ocean by U.S. and other officials. This gives rise to the belief that there is some sort of secret intelligence knowledge behind that assertion and the confidence in it. Now given that those assumptions are true then wouldn’t it be reasonable to conclude that there would be some level of precision in regards to the selection search areas? However there does not seem to be that precision. In fact the search areas have shifted several times by hundreds or thousands of miles or kilometers. The confidence in the prediction of the south Indian Ocean combined with the lack of precision are incongruous with what are assumed intelligence capabilities of the nations involved. It appears that search parameters are based only on the ever changing refinements of the Inmarsat data which is under considerable question.
Conspiracy (Just for fun):
Inmarsat is currently publicly trading at about $750 US. If they are right and their technology is applied for more use in the airline industry what happens to their stock? If they are wrong, or way wrong, what are the consequences to their stock? Inmarsat’s interests in the final results of this incident can have a significant effect on their bottom line.
Littlefoot,
I agree with your main points, and Rand Mayer’s. I was only saying that Inmarsat’s analysis of Doppler effects to determine the orientation of the aircraft is fudged. The confidence in the south route must be coming from undisclosed intelligence. The other part of Inmarsat’s analysis, the time delays in the handshakes is straightforward and reliable.
Again, was the ocean calm in the search area on the morning the flight disappeared ?
@Gene, I think, it is perfectly possible, that there might be classified data, which suggest, that the plane took a Southern route, but whoever is in possession of that data, does NOT know the precise location of the plane. The Southern Indian Ocean region is vast, and not every region is of military interest. So, IF the plane popped up on someone’s military radar screen, going South, it might well have travelled beyond their radar’s reach, and they have to rely on Inmarsat’s ping ring calculations for possible search regions. Which, btw, is still considered to be valid by Duncan Steel. He just questioned Inmarsat’s Southern route preference.
For me, it’s harder to understand, how there could possibly be no SI knowledge by several nations, if the plane really travelled on one of the possible Northern routes, especially, if it crashed there.
@Arthur T, you may well be right about the Doppler data derived preference of the Southern route being erroneous or fudged, for whatever reason.
With respect to the idea that US intel had evidence early on that the plane went out over the Indian Ocean and then into the water, see this ABC News report of March 13:
http://abcnews.go.com/International/us-officials-malaysia-airline-crashed-indian-ocean/story?id=22894802
From the article:
*******
“We have an indication the plane went down in the Indian Ocean,” the senior Pentagon official said.
The official initially said there were indications that the plane flew four or five hours after disappearing from radar and that they believe it went into the water. Officials later said the plane likely did not fly four or five hours, but did not specify how long it may have been airborne.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said, “It’s my understanding that based on some new information that’s not necessarily conclusive, but new information, an additional search area may be opened in the Indian Ocean, and we are consulting with international partners about the appropriate assets to deploy.”
Carney did not specify the nature of the “new information.”
*******
This raises the question of the nature of the “indication” cited by the senior Pentagon official. It is interesting in light of where things stand today. The ping data would not by itself have been sufficient to indicate a crash into the Indian Ocean at that date, at least based on what has been publicly released about the evolution of the Immarsat data analysis.
Back on March 13, one might have thought in terms of undisclosed radar data or satellite imagery consistent with the plane exploding, impacting or otherwise terminating flight over water. But, how could that kind of data point to the plane going into the water without also revealing at least roughly where the plane was at the time?
This leaves us with a few possibilities:
1. There was simply nothing to the ABC report — it was just fluff, filler, conjecture, or misreporting by ABC.
2. US intel had specific data about where the plane ended up weeks ago, but didn’t share it with Malaysians for security reasons, or the Malaysians found it unconvincing or for some other reason chose to ignore it.
3. The “indication” was an assessment based on a preliminary analysis of the ping data integrated with other data or considerations that were judged to make a landing or a crash on land (e.g., on the Northern arc) implausible.
4. The “indication” came from SIGINT rather than radar or satellite imagery, and pointed to the fate of the plane without revealing its course or location.
@Luigi Warren, thanks for that. I clearly remembered that report, but forgot about the precise time line.
The wording is interesting:’We have an indication the plane went down in the Indian Ocean…”
Yes, what exactly was that ‘indication’? They certainly never changed their minds about the Indian Ocean hypothesis.
Given the fact that the pingers range is approximately 2 miles wouldn’t the listening device that captured the pinging for 2 hours have to be almost on top of the black box at the 1 hour mark?
I can’t understand why it is being reported the search area is still vast when you have to be within a couple miles to hear the pinging, and to hear it for 2 hours has to mean you passed near the center of an approximate 5 mile circle that the pinger sound can be detected.
What am I missing?
@Gene what if we were to say that corroborating intelligence data supported the southern route and tracked the aircraft on a heading into the southern Indian Ocean before it went off into the ‘wilderness’ and out of the range of detection, so to speak? This is rational, as there is a cluster of non-allies in SE Asia while to the south there is only said wilderness and Australia, an ally. Thus would the exact location of impact remain unknown to the intelligence assets corroborating the Inmarsat data set.
Inmarsat’s market cap: yet another reason for the company to take a backseat on the search while it’s data set is winning the day, while they likewise look to a future opportunity to leverage their present level of cooperation.
