Five weeks into the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, more than $30 million has been spent scouring great swatches of the southern Indian Ocean. Yet searchers have still not found a single piece of physical evidence such as wreckage or human remains. Last week, Australian authorities said they were confident that a series of acoustic pings detected 1,000 miles northwest of Perth had come from the aircraft’s black boxes, and that wreckage would soon be found. But repeated searches by a robotic submarine have so far failed to find the source of the pings, which experts say could have come from marine animals or even from the searching ships themselves. Prime Minister Tony Abbott admitted that if wreckage wasn’t located within a week or two “we stop, we regroup, we reconsider.”
There remains only one publically available piece of evidence linking the plane to the southern Indian Ocean: a report issued by the Malaysian government on March 25 that described a new analysis carried out by the U.K.-based satellite operator Inmarsat. The report said that Inmarsat had developed an “innovative technique” to establish that the plane had most likely taken a southerly heading after vanishing. Yet independent experts who have analyzed the report say that it is riddled with inconsistencies and that the data it presents to justify its conclusion appears to have been fudged.
Some background: For the first few days after MH370 disappeared, no one had any idea what might have happened to the plane after it left Malaysian radar coverage around 2:30 a.m., local time, on March 8, 2014. Then, a week later, Inmarsat reported that its engineers had noticed that in the hours after the plane’s disappearance, the plane had continued to exchange data-less electronic handshakes, or “pings,” with a geostationary satellite over the Indian Ocean. In all, a total of eight pings were exchanged.
Each ping conveyed only a tiny amount of data: the time it was received, the distance the airplane was from the satellite at that instant, and the relative velocity between the airplane and the satellite. Taken together, these tiny pieces of information made it possible to narrow down the range of possible routes that the plane might have taken. If the plane was presumed to have traveled to the south at a steady 450 knots, for instance, then Inmarsat could trace a curving route that wound up deep in the Indian Ocean southwest of Perth, Australia. Accordingly, ships and planes began to scour that part of the ocean, and when satellite imagery revealed a scattering of debris in the area, the Australian prime minister declared in front of parliament that it represented “new and credible information” about the fate of the airplane.
The problem with this kind of analysis is that, taken by themselves, the ping data are ambiguous. Given a presumed starting point, any reconstructed route could have headed off in either direction. A plane following the speed and heading to arrive at the southern search area could have also headed to the north and wound up in Kazakhstan. Why, then, were investigators scouring the south and not the north?
The March 25 report stated that Inmarsat had used a new kind of mathematical analysis to rule out a northern route. Without being very precise in its description, it implied that the analysis might have depended on a small but telling wobble of the Inmarsat satellite’s orbit. Accompanying the written report was an appendix, called Annex I, that consisted of three diagrams, the second of which was titled “MH370 measured data against predicted tracks” and appeared to sum up the case against the northern route in one compelling image. (See the chart at the top of the post.) One line on the graph showed the predicted Doppler shift for a plane traveling along a northern route; another line showed the predicted Doppler shift for a plane flying along a southern route. A third line, showing the actual data received by Inmarsat, matched the southern route almost perfectly, and looked markedly different from the northern route. Case closed.
The report did not explicitly enumerate the three data points for each ping, but around the world, enthusiasts from a variety of disciplines threw themselves into reverse-engineering that original data out of the charts and diagrams in the report. With this information in hand, they believed, it would be possible to construct any number of possible routes and check the assertion that the plane must have flown to the south.
Unfortunately, it soon became clear that Inmarsat had presented its data in a way that made this goal impossible: “There simply isn’t enough information in the report to reconstruct the original data,” says Scott Morgan, the former commander of the US Air Force Rescue Coordination Center. “We don’t know what their assumptions are going into this.”
Another expert who tried to understand Inmarsat’s report was Mike Exner, CEO of the remote sensing company Radiometrics Inc. He mathematically processed the “Burst Frequency Offset” values on Page 2 of Annex 1 and was able to derive figures for relative velocity between the aircraft and the satellite. He found, however, that no matter how he tried, he could not get his values to match those implied by the possible routes shown on Page 3 of the annex. “They look like cartoons to me,” says Exner.
Even more significantly, I haven’t found anybody who has independently analyzed the Inmarsat report and has been able to figure out what kind of northern route could yield the values shown on Page 2 of the annex. According to the March 25 report, Inmarsat teased out the small differences predicted to exist between the Doppler shift values between the northern and southern routes. This difference, presumably caused by the slight wobble in the satellite’s orbit that I mentioned above, should be tiny—according to Exner’s analysis, no more than a few percent of the total velocity value. And yet Page 2 of the annex shows a radically different set of values between the northern and southern routes. “Neither the northern or southern predicted routes make any sense,” says Exner.
Given the discrepancies and inaccuracies, it has proven impossible for independent observers to validate Inmarsat’s assertion that it can rule out a northern route for the airplane. “It’s really impossible to reproduce what the Inmarsat folks claim,” says Hans Kruse, a professor of telecommunications systems at Ohio University.
This is not to say that Inmarsat’s conclusions are necessarily incorrect. (In the past I have made the case that the northern route might be possible, but I’m not trying to beat that drum here.) Its engineers are widely regarded as top-drawer, paragons of meticulousness in an industry that is obsessive about attention to detail. But their work has been presented to the public by authorities whose inconsistency and lack of transparency have time and again undermined public confidence. It’s worrying that the report appears to have been composed in such a way as to make it impossible for anyone to independently assess its validity—especially given that its ostensible purpose was to explain to the world Inmarsat’s momentous conclusions. What frustrated, grieving family members need from the authorities is clarity and trustworthiness, not a smokescreen.
Inmarsat has not replied to my request for a clarification of their methods. This week, the Wall Street Journal reported that in recent days experts had “recalibrated data” in part by using “arcane new calculations reflecting changes in the operating temperatures of an Inmarsat satellite as well as the communications equipment aboard the Boeing when the two systems exchanged so-called digital handshakes.” But again, not enough information has been provided for the public to assess the validity of these methods.
It would be nice if Inmarsat would throw open its spreadsheets and help resolve the issue right now, but that could be too much to expect. Inmarsat may be bound by confidentiality agreements with its customers, not to mention U.S. laws that restrict the release of information about sensitive technologies. The Malaysian authorities, however, can release what they want to—and they seem to be shifting their stance toward openness. After long resisting pressure to release the air traffic control transcript, they eventually relented. Now acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein says that if and when the black boxes are found, their data will be released to the public.
