Flaperon washes up on Reunion Island

[gmorton]

Press Conference

Press conference going to start in a couple of minutes on French channel itélé

[MrSnuggles]

gmorton

Link if possible?

BTW, could you please link to your previous citation from the French paper Liberation? I want to read the story in French but my google skills aren't good enough...

[Pontius Navigator]

Producer,

So from all this, we learn that the Malaysian radar had recorded an altitude of 29,500 feet at LNP (more likely 9,000 meters and the NYT did a translation), and we also learn that Daud had greater faith in the accuracy of the altitudes recorded over the peninsula (the altitude data we would love to have.)

Did you mean LKP? Ie last Known position?

[crHedBngr]

MrSnuggles:


Here is the link to Liberation: Le débris retrouvé à La Réunion provient bien du MH370, selon le Premier ministre malaisien - Libération

[oldoberon]

Flaperon announcement

Live conference translator says, boeing confirm it is from a 777 and paperwork fro mayalasian airlines shows it is from that airframe


I have played the newscast a number of times to get this wording as near correct as I can.


however earlier the the phrase "very strong presumption, very strong likeness that the flaperon that has been found on a beach in reunion island should belong to mh370, of malaysian airlines which crashed ....... there are two reasons behind that, the representatives from boeing have confirmed it does belong to a 377(not a typo) and there are technical reasons for that the structure of the links etc and secondly the representatives of the malasian airline company communicated various elements as to the technical documantation for that boeing and particularly flight mH370 and on that basis we were able to carryout a connection between the debris that has been analysed by the experts and the flaperon of that flight and on the basis of specific technical characteristics it is very likely and a strong presumptions which of course have to be confirmed through complimentary analysis which are going to begin tomorrow morning in the technical lsb of the department and I am not at this stage tonight able to tell you the time when the results of these analsis will be available the experts are carrying out the work as soon as possible

Apols for no punctuation,.

I note there is no mention of serial numbers etc, at this stage it looks like they are really confirming what most of us thought was blindingly obvious, seeing as no other 777 has been lost at see anywhere and there has never been any evidence of one losing a flaperon in flight over the IO

[thcrozier]

Enter the Marine Biologists.

[Ian W]

Originally Posted by ZeBedie

Yes, some aircraft are spirally unstable. To be honest, I guess reduced aerodynamic stability is more likely with a fly by wire design because the FBW can compensate. But MH370 is widely believed to have had power available for the FBW until fuel exhaustion.



That's my point! The assumption of a constant track is without any evidence at all. Who's to say it didn't do multiple lazy 360's whilst remaining further north and still fitting in with the Inmarsat arcs?

Have you worked out the probability/feasibility of an aircraft randomly doing 'multiple lazy 360's' and managing to fit in precisely with 'the INMARSAT arcs' and Doppler shifts from the Satellite?

That is about the same probability as a meteorite strike on the cockpit.

The aircraft on handoff went dark, turned back and did not attempt to land at the well lit and well known airports on the Malaysian peninsula, but followed the Thai border then out in the Malacca straits turned North avoiding Indonesian and Thai airspace climbing to FL295 then turned left around Banda Aceh out to MEKAR and just beyond the radar horizon of a known military radar turned onto South and maintained a steady flight path for nearly 6 hours as recorded by range and Doppler shifts from INMARSAT. This is not a ghost aircraft it is a controlled aircraft. It is possible that someone entered that new route into the FMC but it was deliberately done not the kind of thing that a pilot would do with hypoxia and 40 seconds of useful consciousness or with a fire in the cockpit.

[gmorton]

Very Strong Presumption

The French 'procureur adjoint', during the press conference in France this evening, used the words 'very strong presumption' that the flaperon is from the Malaysian Airlines plane.
As a PP said there was no mention during the press conference of a serial number.
The french journalists immediately analysed this 'caution' in the wording from the 'Procureur adjoint' as being related to the passengers families and the legal context.
The Procureur adjoint named all the people present during todays 'unveiling' of the flaperon- there were many, many representatives there including officials from Singapore and England as well as the usual suspects;

Here's the link to the Press conference (from You tube, quality a bit poor):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVkqg4xny2U

[oldoberon]

further to my comment above about no absolute proof has been presented by MA and we have been told there serial number plate is missing.
Is it possible a repair had been carried out which they can track from maintenance docs or perhaps the major heavy components (end bracket hinges) have a serial number which can be traced to the actually assembly (by boeing) and there by give the flaperon serial number.

I am fairly certain for all major components full traceabilty must be kept forward and backward.

Or is it as I said above they are just "officially" confirming the blindingly obvious

[Alain67]

The French 'procureur adjoint', during the press conference in France this evening, used the words 'very strong presumption' that the flaperon is from the Malaysian Airlines plane.

He added that this presumption has to be confirmed by other investigations to be made very soon, but he said one cannot tell the exact moment when the results will be known.
He also told about a black bag that has been found a few hours after the flateron, and that will also be given to experts for analysis.
In the first part of his speech, he explained that France was legitimate to make these investigations because the objects were discovered at Reunion island [French territory] and because 4 victims were French people.

