ttcse:
I wasn't arguing against power failure, but against the notion that it would offer an even simpler Occams Razor. To make my point I was fishing for the 'What happens then?"
I know you didn't but also most people don't really understand what is the real meaning of this overused reference to Occams Razor "law". In short, it means that the simpliest explanation which agree with
all the facts is certainly the good one. The difficulty behind this theory is much more about understanding
all the facts than putting them together into the simpliest explanation possible.
For most people here, the simpliest interpretation of the end at 0214 of ACARS is to say: obviously, no more ACARS = aircraft crashed. This is a fact and lets build a theory starting with this postulat without even verifying if another possibility exist. But this is not the only possibility as no more engine imply no more ACARS also.
Another example was the severe/extreme turbulence theory which postulate: proximity with an active CB = severe turbulences. Then, because this aircraft was experiencing severe turbulence at 0210, it could have been only worst later, consequently it crashed at 0214. Until one say: "hey, at 0210, the autothrust setting doesn't fit with severe turbulence from Air France SOP and, by the way, the initial report of turbulence has never been confirmed by the BEA. Why do you always mention turbulences when the only factor confirmed about the weather is ice?"
And so on.
If the criminal investigators used this Occams Razor principle the same way to arrest people, they would always arrest inocent people which looks like criminals rather than criminals which looks like inocent people. As I said, the main difficulty is to find what are the real facts and to cross-check everything before building "simple" hypothesis based on unverified postulats. Others will start from their own conclusion and then will try to bend any relevant fact around, no matter if others doesn't fit at all.
To cut to the chase, they came down west of course but near the zone of eastward current flows. Then they drifted eastward/east-north-eastward before then currents took debris more north-north-eastward.
An approximate distance crash and zone with a map will explain it much better.
If you based this claim on OSCAR, let me tell you that this is a good tool for an average zonal current but in no way it should be considered as an ultimate reference for such a study as it is based on sattelite data extrapolation. See the validation method here compared to drifting buoys and the limitation in the granularity of the dataset (about 20 days average mean with filtering):
Method:
In these comparisons, as in the rest of the validation study, the drifting buoy data are minimally processed. The principle of this validation study is to compare OSCAR to the drifter data at the locations of the buoys.
For each individual buoy, the drifter data (locations and derived velocity vectors) are initially sampled every 6 hours, and are 20-day low-pass filtered along the drifter trajectory. Hence this validation study only concerns surface current variations on time-scales on the order of, or larger than, 20 days. This is consistent with the OSCAR surface current processing, which, by construction, is relative to periods larger than 10-20 days. The filtered drifter data are then sub-sampled onto the ~5 day OSCAR time base. For a set of drifter vectors defined by locations, times and velocity components, the collocated OSCAR vectors are obtained through linear interpolation at the same locations. The two collocated datasets can then be compared.
Moreover, the actual drift is not a simple function of surface currents. Drift may be approximated by buoys but it is related to the drifting object (the reason why, after several days, a wreck field will be 10 time larger than it was the first day, because objects are drifted differently. The main components of a drift vector are the near surface currents and the surface winds (here waves height may be neglicted) which are function of the object.
I did something much simplier than that. I reconstructed the real drift from 6-10 June (0.37 m/s, hdg 357 deg). then, I compared it to different currents maps (including OSCAR) to check versus the zonal currents and for extracting the wind factor during that period. The main purpose was to get an approximation of the distance covered during 1-5 June which is in the range between 90-115 NM. I'm still working on the wind part to have a better estimation of the distance and direction. But between 1-10 June, all the objects have to come closer and end at roughly the same place. From your estimation, I just can't understand how it is possible.
S~
Olivier