Malaysian Airlines MH370 contact lost

[JamesGV]

duffyp99

Re your question.

A link. Not my "find" but a very interesting "paper" indeed.
Think it's credit to @ "B.A.R" this am.

Duncan Steel | Space Scientist, Author & Broadcaster

[WillowRun 6-3]

Four (4) questions, going forward

Soon a full month will have lapsed. The wisdom of the aviators who have populated this forum in its past few years compels not drawing conclusions absent facts. Typically the set of facts which the professionals await are those reduced to published form by one or another of the various national air accident investigation boards (e.g., National Transportation Safety Board, for the United States). It is no small irony that the professionals' "Rumour" message board has yielded up, in this thread, a great deal of technical, scientific, engineering, and flight operations information of a factual nature (some poor fraction of which has been understood here). And some rolls of tin foil (all literally incomprehensible, here).

Thinking about the systemic governance implications presented by the present situation, and in urgent anticipation of facts pronounced by the pertinent official bodies, four questions of material relevance seem worthy of posting. (By "systemic governance" I mean the web, the system, of legal and juridical structures which govern how these processes go forward, such as ICAO annexes, other bilateral and multinational agreements (as in the S&R context (discussed boatloads of posts ago)), operating protocols for INMARSAT resources, and similar 'arrangements' all the way down to interagency operating protocols as between NTSB and FAA.)

1. Is there any precedent for the accident investigation and reporting process to be undertaken on a multi-national basis, jointly and severally shared and operated? Understanding that Malaysia has "first in line" jurisdiction (for lack of a better descriptive term), the locus of facts spans an unprecedented scope of nation-state jurisdiction. And the technical aspects are becoming immensely complex. The INMARSAT analyses alone argue for a "deep bench" of investigatory and fact-finding national air accident board expertise. Would ICAO appear equipped and prepared to innovate and provide an organizational situs for a multi-national inquiry board? (Note: "locus" is legal terminology for "place"; "situs" similarly means place but generally connotes a more specific location (just in case legalese is not your first language).)

2. Posters galore have written, or speculated, about national air defense capabilities, practices, and the like. And such have noted the quite significant reluctance of nations to air this out, even when prompted by the given incident. So: is there precedent, in any air accident inquiry anywhere, for an executive or classified component to be reserved for such sensitive matters? Governing boards of institutions as relatively straight-forward as a municipal public library routinely move to closed session to discuss sensitive matters (such as personnel decisions). What if anything precludes examining all the radar (and even the hypothecated fighter intercept, tin foil wings or not) data in closed session and issuing the ultimate inquiry board report in bifurcated form?

3. The given incident does appear to break new ground (or new space, if you prefer) in the application of satellite orbital dynamics and parameters, and data communications protocols, to a search and rescue situation. The criticisms leveled at the public dissemination of information by the Malaysian government might be better understood if one takes into account SPECIFICALLY what data the Malaysians had received from INMARSAT on a very detailed timeline basis. In other words unless one knows the PRECISE state of information flow from 'Marsat to Malay at a given moment in time, it is not valid to critique Malaysia's pronouncements. It is way too easy to unconsciously impute information to the Malaysians which they actually did not receive until later. Thus: is there precedent for any air accident inquiry board to coordinate closely with the INMARSAT organization so as to acquire an officially validated timeline of information flow to an S&R entity? If this has not been done previously, does it not lend further support to the structuring and convening of a multi-national inquiry board for this incident? (Editorial comment: once more, the roots of the law applicable to international civil aviation and aeronautics - Admiralty Jurisdiction - are plain to see for those who will look - INMARSAT which began operating in orbit in the late 1970s was and is a project of the Int'l Maritime Organization.)

4. The air carrier representative body, IATA, has proclaimed the need to augment data link capacities of certificated air transport category aircraft. Presumably advocates for implementation of such a shift in data link technologies and operations would advocate also for making things change much more rapidly than the way things usually have worked in such matters. Hence: is there any established vehicle for taking the accepted inter-agency coordination of the NTSB and FAA with respect to changes in airworthiness certification stemming from air accident inquiry findings, and "scaling such coordination up" to a more global, at least multi-national level? Presumably ICAO (again) would provide the situs for such an effort of multiple nations and multiple agencies (sovereign as well as multi-national in form).

