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.
@Rand and Luigi, in general I agree with your thoughts. However, phase 3 must’ve begun later IMO. The ping ring calculations indicate, that the plane moved West, closer to the satellite, even if the Doppler data have the plane always moving away from the satellite. But that’s only true for the exact ping times. The plane was registered closest to the satellite (furthest West) at 19:40, then it turned around and went probably more or less straight to it’s final destination.
@Tdm, defueling for a planned landing (even if the landing didn’t take place) has to be considered. Flying circles and this excursion West until 19:40 could indicate that… and communication could’ve taken place.
I’m exhausted. I want to know the truth.
2 rolls royce RB 211 Trent892B17
Now that’s data! Now what we need is maintenance records,Jeff are these ever released to public ?seeing this new proposed directive as well as old ones for this particular engine has me wondering about maintnance.
Airworthiness Directives; Rolls-Royce plc Turbofan Engines
https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2014/03/03/2014-04350/airworthiness-directives-rolls-royce-plc-turbofan-engines
Damn…
https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2014/03/03/2014-04350/airworthiness-directives-rolls-royce-plc-turbofan-engines
Under table of contents
Discussion
The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Community, has issued EASA AD 2013-0223, dated September 19, 2013 (referred to hereinafter as “the MCAI”), to correct an unsafe condition for the specified products. The MCAI states:
Rolls-Royce has identified that limitations in the drawing definition for the Trent 800 low pressure (LP) Turbine Bearing Support and Exhaust Case assembly (EIPC 72-52-51, 03-300, also known as the Tail Bearing Housing or TBH) may have resulted in thin wall section parts being delivered into service. Further analysis has concluded that under certain circumstances, the structural integrity of a thin walled part may be insufficient to withstand a fan blade failure event.
This condition, if not detected and corrected, could, in case of fan blade failure, lead to a loss of integrity of the TBH and leave the engine unsupported at the rear mount, possibly resulting in damage to, or reduced control of, the aeroplane.
This condition, if not addressed, may allow failure of the LP turbine bearing support and exhaust case assembly, which could lead to engine separation and damage to the airplane. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket on the Internet at http://www.regulations.gov by searching for and locating it in Docket No. FAA-2013-0953.
https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2014/03/03/2014-04350/airworthiness-directives-rolls-royce-plc-turbofan-engines
I could have written that report from here. But, it does confirm my thoughts about radar and procedural sloppiness. Delays where people look at screens, look at each other, look at the clock on the wall, look for somewhere to hide, and Malaysia would have been one of the better ones. Indonesians none the wiser still, and north from there it would have been worse again. If you took Inmarsat out of that report it would have been chopped back even further. Kind of says a bit about where we are.
And on the maps it takes a pretty dramatic swerve to the Australian mainland, and if they hadn’t managed to spend their fuel, they would have hit it in another hour or so. That doesn’t look deliberate from the suicide angle.
It’s making less sense, not more. I’m taking suicide off the table at least. They would have known they were in Jindalee range(potentially) if they were awake. I think the searchers are up the creek here.
I’d really like to know what qualifies you to comment on any of this. To me, you’re little more than a pseudo-scientific rabble rouser, passing sweeping statements like they are searching in “random” locations in the Indian Ocean which at worst casts aspersions on literally thousands of dedicated analysts, and at worst bolsters the fading false hopes of the families. I have no idea who you know at CNN or what kind of relationship you must have with someone to give you such a platform. No doubt, you’re not going to give some full disclosure on that account just as, ironically, you call for full disclosure from others. I’ll keep an open mind, as much as I can, but to me, you’re little more than a charlatan selling snake oil. We used to have Richard Feynman to provide credible, clear scientific explanations. Now we have Jeff Wise, twitter monger.
“You are right: I don’t think a suicide leg of the flight makes sense. Perhaps something else happened in Phase II that produced the behavior of the aircraft in Phase III.”
Actually, I think the third leg does look like a suicide leg — or possibly a final upping of the ante, which is almost the same thing. But I don’t think Zaharie would have bothered to make a dog-leg around Indonesia if he’d already decided to end his mission. I think that was to avoid being shot down by the Indonesians — he diverted to Plan B first, before Plan C. Looks like Plan A involved returning to Malaysia. To me it seems increasingly plausible that Zaharie did in fact attempt to communicate with someone in authority — very high authority. However, if I were Hishammuddin’s defense counsel or his spin doctor (as if he needs one), I guess I would float a scenario where Zaharie planned a kamikaze attack on the mainland, then got cold feet and retreated westward out of radar range. Subsequently, overcome by shame and remorse, he sent the plane on a ghost flight to the South Pole. And, in this exculpatory scenario (for Hishammuddin), all of these changes of plan emerged spontaneously in Zaharie’s noggin, without any interaction with the authorities on the ground. But, seriously, I kind of doubt that is how it really went down.
I hear you Luigi. Let’s take a step back for a moment.
And Matty, can sloppiness on the part of the Malaysians include making matters worse and doing something outrageously stupid, dangerous and nonsensical?
For actually, and this is HUGE, we now have some data _ evidence, really – that corroborates and supports our hypothesis that there was a secondary causal event post-diversion. It was there all along, only I, at least, couldn’t see it, as I am a highly visually oriented person and I need cartoons (well informed cartoons!) to integrate all into a holistic frame.
