IF they were at 5k in an effort to dodge radar, as soon as they were a few hundred miles into the Indian Ocean, they could easily climb back to normal cruise altitudes to maximize the range with little risk of radar detection (assuming they continued to head away from land).

I keep thinking about that hostage/kidnapping scenario - if that was it, and it went well, I'd think that by now we would have heard something like a ransom demand.
Suppose it was intended to be a hostage/kidnapping scenario, but it went badly somehow. Perhaps dodging radar, etc. burned more fuel than anticipated and they ran out and crashed short of the destination, or there was an attempt to take the airplane back and it crashed (think United 93). Rather than admit their master plan had failed, have the would be terrorists/kidnappers instead stayed quiet and let the world wonder?

AIS, MMSI, IMO
 

A few tidbits on this topic:

- AIS is not mandatory for ships less than 300 tons dw. Neither for military ships, I believe. So don't expect AIS from every rescue ship.

- An AIS transponder (i.e. a transmitter which makes your ship visible to others) identifies the ship using its MMSI number, same as its phone number on VHF DSC.

- IMO number is meant for larger ships (over 300 tdw). I copied this list from Wikipedia:

Note that SAR vessels don't need an IMO number.

As said, AIS main use is collision warning (much as TCAS, but closer to ADS-B) while the tracking function is an extra goodie.

I've had an AIS receiver in my sailing boat for a number of years and now have an AIS transponder (an approx $400 investment). Very good piece of safety equipment.

One very important piece of data I haven't seen *confirmed* is the aircraft fuel load. Obviously this dictates range. I believe MAS stated the loaded was "normal" and no "extra fuel" was loaded, but that begs the question what was normal for this route? Were they tankering fuel? :hmm:

What difference does it make....?

Airborne at 0041....last recorded satellite "ping" at 0811. Fuel: 7:30

deadheader said

I would add; two even more reliable knowns, that are extremely important and near impossible to reconcile, need to be addressed in such a scenario

- ACARS never sent emergency transmissions indicating a system failure anywhere on board

- Flight continues for hours, meaning whatever the 'catastrophic event that took out all the systems' was, it seemingly did not effect auto-pilot at all

Originally posted by Zooker:

Sunrise in the Maldives on March 8 was at 06:15, same exact time as sightings were made, according to local press reports, so it would have been possible to see an aircraft passing by.

a quick update of the...
 

What we know* timeline
(*or at least have a separate "unidentified official" verification on from a reputable source)

- 1:07 - ACARS last transmission (thru VHF) which apparently includes notation of a WP change having been entered into system since last scheduled report at 12:37
- 1:11 - INMARSAT ping would have been received, as apparently Boeing's AHM report attempted to automatically transmit (thru Satellite?)
- 1:19 - 'Alright, Good Night' at handover (supposedly by co-pilot)
- 1:22 - Transponder goes off
(note: those previous two might be reversed, we have multiple sources seemingly confirming both possibilities. One happened at 1:19, one at 1:22 though. I'm putting them in this order mainly because...)
- 1:22 - Plane goes out of range/black from Thailand Radar (likely from the transponder going black and not the plane going out of range)
- 1:28 - Unidentified plane shows up on Thailand Radar roughly off the Kota Bharu, Malaysia coast (at Malaysia/Thailand border) and this apparently shows plane crossing the Peninsula to the Straights of Malacca (unknown endtime for this path)
- somewhere between 1:15-1:30 - Vietnam sees plane turn around.
(note: they have not told us a specific time of turn or if they know this because of a Military or ATC radar hit, but they told Malaysia they 'watched plane turn around' sometime shortly after contact was lost)
- roughly 1:30-forward, Vietnam is "frantically" trying to contact the plane
- 1:37 - ACARS misses scheduled transmission
- 1:30-1:45 - at minimum 11 eye witness reports from around and past the Kota Bharu, Malaysia/Thailand border areas (including one saying 'plane descending fast' like one of the later radar hits indicates)
- 2:11 - INMARSAT ping would have been received, as apparently Boeing's AHM report attempted to automatically transmit (thru Satellite)
- between 1:30-2:40 - Malaysian Military and Civilian radar picks up an "unidentified" plane flying over peninsula (Daud says "this was corroborated by civilian radar" in the March 9th press conference). Those include a couple radar WP hits we have specifically been told about* (and who knows how many that haven't been provided/leaked):
... VAMPI
... GIVAL
... IGREX
(note: we are not sure of the timing of the radar hits, and there is very contradictory evidence here. The most recent seemingly-official time is 2:15 for the last hit. Which hit that was, we don't know for sure)
post 2:15/or/2:40 apparent absolute complete blackout of plane (except...)
- 3:11 - INMARSAT ping received, as apparently Boeing's AHM report attempted to automatically transmit (thru Satellite)
- 4:11 - INMARSAT ping received, as apparently Boeing's AHM report attempted to automatically transmit (thru Satellite)
- 5:11 - INMARSAT ping received, as apparently Boeing's AHM report attempted to automatically transmit (thru Satellite)
- 6:11 - INMARSAT ping received, as apparently Boeing's AHM report attempted to automatically transmit (thru Satellite)
- 7:11 - INMARSAT ping received, as apparently Boeing's AHM report attempted to automatically transmit (thru Satellite) near 40 Degree line
- 7:24 - Statement released by Malaysian Officials saying contact lost at 2:40 and SAR efforts are underway
- 8:11 - INMARSAT ping received, as apparently Boeing's AHM report attempted to automatically transmit (thru Satellite) (thru Satellite) on 40 Degree line