[G0ULI]

duffyp99
The positional arcs produced by INMARSAT have been developed using original source data and a deep understanding of the equipment and specifications. Ultimately it is a pure guess, but a guess based on the best interpretation that can be made by people at the peak of their careers and with experience and access to data that has not been publically released.

[JamesGV]

One Question. Is this route correct ?

One question.

Is "this" the correct route now or not ?

http://multimedia.asiaone.com/sites/...?itok=0kg0aSeD

[G0ULI]

Willow Run 6-3
Given that the aircraft appears to have disappeared in international waters, primary responsibility for the investigation will lie with the Malaysian authorities. If it subsequently comes to light that the aircraft crashed in territory claimed by another sovereign state, then they will assume a lead in the investigation.

It would be futile to attempt to force any nation to reveal details that they are not prepared to divulge voluntarily. Commercial organisations would doubtless be prepared to reveal data and cooperate with investigations so long as their costs were covered. Commercial interests will force companies like Boeing to participate because they are anxious to prove that it is not a fault in their product that was responsible for the event.

So basically it comes down to money. How much will it cost to equip every aircraft with a tamper proof satellite position transponder? Who will be responsible for gathering and safe guarding the data? Who will set the technical specification? How will international agreement be reached? How will compliance be enforced? Who is going to pay for the engineering development, international conferences and behind the scenes diplomacy? How long will it take?

The unique nature of this incident has brought together resources from many nations who would not normally be expected to cooperate. Not all of the resources are being paid for by the Malaysian government, but the SAR experience gained by the parties taking part can make it worthwhile. How much to rent a nuclear sub for a day? Opportunity to check out some of the latest Chinese military equipment, priceless.

[Blake777]

James

I have been searching for confirmation or denial of that turnaround. It was put together by Chinese relatives who believe based on the various headings in and around IGARI that it may have been a looping turn around to the right, less perceptible to passengers than a hard left so to speak.

There has been no public comment from Malaysia yet about whether it is factual or not. They have refused to comment on today's behind doors meeting with relatives. This is part of the radar data that either has not been released or is possibly missing.

if true it may explain why more fuel was used in the initial stages of the diversion.

[JohnPerth]

The handling of the SAR may be embarrassing for some parties, but ultimately it is hard to see we would be any closer to finding the aircraft, even if they had worked better.

Well, that depends on where the aircraft is. If it's in the Indian Ocean perhaps things floated for even a week or two and then sank, in which case searching there earlier might have made all the difference.

The trouble is that right now we don't seem to have much to go on! I'm not even completely sure we know it went south. That seems to my mind to be a solid hypothesis rather than an established fact. Sufficient to direct resources there, but...

[drwatson]

Love the unanswered questions..I'm no pilot but earn a living troubleshooting and solving problems as part of a global IT sofware company in a 24x7x365 follow the sun support model with multi tiered escalation matrices. Anyways enough about me...question time..and before that a quote of why questions are important.

If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.
Albert Einstein

So questions and problems/issues..starting with my fav right now

"We're not searching for a needle in a haystack, we're still trying to define where the haystack is. That's just to put it in context,” Australian Defence Force vice chief Mark Binskin told the media at Pearce RAAF .The BB was not designed for this scenario . Ok where is the crash site ? Wait a minute..is the direction or route of the plane is still in doubt right?

Why? The transponder was turned off either mechanical failure or by hijackers and no VHF maydays were sent out..

This immediately comes down to a scenario close to tracking military or enemy a/c via .... If it were still in the air..primary radar and satelite and even.visual contact by interceptor jets

Have we faced this scenario before. I would say yes as we are post 911. I must add at this juncture if MH370 was on route to the US we may not be in this situation right?

