RichardC10

'South of Greenland' would be about 60 degrees North. The search area is 40 degrees South. I wouldn't expect to see ice at 40 degrees North - would you expect to see it at 40 degrees South?

The" fire bottle " is more likely to be part of a scuba rebreather apparatus. See previous posts!!

In reply to the post that suggested the debris could be from Yolanda, it doesn't look likely. Most of the debris still around from Yolanda would be bare wood.

Very little is painted in the Philippines, most of the people in the affected areas would spend what little they have on rice and fish rather than paint.

Most of the debris in the pictures looks white.

Location of Thai debris
 

Can anyone read the co-ords on these pictures ? I was wondering how close they are to the French debris.

Unless I'm mistaken, water temperature there is in the mid 50's F, 14 C, so it's probably not ice.

Data transmission – or not – from MH370?
 

1 This very interesting pprune blog has informed us many times that all forms of communications from the missing B777 were shut down at about the time that the aircraft left the airways leading to China.

2 But several pprune posts have also told us that there were hourly pings from the B777 until shortly before the time that it was estimated to have run out of fuel (7 hours or so).

3 This same pprune blog has sometimes told us that the 2 Rolls-Royce Trent engines throughout the flight sent coded performance data back to R-R – as this system cannot readily be disabled or was overlooked. (Most comments about R-R maintenance monitoring have been quickly deleted by the Mods. Watch this space!)

pprune blog quote:
So here are 3 simple questions:

1 What system & antenna aboard MH370 continued to send the pings?

2 What system & antenna aboard MH370 sent the R-R data engine monitoring data?

3 When did these two data streams cease?

In reply to the post that suggested the debris could be from Yolanda, it doesn't look likely. Most of the debris still around from Yolanda would be bare wood.

Very little is painted in the Philippines, most of the people in the affected areas would spend what little they have on rice and fish rather than paint.

Most of the debris in the pictures looks white.

"Can anyone read the co-ords on these pictures ?"

Blow them up, the co ords are just visible.

The a/c was fitted I believe with Satcom which can be used in real time to send back engine data etc or used as a Satphone. The data stream costs money and was not subscribed to by the airline however the Satphone was still available for use in an emergency & only cost the airline money if used.
The pings I believe were just the handshake, similar to your mobile phone, & were produced to establish a connection if needed. I have been wondering if the final "partial" ping was in fact generated when the power went down on the Satcom & was re established by the RAT say. ie maybe the system was trying to re establish contact after a power outage.

I'm probably being picky, but the 'pings' weren't really communication. No data was transferred. And they were actually initiated by the satellite rather than MH370. One of the satellite communications specialists would explain it far better than me, but basically the satellite routinely 'pings' the Satcom system on the aircraft to verify that it is still active, and the aircraft pings back to verify this.

There is no ice within a 1000 km of the search area. At least not ice fragments.

The furthest north Ice I know of was a fairly recent solitary iceberg off the coast of New Zealand in an extremely rare event.

Don't imagine you would find ice that far north at this time of year (end summer). Sea temperature in this region likely to be 14 degrees.

South Western Australia

The fairly high density of the debris suggests it is from a common source and recent. Stuff from Banda Aceh tsunami (in 2004) wouldn't still be floating around in close formation.

I wonder if drift analysis is going to be much use at this stage. They had debris within a few days with AF447, and even that didn't really help find the wreckage. After a couple of weeks? - and particularly when the search has been cancelled due to poor weather (mainly due to low cloud base, but there was also a high sea state).

Perhaps the main use of finding wreckage will be to confirm the plane is somewhere in the South Indian ocean. The nature of debris will perhaps help experts determine the nature of crash - controlled ditching or high speed entry.

Finding a body with a phone containing a message or video would be very helpful. I suspect this is very unlikely however.

Searching for the pingers seems a long shot given the area involved, the difficult location, and the time remaining. And thats assuming the damn things are working. I have the feeling they would have to be very lucky.

If this was a deliberate act, someone would have done a fair bit of research. Hypoxia, human physiology, altitude medicine, depth of Indian ocean, current information for this area, Australian SAR capabilities, shipping routes etc.

It would certainly be worth checking peoples computers for evidence of such searches. This would be easy for crew, but would obviously be difficult for the passengers.

Does anyone know if it is possible to search back in the reverse direction? Can you search Google for someone who has searched what would be an unusual collection of unrelated things? I guess this would be looking for a different needle in a different haystack. However everything is looking like a long shot right now.

Comparing to AF447
 

It doesn't matter how much 'debris' has been spotted if it's not MH370 its just debris.

25 days into AF447 SAR recovered 50 bodies and 640 items of actual debris.

Air France Flight 447 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Even the ethiopian hijack proves some debris should be prevalent on low impact or hi impact (AF447/Swiss 111)

20 days so far with Zero results. And this is in no way detriment to the brave expert men and women involved in this search.


I hope they have their coordinates right.

That sometimes happens in b&w images...

Does anyone know if it is possible to search back in the reverse direction? Can you search Google for someone who has searched what would be an unusual collection of unrelated things?

Yes, it is and it is rumored that all intelligence organizations do it permanently. You can also buy individually optimized placed ads on the market, based on traced behavior on the net. Just look at the marketing slides of Google Analytics and you get a first guess what is possible.

But the North Atlantic is not the South.

As someone pointed out, the last iceberg anywhere further north than normal
was a huge one off Christchurch, NZ a couple of years back.

Further to what I wrote a few postings ago, I realise if the Satphone was still available, ie it was "pinging" then the flight crew IF alive and wanting to establish contact would have known how to use it. As it was not used then it seems to indicate that this a/c was flying "a la Helios" Probably in Hdg mode, which was the last selection made by the flt crew. So did the crew turn the a/c initially towards Langawi a/f then South towards the r/w?. What I find perplexing is if the a/c went this way WHY? did Malaysian radar not pick it up, it was after all flying back towards central Malaysia and in fact passing abeam of KL. Very odd!! I believe the press should be asking for the complete primary radar trace.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

Ethiopian Airlines ditched close to a beach in broad daylight; it's exact position was known.
SR111 crashed a few miles offshore. It was heard by local residents and had been in contact with Halifax ATC until a few minutes previously. It's location was known with reasonable accuracy.
Even with AF447, the authorities knew what direction it was heading and the time of it's final ACARS communication; they had a pretty good idea where to start looking.

MH370 is quite different; it's route deviated from the flightplan, there were no communications with the aircraft and it's eventual routing can only be inferred. The search for it's remains is simply not comparable with the examples you quoted.

rubberband2
 

Answers:

1. The onboard SATCOM terminal

2. ACARS via one of the VHF transmitters.

3. The Rolls Royce data engine monitoring transmissions ceased when ACARS was disabled.

The SATCOM pings ceased at 08.11 with a partial 'handshake' shortly after.

Thai Sat pictures
 

It is written here Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: Thai satellite spots 300 objects - World - CBC News

objects found at about 200km from the French Sat. pictures

On the Bangkok Post published pictures here
Thai satellite has detected about 300 objects floating in the Indian Ocean near search area | Bangkok Post: breakingnews

I would say from what I can read 46.20 S//89 21 and 89 27 and /29E on three different pictures. Hard to read even when zooming.