Malaysian Airlines MH370 contact lost [Archive] - Page 47

slats11

31st Aug 2014, 14:16

I agree Richard C10. Up to a point. That is probably how you would like to analyse the satellite data and model the possible tracks. As a purely scientific exercise.

However real life is always more messy, and there were many other factors and agendas going on.
1. Inmarsat was breaking new ground here. The BTO analysis came out first, and this data was easily understood and was presumably readily accepted. So we had the north and the south arcs. The south arc was initially seen as more likely as no one (especially India) had observed the plane over the northern arc.
2. As soon as the south Indian ocean was identified as a possible area, everyone with a satellite started finding debris.
3. Then the BFO analysis came out. This was far more complex than the BTO analysis. It took time, It required corroboration by independent scientists. And there was likely a degree of circumspection in various quarters. None the less, the BFO analysis identified a likely area - not so far away from the area now thought to be most promising.
4. Then came an air search. Due to all the delays, it was already very late when this was started. Even if debris had been found, it would have been difficult to backtrack. However it was the best hope at the time, and so began a multinational air search that was complicated by the distance from land and poor weather. This was only called off when it was clear the delay meant that backtracking would be futile.
5. At some point, the search area moved a long way NE along the arc. It has never been made clear why this happened. People have speculated that a UK submarine detected something that could have been a pinger, but we will likely never know the explanation for this. Ships went to this new area and seemed to have immediate success finding the pinger. It turned out there was no pinger and the noise heard came from the ship. Yes that was all a bit of a screw up.
6. Hence back to the BFO data. The highest probability area was calculated on the basis of detailed calculations and utilising different models, and is fairly close to the earlier area. So they started to map the ocean floor (this area is practically unknown) in preparation for another search.
7. They have now incorporated information from an unanswered call to help refine the search area. Presumably this data pushes the search area a little further SW.

On top of all this has been significant political and diplomatic pressures. There was certainly an initial reluctance on the part of the Malaysians to tell all they knew. The Australian Prime Minister was under pressure, and jumped the gun based on satellite photos of debris.

Its not been perfect. Far from it. Things are always easy in retrospect.

In fairness, it has probably been about as good as could have reasonably been expected in the real world. This is especially true given this event was unprecedented, and given we have been using technology in novel ways.

Nemrytter

31st Aug 2014, 16:35

Instead we have Inmarsat guarding their company secrets, I do not agree with that at all, Inmarsat had no obligation to release any of this data (or even collect it). The fact they have done so has resulted in the only evidence we have to suggest a possible final location for the aircraft. They should be applauded for the hard work they have done thus far, not lambasted for not releasing the data (which, by the way, I thought they had?) for internet amateurs to pick over.

MG23

31st Aug 2014, 16:41

And nothing has been found yet, although the primary search areas have changed multiple times

That's because they're only mapping it at this point. I doubt anyone involved in the search expects anything to be found until they go back with high-res sonar.

New analysis of the data has been used multiple times already. It means that the former analysis has been incomplete, has been wrong, has been what?Again, the new location is inside the area previously chosen for the next phase of the search. The original ULB search area was also inside that area, and the ship searching for the ULBs was heading there when it heard what turned out to the spurious signals and stopped to investigate.

None of this satellite data was ever designed to be used to locate a missing aircraft. The BTO was thought to be a means of extracting some information to help locate an aircraft in an incident like AF447 where we already knew the approximate area, but not to find one that had vanished without trace. No-one expected to find useful information in the BFO data, because the aircraft was supposed to correct for frequency offsets, so this has all come from reverse-engineering the corrections made.

And all of the detailed position estimates are heavily reliant on knowing where the aircraft turned south. Anything that changes the estimate of that position inevitably changes the final position.

So the odds are good that it won't be found exactly where they're now predicting, because there are so many other variables that can only be estimated. But it's the best place to start, to minimize the amount of time spent searching the area they're now mapping.

Ulric

31st Aug 2014, 19:13

We should all remember that the disappearance of this aircraft is the subject of a criminal investigation and as such, not all information available to the investigating team is available to the public.

The investigating team and their advisors may look ill informed but it is wise to remember that they probably have more information than we do.

AreOut

31st Aug 2014, 22:20

"We should all remember that the disappearance of this aircraft is the subject of a criminal investigation and as such, not all information available to the investigating team is available to the public.

The investigating team and their advisors may look ill informed but it is wise to remember that they probably have more information than we do."

then it would be fair from them to say "we have some informations that we can not disclose at this point", not look totally inept calculating numbers that at first aren't reliable enough to prove anything

slats11

1st Sep 2014, 04:06

Ozlander1

1st Sep 2014, 21:44

"
then it would be fair from them to say "we have some informations that we can not disclose at this point", not look totally inept calculating numbers that at first aren't reliable enough to prove anything

Why, they don't owe you anything and you have no 'Need to know".

AreOut

1st Sep 2014, 23:53

hah, my country doesn't pay for the search so I indeed don't have the right to know, but taxpayers of countries involved in search certainly do

Shadoko

1st Sep 2014, 23:54

The transcript of the press conference after the tripartite meeting has been published:
Transcript of Press Conference, 28 August 2014 (http://www.jacc.gov.au/media/interviews/2014/august/tr016.aspx)
The answer about the investigation is not, IMHO, very clear.
And perhaps an update after somebody undestanding the Chinese will be found? :E

Lonewolf_50

2nd Sep 2014, 15:30

chronus:
Whilst public attention is focused on the search effort, no reports are released on the criminal investigation which continues under wraps. Is it not high time the authorities release some information as to progress on this aspect of the search for answers.
Utterly disagree with your demand / appeal for more info release on the criminal investigation. Considering the nature of this from the criminal aspect, the law enforcement folks are better off keeping as low a profile as possible as they undertake their very difficult investigation.

As above, you do not have a need to know, nor any right to know, about the ongoing investigation. When they are complete, I am confident that there will be sufficient press releases and public disclosure to meet public information requirements.

Are you?
If not, why not?

I also suspect that the criminal investigation is stalled pending retrieval of the aircraft and such data as that eventual discovery may provide. More leads, albeit cold.

hamster3null

2nd Sep 2014, 22:44

It's not an easy task. Trying to determine ground speed and heading over many hours from a handful of values for velocity away from a satellite.

Agree that vertical velocity will influence velocity relative to satellite. But not sufficient to produce a false (of to conceal a real) major heading change.

According to ATSB, aircraft systems don't compensate for vertical velocity at all. (Unlike horizontal velocity, which is compensated for, but with assumptions about stationary satellite.) Uncompensated velocity of 3000 fpm is equal to Doppler shift of 84 Hz at 1.645 GHz.

The difference between BFOs at 18:28 and 18:40 (and the difference between heading northwest and heading south) is around 55 Hz.

slats11

3rd Sep 2014, 04:08

According to ATSB, aircraft systems don't compensate for vertical velocity at all. (Unlike horizontal velocity, which is compensated for, but with assumptions about stationary satellite.)

I'm trying to understand this.

Total (or uncorrected) horizontal velocity is much greater than vertical velocity. But are you suggesting the aircraft corrects for its own ground speed? And so vertical velocity becomes relatively greater when compared to horizontal velocity corrected for ground speed? That is, vertical velocity makes a significant contribution to BFO because horizontal velocity is corrected for ground speed.

Have I got that right?

Presumably the aircraft uses GPS to establish its ground speed. Would GPS always have been available? Presumably GPS does not rely on satcom, and someone piloting the aircraft around the tip of Sumatra would have relied on GPS.

How about the postulated fuel exhaustion at the end, and the final partial log on perhaps due t APU. Would the aircraft system have a GPS derived ground speed available in order to apply the necessary correction at this log on. Or would ground speed still be in the process of being established at the time of the satcom log on, and would a ground speed of zero be assumed and no correction be applied (it would make sense I guess for the system to initially assume aircraft not moving when system booted up).

Sorry for all the questions. A lot of this technical stuff is beyond me.

hamster3null

3rd Sep 2014, 07:16

I'm trying to understand this.

Total (or uncorrected) horizontal velocity is much greater than vertical velocity. But are you suggesting the aircraft corrects for its own ground speed? And so vertical velocity becomes relatively greater when compared to horizontal velocity corrected for ground speed? That is, vertical velocity makes a significant contribution to BFO because horizontal velocity is corrected for ground speed.

That's what they are saying. It corrects for its own ground speed, and the only reason why we have any meaningful data at all is that it corrects based on the assumption that the satellite is stationary, and in reality the satellite wobbles up to 1.5 degrees along the north-south axis. This gives us a compensation error which, added to a bunch of other terms, gives us BFO. See here http://www.atsb.gov.au/media/5243942/ae-2014-054_mh370_-_definition_of_underwater_search_areas_18aug2014.pdf, page 55 and onwards.

The aircraft can get ground speed and heading from GPS as well as from the inertial reference system. Both sources would agree with each other under normal circumstances. I'm not sure what would happen if circumstances are less than normal (an in-flight power outage would scramble the state of the IRS and necessitate manual realignment, and there may not be anybody in the cockpit to do this.)

slats11

3rd Sep 2014, 10:22

Thanks for that. I had understood about the satellite not being truly stationary. However I had forgotten the bit about the aircraft correcting for its own speed.

I wonder if the BFO for the final partial handshake was wildly different to the previous ones, which is what you might expect if the correction was not available for this final event. The graph I have seen (included in link below) does not seem to show this final 0019 UTC event.

MH370: What does Inmarsat ping data reveal? | Air Traffic Management | Air Traffic Management - ATM and CMS Industry online, the latest air traffic control industry, CAA, ANSP, SESAR and NEXTGEN news, events, supplier directory and magazine (http://www.airtrafficmanagement.net/2014/06/mh370-what-does-inmarsat-ping-data-reveal/)

This link also gives the 0011 data but not the 0019 data

Aqqa on MH370 (http://www.aqqa.org/mh370.htm)

One thing I noted in this graph is the progressive increase in BFO over time. Presumably this is not because of increasing ground speed, but because the plane was flying an arc. That is, as the plane flew further south and the satellite became progressively lower in the sky, the relative velocity between plane and satellite progressively increased (even though ground speed may have remained constant).

Paulena

5th Sep 2014, 07:49

Hard objects on seabed found in search for MH370 (http://www.9news.com.au/world/2014/09/05/13/19/mh370-search-uncovers-hard-objects-on-indian-ocean-seabed)

roninmission

5th Sep 2014, 15:20

The spokesman was very careful not to overstate the significance. Faced with a phenomenon like this, is it likely that they will investigate this immediately or simply wait until they get to that location with the search plan?

SnarfOscarBoondoggle

5th Sep 2014, 20:21

i highly doubt that there would be any delay in immediately investigating this particular site much more closely.

onetrack

6th Sep 2014, 00:59

The preliminary sea-bed mapping of the area has found areas where the water depth is as shallow as 600 metres and within a couple of kilometres, it has gone to 6000 metres. It has also found undersea volcanoes. "Challenging" is the understatement of the month for this piece of seabed, and the location and recovery of any critical MH370 wreckage is going to be one of the most difficult undersea operations ever mounted.

Downwind Lander

11th Sep 2014, 14:03

Today, it is precisely 13 years since a nutbag islamist on board United 93 switched off his transponder and caused problems for ATC tracking staff.

Earlier this year, the same appears to have happened to MH370.

I have heard various excuses varying between "far fetched" and "daft" for why this switch should not be capable of being disabled from the flight deck. Will the regulators ever wake up?

If they do, they could also consider why FDR and CVR batteries are so inadequate and why these should not operate in passive transponder mode.

wiggy

11th Sep 2014, 15:52

Smoke Removal and various versions of Cabin and/or flight deck Smoke and Fire drills often call at some point for electrical power to be removed from items (either by a switch or by disconnecting busbars) in order to try isolate the source of the problem.

Do you consider such drills " "far fetched" or "daft"?

Downwind Lander

11th Sep 2014, 16:04

wiggy says: "Smoke Removal and various versions of Cabin and/or flight deck Smoke and Fire drills often call at some point for electrical power to be removed from items (either by a switch or by disconnecting busbars) in order to try isolate the source of the problem.

Do you consider such drills 'far fetched' or 'daft'? "

So far, we have lost two aircraft and their passengers. That is a high price to pay. We may have lost them anyway. Certainly, this crucial circuit should not interfere with drills; with good design, it does not need to.

formulaben

11th Sep 2014, 16:10

Downwind Lander

11th Sep 2014, 16:23

formulaban says:
"Precisely how would souls have been saved if either UA93 or MH370 would have continued to squawk during its doomed flight?"

ATC couldn't find UA93. The F-16s did not know where to go. As for MH370, the signals would have been of immense value, if only for investigative purposes.

Ian W

11th Sep 2014, 18:57

Precisely how would souls have been saved if either UA93 or MH370 would have continued to squawk during its doomed flight? :rolleyes:

UA93 was in an area (sort box) that was only secondary radar so disappeared. Continual tracking would have enabled some kind of fighter response - whether that would have saved anyone nobody can know.

MH370 appears to have deliberately stopped squawk. Had it continued there would not have been a wasted effort searching the South China Sea for the aircraft and it would have been apparent that it had flown across the straits of Malacca and around the northern tip of Indonesia. Again, there is no way that anyone can know whether that would have led to people being saved, but it certainly would have reduced fruitless searches and some 'dark' satellites may well have tracked it to its final demise allowing recovery efforts to commence in the right place before the barely useful FDR/CVR locator batteries died. Again saving huge amounts of time and effort.

Finally, knowing that whatever is done in the cockpit the aircraft will be continually tracked _may_ act as a deterrent for certain planned hijacks in the future.

formulaben

11th Sep 2014, 20:42

So we have established it will help find wreckage or aid in an intercept (shootdown) of a hijack in progress. Time and money might be saved in S&R ops, but zero souls saved with a transponder that is unable to turn off. Perhaps that is why regulators have not "woken up"?

susier

12th Sep 2014, 06:13

It's not just S&R, it's a massive issue across the board. If you can't find the AC you don't have answers and it affects just about every aspect of the industry from SLF confidence to technical R&D. Thought that was obvious.

mixture

12th Sep 2014, 07:23

So far, we have lost two aircraft and their passengers. That is a high price to pay. We may have lost them anyway. Certainly, this crucial circuit should not interfere with drills; with good design, it does not need to.

Its quite frankly ludicrous that you say its perfectly acceptable to make it impossible to turn off a piece of electrical equipment during Smoke and Fire drills.

All you are doing is replacing one major problem (the tracking question), with another major problem (sending those on board to their early demise through smoke inhalation and/or fire).

Quite frankly, I don't give a damn how good you think your circuit design skills are.....there will always be instances where the brown stuff hits the fan and unforeseen (or impossible to avoid) scenarios lead to the need to turn a piece of equipment off.

slats11

12th Sep 2014, 09:29

In some ways risk is like an air filled balloon. Early on, it's pretty easy to reduce risk (use your hands to squeeze the ballon to reduce its size). Over time it gets harder to reduce the total risk further. Squeezing the balloon in one dimension results in it bulging out in a different direction.

Sometimes this increased risk elsewhere is anticipated. Sometimes it is not - until it happens. It becomes a trade off, and you can never get it down to zero.

Mh370 may have come about partly through our efforts to mitigate 9/11.

So this question is a balance of risks. On balance, I wonder if the risk of being able to turn a transponder off is greater than the risk of not being able to do so.

I accept that a functioning transponder may not have saved lives, either here or 9/11. We will never know for sure.

But we would know what had happened in real time. With 9/11 it might have permitted the shooting down of UA93 had passengers not taken things into their own hands. A hell of a decision, but what would you have authorities do if it was headed towards a major population centre. We would likely have the recorders for MH370. And the sure knowledge you couldn't disappear may act as a deterrent.

As the world moves into a period of higher risk, the (acknowledged) risk of not being able to turn off an electrical item may actually now be the smaller risk.

mixture

12th Sep 2014, 12:23

I accept that a functioning transponder may not have saved lives, either here or 9/11. We will never know for sure.

It would not have saved lives, that's obvious based on the fact that its an aircraft you are talking about.

Once the aircraft has been commandeered by miscreants, there is always going to be bugger all you can do about it until the aircraft reaches the ground in one form or another (i.e. whether they crash it or a government blows it out of the sky.... the result in terms of the lives of those on board is the same).

I suspect rather than creating stupid fire hazards by hiding away equipment, you will find the more obvious solution to MH370 is staring you in the face .... improved profiling and psychological monitoring of flightcrew.

slats11

12th Sep 2014, 14:52

It would not have saved lives, that's obvious based on the fact that its an aircraft you are talking about.

Well it could have saved lives if it had been a sufficient deterrent to prevent the "hijacking" in the first place. And being able to track a plane could perhaps help to save lives on the ground. Can we agree that we would prefer to track a hijacked plane than not track it?

improved profiling and psychological monitoring of flightcrew.

It would be hard to think of a less effective measure than this. Psychologically profiling is unable to identify someone about to commit such an atrocity. No psychologist believes this is possible.