The supporting evidence: shortly after the aircraft disappeared from Malaysian radar at 18:22 UTC, there are a cluster of handshake pings. Dr. Kuang and Duncan Steel have stated that the cluster of pings were most likely initiated by the aircraft, signaling that there was a sudden change in altitude, a sudden change in direction, mechanical distress, or the system resetting after an attempt was made to call the aircraft. They could also represent ground-initiated attempts to contact the aircraft…
…yes, Littlefoot, here could be your illicit phone calls.
No matter who called whom, no matter if it was just the aircraft reporting in unusual events, no what meat was on which bone, the cluster of pings shortly after 18:22 supports the hypothesis of a secondary event and some form of intervention. From this cluster of pings, the Inmarsat analysis then has the aircraft on alternate and terminal flight trajectory.
Dr. Kuang is barking up this same tree, it seems. I just read his last two posts on his blog. The Malaysian report revealed a cluster of pings after 18:22 and it integrated this ping data into a graphical representation of the flight. Dr. Kuang has in turn integrated the screen shot of the radar trace and reproduced this graphical representation (link below). Basically, from a graphical perspective, we can now discern that the Malaysians are stating that they lost ‘sight’ of the aircraft precisely at a moment just prior to where the cluster of pings occurred. Dr. Kuang also points out that there is a missing ping for a reported sat phone call to the aircraft.
I would hate to use the term “smoking gun,” but I would state that perhaps by way of the Malaysians going to whatever lengths to state that they are uninformed as to the flight after 18:22 UTC, they are in fact revealing that they are indeed informed. Together with the non-disclosure of any military comms/actions/activities concerning the flight after the diversion at IGARI, we now have a cleanly swept trail, devoid of any footprints. I learned long ago when studying tracking techniques that a well-swept trail is actually a trail, it is something that you can look for and discern – and follow.
Have a look at Dr. Kuang’s graphic, Figure 1, below:
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%3D790500
I suspect that many others will now begin focusing on the cluster of pings, enquiring as to what happened just after 18:22 UTC.
Please attempt to impeach the above. I seriously believe that we are on to something, but I can be a rather excitable and emotional type; please extract the woo woo.
Luigi: Phase II now had some data points. And, yes, all statements by Hussein (shorter) to date exculpate him as long as no further information is revealed.
Jeff? Thoughts? Can we tweet you a provocative question to share on air? If GeoResonance is boat that floats on CNN, surely this one won’t immediately sink. OK, I’ll stop calling you Shirley…
Of course, I botched the key paragraph. It was to have read:
No matter who called whom, no matter if there weren’t any communications with the aircraft and it was just the aircraft reporting in unusual events, no matter what meat was on which bone, the cluster of pings shortly after 18:22 supports the hypothesis of a secondary event post diversion and some form of human intervention or interaction. From this cluster of pings, the Inmarsat analysis then has the aircraft on an alternate and terminal flight trajectory which the aircraft followed to the point of fuel exhaustion.
@Rand Mayer –
I wouldn’t draw the line at sloppiness, no.
@Rand
What was Plan A?
Clearly, the charted trajectory makes no sense if the presumed endpoint was the planned endpoint. Actually, the presumed endpoint (a crash into the Southern Indian Ocean after flying 7 hours) makes very little sense as a plan from any perspective.
It’s conceivable that Plan A involved disappearing from radar and flying westward over the Indian Ocean, with a destination, target or abort/surrender option in that general direction, e.g., the Maldives or Sri Lanka. The first problem with that scenario is the return to Malaysian airspace. I suppose Zaharie might have considered that a safer option than a brief overflight of Thailand, in that he might have had an easier time bluffing his way through if challenged. Perhaps a more serious problem is explaining what precipitated the turn to the south. Still, if there was an ongoing negotiation that turned sour, it could have provided the trigger.
I suggested a model such as I just described a while back: Zaharie flew over the Indian Ocean and turned himself into a “devil in the dark” to gain leverage for a private political protest, while holding out hope that he would be able to give himself up to non-Malaysian authorities at one of the Indian Ocean airstrips on his home simulator. As I recall, you argued at the time that the turn back instead suggested a plan involving Malaysia as a target and/or peaceful surrender option. Looking at the chart, I’m inclined now to think that was Plan A. I think that would also be the gutsier and more “honorable” strategy for a protest, and perhaps a better fit to Zaharie’s personality. But Zaharie also seems like a guy who would have had a Plan B and maybe a Plan C, and I think we could be looking at those options unfolding when we peruse this map.
Luigi: I would obviously concur with your concurrence with me on the nature of plan A! YES, it is difficult to reconcile a distant intended destination with the present location of the aircraft, and then the evidence is suggesting that the present location is most likely the southern Indian Ocean, which is a most unlikely intended destination.
I intentionally left out the nature of Plan A in my last post, as we do not have any evidence to support any model, despite the fact that we inuit that it is more probable. What we can do is point to the fact that we have EVIDENCE that supports a secondary causal event that reconciles the entire flight path AND now needs to be disproved before our hypothetical can be thrown in the bin.
As for plan B and C, I simply can’t go there at this point, I want to continue to test what was happening on the aircraft between 18:22 and 18:28 UTC. These are the crucial six minutes of the flight path from IGARI that could inform the entire flight trajectory. It’s a very real pity that the Malaysians lost radar contact with the aircraft at 18:22, as such information could probably have helped out a bit…
I’ve gone ahead and thrown myself to the lions over at steeldata.com; I just posted the following, pending moderation. My guess is that it will be discarded, but if it survives, perhaps one of the big brains over there will take the bait and find something new that can be derived from the data.
Duncan,
I would suggest that Dr. Kuang is on to something regarding the significance of the cluster of three pings that were reported between 18:25 and 18:28 UTC. I have likewise been focused on this aspect of the known flight data for some time now, while it took the formal presentation of the Malaysian government’s report to the ICAO to provide an opportunity to draw any conclusions based upon supporting evidence.
