Originally Posted by
Ian W
The fuel burn rate increases so that although the aircraft is flying faster it will run out of fuel earlier after a shorter distance. It will also be less affected by winds as it was faster. [...]
But this would be impossible given current assumption because it is thought that the plane was in the air until the last ping, so it couldn't have run out of fuel "earlier."
The actual source of the confusion in the post you're responding to is that the "faster" referred to the first part of the plane's flight, which means less fuel was available for the final constant-speed portion of the flight, which in turn means that that portion was actually *slower* than initially assumed.
This is explained well in this older post:
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/5...ml#post8405815
The new assumed speed for the final leg is 400kts, revised down from 460-480kts.