Due to the number of incidents, the best data probably comes from looking at mass murderers. Yes in retrospect people will often come out and say the offender was odd or unusual in some way, or had recently suffered a relationship breakdown. But that is very different to prospectively identifying someone in time to prevent an atrocity.

There are certainly some "risk factors" e.g. male gender, feeling isolated, being a bit aloof or awkward among others, recent marriage breakdown, financial problems etc. However these risk factors are so common they define a significant proportion of the population. Does anyone know a male pilot with marriage difficulties?

The risk factors have high sensitivity (i.e. some of these factors will be present in most offenders), but appalling specificity (in that the overwhelming majority of people with these risk factors will not offend). So we can use these risk factors to predict that the next offender will likely be a male with some interpersonal difficulties, but we can't predict the identity of the next offender. They are useful at a population level, but completely useless at an individual level.

This article is a few years old, but is still true today
Dark Matter: The Psychology Of Mass Murder (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/16/AR2007041601831.html)

"Terrorism" used to be about getting a gun onto a plane and issuing demands to release prisoners etc. 9/11 changed that - it was about getting a pilot onto a plane, forcing entry to the deck and taking control. It has probably changed again with MH370.

I would certainly take my chances with being unable to isolate an electrical system than with psychological screening.

Downwind Lander

12th Sep 2014, 15:12

Slats11 says:

"I would certainly take my chances with being unable to isolate an electrical system ...".

I suspect, but don't know, that the transponder circuitry itself is remote. All that is local is the line and the switch. And, in my view, even they don't need to exist.

But nobody is talking about the CVR and FDR batteries. Surely none of my detractors think that these batteries are sufficient? I wonder if a power source can be devised using seawater as an electrolyte and dissimilar metals as electrodes.

Ian W

12th Sep 2014, 15:36

Slats11 says:
But nobody is talking about the CVR and FDR batteries. Surely none of my detractors think that these batteries are sufficient? I wonder if a power source can be devised using seawater as an electrolyte and dissimilar metals as electrodes.

There was a significant discussion on CVR/DFDR batteries several eons ago on this thread. Not only that but on the choice of frequency, the lack of modulation of the ping with an aircraft ID or last GPS position, and power increases by reduction of the number of pings or by using transponder techniques.

It seems that the CVR/DFDR spec for locator beacons was for finding the recorders in a river or lake. The expansion of transoceanic flight passed by the people setting the requirements until AF447. Now they are belatedly increasing the battery capacity but other 'bright ideas' have not been taken up.

Vinnie Boombatz

13th Sep 2014, 00:47

Some new material posted by ATSB.

MH370 (http://www.atsb.gov.au/mh370.aspx)

3D map of sea floor (2.2 MB) in search area:

http://www.atsb.gov.au/media/5092636/3dmodel_seafloor_terrain.jpg

Depth in primary search area roughly 2 to 3 km, some deeper, some shallower.

Eyrie

14th Sep 2014, 07:15

One good reason for having a transponder that can be turned off from the cockpit is it if develops a fault and starts giving bad data to ATC.
AFAIK large airliners have two transponders in case one fails.

Vinnie Boombatz

18th Sep 2014, 20:43

Sep 9 update by Duncan Steel, Michael Exner, Tim Farrar et al:

MH370 Search Area Recommendation | Duncan Steel (http://www.duncansteel.com/archives/1023)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/32349391/MH370_IG_Report_2014-09-09_Rev1.pdf

Their best estimate of position at the 00:11 ping is 37.5 S, 89.2 E, very far removed from the ATSB search areas. Their recommendation would further imply a need for another several months of bathymetric survey.

On the other hand, John Zweck, Australian Ph.D. in mathematics does an independent calculation that aligns very well with the ATSB search area. His August update:

http://www.utdallas.edu/~zweck/MH370AugustReport.pdf

(Note: to convert km/hr to knots, divide by 1.852)

Zweck's best estimate of position at 00:11 ping using great circle model is 98:89 E, 27:64 S and using small circle model is 99:16 E, 27:28 S.

These don't account for glide after fuel exhaustion, so are very close to the center of the ATSB Priority search area.

Sep 10 link to Zweck's latest spreadsheet:

Aqqa on MH370 (http://www.aqqa.org/mh370.htm)

Dont Hang Up

24th Sep 2014, 08:40

I would certainly take my chances with being unable to isolate an electrical system

Which rather implies that you consider the risk of hijack on any given flight is more severe than the risk of electrical fire on board. I am not sure that would stand up to statistical scrutiny, probably by a factor of several thousand - even if the "no-off" transponder was a sure fire deterrent of hijack, which clearly it is not.

The mystery of MH370 is frustrating, but perhaps it is better to just swallow that frustration than fit an additional fire hazard in every commercial aircraft just in case it happens again.

As for psychological profiling, I am similarly sceptical about its effectiveness. But at least it is directly addressing prevention. The transponder issue is just helping us find the wreckage afterwards.

PrivtPilotRadarTech

24th Sep 2014, 21:56

Quote:
"Which rather implies that you consider the risk of hijack on any given flight is more severe than the risk of electrical fire on board. I am not sure that would stand up to statistical scrutiny, probably by a factor of several thousand - even if the "no-off" transponder was a sure fire deterrent of hijack, which clearly it is not."

Electronics is my area of expertise. First, low-power devices pose little fire risk. Second, there are hundreds of such devices on any given commercial jet- phones, laptops, etc- which the pilot cannot turn off. Adding one more won't make any difference.
Third, the technology is readily available and cheap. Something like a $150 SPOT beacon could report periodically, somewhat like a transponder. Smart people can work out the details and address legitimate concerns, but it's nuts not to track every airliner in the post- 9/11 era.

Dont Hang Up

25th Sep 2014, 06:04

Electronics is my area of expertise.
OK

First, low-power devices pose little fire risk.
The two Mode S transponders on a typical commercial airliner have a 500W plus transmit power!

Something like a $150 SPOT beacon could report periodically, somewhat like a transponder.

...so yet another piece of equipment on board. Can we just have a reality check here. There are already means of satellite tracking aircraft. It is just that on this one occasion that means was disabled - possibly deliberately, but we do not know for sure, and if it was disabled by electrical fire then this whole argument gets a bit ironic..

When CVR and FDR became mandatory this fulfilled a clear purpose: Post accident analysis to find means to prevent recurrence. However, adding ever more kit to report on ever more rare events just does not make sense to me.

We have to assess risks and mitigation properly before we add our quick fixes.

but it's nuts not to track every airliner in the post- 9/11 era.
Maybe I am nuts, but to me that seems to have been an excuse for adding extra layers of surveillance on just about everything and everyone. Even since that fateful day the risk from terrorism remains one of the tiniest risks an individual (even an airline pilot) will face in their daily life.

PrivtPilotRadarTech

25th Sep 2014, 08:38

Quotes:
"The two Mode S transponders on a typical commercial airliner have a 500W plus transmit power!"

"There are already means of satellite tracking aircraft. It is just that on this one occasion that means was disabled - possibly deliberately"

"We have to assess risks and mitigation properly before we add our quick fixes."

I believe the most powerful transponders put out 250 watts, so you could claim that a pair of them have "500W plus transmit power". However, they transmit brief pulses, so they only consume about 10 watts. They are low power devices. Yes, there are already means of tracking planes via satellite. My point is if hand held devices like satellite phones and SPOT beacons have enough power to communicate with satellites, it obviously doesn't take much power and therefore poses little risk of causing a fire. I have no objection to assessing the risks and mitigating them, smarter people than me can figure out the details. More than a decade after 9/11 I don't see much risk of "quick fixes".

Dont Hang Up

25th Sep 2014, 10:22

I believe the most powerful transponders put out 250 watts

The most powerful transponders are around 600W. And it is the peak power rather than the average which is the risk if the transponder goes faulty - not just to the aircraft but potentially also the local radar environment. It is really important that transponders can be switched off. This is all simple stuff but not really the point.

More than a decade after 9/11 I don't see much risk of "quick fixes".

More than 13 years on and the paranoia does not abate. An endless series of sticking-plaster quick fixes. When it comes to the "war on terror" there is a bizarre lack of perspective. So let's put another piece of kit on board, drill yet another hole in the aircraft skin and create yet another certification procedure (nothing on a modern airliner costs "only $150"). And without any clear idea on whether this would improve aircraft safety or by how much. Because let us be clear, what is proposed here is not a safety feature. This is a "something must be done" and "how hard can it be?" feature.

mixture

25th Sep 2014, 11:24

When it comes to the "war on terror" there is a bizarre lack of perspective. So let's put another piece of kit on board, drill yet another hole in the aircraft skin and create yet another certification procedure (nothing on a modern airliner costs "only $150"). And without any clear idea on whether this would improve aircraft safety or by how much. Because let us be clear, what is proposed here is not a safety feature. This is a "something must be done" and "how hard can it be?" feature.

I agree.... ever since 9/11 politicians and companies selling security products have used the "terrorist" word to validate the introduction of knee-jerk archaic legal powers and obtain finances to fund vast technology purchases.

Its time for the world to act less Daily Mail and more Financial Times when it comes to implementing measures to combat terrorism.... :cool:

Ian W

25th Sep 2014, 13:02

The main problem with the MH370 disappearance was that the response to a missing aircraft has not altered for years. Aircraft overdue action is only legitimate once the aircraft is overdue at destination. In the current systems where aircraft are already continually tracked - despite the avionics and comms salesmen claims - an aircraft ceasing to report its position and respond to RT/CPDLC should immediately be treated as an emergency. Even with the loss of secondary being on handoff, the systems could have flagged a possible problem. The Malaysian and Vietnamese controllers should then both have treated the missing aircraft as an emergency and alerted all agencies including the military. The military would almost certainly have responded that they could still 'see' the aircraft. The event could then have had an entirely different outcome.

There is no need for new equipment to track aircraft they all have it. The beancounters try to limit the use of ADS-C as the SATCOM providers charge for each transmission. However, that is no longer the case as both INMARSAT and AIREON (Iridium Next) are offering free tracking services. With AIREON also proposing to track ADS-B (although the capability is yet to be proven). What is needed is procedures to use when the tracking suddenly fails because the aircraft has 'gone dark'.

I would propose that someone at the ICAO level start's looking at the old procedures for missing/overdue aircraft. A start would be an immediate response to aircraft that stop communicating/transponding rather than we wait for the end of the aircraft endurance before we can start anything official.

Green Guard

25th Sep 2014, 13:46

Why not use ELT "the way sea ships" are using them. No need for any el power nor radio relay. They are designed to detach from ship in case of disaster and NOT to be pulled down together with the rest of tail or cockpit. Voila !

Ian W

25th Sep 2014, 19:15

ELT's were discussed way back in the thread. The C5 I think had a jettisonable ELT on the tail fin. The ones in current commercial aircraft tend to be fixed in the fuselage, or on life rafts or even as separate manually initiated buoys that the flight attendants can access. Given the thoughts on what happened with MH370 only a detachable external ELT would have given any location of crash as the cabin crew are thought to have been disabled by depressurization. ELTs do not run all the time as they are on an HF emergency frequency so they would only allow easy finding of the crash site.

DaveReidUK

25th Sep 2014, 21:49

ELT's were discussed way back in the thread. The C5 I think had a jettisonable ELT on the tail fin.I can't speak for the C-5, but the P-3 certainly has.

Either way, you're right in that the subject of ejectable ELTs has been done to death.

While it might seem unreasonable to suggest that posters making suggestions like that should read the previous 11,000 posts first, they might pause to consider that in a thread that's been running for more than 6 months, almost every conceivable angle has already been explored extensively.

LabratSR

26th Sep 2014, 12:54

MH370 Operational Search Update 24 September 2014

MH370 (http://www.atsb.gov.au/mh370/)

Three-dimensional models of the seafloor terrain

Three-dimensional models of the seafloor terrain (http://www.atsb.gov.au/mh370/three-dimensional-model-of-the-seafloor-terrain.aspx)

lincman

29th Sep 2014, 00:55

Ian W

Recommend you look at my post No. 8089 that was written way back on March 25, 2014. There is not much wrong or lacking with the ICAO procedures (i.e. Annex 12) for locating missing aircraft - they just need to be followed in a timely manner. My post described the various steps and actions to be taken once an aircraft appears to be missing. This was clearly not done by several involved parties - in particular, the various Malaysian authorities. The Annex certainly does not intend for S & R organizations to wait for the aircraft to reach its endurance before initiating a search. Those in commercial aviation with responsibilities associated with S & R need to gen up on Annex 12 and keep a copy handy at their work stations.

DaveReidUK

29th Sep 2014, 06:28

The Annex certainly does not intend for S & R organizations to wait for the aircraft to reach its endurance before initiating a search.

How would that have made any difference?

The aircraft was off-track, not transmitting, and the only data that was subsequently able to give clues as to its possible whereabouts didn't emerge until weeks later.

Skyjob

29th Sep 2014, 08:56

What difference?
Maybe that areas which are now discarded could then have been searched and excluded as possible locations.
We still don't know for sure the aircraft flew the track it is said to have done.
We assume...

Pax Vobiscum

29th Sep 2014, 12:50

Today's Times (behind a paywall) says the following (in a story about the new sonar search about to start):Australian air accident investigation authorities co-ordinating the search have assumed it likely that an event on the aircraft, either a malfunction or a small explosion, caused the two pilots and probably the 237 passengers and cabin crew to black out and die because of oxygen starvation hours before it crashed.
I've seen nothing to suggest that anyone (particularly not the AAIB) any longer believes this to be a plausible theory. Have I missed something, or have The Times journos been at the sherry a bit early?

LabratSR

2nd Oct 2014, 10:38

Underwater Search Now Set to Begin Oct. 5th or 6th

First MH370 deep search ship now due to be on site 5 October | Plane Talking (http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/2014/10/02/first-mh370-deep-sea-search-ship-now-due-to-be-on-site-5-october/)

This is the tow fish that GO Phoenix will be equiped with.

SLH PS-60 Specs (http://www.slhydrospheric.com/prosas60_spec.html)

Whitepaper

http://www.slhydrospheric.com/PS60_whitepaper.pdf

Fugro Discovery is nearing Fremantle where it will be paired with its own tow fish. This is the equipment it will be pulling.

2400: Deep Towed ? EdgeTech (http://www.edgetech.com/products/bathymetry/2400-deep-towed/)

EDIT: Video of Fugro Edgetech DT-1

http://media.watoday.com.au/news/wa-news/the-equipment-tipped-to-find-mh370-5839201.html

Shadoko

8th Oct 2014, 19:22

It seems the underwater search has begun:
On Monday, 6 October 2014,GO Phoenix arrived in the vicinity of the search area and, following system checks and vehicle deployment, underwater search operations commenced on the 7th Arc. ( MH370 Operational Search Update?<br>08*October*2014 (http://www.jacc.gov.au/families/operational_reports/opsearch-update-20141008.aspx) )

There is also an update about the search area: http://www.atsb.gov.au/media/5163181/AE-2014-054_MH370%20-FlightPathAnalysisUpdate.pdf with some new (from my memory!) infos:
At 1707, the last ACARS transmission from the aircraft provided the total weight of the fuel remaining on board at 43,800 kg.
And discussion about the south turn (p.10) and BTO/BFO errors optimisation.

And a map of the first areas which will be searched: http://www.jacc.gov.au/media/maps/files/20141008_UnderwaterSearchAreas.jpg

megan

8th Oct 2014, 22:58

Satellite communications company Inmarsat has written a "clear language" analysis in the Royal Institute of Navigation's peer-reviewed journal on the high-tech detective work that went into establishing the current search area for Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370. The download available at http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FNAV%2FS037346331400068Xa.pdf&code=4a44446c006ff5b8e332fec41a70bb64

Bare Plane

9th Oct 2014, 11:02

"Tim Clark has been a senior manager at the airline Emirates since 1985 and has been instrumental in developing it into one of the world's largest airlines."

His views from an interview with Der Spiegel, German news magazine, at this link in English.

MH370 Emirates Head Has Doubts about Investigation - SPIEGEL ONLINE (http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/mh370-emirates-head-has-doubts-about-investigation-a-996212.html)

GHOTI

10th Oct 2014, 16:18

Sir Clark raises some interesting points from a layman's POV, although by his own admission, he is an airline manager, not a technician. This interview, and those missing Libyan jets, will have the conspiracy theorists talking to themselves. Is there any wisdom in Clark's proposition that xponders not be turned off in the cockpit?

Jonfra

10th Oct 2014, 16:56

Shadoko the figure of 43,800kg fuel remaining was embodied in the last ACARS message at 17:07 UTC from the on board computer.

Fuel weight at departure was 49,100kg and reported gross T/O weight of 223.5 tons.

Expected FF/engine @ 490,000lb @ 35,000ft was 7,403lb/engine (3361kg)

IIRC MH370 reached 35,000ft @ 17:17. It was overhead Kenyir Lake, Malaysia at 17:07 UTC passing 27,675ft.

First engine flame out at 00:11 UTC and second engine flame out @ 00:19 UTC, therefore first flame out 7 hours 4min after this fuel figure.

I question how is it plausible that this aircraft could descend fly west through the Straits of Malacca make all sorts of bizarre manouveres and then climb again to 35,000ft before turning around the tip of Sumatra to fly to intercept the southern arc within the fuel burn parameters?

