Propduffer
 

While the video itself is real, it is clearly a misrepresentation of the circumstances surrounding the search, and when people make comments like "the view from the bridge of a search vessel", you know we have reached information BS at high levels.

This video is representative of conditions in the North Atlantic in Jan, 2013. Please spare us your attempts to show this is representative of the crash zone. It adds no information to an already confused situation.

PS: Google "heavy seas". Then click on "videos". Lots of 'footage' of high seas in many different circumstances. You want to post 50 or 100 of them as being "representative" as well?

Here's a good graphic of the search region, around 43 deg S and 90 deg E, IIRC? The jagged yellow line is the South East Indian Ridge, the join line of the Indo-Australian and Antarctic tectonic plates.

If the aircraft ended up in the flatter regions of the S.E. Indian Ridge, it could be up to 4500M deep - if it just happened to lodge on top of one of the underwater volcanoes, it will more likely be a modest 2000M down. :uhoh:

File:Seir.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Modern radar from Fast Patrol boats of 20 years ago couldn't pick up low, non metallic boats in rough seas (typical seas you got South of Aus) unless we put up something metal on a pole. How that relates to wreckage - no reading ? but happy to be corrected.

The SATCOM installation in 9M-MRO?
 

What model of SATCOM system was installed in this Aircraft. I haven't heard anything from Boeing or The SATCOM installer since this all began. I understand INMARSATs calculations but does the SATCOM system, have any more to it than we know.
If say for example the ADIRU Position speed heading data info sent to the SATCOM for the BSU Beam steering Unit. If the info was cut or missing, what would happen to the gear?
Would it work based on its last SPEED and HEADING input ie. stored in some type of buffer. Or would the system read an error and park the Antenna ( if it was a mechanical type) or just freeze the position say in a modern phased array type antenna?
We need to hear Avionics SATCOM techos out there people who work on the gear. Anyone know brand of gear it was, Rockwell Collins, Honeywell ?

It would seem that air in the fuel tanks brought down MH377

With the approximate final location now known, has it been confirmed which agency will lead the investigation once AMSA has completed the search?

That footage was taken in a hurricane. Going by the BOM.gov.au sea/swell forecast charts, conditions appear relatively OK for todays search.


Last light in the general search area is at around 1230Z tonight, unfortunately coinciding with what looks like the last window of reasonable weather for some time.

Regarding the radar search...

The track spacing in poorer sea conditions has to be tighter, resulting in less area covered in the visual search. As the sea state increases, search radar like they have on the P3 must be brought down closer to the surface, resulting in decreased range and less efficient coverage.

So here's hoping they can pick up something of interest again this afternoon, pass it to a surface vessel and actually get some hard evidence.

Like many people I have been rather skeptical of the data produced by
Inmarsat in which they claimed that the a/c flew along or near to the
"southern" arc produced by signal levels of the hourly pings.
I could see how they might deduce the arc , but not how they could tell if
the signals were north or south of the equator.
Of course all this assumed that , as was mentioned in the media Inmarsat at
63 degs was used [ 5 Flight 1 ]....but the system aboard MH370 was older and
didnt use GPS.
Then I suddenly realised that not only was the system old , but so was the
satellite.
These non GPS signals are sent via Inmarsat 3F1 at 64.18 east....not 62.7
east.
Not only that , but 3F1 launchedd in 1996 , is inclined by 1.6697
degs....so wobbles above and below the geo arc in an extended figure of 8
pattern every 24 hours.
INMARSAT 3-F1
1 23839U 96020A 14082.92914473 -.00000008 00000-0 10000-3 0 2891
2 23839 1.6697 73.1023 0005489 286.4812 220.7448 1.00274299 65821

At the time the flight took off the sat was 1 deg 11 mins N of the equator
.Three hours later it was at the top of its wobble one deg 40 minutes....and
by 2240 GMT it was back around one deg 11 minutes....having travelled around
the top of the figure of eight.
This gave Inmarsat the third refrence to allow a very approximate idea of where
the signal was coming from....and put it in the southern corridor , not the
northern.

Ref 1 the signals from MH370
Ref 2 the doppler from the wobbling satellite and the moving aircraft
Ref 3 the calculated behaviour of a signal from a "known" a/c within the
footprint of Inmarsat

Hardly cutting edge science...more basic orbital mechanics , but probably
the first time they have used the technique

All geostationery satellites move around a bit but are kept in position by
the operators station keeping.
As they get older they start to wobble more as the fuel runs out and to
extend their life , the operators carry out fewer regular burns.
Even the most stable geo sats. those we get our tv from , move
You can see this movement in the 80 minute time lapse video I took about
ten years ago of a group of TV satellites
http://www.satcom.freeserve.co.uk/hbs1a.GIF
The dots are the satellites 36,000 km out in space the streaks are stars
which appear to move due to the rotation of Earth


So there we are....thats probably how they did it.
No doubt someone from Inmarsat will correct me on some of the finer points....but these are the basics.

Of course , Inmarsat tracked the device emitting the ping....not
necessarilly MH370......but odds are the two were together.