Both you and Dr. Kuang has stated that these pings could represent aircraft-initiated pings, signaling a change in altitude, a change in direction or mechanical distress. The Malaysians have indicated that there were two ground-initiated calls to the satellite phone on the flight deck, one at 18:39 and another at 23:13 UTC. There is no reported record of ground-initiated or aircraft-initiated satellite communications between 18:25 and 18:28 UTC.
I would suggest that the above data could be considered as evidence that there was some sort of causal event that occurred between 18:22 (the moment of the last recorded radar trace) and 18:28 UTC, as indicated by the frequency in the ping data. The possible origins of the pings have been previously been described by both you and Dr. Kuang.
This causal event could then have led to the aircraft initiating a turn to a northern or southern flight path that terminated at the point of fuel exhaustion. The possibility that the aircraft was at some point put on/defaulted to autopilot (as you have so diligently explored) at some time between 18:22 and 18:28 UTC is supported by the flight path trajectory as it is presently informed.
Dr. Kuang’s latest post contains a graphical representation of the flight path (figure 1, link below) which integrates the data, map projections and the primary radar trace that ended at 18:22, just prior to the series of three pings between 18:25 and 18:28 UTC. This representation highlights in a readily graspable form what is already indicated by the data: where the Malaysian primary radar trace ends at 18:22 UTC, the cluster of three pings graphically begins at 18:25 UTC. Shortly thereafter, the aircraft ‘disappears,’ save for the Inmarsat data set and its analysis.
There is evidence to suggest yet it does not fully confirm that the aircraft was intentionally diverted at IGARI.
From here, we can attempt to reconcile what is known regarding the flight path of the aircraft from its point of diversion at IGARI to the cluster of three pings occurring between 18:25 and 18:28 UTC, together with that segment of the flight path beginning with this same ‘ping cluster’ and ending at a presently unknown terminus.
Conclusion (I have deleted location coordinates in the interest of economy while emphasizing the timeline):
The evidence supports that the aircraft may have been intentionally diverted at or near IGARI. From IGARI, the aircraft made a base leg turn towards Penang. From Penang, the aircraft travelled in a northwesterly direction, with a reported “air defense radar point” recorded at 18:01:49; and an updated “last air defense radar point” at 18:22 UTC, confirming the direction of the flight path. The aircraft then continued to a general geographical location where three handshake pings were generated between 18:25 and 18:28 UTC. These pings could be an indication of a causal event that shortly thereafter sent the aircraft on an alternate northern or southern flight trajectory that terminated upon fuel exhaustion, as indicated by analysis of the Inmarsat data set and its analysis as pursued here and elsewhere.
Regards,
Rand
PS Please feel free to chuck this in the bin if you believe that I have strayed too far from the evidence or otherwise committed any errors in logic.
@Rand
I know you don’t like the shadow theory, but the cluster of pings fit with whoever was in control briefly turning their transponder back on in order to locate/confirm the position of the the flight they wanted to shadow. The sharp turn would coincide with circling to wait for the KLM flight to catch up.
P.S. no worries about stepping on any toes. I really appreciate your thoughtful engagement on what I think is a genuinely serious topic despite the way it has been covered by the media, and the “facts” such as we know them force us to consider some very unlikely scenarios.
JJ: Thanks for your responses.
I am unsure whether activating the transponder would initiate a ping, but no matter. The cluster of three pings would be congruent with any sort of ‘shadow theory’ derivative where a ‘rendezvous’ with another aircraft would have taken place around the time and location of these three pings.
When Keith Ledger first advanced the idea early on in this saga, it gained immediate traction. A weaponized aircraft with the Petronas Towers as a target was likewise highlighted only to wither rather early, once the Inmarsat data set emerged. Regardless, both influenced the perspectives of many in a situation with limited data and information. If there is one thing that I have learned from this, it is that an ‘aperspectival view’ is indicated, so as to be able to incorporate new information as it emerges. That said, I believe I am done; I am, as Arthur said in describing himself, ‘exhausted.’ I don’t think I have any more fresh ideas in me, while I am now convinced that if there is anyone that can better inform the search, they are to be found running Malaysia. It’s either them or the folks at GeoResonance; take your pick.
The hypothesis that I have summarized (an intentional diversion and some sort of secondary causal event or events that eventually disabled the pilots and/or the flight deck near or after Penang) is really more of a summary of all the thinking and hypothesizing of all the fine people that frequent this site. For weeks we have been entertaining this notion and that, weighing probabilities and discarding dead ends as we went along. I eventually put everything into a probability tree and what emerged as the highest probability was an intended diversion at IGARI with Malaysia as the intended destination. If Malaysia was the destination, then how to reconcile the Inmarsat analysis and the confidence shown in its conclusions? I won’t bore you with regurgitating the rest of it, but this was the process. We did not start with a hypothesis and struggle to make things fit; it more rather emerged. Now, it is being tested, and I am sure that everyone here is open to exploring other hypotheses, although perhaps we now have less stamina in this regard.
If it proves that the Malaysians cannot better inform the search simply because they took no action and know nothing, then the aircraft may truly have vanished. I am, however, hanging my hope on future revelations of what occurred on the flight deck while the aircraft was in Malaysian airspace.
@ Rand
Thank you for all the time and thought you have contributed to the discussion here. I don’t think any of us will figure out what happened or where the plane is, but I do find it fascinating to see where the pressure points are in the info that is being released, because I think it helps demonstrate the dysfunctional relationship that currently exists between governments, militaries and the press. And in particular it exposes how weak and captured the press has become.
