Even more astonishing
 

It is, of course, all too easy to persuade oneself that one might have thought of X at the time: "hindsight is 20/20".

However, even bearing this principle in mind, it is breathtaking that the Malaysians failed to look carefully at their own primary radar recordings (civilian and military) around the place and time of loss of contact.

Similarly, as discussed at some length here earlier, civilian and military radar systems should have worked to make sense of each and every aircraft overflying peninsular Malaysia, including aircraft flying between established waypoints.

Either these basic steps were neglected over several days, or Malaysia's establishment balked at confronting the likely religious motivation behind a hijacking.

I'd hoped the 45,000 feet figure had been kicked into touch by the time I got back here, seems it's still being argued over.

IMHO a Rolls powered T7 at that stage of that flight isn't going to close to getting get up there.

And yes I've done many performance courses and operate (at times) a Rolls powered T7.

Now OTOH if there's proof that there were significant height excursions and that that the aircrfat then continued onwards in stable flight I am minded to think back to a notorious incident a European airline had probably well over a decade ago.

@p.j.m.

Because when the aircraft is pinging home, it doesn't do so directly, it is relayed via satellite. This is exactly the kind of stuff Immarsat does

As has been previously noted in the thread, the pings would have been sent out even though MAL does not subscribe to Boeing's Health Check software.

The Presidents statement doesn't quite add up...

"Today, based on raw satellite data that was obtained from the satellite data service provider, we can confirm that the aircraft shown in the primary radar data was flight MH370. After much forensic work and deliberation, the FAA, NTSB, AAIB and the Malaysian authorities, working separately on the same data, concur.
According to the new data, the last confirmed communication between the plane and the satellite was at 8:11AM Malaysian time on Saturday 8th March. The investigations team is making further calculations which will indicate how far the aircraft may have flown after this last point of contact. This will help us to refine the search.

Due to the type of satellite data, we are unable to confirm the precise location of the plane when it last made contact with the satellite."


Surely if the satellite data can't confirm precise position how can they confirm the Military Primary plots then. Something is a miss here......

With the "New" information in mind, I return to a post I made this time yesterday. An American General interviewed by Fox suggested that the aircraft was bound for Pakistan. Again, that was before the NW OR SW corridors had been speculated.

IMHO, if it did head NW, Pakistan is the most likely destination because I can't believe a T7 would get anywhere near Afghanistan or beyond unnoticed. That part of the world is full of US assets, including drones. Conversely, large areas of Pakistan are under the effective control of the Taliban. If it was piracy, this would be the most likely destination.

If it was a suicide mission by whomever, the Southern track out over the Southern IO would be more likely. And that probably explains why US asssets were already being positioned in the Indian Ocean.

If indeed the aircraft did go up to FL450 immediately after going silent, that suggests that hostages were not an issue. So unless there was an extremely valuable cargo (And we still haven't seen a cargo manifest) it would seem to point to the suicide mission by a person or persons unknown, in which case the IO seems more probable.

Even if it is found, the CVR will be useless as it only records two hours. The DFDR won't, necessarily, provide anything definitive either?

Difference between FACT and INFERENCE
 

Let us recognize that the Malysian PM is most likely not trained as a physicist (an inference of mine), and when he starts hinting at what he thinks are facts, he is actually speaking of deductions, or inferences.

We already have the Facts of the take-off, destination, last radio contact, message, and no transponder signal. We have as Fact the last known Heading and Altitude.

We have these indications of "pings" being picked up, with no further details. That event gets transposed in the "fact" that the ping(s) came from this aircraft, but that is not fact, that is inference. From that, we have the deductive inference that this aircraft is still flying around at altitude for some 7.5 hours after last contact. Again, this inference gets transposed into "fact." Except it isn't.

Absence of events are also facts. Factually, nobody has seen this aircraft. Nobody has reliably reported seeing it land in Tajikistan, or anywhere else. Nobody has seen it crash, and nobody has seen any wreckage. There is no factual basis to indicate that it has crashed over water. There is no factual basis to say it has not, conversely. Equally, there is no factual basis that it crashed into terrain; nor that it did not.