Vinnie Boombatz

10th Oct 2014, 19:56

@megan - 8 Oct 2014 15:58 -- Thanks for the link to the Inmarsat paper! A very detailed explanation of their processing, and the evolution.

Some observations made in the paper:

"While the validation demonstrates the general accuracy of the BFO technique, it is important to note that agreement is only achieved with ±7 Hz accuracy during this flight, and to assume better accuracy for the measurements taken on MH370 would be unrealistic."

"Combining the sensitivity data with the measurement accuracy of ±7 Hz indicates that inaccuracy in each individual BFO measurement would correspond to ±28° heading uncertainty and ±9° of latitude uncertainty."

Which helps to explain the size of the potential solution area.

At or above the tropopause in a standard atmosphere, the speed of sound is about 1062 km/hr. The speeds shown in their Table 9 range from about 0.75 M to 0.82 M for a standard day above the tropopause, a reasonable range for max distance cruise. Granted the table shows groundspeed, not airspeed, but the headwind or tailwind component would probably be small on a southerly track.

The latest charts from ATSB show that they have done the bathymetric survey on a fairly narrow swath about the 7th arc, and plan to search initially along that narrow swath. The bathymetric survey covered a broader cross-arc distance for regions more to the NE.

Will they need to conduct additional bathymetric surveys prior to expanding the search area on either side of the arc?

Jonfra

11th Oct 2014, 02:17

Please could somebody guide me, or correct me if I am wrong, but I estimate if MH370 reached FL350 @ 17:07 UTC the fuel remaining was 97,550lb and then given a further 5 minutes cruise to a minute flying beyond IGARI leaves 96,363lb fuel.

Then we are told it descended to 5,000ft and flew west until next seen at 18:02 UTC over Pelau Perak climbing @ 23,000ft. Thus MH370 covered 289nm from IGARI to Pelau Perak making a dog leg around the south of Penang in 40 minutes at full power and performing 433kt TAS?
... At low altitude?

Flying for example at 10,000ft at full power/310 KIAS would equate something like 1,350lb per engine/minute. Therefore in 40 minute segment MH370 burned 54,000lb?

So by the time it reached Pelau Perak at 18:02UTC MH370 had fuel remaining of 43,550lb and then commenced a 20 minute climb back to 29,500ft at MEKAR covering 154nm and burning say 12,000lb?

So by the time it reached SANOB where MH370 is supposed to have made its turn south to intercept the Southern Arc, MH370 had just 31,550lb fuel remaining to cover another 5.5 hours to the Southern Arc flying at 35,000ft with a fuel flow of 9,900lb/hr?

In other words at the time it turned past the tip of Sumatra it had fuel remaining for just 3.2 hours but is supposed to have flown another 5.5 hours?

etudiant

11th Oct 2014, 02:45

The flight duration is known, the last ACARS message gives the fuel available then and the arc calculations give an indication of where the plane wound up.
The various climbs, doglegs and descents postulated after the last ACARS message are needed primarily to explain why the aircraft was not picked up by the various radars purportedly scanning the area. If there was not enough fuel to fly this route, then clearly there was a surveillance failure which people are reluctant to confirm.

mrbigbird

11th Oct 2014, 13:41

Nerik

11th Oct 2014, 15:42

I see little benefit in Clark's speculation and I think he should not have entered into it. He could have just stopped at saying that he hopes that the case is resolved soon and that there is too little known about what happened. His talk about the plane being under control, maybe not being in the water etc. is just basically pub talk.

sky9

11th Oct 2014, 16:15

Packs off or bleed air off?

etudiant

11th Oct 2014, 17:55

That is the type of basic question that needs to be addressed, whether any combination of systems management would allow the aircraft as configured to fly the route that is projected.
Jonfra makes a case that the known onboard fuel would not support the flight path that is assumed, a path incidentally that requires active and skilled crew input. Boeing engineers have the best 777 knowledge, they could tell what endurance is possible given this path, but they have been entirely mute on this thread afaik. The flight remains a mystery which erodes confidence in the integrity of the world civil aviation authorities.

Ian W

13th Oct 2014, 00:55

As with a lot of things on this hamster wheel, they have been discussed before. There were a lot of assumptions made to come up with a flight profile based on claims (unverified) that military radar had seen climbs to 45,000ft and the aircraft was flying low level in radar shadow to avoid alerting the Thai's, etc etc. All this is assumption based on partial reports from military radars that have a vested interest in ensuring that nobody knows the bottom of their cover or their height finding capabilities. Whether these people have been more forthcoming to the various boards of inquiry as long as their reports are kept secure - we do not know. However, what we do know is that the aircraft was airborne until the last 'partial ping'/'SATCOM logon attempt. Therefore, we should discount the 30 minutes of aerobatics and then the flight low level in radar shadow, it is more likely that the aircraft maintained level for the zig zag transit to the Malacca straits and then around Indonesia before flying South. If it _didn't_ fly like that it is not easy to come up with a flight path that would cross the range rings from the INMARSAT satellite at the right times within the error bounds of the tracking methodology. So until there is a better idea, the search is on the ring of the partial ping out to the West of Perth.

RetiredF4

17th Oct 2014, 07:27

Some interesting read.

AN Australian scientist says it is possible to locate missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 by identifying cloud changes for evidence of vapour trails caused by burning fuel emissions from the aircraft.
Hydrometeorologist Aron Gingis, head of environmental consultancy firm Australian Management Consolidated, and a former Monash University academic, specialises in cloud microphysics.
Mr Gingis says he has used the technology to locate shipwrecks in the north Pacific Ocean by identifying “ship trails” and the changes in cloud microphysics caused by emissions of floating vessels using archival satellite data.

MH370 search: Contrails could be key to finding missing plane (http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/could-this-technology-find-missing-malaysian-flight-mh370/story-fnizu68q-1227093827402)

sydgrew

21st Oct 2014, 05:03

From The Guardian, to-day 21 October 2014:

Australian Prime Minister Abbott received no official briefing from his department or special envoy suggesting they were confident early acoustic noises detected in the search for the missing flight MH370 were from the flight’s black box.

In a Senate hearing on Monday night the Greens leader, Christine Milne, asked how the prime minister came to make a statement suggesting the search had been substantially narrowed and questioned whether he had acted recklessly.

In April Abbott said during an official visit to China that the search for the missing plane – which is believed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean killing all passengers on board – “has been very much narrowed down because we’ve now had a series of detections, some for quite a long period of time”. He added that he was “very confident” it was the black box.

But the comments were tempered later on the same day by the joint agency coordination chief, Angus Houston, who said there had been no significant developments in the search. The plane has still not been recovered, and no traces have been found in the Indian Ocean.

The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) confirmed on Monday evening that no briefing had been provided by them to the prime minister to support the assertions made in China.

DPMC assistant secretary Helen McDevitt said: “The prime minister’s statements on each occasion were made on the best advice available to him, and of course the prime minister was in discussions not only with the department of the prime minister and cabinet … but also with his special envoy, Angus Houston, and a range of experts involved in the process.”

Milne questioned how Abbott came to make the announcement, if it appeared that the joint agency coordination centre and DPMC had not provided any evidence to support the assertion.

“I’m asking where it came from since his chief envoy clearly clarified later in the day to say there was no breakthrough, Amsa [the Australian Maritime Safety Authority] said they didn’t provide the information to the prime minister, the bureau of transport and safety says it didn’t provide the advice to the prime minister, so I’m just trying to find out where the prime minister got this from,” she said. “It was pretty reckless, surely, to go and make a statement like that if there’s no detailed analysis at all of the substance.”

Tony Abbott not advised MH370 search had found black box, senators told | World news | theguardian.com (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/21/tony-abbott-not-advised-mh370-search-had-found-black-box-senators-told)

mm43

22nd Oct 2014, 20:55

On 22 October 2014, the ATSB has again updated their MH370 operations page.

www.atsb.gov.au/mh370/ (http://www.atsb.gov.au/mh370/)

mm43

25th Oct 2014, 19:30

An article published in Aviation Week (http://m.aviationweek.com/commercial-aviation/inmarsat-details-forensic-search-mh370) on 20 October 2014, contains an interesting look at the continuing saga surrounding the original Inmarsat data. It compares that data with that released by the Malaysian MoT, the continuing reassessments being made by the ATSB on where to search, and the conclusions of the so-called Independent Group who have continued to point out the errors they claim have been made by the ATSB's panel of experts.

Links in the article will show that the movement in the ATSB priority search area has always been in the direction of the location that the IG have been promoting.

The ATSB's MH370 Flight Path Analysis (http://atsb.gov.au/media/5163181/AE-2014-054_MH370%20-FlightPathAnalysisUpdate.pdf), which is a PDF file.

Ulric

25th Oct 2014, 20:29

The nature of the data leads to uncertainty here. I believe the ping arcs can be established with good certainty - many have repeated the calculations - but these only establish the distance from the satellite at the times of the pings. To establish a position on the final arc requires assumptions to be made and in particular, assumptions about the position and timing of the final turn south. The movement of the priority search areas over time thus reflects changing support for the various assumptions which could be made. Sadly, the hard data does not favour one assumption over another and so the range of possible endpoints is very wide indeed. At the moment, the Independent Group clearly has the floor and the search area seems to have moved to match the assumptions which underlie their calculations.

mm43

25th Oct 2014, 21:05

To establish a position on the final arc requires assumptions to be made and in particular, assumptions about the position and timing of the final turn south.To highlight your point; the assumption that the aircraft remained at a constant altitude during the unanswered satphone call between 1839~40, is really what everything hinges on. If it was climbing, then a turn to the south hadn't occurred prior to that time.

Ulric

25th Oct 2014, 21:19

Gysbreght

25th Oct 2014, 22:19

mm43,

Agreed, except that in your last sentence "climbing" should be "descending" (approximately 2500 fpm at the speed and heading at the end of the primary radar trace).

mm43

26th Oct 2014, 00:32

Gysbreght,

If the aircraft had maintained the assumed PSR track, I accept your RoD. OTOH, think of a heading on which it could have been climbing.

As Ulric has said, we really can't be sure where the aircraft went after 1829 and until it turned up 'somewhere' on the 1940 arc. That 'somewhere' makes all the difference to the outcome.

Ulric

26th Oct 2014, 20:44

Exactly right. Some views I've seen expressed put the 19:40 arc at the western extremity of the flight path, some have it crossing EW and some WE. The data we have doesn't distinguish one from the other but the assumption you make at that point can cause any plausible course solution to move the endpoint thousands of kms.

I have to admit defeat and hope that the investigation team have followed the right hunch. Hopefully, they do have some information which can be used to favour a particular path.

selfin

26th Oct 2014, 21:59

It all hinges on the path taken between the 18:29 and 19:40 arcs. One crucial question is which direction the aircraft was travelling in when it crossed the 19:40 arc - E-W or W-E. The data doesn't tell us the answer to that.

We can take the view that the final major turn is bracketed by the 182815z observation and the cluster corresponding to two telephone call attempts around 1840z. The BFO for the latter has azimuth solutions to the south, whereas a risk analysis for the former provides strong support for flight continuing along on the track as it existed at 182212 depicted in the Lido Hotel radar photograph.

A game of overfitting rapidly ensues if an additional turning point is assumed to have occurred between 1840z and 1941z.

KTVaughan

27th Oct 2014, 14:12

Is there an up-to-date map locating the relevant timepoints in the flight sequence?
I know these maps continue to evolve..........

selfin

28th Oct 2014, 00:55

Gysbreght, any azimuth solution very close to due south will be numerically unstable where very small speed changes cause relatively large azimuth changes. Azimuth solutions are essentially symmetric about north/south, with a small latitude-dependent phase shift that depends also on the flight path angle in non-level flight. A prime example of this instability can be seen in the 1827z BFO cluster.

Solutions in general are not due south. For example at 1941z the choices are about 30 degrees either side of south at normal cruising speeds.

See http://www.aqqa.org/MH370/models/aqqaBFOazimuth_v3-5.xlsx for an analytic azimuth model.

slats11

28th Oct 2014, 11:24

I find it increasingly hard to believe that the plane will be found using the Inmarsat data in the public domain. There are too many unknowns in the publicly released information, and these unknowns create a myriad of potential solutions such that the search area is huge. We had a much better idea where to find AF447 and the Titanic.

I sincerely hope authorities are in possession of more information than has been released to the public.

I had always been struck by the early US government statement that the plane flew for hours and likely crashed in the Indian Ocean.

Have a look at the following:

MH370: US sends ship to Indian Ocean on new ?indication? of crash site | euronews, world news (http://www.euronews.com/2014/03/12/live-updates-search-for-malaysias-missing-plane-expanded-to-se-asia/)

So by 1051 (CET) on 12/3, the US was stating they had indications the plane flew on for some hours and went down in the Indian Ocean, and were already moving a USN ship. Subsequent reports confirmed these indications were the hourly satellite pings. This report would have been early in the day in the USA. The fact they had already moved a ship means they had this information for at least some hours - possibly even 11/3

http://www.inmarsat.com/news/malaysian-government-publishes-mh370-details-uk-aaib/
Malaysia sates they were told (by Inmarsat) about the satellite pings on 13/3.

Now maybe Malaysia got the date wrong. Or maybe Inmarsat (UK) shared with US before Malaysia - perhaps from a concern that Malaysia was being less than completely transparent. Maybe.

Or maybe there is another explanation.

It is generally accepted satellite tracking of submarines exists. It is also accepted there is satellite monitoring for the heat signatures of ballistic missile launches (although presumably such systems would not be looking in this area). But there is plenty of satellite surveillance of the earths surface.

You also have to wonder what technology has been developed since 9/11. It is presumably possible to track a large plane by its heat signature. You would imagine there has been research into tracking aircraft, and subtracting verified flights in order to identify rogue aircraft. This would seem a sensible area to research in the post 9/11 world. Such technology would have been very useful during the many hours that MH370 kept flying.

Anyway, hopefully there is additional information available even if it is not in the public domain.

MG23

28th Oct 2014, 14:01

Now maybe Malaysia got the date wrong. Or maybe Inmarsat (UK) shared with US before Malaysia - perhaps from a concern that Malaysia was being less than completely transparent. Maybe.

I'm sure the BBC documentary a couple of months ago went into that in some detail, but I can't remember exactly who told who what and when.

Exoixx

29th Oct 2014, 05:22

The 4 Corners ABC documentary went into this. Just double checked and it says Inmarsat privately handed over the data to it's distributor on the 11th March, who in turn passed it to Malaysia.

However, Hishamuddin dismissed the possibility that the plane continued to fly on the 13th March. He actually made a point to dismiss it. It was another two days before they abandoned the search in the South China Sea.

My money would be on poor communication and incompetence on the part of Malaysia and Hishamuddin's ever present foot-in-mouth syndrome..

AirLandSeaMan

29th Oct 2014, 08:14

Have the 9M-MRO RR PDAs surfaced here? Or any difference in fuel in left vs. right tank? I ask because the IG received a 3rd hand report yesterday from someone attended a meeting in Perth on Oct 22, saying that an official member of the search team stated that one engine flamed out ~1 hour before the other. We are very skeptical, but trying to find out if anything like that has ever showed up here.

slats11

29th Oct 2014, 08:38

Thanks Exoixx. That fills in a few blanks. I never saw that story. Will try and find it on line.

The timing still looks very odd.

MH370 goes missing on evening of 7 March UTC, and the world knows its missing by morning of 8 March UTC. The circumstances of disappearance are highly unusual from the outset - e.g. no distress call.

Inmarsat hand the information over on 11 March UTC. 4 days later. After Inmarsat had specifically very recently looked into applying this technology to track a missing plane (as a result of AF447).

I find it difficult to believe Inmarsat took days to discover they actually had this information. Or that it would take 4 days to deduce the plane kept flying for many hours after lost contact.

Did someone at a high level (political rather than Inmarsat) sit on this for a long time? Just one of the many questions surrounding the early response to this incident.

mm43

29th Oct 2014, 08:50

Have the 9M-MRO RR PDAs surfaced here?Like you we would also be interested in such info. The short answer is no, but it would be interesting to know.

Whatever the fuel imbalance (if any) noted in the last ACARS to RR, there is no way of knowing if that was or wasn't corrected later in the flight.

AirLandSeaMan

29th Oct 2014, 08:55

See page 970 here: https://db.tt/4EXSNq5o for info on fuel imbalance and cross feeds.

wiggy

29th Oct 2014, 09:12

Can anyone with access to B777 manuals please find out the maximum fuel imbalance?

There's no quoted Limitation/"maximum" in the manuals (whilst gross imbalance obviously isn't desirable I suspect for certification purposes the aircraft would have to be controllable one wing tank full, the other wing tank empty (e.g.holed)).

Balancing, when called for, is performed as ALSM/the FCOM 2 describes.

MG23

29th Oct 2014, 13:53

I find it difficult to believe Inmarsat took days to discover they actually had this information. Or that it would take 4 days to deduce the plane kept flying for many hours after lost contact.