With the search for surface debris winding down, the mystery of MH370 is looking more impenetrable by the moment. If the effort to find the plane using an underwater robot comes up empty, then there should be a long and sustained call for the Malaysian authorities to reveal their data and explain exactly how they came to their conclusions.
Because at that point, it will be all we’ve got.
This is a cross-posting of an article that was published on Slate.com on April 18, 2014. You can read the original here.
I think I knocked a few screws loose over Quest’s interview with the PM; I should probably take a break. I’ll be back in a few days…
#Rand
RE: “We know that the PM is not supreme commander of the Malaysian Armed Forces, and thus knowledge held on the part of commander of a primary radar unit or a squadron leader or a signal corps commander could conceivably report up the chain of command to a level where the PM could be excluded from this same knowledge.”
That would be to the guy who is now running interference for the MH370 investigation, Defense and Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein.
@littlefoot
I see nothing to indicate that any person or authority in Malaysia or anywhere else knows where the plane went down. It looks like the aim of the first phase of the diversion was to get off the radar and into the wild blue yonder, so perhaps that isn’t so surprising.
The thing to do in these situations is keep the discussion focused as much as possible on topics which require as little dissembling and obfuscation as possible, while avoiding matters which do. That is to say, keep everybody talking about the relatively unimportant question of where exactly the plane went down, and not talking about who did it and why. Seems to be working well.
@luigi
You see nothing to indicate they know where plane went down! if you can believe the Malays spin at this point well to each his own . .we have been told for weeks the plane was acting in erratic manner now last night it was acting like a commercial plane !nonsense !I have gone back and looking at credible reporting are we all forgetting this data.you can claim it was a false report but why would someone make it up?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/15/world/asia/malaysia-military-radar.html?_r=0
“Investigators have also examined data transmitted from the plane’s Rolls-Royce engines that showed it descended 40,000 feet in the span of a minute, according to a senior American official briefed on the investigation. But investigators do not believe the readings are accurate because the aircraft would most likely have taken longer to fall such a distance.”
Addendum to this rolls royce data
http://www.nst.com.my/latest/font-color-red-mh370-tragedy-font-rolls-royce-boeing-should-be-more-involved-1.551330
Datuk Zolkipli
“MAS spend a great deal of money to secure the best services from both Boeing and Rolls-Royce but when this incident happened, both of them seemed to have clammed up,” he said at the Fun Walk event and doa recital for MH370 in conjunction with AAT 20th anniversary, today.
Read more: MH370 Tragedy: Rolls-Royce & Boeing should be more involved – Latest – New Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/latest/font-color-red-mh370-tragedy-font-rolls-royce-boeing-should-be-more-involved-1.551330#ixzz2zvenh91J
Earlier today I sent out a series of tweets explaining in bullet-point form why I thought that this past week has seen a major turn in the MH370 story, whose significance many commentators have failed to appreciate. For those who don’t follow me on Twitter (what??) I’m reproducing my points here. I hope to expand on them in coming days.
1. Australian authorities declared high confidence, based on Inmarsat data analysis and detection of accoustic pings, that they’d located MH370 black boxes
2. Seabed within detection distance of best ping search exhaustively over 12 days; no wreckage/black box found
3. Ergo, best ping was a false positive. Must have been caused by something other than MH370.
4. Ergo, other pings of identical frequency & audio characteristics also most likely caused by something else.
5. Ergo, no reason to suppose that MH370 is in vicinity of search area; no reason to bring in more resources or continue search
6. Australian confidence in Inmarsat analysis proven to be misplaced. Grave doubt thrown on authorities’ understanding of Inmarsat data significance, inc. conclusion that plane went south
@Jeffwise,
I agree completely, this is a turning point. If an expanded search of the ping area doesn’t produce results I will be very curious to hear an explanation of the pinging sounds they detected for 2+ hours, sounds we were repeatedly told were unique to the black boxes and sounds that were confirmed by expert analysis.
Without floating debris, without functioning ELT’s and the lack of radar data or Inmarsat data to convince us otherwise, it is difficult to be confident the plane is where they are searching at this point.
Congratulations for maintaining your skepticism, I went all-in once they heard the pinging.
Thanks Jeff I will look forward to your upcoming expansions .keep in mind inmarsats validation of southern route was an exact match to other 777 flights I will leave you to figure out what flights matched and where these landed ,.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101521136
“We then took the data we had from the aircraft and plotted it against the two tracks, and it came out as following the southern track,” Jonathan Sinnatt, head of corporate communications at Inmarsat, said.
The company then compared its theoretical flight path with data received from Boeing 777s it knew had flown the same route, he said, and it matched exactly.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101521136
Mr Wise:
Thank you for all the informative reporting on MH370 both on CNN and in this blog. I’ve been tuning in whenever I can, and also occasionally participating in the DuncanSteel.com blog which I would never have discovered, but for your good work.
Mr. Steel was kind enough as a moderator to post my following question for his contributors, and since then, I feel like his blog and Reddit and other blogs have come alive investigating the matter. Do you have any plans of develpments you can discuss in this regard?
(Following posted on DuncanSteel.com)
Michael Molinaro
2014/04/24 at 8:14 PM
My thanks again to Duncan, Richard, Victor, Alain, LGHamiltonUSA, in fact, all other commentators, for such detailed, rational (and interesting ) presentations of why Quambo Bamda Airport, Muynak Airport, and the Beshtash Valley merit further attention. And now, thanks to Dave Whittington for his 2014/04/23 comment at 10:27 AM. It referenced “http://www.reddit.com/r/MH370/comments/230gri/do_the_pings_stopping_suggest_they_were_from_mh370″, a spirited back and forth with very material discussion on the two points of:
1)the reliability of the reported underwater pinging(37.5khz vs 33.3khz); and
2)the rapidity with which Ocean Shield found the reported pings.