[Pugachev Cobra]

Americans are cautious to confirm

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/06/world/asia/mh370-wing-reunion.html?referrer=

"...experts from Boeing and the National Transportation Safety Board were not yet fully satisfied that the part had indeed come from Flight 370, and called for further analysis before reaching a definite conclusion.

(...)

The person involved in the investigation said that no serial or other unique identifying number was found on the wing flap, making the job of identifying it more complicated. The person also said that so far, no burn marks or other evidence of physical damage had been found that might provide any further clues about the circumstances under which the plane went down."

So, no numbers...

Is there any chance of it being from some other 777?

[Vinnie Boombatz]

The weekly operational update from ATSB includes some discussion of the flaperon:

Operational Update

and links to this discussion of drift models and debris:

MH370: Aircraft Debris and Drift Modelling

"Over time, all floating debris will become water-logged and then sink."

"Most recent drift modelling indicated that the net drift of most debris in the months to July 2015 is likely to have been north and then west away from the accident site. The drift analysis undertaken by the CSIRO further supports that the debris from MH370 may be found as far west of the search area as La Réunion Island and is consistent with the currently defined Search area."

[ZeBedie]

Have you worked out the probability/feasibility of an aircraft randomly doing 'multiple lazy 360's' and managing to fit in precisely with 'the INMARSAT arcs' and Doppler shifts from the Satellite?

Well, the aircraft didn't "fit in" with the Inmarsat arcs. The reverse is true, in that the arcs represent the wanderings of the aircraft.

[olasek]

The reverse is true, in that the arcs represent the wanderings of the aircraft.

No, the arcs don't represent any 'wanderings', arcs are arcs and they fit well with the assumption that aircraft continued on a fairly straight path. If the aircraft was doing some 'random' turns that arcs would look completely different. I believe even the ATSB report mentioned that.

he was "confused and angry"

These people would always be 'angry' no matter what happens and who says what. I believe there is only one scenario in which they would be less angry - if someone miraculously finds the aircraft with everybody alive.

[roving]

MH370: Malaysian PM confirms Réunion debris is from missing flight

---

There is a video of the Malaysian PM addressing the media.

---

MH370: Malaysian PM confirms Réunion debris is from missing flight | World news | The Guardian

[aerobat77]

No, the arcs don't represent any 'wanderings'

as far as i understand it they indeed do. there was a first second etc... arc - up the the last seventh arc which was last ping with the aircraft - every arc circles other areas. this circles were calculated from a known satellite position at ping time and the time for the signal needed to reach the aircraft but since it was only one sattelite it only represents a circle around the globe and not a fixed position .

the difference in time travel between arrival and return signal - called doppler effect - could say if the aircraft is approaching or going away from the sattelite - and with known satellite orbital path at every ping they were able to exclude the northern corridor.

they were even able to roughly calculating the aircraft speed by doppler effect vs sattelite speed and orbit.

you can surely exclude 360,s since an nearly "stationary" aircraft would be recognized by doppler effect , but - as far i understand it - the cannot say anything about what path the aircraft took between the seven pings , what altitude it had at all and what speed it had between the pings .

realizing we talk here milliseconds in time burst and time offset and the fact the sattelite itself changes its position very fast and even has an whobbling orbit ( the satellite altitude is not always the same ) i guess the people at inmarsat did a hell of a job what was never done before to calculate this arcs at all.

the initial search area was an assumption the flight path between the arcs was a straight line with the same speed at same altitude and the last partial ping represents fuel exhaustion and ( +-glide ) crash side .

but without knowing at what altitude that happened ( glide time, glide characteristic ) , with changing wind directions and so without knowing what exact flight path the aircraft took to reach the final seventh arc they have a hard time to say where the aircraft exactly is on this seventh arc.

best regards

[Greenlights]

It is from MH370,
to me, there are not many B777 who arrive at destination with a flap missing....

[SaturnV]

According to the New York Times, the Boeing and NTSB representatives' reluctance to say conclusively, at this point, it is from MH370, is based on a modification to the flaperon that doesn't exactly match what they would expect, from the airline's maintenance records.

What I take that to mean is that the MH370 flaperon was modified, the flaperon that was found was also modified, but the modification, whatever it was, doesn't quite fit the description in the maintenance logs.

[PersonFromPorlock]

PersonFromPorlock, Pulau Perak is very small, it would be difficult to stay in the radar shadow and would require flying directly away from the radar.

Agreed, I only threw it in to be thorough.

3D radar (at least by that name) is a bit after my time, but if it works like the old V-beams, the altitude accuracy degrades with range. So it's possible that in fact MH370 had descended to 12,000 ft. I had the impression that the radar-sourced altitude was harder than it apparently is.

Or it could be that from the rear, a 777 reflects most of a radar pulse away from the emitter, in a sort of cheap stealth. A plane level with the Earth beneath it and 200 nm away from a radar site directly behind it would be about 3.3 degrees nose down relative to the radar, just because of the Earth's curvature. So when the angle of attack is subtracted from that nose-down attitude, the undersides of the wings, horizontal stab and fuselage would be close to dead in line with an arriving radar pulse. Not a lot of reflection there.

[deanm]

Radar reflectivity

PfP: the engines are almost 2.8 metres in diameter.

That gives a cross-sectional area (when viewed from front or rear) of around 6 square metres per fan disc....

Dean