I hope you will return if you find anything new worth commenting on.
@ Michael Bauer –
Michael there are plenty of scientists commenting here because they are frustrated. The search locations of late have been determined by tweaking a computer model that itself relies on shaky assumptions such as speed/altitude etc. We actually don’t know much, but the searchers don’t behave that way. I just read that with flight 447 they were getting wreckage two years later. This time with every satellite company jockeying for airtime and identifying debris fields from space item by item, we have nothing.
Let me suggest a possible explanation for the peculiar probability regions in the interim report diagrams.
Previously I mentioned the high-low probability regions on the interim report map, and my interest in the fact that they appear to indicate two points of higher probability, in turn suggesting the influence of “other data” that we don’t know about.
I’d like to expand on that, in 2D for the moment.
Consider a line between two “stations,” each having a sensor of some sort to detect an event. If the two sensors identified an event only by the time received, and the time of the actual event is known via other sources, and further the speed of the signal is known, the location of the event would fall at either end of a line segment perpendicular to that station-station line, forming a lowercase “t.” The length of the t’s crossbar would indirectly be determined by the difference in receipt times and the actual event time.
If the station-station line is not a radius of a ping circle, then one of the two possible event locations would lie closer to the ping circle than the other. If the two location candidates included an error margin, they would each be circles.
One of the circles would be closed to the ping circle than the other. This would place a low-probability region at the intersection of the station-station line and the ping ring, a high-probability region at one end of the perpendicular line segment, and a medium-probability region at the other end, as we see in the interim report diagrams. Importantly, unless I’m messing something up, the station-station line necessarily crosses the ping ring in the yellow low-probability region. That narrows the possible pairs of stations.
As it turns out, the line between Keeling Island and Cape Leeuwin fits the bill as it appears to cross the ping ring in the yellow, low-probability region. If an acoustic signal was received at Keeling first and then Leeuwin second, separated by something on the order of 10 seconds, it would yield the probabilities along the final ping ring roughly matching the interim report diagrams. One solution would fall close to the ring, while the other solution would fall inside the ping ring and to the southwest.
I realize this amounts to reverse-engineering from a weak diagram, and I know nothing about any sensory capabilities at Keeling Island. But it does offer a possible explanation for the probability regions which cannot yet be supported by the satellite data alone.
RE the “Pings do not add up” link.
If the airborne ping thing can be manipulated, it makes sense to leave it on. Think about it, you would not steal a plane on impulse, you would cover every electronic angle. Whatever happened we will learn a lot about aircraft security in the course of this episode.
Looking at the flight map again – the projected routes south from high to low probability, if reflected northwards from Malaysia, almost mirrors the intended flight route of the plane, just the wrong hemisphere?? Coincidence?
JJ: I’m not going anywhere, I’ve simply had enough of trying to figure out what the heck happened. I think we are pretty close in this regard, and so I will ‘quit.’
Well, we were correct in assuming one thing: primary radar assets have informed the Inmarsat data set as to airspeed and other factors from early on. From the WSJ Asia Edition 2 May: “Boeing used the primary radar data to determine that the plane had traveled faster during the early part of the flight near Malaysia…Boeing’s calculations using the military radar were combined with Inmarsat satellite data to help determine the current search area…” People just weeks ago were dismissing such notions as “unscientific and lacking in evidence.” I can’t even count the number of beatings I took over the last four weeks advancing such “grandiose” conspiracy theories. Which brings me to our new friend Mr. Bauer.
Mr. Bauer: I can perceive the trajectory of your anger as it builds through to its final statement, culminating in an ad hominem attack on Mr. Wise. I don’t know what could give rise to such vitriol (you could have had a friend or a relative on the aircraft, or a son aboard a navy vessel), and thus I would not likewise attack your person. I would, however, rather ask you to only reconsider your remarks. Indeed, keep an open mind and stay for a while.
If the venerable Dr. Feynman were still alive and reasonably robust, I am fairly certain that he would pull you aside and provide you with his views regarding the value to be found in the multiplicity of perspectives provided by the internet and how this compliments a traditional, hierarchal information distribution structure quite nicely.
No doubt my mother would likely have something to say to you, although her forgiving nature would have her choose a more tactful approach. “Rand,” my mother would say, “Michael seems to be a really bright boy, and he is welcome in our home anytime, but please do have chat with him, would you? Please tell him that I really don’t mind his getting drunk, but I do wish he would not urinate in my potted ficus trees in the living room.”
@Rand, I wish, Richard Feynman was still around! This mystery would’ve been right up his alley.He would’ve given us ‘mystery mongers’ and those ‘scientism worshippers’ the runaround 😉
He coined the word ‘Cargo Cult Science’, which means, if you want these cargo planes keep coming with loads of desirable goodies, you just have to build something looking like a runway and pray hard. We all have been occasionally guilty of Cargo Cult Science’and have been building runways called ‘Conspiracy’ or ‘Occam’s Razor’, but the plane didn’t come. However, Feynman said something else, which is very much appliable here:
‘We want the truth to be simple and elegant, but sometimes it’s hidden under layers upon layers like the core of an onion.’
I’ve met many great scientists, but unfortunately never Richard Feynman. The clostest we came to him, was, when my husband mistakenly parked his car on Feynman’s parking place at Caltech, when we were still students. When he realized his mistake he had a bad attack of hero worship.
Just read the article from Alan Milner at ‘Liberty Voice’, ‘The ping rings do not add up’.(what kind of source is Liberty Voice?)