Within that discussion were comments quite akin to my prior question as to whether infrasound monitoring at the Cocos Islands may have detected the jet flying nearby, in nautical miles, not nanometers. But instead of a report of detecting sounds of normal flight, the 8 day old discussion referenced detection of “transient booms.” I wondered whether such assertions withstand scrutiny, whether the author (“metao”) is known to any of the commentators of this blog, or whether the comments might more likely be considered unproven and unreliable at this stage of the blog.
For your reference in that discussion, the points made by “metao” 8 days ago in the Reddit discussions, regarding Ocean Shield finding results essentially on the first try, were:
“It wasn’t exactly luck. Acoustic analysis of a transient boom detected near to the time of the half handshake revealed the area to search with the TPL. . .”
“A transient is an temporal anomaly. A boom is what you think. So, this wasn’t well publicised, but the translation is: a very loud broadband noise like an explosion (or heavy object striking the water at high speed) was detected on two different data recorders, one belonging to CMST off Rottnest Island, and one belonging to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty people near Cape Leeuwin, I think? at around the same time of the half handshake. Using speed of sound estimates it was possible to guess where the noise came from, and it was near the arc calculated by inmarsat.. Ocean Shield went there with the TPL – towed pinger locator – and viola. . .”
“A combination of first hand and reliable second hand information. It’s difficult for me to elaborate further, unfortunately, for both identity and employment reasons. . .”
“As I said some of this I know firsthand and some is second. As far as I know the second hand information is legit, but has not been well publicised (but as far as I know it’s no secret). A journalist should call CMST, do a little leg work, and write an article. You know, do some journalism instead of regurgitating press releases and interviewing professional press consultants (aka people that didn’t cut it doing real work). . .”
I presume that if the comments by metao are well founded, this would have significant implications for the future blog comments on the northern routes. Do you think these comments make the current search area more credible, or that they should have little to no effect on the direction of the commentator’s comments?
Michael Molinaro
@ Littlefoot –
Regarding the acoustic booms. I’m not saying they didn’t happen because I don’t know. But it’s very odd that it’s a secret. Curtin University is my old uni and not far from here. If they had evidence related to MH370 it becomes very valuable publicity for them and their marine studies. There is nothing classified about what they do and one of the things they study is marine acoustics. It’s all in the open, bunch of undergraduates and a group of post grads plugging away. JACC are under pressure to justify what they are doing and it would make sense for them to use such data in a similar way to the Inmarsat data. Why has that stayed out of the news I ask myself. With journalists swooping everywhere, so much so they make it up and have been caught doing so. I can’t find a reason for the secrecy, but it might just be a rumour. As for the volunteer nuclear test monitoring group, I wouldn’t trust it for a moment.
Worth digging around though because if it went in where they are looking they would have heard it. But I can’t imagine why they would be sitting on it.
Hope I’m not repeating a recent comment I tried to type an hour ago. Had computer difficulties – frozen screen, etc.
I wanted to thank you, Mr. Wise, for alerting me to the DuncanSteel.com site on MH370, at which I have posted a few blog comments. In the last two days, the subject seems to be catching fire, as I see other comments in this blog already present. My post on the issue of “other evidence” leading to the current underwater search zone to DuncanSteel was a mere question, based on a Reddit post that encouraged intrepid reporters to report on this issue:
Michael Molinaro
2014/04/24 at 8:14 PM
My thanks again to Duncan, Richard, Victor, Alain, LGHamiltonUSA, in fact, all other commentators, for such detailed, rational ( and interesting ) presentations of why Quambo Bamda Airport, Muynak Airport, and the Beshtash Valley merit further attention. And now, thanks to Dave Whittington for his 2014/04/23 comment at 10:27 AM. It referenced “http://www.reddit.com/r/MH370/comments/230gri/do_the_pings_stopping_suggest_they_were_from_mh370″, a spirited back and forth with very material discussion on the two points of:
1)the reliability of the reported underwater pinging(37.5khz vs 33.3khz); and
2)the rapidity with which Ocean Shield found the reported pings.
Within that discussion were comments quite akin to my prior question as to whether infrasound monitoring at the Cocos Islands may have detected the jet flying nearby, in nautical miles, not nanometers. But instead of a report of detecting sounds of normal flight, the 8 day old discussion referenced detection of “transient booms.” I wondered whether such assertions withstand scrutiny, whether the author (“metao”) is known to any of the commentators of this blog, or whether the comments might more likely be considered unproven and unreliable at this stage of the blog.
For your reference in that discussion, the points made by “metao” 8 days ago in the Reddit discussions, regarding Ocean Shield finding results essentially on the first try, were:
“It wasn’t exactly luck. Acoustic analysis of a transient boom detected near to the time of the half handshake revealed the area to search with the TPL. . .”
“A transient is an temporal anomaly. A boom is what you think. So, this wasn’t well publicised, but the translation is: a very loud broadband noise like an explosion (or heavy object striking the water at high speed) was detected on two different data recorders, one belonging to CMST off Rottnest Island, and one belonging to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty people near Cape Leeuwin, I think? at around the same time of the half handshake. Using speed of sound estimates it was possible to guess where the noise came from, and it was near the arc calculated by inmarsat.. Ocean Shield went there with the TPL – towed pinger locator – and viola. . .”
“A combination of first hand and reliable second hand information. It’s difficult for me to elaborate further, unfortunately, for both identity and employment reasons. . .”
“As I said some of this I know firsthand and some is second. As far as I know the second hand information is legit, but has not been well publicised (but as far as I know it’s no secret). A journalist should call CMST, do a little leg work, and write an article. You know, do some journalism instead of regurgitating press releases and interviewing professional press consultants (aka people that didn’t cut it doing real work). . .”
I presume that if the comments by metao are well founded, this would have significant implications for the future blog comments on the northern routes. Do you think these comments make the current search area more credible, or that they should have little to no effect on the direction of the commentator’s comments?
Michael Molinaro
Thanks Matty & Jeff. This transient boom has had me totally bewildered for the past 24 hours. I just can’t think that people would be so cruel to the families by not releasing this information if it’s true. The only acceptable excuse for not mentioning it is that it is not true.
@Matty, I agree, it’s very strange. But I went through several threads (duncansteel.com and reddit), and people with apparent inside information ( they even knew how many hydrophones were working and how that would affect the accuracy of calculations) seemed to confirm it. The facilities might not have been sitting on it. Communication protocols might be ambivalent or loose. They could’ve informed the search teams but not the public, because they didn’t possibly want to draw false conclusions and mislead anyone, least of all the passengers’ families. Especially if they are a bunch of undergraduates and post graduates, as you describe it. They might’ve chosen to wait for the outcome of the search.