Meanwhile, as alleged, what is the aircraft doing in the Indian Ocean without a destination when virtually all aircraft push back (or are hijacked) with a destination in mind? The probability that the Indian Ocean was the intended destination is quite low given the paucity of plausible scenarios (e.g., pilot suicide to provide for a life insurance benefit) that support it as the intended destination. It simply doesn’t add up.
Perhaps the aircraft was indeed headed north by northwest after the diversion at IGARI and some secondary event (e.g., a failed attempt to retake the aircraft) sent it on a ghost flight south, but then this is also a stretch as far as I can crunch it.
# Luigi :
Yes, the 13th or 14th was about the same time that Inmarsat initially came forward with their ping-data and the networks put up their ping-arc graphics. Also the time we first heard the phrase “at the bottom of the Indian Ocean.” There is a dual-meaning there : “at the bottom” you can take as “two-and-a-half miles down,” also as “at the bottom of the world.”
I’ll pose another possibility. Malaysia-Air is the state airline, a source of national pride. The commandeering of one its airliners, buy one of their senior, most trusted pilots, would be a cause of shame, consternation, and embarrassment. By the same token, an accidental, tragic, mistaken shoot-down by the Chinese military with itchy trigger fingers of a civilian airliner in the wee hours over Western China carrying 150-plus of its own citizens would also be a cause of shame, consternation, and embarrassment. Exactly how would a nation (China) tell the world and it’s people that news sometime on Mar 8th? And would they?… they had great famines in the 40’s and 50’s when hundreds of thousands died and they told the world nothing as that would have brought shame to their ‘Great Cultural Revolution’ and Mao-ism. Likewise when they killed a few hundred of their own kids (intentionally) in Tiananmen Square it took a while for the world to learn about that.
So when the Malaysians realize they had one of their state airliners commandeered by one of their senior most trusted pilots, and the Chinese realize they accidentally, tragically downed that same civilian airliner with 150-plus of their own citizens, both nations had their own ‘oh shit’ moments, and realized, together, they had the mutual need to tell/sell a different story. And enlisted the help of the rest of the world to tell/sell it.
Two-and-a-half miles down, at the bottom of the world (almost), a not-well- explored ocean floor, and with winter coming, is a good spot to ‘bury’ an airliner … or a secret about one.
@Luigi Great post, an excellent process analysis. My hope is that, if we keep this up long enough, our host, who is obviously more in the know than we are, will eventually find some resonance in something someone here has referenced and integrate it together with some other element that he is privy to. The odds, of course, are quite small that ‘it’ will actually happen here as opposed to elsewhere, but this is irrelevant. The experts and investigators are befuddled; they need people such as Jeff with an unvested, a-perspectival view looking at this thing.
@Littlefoot
Inmarsat has contracts with U.S. and other defense departments. Devil’s Advocate: Perhaps U.S. defense and other officials had access to early Inmarsat analysis prior to public disclosure? Pursuant to that released it in veiled forms for whatever reason.
I’ve already cast myself as a half nut-job for suggesting that the plane might have headed north; I have to be careful about throwing stones at Inmarsat, so right now and trying to line up some rock-solid independent sources who can authoritatively explain why the Inmarsat report doesn’t hold water (if indeed it doesn’t — not to get ahead of myself here!). Some people are more open to this idea than others. Erin Burnett’s people (7pm, CNN) are trying to get an Inmarsat spokesman on the show for tonight, I suggest that anyone with an interest in this angle might want to set their DVRs!
@ Rand
Assumptions…
Assumption 1: Inmarsat using new math, and with some assumptions, plot northern and southern routes. Eventually discounting the northern route.
Assumption 2: The assumption that all radar is equivalent to North American, European and other technical standards or quality. That it is operating 24/7. That it has quality operators paying attention.
Assumption 3: That some undisclosed radar tracked the aircraft on a southern route.
Assumption 4: That the assumed undisclosed radar has corroborating undisclosed intelligence data.
Assumption 5: That the assumed intelligence data has the precision to say where the plane went without being able to precisely say where the plane went.
As for Inmarsat itself, I think it is possible that out of hope and wishful thinking and fueled by media attention and ambition that they may have gotten ahead of themselves. Somewhere along the line there “may” have been an “Oh S**t” moment and thus they start to become quiet.
@Jeff :
Well, right now, there aren’t plausible reasons, are there, for how the TPL can acquire and hold a ping-signal for 2 hrs 20 minutes (traveling at the speed it’s supposed to be traveling at), and then acquire and hold two signals for 13 minutes, then no further acquisitions whatsoever, other than that the pingers or their batteries were perhaps made in China, or perhaps some giant squid is fascinated with the color and pulse-tone emitted and wants to make the CVR and/or FDR his girlfriend….right? A ‘half-nut-job’ explanation is needed to explain these signal acquisitions, and losses. I mean, as the pinger batteries die, it should be a gradual process of weakening, signals fading, not an instant stop, correct? The FDR and CVR didn’t happen to fall into a bed inhabited by two really big oysters who had their shells open at the time, and the TPL just happened to pass over them one time when their shells were open but for all the TPL’s subsequent passes their shells were closed. (and for that 2 hr 20 minute acquisition the squid was carrying the FDR and following the TPL?)
CNN producers might as well get some marine biologists on the show to tell us which creatures of the deep may be attracted to FDR’s and CVR’s (more than “half” nut-job).