And ‘wow’, another intriguing ‘conspiracy runway’! Would it really be possible to fake the pings of mh370? Sounds wild, and I don’t have the technical expertise, but I would like to know, if it’s possible. There’s still no good explanations, why the pings stopped for two hours in the later stages of the doomed flight. And if a party was clever enough to do fake a ping track, they might’ve easily have faked black box pings at the right search areas as well. Because this cannot get brushed off easily IMO: The alledged black box pings appearing conveniently just a couple of days before the batteries are about to give up, being heard just long enough to fixate the search for a very long time in that broader area. It hasn’t been really analysed so far, where those pings actually came from, if it wasn’t the black box. Marine mammals and the search ships themselves have been mentioned as possible sources, but experts like David Mearns were convinced, that the pings were manmade. And the very fact, that they stopped a couple of days later was taken as evidence, that they might’ve come from the black box of mh370. If the ships were hearing themselves, the pings shouldn’t have stopped.
If a party was clever enough to fake the last couple of the plane’s pings, in order to fake a Southern route, it would be child’s play to throw a decoy pinger into one of the search areas.
Mind you, I don’t really believe in this really nefarious and complicated theory (especially since it’s questionable, how much was really known about ping handshakes at the time). But it would explain a few very puzzling facettes of this mystery quite well, like the 2 hour long pause in between handshakes and the ‘black box pings mystery’.
The big problem is of course the question, who could be behind such a complicated scheme? It would have to be a party with quite a few resources and the power to suppress undesirable information.
Here we go. I’ve just constructed another ‘cargo cult runway’. 😉
@Littlefoot – I think the crosswinds are little high to attempt a landing on that runway of yours… Also, what happens to this string theory you husband is working on if someone sneaks in and ties knots in it? Or takes the two ends and ties them together? Or goes a little hippy and dips the string in wax and makes a candle out of it?
@Gene, agreed, that theory is very outlandish, and on reading the article again I noticed several telling technical inaccuracies.It’s tempting ,though, to imagine a plane throwing false pings out like Hänsel and Gretel did with their bread crumbs.
As to String Theory:The idea of knots and circles and stuff is very much a part of that theory since it creates topological variance. And they are still trying to come up with the Theory of Everything’ and haven’t quite managed to pull it off, much to the annoyance of the journos, who created this term in the first place, and are getting a little impatient now.
Now that the families of the vanished have been unceremoniously given the boot and packed off home, the last pings have faded, the 5-page report released, the press conferences wrapped up, the headlines gone, I think we can all agree that this event has taught us one thing, and that is the importance of unity. One people, united under one family, for ever and ever.
Right u are:)“@IsmailAmsyar: #MH370 is a blessing in disguise 4"all of us.I understand now d beauty of unity&sweetness of having each other.
— Hishammuddin Hussein (@HishammuddinH2O) April 2, 2014
Just did a bit of check up on Alan Milner, who wrote the piece about the pings not adding up: We can discard this particular runway. While the guy has some writing talents and some good observations on human nature, his fact checking and technical expertise is abysmal to say the least: He wrote a few articles about mh370, and they are riddled with factual mistakes.
@Littlefoot – I can see how they are getting annoyed with things taking so long. I mean it took a few billion years for the known universe to get to where it is and therefore mere man should figure out all of it’s secrets in just a matter of decades. 😉 Add to that an infinite amount of time before the uber dense whatever mass and energy it was exploded in the Bing Bang. Gee whiz we are really falling behind! Maybe because the uber dense pre Big Bang mass exploded the one unifying thing couldn’t keep it together? Maybe there isn’t one thing that can unify everything? Maybe it’s opposites… Positive and negative, north and south magnetic, yin and yang, Newton’s equal and opposite reactions… How were things on Witch Mountain and did the Spitz give up the goods on the plane? 😐
Is it me or is it curious that despite the unlikelihood of the Bay of Bengal theory that they continue to commit increasing resources to check it out? For elimination purposes I can see sending something, but adding to the fleet?
@Gene, maybe,the real problem with the ‘Theory of Everything’ or the ‘World Formula’ is, that the human brain simply isn’t smart enough to figure it out 😉 That’s not exactly, what the physicists like to hear, but who says, the universe is constructed in a way, that humans can fully understand the underlying principles and intricacies? We take it for granted, that gorillas can’t understand the solar system, after all, though they aren’t exactly dumb. Our brain evolved on planet earth. Considering that, we’ve gone pretty far, but there may be limits. Right now we can’t even account for the whereabouts of a certain plane, though I’m pretty sure, it hasn’t left our planet.
As to the witches, they didn’t arrive in a B777 at their gathering. I guess most of them were still on their old fashioned brooms, though some might’ve taken to the German Autobahn. I was driving that night, and an inordinate amount was closed off for no good reason. The witches might’ve been tempted by the lack of a general speed limit on the Autobahn, which can make it a unique driving experience, if you aren’t used to it. I always find American highways very relaxing, since nobody is zipping past at 200 km/h or trying to push you away with blinking lights because he wants to go 200 km/h and you are only going at a snail’s pace of 150 km/h. On German Autobahns, you cannot relax at all. You have to be constantly on your toes. The dog loves it though. He is always looking out of the window, barking at everyone who dares to overtake us.:)
Good weekend to you all wanted to put this transcript up its a must read .To me this has been the reveal of cargo manifest and David sluice has got it right!
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1405/02/cnr.01.html
Costelo: I want to bring in CNN safety analyst and author of “Why Planes Crash,” David Soucie.