*those way-points on map
http://mothership.sg/v2/wp-content/u...erted-path.jpg

(Note on map: the Thailand radar data, as we understand it, indicates a straight path from IGARI to VAMPI is not possible, so there are more unknown/unreleased turns in there somewhere. Please do not read that map as a 'straight flight' from WP to WP; it was not a straight path over the peninsula, in the very least)

Anyone have any other times to add and/or corrections? Would like to keep this as updated and accurate as possible for all, and any input is welcome! (just, want to keep it to things cross verified, so please keep that in mind if suggesting other times - that is why things like the possible post-1:30 JapanBoundFlight/MH88 call is not included here)

Maldives 'sighting'?
 

A very low flying "jumbo jet" (a 747 or an A380 is a jumbo jet but we will let that pass) was purportedly spotted over the Maldives 0615 local 8 March -10 days ago, and yet so precise about the time? But we will let that pass also.
0615 local Maldives is 0115UTC ; MH370 departed KL 0030 local which is 1730 UTC (7 March) -by my math that puts the plane as having been airborne at the time of this possible Maldives sighting for 7 hrs 45 and likely about or completely out of fuel.....:ugh:

D.S.

I would explain the apparent inconsistency on the IGARI-VAMPI leg, and indeed the other straight lines, as journalistic simplification given the scale of the map. They may also have chosen to ignore non-radar sources.

Interesting theory from Business Insider
 

A few days ago, a former pilot named Chris Goodfellow articulated an entirely different theory on Google+.

This theory fits the facts.

And it's one of the most plausible yet:
Shortly after takeoff, as Malaysia 370 was flying out over the ocean, just after the co-pilot gave his final "Good night" sign-off to Malaysia air traffic control, smoke began filling the cockpit, perhaps from a tire on the front landing gear that had ignited on takeoff.

The captain immediately did exactly what he had been trained to do: turn the plane toward the closest airport so he could land.

The closest appropriate airport was called Pulau Langkawi. It had a massive 13,000-foot runway. The captain programmed the destination into the flight computer. The autopilot turned the plane west and put it on a course right for the runway (the same heading the plane turned to).

The captain and co-pilot tried to find the source of the smoke and fire. They switched off electrical "busses" to try to isolate it, in the process turning off systems like the transponder and ACARs automated update system (but not, presumably, the autopilot, which was flying the plane). They did not issue a distress call, because in a midair emergency your priorities are "aviate, navigate, communicate" — in that order. But smoke soon filled the cockpit and overwhelmed them (a tire fire could do this). The pilots passed out or died.

Smoke filled the cabin and overwhelmed and distracted the passengers and cabin crew ... or the cockpit door was locked and/or the cockpit was filled with smoke, so no one could enter the cockpit to try to figure out where the plane was, how the pilots were, or how the plane might be successfully landed. (This would be a complicated task, even if one knew the pilots were unconscious and had access to the cockpit, especially if most of the plane's electrical systems were switched off or damaged).

