Originally Posted by
silvertate
So if they are looking at a new track (purple) to the northeast of the original (red) track, then they must be looking at slower aircraft speeds, not faster speeds.
Indeed, based on the arc where the aircraft was at the time of the individual pings, there is a combination of direction and Speed in the way your graphic shows. Faster on the same course means more rings crossed between two pings. If not more rings have been crossed despite being faster the plane would have to fly a course more parallel to the rings, i.e. SW in this case.
Therefore a higher than assumed speed seems indeed somewhat contradictory to the position of the plane being more to the East.
The Problem in this is probably to do with the level of accuracy of these calculations based on Signal strength and Timing. Would be interesting to know the tolerances of these calcs.
Apart from that I somewhat share your confusion about the combination of higher Speed and more Easterly Search Location.