1. It was a weekend. Someone probably to had to go and look at the data in their time off, when the news reports already seemed sure it had crashed not long after takeoff, where it would be relatively easy to find.
2. The BBC documentary said their first thought was that someone was spoofing the system, pretending to be the aircraft. That probably involved pulling in experts from other companies to verify that it wasn't. Again, on a weekend.

So, you're probably already up to the 10th by the time everyone is available who needs to be available.

Ian W

29th Oct 2014, 15:00

Then don't forget getting authorization to release the data and getting the report that was being handed over double checked by lawyers that nothing was going out that would be detrimental to INMARSAT. Calculations and documentation re-checking amendment and reapproval by senior management after all hoops jumped through.

I know some companies where that would take a month.

TamairTarmac

9th Dec 2014, 23:08

In the following article, regarding redundant systems, Byron Bailey said

"the 777 has 80 computers and three sets of nearly every system on board – including three radios, three radar transponders, three autopilots and three flight management computers – to ensure a "practically fail safe" operation.

A failure of one will result in transfer, usually automatically, to another. "

Here is what I am asking 777 pilots: Is it correct that there are three transponders?

Flight MH370: former Boeing 777 pilot points to sabotage | Flight MH370 News | The Week UK (http://www.theweek.co.uk/world-news/flight-mh370/57641/mh370-details-of-who-was-on-missing-plane-are-being-withheld-says)

MrPeabody

10th Dec 2014, 03:53

TamairTarmac

There are actually 2 ATC Transponders; L & R switched by the crew. The general thrust of his statement is however correct in that most flight critical systems are triplicated and have auto switching.

If it's not triplicated; then in most cases it's duplicated. These systems are never on the same power supply.

As a separate example; a non essential system such as ACARS is a software function within the AIMS system. There are 2 AIMS systems and therefore ACARS; The system uses the VHF system it can tune to, one of three (VHF L, C or R), depending on the aircraft option/vintage it will the go for one of two HF systems (L or R) after that; then on to a single SATCOM connection if enabled and optioned. The pilot can select a source if so desired.

So what he's saying in a nutshell is that something IS fishy leading to the end of this aircraft.

TamairTarmac

10th Dec 2014, 04:05

I have just seen him quoted all over the internet referring to three transponders; and I just wonder if it is only 2, that no one has called him on it. Or if there is some kind of third redundancy, want or where it might be. Or might he be referring to the Inmarsat pings as a kind of transponder?

Exoixx

11th Dec 2014, 01:25

As somebody who knows nothing about this (or anything of a technical nature like this) i'm curious, how does the auto-switching work? That is, what is the technology that detects the need for a switch and switches it? To my lamen brain, it seems logical than in order for a switch to take place between two systems, they would have to be connected in some sort of way?

Apologies if this is really dumb question. :uhoh:

MrPeabody

11th Dec 2014, 05:56

Exioxx

You are correct that there is a link between systems for automatic switching to occur; this can either be via data bus links between computers or simply by relay connections.

Trying to keep it simple;

Depending on the system; computers on different power supplies will be connected through data buses, each computer comparing and monitoring against the computer in control to detect a failure and then force a transfer to a good computer.

Relays often provide discrete inputs to computers as to status of power and other circuits. A failure of power on a circuit can be the trigger to initiate the system on standby.

KenV

11th Dec 2014, 15:30

I have just seen him quoted all over the internet referring to three transponders;

It doesn't matter anyway. The plane was no longer within radar coverage, so 1 transponder or 1 hundred, there is no transponder signal when outside radar coverage.

Lonewolf_50

12th Dec 2014, 14:59

Just a thought about this faux concern vis a vis 3 transponders. Uninformed complaints / criticisms seem to abound in the media these days.
1. The IFF/Transponder system doesn't need to be triple redundant, the way some of the flight safety systems mentioned above might need to.

Why?

The plane flies safely with 0, 1, or 2 operational.
If 0 are working, the crew need to use their radios more often in terms of coordinating with ATC on where they are and what they are doing, since the information isn't passed by the system via the radar and radar returns.

You can argue that if you wish to "for safety's sake" rely on a third layer of capability, that third layer is present in the ability to use two way radio communication:

You tell them where you are and what you are doing, just as we have always done in areas where there is no radar contact.

ATC then associates that with a radar reflection, rather than a transponder paint/code, and can thus track you and sequence you into the air traffic du jour. If you turn off your two transponders, and refuse to talk to them on the radio, it amounts to the same thing as turning off three transponders.

May we put to bed (without any supper!) this "three transponders" thing?

For any journalists reading (Mr Bailey?): please, give it a rest.

Up-into-the-air

17th Dec 2014, 18:42

The Deputy Prime Minister/ Minister for Transport announced a setback today:

MH370 setback in search | Assistance to the Aviation Industry (http://vocasupport.com/mh370-setback-in-search/)

Bergerie1

23rd Dec 2014, 15:50

Flight Magazine has just published a new theory on the location of the possible crash site of MH370. It looks very plausible, what do others think?

Is this where MH370 is? (http://www.flightglobal.com/features/mh370/)

DaveReidUK

23rd Dec 2014, 16:44

He assumes a constant TAS and true track for the last two and a half hours of flight. If either of those varied, his final position calculation will be wrong.

sk999

23rd Dec 2014, 21:08

The proposed route is not all that different from routes that others have proposed. Great circle and true track routes at constant air velocity tend to end up at the Southern limit of the search area, around -37 to -40 deg latitude. Once again, however, only BTO data are considered in the detailed solution. Such tracks do not match the BFO data very well - the BFO data favor a lower velocity for the first hour after the final turn South and either an increase in velocity or some sort of curved path thereafter. Unfortunately we do not have as clear an understanding of the BFO error model as we do for the BTOs, so deciding whether a seemingly poor match to the BFOs is significant or not is still unclear.

Minimbah

20th Jan 2015, 04:33

Up-in-the-air

This is the official latest

MH370 (http://www.atsb.gov.au/mh370.aspx)

SOPS

20th Jan 2015, 05:36

I'm really starting to think they will never find it.

onetrack

20th Jan 2015, 05:52

I find it difficult to understand how, after more than 10 months, not a single shred of wreckage has appeared on some coastline somewhere, or been sighted, floating.

The prevailing weather, wind, and currents drive debris from this area towards Western Australia, and up and along the West Australian coast.
One would think that either seat cushions, luggage, honeycomb panels, or one of a thousand items from an aircraft, that floats, would eventually be sighted or found on a beach or near the shoreline.

The fact that not a shred of anything from MH370 has ever been sighted or found only feeds the conspiracy theorists and the tinfoil hat brigade.
I find it hard to believe that a 777 would disappear into an ocean without a trace.
I know it's a big and lonely ocean, but sooner or later, some type of wreckage usually appears from an ocean disaster such as this.

Ian W

20th Jan 2015, 10:46

People do not understand how extremely large the world is. The West Australia coast is around the same as if there were a coastline from Galveston running all the way around to Seattle. The State is around as big as the USA West of a North South line running through Galveston to the Canadian border. The entire state has a population of around 2.5million which is a million less than the population of Los Angeles and most of that population is in Perth. The chances of wreckage being found by someone who remembers MH370 is extremely small. The coast is covered with flotsam and jetsam of all sorts. Only if a sizeable piece of aircraft turned up on a beach might anyone notice and that is a long shot.

If you wanted to lose an aircraft dropping it into the sea over a thousand miles West of Perth into unexplored areas of the South Indian Ocean would be the ideal choice.

SLFguy

20th Jan 2015, 11:02

"The West Australia coast is around the same as if there were a coastline from Galveston running all the way around to Seattle"

Hi Ian,
With respect, the size of the coastline is exactly why it is surprising nothing has been found. It is a huge 'mitt' in which to catch debris.

Whilst I appreciate the coastline is long there are enough settlements, holiday marine traffic, GA and other populations that something should have been found.

john280z

20th Jan 2015, 22:21

There is an update on Capt Simon Hardy's theory:

Considerations for ditching MH370 - Learmount (http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/learmount/2015/01/considerations-ditching-mh370/)

oldoberon

20th Jan 2015, 23:47

good article here from Aviation

MH370: Where is the Debris? (http://jeffwise.net/2014/10/29/mh370-where-is-the-debris/comment-page-2/)

onetrack

21st Jan 2015, 03:52

Brock McEwen has written an article claiming constant lying and misdirection has featured overwhelmingly in the MH370 investigation.

I'm not sure that it's as simple as that - but a large amount of a$$-covering, and initial lying certainly led to a lot of initially-wrong conclusions.

One conclusion that I believe McEwen may be correct on, is that MH370 flew higher and further than any current conclusions - thus leading to a final impact point that is further SW than the seabed area currently being examined.

If his calculations and suppositions are correct, then that would help explain the total lack of floating wreckage, which would have been more likely to be destroyed and sunk by the violence of the Southern Ocean - and anything left, caught in the Polar current which would keep it well S of Australia.

Pages 15 to the end of McEwen's article are the ones I find most interesting.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-r3yuaF2p72ZkNWN1U5bklEbTA/view?pli=1

Ian W

21st Jan 2015, 09:43

good article here from Aviation

MH370: Where is the Debris? (http://jeffwise.net/2014/10/29/mh370-where-is-the-debris/comment-page-2/)

In the article it says:

It’s not clear why the AMSA believes that the debris’ main landfall would be to the north of the presumed impact area.

Then proceeds to show an animated gif of an ocean model that shows precisely that the main landfall could be north to the southern coast of Indonesia.

The article says after AFR447 there were 3000 pieces of floating debris. The model also shows a huge dispersal area for potential flotsam from any crash/ditching site of MH370. That could spread a 3000 floating pieces very thinly.

Would someone recognize a seat cushion that had been sea washed and bleached by the Sun for 10 months as coming from MH370?

SLFguy

21st Jan 2015, 12:35

Would someone recognize a seat cushion that had been sea washed and bleached by the Sun for 10 months as coming from MH370?

In the context of the MH370 event I would imagine authorities would have been inundated with every piece that the beachcombers/general public couldn't positively identify as NOT being related to MH370!

rh200

21st Jan 2015, 19:38

Whilst I appreciate the coastline is long there are enough settlements, holiday marine traffic, GA and other populations that something should have been found.

Not likely, even south of Mandurah I would be surprised, let alone going up past Yanchep, virtually no hope.

In the context of the MH370 event I would imagine authorities would have been inundated with every piece that the beachcombers/general public couldn't positively identify as NOT being related to MH370!

Again, not likely, for general Jo public unless its obvious, its MH370 what? More than a week after the event they have lost interest.

sabbasolo

22nd Jan 2015, 07:34

This coastline is so empty that there are no signs of human habitation for hundreds of miles - flotsam on the beach dates from WWII and earlier. Look at google earth and google maps and compare to the US coastline

Bobman84

22nd Jan 2015, 14:47

No trace was ever found of the Varig 707 in 1979 or missing/stolen 727 in 2003, so why should this be any different?

Both of those aforementioned weren't far from land as well!

Only 26% of the area searched so far, hope something is found!

Squawk_ident

22nd Jan 2015, 20:41

NTSB Calls for Better Ways to Find Aircraft Accident Sites and Retrieve Critical Flight Data

January 22, 2015

WASHINGTON - The National Transportation Safety Board today issued a series of safety recommendations to the Federal Aviation Administration calling for improvements in locating downed aircraft and ways to obtain critical flight data faster and without the need for immediate underwater retrieval. The Board also re-emphasized the need for cockpit image recorders on commercial airplanes.

Recent accidents have pointed to the need for improved technologies to locate aircraft wreckage and flight recorders lost in remote locations or over water. In the 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447, it took almost two years and $40 million to find the recorders. Investigators are still searching for Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. So far the search has involved 26 countries using 84 vessels and numerous aircraft.

“Technology has reached a point where we shouldn’t have to search hundreds of miles of ocean floor in a frantic race to find these valuable boxes,’’ said NTSB Acting Chairman Christopher A. Hart. “In this day and age, lost aircraft should be a thing of the past.”

Last October, the NTSB held a forum, Emerging Flight Data and Locator Technology, which explored these issues in detail.

Among the recommendations to the FAA are to equip commercial airplanes with a tamper-resistant method to broadcast to a ground station sufficient information to establish the location where an aircraft terminates flight as a result of an accident within six nautical miles of the point of impact.

The NTSB also called for the FAA to coordinate with other regulatory authorities and the International Civil Aviation Organization to harmonize implementation of several of these recommendations.

The NTSB also repeated recommendations for a crash-protected image recording system that would record the cockpit environment during the last two hours of a flight.

A link to the recommendation letter can be found here: go.usa.gov/Jsaz

A link to the recorder forum page is here: go.usa.gov/JsCW

WingNut60

22nd Jan 2015, 20:54

As stated, the Western Australian coast is sparsely populated and with large sections that are infrequently accessed, if at all.
Increasingly so the farther north you go, as was predicted for any debris from MH370.
As much as we might like to think, the coast is not all white, sandy beaches either.
There are long (read as 100's of km) of high inaccessible cliffs against which debris would likely be beaten to smithereens.
Not to mention long sections of mangrove forest that would simply swallow debris coming its way and into which people seldom enter.
And north of Yampi Sound the coast (read as 1000's of km) is rugged, hostile and general never accessed, certainly not in terms of "going close enough to identify debris".
It is very possible the debris might be found, but it is at least as possible that it might not

reynoldsno1

22nd Jan 2015, 21:19

I find it difficult to understand how, after more than 10 months, not a single shred of wreckage has appeared on some coastline somewhere, or been sighted, floating.
Having recently spent some time in the area around Dampier, and further south, it is not difficult to understand at all. This is Mars, with an occasional structure and a breathable atmosphere. Someone might find a bit of something in a few years' time ....

mmurray

23rd Jan 2015, 08:59

Australian authorities call for tenders for potential MH370 recovery | Reuters (http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/22/malaysia-airlines-disaster-idUSL4N0V11YT20150122)

dubbleyew eight

25th Jan 2015, 05:39

just completed another search run at 600ft along the beaches south of Perth past Bunbiry, Busselton, Dunsborough, Cape Naturalist and down almost to the Leeuwin lighthouse.
there is absolutely no hint of wreckage or flotsam of any kind washing up.

the beaches are amazing. there are people everywhere on the beaches.
between perth and bunbury there would be a vehicle camped/parked about every 400 yards along the beach.
between bunbury and cape naturalist there are people walking and swimming on every beach.
south of cape naturalist there is about 1km of deserted beach. south of there there are people and surfers everywhere.
so the likelihood of anything washing up on the beaches and remaining there unnoticed is I think absolutely nil. I think if anything washed up it would be noticed within half a day.

mm43

28th Jan 2015, 21:58

www.channelnewsasia.com (http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/mh370-probe-report-to-be/1620608.html)

Exoixx

29th Jan 2015, 07:20

Press conference was due to start about 45 minutes ago. Once relatives had gathered (after hearing about press conference via the media), conference was cancelled due to "unforeseen circumstances".

:ugh:

flt001

29th Jan 2015, 09:38

BBC: Officials said that the recovery operation is ongoing but that the 239 people onboard are now presumed dead.

BBC News - Malaysia declares MH370 an accident (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-31039460)

BillS

29th Jan 2015, 09:40

The link stating search "0fficially ended" above actually says the search is ongoing.

Edit: Link now removed

ausbizjet

29th Jan 2015, 09:42

I was watching it live on News 24 in OZ.

The search is ongoing and they believe they are still in the correct area, they only officially announced it as an accident so next of kin can claim compensation.

Chrome

30th Jan 2015, 11:56

Yes they are so concerned of the next of kin that's why the families were never approached before the announcement to the rest of the world.

cwatters

30th Jan 2015, 17:33

How do they normally approach the next of kin without telling the whole world? Do they send out emails or make lots of phone calls?

yarpos

6th Feb 2015, 06:20

Possible work through the Embassy/Foriegn Affairs departments of the victims countries , wait two weeks and announce. It would never be perfect but the effort could be made.

Niner Lima Charlie

11th Feb 2015, 13:55

Andrewgr2

11th Feb 2015, 15:16

Isn't ADS-B out linked to transponder operation? MH370s transponder was not transmitting from the earliest stage of its loss. So this new service would have been of no use even if it had been operational.

Lonewolf_50

11th Feb 2015, 15:23

Andrew, the point you raise became evident early in this investigation of this lost hull. What is interesting is how the various "solution" presenters seem to have overlooked that point.
Not enough people seem to have watched the Monty Python "I'm Trying Not to be Seen" sketch.

Ian W

11th Feb 2015, 15:34

From AvWeb:
Beginning in 2017 any aircraft, GA included, with ADS-B out transmitting at 1090 MHz will be automatically tracked and the precise location of its last transmission anywhere on earth recorded. At last week's ICAO High Level Safety Conference, Aireon LLC, which is launching the first space based global air surveillance system, announced that the headquarters for its Aircraft Locating and Emergency Response Tracking (Aireon Alert) will be at the Irish Aviation Authority's North Atlantic operations center in Ballygirreen on the west coast of Ireland. Once the Iridium constellation of satellites carrying the ADS-B receivers is complete, any airline, search and rescue organization or any other group needing "last known" information on a flight can get it for free from Aireon. VP of marketing Cyriel Kronenburg told AVweb it will work for all aircraft equipped with 1090 MHz ADS-B and the mystery of Malaysian MH370, a Boeing 777 which hasn't been found since it disappeared a year ago, prompted the ALERT service.