David, you also read that preliminary report. It’s still unclear to me how many pounds of lithium batteries were on board that plane. Have you been able to determine that?
DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Yes, I have the flight — the flight manifest was released. There were some confusion because it was broken into two different categories. But there — in essence there — well, not more in essence, there are 5,400 pounds on that manifest of lithium batteries so that’s what was on board that aircraft. That’s more than the weight of two vehicles, two cars, in that aircraft of lithium batteries.
COSTELLO: Wow. So, Peter, you’re formerly with the NTSB. Would that raise a red flag to you?
GOELZ: Well, as David has pointed out lithium batteries are prohibited from flying on flights with passengers in the United States. But the — you know, the drawback on the lithium battery, you know, as a suspect is that there’s not a scenario in which the pilots would not have been able to call an emergency, would have been able to indicate to the flight controllers that something was going on.
So, you know, it’s an interesting point. It’s something that, you know, probably worldwide air carriers ought to revisit but there’s no evidence that it’s got anything to do with the disappearance of Flight 370.
COSTELLO: David, do you disagree?
SOUCIE: I’m sorry, Peter, I do a little bit in that they are claiming that they did put those lithium batteries in the back cargo area. But the fact that they originally said there was 400 pounds and then later said there were — 5,400 pounds leads me to doubt that they actually put them in the rear compartment.
And if they were in the front compartment it’s a mere two or three feet between that front cargo compartment through a thin aluminum door to the avionics rack where the transponder is located. The ACARs box is located and the UHF and VHF radios are all co-located on the rack, that’s just ahead of that — of that door. So I’m not saying that’s the case or that’s what caused it because there’s subsequent things that would counteract that that happened in the aircraft.
So what I’m saying is that there — if the aircraft was loaded improperly which at this point why would it not be, but it would have been right near where those radio racks are. So that’s the only connection I could make there.
I arrived in Singapore tonight from Bangkok on TG 409. Security was tighter than normal, full American style. And, when I approached the forward head near the cockpit door from business class, I was directed to those at the rear. They really should bring the cockpit door out a bit to include the forward toilet for enhanced security.
Our flight path took us perpendicular to MH370’s initial take off climb to 35k. Malaysia looked beautiful in the sunset that filled the windows on the starboard side as we descended to our approach to Changi airport. I almost feel like taking a flight up to KL next weekend, just because it’s there, but this would be a bit nutty, of course. Anyway, it was actually quite eery to fly through the same airspace…
Gene: yeah, and then I loved how Hussein, upon saying that they were going to dispatch the Malaysian undersea search vessel said, “…and then who will be responsible for it?” Well, uhh, you? I don’t even think he gets it. The more I look at Malaysia, the more it looks like Myanmar in many respects, in that it’s leaders don’t really see themselves as accountable, they see themselves above any such notion of accountability.
Thanks, Tdm, you always have great links.
The discrepancy in the admitted weight of the batteries underscores one more time, how unreliable everything uttered by Malaysian authorities is.
I cannot envision a scenario, though, where the plane would fly on for 6 more hours with such a fire in the cargo bay. I guess, that’s the reason,why most aviation experts discarded it.But wow! 5000 pounds more batteries than originally conceded…
Rand,
I agree with you that if the Malaysian government is not hiding something (excluding further evidence of their total incompetence) then we might never know what happened to the aircraft or why it happened.
Littlefoot has pointed out that our exhaustion in trying to figure it all out led us to drink the cool-aid and give credence to GeoResonance’s claim, even though their technology was obviously absurd. What shocked me ( and having been around for a long time I am not easily shocked) is that not a single major media organization did a serious background check of GeoResonance before going public with the story.
We have at least learned that the decision to focus the search on the south Indian Ocean was made before Inmarsat supported that decision. The questionable Inmarsat Doppler analysis is not going to be opened to public scrutiny. Does it still matter ? It was US intel that informed Malaysia that the plane went south. They did not offer direct evidence that it went south, but rather, offered the complete lack of evidence that it went north. I’m sure their investigation was very thorough. They listen to everyone, every communication, every data transmission. They took very seriously the prosect that the plane was stolen to be used as a future weapon. Just think of it, a Boeing 777 loaded with 50,000 kg of plastic explosives, sneaked into the air trafic flow disguised as a scheduled flight.
Nonetheless, it is very suprising, as Jeff has noted, that the Malaysians are saying the plane made a sharp left turn and went south at Banda Aceh at the northern tip of Sumatra. There must be a major Indonesia military radar station there, no? So what is going on ?
PS: Littlefoot, I would love to offer your husband some advice on String Theory, but I can’t imagine he is looking for advice.
@Littlefoot – I hope those brooms are licensed and insured or there would be hell to pay in the case of an accident! I am surprised Germany would be so slack on these kinds of things…
As for the theory of the universe that is pretty easy in redneck terms. All it takes is a six pack and a diesel pick up. More so the diesel pick up than the beer. Anyway, it’s pretty simple. The universe is just like a 4 stroke internal combustion engine. Intake, compression, power, exhaust. Let’s crack the first beer of that six pack and start in the middle with power.
Beer 1) Power: This begins with ignition and that would be your Big Bang. Diesel is explosive and hot. Just like them first micro seconds of the universe.
Beer 2) Exhaust: We got our universe expanding and creating a great big ole plume of galaxies, comets, planets, stars, and even them black holes. Black holes being the vacuum cleaners at the center of galaxies.
Beer 3) Intake: Hey them black holes keep sucking everything up and getting more powerful. Soon they gobble up their whole galaxy! It’s a stellar smorgasbord out there folks and black holes are gluttons.
