John Young AMSA briefing
John Young AMSA (Emergency response division) briefing was very interesting.
Acting on information from NTSB He explained that:
Quote:
"Regular messages from the aircraft, at approximately hourly intervals during its flight. Those transmission were detected by a communications satellite over the indian ocean and with the time of those communications and the distance, Then clarified "They can't plot exact distance but sequentially they can be build up into a route the aircraft took."
The wording here is crucial, it implies that all pings were received and from that, a 'join the dots' plot can be derived. This would be the first confirmation that all pings were received, not just the last one!
Unless the Australians are assuming this is what NTSB has done, this would indicate the aircraft has been plotted heading due south or of course due North as the arcs are mirrored!
No, there is really only one arc with a bite taken out of the middle to eliminate the area covered by the adjoining satellite which did not receive a '0011Z ping'.
When John Young says 'sequentially' he is probably indicating the use of earlier 'ping rings' in the calculations. I suggest that if so, these would be a series of running fixes from the last reliable co-location of radar fix and 'ping ring', using max and min ground speeds, which would branch out into some but not all of the final arc.