What a commentary on the whole operation that the announcement just now was, in effect, that China had spotted something 22 X 30m and that China is sending 2 ships to search for it".

Hardly a co-ordinated operation then; it sounds more like an international competition to find the aircraft rather than an international effort to do that.

Exactly what we would expect when politicians call the shots.

Andu: Now to the really uncomfortable bit... It's now completely immaterial whether this was done by terrorists or a rogue pilot. It doesn't matter if it was a technical fault, (any one of the theories currently out there). The uncomfortable fact is that, having seen the way the world...


Completely wrong. It has to be part of the learning process for the whole industry. I would go as far as to say it is essential to eventually understand what happened to drive improvements in safety for future confidence in air travel.

Can't be too many pieces of a T7 that size that could be floating.

Could conceivably be the same piece as seen before. That was described as "awash" and I imagine could look quite different sizes in different photos.

Here's the picture of the paper handed over during the press conference
http://s28.postimg.org/3luslo5kd/Bj_...Cc_AAJpg_R.jpg

Capot said:
It's being coordinated. The fact that Chinese planes are flying into WA's Pearce Base and heading out under Australian coordination & management along with the other planes, and the fact that Chinese ships were heading for the Southern Ocean, were both announced on Thursday evening.

TURIN,

22x30m? That's a very big red herring indeed.

I suspect what we're seeing there is a potentially embarrassingly report of the woeful imaging resolution limit of that particular satellite, and unless it's a radar image, that someone might be about to get it in the neck.

I have been wondering why "debris" sighted in the Southern Indian Ocean hasn't been monitored as closely as possible until identified and marked from the air or surface vessels arrive. If the latest report is correct they now have an accurate position and hopefully one of the ships will reach there soon.

chinglish
 

sky news reporting the latest item found by the Chinese is actually 22m x 13m (not 30m) according to source in Beijing. Dimensions lost in Chinglish?

One thing that's for sure, is that there's a definite shortage of FACTs in this whole affair. Even things that initially seem to be facts, ultimately turn out not to be. It exploded in midair. There are oil slicks in the Gulf likely caused by the accident. Chinese satellites spotted pieces of the plane in South China Sea. It crashed into Malacca Strait. It crashed into Andaman Sea. It flew for 5 hours. It flew for 7.5 hours. Etc, etc.

Part of the problem is that everything we know is third-hand or fourth-hand information. And somehow the people in charge of the investigation are really good (bad?) at playing broken telephone. Just take the radar chart linked on the previous page. This is the closest thing to the primary source we (the general public) have in the whole investigation, because it purports to show raw data rather than someone's interpretation of it. Previously, we only had someone's retelling of someone else's interpretation of that data. It took me 2 minutes of staring at the radar chart and at the skyvector map to convince myself that either the radar chart, or the original description of the track, had to be wrong.

Right now the entire search is guided by yet another fourth-hand factoid: the infamous Inmarsat arc. In the grand scheme of things, this factoid makes very little sense, since it implies one of two things - either that the person in control of the aircraft skilfully navigated his way into Andaman Sea, waypoint to waypoint, only to turn the plane 90 degrees towards one of the most remote parts of the ocean and fly in that direction for several hours, in effect, making this an extremely elaborate suicide; or that the same person managed to evade air defense systems of India, Pakistan and/or China and either crash or land in Central Asia.

I can't help but start feeling that it's yet another false lead. Someone made a mistake somewhere along the way, and now everyone is chasing their tails searching for it in the wrong part of the planet.

Suppose that we don't have the Inmarsat distance data, all we have is two bits of information. 1) MH370 was on heading 285 in south Andaman Sea at 1822 UTC. 2) it was still airborne at 0011 UTC. Where would we look for it? Early on, several people in this very thread suggested Somalia. Could be Yemen, or even (less likely) Iran. All somewhat credible destinations for a pirate, all in the right direction and reachable in 6 hours, give or take, without coming afoul of Indian air defense installations.

Malaysia has clarified that the object found by China is 22.5m by 13m, not 22m by 30m.