It appears that MH370 had a Swift64 terminal onboard (or possibly an older Aero-H or H+ terminal), not one of the latest SwiftBroadband terminals according to this blog. Classic Aero Services.

Regardless of the cause, this incident has sparked considerable debate about commercial flights.


Should the passenger emergency air be able to maintain life in a decompression at the maximum altitude achievable by the aircraft?

Should cabin crew have enough endurance in their portable air to stabilise passengers, then react and enter cockpit if during a decompression the flight crew are non responsive?

Should the cabin crew have independent means of communicating with the ground, a comms system that can't be turned off in the cockpit?

Should low cost PLBs be available for deployment by cabin crew and passengers?
If there were a dozen PLBs onboard and none were deployed after an accident this would speak to probable survivability.

Is a live camera view of the cockpit that can be viewed by cabin crew or passengers out of the question?


After watching a well produced documentary a few days ago about the Qantas A380 that suffered a runaway engine, I am of the view that both passengers and crew are distancing ourselves from the perils of flying at 500 knots at 35000ft over hostile terrain in a machine controlled by a computer.

Pilots can't see even their engines or control surfaces, in the case of the A380 an action list that took 45 minutes to scroll through, cabin crew somewhat isolated from pilots and 600 lives at stake. The pilot commented that he was very fortunate to have a spare pilot on the flight deck who could go back and report on what the hell had happened, in the meantime copilot worked his way through the onscreen warnings, but with no way of knowing how many pages of warnings there were and how long it would take to get through them.

MickJoeBill,

I don't think this incident raises ANY of those questions..... YET. How about we just see what comes out of the investigation.

That would make the safety demonstration very interesting - by the time you have shown 300+ pax how to don pressurised masks and then how to breathe through them, you'd be at your destination.

And just how long would you plan on being able to sustain life for at FL400 with no cabin pressure? Where would you store all the extra oxygen that would require?

MickJoeBill
Is a live camera view of the cockpit that can be viewed by cabin crew or passengers out of the question?

Or recordings via a secure link that cannot be turned off in flight manually, with its own independent power supply, collected data to be stored at a central base then deleted at an appropriate time subject to any events being recorded that may require future investigation.

@F14

Highly unlikely that 238 pax then sat about for 7 hours without attempting and succeeding in breaking down the door to the Flight Deck and/or communicating with ground via alternate means.... Confident there were at least 238 operational cell phones/tablets and other such devices on board.

More importantly and this is an answer a MH crew member would give as to what is the protocol followed by that carrier when one of the crew leaves the deck for a leak....

As in all accidents post the human tragedy it is important the cause is determined to avoid re occurrence.

Mountain snake,

What about the humble fisherman at Kota Bahru? Anyone actually discounted his police report yet. Was the Kota Bahru Airport still open at 1:30 am. It says on wiki it closes at 12:00 midnight and may stay open for delayed departures.

I fact there were multiple sightings on the North Malaysian. Coast Gulf of Thailand.

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/...essages/129362

It seems to me that we've relied to much on technology, to get to the current search zone and there seems to be a total discount of what these people saw.

The majority of air accidents are seen or heard first technology comes second.

Don't discount the Mark 1 eyeball!!

@Uncle Fred
this is pretty close to the current conditions, 4-5m swell in the southern ocean. Vessel is 95m long. Think the current winds are a little stronger then this day

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9G-QxYXE4I

It's not so much the swell that's a problem for searching but the sea and rain.

Swell in that area is usually generated by sub-polar lows or tropical cyclones to the North. It travels thousands of kilometres from origin. The weather at any mid-latitude is mostly unrelated to the swell.

In a previous career I monitored and reported on sea and swell in the Western Australian littoral - particularly off Perth and in the North-West.

This a question I have been asking from the outset and no one, as far as I know, has come up with an answer.

We know the FO had invited passengers on to the flight deck.

Based on that I would expect either:

a. Someone to admit that the FO had done this frequently.

b. Admit that several pilots did this from time to time.

c. Admit the company knew the FO had done this and issued him a formal warning.

d. Deny they knew the FO had done this.

e. Admit the door was left open routinely when one left the flight deck.

f. Deny the door was left open routinely when one left the flight deck.

Now I don't hold with the conspiracy theorists but this is a strange thing that as far as I know MAS has made no such statement.

g. We might also ask he the Captain and FO flown together previously? We know the FO was a recent convert to the 777 so we may deduce that any previous flight together was either in the distant past (737) or recently (777).

Now that is a conspiracy of silence or just plain lack of thought.

F14 highly unlikely the FO or Captain couldn't get back in. Without going into details you can gain access UNLESS the person inside doesn't want you to.

The people that need to know the code, know the code.

@ Pontius
 

Good points regarding protocol. I would expect the company to deny all points and even if management had addressed the issues, that would be between the flight crew and management and not to be aired in public as dirty laundry and under normal circumstances I would agree. However MAS probably need to be seen as being proactive and show internal audits are in place to re-assure customers.
Put quite simply, it is cost prohibitive to have an extra crew member for each flight so if it MH370 turns out to be anything other than a catastrophic failure, then other measures probably need to looked at. As you say, we learn from mistakes.