Except that the ADS-B transmitters were switched off by whoever was in the cockpit of MH370. There were arguments about switched off/failed but the net result was they stopped Mode-S and secondary radar transponders at around the same time.

So under the Aireon/Iridium scheme everyone would now start searching the South China Sea again. :ugh:

The argument about making it impossible to switch off ADS-B has also been rehearsed numerous times.

The Aireon idea is a solution to a different problem. It might have helped with AFR447. But that would also be solved by Aireon's competitor INMARSAT providing free tracking for ADS-C equipped aircraft.

The problem of what to do when someone in the cockpit (crew or savvy hijacker) decides to close down all on board active tracking systems has yet to be solved.

Skyjob

11th Feb 2015, 20:51

wiggy

12th Feb 2015, 06:11

I guess you mean something similar to the device involved here:

Ethiopian Airlines 787 Dreamliner fire caused by emergency locator battery | WJLA.com (http://www.wjla.com/articles/2013/07/ethiopian-airlines-787-dreamliner-fire-caused-by-emergency-locator-battery-91603.html)

mm_flynn

12th Feb 2015, 12:56

A simple autonomous device, located in tail, transmitting position from a integrated GPS through Inmarsat each minute... Seems simple enough.
Fitted with internal batteries which could be charged only on ground from AC system, no link to flight deck required.

It would seem simple enought to get around by using a £100 'truck driver' GPS jammer placed near the device. This would prevent the device from knowing where it is. And as such, a Geostationary satellite wouldn't be able to locate the device. The LEO satellites that do a Doppler fix seem to rely on the target being motionless so it is just the satellite to surface motion that is considered. In addition, there are significant coverage gaps (up to 2 hours).

Some basic improvements would help for tracking aircraft oceanic aircraft. However, my understanding is that the wrecks of both AF447 and QZ8501 were located within a couple of miles of the last electronic datapoint. So for accidents, we are talking about a technology that might shrink the search area a small amount and might speed up the investigation, but not fundamentally change anything.

For someone who wants to disappear and can fly the aircraft, I think all of the ideas proposed so far are either unsafe (high power complex equipment with no off switch) or relatively easy to defeat.

aircarver

12th Feb 2015, 13:20

Yeah, electronic devices that can't be turned off are a great idea .... :eek:

.

Dont Hang Up

12th Feb 2015, 14:01

Originally Posted by Skyjob View Post
A simple autonomous device, located in tail, transmitting position from a integrated GPS through Inmarsat each minute... Seems simple enough.
Fitted with internal batteries which could be charged only on ground from AC system, no link to flight deck required.
It would seem simple enought to get around by using a £100 'truck driver' GPS jammer placed near the device. This would prevent the device from knowing where it is. And as such, a Geostationary satellite wouldn't be able to locate the device. The LEO satellites that do a Doppler fix seem to rely on the target being motionless so it is just the satellite to surface motion that is considered. In addition, there are significant coverage gaps (up to 2 hours).

Some basic improvements would help for tracking aircraft oceanic aircraft. However, my understanding is that the wrecks of both AF447 and QZ8501 were located within a couple of miles of the last electronic datapoint. So for accidents, we are talking about a technology that might shrink the search area a small amount and might speed up the investigation, but not fundamentally change anything.

For someone who wants to disappear and can fly the aircraft, I think all of the ideas proposed so far are either unsafe (high power complex equipment with no off switch) or relatively easy to defeat.

Well put. Hopefully enough to avoid going round the "how hard can it be?" cycle for the umpteenth time on this thread.

This remains a bizarrely unique event and re-equipping the entire aviation fleet on the strength of it is unwarranted.

Ian W

12th Feb 2015, 15:16

Well put. Hopefully enough to avoid going round the "how hard can it be?" cycle for the umpteenth time on this thread.

This remains a bizarrely unique event and re-equipping the entire aviation fleet on the strength of it is unwarranted.

At the same time, it would be really good to have ELT's that worked. They have almost a zero success rate.

Ian W

13th Feb 2015, 17:32

The 'landing' in the Hudson was a ditching with significant g as the engines went into the water.

The reasons for the ELT's failing - broken antenna, going underwater etc are well known. So now get a couple of engineering undergraduates to design them so that they work! It is not difficult but it appears that the manufacturers are perfectly content to deliver equipment that demonstrably fails EVERY time it is needed.

Note that if the ELTs worked on MH370, it would have been found within 7 hours of going missing. How much has been spent searching for that aircraft again? Probably enough to design,manufacture, purchase and fit a nice shiny new functionalELT for every widebody flying.

Instead off go the avionics engineers fresh from their total failure to create a functional ELT, trying to sell ever more sophisticated tracking devices that will also fail, but bring in far more income.

A question that operators should ask the avionics industry is: "If you cannot create a working ELT an extremely simple device, why should we trust you to create a sophisticated tracking device?"

Derfred

14th Feb 2015, 05:40

Why don't you read about what ICAO are actually doing...

406-MHZ ELT Specification Development - ICAO (http://www.icao.int/APAC/Meetings/2015%20APSARTF3/IP03%20406-MHZ%20ELT%20Specification%20Development%20by%20Cospas-Sarsat.pdf)

ampclamp

25th Feb 2015, 21:36

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7Mw3Wr44Gw&feature=youtu.be

Some interesting facts I was not aware of.

mickjoebill

25th Feb 2015, 22:35

In the previously linked video, classification of sonar targets is described into 3 levels, with level 1 warranting "immediate investigation", level 2 being a "man made object" and level 3 being of "some" interest

In the event of not finding any level 1 returns will the relatively few in number (8) level 2 returns be investigated?

Also, Peter Foley says there are well over 100 class 3 targets, not 200 as quoted earlier.

advo-cate

27th Feb 2015, 20:54

Good to see MH370 finally getting some air in Australia.

ATSB update to the Senate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7Mw...ature=youtu.be (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7Mw3Wr44Gw&feature=youtu.be)

Some interesting facts I was not aware of. The senators certainly were asking some serious questions. All the individual segments in order are grouped (http://vocasupport.com/senate-estimates-the-actual-hearing-24th-february-2015/) out on this site. They are worth reading in context.

Here is a direct quote from Hansard - Senate papers

Page 156 Senate Tuesday, 24 February 2015
RURAL AND REGIONAL AFFAIRS AND TRANSPORT LEGISLATION COMMITTEE

Senator BACK: Mr Foley, can you just give us a very brief update on the progress of the MH370 recovery and the number of vessels now in the recovery operation?
Mr Foley: I am the Program Director, Operational Search for MH370. We have currently got four vessels working in the search area. Three of those are contracted jointly by the Malaysian and Australian governments. They are the Fugro vessels—the Fugro Supporter, the Fugro Equator, the Fugro Discovery—
Senator BACK: Those are the Dutch vessels?
Mr Foley: Dutch mother company. The actual local company is based here in Australia. It is Fugro Survey Pty Ltd. The contract is with them as the Australian entity. The fourth vessel, GO Phoenix, is actually contracted by DefTech, a Malaysian defence contractor.
Senator BACK: Can you tell us approximately the number of square kilometres of the priority area that have now been searched and what does that represent percentage wise—35, 50?
Mr Foley: We have done about 24,000 square kilometres, which represents about 40 per cent of the initial priority search area of 60,000 square kilometres.
Senator BACK: Can you give us some indication when you think that that balance of about another 3½ thousand square kilometres—
Mr Foley: In what sense?
Senator BACK: When will you have completed the search of this priority zone?
Mr Foley: We anticipate that 60,000 square kilometres will be completed towards the end of May.
Senator BACK: Can you give us any indication whether the four vessels have come up with anything of interest or promise?
Mr Foley: The four vessels have certainly identified various objects on the sea floor, which may be man-made. But at this point—we have expert analysis of the sonar data and imagery—there is nothing that indicates that it is likely to be an aircraft debris field. There are some isolated objects which, by and large, could be man-made but we have not positively identified any of them as such.
Senator BACK: Are you saying that preparations are in place in the event that wreckage is found?
Mr Foley: Yes, we have been making preparations. As you may be aware, we requested expressions of interest for a recovery operation. We ran a 25-day open tender process through AusTender. That closed last week. We are in the process of assessing those expressions of interest to participate in a further tender process for the recovery operation.
Senator BACK: So there was a level of interest, competence and expertise to do that?
Mr Foley: There was a good response.
Senator BACK: Thank you.
Mr Dolan: Senator, if I could just make clear: governments have not yet decided or authorised recovery. We are making preparations against the event of—
Senator BACK: I can understand that. Thanks, Mr Dolan.
Senator STERLE: These four items—are they the size of a suitcase or a desk?
Mr Foley: More than four, Senator Sterle. We have a system of classification. We are very careful in the way we treat the sonar data in terms of its acquisition, how we gather it and indeed how we assess and analyse it. We have a system of classification for objects, so we have three levels, if you like—one, two and three. Level 3 is items of potential interest—an object detected on sonar of some interest. Level 2 is likely to be something that is a bit more interesting, probably man-made. A level 1 object we need to investigate immediately. It could be an aircraft debris field. We have not had any level 1s. We have, to date, according to my memory, had about eight level 2s. And we have had well over 100 level 3s. I would hazard a guess that some have the dimensions of a shipping container, but we do not know until we get photo imagery. You are not taking a picture with sonar.
Senator STERLE: Thank you.

Obba

1st Mar 2015, 01:19

Just heard on the Australian news that they (don't know who 'they' are), will be putting forward 15minute tracking onto planes flying over remote areas instead of the 30-45minute intervals.

Johno8

1st Mar 2015, 10:14

Here's more info.
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 mystery prompts new plane tracking program - World - CBC News (http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-mystery-prompts-new-plane-tracking-program-1.2977476)

Robbovic

1st Mar 2015, 23:23

It's called Automatic Dependent Surveillance Contract - ADS-C
It is and has been used extensively in Australian airspace for a number of years. It entails the aircraft establishing a "contract" with the ATC centre through a satellite link - aircraft downloads positional and other info at the contract rate. This is usually 30 minutes but can be varied by the controller with jurisdiction - in fact he can "one shot" a position at any time and can increase the rate in case of emergency. In between downloads, the position is extrapolated by the ATC equipment.
The procedure is being trialled of setting the default contract to 15 minutes.
The give-away is the "Dependent" bit - can still be turned off in the cockpit and bingo the aircraft's real position is purely supposition.

Ian W

1st Mar 2015, 23:36

Yes ADS-C is part of Future Air Navigation System 1/A (FANS 1/A) that also includes CPDLC and ACARS. The system was put into use initially by Boeing in the late 1980's so it has been around for around 4 decades. The ADS-C contract can be with up to 5 ground stations world wide. The ground stations as you say can re-contract without the pilot even knowing and request other position reports or reports on level changes and leveling etc etc.

ADS-C is being extended in Europe and USA to use VHF Data Link (2) (VDL-2) and will be used to control aircraft flying business (user preferred) trajectories. So one of the new messages will be Extended Projected Profile (ADS-C EPP) a series of up to 128 waypoints and pseudo waypoints ahead of the aircraft with their associated attributes/constraints such as speed, flight level, time. (Pseudo waypoints are for example Top Of Climb, Start Of Turn). Again the ground can ask and your FMC will reply you don't even know it has happened. This is all part of ATN-Block 2

Hey but don't stop the ICAO meetings and standards people re-inventing things the avionics salesmen love it. :rolleyes:

konstantin

2nd Mar 2015, 00:20

Robbovic

That too was my initial (puzzled) reaction - it seems all they are doing is creating an automatic contract change trigger which increases the ADSC update rate whenever there is an altitude or route deviation event?

And I am certainly a little confused at the meedja fanfare this is receiving. From the CBC article linked by Johno8;

Houston warned that new method being trialed would not necessarily have allowed air traffic controllers to monitor Flight 370 — whose transponder and other tracking equipment shut down during the flight — to the point where it crashed.
"I think we've got to be very, very careful because you can turn this system off," he said. "What would have happened while the system is operating, we'd know exactly where the aircraft was. If somebody had turned the system off, we're in the same set of circumstances as we've experienced on the latter part of the flight of MH370."

So we are back to square one anyway...the point of the exercise being...?

DrPhillipa

2nd Mar 2015, 05:19

Is the point of the excercise that they will make ADSC subscription compulsory in the relevant airspaces?

thf

2nd Mar 2015, 07:31

Reuters: Australia says hunt for missing MH370 jet may be called off soon (http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/01/us-malaysia-airlines-australia-idUSKBN0LX1RS20150301)

(Reuters) - The search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 cannot go on forever, Australia's deputy prime minister said, and discussions are already under way between Australia, China and Malaysia as to whether to call off the hunt within weeks. (...)

The search of a rugged 60,000 sq km (23,000 sq mile) patch of sea floor some 1,600 km (1,000 miles) west of the Australian city of Perth, which experts believe is the plane's most likely resting place, will likely be finished by May.

Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss told Reuters that a decision would have to be taken well before then as to whether to continue into the vast 1.1 million sq km area around the primary search zone if nothing has been found.

Discussions had already begun about what to do in that event, including the possibility that the search might be called off, said Truss, who is also transport minister.

rh200

2nd Mar 2015, 10:17

Discussions and possibility are the key words. All very prudent to reevaluate the data instead of just continuing to spend money.

Mind you I suppose the scientific community wouldn't mind a complete hi resolution map of the Indian ocean:p

atakacs

3rd Mar 2015, 21:43

Somewhat off topic but do we have robotic technology to perform that mapping task? Or is it a tedious manned operation?

mm43

3rd Mar 2015, 23:03

@atakacs

The following link will give you a good insight into how the mapping operation has been undertaken.

[/URL][URL="http://www.ga.gov.au/news-events/news/latest-news/mapping-the-deep-ocean-geoscience-australia-and-the-search-for-mh370?utm_source=promotion&utm_medium=slider-banner&utm_content=news-button&utm_campaign=MH370"]'Mapping the deep ocean: Geoscience Australia and the search for MH370' (http://www.ga.gov.au/news-events/news/latest-news/mapping-the-deep-ocean-geoscience-australia-and-the-search-for-mh370?utm_source=promotion&utm_medium=slider-banner&utm_content=news-button&utm_campaign=MH370)

ATC Watcher

4th Mar 2015, 01:55

Is the point of the excercise that they will make ADSC subscription compulsory in the relevant airspaces?

No the point of this perticular trial is to assess the load on the ATC system if the interrogation rate is increased to every 15 min instead of 20-30.
Nothing to do with MH370, and , as said previously , it would not have changed anything if the rate had been 15 min at the time.

Ian W

4th Mar 2015, 12:22

No the point of this perticular trial is to assess the load on the ATC system if the interrogation rate is increased to every 15 min instead of 20-30.
Nothing to do with MH370, and , as said previously , it would not have changed anything if the rate had been 15 min at the time.

I don't see that there is any "load on the ATC system" If you want to fly one of the more popular tracks on the North Atlantic under the Reduced Longitudinal Separation Method, you will be reporting on ADS-C every 4 minutes.
BEA after AFR447 asked for reports as often as once every 1 minute.

Most carriers are now paying a fixed annual rate for ADS-C unlike the old days of pay per transmission. So there is no benefit by not using ADS-C. If the Air Traffic Service Provider in the airspace you are flying in does not use ADS-C you have up to 5 connections that can be made so contract with your FOC/Dispatch and they can track you.

Once you have a secure internet link to SITA/ARINC displaying and storing ADS-C positions is extremely simple.

Of course while this means that the regulators can say that they are "doing something" ADS-C update rate change would have no effect on a future MH370 scenario where the 'cooperative' / Active tracking devices are switched off.

Lonewolf_50

4th Mar 2015, 12:34

Reuters: Australia says hunt for missing MH370 jet may be called off soon (http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/01/us-malaysia-airlines-australia-idUSKBN0LX1RS20150301) Searches cost money. There is not infinite budget for such a search.
Who would fund the continuing effort beyond point in time "X" is a pertinent question.

ATC Watcher

4th Mar 2015, 14:20

I don't see that there is any "load on the ATC system" If you want to fly one of the more popular tracks on the North Atlantic [....] you will be reporting on ADS-C every 4 minutes.

My comment was not a speculation but a fact. The South Indian Ocean airpace is not the North Atlantic , and data link processing load is an issue for the Australian system, hence the trial.

Of course while this means that the regulators can say that they are "doing something" ADS-C update rate change would have no effect on a future MH370 scenario where the 'cooperative' / Active tracking devices are switched off.

There we agree 100%

Ian W

5th Mar 2015, 23:34

My comment was not a speculation but a fact. The South Indian Ocean airpace is not the North Atlantic , and data link processing load is an issue for the Australian system, hence the trial.