For me the time delay is more worrying. If this info was available, why didn’t they zero into the current search area immediately? Did it take that long to realize the possible relevance of their readings?
Matty, your reverse conclusion, that they must’ve heard something, if the plane went down near the current search area, is interesting (unless the plane did a soft ditch or glide). So these facilities might be important either way. That also might make them a bit tight lipped and careful.
I guess, we have to wait and see, if there is anything to it. It’s certainly not confirmed in any way. Can you find out more?
7 weeks later there is nothing to suggest they have much of a clue where it is. Even the favoured southern arc is shaky and if this focus was based on anything solid we don’t know about, it hasn’t provided anything more than Inmarsat has. If it crashed there it should have been acoustically detected and a time pinpointed early on. There is a submarine base here in Perth, so why are they now thousands of kms away from where they started? A hitech detection would not involve that sort of error I’m assuming. Everything points to a lack of certainty and I thought early on they were guided mainly by probability because their intel was revealing nothing much from the northern scenario. It’s the presence of those subs that tells me they are desperate to confirm it went south, and just as keen to establish what the hell happened.
@ Littlefoot –
The local Uni’s are publicity hungry as a rule and any excuse to have a press conference will do. Sea barriers, mosquito born viruses, mining safety etc, they jump out at every chance. I could understand them being careful with it but it’s hard to see it staying concealed. It would be an unusual situation indeed if Uni students were not allowed to talk about their studies. If it was passed onto JACC there would need to be reasons for Curtin Uni to stay invisible, and I struggle to find any – at the moment. The Uni owns the equipment and they are in a similar position to Inmarsat. It’s promotional gold as long as you exercize appropriate caution.
One ping. Two ping. Red ping. Blue ping… So “pings” on land and at sea have rendered no results. I guess everything is back on the table then. That is unless Inmarsat engages in full disclosure and peer review validates their conclusions. So will the answer fall along Occam’s Razor or will it be one of those improbable remainders after the impossible has been ruled out that Sherlock Holmes liked so much? In the realm of speculation perhaps it is good to keep another Holmes quote in mind.
‘It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.’
Then again maybe Inmarsat, Malaysian authorities and a host of others should and should have remembered that as well.
@Littlefoot – Are you sure your dog didn’t pilfer it?
@ Littlefoot –
Regarding acoustic detections from CMST: I have passed it onto local media who can make enquiries directly so if it has legs we will know in due course.
Tdm: I believe you misread Luigi’s comment. I believe what he was implying was congruent with what you are stating. Namely, the Malaysians want to keep the search focused in the XYZ domain with the messaging focused on the central operative question: where is the aircraft?
Jeff: thanks for the summary. I have access to twitter in the office (we have a VPN router), but the Great China Firewall blocks twitter with an open connection (at home). OK, OK, you got me: I’ll now begin reading your tweets as I were a fanatical altar boy…
So, if we continue with the thread of Jeff’s logic, engage the Socratic method and assume that he is asking us a question, we can pick up where he left off (“…grave doubt thrown on authorities’ understanding of Inmarsat data significance…”.
The follow up questions are: who directed the search to the southern Indian Ocean, and why?
The timeline I suggested re US assets informing the search revealed that I was dead wrong, that there was nothing to suggest that the Inmarsat methodology was developed in the US (not to say that it wasn’t!). The UN’s ICAO and various international conventions are quite clear regarding the assignment of investigative authority in the event of a civilian plane crash: the authority rests with the country of the carrier and where the incident occurred – Malaysia.
Carney at the White House and Kirby at DoD have actually been distancing themselves from this incident, so as to be clear that the US is not meddling and infringing upon sovereignty. Kirby has been most explicit in stating that resources have been provided to Malaysia on an “as requested and as needed basis” (his often repeated line).
Clearly, Malaysia is directing the search, while the Australians and others are merely looking in the XYZ domain, basically looking where they are told to look.
Question: why is Malaysia expressing such confidence that the aircraft is in the southern Indian Ocean?
Answers: 1. they are bewildered and simply bungling through and continue to dig their own fox hole deeper as they attempt to cover their incompetence; or 2. they are more informed as to the search parameters than they are willing to admit.
Regardless, Matty and Jeff have both been correct in advancing the idea that things are about to shift, that the story is about to turn. The lack of recovery of any remains of the aircrafts in the present search location will again surface the question – where is it? Now, who is really in charge of supplying the answer?
Next up: Spotlight Malaysia!
Najib Razak’s interview with Richard Quest was about trying to get Malaysia in front of the story. My guess would be that there will be no additional interviews forthcoming.
Matty re subs, HMS Tireless has had enough after 7000 square nm. Sounds like hard work down there. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-27157554
@ Juanita –
Interesting that they refer to inhospitable sea conditions? That would suggest to me they headed further south than where bluefin currently is? Did they head straight down the arc listening as they went?
Jeff–When MH370 flew at 4000 ft. alt. in Malacca Strait, sans transponder, cell phone contact made. A plane ‘X’ flew to meet it and turned on its transponder. MH370, sans transponder, flew West in a straight path over Maldives, where sighted by witnesses. Probable destination Yemen on Arabian Peninsula, or Somalia in Africa. Plane ‘X’ took the southern route over the Indian Ocean. (My son says this a “Hollywood Script.”)
@Matty, thanks for passing the ‘boom or no boom’ question to the local media. If the facilities have NOT picked up anything, that would be interesting, too.
@Gene, I thought, my dog is beyond suspicion due to sheer size issues. I’m not so sure anymore. He seems to be drawn to lost planes. Last weekend we walked with him to the highest mountain in our region, which is only 1150 m above sea level, but since everything here is totally flat, it’s a stiff walkup. When we arrived at the barren summit, we were told, that a plane (a cessna) got lost recently in the fog and crashed into the mountainside. It’s also known to be visited by witches on their brooms quite frequently. There are off limit areas, which are reserved as air tunnels just for witches. There will be the annual international witch gathering pretty soon. It’s called ‘Walpurgisnacht’ and starts at 4/30 around midnight.