Its transport ministry says it received the information by phone during the press conference and was misheard,

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BjUzgj2CYAAGMaU.jpg

And

And

To put this hypothesis to bed. The satellite has a footprint that covers approximately one third of the Earth's surface. Even though there are lots of empty spaces in the southern Indian Ocean, this satellite also covers a lot of Africa, India, most of Russia and most of Europe. These are not silent areas, there are lots of transmissions to 'listen' to. The only way the satellite can discriminate between 'pings' from aircraft is that these low level protocol 'pings' are actually short messages with a unique 'electronic aircraft address'. It is the INMARSAT business to ensure that these thousands of aircraft transmissions are not mixed up. So the hypothesis that they 'tracked the wrong plane' is just not supportable.

They keep looking further and further south. It's really starting to stretch imagination. Latitude 45 south? I understand that there's wind and ocean currents and the object (if it were related to MH370) would have drifted in 2 weeks, but still. MH370 _might_ have run out of fuel close to the spot if it turned due south as soon as it was out of range of Butterworth, passing over a broad swath of Sumatra along the way. If (more likely) it continued at least 30 min. on the original heading before turning, in order to stay clear of Indonesia, it would only get as far as latitude 36 by the last ping, latitude 40 if it stayed airborne for another 30 minutes after that.

But let's wait and see what this mysterious object really is. Who knows.

Is there a time stamp on that photo ? Is that what the Chinese characters say ?

@capot - The search is being co-ordinated internationally by the UN-SPIDER organisation. UN-SPIDER is a platform set up to co-ordinate space-based information for disaster management. This is the first time that it has been initiated for lost aircraft recovery.

Re the on-the-job co-ordination; it is exceptionally difficult to co-ordinate SAR groups that have different languages and differing levels of discipline and command structures.
English is still a foreign language to many billions of people.
Therefore, it is easier to merely co-ordinate the separate search groups into a common aim, allowing each group to operate independently using its native language and command structure.
Local level co-ordination is being handled by AMSA, as the search zone is within AMSA's recognised maritime control area.

International Charter activated for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 | UN-SPIDER Knowledge Portal

Given the pixelation and the revised dimensions, could be same. Does seem a long way south, but the earlier bit was 44S I think.

In reference to last ATC conversation, did the MH370 ever read back the new frequency?

All the casual stuff about good night etc. is not an issue, as this is normal, however 2 things that you would expect that is not specified in the transcript, and that is why was not the new frequency read back, and the aircraft's call-sign?

These might be small details in the big picture, however sometimes the devil lies in the detail.

Why would they fly at 29.500 (FL295)

How has the documentation of the inital climb to FL450 - then FL230 and then FL295 - during same time new tracks.

To many questions and not enough answers.

New debris at S44°57' E90°14'
 

Chinese finding is 3092NM from last radar plot past MEKAR.

Flying time 6 h 52 min at 450 kts.

Not taking into account turn at a later waypoint, zig-zag flying, debris drift etc.

Just for overview.

http://i60.tinypic.com/ngrj3k.jpg

Well that just doesn't make any sense I'm afraid - way beyond range.

And good luck mounting a SAR expedition there...

Nearly 45 deg S is definitely in the region of regular remnant icebergs. 90% of a 777 is metal, 10% is composite.
Does anyone really believe that a 22m x 13m (72' x 42') section of a 777 would still be floating on the surface after 2 weeks in Southern Indian Ocean swells and storms?? :rolleyes:

Some points.

The Southern Ocean is full of debris because it has nothing to bump into. It can just go round and round.

The Northern route could have gone through some very soft or non existent air defences and primary radar. Myanmar. The Myanmar/Chinese border, Tibet, Natal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan.
Especially in the early hours of the morning at the weekend.

It is very difficult not to have rechargeable lithium cells on a flight. They are in everything these days.
Very many thousand of torches like this are flying right now in jiffy bags, for instance: UltraFire 2000Lm CREE XM-L T6 LED Zoom Zoomable Flashlight Torch Light 5 Modes | eBay

UK defence planners have seen this and must now be making a very good case for a purchase of Boeing P-8s. It is a scandal that we don't have this resource.

T7 entered service in 1995 and nearly 1,200 have been built, so it has many millions of flying hours. But this does not mean that every possible fault in the aircraft has been found. As BA 38 and SU-GBP proved.