@xgjunkie: if you were correct in your hypothesis that previous pings (the details of which have not been published) might also be on the same arc thereby indicating the possibility of a stationary aircraft, then surely the SAR efforts would be focussed on airfields positioned along those lines?

Not saying you are wrong, but just pushing back to test the logic of your thoughts.

The ping timings are very accurate. Expect accuracy of the order of 10 km or below (although details have not been released).

The satellite is roughly 40,000 km away so whether the aircraft is at altitude 0 or 12km does not make much difference.

Thanks OneTrack, I had not seen this previously but would be logical. I have been retired for a few years but unless SOPs re fuel had changed dramatically, 3 hour excess did not make sense - simply not economical.
If these reports are to be believed we have had the jet flying at varying altitudes up to FL450.
This would dramatically increase fuel consumption, so the 8 hour flight time seems exaggerated ........unless the last ping was received after fuel was exhausted, wherever that may be.

Strategically Australia will not want to divulge it's radar capabilities in full, so if they don't go looking or appear to only be putting in a token search effort, I suspect it will mean that the aircraft never came near Australia.

@SQGRANGEI'll correct you. A commercial flight typically departs with trip fuel (6 hours as you have supposed) + alternate (some have assumed about 1 hour) + 10% contingency (about 40 mins based on the presumed figures) + final reserve (30 mins) + whatever the captain deems appropriate, having good knowledge of most aspects he is likely to encounter on the flight.

If the flight continued until flame-out or into final reserve, the figures above come to over 8 hours, unuseable fuel and other factors aside.

On the contrary to your creative accountant supposition, I think someone is displaying confusion based on ignorance. You claim to be an ex 777 jockey - are you sure about that?

I am a satellite communications engineer and just want to give a bit of insight on the ping data that was used to draw the two corridors.

First of all I want to comment that the ping data can provide a pretty accurate (within a few km) picture of the range of the target to the satellite. In that respect the target can be within a circle that has as a centre the sub satellite point. Someone also mentioned about multiple satellites just to remind that the inmarsat system uses geostationary satellites and there is just one that covers that part of the globe otherwise known as IOR (Indian Ocean Region)

The result corridors are not an outcome of just ping ranging but I would assume that they are correlated with other data. What I would have done is start from the last point of radar contact and draw a circle that would define all the possible locations of the aircraft at the time of the next ping. That circle would intersect to at least at one point the ranging circle see here that are defined by the next ping roundtrip delay. Then repeat the same for every ping I got and should end up with some locations across the final arc. Each one of them can have an associated probability by correlating the probabilities of altitude and ground speed of the plane.

I therefore see no problem at the depicted arcs, although I am sure certain locations or sub arcs have higher probabilities than the others. Good luck to them this is a very tough case.

I tend to believe Abbott will share the data available with Malaysia. This is a major international event involving Australians on board as well.

There's also a lot of things we as the public won't know that they (the investigators) do as well.

He probably will.... off the record though, we won't hear anything of it I suspect.

Hi,

Where is KLM 836 when MH 370 is detected at 29.500 near Pulau Perak ?
Interesting to know ...
"Shadowing" ?

Sensors
 

There has been discussion of what the Royal Malaysian Air Force (abbreviated to TDUM in the native language) did or did not do on the night when this frustrating, perplexing tragedy began.

A quick look suggests that the RMAF had its radars at Kuantan and Butterworth modernised in 2005 and that two Vera ESM units were introduced in 2007.

There has been mention of RMAF F-16s, only it appears their small but diverse fleet of combat aircraft includes Sukhoi Su-30s, F/A-18Ds and some Mig-29s. As recently as last year a sum of US$100 million was allocated to improving the Su-30s combat readiness from 65-70percent to 80percent or more.

Such data suggests the RMAF takes its role as providing aerial defence and airspace dominance of Malaysian airspace and territory seriously.

One of the characteristics (to which I am of course adding) of posts on this topic is that they come from civilian people based far away from Malaysia so views on what may or may not have occurred within RMAF bases that night are unlikely to be highly accurate.

It would appear, though, that the country does possess the sensors and the aircraft to have responded to a radar track not exhibiting normal identification and not conforming to a scheduled or filed flight plan, although the time to do so would perhaps have provided little opportunity to do so.

Only the country always was and remains relatively narrow, so the timings are always going to be squeezed and presumably the air defence system is rigged accordingly, if only in theory.

Press conference underway. Little new info.

They did say that they (Malaysians) are dispatching 2x ships with 1x SuperLynx helo between them to the southern zone. He did stress that the (single) helo can operate from either vessel!

This is a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the resource needed to stand even a chance of finding any wreckage. I wonder whether, if the entire US Navy were deployed to the Indian Ocean on SAROPS, even they would find any trace?

I now believe it's unlikely that MH370 will ever be found, but rather that this will be an enduring mystery that our grandchildren ask us about. We can tell them we followed it closely in real-time on long-defunct aviation forum PPRuNe...

The cargo was mainly Mangosteens.

The UK, USA and Russia have submaries capable of staying out there for many months at a time, not sure how long the recorders can transmit for but I suspect the search will go on for a long time yet, officially or unofficially.

Recorders will only ping for 30 days, and it already been missing for 9 days.

500 to 600 hours a year flight time would be about right ....

Press Conference
 

I must say the officials fielding the questions this morning still look uncomfortable and looking at one another for inspiration.

Time
 

I'd suggest if there are no real developments in the next few days the international search assistance will reduce considerably. Most of the countries would have had time to get some updated aerial surveillance/intel of the area and contribute to the search effort. The fuel and resources are going to add up and with no new intel + the work done to date + satellite imagery, etc. there aren't good signs of it being found at the moment.

I'm sure digitalglobe could get some coverage there and use automated software/crowdsourcing to cover a bigger area over time.

As someone put earlier, the longer SAR goes on, the longer it takes to find something.

Press conference just told that something that seems to contradict idea that there was a signal indicating ACARS manually switched off. Just said that ACARS failed to report from 1:07am and especially at about 1:37am when it was due to report.

Did I hear they based the famous "arcs" on minimum and maximum speed?

But... what about being landed? Minimum speed is 0! I wonder how long a airplane would float. I seem to remember from the Hudson-ditching that they will float for quite some time, or was it just that they moored it quickly? Also, I guess batteries etc might get a bit waterlogged...

From my experience of Malaysia and the RMAF, so long as it happens between 0930 and 1630 hrs Monday to Friday.