Yes, Iridium low earth orbit satellites have global coverage including the poles.


Helicopters in the Gulf of Mexico have been using a similar SATCOM service from Outerlink ( www.outerlink.com ) for flight following for some years.

Ocean floor likely conditions
 

'Zenith Plateau as the final resting place for MH370 Wednesday, 09 April 2014 22:14


The underwater search for the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 has become focused on the Zenith Plateau in the eastern Indian Ocean, lying about 1000 km to its nearest point on the Western Australia coast, or 1680 km north-west of Perth. The plateau is surrounded by the extensive Wharton Basin to the west and north, joins to the Quokka Rise and Wallaby (or Cuvier) Plateau in the east, and to the south by the Perth Abyssal Plain. The origin of this plateau is proposed to be a fragment of continental crust that started rifting from the north-west Australian margin during the break-up of Gondwana in the Late Jurassic. The continued north-westerly migration of the India plate away from Australia resulted in extinct spreading ridges and volcanoes that blanketed the region in basaltic rocks during the Cretaceous. Subsequent drowning of the plateau in the Eocene has resulted in a thick build-up of calcareous ooze that now forms the present day seafloor.

The Zenith Plateau has a dimension of about 300 km wide in the east-west direction and about 220 km in the north-south direction. The plateau is relatively deep with its shallowest point at 1671 m and gently deepening towards the Wharton Basin in north at around 5000 m. The Wallaby-Zenith Fracture Zone forms an escarpment along the southern margin with a steep drop of between 2000 to 3000 m into a narrow trough with depths close to 6000 m. This narrow trough separates the Zenith Plateau from the adjacent Perth Abyssal Plain to the south.

The plateau is very poorly mapped with no modern multibeam surveys anywhere over this feature. Our current understanding of the bathymetry (depth) of the plateau are therefore based on older singlebeam echosounder data and coarse satellite gravity data. Within the present MH370 search zone on the northern flank of the plateau, seafloor depths range from about 3500 to 4500 m. The finer-scale seafloor topography in the search zone appears to vary by up to 300 m in height over distances of approximately15 km, but cannot be confirmed with the coarse data available.

Despite the deep depths on the plateau, the gentle sloping seafloor, (apparently) limited finer-scale topographic relief and the soft sediment nature of the seafloor, could provide a helpful background environment during the seabed search for the MH370 using the Bluefin-21 AUV's sidescan sonar and optical imagery.'


From Deepreef Explorer - Zenith Plateau as the final resting place for MH370

ULB Duration
 

On 5th Apr 2014, 14:49, Green-Dot posted:
At what intervals are the batteries usually changed? In general, how substantial (or how minimal) is the likely dropoff between the projected pinging duration (beyond 30 days) of a newly installed battery versus one due to be replaced soon? (I realize 30 days is the minimum requirement and that individual batteries may differ).

The case for acoustic transponders vs. current pingers
 

Might as well prepare yourselves for the next 10,000 posts on this subject.

If they don't find any part of the airplane how many reasonable theories will be left ?

If they find only surface debris how many reasonable theories will be left?

If they do-not or can-not recover the black boxes but do find the aircraft on the bottom, how many reasonable theories will be left?

When considering what is a theory also give a thought to a possible viable corrective action, else the theory is worthless to even set forth inside our aviation community.

I'd be interested to know where the current AIS information is coming from. Prior to the SAR operation, there was never any details of shipping in that region, the best range you got was a few kilometres off the WA coastline.

Interim report
 

Is a 30-day interim report expected from Malaysian air safety authorities?

ULB batteries are lithium (don't confuse them with rechargeable Li-ions.) They have a shelf life measured in years with very low self-discharge.

Yes, there is a general trend towards continual data monitoring. We are increasingly being monitored everywhere now and there is no reason to suppose aviation to be any different. This is not driven for safety reasons but for cost and maintenance and revenue from data mining. General Electric, for instance is exploring a new revenue model for its engines. The falling cost of sensors, storage and bandwidth will allow them to charge airlines for thrust instead of selling engines. To do this will require precise and continuous monitoring of the engines with much greater detail than is currently done. In this case it does not have to be entirely real-time, of course, but there are other examples. The data from flights is rising quickly with the demand for on board wifi etc.

People will of course be demanding extra checks after the dust has settled on this tragedy, but that's because they forget just how strange this incident is. Aircraft failures in cruise are so rare that they hardly warrant a particular (probably expensive) fix, just because of a bizarre incident, which may be unique in the history of aviation.

The only thing I would like to see is some alarm to go off when a transponder is switched off. This should not be possible without alerting ATC or satellite message. I am very surprised something was not done about this after 9/11/01.

edit: aireps you beat me there, re satellite ads-b ( like http://www.aireon.com/Home )

the main driver probably isn't safety (rather reduced separation minima, fuel savings, and eg weather avoidance on North Atlantic tracks), but it can help improve safety as well.