There have been some rather short, and snippy, even pejorative sniping by highly experienced professional pilots at other pilots, which leads me to the inference (not fact) that everybody's nerves are getting frayed. And you fellows, who are historically exceptionally cool under pressures that would crack any mere mortal, should know better. Since you have ice water in your veins, now is the time to show it.

We can make some inferences based on plausibility. Is it plausible that this aircraft is still flying around, thousands of miles from where it should be, at altitude, and not near any place to land, some 7.5 hours after last radio contact? Nope. It is plausible that the aircraft flew right across India for hours and was undetected? Nope. It it plausible that it flew undetected towards Perth? Nope. Is it plausible that it was taken over by hijackers, flown around by amateurs, landed in the dark on the undercarriage on some 7,500-ft surface capable of handling the weight, without lights or any ILS - and nobody in authority knows anything about it? Nope. Is it plausible that it splashed and left no vast field of debris and bodies - as all other water crashes have done? Nope.

Is it plausible that, after 7 days with no facts linked directly and observably to this aircraft, and that we still do not know what ocean (or land mass) this aircraft is in, we may never know? Unfortunately, Yes. That is plausible.

But since MAS did not subscribe, now the burden is on Inmarsat to do telecom forensics based on the little they may have received, but never relayed.

I think that no location data is included in the pings and even if it was it would not be decoded on sat, so they will have to work with just signal analysis, not even exact triangulation, as someone explained before, from that the "corridors" notion.

Motive...
 

If it is piracy then what is the motive. Either very VIP PAX we haven't been told about or cargo. Why aren't they telling us about the cargo if that is all so innocent? and why aren't the press jumping up and down asking about it? :confused:

I have been inside the E/E compartment of the 777 during flight. We had to push back a few CB's which were not pushed back during a hangar visit. (all lavatories didn't fuction) we found out about 30 minutes after departure when the first passengers started going to the lavatories.
Took a portable O2 bottle with me, in case of decompression while I was down below. took about 3 minutes total time. Saved us from having to turn back.

These reports of looking in Turkmenistan AND northern Thailand are surely misrepresentations, unless the news editors' atlases were just open at T in the index. Turkmenistan is as far from KL as Beijing is, but a long long way from northern Thailand.

The intention of the press statement was presumably to say that there's the possibility of looking along a track from Turkmenistan to Thailand - since it presumably wasn't seen by either Chinese or Indian radars.

Did MH370 land and takeoff again?
 

http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/5...-lost-161.html

Few pages ago i postet my take on a possible landing site.
My original link, which included a high resolution picture of the place showing all details of the military instalations is gone, not from the site, but from the whole net. I cant find it anymore. I replaced the link in the quote with other not so good ones as they are older, before the runway was built to 1.400 meters.

If the mods allow, i like to raise the question wether it would fit the timeframe of the last received ping down in the south, if MH370 has been landed at great coco island, unloaded whatever they desired, and then be flown to the deep spot to get rid of evidence. If this pure speculative plot would be considered possible, then two things come into my mind:
From the beginning the uncertainity wether it headed to the north or to the south does only makes sense, when there had been contradicting information from the beginning, meaning a contact in the north and a contact in the south.
As there seems to be no information / ping reported enroute to the south, it could be assumed that this last ping was intentional, to point to the final grave of the jet and thus making believe it went there without landing before.

If the times do not sum up, or the jet would not be able to takeoff with the necessary fuel load from a 1400 meter runway, then all speculation above is doomed from the beginning.

edit:
Wikimapia - Let's describe the whole world!
Go to position 14.13151742 lat 93.3695639 lon

@Sheep


See TelcoAg's posts #3774 and #3800. The whys and wherefores are there. Not enough data to triangulate, but they can establish the corridor.

The 772 is a Faraday cage ?
 