I will keep a close eye on everything.
@Rand, yes, that’s the million dollar question: Why were the ‘as sure as they can be’, that the plane went South? And are they still sure it went South, though at a different location than the Bluefin search area? Or are they really starting from scratch as far as the North/South question is concerned?
It is more neccessary than ever, that Inmarsat’s calculations get an independent review and that the Malaysian authorities supply additional informations, if they have any. I don’t hold my breath, though…
Yesterday I went through the latest comments at duncansteel.com. A German physicist was very critical on their approach to reverse engineer ping rings and routes from material, which is little more than imprecise preliminary charts, and without having access to methods and raw data. And without knowing, if this publicised material is even trustworthy. He jotted down a few methods, how Inmarsat might’ve arrived at a valid conclusion after all. I will try to contact him, and ask him, if he is so kind to elaborate. I have an idea, what he might’ve been hinting at.
On the news right now over here – the search of the ping cluster is over, now moving outside of it. Aerial search about to be called off. Get comfortable.
@ littlefoot
“And are they still sure it went South, though at a different location than the Bluefin search area?”
It’s been bothering me for a while why the surface fleet has been way down to the south west of the ‘ping site’. If one looks at the charts of ocean currents in the area – NYT had a good one but I can’t find it at the moment – there is very little likelihood of there being any floating debris there. If they are following up some other lead then it seems the confidence in the ping site never was that great.
Re. Tireless – what are inhospitable sea conditions to a submarine anyway? Does this mean they were operating on the surface?
@Gene Yes! Put it all back on the table! @Jeffwise back to the beginning & treat it as the crime scene it is. Hard to buy the one guy alone decided into the flight to do all this.Maybe, but most likely this involves other’s & they are still pulling the diversion for whatever reason. Get the who & motive. Then you get your plane and victims.
@Chris, I think the sub just went out of supplies, and since there is no chance for legit pings anymore, they called it off.
I could live with the fact, that they haven’t found any debris so far – the Indian Ocean is vaster and deeper than we can fathom, and apparently polluted with debris. The chance to spot plane parts are pretty small after valuable time was wasted at the South China seas and on ‘arcane’ calculations. But those circumstances demand more than ever to persuade the public, that the thought processes and calculations, which guided the search team exclusively down the Southern road, are legit. Or for that matter, why they were so sure about the underwwater pings, that Tony Abbott declared the plane as good as found. So far, no one has said something even remotely illuminating. The search is extremely difficult, but the involved parties produce a public relations disaster on top of that.
@littlefoot
Well, no, I’m not surprised either that they have not found any debris as they are looking in an area where it probably isn’t if the black boxes are in the area they say they probably are.
What is their rationale one wonders?
Jeff.
I too have been troubled with the pings and have posted a number of comments on this thread. While pings have actually been detected, there is the possibility that they came from another source(s).
Rejecting MH370 as being the source on the basis that nothing was found within the detection distance of the best ping or the defined “focused underwater search area” is on shaky grounds.
Each of the ping detections were located a substantial distance (greater than its expected range) from the others, but appear to share the same signature. How could this be?
From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOFAR_channel), we find the brief description of how sound in deep water can travel further than expected: “The SOFAR channel (short for Sound Fixing and Ranging channel), or deep sound channel (DSC), is a horizontal layer of water in the ocean at which depth the speed of sound is at its minimum. The SOFAR channel acts as a waveguide for sound, and low frequency sound waves within the channel may travel thousands of miles before dissipating.”
Detection range is a function of many obvious factors plus at least the general noise environment and this SOFAR channel effect. I would expect that these additional factors would have a varying effect over time, especially as the towed pinger locator was moving through water that was also subject to current set and drift. Thus, the probability of detection during a given time interval at a given distance was also function of the bearing from the pinger and state of the intervening environment, both of which were shifting as the searches progressed. This model helps explain the long gaps between detections, as well as the wide dispersions.
I am uncomfortable with the JACC’s definition of its “focused underwater search area” and not clearly describing the confidence level that the MH370 debris would be found therein.
JACC defines its “focused underwater search area” as contained within a 10 km radius circle centered on Ocean Shield’s second pinger detection (April 8th). Please refer to http://www.veooz.com/photos/DH3XTN5.html and imagine that 10 km radius circle. Three of those four observations started outside of it. The unweighted mean position of those samples is a couple kilometers to the east of that center. The standard deviation of that sample set is larger than radius of that circle. Thus, the statistical confidence level that debris would be found in that search area is relatively low but thought at that time to be better than that for other neighboring areas of that size.
Given my conceptual probability of detection model above, I would have weighted the samples primarily by their length of contact. This would have centered the “focused underwater search area” much closed to the center of Pinger Detection #1. This is the direction that JACC is now considering.
It is worth repeating Cris’ quote from Holmes: “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”
I can count only three commentators on CNN who are sober and stay within the boundry of their knowledge; Jeff Wise, Mary Schiavo, and the pilot Jim Tilmon. Tilmon keeps saying, “We know nothing. We know nothing.” And he is right. The radar analysis contradicts itself. The Inmarsat Doppler analysis contradicts itself. The undersea ping analysis conntradicts itself. The acoustic boom triangulation either doesn’t exist or is unusable. And not a single piece of floating debris found after an immense satellite, aircraft, and ship search of a large area.
There is no doubt that information is being withheld, but it is probably as ambiguous as everything else.
It is time, as Jeff and others have been insisting, to go back to square one, to start with a new ‘white sheet’. I’m not sure how Crowd Sourcing works, but it can’t hurt.
In the meantime we can only speculate. I’ve read everyone’s Comments over the past five weeks, each of them fueled by an intense desire to know.
This is my guess: We are observing an extremely well planned, thought through, and executed hijacking, (The pilot may have been a party to it.) There was no need to avoid radar in the first two hours, and they knew they could count on the indolence and incompetence of the Malaysian Air Force. The plane may have been intercepted near the end of its flight.
What the political motivation was, I haven’t a clue. It doens’t much interest me.
I want to know how they pulled off the biggest magic trick of the 21st Century.
Jeff.
I too have been troubled with the pings and have posted a number of comments on this thread. While pings have actually been detected, there is the possibility that they came from another source(s).