However the question which has got me puzzled ever since the mh370 decided to dissappear is although we are not in the USA is why murphys law has not happened sooner?
So can a/c dissappear if they are not in range of primary radad? Arnt modern air defences manned 24x7x365 all REALLY asleep? Before my current job as tech support i use to work for a IT monitoring sofware and it is more or less fully automated..we get pinged via email /sms/phone and if we dont respond in 30 mins / 2 hours more ppl get pinged till someone responds. A case of multiple failures by just the malaysians..how about Thailand or Vietnam or Indonesia or Singapore.
Have they all REALLY failed? What were the equivilant of homeland security intelligence doing when the jetliner dissappeared and possibly headed to crash into a city?

Heres what I think happened..as soon as word got out to millitary intel in the all airforces they were put on high alert and all primary radar was switched on at full power and everyone in the region with surveillance capabilities were on the lookout to confirm if the plane was going to used similar to 911. It went missing 1 -2 hours into flight and the press got wound of it very soon after that what not of military intel in this post 911 scenario. Someone please answer that?
What was military intel doing and did they not alert their airforce to monitor radar ? We need to find the haystack. If they did and MH370 did in fact evade all that radar what route did not have any radar coverage at all during those hours.
Are immarsat sateline pings the only lead?If so we are on the right path but we really need bigger black boxes in future which transmit to larger distances or work like GPS mobile apps and for commercial aircraft to have transponder reduncies or advances in primary radar quickly. This cannot be a precedence for things to come

[Lonewolf_50]

Originally Posted by Pontius Navigator

Salesmen moving in?

Indeed, but I doubt many are well versed in systems integration and airworthiness certifications. That's for someone else to deal with. There's a buck to be made, eh?

To whomever, thanks for the link to Duncan Steel. A worthwhile read.
Note: he's not debunking anything. He is demonstrating how to analyze and judge a hypothesis or a theory based on a given set of information and a given set of assumptions.

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.

For drwatson:

What was military intel doing and did they not prime thier radad ? We need to find the haystack.

It was Friday night going into Saturday Morning.
It is the Third World. As I noted a few hundred pages ago, the odds of your A Side being on watch in peacetime at that hour aren't good.

Recall 07 Dec 1941. One book covering that event is entitled "At Dawn We Slept." Fast forward to Sept 11, 2001. It was a normal work day, but nobody was expecting what happened to happen. In the military, we used to call that "the element of surprise."

I think you can put the pieces together.

[Lonewolf_50]

Communicator:

The last time I went looking for my dog, I had a few ideas on where to find him, and a report from my neighbor that he'd seen the dog heading down the street "about ten minutes ago," toward the intersection by the local gas station.

Lucky for me, I didn't have the whole world's media looking over my shoulder and barking at me about what data I was using to find my dog. I got to conduct the search without being second guessed. It took me about an hour, and asking a few more people if they'd seen a golden retriever go by, before I got a good lead and found the little rascal lying under a tree happily chewing on a plastic water bottle.

Whilst I appreciate your points, those who are involved really don't need a globe full of back seat drivers to help them find this "dog."

[drwatson]

Pontious

There was no threat.. my question is when it became a threat.. what was military intel doing?

Next Singapore..I know that singapore spends more on its airforce ..enough to have powerful radar which overlaps into the malacca straits and the south china seas given its importance to shipping and air routes into Singapore?

24X7x365 response .....if anything thats what the military..and not from IT. There are operational and reserve units going into a rota at all times. But again this is based on good monitoring and intel and eventual activation.

Was everyone really caught by surprise and did no one in the region not react?

[StrongEagle]

The positional arcs produced by INMARSAT have been developed using original source data and a deep understanding of the equipment and specifications. Ultimately it is a pure guess, but a guess based on the best interpretation that can be made by people at the peak of their careers and with experience and access to data that has not been publically released.

And it would be appropriate for the data to be released to qualified individuals or agencies for independent verification of InMarSat's findings.

[MG23]

Originally Posted by StrongEagle

And it would be appropriate for the data to be released to qualified individuals or agencies for independent verification of InMarSat's findings.