Beer 4) Compression: Black holes are gluttons in the biblical sense. They don’t stop! Soon they turn cannibal and turn on each other. Eventually the biggest one wins. Kinda like a fat guy in pie eating contest. All that mass crunchin’ down on itself becoming denser and denser. Soon it reaches critical mass…
Beers 5 & 6: Whoa… we’re back to power. How long has this been going on? The universe is on auto replay? That’s infinity is it? Can’t wrap my head around that. I guess that’s because it’s infinite. Okay, so what started the cycle? Brain ouch! Back to the beer store…
@Rand – I’m not sure if I understand Malaysian democracy very well, but it seems to me that you can vote for whomever they select or allow on the ballot and silence any sort of organised opposition. In that light it is hard not to view any of their approaches from something other than a skeptical or cynical point of view. Right now that movie about J Edgar Hoover on and there was a line of Hoover’s about Bolshevik communists. I wondered if Bolshevik capitalists would be okay in his mind. Then I thought about Malaysian transparency….
@Arthur T –
The so called turn at the tip of Sumatra looks odd. After crossing back overe Malaysia they go NW over water, apparently to avoid Indonesian mainland, then cut the corner?? Looks child-like. It doesn’t take them away from the possibility of radar detection, if Indonesia has anything serious – it’s a 3rd world country and they say they saw nothing – but it’s still a big violation of airspace. I’m reasonably sure you could overfly Indonesia without much going on, there is no real airforce, and they would make the Malaysians look competent. Crossing Malaysia would be a bigger challenge and they did it with their eyes closed. At this particular juncture a turn to the north looks more logical. To me.
Arthur: I would agree that radar/intelligence would have informed/confirmed a northern route. In fact, as I have stated previously, perhaps the Malaysians actually counted on various nations being able to provide information if, in fact, the aircraft went north. The securing of resources for an expensive search in the south would have taken precedence here.
Matty: the above doesn’t infer that the aircraft did not fly north; rather, it’s merely indicative of the process of the search. That said, I believe the longer the search continues the greater likelihood that it ended up in the water. Yes, I am still bothered by the fact that no debris has been found, but this could not compare to the level of my surprise were it to be found parked in a hangar somewhere. As Arthur has stated, the official response would have been to treat the loss of the aircraft as a potential terrorist incident, but this does not mean that it in fact was.
As for Indonesian primary radar, I would argue what you did previously: they were asleep at the screen when it nicked their airspace for all of ten minutes. Furthermore, perhaps the Indonesians informed the Malaysians privately as to the flight trajectory of the aircraft, which would only enhance a conclusion indicating a southern flight path.
Please let me know if I am missing anything here. I am stuck trusting the general conclusion of the dominant paradigm that the aircraft most likely went south, and I can’t seem to find anything that points to the contrary. I do buy into the idea that it yet could have flown north, but if I were directing the search, I would commit proxy diplomatic and intelligence assets to the search in the north, while taking my dog and pony show on the road to drum up the big cash and the special gear for the long haul in the south. In short, I would basically do what the Malaysians have been doing – only perhaps I would admit that Gene and I took a few shots at the thing with a 20mm cannon at about 18:25 after chasing it out into open water.;-)
The overflight of the tip of Sumatra is a big problem for the southern arc, as I see it. Not only because Indonesian radar should have seen it, but even more so because it makes no sense from the point of view of motive: why would anyone fly for an hour on a westerly track, skirting Indonesian airspace, only to then turn south and fly right through it? If someone’s aim were to fly south, why not just fly south to begin with? It feeds into the larger problem with the southern arc, and in particular with the current search area, which is that it becomes impossible to imagine a motive behind the required behavior: why fly slowly, for hour after hour, into an area covered by Australian radar? One could argue that there was no intention, that the plane flew the final leg as a ghost ship, but I believe that the Inmarsat data may rule that possibility out. Mike Exner is now working on a mathematical analysis that will show whether or not there is a constant-speed, constant-heading course that complies with the data.
Another point with the southern arc. If it did indeed go in level with Exmouth, and Jindalee tracked it, it wouldn’t have flown off the screen and they would have known exactly where it went in, and not ended up messing around half way to Antarctica. The Indonesians might have been asleep at the screen, but something would have been recorded?? They say they saw nothing? Interesting that, because if the Singaporeans said the same thing they most likely would have concluded it it didn’t go there. Radar should have confirmed the southern route really, but plenty of rickety planes flying around those parts. Ships without proper electronic signatures might be common. Bit like Nepal…….sorry……….there is nothing like Nepal.
Rand, I’ve been banging on about probability for ages now. I think these days that’s all they’ve got. They have to look south, because if it went north then it got through. At face value it’s inconceivable the Indons missed it?
How about this then –
International experts would meet in Canberra on Wednesday to sift through the information gathered so far in a bid to define the new search area and make sure nothing has been missed, Mr Truss said.
This audit of information would “look again at the satellite information that has been accumulated so that we can make sure that it’s been accurately interpreted (and) whether it should lead to some further search for information”, Mr Truss said.
Behind closed doors?? Surely they need to throw it open.
@Jeff, there is the possibility, that the plane became a ghostship later, after it was last seen on Malaysian primary radar. There could be several reasons for this: There was a disaster, but the crew didn’t become incapacitated right away; or there was a highjacking by the captain or someone else, and there was an intervention inside the plane, which led to the Southern leg; or the plane was highjacked (again by captain or someone else) and there was an outside intervention, which led to a Southern ghostflight. Right now the plane’s route from IGARI to roughly IGREX looks like someone was deliberately flying the plane. Some time after 18:29 it looks like a ghost flight.