Rejecting MH370 as being the source on the basis that nothing was found within the detection distance of the best ping or the defined “focused underwater search area” is on shaky grounds.
Each of the ping detections were located a substantial distance (greater than its expected range) from the others, but appeared to share the same signature. How could this be?
From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOFAR_channel), we find the brief description of how sound in deep water can travel further than expected: “The SOFAR channel (short for Sound Fixing and Ranging channel), or deep sound channel (DSC), is a horizontal layer of water in the ocean at which depth the speed of sound is at its minimum. The SOFAR channel acts as a waveguide for sound, and low frequency sound waves within the channel may travel thousands of miles before dissipating.”
Detection range is a function of many obvious factors plus at least the general noise environment and this SOFAR channel effect. I would expect that these additional factors would have a varying effect over time, especially as the towed pinger locator was moving through water that was also subject to current set and drift. Thus, the probability of detection during a given time interval at a given distance was also function of the bearing from the pinger and state of the intervening environment, both of which were shifting as the searches progressed. This model helps explain the long gaps between detections, as well as the wide dispersions.
I am uncomfortable with the JACC’s definition of its “focused underwater search area” and not clearly describing the confidence level that the MH370 debris would be found therein.
JACC defines its “focused underwater search area” as contained within a 10 km radius circle centered on Ocean Shield’s second pinger detection (April 8th). Please refer to http://www.veooz.com/photos/DH3XTN5.html and imagine that 10 km radius circle. Three of those four observations started outside of it. The unweighted mean position of those samples is a couple kilometers to the east of that center. The standard deviation of that sample set is larger than radius of that circle. Thus, the statistical confidence level that debris would be found in that search area is relatively low but thought at that time to be better than that for other neighboring areas of that size.
Given my conceptual probability of detection model above, I would have weighted the samples primarily by their length of contact. This would have centered the “focused underwater search area” much closed to the center of Pinger Detection #1. This is the direction that JACC is now considering.
“I’ve read everyone’s comments over the past 5 weeks, each of them fueled by the intense desire to know”
@Arthur T, you said that well! While I feel for the passengers, the crew, the relatives, even to some extent for the perpetrators, if there were any, I have to confess, that I want to KNOW.That was my weakness even as a kid. I could never enjoy a magician’s show, if I couldn’t figure out how it was done. I still curse Charles Dickens, that he died without leaving a clue behind, how his last novel (a mystery novel) was supposed to end. Though as a psychologist I’m equally interested in the “Why” of this mystery.
@ Littlefoot –
My uni background is psychology also but I never had anything to do with it from then on.
I just looked at an old interview with Zaharie Shah’s friend who says adamantly that he would never put peoples lives in danger deliberately – and that probably sums up pilots in general. Previous pilot suicides weren’t straight forward instances and seemed to involve mental instability/insanity, and that doesn’t seem to be him. His political activities are not totally unlike mine which reveals a civically engaged person with convictions and a purpose. His anti-govt inclinations are not at all unusual among the educated class in Malaysia. Most of the so called issues surrounding him have turned out to be false. In summary the idea of him dumping the thing down there is just inexplicable and I don’t think he did. Looks like we will have to wait until the broadened bottom search is completed before a fresh start occurs. As long as they are credibly looking the media are going to wait out. Everyone forgets that this was the co-pilots first trip in a 777 without someone holding his hand. In other words, his first chance to do something with a big long range jet, and I don’t buy the idea that only Shah could have pulled it off. The coey is qualified to fly the thing – period, and his age puts him in the right bracket to be radicalized. His many friends say no chance but the London tube bombers were weekend cricketers with normal lives, until one day……
If you haven’t already, check out Dr Kuang’s two most recent posts. Apologies for the length of the links, I hope they work:
April 25:
http://translate.google.com/translate?depth=1&nv=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=zh-CN&tl=en&u=http://blog.sciencenet.cn/home.php%3Fmod%3Dspace%26uid%3D612468%26do%3Dblog%26id%3D788567
April 26:
http://translate.google.com/translate?depth=1&nv=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=zh-CN&tl=en&u=http://blog.sciencenet.cn/home.php%3Fmod%3Dspace%26uid%3D612468%26do%3Dblog%26id%3D788817
Typical Mahatir. He was a horrible little sh_t as a politician and he’s trying to shift some heat away from Malaysia. Boeing’s fault!! But, on another level he’s saying some stuff a lot of people are thinking.
Malaysia’s former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has questioned whether flight MH370 crashed into the southern Indian Ocean and has blamed Boeing, the plane’s maker, for its disappearance.
Dr Mahathir, who maintains a powerful influence in his country’s ruling party, also suggested the reason why the passengers and crew never acted to stop whatever was happening on board was because they were “somehow incapacitated”.
“Even if the pilot wants to commit suicide, the co-pilot and the cabin crew would not allow him to do so without trying something,” he said.
“But no one, not even the passengers, did anything.”
Writing in an opinion piece, Dr Mahathir questioned why no debris or oil slick from the plane has been found.
“Can it be that the plane remained intact on crashing and sank with no trace and no one launching the lifeboat doors, as we are told all these aircraft are equipped with?” he asked.
“Can one believe this plane quietly floated down into the raging sea and sank conveniently in the deepest part (seven miles deep) of the Indian Ocean?”
Dr Mahathir said it must have taken some effort if the pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, disabled the plane’s communication system.
“The co-pilot would notice and for his own life he would have tried to do something … was he disabled? Were all the crew members and the passengers disabled?”
Dr Mahathir, 88, who was prime minister for 22 years from 1981, said he is upset that Malaysia Airlines staff were taken hostage by angry Chinese relatives of passengers in Beijing last week, “because they are blaming the wrong people”.
“The loss of the plane is due to the makers, Boeing. How can Boeing produce a plane that is so easily disabled?” he said.
Dr Mahathir said in an era where passenger planes can be tracked on mobile phone, and spy satellites operated by some countries can photograph and identify a person on the ground, Boeing must explain how all these means of tracking the plane “can be disabled, can fail”.
“Either Boeing technology is poor, or it is not fail-safe,” he said.
“I would not like to fly in a Boeing aircraft unless Boeing can explain how all its system can fail or be disabled.”
Dr Mahathir said Boeing, a multinational corporation based in Chicago, must “demonstrate possible ways for the communication system to be disabled”.
