If the aircraft had landed, would the ACARS continue to transmit on the ground and wouldn't the this look like an arc to the satellite?

@dicks-airbus
No. No. That's an assumption that has been permeating this thread, but it is only one possible interpretation of what has been said.

The "arcs/corridors" are simply the loci of all possible positions that satisfy the constraints imposed by analysis of the satellite signals. The exact position of a ping on the arc can't be determined, or they could simply search at the last point!

If the last two pings were both from a 40 degree locus (which I think is a leak/speculation, not officially stated anyway) all that that would mean is that the last two pings came from positions on the same 40 degree locus, assuming that the two loci are too far apart to fly between in an hour.

The aircraft being stationary, whether landed, crashed or ditched, is one possible interpretation, but so is that it remained flying, either along the arc for some reason, or on a course which intersected the arc in two places an hour apart, within whatever margin of error is implicit in the analysis. It could have ended its life flying round in circles, for example...

Stating that the airframe was stationary is tempting, but is going beyond what has been announced.

Whoever is in charge of this investigation (who?) has very few ideas and very well confused.

The smoke spread to the media is firing back on them and it is now too much to deal with. Usually in this cases another "big event" happens to divert the attention. It happened many times in the past world wide. It will happen again.

Many witnesses in their key positions, mainly civil and military radar personnel, are on the cutting edge. We all know that.

God bless all the pax/crew missing and other people linked to the facts that in the future will be missing in unknown circumstances.

Anyone else seen this yet?

Pieces of aircraft found floating on Andhra coast? : South, News - India Today

@DespairingTraveller

If we assume that it has not become stationary, but has continued to fly but has been present on the same arc at both 07:11 and 08:11, can we make the maths work if we know the changing direction of the southern arc if we follow it south and we assume that the aircraft is flying on a constant track? IE. Where would they have converged, as it were? Or would that not have occurred at all?

Not sure who you mean (?), but I doubt there is anyone who has any inkling about this mystery within the 'professional' aviation community.

The only 'professionals' who could Post on here are hardly likely too!

This is PPRuNe and although the disappearance has caused unprecented interest in all respects and, apart from the tragic human element whatever the outcome, should be taken in the normal manner - 99% bu****it and 1% interesting comment!

Now with 7 hours endurance the Nazca Lines are ...; or could it be an abduction; who assassinated JFK ... back to PPRuNeing!!!

CodyBlade,

Released to the general public. Transparency implies being transparent with your audience. It doesn't matter if they can or will do anything with the information you furnish, but in crisis management, information calms and furthermore provides you with much needed credibility.

Either way, the whole situation is frustrating for everyone involved. I'm just baffled at the way MAS and the Malaysian govt are handling the situation from a communication perspective.

Briefing: We do not know what happened at this time. All we do know is that there have been a number of human errors in the system.

Why all the attention?
 

Basic human nature. Control and fear.

When things happen to us that we don't understand/are beyond our control, our first instinct is to "control" the uncontrollable by gaining a full understanding of it.

When something terrible happens and we can't understand it, the tension creates a huge vacuum which is so powerful that we would rather fill it with nonesense than let it stand until we can understand. Our hope is that occasionally the nonesense turns out to contain some real answers. It has happened—the outsider perspective sometimes provides fresh solutions (and we're all outsiders here to a degree when it comes to this investigation :)

Pprune is a fantastic technical forum for exploring technical/operational ideas and brainstorming solutions. As such, it occasionally also serves this other function of helping to fill void.

Both are essential and important, although the latter understandably annoying to the more-technically inclined. From watching this board for the last few years, I'd say give it some time, things will at some point return to normal. In the meantime I think pprune is providing a valuable public service and I'd like to thank the dedicated people who provide this little corner of the world for all of us come together. You work—and I know it's work—is appreciated.

jm

FO Kite, I was referring to the previous post referring to the retired RAF Lt Col and other talking heads on TV not in this forum.

It was said earlier that current T7 pilots were generally too sensible to go live on TV.

As this thread is demonstrating, there are many strands to this mystery, aircraft systems, external monitoring systems, air defence and ATC systems and many others. Too easy for your talking head to be asked a question outside his knowledge and experience but to spot off anyway.

Attention Press! Ask this:

If it exhausted fuel and ditched in Southern Indian Ocean . How come no ELT Signal.

Interesting article in the UK Guardian:

"What the air traffic controllers knew about how to stop 'flying blind'
No matter where it is, the Malaysia Airlines jet suffered from outdated technology. Eyes in the tower saw this coming"

"It has come as a shock to the general public to learn that commercial flights aren’t monitored constantly by the high-tech GPS tracking systems we’ve come to expect in our cars and smartphones."

MH370: what the air traffic controllers knew about how to stop 'flying blind' | Barbara S Peterson | Comment is free | theguardian.com

I've just read the very short article which contains the following:

there was no confirmation from any official if the objects seen floating were indeed pieces of an aircraft.

FBI involved
 

From the NYT: The Malaysian authorities have asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation for help in recovering data that was deleted from a home flight simulator belonging to one of the pilots of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, in the hope that it will provide some clue to what happened to the plane.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/20/wo...ref=world&_r=0

It was suggested that the timing of that moment to take a break would be a bit weird. 40 mins in and precisely between ATC. Doesn't make a lot of sense but then what does...?

Only interesting in its lack of understanding of the distinction between surveillance and navigation.

@Token Bird You'd have to make an assumption about its speed - strictly its ground speed, since the arcs are defined relative to a point in space fixed relative to the Earth's surface (the IOR satellite's geostationary position) . If you did that, then there'd only be one heading that could link any two points on the arc. But since you don't know where the first point is, it doesn't help find the second.

Really you need to start from a known position - last radar plot, for example - and then work out a tree of possible locations each hour from knowing which "arcs" it was on each hour, what airspeed it might have maintained and factoring in winds aloft etc. Horribly complicated and error-prone, but I imagine that there have been clever, well-informed, people doing that for days. It may be how the NTSB tracks on the Aussie search area maps were derived, I suppose.

DX Wombat

That`s right,but yo can`t compare the ressources used then with MH 370.They always searched in the wrong place.

Pontius Navigator

Understood!

That Post by a 777 Captain was interesting ... and he ended with it being a mystery!

It's now 1650Z on 19 March 2014 - where are those people and (hopefully) what are they doing as I Post this?!

That's the important issue!

The Avherald did report that the flight had the standard amount of fuel on board with the normal contingencies and reserves.