Malaysian Airlines MH370 contact lost

[Vinnie Boombatz]

More Easterly Search Areas

#MH370 search areas in perspective

"A graphic which puts the changing search areas for Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 into a clearer context has been produced by Scantherma, an Australian remote sensing and thermal imagery company commissioned by a global insurance company to find debris from the missing Boeing 777-200ER."

Scantherma web site:

Scantherma - Specialists in Thermal Energy Inspections & Remote Sensing

[PriFly]

I believe it was the AAIB and the NTSB that concurred with Inmarsat's conclusion about the Southern arc theory.

Malaysia's politician are risk averse when it involves the world's spotlight on them. I highly doubt the Malaysian PM would make such a bold statement (plane ended in South Indian Ocean) if he wasn't 100% sure that the 'westerners' told him they themselves are 100% sure of the Southern arc route.

anyway just my 2c.

[DH_call]

So will the Chinese government foot the bill in this search effort or are they just going to sit back and enjoy the moment as the victims families blame every non-chinese government or organization for the lack of results in this search?

[EEngr]

Leightman 957

3. Total (electrical) power loss would have created the known fact of Transponder and ACARS loss.

Except for the continued operation of the Satcom system. Someone will have to propose an electrical system failure that takes the transponder and ACARS down but leaves Satcom up.

And then there's the 'Goodnight' message after the transponder shut down. I understand the need to aviate first. But if you've got the time to key the mic and say goodnight, a little aside to note the ongoing systems failures wouldn't be out of line. Its possible that the ACARS/transponder losses may have presented as passive failures at the outset. But here again, some serious systems analysis is in order to identify the sorts of failures possible. VHF comm was still up at this point, adding another constraint to the problem.

[Propduffer]

A thought on the partial ping.

An explanation for this occurs to me. If the last ping was sent at the moment of impact with the water there probably were other electronic devices collapsing and shorting themselves out at the same time, these might have created EMP pulses strong enough to overpower the ping in progress. The EMPs might even have come from batteries being crushed.
If the 777 struck the water forcefully, there would have been an electromagnetic splash as well as a H2O splash.

[Leightman 957]

Steel Theory

Ian W, James GV, and EEgr--I was passing on very carefully limited opinions of three aviation people with current operational familiarity with 777 systems, radar, and airline operation who have more knowledge than I and who were responding specifically to the Steel theory after conversing together about that site. I had hoped their opinions might be useful but I can't answer the questions you pose. I can add something that came after I made that post:

....your question about flight controls with total loss of power. Yes, they would maintain course. All flight controls stay at neutral when there is no input. The only time flight controls deviate from neutral is during hydraulic failure, a situation that would not arise as long as the engines are spooling.

If their opinions cause further dispute I apologize for the post. The one thing that is not in short supply is differences of opinion--not a good thing if those in contention are all aviation people with current operational familiarity with 777 systems, radar, and airline operation.

[andianjul]

Switched off?

Hamster:

You are forgetting that transponders and ACARS were switched off before the last communication with ATC.

It is 'known' (or, we have been told by the Malaysian authorities) that the transponder and ACARS stopped transmitting at different times prior to the final communication with ATC. It is, however likely, still an assumption that they were actually switched off. What actually occurred to stop them transmitting and the reasons for this occurring, are still the subject of conjecture.

[500N]

The Malaysian PM might get an eye opener today when he visits RAAF Base Pearce and JACC and gets a briefing

Will be interesting to see what the media do and how they cover it as I doubt they will be allowed to "run amok" in press conferences like they did originally.

Luckily the families of those lost don't arrive until after he has left !

[JamesGV]

Leightman 957

Leightman 957

I am merely pointing out that in the absence of anything, the situation is confusing.

I may even "self quote" myself in the future with that "Rumsfeldism" !

In the event of complete electrical failure, it would appear that, at various stages, there was a variety of inputs, up until, what appears to be the "navigated" turn "due south"....along with a (singular) component response, which continued for what appears to be the duration of the flight.

...and no one appears to have a clue what happened.
Now "something" happened. We know as much as that.

[pax britanica]