One of the early news stories said independent teams in the US and UK had calculated positions from the raw data, and both ended up with the same arcs. So it has been independently verified to that extent.

[Lonewolf_50]

Originally Posted by Communicator

LW 50 - you found your dog based on information you sought and obtained.

I was worried that I'd find him dead, run over by a car, or that I'd not find him and he'd run off, never to be found again. In a search, with limited information, one still searches with such info as one has. In a more complex search, such as for a missing aircraft over the ocean, when you have conflicting input, where do you begin? Best estimate, which was probably something related to LKP. As other info gets to you and shapes your understanding, you may change your area of search. I find no intentional screw ups there, but their handling of the PR and press has been sub par, at best.

MAS and various national agencies have NOT found MH370. The crucial first days of the SAR operation were INTENTIONALLY WASTED

Respectfully disagree. I try not to ascribe to malice what is usually explained by incompetence.

Originally Posted by Communicator

More importantly, real experts are not afraid to re-examine even very basic premises in light of seemingly "ignorant" questions and comments from "non-experts".

This leads one to question how many experts Malaysia actually have on staff. See my first point. Add in the pride factor, and it makes sense to me how the early search efforts ran adrift.

ADDED later:

Communicator, for you to assert intentional waste of search time and assets, by someone in the Malaysian circle involved in this, you can't just leaved it hanging there.
Where does this assertion/assumption take you? It takes you to someone with material involvement in this search who wants this plane not to be found, or, wants to embarrass MAL, the government, the various ministers, high officials, etc.
Where does that lead you?
Deliberate sabotage, and a human agency either linked to a passenger who is not whom he/she seems to be, or collusion with a member of cockpit or cabin crew to deliberately stage a crash of that aircraft to achieve ... what political end?

To take the heat off of the trial of the opposition leader?
To deliberately piss of that large and powerful neighbor to their north?

What sort of conspiracy theory are you harboring? Or, if not, why didn't you think that through before making that accusation?

[Leightman 957]

Duncan Steel Theory

Specifically regarding the Duncan Steel post, three people including active airline pilots well versed with airline procedures and airliner capabilities and controls who wish not to be identified due to the obvious high degee of conjecture involved at present have responded to my inquiry regarding the Steel theory with these comments:

1. Route over land would have been easily picked up by numerous radar
sites. Any plane without a transponder signal at cruising altitude, without a transponder signal, would stick out like a sore thumb. 2. The first initial turn (if correct) is a classic "return to safety" in an emergency. 3. Total (electrical) power loss would have created the known fact of Transponder and ACARS loss. 4. The two engines can continue running with full aircraft (electrical) power loss as in they have isolated generators that continue to running EEC power. The engines will continue to maintain performance, and all necessary functions independent of aircraft central inputs. 5. All opinions/theories resulted in: The aircraft flew statically on the last course. The last course was a sloppy 180 most likely set in by pilots in a rush, or with limited visibility to PFD or CDU. Pilots lost consciousness, aircraft continued on course. If you go by such a scenario, the aircraft most likely took a western route as that was the initial turn programmed by hurried pilots.

[CodyBlade]

Next Singapore..I know that singapore spends more on its airforce ..enough to have powerful radar which overlaps into the malacca straits and the south china seas given its importance to shipping and air routes into Singapore?

They hv a G5 eye in the sky 24/7.

[Ian W]

Originally Posted by Leightman 957

Specifically regarding the Duncan Steel post, three people including active airline pilots well versed with airline procedures and airliner capabilities and controls who wish not to be identified due to the obvious high degee of conjecture involved at present have responded to my inquiry regarding the Steel theory with these comments:

1. Route over land would have been easily picked up by numerous radar
sites. Any plane without a transponder signal at cruising altitude, without a transponder signal, would stick out like a sore thumb. 2. The first initial turn (if correct) is a classic "return to safety" in an emergency. 3. Total (electrical) power loss would have created the known fact of Transponder and ACARS loss. 4. The two engines can continue running with full aircraft (electrical) power loss as in they have isolated generators that continue to running EEC power. The engines will continue to maintain performance, and all necessary functions independent of aircraft central inputs. 5. All opinions/theories resulted in: The aircraft flew statically on the last course. The last course was a sloppy 180 most likely set in by pilots in a rush, or with limited visibility to PFD or CDU. Pilots lost consciousness, aircraft continued on course. If you go by such a scenario, the aircraft most likely took a western route as that was the initial turn programmed by hurried pilots.