“Boeing must accept responsibility for building an aircraft that can disappear in mid-air so completely,” he said.
Boeing has sent experts to Kuala Lumpur to work with Malaysian and international aviation experts investigating the disappearance of the Boeing 777 with 239 people on board during a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8.
Dr Mahathir’s comments will fuel scepticism among Malaysians that the plane crashed into the Indian Ocean 1500 kilometres west of Perth, where an Australian-led hunt has so far failed to find any trace of the airliner.
Malaysia plans this week to release a preliminary report into the disappearance – but, according to officials, it will shed little light on what happened.
The report is expected to reveal details such as the plane’s altitude and speed after turned back from its scheduled course over the South China Sea.
Malaysia’s Prime Minister, Najib Razak, told the Wall Street Journal that investigators have made no substantial progress since March 28, when a detailed analysis of satellite data caused the search to be shifted to the Indian Ocean.
“That’s all we have until today,” Mr Najib said.
‘”That’s why it’s so frustrating. When you do an investigation, you have to adhere to the principle of ‘follow the evidence’,” he said.
“But what evidence do we have? It might sound unbelievable but that’s all we have. That’s all the world has.”
Malaysian police conducting a criminal investigation into the plane’s disappearance have not publicly identified any crime.
They have not identified any motive, nor named any suspects, in one of the most baffling mysteries in modern aviation.
Officials in Kuala Lumpur have indicated that unless the plane’s black box recording device is found it may never be known what happened to the flight.
Boeing has not responded to Dr Mahathir’s comments which were first published in his personal blog and then republished in several Malaysian news outlets.
@Matty, agreed, this op ed from the former Malaysian PM is complete crap. Of course one can blame Boeing, because they built the plane in the first place. Or we can blame Otto Lilienthal or the Brothers Wright for that matter, because they helped to make flying possible. In scarce times the news makers in Malaysia and elsewhere have to hold on to many dubious pieces…
As to the captain as perpetrator: I have to confess, that by looking at him, I have the same sensation when I look at this famous trick drawing of the beautyful/ugly woman. In one second, you see one face, then you blink and you see the other face, but you never see both faces at the same time. While I believe for many reasons, that the captain was at least involved in the disappearance of the plane, I also have scenarios in my head with the captain as the hero of this tale. But both perspectives have one thing in common: I see the captain as an extraordinary man. And since this mystery seems to be extraordinary, he’s a better fit for most scenarios than the copilot. This doesn’t seem to be a run-of-the-mill Islamistic terrorist plot. That’s why general conceptions about radicallisation and age braquets might not be useful here.
The same goes for all calculations, which try to reconstruct the plane’s behavior and flight paths by assuming an normal commercial airliner’s behavior.
I haven’t completely excluded one scenario, though: There was some kind of accident/disaster, and the loss of communication just between Malaysian and Vietnamese airspace is either a coincident, or the pilot decided at that point, he would rather fly back to Malaysia than continue into foreign airspace. And all the subsequent inconsistencies and riddles were introduced by the Malaysians in order to blame the captain. He supported the political opposition, who could be a little smeared this way, and the financially ailing state owned MAS is not to be blamed for negligence and incompetent management. I don’t see this as a systematic plan, but rather as an evolving thing, made up as they go along, thus producing all those contradictions. Many facts don’t seem to fit into this scenario, but then, we don’t even know, if they are real or not.
Matty & littlefoot,
Mahatir’s question,’How can Boeing produce a plane that is so easily disabled?’, seems to me a good solid question, thought we cannot expect a response from Boeing.
Were you not as suprised as I was to discover how easy and straightforward it is to turn off all external communication systems (with the exception of the engine handshakes with Inmarsat) in a 777 ?
Obama backs Malaysia’s handling of MH370 search
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/04/27/obama-malaysia-asia-china/8249119/
“Obviously, we don’t know all the details of what happened but we do know that, if in fact the plane went down in the ocean in this part of the world, that is a big place and it is a very challenging effort and laborious effort that’s going to take quite some time.”
—————
Interesting. Statement by the president reads like he’s not convinced plane is in ocean !my personal opinion after watching pm interview with Richard quest and this press confrence referenced above is both these men are not being straightforward with what actually transpired .
@Arthur T, yes, I was very surprised, that communication can be turned off, but I would hardly blame this on Boeing. Apparently there are good reasons to enable the crew to turn off all things electrical if necessary. And if MAS had subscribed to more Inmarsat services, the plane would’ve been traceable even after all communication channels were turned off. Unless there was a disaster, which had to do with the very design of the plane, one can hardly blame Boeing for the plane mystery.
What I find very surprising are the limits of the black box design and the pingers. Why couldn’t each black box ping or beep in an individual way or code? Then one wouldn’t have to guess, if the recorded pings are from the black box of mh370 or whales or tacked tuna fish or a nefariously thrown in decoy pinger. And the batteries should definitely last longer. And the black boxes should brake free and float.
I like this line from current Malaysian PM:
‘”That’s why it’s so frustrating. When you do an investigation, you have to adhere to the principle of ‘follow the evidence’,” he said.
“But what evidence do we have? It might sound unbelievable but that’s all we have. That’s all the world has.”
This pretty much confirms that if there us other evidence the Malaysians are not in the loop. Then there is Obama’s ambiguity and you start to wonder about our convictions that they have alternate sources.
“But what evidence do we have? It might sound unbelievable but that’s all we have. That’s all the world has.”
Was the Malaysian PM talking about evidence for the exact location of the plane, or evidence regarding the cause of the diversion? If the former, he might well be right — and on safe territory. If we talk about evidence for the cause of the diversion, does Captain Zaharie’s anger at the campaign against Anwar constitute “evidence”? What does the PM think?
I tried to add a couple of links to Dr Kuang’s 2 latest posts but the URLs are so hideous that I suspect the comment didn’t get through. If you haven’t read them yet, they are linked to in a comment in Duncan Steel’s latest blog entry. Dr Kuang’s thoughts alone are reason enough to go back to the beginning.
We are definitely being lied to about the disappearance of MH370, that much is obvious. What really irks me is that if anyone suggests anything other than either pilot suicide or fire/failure leading to a ghost flight, it’s branded as conspiracy. CNN is the worst, they introduce any story that looks at any other possible options by mentioning that the plane might have been taken by aliens, just to ensure that everyone treats everything said after that point as completely ridiculous.