But I also have problems with the alledged Southern turn over the tip of Sumatra. It contradicts blatantly earlier allegations of Malaysian authorities, who claimed, the plane deliberately avoided Indonesian airspace. I’m not even talking about those unauthorized sources, who had the plane as far as Port Blair over the Andamans; something which is apparently confirmed by Chris McLaughlin, when he made his statement on tv, that ‘the plane went South’, but had proceded to the Andamans.
The route of the preliminary report seems to be incomplete and smoothed out somehow.
What I’m saying is that the Inmarsat data may be able to rule out a ghost-ship scenario precisely in the latter phase of flight. It may look to the naked eye like the plane is flying in a straight line, but to fit the ping arcs and Doppler data may require heading and speed changes.
How do the Malaysians even know for sure, where the plane turned South exactly? Didn’t they say, they lost it from their primary radar screen at 18:22, when it was still heading in a Northwestern direction?
Another question: Couldn’t the plane simply have undercut Indonesian radar by flying very lowly over Sumatra’s tip? It thad done so after all in Malaysian airspace as well, when the Malaysians lost it from their screen. Why couldn’t it have eluded the Indonesians the same way?
While the precise point of the final turn, and even the conclusion that it was a southward rather northward turn, might be uncertain, the chart confirms and clarifies important points. The plane was under deliberate control, and Plan A involved going back to Malaysia. It came in low overland, as corroborated by the cellphone reattachment. It looks like the pilot was careful to avoid overflying non-Malaysian territory after aborting that plan and retreating west, probably to avoid being shot down. A reasonable explanation would be that he tried to contact Malaysian political authorities on a direct line, initially received no response, pulled back west to await a return call, heard nothing or had an unsatisfactory conversation, and then sent the flight south to its doom. If so, then who did he try to contact? My guess would be the Defense Minister. Did the pilot set the final course and commit suicide, or was the last leg a chickee run? Your guess is as good as mine.
Jeff: that would be great if Mike Exner can analyze the data further and provide additional indications as to the actual ‘behavior’ of the aircraft. Please keep us posted on his results. Richard over at dsteel.com has been fooling around with the cluster of three pings after 18:25-18:28 after I posted references to our work here, there. He correlated the ping data with the waypoints and found that at the time of the cluster it appeared that there was a “correction and a recovery” of some sort, after which the aircraft traveled north with intentional human input or south without it. Could Mr. Exner possibly have a look at the ping cluster as well?
On radar: I really don’t see where need to work with the assumption that there was the intent of avoiding radar. Perhaps this impression was created by repeated press speculation as to the same? Or perhaps it is how we would expect someone to behave if they had the intent of jacking an airplane? Regardless, what do things look like if we assume that there wasn’t any attempt to avoid radar?
If there was an intentional diversion and things began to ‘fall apart’ near Penang, we really don’t have all that much time to account for between leaving the coast of Malaysia and the first ping in the cluster at 18:25. The pilot could simply have directed the aircraft out over water on run for time with literally nowhere else to go. There actually was no where else to go, and/or flying out over the water would be the sensible thing for a pilot to do, if he had even the barest crumb of a conscience.
As for flying over Malaysia or Indonesia, if the pilot was indeed not intending to avoid radar, than all is not in toilet in terms of the southern route, if after 18:28 it was in ghost flight mode. The Indonesians could very well have shared data with the Malaysians on the QT, which could have further informed the analysis of the direction of the flight path. The Indonesians could have very likely not wanted their sharing with the Malaysians a matter of public knowledge as this would create political complications both internally and externally. So, they could have played nice, but only with assurances of quiet from the Malaysians. This, then, would have provided further indication as to the southern path. Indo radar data could have been the data that the WSJ had Boeing coupling together with the Inmarsat data to indicate the flight path.
Jeff: BTW, I am now in Singapore through Sunday and free Friday AM through Sunday afternoon. I can pay for a flight up to KL if you have any errands you want me to run on a day trip. I am dead serious. If you have a name, I can track down their contact info and arrange a meet before I make the trip. Yeah, I’m a ‘nut job.’ Email me, otherwise I will simply continue with my day job, here.
@Rand, since the plane could’ve been flown at a low altitude (when it was last seen on Malaysian primary radar, it was already very low) over the tip of Sumatra, thus avoiding possible radar detection, I don’t really see a problem with a Southern course and the Indonesians declaring, that they haven’t seen it. Maybe, they have and aren’t admitting it publicly, or they haven’t because the plane was too low.
The problem I see, is with the Malaysian authorities, who have contradicted themselves for the umpteen’s time. Not that long ago they declared, that the plane had deliberately avoided Indonesian airspace. Their preliminary report seems to contradict this. And how do we know, that the route they are showing us now, is the correct one? Somehow I doubt it…
@Jeff, would be great, if Mike Exner could look into the latter stages of the flight again. You’re right, it looks like a straight line, but it doesn’t have to be so.
I’m just a little surprised, because so far the assumption at duncansteel.com was, that the plane flew probably a straight and constant route from 19:40 onwards.
And it would be great, if he looks at the 3-ping cluster around 18:29 again. Something crucial might’ve happened then.
@Rand, I’ve also toyed with the idea, that our idea about the plane deliberately avoiding radar detection, was wrong. At least in Malaysian airspace it certainly didn’t try to avoid primary radar. Otherwise it would’ve flown low all the time and not just for 120 miles over Malacca Straight. There might’ve been other reasons for the low altitude.