I do not see that many posters 'from the east' on here and perhaps that in itself tells us something about the current western obsession with needing to know everything about an incident immediately , something we have been conditioned to expect by 'the media'. So after so many posts, some fascinating some bizarre I thought a few points of reflection about the overall incident might be an idea to bring a bit of perspective back, albeit from a personal point of view
I have visited Malaysia and worked with companies there .It is a complicated place politically and to western eyes there are a number of wrongs, it is said to be corrupt, but then who defines corruption and its political complexity is a reaction to the country's history and diversity. But their streets are pretty safe and not populated by druggies and 'gangstas' and their country pretty stable despite a potentially fairly inflammatory mix of races and religions. They don’t leave their elderly to starvation and mistreatment in state hospitals nor do their financial communities lie and cheat and steal money from governments and populace on a scale big enough to trigger global recession
Equally despite past troubles the ASEAN nations plus China and a few others get on quite well and certainly quite practically, as has been pointed out they do not have any reason to send Mach 2 interceptors after anyone with a radio failure.
All would agree that this is an unprecedented event and perhaps the US or Uk would have handled the media side more professionally but at the end of the day we would still know nothing more would we-making it quite clear that the media are not at all as important as they like to think they are .
Malaysia's preparedness for such an event, bizarre as it is, is probably no worse than any other country which has not had to deal with what could be 'an internal problem'. The US, for all their defence spending could not easily see rogue traffic over the domestic US pre 9/11 and worse still upheld the ludicrous idea that domestic passengers were subject to far less security than those on international flights.
As to the Malay Govt covering things up , well that's a hell of a risk to take for a small Asian country if the information you are hiding impacts China more than any other country, even their own.
Diego Garcia keeps popping up to, I am pretty sure if MH370 headed their the US Military would know about it, after he USS Vincennes tragedy though I think they would have been hugely reluctant to down another airliners , especially one from a friendly Muslim country. They would have been aware of its approach and identity for some time I am sure, and what real damage could it cause anyway, not least because it would be dark at DG at the time, Hitting a specific building would be close to impossible and a smoking hole on the airfield while tragic in terms of lives lost would have no material impact on the base itself. In any event who would be the target, DG is not American it is British.
So perhaps we should reflect a little before posting , especially if that is a critical and defamatory post, this is truly a mystery and hopefully will be solved on day , but for the countries involved and their experts and service personnel it is hard enough without the constant we know better attitudes displayed here and on so many TV news broadcasts.

[chillpill]

The world did not see 911 coming...

The world did not see MH 370 coming...

Consider this... a 'perfect' terror plot?

Pick an airline, coerce or infiltrate of one of the Flight Deck into making a 350 tonne aircraft 'vanish'...(up to 450, depressurise, turn off systems, HDG SEL into the vast open spaces... or whatever other theories we may all simply continue to hypothesise about...)

Wait for some time... then repeat the event and another airliner vanishes... and perhaps one more...

The aviation world and business would collapse... what a coup.

I really do believe it is an absolute imperative to fit completely independent GPS tracking systems to all airliners. NOW...

[portmanteau]

ian w . your theory of little or no interest in an aircraft wandering around the skies might have some validity if the disinterested parties were unaware that an aircraft was missing. 370 was known to be missing at the time it should have contacted vietnam and it is inconceivable that the word did not reach all parts of se asia in a very short time. all surrounding atccs would be on alert for the aircraft on radio and radar. interest would be of a very high order I would say.

[Lonewolf_50]

Originally Posted by portmanteau

370 was known to be missing at the time it should have contacted vietnam and it is inconceivable that the word did not reach all parts of se asia in a very short time. all surrounding atccs would be on alert for the aircraft on radio and radar. interest would be of a very high order I would say.

Inconceivable? Why?
As to "all surrounding ATCCs on alert" -- what is the trigger for this "high alert" and when would interest become of a high order? There is a time delay between "hmm, haven't checked in yet" and "where the EFF is that plane" of X amount. What do you think X is, in terms of minutes or hours?

Beyond that, on what do you base your set of presumptions?

From what is available to the public, the ATCC in Viet Nam had an interest, and they communicated their concern to a Point of Contact in Malaysia.
(Enroute ATCC asks Departure ATCC "we were expecting this flight, have not heard them check in as expected, were they delayed? Do you know where it is?" That sort of communication would be my guess. )

[Whiskey Mike Romeo]

We can go on ad nauseam creating posts about Inmarsat pings but the $64,000 question remains 'Who was flying the plane post FIR handover, where to and why?'

Surely nobody really believes, any more, that it was flying itself having taken the trouble to go incommunicado except for satellite linked ACARS.

[SLFguy]

Anyone who doesn't think that there is a government agency that knows what happened to MAH370 is kidding themselves.

Not a scrap of identifiable wreckage? Just not believable.

[hamster3null]

Originally Posted by Whiskey Mike Romeo

We can go on ad nauseam creating posts about Inmarsat pings but the $64,000 question remains 'Who was flying the plane post FIR handover, where to and why?'

Surely nobody really believes, any more, that it was flying itself having taken the trouble to go incommunicado except for satellite linked ACARS.

Even Malaysian investigators can't figure out the "who". And they have far better knowledge of everyone on board than we do. They can't find anyone on the passenger list with terrorist connections or adequate knowledge of piloting a 777. The closest they got is one guy who used to work as a flight engineer for a jet charter company. And they can't find anything in backgrounds of either pilot that would raise any suspicion. At least so they say. It makes me wonder how hard it would be for an organized group of hijackers to simply intercept both pilots at some point prior to takeoff and to "substitute" their own guys without raising the alarm. But I don't want to go deep into conspiracy theory land.

