Navy Prepares Black Box Locator for MH370 Search
 

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That's all very well and good, but it doesn't do anything for finding the wreckage and the recorders. Unless someone has some radar data or intercepted Inmarsat broadcasts, then the mystery is probably going to
remain unsolved.

Perhaps it's time to try stacking weather satellite data for a contrail along the route after sunrise, and IR early warning data to try to pick out the engines?

McRotor

A plus one from me, well said.

There will be no prize for the best analysis or closest guess. Inmarsat, the AAIB, NTSB have got enough on their plate right now without pandering to the " I demand to know" brigade..guess what - right now we don't need to know. I, and I suspect others here will be strapping a strapping a T7 to my backside tomorrow, I want the investgators focused on the job, not on PR.

The PM did the decent and IMHO the right thing.

Maybe time for a little quiet reflection by some in this place as to what has gone on here and the suffering some people are going through?

Interesting that the US dispatched a ship with towed array to the search area in the last few days.

Re information NOT being released in real time, not surprising and if you think of the criticisms the Malaysians endured by releasing info and then retracting it, I would say that the US, UK, Aust etc are being very careful. The only people who need to know are the families and the searchers, everyone else - especially the media - can wait.

At least Aust has lots of activity to keep the media busy and occupied.

Indeed, very bad, although expected news.

But I am really flabbergasted that Malaysian Airlines chose to tell the relatives by text message. I mean seriously, what were they thinking? I've heard of people dumping their boyfriend or girlfriend by text message, but telling someone their loved one died in a remote part of the ocean in a plane crash by text message?

I think I'm going to ban Malaysian Airlines for my personal travel - not because of the crash, that could happen to any airline but they have not had that good a level of contact with the families for the last two weeks and then this text message is really unbelievable.

Banned.

"The following SMS message has been sent to relatives: "Malaysia Airlines deeply regrets that we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and that none of those on board survived. As you will hear in the next hour from Malaysia's prime minister, we must now accept all evidence suggests the plane went down in the southern Indian Ocean.""

Inmarsat saying they have used Doppler effect to isolate the southern corridor and tested the theory on known flights. Hence their latest conclusion. Can only give a general location.

Well said.

a bbc reporter has just been told by Inmarsat that their investigations were completed yesterday and involved the movements of other aircraft (some kind of more accurate calibration ?)

Wiggy I think we do need to know. We need to be confident that we can fly on 777s, that we can fly on Malaysia Airlines flights, that we can fly out of Malaysian airports. I agree with you that breathless speculation from fruitcakes on this site or from the press won' t get those questions answered, but the Malaysian government does need to get something out from its apparently interminable police investigation to start giving some assurance to all of us who fly in and out of Malaysia or on 777s.

http://www.pprune.org/8380536-post4502.html

Posted that Doppler could solve the rough track of the aircraft back on the 16th. Looks as if thats how they managed to go firm on the southern route.

Indicated doppler effect pops up on our FMS, typically depending on sat geometry, you are looking at between 10 and 50 Hz difference, so not insignificant I believe. With multiple sats and a few complex equations, you can get a rough derived relative track and velocity which it loos as if Inmarsat have done in this case.

Whether any other agencies have been involved in locating potential wreckage is irrelevant. All that matters is the families can get closure and a rough search area is established to determine what why and possibly who was responsible.

ORAC

"a super-secret installation just outside Alice Springs -- remains cloaked in secrecy."

Pine Gap is NOT super secret anymore. A fair bit of what goes on was disclosed in a book written by a person who works inside and all of it was fully approved before release with more detail than people thought. The media however like to blow it up as "super secret".

As to whether JOHR was working, we don't need to be told, as long as the relevant information is passed on which it would have been.

True.

I don't believe anyone here is demanding to know the details of "other means." We all surely accept that we won't be told - perhaps ever.

What I (and I think most people share) is a hope and conviction there is more information that will lead to the wreckage, lead to answers, and lead to closure for the relatives. Because the official information that has been released does not create very much hope of this.

I really don't give a damn exactly what this data is. I just hope it is there.

I believe this is the focus of most people here.

While the media report that Najib Razak has now officially declared the plane as crashed with no survivors, based on satellite data analysis, I still feel uneasy about the whole case.

As far as I understand, actual debris from MH370 has not yet been found and positively identified. In that light, I consider Razak's statement as the most probable outcome, but in no way confirmed.

To me, it appears that due to public pressure and because of the upcoming car racing event, the Malaysian government wants to put a quick end to the story.

A lot of loose ends still need to be tied up.

MAS statement

"On behalf of all of us at Malaysia Airlines and all Malaysians, our prayers go out to all the loved ones of the 226 passengers and of our 13 friends and colleagues at this enormously painful time".

226 ? or 227 ? souls onboard

In the past 15 years, the majority of fatal crashes during cruise flight were due to terrorism and pilot suicide.

I think there were only 2 passenger airliner crashes caused by mechanical reasons in the past 15 years (China Airlines disintegrating in flight, and Helios Airways loss of cabin pressure). Compare this to 3 pilot suicides during the same time period alone.

Pax manifest

http://www.malaysiaairlines.com/cont...ationality.pdf

227

Thats very interesting. Why then did he say 226?

I accept that from a customer and crew confidence point of view we need to know what happened to cause the accident as quickly as possible. My issue is with those who seem to need to know the source of every piece of information...if the AAIB want to claim that they worked out the possible position all by themselves without the help of the NSA or even GCHQ, I personally have no problem with that, and if the authorities want to keep any presumed liason secret so be it - that's the sort of thing we don't need to know, all IMHO of course.

Inmarsat calculations
 

I have always been sceptical that the logs would contain detailed enough data to estimate speed. Why would a desperate-for-storage-space engineer add logs for such extraneous information? (If she did, hats off as it may have made a difference to this investigation.)

Again, I doubt they would give scarce log space for signal strength data, unless it serves other purposes. I wonder if they haven't been using the slight variations above / below the equator that the satellite travels, with an assumption of constant speed and bearing, to eliminate the northern arc.

As if all the various governments and their militaries don't already know what capabilities there are out there? During this time of tragedy and confusion, classifying everything as a state secret, not sharing data with other agencies/governments or the media, and worst of all the families who are being dragged through emotional roller coaster after emotional roller coaster is all quite ridiculous. We are not living in the cold war where everyone is a spy and every country is trying to destroy you. This emotional scaring of the people who lived through those times is still quite apparent unfortunately. But the past decades it has been to the detriment of the rest of society than some people refuse to drop the us vs them belief.