With no one awake to instruct the autopilot to land, the plane kept flying on its last programmed course ... right over Pulau Langkawi and out over the Indian Ocean. The engine-update system kept "pinging" the satellite. Eventually, six or seven hours after the incident, the plane ran out of fuel and crashed.

This theory fits the facts. It makes sense. It explains the manual course change as well as the "pings" that a satellite kept hearing from the plane. It requires no fantastically brilliant pre-planning or execution or motives.


Read more: Malaysia Plane Fire - Business Insider

A question. Could PF have made a course change at 1:07 in such a way that PM would either not have noticed or not have questioned? (For example, saying it was a course correction, or waiting until PM was distracted by making a cabin announcement, etc.)

If so, I could envision the PM finishing his radio duties ("Good night.") and then having the PF send him onto the cabin on some sort of errand (or even just saying that there was a pretty girl back in the 10th row that had been making eyes at him, and he should go talk to her.)

Then PF locks the cockpit door and does whatever he wants...

INTEL101 said

This theory, unfortunately, pretty much falls apart right out the gates.

- it ignores the ACARS message indicating WP was altered prior t 1:07

- Between the two paragraphs events, ACARS would have sent emergency messages indicating major problems on board.

- Then, the nearest safe location to land was likely Vietnam anyway, not a frantic turn back to where you came from. (this is especially true if the cockpit is that bad off already)

- Plus, if the fire is believed to be that bad (bad enough to turn off most/all systems before you start reacting) you probably don't want to fly the plane over a city with a population of 577,000 people (Kota Bharu) and instead want to attempt a sea landing

D.S.,

(my bold)

Where does Boeing enter into it? Malaysia Airlines did not have a health monitoring contract with Boeing. And even if, these transmissions would have gone via ACARS, which was apparently disabled/inactive/switched off/...

These "attempted messages" as you call them, were keepalive-pings to the INMARSAT network, and have nothing to do with either ACARS, Boeing, or anyone else.

Well, I don't know where on that arc that ping occurred... the furthest they went along that arc is defined by max speed from the last recorded point on the radar trace, limited only by fuel load.

The circles (assuming that more than one could be plotted, which now seems in doubt) would be 60 minutes apart, because that's how often the satellite pings the aircraft.

The only deduction that could reasonably be made would be if the spacing between two successive rings turned to be equal to the maximum distance that the aircraft could fly in an hour. Then it would follow (as previously suggested) that the track must be along the radius of the rings, but of course that doesn't identify which radial.

If two hourly rings are spaced closer together, then it's hard to see how anything can be deduced in respect of track or groundspeed.

But as it seems that only one ring is known, it's all a bit academic.

Speed of sound,

You're right - to fly equidistant from the satellite would require a non-great circle along the red arc. If the ACARS was powered off, the alleged miscreants wouldn't think they needed to worry about that, and would it even enter their heads what Inmarsat logged about data signals for Rolls Royce, and where their satellites were located?

If there are prior distance measurements, then they will help. They'll give a time to some unknown point on the arc, and thus constrain possible paths between points on the different arcs.

If the Inmarsat signal has a frequency measured in fine channels, which it probably doesn't, and better a change in frequency from signal to signal, since the properties of the transmitter aren't known, that might even add a point measurement of line-of-sight speed which would help improve the possible paths it could have taken.

What useful data would have been exchanged, had Boeing decided to activate their SAT service before the event was over?

bsieker

the pings are only known (supposedly) because of Boeing's Airline Health Management system, and were not connected because of MAH not having that service plan. That is where the Boeing name came in

That said, you are correct in it being stated a bit confusing, and I will update the timeline. Thanks!

Edit to say the previous posts edit is as follows
INMARSAT ping received, as apparently Boeing's AHM report attempted to automatically transmit (thru Satellite)
That make more sense?

Likely nothing, since ACARS had been disabled.

I don't think the Maldives account and the Inmarsat tracks can be consistent. If Inmarsat hold to their technical knowledge about their system, then the Maldives witness account has to be spurious.