@ HighAndFlighty posting # 3885 re "A simple satellite phone would do nicely" :

To relay the signal of your satellite phone through the 772 viewed as an effective Faraday cage you still need an outside antenna (with the systems backing it operational), so if the Air Pirates wanted to OK the landing at the intended remote airstrip somewhere conferring with their ground based acolytes, they'd need to switch the Inmarsat antenna back to 'ON' at some point in time. At that point, they'd give away their location, oder ?

Live TV | Astro Awani

MAS Capt. now speaking is making a lot of sense.

PAX were from many countries. 777's are used by many countries. There is a very large incentive on both fronts for many countries to assist in locating the aircraft in order to determine it's fate.

While I realize that all possibilities remain, ranging from malice to complicity to incompetence on the part of the flight crew, the possible hijackers, and ATC or military staff who observed the subsequent flight of MH 370, let's see what educated guesses we can make. Let's have a thought experiment that concentrates on likely events and likely reactions (while acknowledging that other answers aren't totally discounted).

1. Is there a general feeling that a NW flight path implies piracy for future use while a SE flight path implies pilot suicide?

2. Previously, forum members were able to share maps showing the civilian radar coverage areas in SE Asia. Is the same info available on India, Bangladesh, Thailand, and Myanmar?

2a. If there are visible gaps in that radar coverage, and we assume the aircraft flew through those gaps to a destination beyond those countries, how does that flight path narrow down the remaining endurance and possible destinations?

2b. If the aircraft did not purposefully avoid radar coverage when making landfall, what reaction would we expect to a NORDO aircraft passing into India, Bangladesh, Thailand, or Myanmar? Would any professional pilots with experience flying through those countries comment specifically?

3. If the aircraft WAS landed safely at some remote site after a piracy for future use, why would that "future use" not have been carried out yet? Why wait and risk the possibility of discovery and disruption of one's plot?

4. If the aircraft was detected at the extreme southern end of this overlapping Venn diagram, 1000 miles west of Perth, are there any airfields within 1 hour of flight time that would be usable by a 777?

Utter nonsense.

Have you ever tried to use a satellite phone inside of a vehicle ? I have, and you can hardly establish a viable network connection, let alone make a phone call unless you have an external antenna connection, which, lets face it, they are very very very unlikely to have had on a 777 !

ACARS
 

To torture an analogy -

ACARS is like SMS on your phone, and more accurately, its like Apple's iMessage.

The ACARS generates a msg. In then makes a routing choice of which way to send the msg to "base".

The msg then gets sent to the appropriate system for transmission (VHF, HF or Sat, depending on availability).

(Using the iMessage analogy, its sends the message preferably via Wifi, then 3/4G if Wifi isnt available).

So, disabling ACARS stops messages being sent - via VHF/HF/Sat. It doesnt necessarily turn off any of those specific comm sets.

If I wanted to "stealth" a 777, you'd turn off the Transponder and ACARS - they both automatically transmit data. There might be other systems you'd turn off - external lights, dim cabin lights for instance. TCAS if turning "off" the Transponder doesnt also shut that down.

As for VHF or HF, that just requires discipline not to transmit from the flightdeck. You might want to keep them on to monitor ATC.

Sat comm's is interesting. Out of VHF/HF and Sat, its the only one that maintains, in some form, continuous communication with the Sat. Like a cell phone maintains communication with the tower when not making a call.

I can see this being overlooked if, hypothetically, someone wanted to turn a 777 dark.

Malaysian Airlines have clearly radically changed their fuelling policy if there was enough on board one hour out for a further 7 hours flight (yet not enough for return trip to Beijing). Can any professionals explain please?

@Frequent Traveller

I was envisaging they would have their own antennae with the phone, or could rig one up. But your point about them giving themselves away is exactly what I was getting at.

Like I said, we don't know exactly what data Immarsat relayed.

I'm just postulating that the data may well have included satphone calls.

They wouldn't actually give away their location. As has been noted, you can't triangulate off one or two satellites.


@ Mixture

I take your point about using the satphone handset in a car. In the plane, perhaps even with an antennae across the cockpit windows, they may have more success.

I'm happy to be corrected. The people who planned this excursion are rather clued up.