But ADS-C (Automatic Dependent Surveilance - Contract) is addressable SATCOM, with up to 5 contracts that can be held concurrently. So you could have a contract with any agency worldwide, including your own dispatch. ADS-C cannot overload the air traffic service provider of the airspace the aircraft is flying in, if they are contracted to receive the ADS-C they merely have to store the data - a short data message every 15 minutes.. The South Indian Ocean Airspace is indeed different to the North Atlantic. It is extremely sparsely flown whereas the North Atlantic is ~2000+ flights a day.

kaikohe76

7th Mar 2015, 08:29

After almost a year of highly professional & concentrated searching of the ocean to the west of Perth, so far without any sign at all, or any indication no matter how minor, that the 777 may be there. Can I suggest a couple of things please.
- Despite the vast majority of genuine experts, saying, this is where the aircraft is almost certainly to be found. Perhaps in fact this is not the case at all & before the search is scaled down or terminated, all other areas of interest should at least be checked.
- Are we absolutely sure the 777, once having recrossed Malaysia from east to west, did in fact fly south west & not anywhere to the north.

- Surely if the 777 is where most of the search agencies think it is, west of Perth, some even small part of the aircraft would have come to the ocean surface by now.
- I am still of the opinion, that certain people & or agencies from the missing aircraft's home country, may well have information that for whatever reason continues to be with held & so far not made public.

My thoughts only, but someone knows something out there & is so far not letting on.

Ian W

7th Mar 2015, 09:20

The Doppler tracing and tracking carried out by INMARSAT on the SATCOM signals plus validation testing against other aircraft would put the aircraft in the area being searched. It is not possible for the aircraft to have gone North and still provided the same Doppler signals. These calculations have also been checked by a considerable number of mathematicians.

There _is_ some discussion on the actual fuel burn that the aircraft could have made as it is thought to have made at least one low pass before flying South this could lead to an along track error that would have the aircraft crash/ditching site further North.

rh200

7th Mar 2015, 09:57

- Surely if the 777 is where most of the search agencies think it is, west of Perth, some even small part of the aircraft would have come to the ocean surface by now

40% is the figure I think you will find. Not sure if the search area is sub broken up with most likely spots, but if it isn't, and there's equal probability of it being any where in the area, then theres just as much chance of finding it on the final day as the first.

As for bits, awful big ocean and planet out there.

RetiredF4

7th Mar 2015, 10:34

Ian W

The Doppler tracing and tracking carried out by INMARSAT on the SATCOM signals plus validation testing against other aircraft would put the aircraft in the area being searched. It is not possible for the aircraft to have gone North and still provided the same Doppler signals. These calculations have also been checked by a considerable number of mathematicians.

But that is only true for an aircraft which after last radar contact to the northwest turned south and flew then with constant altitude, speed and track , which are the assumptions and led to the present search area.

An aircraft maneuvering in altitude, speed and track could be anywhere on a position close to the south arc and to the north arc.

Under the above assumptions they search at the most probable positions, but those are not exclusive and might be off by thousands of miles.

Straw42

7th Mar 2015, 19:57

Hello. I have a request for more Inmarsat data.

I want to give my own calculations based on the BTO and BFO datapoints posted by Inmarsat a shot. As we know, some of the individual values make little sense. And the diagrams of how the data is collected contain some black boxes just saying "compensation", which could really mean anything. What kind of "compensation" has been done to the data before making a record? Is that reliable? Is that compensation that is predictable enough to undo to maybe correct errors? I imagine whoever programmed that system didn't have in mind that it would later be used to locate a plane based on less than a dozen datapoints and no other information.

What I would like to have is the same set of data for BTO and BFO as we have for MH370, but for a flight that proceeded normally (and hence we know where it actually was for any given value pair).

Is that available anywhere? Any random flight would do, but obviously it would be nice to have something that proceeded at about the same distance from the recording satellite.

Gysbreght

7th Mar 2015, 20:49

An aircraft maneuvering in altitude, speed and track could be anywhere on a position close to the south arc and to the north arc. Please explain how a position close to the north arc can be compatible with the logged values of BFO (Burst Frequency Offset or doppler compensation error).

RetiredF4

7th Mar 2015, 22:31

Quote:
Originally Posted by RetiredF4
An aircraft maneuvering in altitude, speed and track could be anywhere on a position close to the south arc and to the north arc.
Please explain how a position close to the north arc can be compatible with the logged values of BFO (Burst Frequency Offset or doppler compensation error).

I can't explain it to you, however others can.
As I understood it from discussions, a rapid descent or a rapid climb while over the data point would alter the data more than cruising north or south, as climbs would give closure to the satellite and descents would give opening to the satellite. If the aircraft was turning north and descending at the same time, the turn to south at the relevant data point would no longer be the only option, but to the north it would be possible too. Speed and track changes from one data point to the next would alter the present interpretation as well. There would be millions of pathes possible if all maneuvering options would be considered, as long as those pathes ended somewhere close to the northern or southern arc.

The present "only south it is" path is founded on a lot of assumptions and few facts, as would be a north path too. I'm not saying it was the wrong decision to search south, but it might have been flown to the north as well.

Ian W

8th Mar 2015, 00:11

There are not that many permutations with the aircraft out of fuel when it was. From my understanding the INMARSAT team did do comparison/validation with other aircraft flying in the area and that confirmed their view of what happened. The 'North' story doesn't fit the Doppler changes that were recorded. It is extremely unlikely that the person(s) flying MH370 were aware of the SATCOM tracking that could be done, therefore it is also extremely unlikely that they were spoofing the tracking.

D Bru

8th Mar 2015, 08:25

http://mh370.mot.gov.my/download/InterimStatement.pdf

http://mh370.mot.gov.my/download/FactualInformation.pdf

RetiredF4

8th Mar 2015, 08:32

A good summary of what has been used to choose the southern arc can be found here.

http://www.rin.org.uk/Uploadedpdfs/staticpages/MH370%20Inmarsat%20Paper.pdf

Note please, that the following initial basics did not change throughout the whole process. Every refinement and the final conclusion are based on the asumptions of this initial reconstruction attempt. (bolding by me)

Initial flight path reconstruction attempts were based on the aircraft flying at a steady speed on a relatively constant track consistent with an aircraft operating without human control. It was initially thought that for the fuel to have lasted until 00:19 UTC the aircraft would have needed to be flying at high altitude, where the air is thinner and drag is reduced, which would have resulted in its flying at close to its maximum speed of just over 500 knots (926 kph). This gave two solutions, one in a northerly and the other in a southerly direction, as illustrated in Figure 6, where thered lines indicate the flight paths prior to 00:19 UTC and the green lines indicate the potential additional flight paths between the last signal at 00:19 UTC and the failure to respond to the LOI message sent by the GES at 01:15 UTC.
It is important to remember that these initial flight paths, while consistent with the BTO timing data and the aircraft performance, were based on a number of assumptions: that the aircraft travelled at a steady and high speed and did not make any manoeuvres beyond a turn to the north or south shortly after its last radar detection.

The changing BFO data caused by the wobbling of the Sattelite and the above assumptions led to the southern path. The sattelite moves north south with a maximum of 2,412 km per day which results in a comparable low BFO change opposed to a climb, descent or a speed change.

Read also on the Blog of Duncan Steel.
The Bottom Line: A northerly route for MH370 deep into central Asia cannot be excluded on the basis of the publicly-available Inmarsat-3F1 satellite data.

The Inmarsat-3F1 Doppler Data Do Not Exclude a Northerly Flight Path for MH370 | Duncan Steel (http://www.duncansteel.com/archives/507)

sunnySA

8th Mar 2015, 10:13

The battery powering the underwater locator beacon on missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370's data recorder expired in 2012

from this site
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-08/mh370-report-says-black-box-locator-beacon-expired/6289462"]

Gysbreght

8th Mar 2015, 10:28

RetiredF4:

I suppose mr. Duncan Steel doesn't like to be reminded of that blunder he published on 2014 April 02, when he did not understand the interpretation of the logged BFO's. That was explained in the ATSB report "MH370 - Definition of Underwater Search Areas" dated 26 June 2014.

Your first quote doesn't have a date and does not mention BFO.

The BFO's for a northern route would be about 78 Hz greater than the logged BFO's in level flight. To obtain the logged BFO's on the northern route the aircraft would have had to climb at 3360 feet per minute during the 343 minutes of flight remaining after the first 'ping' at 18:25 UTC. That is 1,152,480 feet.

whatsthefrequencyken

8th Mar 2015, 11:04

Does everyone else see page 93 (as numbered on the pages) is missing from the Factual information report?

RetiredF4

8th Mar 2015, 11:05

Gysbreght
The BFO's for a northern route would be about 78 Hz greater than the logged BFO's in level flight. To obtain the logged BFO's on the northern route the aircraft would have had to climb at 3360 feet per minute during the 343 minutes of flight remaining after the first 'ping' at 18:25 UTC. That is 1,152,480 feet.

Come on, I do not understand the whole mathematical stuff involved but the handshakes are just that, one transmission for a very short time, giving BTO data which locate the arc and BFO data which tell something about the speed from or to the sattelite. This speed is a function of sattelite movement to the north or south, aircraft altitude, track, horizontal speed and vertical speed. We have an equation with one known (sattelite movement) and 4 unknowns (aircraft data).

Only during the short time of those few handshakes about 1 hour apart from each other the BFO data have to be fullfilled, not for the whole time of the flight. The flight could do circles in between, as long as it reaches the corresponding BTO arc at the next handshake and fullfills the respective BFO data. On what heading, speed and altitude that would take place or if the aircraft is climbing or descending at that very moment is not shown by the data.

Your computation assumes again a given track and a given speed and the computed vertical speed not only for the respective time of the handshake, but over the complete flight. It is the assumption that it was flown on autopilot with one fixed final target until end of the flight.

DespairingTraveller

8th Mar 2015, 11:20

Does everyone else see page 93 (as numbered on the pages) is missing from the Factual information report? Yes - the page numbering goes from 92 to 94. There does seem to be a missing page as the para at the bottom of 92 stops halfway through a sentence.

ETOPS

8th Mar 2015, 11:20

DespairingTraveller

8th Mar 2015, 11:31

At an early stage in this sad affair, much was made of a statement by a Malaysian official (the PM possibly?) that the SSR and ACARS systems were deliberately switched off from on-board the aircraft. Later on, something similar was said about the inflight entertainment system.

I'm not seeing any of those statements in this report. There's a reference to how the transponder could be switched off, but not that it was, only that the aircraft dropped off SSR.

Similarly I see a reference to the IFE not logging on to the SATCOM system late in the flight whereas it had previously, but not that this was the result of deliberate action.

Am I missing something in the 500+ pages? Is there something buried in the logs that I don't understand?

Ulric

8th Mar 2015, 11:35

What I would like to have is the same set of data for BTO and BFO as we have for MH370, but for a flight that proceeded normally (and hence we know where it actually was for any given value pair).

Is that available anywhere? Any random flight would do, but obviously it would be nice to have something that proceeded at about the same distance from the recording satellite.I believe this exercise has been done by Inmarsat as part of the work to validate their calculations. I'm not sure now whether I read it in an official statement from the investigation team, from Inmarsat or the independent group coordinated by Duncan Steele. Nevertheless, the data does exist and has been used to discriminate between northern and southern routes.

PS: Inmarsat's own statement - http://www.inmarsat.com/news/malaysian-government-publishes-mh370-details-uk-aaib/

sooty655

8th Mar 2015, 11:38

Only during the short time of those few handshakes about 1 hour apart from each other the BFO data have to be fullfilled, not for the whole time of the flight. The flight could do circles in between, as long as it reaches the corresponding BTO arc at the next handshake and fullfills the respective BFO data.
True, but the time of the handshakes was reset by external events a couple of times. Expecting any spoofing attempt (manual or pre-programmed) to take account of that pushes the limits of plausibility.

whatsthefrequencyken

8th Mar 2015, 11:42

On the page numbered 53, point #4 says...
When the SATCOM link was re-established at the above times, no Flight ID was present.
Is this normal after a logon, or perhaps a power interruption? I would have thought that the flight id was available from AIMS?

whatsthefrequencyken

8th Mar 2015, 12:00

The report seems, in my view, critical of the FO.

Page 80...
The airline embarked into sponsoring fresh cadets for pilot training since it first started but
had slowed down this programme with the abundance supply of self-sponsored pilots
since the last 5 years.

and...

By the time a captain is ready for the B777, he would have at least flown
F50, B737 or A330 or combination of all the 3 aircraft with at least a total of 6000 hours,
part of which has to be a minimum of 2000 command hours on the smaller jets.

On page 14 we are given the FO's experience...
Date of joining MAS 23 July 2007
...
Aeronautical experience 2813:42 hours
Experience on type 39:11hours

Pay to fly?

RetiredF4

8th Mar 2015, 12:04

sooty655
True, but the time of the handshakes was reset by external events a couple of times. Expecting any spoofing attempt (manual or pre-programmed) to take account of that pushes the limits of plausibility.

You may have missed the point, I'm not talking about spoofing the data nor assuming that the datas have been spoofed. Whoever was part of the disappearance of Mh370 knew nothing about those data as the rest of the world didn't know either.

All I'am saying is, that the southern arc is one interpretation of the data, even a highly probable one, but it is not an exclusive one as others have stated. The conclusion for the southern arc as the most probable track relies heavily on the assumption of near constant track, near constant altitude and near constant speed, simplified on a flight to a preset target in the south flown by autopilot.

Gysbreght

8th Mar 2015, 13:04

The conclusion for the southern arc as the most probable track relies heavily on the assumption of near constant track, near constant altitude and near constant speed, simplified on a flight to a preset target in the south flown by autopilot. No, it doesn't. Although some reconstructions have been based on those assumptions, that statement is not correct. After 18:40 UTC all BFO values indicate a southward component of groundspeed if one assumes level flight. They also show a smooth progression, increasing almost linearly with time. To support a northern route it is necessary to assume that the airplane was climbing at approximately 3500 fpm at the times of all six 'handshakes' and two 'unanswered ground-to-air telephone calls'. During the first unanswered call at around 18:40 86 responses were received from the aircraft during approximately one minute, all with BFO's of 88 +/- 2 Hz.

Ian W

8th Mar 2015, 13:41

You may have missed the point, I'm not talking about spoofing the data nor assuming that the datas have been spoofed. Whoever was part of the disappearance of Mh370 knew nothing about those data as the rest of the world didn't know either.

All I'am saying is, that the southern arc is one interpretation of the data, even a highly probable one, but it is not an exclusive one as others have stated. The conclusion for the southern arc as the most probable track relies heavily on the assumption of near constant track, near constant altitude and near constant speed, simplified on a flight to a preset target in the south flown by autopilot.

A flight at a constant speed South on autopilot fits the INMARSAT data. Data which as you say probably nobody in the world knew was available.

The alternatives, orbits crossing the distance ring (which you did not know about) at precisely the right time at precisely the right velocity (ground speed/track/climb corrected for winds) to look like an aircraft that was on a consistent southerly heading. Yes - it is possible. I challenge anyone to do it.

The problem I see is not overtly modeling all the other 'ideas' and showing where they fall down. If instead of repeatedly reassessing the one path, someone had set up a relatively straight forward computer model to vary the assumptions made within their possible limits and falsify (disprove) these alternate ideas. There might be a small family of possible tracks that would work. However, looking at the 'search area' which is very imprecise, I think that it may have been defined by an approach of varying the assumptions within their feasible limits, plus uncertainty due to error.

I have a feeling we will eventually find out.

Ian W

8th Mar 2015, 13:58

I've just read all the ATC transcripts in the report.

The lack of action and confusion as the events unfolded would be comical if not so serious. All concerned appeared as "rabbits in the headlights" and thus laid down protocols went out of the window.

Why did the Vietnamese wait over 15 minutes before querying the Malaysians as to the location of MH370?

Why did ATC not declare an "uncertainty phase" as per their own laid down procedures?

Why was "aircraft overdue" not declared 30 minutes after the IGARI estimate?

When MAS ops failed to get a response to their ACARS messages what did they hear when they called the aircraft via Satfone? Was it ringing, busy or unavailable?

When they called again a few hours later what did they hear? And, by then, were the SAR team aware MAS ops were able to try to call the aircraft.

More questions than answers I'm afraid...

Yes why not blame the controllers for not responding immediately to a routine event as if it was an emergency.

All controllers have had aircraft handed to them that do not call. It is not a startling event, in some instances such as crossing from oceanic to en-route airspace it is relatively normal to get a delay. SSR responses drop out and return to the extent that many ATC computer systems 'coast' a pseudo response to show the controller where the aircraft should be if it continued on its previous vector (some even turn that coasting response at waypoints).

So it is 1am on a quiet weekend night and an aircraft handed off drops off your radar. Not your problem - you handed it off. The receiving controller gives it a bit then buzzes you and says hey MH370 has not called me, is he still with you? You call, (it's not your problem really) and no answer. No he's not with me. END. The aircraft was handed off and not in my airspace. Yes the controller could have alerted people but they would have said where is it - it's in Vietnamese airspace and they know about it - why are you telling me then?

All these hindsight ideas of how controllers _could_ have responded are just that. About as useful as comments on how pilots _could_ have responded.