As to "where to and why", southern route is only consistent with a very complicated and illogically executed suicide. I tried to point out a few pages back that actions up to 18:22 look less illogical and not so overly complicated if they were followed up (or were intended to be followed up) with a route to the west or to the northwest (most likely towards the Persian Gulf.) But that's still about as far as available evidence can take us.

Originally Posted by Major Cleve Saville

The very strong rumour in SE Asia is that the 'perpetrator' did attempt to speak to the government via air traffic and make demands regarding the charges against Dato Seri Anwar Bin Ibrahim.

On an open ATC channel with possibly dozen other aircraft listening in? And no one came forward and reported it in the media the morning after the disappearance? Count me as skeptical.

[Watchful]

@hamster3null: the inmarsat press document with the doppler graph describes the method. It does not say that the AES adjusts transmit freq. Instead, it suggests freq search is done by the ground station. The ground station computes the expected sat down link doppler shift, any residual doppler shift is logged as the offset due to a/c + up link motion.

I have verified the qualitative Match to the published graphs, as have you. My calculations result in shifts 250% of those charted. By coincidence, this is the conversion factor for Hz to mph, so I wonder if in the hurry to publish, someone labelled the graph with the wrong unit or forgot about a conversion factor in the spreadsheet.

If there was any other kind of compensation going on, or the modeling was more sophisticated, I don't think we could Get such a good qualitative match. If anything, thus supports their calculation and their conclusion as to likely flight path.

[Shadoko]

One more guess about Doppler...

If the AES has to compensate for Doppler, it have to do this from its own.
When AES is pinged by the sat, it could "deduce" the offset from the signal frequency it receives. But it can't do that when it initiates the transmission.
How to do that?
From a patch of data (one for each Inmarsat sat) included in the AES?
If those data are related for a theoretical position of the sat, the remaining offset which was used to compare north/south routes could come from the wobbling of the sat which appeared slowly with the sat aging, and not included (or not "includable") in the data patch.
In this case, it could explain the low values of the offset compared to the true relative speed of the sat and a/c.
Il also could explain why there is no negative values in the published chart: the sat is at every time of the flight north of its theoretical position above equator.

Just an idea...

[cappt]

FBI finds nothing suspicious on flight sim

The FBI has completed of review of the in-home flight simulator that belonged to the captain of the missing Malaysia Airlines passenger jet and found "nothing suspicious whatsoever."
It was the latest dead end in the investigation of the jetliner's disappearance on March 8 with 239 people on board.
The home-made flight simulator belong to the plane's pilot Capt. Zaharie Shah. It was seized by Malaysian investigators when baffled authorities began to look into the background of the plane's crew. Officials looking for signs that the pilot may have practiced certain routes or maneuvers found that some files had been deleted from the simulator's computer. The simulator was sent to the FBI's lab in Quantico, Va.
"They (FBI analysts) have finished with the simulator. There is nothing suspicious whatsoever about what they found," a senior U.S. official told ABC News.
"There's nothing at all (criminal) about the pilot. Right now there is zero evidence of a criminal act by the flight crew," the official said.

[mm43]

Originally Posted by Shadoko

One more guess about Doppler...
If the AES has to compensate for Doppler, it have to do this from its own.

No. The Ground station runs a continuous carrier on the P-channel. The Aircraft Satellite Data Unit compares the "offset" frequency it receives to the known frequency of that channel using a Phase Locked Loop with an Oven Controlled Crystal Oscillator as its reference. This offset frequency has the percentage difference of the Tx/Rx (1.6GHz/1.5GHz) added to it, and is used to adjust the Tx frequency by the same amount, but in the opposite direction.

The aircraft communicates this "housekeeping" data to the Ground station as a "burst offset" signal on the R-channel. The fact that the burst offset seems to be smaller than the expected doppler shift is the issue that is really creating the problems with those on this thread trying to make sense of it.

For good measure, here is a list of the data channels and for what purpose they are used:-

P-Channel: Packet-mode TDM channel used in the forward (outbound) direction (ground-to-aircraft) to carry signaling and packet-mode data. The transmission is continuous from each GES in the satellite network.

R-Channel: Random access (slotted Aloha) channel used in the return (inbound) direction (aircraft-to-ground) to carry signaling and packet-mode data, specifically the initial signals of a transaction (typically request signals).

T-Channel: Reservation TDMA channel used in the return direction only. The receiving GES reserves time slots for transmissions requested by an AES according to message length. The sending AES transmits the messages in the reserved time slots.

C-Channel: Circuit-mode SCPC channel used in both forward and return directions to carry digital voice or data/facsimile traffic. The use of the channel is controlled by assignment and release signaling at the start and end of each call or FAX transmission.