@Juanita, could you make sense of Dr. Kuang’s two posts, which were linked in th
@Juanita, could you make sense of Dr. Kuang’s two posts, which were linked in the comment section of Duncan Steels new post? He was pointing out apparently, that the times and positions given at the radar track pictures, which were used for briefing the relatives, couldn’t be correct. I found that interesting, because I had worked out myself a couple of weeks ago, that the plane must’ve flown awfully fast after it had turned around at IGARI, to meet those given points over Malacca Strait in time. Dr. Kuang came up with roughly the same average speed as I did. Dr. Kuang calls that average speed unrealistic, considering all the maneuvers the plane supposedly has made. But I couldn’t quite make out, what exactly he was trying to say. Did he hint at the possibility, that the radar track picture showed another plane and not mh370?
@littlefoot I think he is saying that if the picture is truly the time that MH370 was flying through the strait, the UAE flight would have been on the radar, so the illustration is not accurate. The two flights would have been travelling in the exact same location. He also points out that the distance written on the illustration presented to families is not correct. Therefore, the families were shown something that contained false information.
A Luigi Warren –
I can only assume he is referring to evidence of the planes whereabouts. I think there are some doubters out there by this stage.
Dear Jeff,
I really appreciate your questioning of Inmarsat calculations.I reviewed Inmarsat released report and had significant problems with this data.Several weeks ago I’ve sent my comments to CNN (Wolf B.)but no response. Some of the points are listed below:My evaluation of Inmarsat analysis – frequency offset plot -indicated that MH370 plane was moving in West direction toward Inmarsat 3 -F1 satellite located in 64.5 E orbital slot.
( positive frequency shift – no offset sign change due to crossing the equatorial plane- if going south). Inmarsat analysis should be more transparent and evaluated by others. Also, ELTs were not activated indicating non crash landing somewhere . My initial guess few weeks ago was Bangladesh •
Actually, there are two Inmarsat satellites with the overlapping coverage of the subject area : Inmarsat3-F1 in 64.5 E AOR orbital slot and Inmarsat3 F3 in 178 E slot POR- so the same handshake pings should have been received and processed by both satellites. I wonder if Inmarsat has data from both satellites and considered this in their analysis .Personally, I could do more precise analysis if raw data from both satellites were available. Inmarsat- more transparency guys.
My credentials: 35 years in satellite industry, PhD in Electrical Engineering and more.
There are many more experts in satellite industry and academia who can help and do better analysis if raw data from Inmarsat F1 satellite or both F1 and F3 was released by Inmarsat
Thanks, Dr J. Who knows, maybe the preliminary report will include Inmarsat data, and the Malaysians will actually go ahead and release it this week as promised.
Dr J,
This is the first time I have heard that there may be data from two of Inmarsat’s eleven satellites. If true, then some triangulation is possible, and, at the very least, you could determine if the aircraft was north or south of Malaysia at the time of the two final handshakes, without having to reference the highly questionable Doppler shift analysis. Great if true, but noone has made such a claim.
Dr. J: Welcome to jeffwise.net; I hope that you stick around. Question: was it not indicated that the aircraft did not travel closer (west) to the position of the satellite? I am a bit confused here.
Gene: I believe you may have grown tired of theorizing; I hear you. How about if we rather continue to hypothesize, testing away assumptions and conclusions as we go? I do realize that it would be better to work with the data in this regard, but we really don’t have any data, and thus information-based hypothesizing is warranted. Let’s go back up the probability tree to simplify things once again.
In brief (for once), the aircraft would appear to have been intentionally diverted, either by the Captain or the First Officer, or by a hijacker who coerced one or both of them to divert the aircraft.
The reason for the diversion was internal to Malaysia. The intended destination upon diversion was somewhere in Malaysia; it was not somewhere on the northern or southern arcs as indicated by the Inmarsat data set and its analysis. The present location of the aircraft was not the intended destination.
The Malaysian authorities are being less than forthcoming regarding the diversion and the flight path trajectory in Malaysian airspace. As to whether they are relatively as uniformed as anyone else as to the segment of the flight that occurred over Malaysia has yet to be determined. Regardless, Malaysia’s leaders are politically exposed at an historical juncture where their monopoly on power is being questioned, to the point that they have imprisoned Anwar, a long-time rival, with the intent of eliminating him as a political threat.
In order to provide for an intended diversion at IGARI together with an unintentional crash of the aircraft at the point of fuel exhaustion some seven hours later, we make the assumption that there was a mechanical systems failure or the elimination of capable pilots post diversion, somewhere in the vicinity of Malaysian airspace. The nature of this secondary causal event has yet to be determined.
It is interesting to note that the PM of Korea found it necessary to resign from her post in the wake of the sinking of the ferry. It also worth noting that documents relevant to the disaster have been intentionally destroyed in an effort to cover up aspects of the event, and that criminal charges have been filed against the captain. Meanwhile, the owner of the ferry is most likely facing civil litigation, with his home having been searched by the authorities. Such is perhaps to be expected in such situations: heads do roll and people do conspire to cover up evidence and obfuscate the facts. Why? Because they are facing exposure politically, legally and financially.
I suppose the release of the UN report and the (promised) report on the criminal investigation headed up by the RM Police will provide some indication as to what actually happened at the point of diversion at IGARI and while the aircraft was in Malaysian airspace.
If somebody could post the radar images posted by Dr. Kuang (I believe we already have one previously posted by Chris), it would be great.
Jeff: looking forward to hearing more from you in print this week or next.
Luigi: Malaysian’s political system and its military chain of command is unique as far as I can discern. The head of the RMAF reports to a Joint Services head, while he reports to the constitutional monarch. The Defense Minister is not n the chain of command, he is rather in a role similar to the US DoD secretary.
The PM of Malaysia is appointed by the constitutional monarch from among the members of parliament. PM Razak and Defense Minister Hussein are cousins. PM Razak previously was Defense Minister. It is very much a rather closed, hierarchal and Malay clan-based political power structure. Malaysia is basically controlled by the nine heads of its principalities and the PM and his portfolio ministers. I have yet to discern the level of influence or independence of its military command structure.