I hope that what this incident leads to is a far more rigid approach to aircraft dropping out of surveillance contact. The only way that things would have been different is a full scale emergency response when surveillance is lost. But remember that this is such a routine occurrence that coasting is built into ATC system software, so it will need to be very carefully done. I suspect that ADS-C SATCOM and VDL2 (VHF Data Link) will be mandatory for commercial aircraft within 5 years with continual ADS-C SATCOM at a 4 minute update rate (that supports RNP-10). Then when ADS-C SATCOM from an airborne aircraft stops reporting a full scale emergency will be declared.

However, in MH370's case would that have helped? Only if the military primary radars had immediately started tracking the aircraft. But what then? They see the aircraft out into the Indian ocean going West. No-one has interceptors on alert that would be able to fly into the Indian Ocean. Then outside primary radar cover MH370 turns South. And from then on we are where we are now - but without the search of the South China Sea.

Chronus

8th Mar 2015, 14:43

Now that a factual report has been released, we can at least focus on it.
I find the following timing sequence of particular interest.

UTC

1701:43 a/c at 34998ft
1706:43 a/c at 35004ft
1707:56 with over 12 minutes to run to IGARI, crew report level at 350 without previous ATC instruction to report reaching or when level.
1708:02 ATC response instructing to maintain level.
1719:26 8.26nm to IGARI ATC release a/c
1719:30 a/c acknowledges
1720:31 a/c at IGARI
1720:36 MODE S off
1721:13 a/c drops off primary radar, turns left and then right before commencing descent and increasing speed.

It is inconceivable that between 1720:30 and 1721:13, in 73 seconds, a failure of all electronic/electrical systems may have ocurred so as to render all communication systems and life support systems inoperative and yet allow the aircraft to execute two turns before descending and continuing to follow a diversionary routing, towards an area outside all radar coverage.

ETOPS

8th Mar 2015, 14:48

Ian W

Having spent a lot of the last 12 years going back and forth over IGARI (4 years B772 and 8 years B744) I'm well aware of the ATC set up and their capabilities. I am very surprised that no "overdue" action was taken..

birdspeed

8th Mar 2015, 14:57

Chronus,

Quite obvious really, the autopilot is also knocked off so the a/c is randomly roaming the skies after the single mechanical failure event.

nashama

8th Mar 2015, 15:12

@ Chronus: "It is inconceivable that between 1720:30 and 1721:13, in 73 seconds, a failure of all electronic/electrical systems may have ocurred so as to render all communication systems and life support systems inoperative and ....."

Some kind of outstandingly & extraordinarily different fault has to rise which could be 1 in 1000 - some thing that aviation industry encountered first time !

Or else, some one "forced" that fault ............. either in MAS ..... or in cockpit ...... or perhaps under the cockpit.

wes_wall

8th Mar 2015, 15:29

Goodness knows, there are so many questions that have been asked, discussed, and discarded. One that has consistently been on the forefront of my mind is why, that after one year, not one piece of the airplane or the contents therein have been seen or recovered. Yes, the oceans of the world are big, but sooner or later, they return things to land, somewhere.

James7

8th Mar 2015, 15:36

Ian W It is extremely unlikely that the person(s) flying MH370 were aware of the SATCOM tracking that could be done, therefore it is also extremely unlikely that they were spoofing the tracking.

If we assume that the disappearance was deliberate by person unknown, then after 1 year of not finding one single scrap from the aircraft, one can also assume that whoever did so was aware. He would have gone through every possible scenario of a search operation. So far he has succeeded.

MG23

8th Mar 2015, 16:26

Similarly I see a reference to the IFE not logging on to the SATCOM system late in the flight whereas it had previously, but not that this was the result of deliberate action.

Am I missing something in the 500+ pages? Is there something buried in the logs that I don't understand?

I don't believe there's any way to tell for sure why the IFE didn't connect to the ground after the final SATCOM logon to the satellite. It could be the aircraft was out of fuel and the IFE had no power. It could have failed. It could have been turned off. The aircraft could have hit the sea before the IFE noticed the SATCOM connection was up and set up its connection to the ground. All that's known is that it didn't connect to the ground after the final logon, and didn't explicitly disconnect from the ground before that.

bloom

8th Mar 2015, 16:40

MH370 report: Underwater locator beacon battery had expired (http://news.yahoo.com/mh370-report-underwater-locator-beacon-battery-had-expired-074304376--finance.html)

Locator beacon battery had expired over a year before departure.

portmanteau

8th Mar 2015, 17:00

Algol

8th Mar 2015, 17:03

For me, the single most remarkable fact about the event is that communications were 'lost' at EXACTLY the most 'convenient' time to facilitate a 'disappearance'.

As Ian W has eloquently explained - when Malaysian ATC handed the flight off that was probably the end of their interest in it.

Before Vietnam was contacted by the aircraft they would have no urgent reason to suspect anything was amiss.

So, for only that initial 10 - 15 minute time period there was the perfect 'window of opportunity' for something to happen.
And it happened.
Right then.
How convenient! What a coincidence!

In fact, the time window was shorter in reality, because the NORMAL practice is an immediate transfer. So whatever happened had to happen within seconds of the handoff by Malaysia.
How INCREDIBLY more coincidental!

Well, yes, there may well have been a purely coincidental MECHANICAL failure/event at just that instant. Its possible.
But common sense and experience would tend to suggest that's so far fetched it is really beyond the realms of possibility.

Whats much more likely is that SOMEONE took an initiative at that ideal moment to carry out whatever plan of interference they had already prepared.

Does anyone still seriously cling to the 'mechanical failure' scenario, rather than the 'unlawful interference' one?

Chronus

8th Mar 2015, 17:44

At 1707:56 when the crew made their unsolicited report of their cruise level, the aircraft had 60nm to run to IGARI. See ACARS position report for speed at 34998 given as 278kts. I find this rather curious. This kind of call is made more commonly when the frequency has gone silent for a while and the crew politely remind the controller of the approach to their next reporting sector. In this instance, the report clearly shows that atc were in communication with other aircraft on the frequency. Perhaps they were expecting an earlier release to the next sector. The question is why the rush.

Fly26

8th Mar 2015, 17:46

Algol I quite agree....therefore with that 'unlawful interference' theory it would have to be months in the planning, because the events after position IGARI what ever that maybe would unlikely be spontaneous. A plan was excecuted or attempted to be executed for what ever agenda. Also that would start pointing fingers within the flight deck, as when the aircraft reaches position IGARI, it could only be known from within the FMC/ND legs page and radio handover...no one down the back could determine when this position was reached i.e. The so called window of opportunity. Therefore clues could be found by further in depth investigation to the backgrounds of the Cpt and F/o.....something may have been missed that aids the investigation/search.

Algol

8th Mar 2015, 17:55

Yes Fly26 - I totally agree. In fact it was my next step in teasing this out.
Only the Flight Crew (or anyone else on the FD at that time) could have known that NOW was the moment to act.

The apparent lack of stress in the crews voice(s) - if we are to believe the statements from the authorities who have reviewed the tapes - would seem to indicate there was nothing 'untoward' going on right up to the point of handover.
Or else the crew member making the transmission was remarkably composed under duress?

Fly26

8th Mar 2015, 18:21

No I dont think it's possible to sound that composed under duress, from what I remember the hand over and transcript sounded completely normal, as we do day in day out. if we look at the minute by minute time frame leading up to the 'event' the normal hand over is quite eery. It could imply that crew member had no clue about what was to happen next or was in on the plan. I have not reviewed in depths the flight path and altitudes of the aircraft after position IGARI, could it show some form of a struggle in the flight deck? Of course everything after IGARI is guess work, which is why more should be done to investigate the pilots, that's information that can be obtained, even if you need to go through it 100 times, it might uncover something to help. I think your theory Algol is that right direction.

HamishMcBush

8th Mar 2015, 18:36

Fly26

8th Mar 2015, 18:49

Report at 17:07:56 : Could this have been a deliberate action by whoever was going to change the plane's flightpath to confirm to ATC that all was well, immediately prior to the ensuing diversion ?

Yeh it's possible....it certainly keeps things to appear normal before a sudden change.

Algol

8th Mar 2015, 19:09

It seems obvious that the initiative was taken by someone on the FD. Someone who was meant to be there, hence no panic in the voices.

It kinda narrows things down a lot, doesn't it.

It also potentially eliminates a lot of the conspiracy theories.
Unless you believe the FD were in cahoots with other actors on board.

SLFstu

8th Mar 2015, 19:25

From page 94 of the Factual Report - 16 controllers were on the floor until midnight, after which half were sent off for a 3 hour sleep (or smoke or feed or whatever). Significantly for the region of interest (sectors 3 & 5), 2 controllers suddenly were tasked with controlling an area that 6 staff covered up until midnight. And the controller who took the last radio exchange with MH370 was off on break when more and more questions were asked higher up and from other centers. It surprises me that the numerous other AC in those sectors that night made it safely home. Reading between the lines the stress level eventually became palpable.

Fly26

8th Mar 2015, 19:28

Yes it does..so if we take it further it begs the question what would be the plan after position IGARI? There's obviously a hundred possibilities, but in theory you would want people to know about it after the event, a statement made from your action...which leads to me to suspect it wasn't seen through and the final position of the aircraft is almost random depending upon the last inputs to the flight controls/MCP.

Algol

8th Mar 2015, 19:45

Fly26 we seem to have had the same thought processes!
My guess?
One or other pilot had a 'spectacular' in mind, as you suggest, to let the world know of his grievance perhaps (I won't speculate here what those were, but I have my suspicions).
So this person acts at the ideal moment - takes control - disables anyone else on the FD - then gets on O2, switches off the pax O2 and depressurises the cabin (outflow valves open). The reported climb to FL400(?) was to guarentee total final incapacitation of all others on board.
Aircraft is then descended and turned. This is where the plan changes. I think something changed his mind and he snaps out of it. Instead of the 'spectacular' he slinks off to die in the empty and vast Southern Ocean.

That's all speculation of course.
But having taken the a/c succesfully, in such a planned way, was this really the planned endgame? Or an improvisation?

Ian W

8th Mar 2015, 21:29

etops. luckily ian w speaks only for himself. I can assure you and others that here is one controller who would have been highly interested in an aircraft that dropped off my radar seconds after I had spoken to it regardless of "not my airspace/problem etc". wait four hours to initiate a search? unbelievable. icao will have much to say about this incompetence alone.

Understandable that you would react immedately Portmanteau, you work with synthetic mosaiced or multi-sensor tracker integrated surveillance systems with coasting track infilling. It is not likely that you would see an aircraft 'disappear' on handoff to the next sector. However, in airspace where the controller is using one radar not a multi-sensor system having patches where aircraft drop out is not uncommon. After working with one of those for a few shifts people might get a little restive with emergency actions every time an aircraft handed-off dropped off the display due to being on the ragged edge of radar cover.

Scubascooby

8th Mar 2015, 21:50

Lantern10

9th Mar 2015, 03:52

Now they say the ATC was asleep.

MH370 report: Air traffic control supervisor asleep on duty after plane disappeared (http://www.smh.com.au/world/mh370-report-air-traffic-control-supervisor-asleep-on-duty-after-plane-disappeared-20150309-13yzdb.html)

A Malaysian air traffic control supervisor was asleep on duty four hours after MH370 disappeared amid confusion and misleading reports on the whereabouts of the Boeing 777 carrying 239 people.

Algol

9th Mar 2015, 04:30

I don't fly the 777. Is it possible to access the CVR/DFDR in flight from a cabin access panel?

slats11

9th Mar 2015, 06:41

If the plane flew on AP until fuel exhaustion and then spiralled into the ocean, there would have been fragmentation of the fuselage and release of all sorts of floating items - pieces of composite lining, seat cushions, oxygen masks, possibly life jackets.

I'm not surprised none were found initially - roaring 40's, and several days before we started searching in the current area.

But it is surprising nothing at all has washed up after 12 months.

This makes me think wasn't a high speed crash with fragmentation.

Interesting site where you can input crash location and see where and when debris is most likely to wash up. It obviously depends exactly which position you nominate, but the densest flow of material is generally towards south and then SE coast of Australia (relatively densely populated).

Adrift: tracking the global ocean circulation (http://www.adrift.org.au/map?lat=-41.8&lng=85.8&center=145&startmon=Jan)

Famous rubber duckie story, but given these float on of water and are affected by wind, probably different to MH370.

What can 28,000 rubber duckies lost at sea teach us about our oceans? | MNN - Mother Nature Network (http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/what-can-28000-rubber-duckies-lost-at-sea-teach-us-about)

Bobman84

9th Mar 2015, 10:00

Just for those who comment on "no debris", these closer-to-land incidents never washed up any debris either and were large jet aircraft:

1969 – Boeing RC-135 jet. Never found, last known position over ocean.
1979 – Boeing 707 jet. Never found, last known position over ocean.
2003 – Boeing 727 jet. Never found, last seen over ocean.

DespairingTraveller

9th Mar 2015, 10:12

Interesting site where you can input crash location and see where and when debris is most likely to wash up. It obviously depends exactly which position you nominate, but the densest flow of material is generally towards south and then SE coast of Australia (relatively densely populated).Worth noting though that, from the example crash location you linked to, whatever type of plastic it is that they are modelling takes around a year to reach significant portions of the Australian coast.

So, given all the uncertainties, we are still relatively early in that process.

Air Snoop

9th Mar 2015, 10:45

For info - the DFDR is only a memory stick with a lot of protection and doesn't have a battery. Normally over rear galley and is accessible in flight.

The battery referred to is the DFDR ULB ("pinger") and it was the 'shelf life' that had expired; may still have worked anyway for 30 days when activated. The problem is that the 30 days had expired by the time they got to anywhere near the current search area.

slats11

9th Mar 2015, 11:27

A few people have privately asked about my recently deleted post.

Rather than attempt to repost it here, it is available at the link below

MH370 - time to think of it as a criminal act (http://auntypru.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=28)

Presumably the mods won't object to this.

Air Snoop

9th Mar 2015, 11:50

Most interesting event to me is 'controlled' flt from IGARI to join N571 at VAMPI to fly to N of MEKAR before disappearing.

Why do that if intention was to fly South eventually. Loads of theories but that's all they can be:confused:

camel

9th Mar 2015, 13:08

one thing seems a little strange to me .. the Captain on the radio to ATC..he seems to be having some kind of trouble with virtually all the read backs ..lots of aa..ahh ..err.. ehhh..malaysia ONE ...7370 ... etc

small things maybe and yes its the middle of the night and he had flown a lot of hours in the previous 28/90 days..

the only read back without any prefix of err ahh aa etc is the very last one .

very precise ( although with no new frequency mentioned)

probably means nothing at all ,just made me think a bit .

Ian W

9th Mar 2015, 13:08

Is there ever a requirement for a proper handover rather than a simple hand-off ?

Like a courier delivering a parcel that has to be signed for, the current ATC must hear contact with the next ATC before the handover can be confirmed.

In a standard hand over the releasing controller contacts the assuming controller says that there is an aircraft to be handed over then identifies the aircraft to the assuming controller
The assuming controller has normally been prewarned by the system and has usually been watching the aircraft track approach the boundary in the 'area of common interest' and will accept the handoff and provide the frequency for the aircraft to call.

These handoff's become extremely routine and both the controllers and often the flight crews know the frequencies and know each other by voice in most cases.

Some systems internally have made the handoff even simpler into what they call a 'silent handoff'. In those the assuming controller will see the aircraft track approaching his boundary become a 'full data block' instead of a simple limited data block. When the releasing controller is ready to hand the aircraft over then the data block starts flashing, the receiving controller 'clicks on' the flashing data block and it stops flashing for him and starts flashing for the transferring controller indicating the acceptance of handoff. The transferring controller then sends the aircraft to the frequency for the next controller.

There are multiple variants between those types of handoff.
For example another common method is to ask the aircraft to contact the next center on 'their second box' when the next controller is ready to accept them they will cancel service from the current sector. This is common on transfers to oceanic where the contact may be by HF or by CPDLC rather than by voice.

portmanteau

9th Mar 2015, 13:30

ian w. there are rules for controllers covering handovers which " people who might get a little restive with emergency actions etc" ignore at their peril. malaysian dca lists them in their Interim Report and it is likely all atcc's have similar versions. it seems some were not followed in this case according to the report.

Sober Lark

9th Mar 2015, 14:48

http://mh370.mot.gov.my/download/InterimStatement.pdf

In the Interim Statement they state the aim is the prevention of future accidents or incidents. They list seven organisations and details of factual information and evidence gathered. As part of this process they don't mention having gathered the medical records of the crew members. However, in 8.4 they mention they are now going to gather information on crew. Seems a bit strange they have waited so long.

DespairingTraveller

9th Mar 2015, 15:33

As part of this process they don't mention having gathered the medical records of the crew members. However, in 8.4 they mention they are now going to gather information on crew. Seems a bit strange they have waited so longSect 1.5 of the Factual Information report makes it perfectly clear that they have already gathered a great deal of information about the crew, including their medical records.

S8.4 of the Interim Statement is merely listing the various headings under which they are conducting analysis of said factual information.