Can we hit something on the head now before it comes up yet again. Area radar controllers do not use primary radar, they are not interested. All the aircratft in their airspace are transponding and their systems label the display with all the required information. A primary track will not even be noticed by most civilian area controllers.

Primary radar cover from military radars is geared to identifying threats; aircraft that are known are labeled and their primary response is correlated with their secondary (transpomder) response. If their secondary response stops then the correlated label still follows their primary response - that is why they are correlated. So MH370 transponder goes off but the label carries on as a non-threatening Comair track. 9/11 is something that happened to the USA - who is going to attack Malaysia? So don't expect anyone to react to a 777 from a local airline with no transponder.

Primary cover is extremely sparse as it is expensive. Civil area control do not use it or reallly want it, airports use it but don't really need it. Military are then given the bill of runnig it and set up their radars where threats may occur. There is very little primary cover over the CONUS for this reason; However, Thai long range primary probably saw the MH370 track but it was no threat, same for Indonesia. What do people expect? Woulld the USA go on alert for a Mexican commercial airliner that turned back to Mexico in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico?

Random primary tracks are common - nobody is going to react to them. This may be why the transponder was turned off.

[Communicator]

UK AAIB and Inmarsat Arcs

airsound wrote:
I don't think the rest of us not having enough information to check the calculations is the fault of either Inmarsat or UK AAIB.

The published graphs are illogical and clearly misleading on their face.

I prefer to think that UK AAIB can do and is doing rather better than the pretty but grossly misleading graphs of spurious "elevation angles" that have been bandied about.

Same for investigators in Australia, the U.S. and even Malaysia itself - one certainly hopes and expects that their efforts are not based on pretty but largely meaningless graphs. There are lots of smart and competent Malaysians, but they have to live and hold on to jobs under a venal and opaque political system.

[Communicator]

Primary Radar Ignored - Malaysia's Baffling Initial Reaction

Communicator, for you to assert intentional waste of search time and assets, by someone in the Malaysian circle involved in this, you can't just leaved it hanging there.

Another poster (D.S.) pointed out long ago that Malaysia was aware of the primary radar track on Day 1 - they referred to contact with MH370 having been lost at 2:40 am. This is the time when the aircraft went beyond the reach of primary radar.

As to what may have motivated the Malaysians subsequently to deny the existence of the primary radar information from their own radar, it is indeed difficult to think of any political rationale that makes remote sense even by their own lights.

Most likely, there was internal wrangling between military and civilian authorities within Malaysia and/or a misguided and ultimately counterproductive attempt to portray MH370 as a routine, "nothing-to-see-here" crash.

[ZAZ]

radar

What do people expect?

Well one things for sure a serviceman can not reveal classified data, no one in MIL is going to jump onto CNN and risk a court martial and time in the stockade.
And yet I am quite sure under the scrutiny and intense interest in finding this plane, anyone with half a heart or morality would risk it, not even wiki leaks has picked up on any traffic..

As for having a G5 or AWACS in the air 24/7, impossible, cos then you need a tanker or another G5 and so it goes, and what is the current threat situtation in the region, mild to luke warm.
Govts don't have that sort of cash to throw around, look at the fuel cost alone in boats and planes from Western Australian, millions per week, which we the tax payer will foot the bill for..we are already 70 billion in the red in the budget and cuts are starting even in defence budget..

JINDALEE OTRH runs on Diesel fuel at some sites so again need to have transmitting and not at night.



Anyone found as much as one piece of foam or Mylar or any other floating object anywhere yet?
If it broke up on impact and the Mylar insulation was still in that plane body there could be hundreds of pieces floating around like the Halifax Nova Scotia fire and crash.