I suggest regulatory work will be focused on the root cause rather than the disease... no point knowing that a crew member has gone UDI after the event. Regulatory barriers need to be placed pre-event, not after the fact.

Does the civilian world utilize a pre brief risk matrix including health and personal stress factors? I know it sounds silly, but the guys we have picked up at work (Mil) with ilness type issues only emerged when prompted at the risk matrix assessment stage done during crew in. They wouldn't have raised the issue unless prompted.

I have seen risk matricies for things like CFIT Risk for Ops assessment
here

but am not aware if the civilian world has equivalents for fatigue and mental/physical health factors.

Its one of the benefits of working for a smaller outfit and regularly flying with the same characters, you can spot if someone has a shift in personality, its usually either work stress, family or relationship based.

The military for obvious reasons, have trauma risk management trained individuals embedded in our staff as a secondary role. Interesting that most individuals taking absence do so as a result of family issues or other home life issues other than exposure to the stuff that goes with the military. They are not trained healthcare professionals but line pilots , copilots and crew who have been given training to identify subtle changes in individual.

Two things need to change:

The attitude of aircrew to aviation medics and in particular reticence to admit mental health issues needs to change.

There also needs to be regulatory protection to allow individuals time off if they need it. Harsh rosters believe are a key cause of mental health issues due to numerous circadian rhythm changes and day/night shift, particularly on long night sectors without augment.

All said from outside the civilian sphere granted. How you manage this in the civilian market will be much more difficult due to the size of organizations. Being taken off the line for mental health should be viewed no differently to blocked ears; very often the time off required is comparable. Until a change in culture and attitude occurs, we will be carrying the same risk with no effective barriers in place.

Good luck explaining that to the Daily Mail/Express and other hack toilet paper rags.

During my 40 years of aviation career, I had contact with a number of individuals suffering from different degrees of mental behavior problems that the six monthly mandatory medicals could not detect.

The pings heard last week , could they have come from anything else ? by going quiet it equates to the useful battery life of mh370 or is this just a coincidence.
Without the recorder pings now is it still worth looking?

The Batteries have up to 8 years from new until replacement. Dukane allow for some storage though, and so the minimum you will get at point-of-sale is 6 years.
Unfortunaltely for the SAR effort for MAS370, it looks like these batteries (if the June 2014 expiry is correct) are end of life units, meaning that they will not last long beyond their certified 30 Day life.

I think claiming that an ULB with a standard 30-day battery would still send out signals after 90 days is a mistake. Sure, Teledyne Benthos has a 90-day ULB model ELP362D available, but it only works for 90 days if an optional lithium battery is used. Standard battery life is the same, 30 days only.

http://www.benthos.com/_doc/main/Bro...815__rev_L.pdf (see page 8)

but we have to read the good news out of it ! if they heard pings with the correct frequency in the current area which started to fade away just after the 30 days limit and are now silent it would be to´much concidence to be something else than really the mh370 blackbox. due to the very limited range of such pings they have now the correct search area to nail down where the wreckage is.

imagine the disaster when they would be some days late here and never hear a ping - they would not know if they are close now or if they are still searchin for the haystack in the whole indian ocean to finally find the needle in it.

mm43 - great work (as usual). Thanks for putting the time in to keep updating the plot.

AIS Report source
 

I have noticed that Echo and Ocean Shield report at the same time. This suggests that a proxy is providing the reports - perhaps AMSA.

No news
 

I think we'er all frustrated by the lack of concrete evidence in this case. Obviously so are the journalists who keep coming up with sensational claims, unconfirmed rumours and technical impossibilities to keep their reports fresh. The FL450 story persists, even though it would appear to be outside the capabilities of a heavily loaded B777. (Was anything ever said about the climb rate or how long it spent up there?) A phone call made by the captain before take-off (already done to death) and now a phone call from the FO - or was it his girlfriend or a family member for whom he bought a phone? Passengers alive and well in Kandahar, or dead over the South China Sea? Claims that the aircraft was flown like a fighter - or was it a Cessna? The fact is, we don't know what the facts are, and journalists are still milking the story in the hope of getting a scoop - if somehow their stories can still fit the data when the wreckage is eventually found, then so much the better for them. As for Capt Zaharie: hero, villain or victim? All we can say for sure is that he was the ranking officer on the flight deck when the flight left KUL. The rest is just hypothesis based on the facts at hand and, increasingly, journalists are cherry-picking the facts at hand to spin a coulourful tale that brings sales, but gets us no closer to the truth. Even worse, they're reporting what other reporters wrote as if it absolves them of responsibility for verifying the source.

As long as the media has fresh pretty pictures and video, fresh maps, some fact from JACC and a sensationalist slant they can run as a headline grabber that sells that day's newspapers, they are happy :O

Australia is providing plenty of fresh pretty pictures / video with plenty of aircraft, ships and people and fresh maps daily looking at what the media is running with.