Sober Lark

9th Mar 2015, 16:05

My reading of the factual information is it relates to the medical records that MAS themselves hold and not necessarily medical information gathered from any Doctor the crew may have attended and which may not have made it into their medical files at MAS.

DaveReidUK

9th Mar 2015, 17:35

A few people have privately asked about my recently deleted post.

Rather than attempt to repost it here, it is available at the link below

Thanks for the link.

But I'm afraid I stopped reading at

the probability it lies within a relatively small search area may be less than the probability it lies in one of an enormous number of individually less likely locations

Gysbreght

9th Mar 2015, 21:00

Since the definition of underwater search areas in the ATSB's report of 26 June 2014, it has always been clear that the "Priority Search Area" of 60,000 square km's, as the name implies, is only a fraction of the area of possible locations of the airplane that are compatible with INMARSAT's data log and the fuel-limited "performance boundary":

(Bolding mine)

This suggested that, for MH370, it was possible that after a long period of flight under autopilot control, fuel exhaustion would occur followed by a loss of control without any control inputs.
Note: (...)
Also allowing for the fact that a maximum glide distance of 100+ NM would result in an impractically large search area, the search team considered that it was reasonable to assume that there were no control inputs following the flame-out of the second engine. Accordingly the aircraft would descend and, as there would be some asymmetry due to uneven engine thrust/drag or external forces e.g. wind, the descent would develop into a spiral.
As the BEA found in their study, in the case of an upset followed by a loss of control, all the impact points occurred within 20 NM from the point at which the emergency began and, in the majority of cases, within 10 NM.

onetrack

10th Mar 2015, 00:20

There has been an interesting discovery with regard to MH370 wreckage, on a West Australian beach.
An unopened towelette in its packaging, with the Malaysia Airlines symbol in it, has been discovered by beachcombers.
The item has been sent to the National Capital, Canberra, for further examination to see if its origin can be more precisely indentified.
It's a long shot, but it does focus attention to this area of the coastline, which could possibly lead to a more concrete find, such as a readily-identifiable MH370 component.

Towelette washed up on W.A. beach being tested for connection to MH370 (http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/mh370-disappearance-towelette-that-washed-up-on-wa-beach-being-tested-for-connection-to-missing-malaysia-airlines-plane/story-fnizu68q-1227256227487)

Airbubba

10th Mar 2015, 00:36

It's a long shot, but it does focus attention to this area of the coastline, which could possibly lead to a more concrete find, such as a readily-identifiable MH370 component.

According to the article, the towelette was discovered over seven months ago in July. I wouldn't hold my breath on this one.

camel

10th Mar 2015, 03:55

and they decide to hand it in 8 months later? they really dont know about the massive search going on down there? ermm...

onetrack

10th Mar 2015, 04:37

As with many innocent finds, the finders possibly dismissed the towelette as of no importance for 7 months - then they were urged by others to hand it in, on the basis it may have come from MH370.
It's certainly a very tenuous link, and the towelete may have origins totally unrelated to MH370.

It is possible the towelette was kept unopened from a flight by a passenger, and carried to the area and then dropped, unopened, by that same passenger.
That would all hinge on how many people who have been on a Malaysia flight, and who have a habit of keeping airline towelettes, travel that section of coastline. I'd expect that chance would be extremely low.
Coming from a frugal upbringing, I have a tendency to keep items such as towelettes from flights, but I doubt if very many airline travellers do.
The chances of the towelette floating down from around Malaysia are extremely low. The general current drift is towards the W.A. coastline from the Southern Indian Ocean.

I do not know what the likelihood is of even being able to verify if it came from MH370. It would seem to me to be very difficult to ID it as such.
However, there is a real chance now, that people will step up their beachcombing for MH370 aircraft wreckage along the coastline in the region, so hopefully this may lead to a verifiable find.

MatrixMan

10th Mar 2015, 05:09

I find it hard to believe (of course... Some news no matter how small can be good news for closure etc...) that of all things on board an aircraft. A Small paper towelette in a wrapper be the first/only piece of MH370 to surface.

There are far more buoyant things on board than a paper towelette. Such as life vests/rafts and seat cushions.

Air Snoop

10th Mar 2015, 08:07

However, that is only a drift of 700 metres per hour (0.4 Kt) from the search area, well within the scope of tide and wind! No evidence is ever wasted, even negative evidence.

Lonewolf_50

10th Mar 2015, 16:51

This suggested that, for MH370, it was possible that after a long period of flight under autopilot control, fuel exhaustion would occur
followed by a loss of control without any control inputs.
Note: (...) Also allowing for the fact that a maximum glide distance of 100+ NM would result in an impractically large search area, the search team considered that it was reasonable to assume that there were no control inputs following the flame-out of the second engine. Accordingly the aircraft would descend and, as there would be some asymmetry due to uneven engine thrust/drag or external forces e.g. wind, the descent would develop into a spiral. As the BEA found in their study, in the case of an upset followed by a loss of control, all the impact points occurred within 20 NM from the point at which the emergency began and, in the majority of cases, within 10 NM. And if there were a hand on the controls all the way down? 777 glide ratio would expand that entry point by quite a bit more than 20 nm. ;)

MG23

10th Mar 2015, 18:19

Sometime last year, there was a claim that the frequency offset in the final satellite logon was consistent with a rapid descent. I don't know whether that's still considered true after the more detailed analysis of that data.

But, yes, if someone was flying at that point, the wreckage could be a long way from the final arc. On the other hand, if they tried to extend the flight as far as possible, you could probably estimate the position by just extending the possible tracks between the last three arcs... still a big chunk of ocean, but not a million square kilometres.

RetiredF4

10th Mar 2015, 21:14

http://mh370.mot.gov.my/download/FactualInformation.pdf

On page 63 of the Factual Information Report the loadsheet is published with TOW 223469 (Kg?) and TOF 49100 (Ltr or KG?)

On page 64 we have 5 ACARS reports containing the following numbers:
time/ altitude / GW / TotFW /
1641:34 / 10300 / 492520 Kg / 49200 kg
1651:43 / 21193 / 486240 kg / 46500 kg
1706:43 / 35000 / 480600 kg / 43800 kg

The original printout is on page 65.

If my math is still worth a bit, than the GW over the period of time reduced from 1641:43 to 1706:43 by 11920 kg, while the TOTFW reduced only by 5400 kg?

If the fuel is in the same units on the loadsheet as on the ACARS report, than they had more fuel at 10.000 feet than on takeoff.

Could it be, that despite the name factual report they do not have their facts together and the GW in the ACARS report is in lbs and the fuel in Liters?
The GW in the ACARS report is more than double of the TOW, and more than max allowed TOW, maybe the loadsheet GW is in KG ?

Unsure.......

portmanteau

10th Mar 2015, 21:27

rtd f4. dont know where exactly the mil radar mentioned is located but the turn south would have taken the aircraft down the E94 deg 25" longitude which passes within 45nm of banda aceh at the tip. indonesia has many mil radars so draw your own conclusions.... for the mil radar mentioned to have seen as far as igari would give it a range of around 350nm from java.

RetiredF4

10th Mar 2015, 21:55

On the way to IGARI MH 370 was still squawking, the indonesian contact was probably a secondary radar contact. Then MH370 went dark and I doubt that Indonesia has a primary radar looking that far.

But they sure would see an aircraft on primary radar passing within 40 NM of their landmass over open sea. To assume they saw that aircraft, did not act and are now hiding the fact that they saw it is imho less probable than the assumed turn to south happening later, at another altitude, or not at all. That is my take.

NeoFit

10th Mar 2015, 23:33

Well done Retired F4

If my math is still worth a bit, than the GW over the period of time reduced from 1641:43 to 1706:43 by 11920 kg, while the TOTFW reduced only by 5400 kg?

The 777-200er (with TRENT 892) MTOW is 299,000 kg (660,000 lb), and it seems quite impossible that an ACARS message sent a GW = 492520 kg

"The Captain ordered 49,100 kg of fuel for the flight" (page 18).

So, GW is given in lb and FW in kg
and 11920 lb = 5400 kg

MrPeabody

10th Mar 2015, 23:40

RetiredF4;

Refer page 30 of the report; total departure fuel was 49,700kg but recorded on the load as 49,100kg.

The GWTs in table 1.9A "ACARS Position Report" are incorrectly recorded as kgs, this should be lbs.

MOE EDSK

11th Mar 2015, 04:26

RetiredF4 (http://www.pprune.org/members/302846-retiredf4) wrote:
On the way to IGARI MH 370 was still squawking, the indonesian contact was probably a secondary radar contact. Then MH370 went dark and I doubt that Indonesia has a primary radar looking that far.

But they sure would see an aircraft on primary radar passing within 40 NM of their landmass over open sea. To assume they saw that aircraft, did not act and are now hiding the fact that they saw it is imho less probable than the assumed turn to south happening later, at another altitude, or not at all. That is my take. If we look at the time DETRESFA (the only phase initiated) was disseminated - over 5 hrs after radio and radar contact was lost - it can easily be explained why adjacent radar units did not pay attention to a lonely and interrupted primary echo creeping along the perimeter of their scopes. If KL ATC had sent out INCERFA and ALERFA at the prescribed times every radar operator in the area would have been on the lookout for unidentified targets.

MrPeabody

11th Mar 2015, 04:31

And if there were a hand on the controls all the way down? 777 glide ratio would expand that entry point by quite a bit more than 20 nm.

According to the table on page 36 of the ATSB report an unpowered glide from FL290 would achieve a max range of 90NM. The search width would therefore be +\- 95NM or 190NM.

It's worse for FL350 reaching to 120NM glide and search width of 250NM.

Therefore it's better to assume no pilot inputs....the search won't take as long!

slats11

11th Mar 2015, 05:06

Best bet might be 2 concentric annuli
1. Current search area i.e. based on the 7th arc. This is the "AP, fuel starvation, spiral scenario."
2. Based on maximal glide (from cruise) distance beyond the 7th arc. This is the "piloted flight, get as far as possible, controlled glide and ditch scenario." Most likely FL350-400 if trying to get as far and fast as possible. If trying to disappear, it would seem illogical to reverse course during glide.

This strategy may be more productive than searching all points between, for which seem to be arbitrary in that there is no scenario pointing to these areas. And I get a sense we aren't going to increase the search area by orders of magnitude. Any further search will need to be relatively focussed.

This of course assumes the BTO rings are accurate. Some have speculated less accurate at low temperatures. However a piloted flight for approx 7 hours wearing normal clothes would require environmental control.

portmanteau

11th Mar 2015, 14:13

rtdf4. the aircraft was within radar range of possibly half of java during its transit past the island. I believe the assumption is that it turned south at or around anoko ( fir bdy) and continued down longitude E94 degrees 25 minutes. he would have passed 60 nm abeam of banda aceh, 110 nm from the coast at latitude N4 deg, 243nm from the coast at lat N2 deg, 312nm from the coast at equator and 585nm from coast at S6 deg when clearing southern end of java.

he would have crossed 15 air routes while passing java and another 5 further south. they led to and from malaysia indonesia and australia. if someone was still in control they would presumably have switched off all visible lighting so chances of being seen not high.

I think australian atsb would have been very keen to have some radar contact to back up the inmarsat info before embarking on their immense search. guesswork of course but it must be possible that indonesia discovered the aircraft had passed them when they played the tapes back much later. they would tell australia in confidence who now have the corroborative evidence they needed and press ahead.

mickjoebill

15th Sep 2016, 21:35

Australian investigators report that the part found in Tanzania is from MH370.
Investigation: AE-2014-054 - Assistance to Malaysian Ministry of Transport in support of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 on 7 March 2014 UTC (http://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/investigation_reports/2014/aair/ae-2014-054/)

Passenger 389

16th Sep 2016, 05:33

If I'm reading ATSB release correctly, this piece is from the starboard wing (in lay terms).

And IIRC all other pieces found to date, that could be linked to a particular side of the plane, also were from starboard side.

Excludes Rolls Royce logo - they couldn't identify which engine it came from -- and a piece of cabin interior.

mickjoebill

16th Sep 2016, 07:37

In general the pundits interviewed by Australian media are saying that it proves beyond doubt that the search is taking place in the right "area".

Passenger 389

7th Oct 2016, 05:52

Wing part found on Mauritius confirmed to be part of MH370

Oct 7, 2016

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- A piece of an aircraft wing found on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius has been identified as belonging to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Malaysian and Australian officials said Friday.

The piece of wing flap was found in May and subsequently analyzed by experts at the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is heading up the search for the plane in a remote stretch of ocean off Australia's west coast.

Investigators used a part number found on the debris to link it to the missing Boeing 777, the agency said in a statement.

Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai also confirmed the identification.

Contact Approach

7th Oct 2016, 06:39

Great story bro.

umop apisdn

7th Oct 2016, 07:36

Are they still looking for it?

FullWings

7th Oct 2016, 07:44

It’s getting to the point where there’s not much to be gained from further snippets on MH370. It crashed into the sea, it was almost definitely suicide, everybody’s dead, move along.

Preemo

7th Oct 2016, 08:06

Or a Samsung like battery fire in the most inconvenient of places .....

Alsacienne

7th Oct 2016, 08:12

FullWings ... whilst your summary might well be correct, it would be appropriate to show respect for those who died and their families.

27/09

7th Oct 2016, 08:46

Fullwings,

There has been recent speculation about a possible on board fire with some damage seen on parts suspected to have come from the aircraft.

I think your comments are a bit flippant and presumptuous.

FullWings

7th Oct 2016, 08:47

Or a Samsung like battery fire in the most inconvenient of places .....
Or aliens.

Pretty much all of the recorded evidence points towards deliberate (human) intervention. Ockham’s Razor and all that.

FullWings ... whilst your summary might well be correct, it would be appropriate to show respect for those who died and their families.
I wish this crash had never happened and that those involved were still alive. However, facts indicate that it did and they aren’t. Is the amount of effort and expense still going into the search for MH370 going to be worth it in terms of saving future lives or providing answers we don’t know already? IMO probably not. That has nothing to do with “respect” which is a rather nebulous cultural concept to begin with...

PDR1

7th Oct 2016, 08:48

An on-board fire would not explain why it was where it was.

neville_nobody

2nd Nov 2016, 00:58

So the saga rolls on....

A new report by Australian investigators into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 suggests the aircraft's flaps were not extended when it crashed, effectively ruling out the possibility of a controlled descent into the Indian Ocean.

An analysis of data associated with the plane's final communications to and from the satellite was also "consistent with the aircraft being in a high and increasing rate of descent at that time", the Australian Transport Safety Bureau advised.

The findings, presented in a report released on Wednesday, are significant because they cast doubt on the "controlled descent" theory being pushed by some observers and elements of the media. Instead, they support the theory that the plane entered an uncontrolled dive when it ran out of fuel over the Indian Ocean.

Analysis of debris from the plane's right wing, confirmed to belong to MH370, found some of the damage was "consistent with the flaps in the retracted position", leading investigators to conclude "the right outboard flap was most likely in the retracted position at the time it separated from the wing". The right flaperon was most likely at or close to the neutral position at the time of the crash, the report said.

In the controlled descent scenario, a rogue pilot – most likely the captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah – was at the controls and conscious when the flight with 239 souls on board hit the water somewhere in the vast Indian Ocean. In a controlled ditching, the plane could have flown further and crashed south of the current search area.

The Transport Safety Bureau previously said that if the wreckage was not found in the current search area, the next most likely scenario was that someone was at the controls and glided the plane beyond the current area. The bureau's critics have argued it should have accepted the likelihood of this rogue pilot possibility from the beginning, but the latest finding backs the bureau's favoured hypothesis.

Prior to the release of the report, the head of the Transport Safety Bureau's search effort Peter Foley indicated the analysis of the flap position would be crucial to understanding the flight's final minutes and whether investigators were looking in the right place.

"The rate of descent combined with the position of the flap, if it's found that it is not deployed, will almost certainly rule out either a controlled ditch or glide," he said in August. "If it's not in a deployed state, it *validates, if you like, where we've been looking."

It is not possible to rule out the rogue pilot theory completely, as a person could have deliberately diverted the plane and allowed it to enter an uncontrolled descent when it ran out of fuel.

Local and international experts are meeting in Canberra this week to discuss the future of the search effort, which has been led by Australia. It is expected the search will be extended, most likely north to the 34th parallel, with the ABC reporting the Transport Safety Bureau wants another $30 million to continue its efforts.

Transport Minister Darren Chester said Wednesday's report contained important information on "what we believe" happened to MH370, and this week's summit would "inform the remainder of the search effort, and develop guidance for any future search operations".

MH370 disappeared from radar in March 2014 during a scheduled night-time flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. So-called "handshake" signals between the aircraft and satellites revealed the plane flew on for hours on an arc over the Indian Ocean.

So far, more than 20 items of debris of interest to the investigation team have been found off the coasts of Africa and Madagascar, and the islands of Mauritius, Reunion and Rodrigues. But most major parts of the wreckage continue to elude search teams.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/mh370-new-report-suggests-plane-dived-rapidly-rejects-controlled-descent-theory-20161101-gsfxvo.html