VinRougeThis is correct, reading Andrew Weir, The Tombstone Imperative - The Truth About Air Safety will tell you all you need to know about saving money in the airline biz.

Perhaps you are taking the 45k figure too literally. The slant range capabilities of radar, particulary at or close to max range aren't accurate to any great degree of precision. To be off a few thousand feet would not be unusual.

A 777 pilot posted in this thread that he had attempted the manovure in a simulator and had gotten to 43,000 and he may have still had some room to go. So the claim seems perfectly valid if you take the information to mean that MH370 soared to max altitude and apparently was at least above 40,000 feet at some time between IGARI and Koto Bharu.

Media Release JACC Today 14th April AM
 

I Suppose there will be a news conference today or tomorrow. Is it worth mobilizing the people to start searching the WA coastline yet? Maybe Scout groups or Cadets or similar?

30-day interim report
 

@ Two to Tango
In the April 5 and April 7 statements (press briefings) by the pertinent Malaysian authority - in which the organization and scope of the investigation were outlined, including the designations of three committees as well as other nations as Accredited Representatives - no reference was made to the requirement of an interim report at the 30-day mark, nor to any plans regarding such report. Link to press briefings:
MH370 Flight Incident | Malaysia Airlines

Most likely, the ICAO authorities will have determined that, procedurally, the 30-day clock has been deferred or suspended, given the known facts of the incident - and given also the many unknowns. Moreover, the statements make reference, in a general way admittedly, to the one-month marker. A good and sensible ruling here would be that, by announcing the detailed structure of the investigation effort at the one-month juncture, Malaysia has substantially complied, on the facts (again, some known, many more unknown). E.g., both press briefings do make reference to ICAO standards relative to other aspects of the organization of the investigation, thus suggesting that ICAO tacitly endorses Malaysia's approach.

If anything official has been issued relative to the 30-day interim report, I plead missing it.

Apr 14 Search Areas
 

The sonobuoy portion of today's search, roughly a square 25 km on a side, is centered at roughly 26 S, 101.5 E:

http://www.jacc.gov.au/media/release...l/mr_021-4.jpg

That appears to fall on the blue arc representing the 0011 UTC "last ping" in the first set of charts published by AAIB:

http://www.inmarsat.com/wp-content/u...ern-Tracks.jpg

But it's well to the East of the other two arcs representing the 400 and 450 kt loci on the AAIB chart.

So does that mean they're de-emphasizing the inferences from Doppler?

The GAFA
 

The only way to search this coast is by choper. A foot search would be nice to clean up all the junk from the last 300 years of pollution.
North of Perth 1250km of coast line, no access, no people, no water.
A map will show 4 centres of habitation.
Geraldton pop. 35,500 because it is port but then
Kalbarri pop. 1,500 a holiday resort,
Carnarvon pop. 4,500 they grow bananas and tomatoes,
Exmouth pop 2,500 tourism.

JACC News conference at 12:00 midday Perth time
 

This link is not geo blocked

Live TV | Astro Awani

Going to stop using pinger locator and start using Bluefin 21 AUV.

He certainly laid out the time frame it takes from surface to bottom to surface and the download of data (4 hours alone !).


Oil slick sounds promising in terms of where it is. Be interesting when the results come back.

Frequency drift
 

Though mentioned several times, is it actually confirmed that the frequency will drift as the battery condition fades (voltage drop?)?

Or does the oscillator circuit simply stop working below a certain minimum voltage level?

Apr 14 Search Areas
 

Vinnie Boombatz
Today's sonobuoy search area is at/near where the Hai Xun 01 heard the pings on 05 April, and it's basically on the #7 arc.
The aerial search areas are on/near the Inmarsat 400 kt path (red) and one of the NTSB suggested paths. Overlay comparing the search areas: http://i.imgur.com/peWnXpJ.png

Interesting comment re the bottom of the sea where they are.

They have obviously looked at previous data collected years ago
and his comment about a lot of silt on the bottom.

Ocean Shield AIS data Update
 

The TPL towing is complete and the Bluefin AUV is being prepared for launching.

An updated graphic is at Post #9950

Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston says it Day 38, 'we have not had a detection in six days. It is time to go underwater.' This is 40 m old @ 1:10 am US EST from Breaking news, latest news, and current events - breakingnews.com.

Actually, you can confidently state that there will be no floating debris anywhere near the datum.

Anything that came of the wreck and floated will by now be hundreds of miles away due to ocean drift.

Any engine Lube Oil slowly leaking could well be still appearing on the surface relatively close to the aircraft's position.

How far did Angus Houston say the oil slick was found from the Ping location ?

Was it 5 1/2 kms ?'

That would be extremely close if coming up from around the 4000 meter mark at a slow but steady rate I would think!

Thanks for confirming.

Pity it will take 3 or so days to get it (the 2 litres of oil) back to port.

It will be good if it is from MH370.

While the plateau is up to 6000m deep, #9930 says it is more likely 3500-4500