ACARS and MH ?
 

Know next to nothing on this stuff (tho hugely interested) but plenty about Malayisan Work practices. Seems to me that lack of ACARS is a key part of the mystery, is it possible/conceivable that MH have not been collecting/monitoring it properly and/or have lost it ? If that were the case and ACARS data was being transmitted, just not received, it would change the whole picture wouldn't it ? Might also explain the concern about not getting the whole story at the press events.

@Onetrack
Not necessarily. Because those involved mght have been on a watch list so that explains unsing fake travel documents.

BREAK-UP AT ALTITUDE vs INTACT ON IMPACT WITH THE SEA
 

Pure speculation here, but if the aircraft had broken up in-flight at its cruising altitude would not wreckage be spread over a very much larger area and consequently be more likely to be spotted quickly, compared to the concentrated wreckage field which would result if the aircraft had impacted the sea more-or-less intact?

Because they don't know. The issue of radar coverage is rather complex:

Civilian ATC is used to monitor and control civilian airspace. It uses two types of radars - Primary Surveillance Radar (PSR) and Secondary Surveillance Radar (SSR). The first is a physical 'echo' from any object within range (as already discussed, that is typically 60NM), the second is essentially a two-way radio communication between two computers using an interrogation - response protocol. Most of the world (except the deep ocean regions and some very remote land areas) are covered by SSR, but PSR is typically based at major airports to cover the surrounding airspace. The information from both sources are displayed on ATC radar screens, and in an area with dual coverage an aircraft with no transponder signal will show up as an unidentified blip on the screen. However in areas with only SSR, aircraft with no transponder signal will not show up.

When MH370 'disappeared from radar', the transponder signal was lost. But that does not immediately equate to anything happening with the aircraft, it just means that there is no transponder response. This is why Malaysian ATC tried for another hour to contact the aircraft, and only when it should have been visible to Vietnamese PSR did they raise the alarm that something was amiss.

Military radar in normal peacetime works the opposite way. Rather than controlling civilian airspace, it just monitors it, with a real-time data link to civilian ATC. On military monitors the known and identified targets are blanked out, so observers can focus on any unidentified targets. Thus military radar would not have monitored MH370, and if in the few seconds between loss of transponder signal and descent below observable height an unidentified blip would have appeared, that would have likely gone unnoticed. In all such cases it is a lengthy reconstruction process to retrieve the primary military radar data (which may first need to be 'weeded' to remove traces of any hush-hush activity), then match all targets with known and identified aircraft before anything may be said with any certainty.

I'm sure this is being done as we speculate in vain. In such cases the radar manufacturer may also be involved to attempt to amplify any possible weak signals that would have been filtered out as background noise by the processing software, but would still be recorded within the primary raw data. Naturally this takes time measurable in days or weeks, and is usually done as a part of an investigation process if no other sources are available to reconstruct the last moments of an aircraft.

Yes, spread over larger - no, for spotted more quickly

If the debris is all together the visibility would by better from the air as it would be a large dark anomalie in water.

To find a single part, as large as a rubber boat, in an area as large as, flying at probably 7000 feet or higher, is almost impossible.

Apart from this, think on all the rubbish cargo ships tend to loose all over the place. This reminds me on a movie i was just watching, "all is lost" with Robert Redford. Unless you put a big light on, no one will find you.

acoustic locator beacon
 

These acoustic locator beacon is are not that powerful!

Detection range at 200ft water-deph is only around 3000 meters.

I am not a SAR Expert but i think these Locators are not intended to be received by airborn search-teams but rather by ships, divers or subs.

By law they need to be able to transmit for at least 30 days.....

Pinkman, the WSJ article links to the same photo of the 'window panel' that we have already seen, could be any piece of unrelated floating debris (eg. some large piece of Styrofoam packaging). Until it is retrieved and confirmed as an aircraft part, it's no new information.

A positive search result would likely reveal a debris field rather than isolated pieces, the sea had been calm over the past 2 days.

Also by now looking for any oil slick would be rather futile. While thicker than petrol, aviation kerosene is still rather volatile, a thin surface film of it would have evaporated by now with 30C+ daytime air temperatures.

@andrasz

What limits primary radar to a range of "typically 60NM"? I mean, the distance to the horizon at FL350 is over 200NM, so is the range typically limited by sensitivity, or noise and clutter at low angles of elevation?

Aircraft can drop passive sonobouys which will detect the locator beacon.


The P3 carries about 100 of them in rotary dispensers. They can be set for depth and 2, 4 and 8 hour endurance but, in this scenario where you are looking for a short range transmission, you would set them for the shortest life so as not to block up the transmission channels to the aircraft.


Also temperature, salinity and thermal profile of the water will greatly decrease or increase the distance at which an acoustic beacon can be detected, you just need to search both above and below the isothermal layer.


Hope that helps.

Anti-Sub aircrafts are able to deploy so called sonarbuoys to collect accustic signals...

I would not bet on this. One of the learnings of September 11, was for USAF to join the tactical and civil radar systems into one. Until Sept 11, US civil and military radar system were separated!

Swiss civil and military (tactical) radar is merged too. Civil or military ATC can initiate a scramble of F/A-18s.

And looks like Malaysian Air force seem to have more radar data than they currently disclose. All they say is that they are analyzing data.

A Singapore Sub operating near the Malaysian east coast [at the time?] at 30/70m water depth?

He is pulling your leg lah.

You obviously don't know the sensitive dynamic between Malaysia and Singapore.

flyboy328, You're right.
Seems like people always confuse the ELT's with the acoustic locater beacons. Two different things. One's for locating an aircraft lost on land, the other is for one lost on water. One uses radio, and the other uses sound.

Ex-ATCO input.

Airfield search radars do not need to operate at long range: 60 or so will suffice.
Military and Civil Area control radars used to work out to much longer ranges - up to 120/150 in my day.
Air Defence radars work to even longer (classified) ranges.
Those are primary radar ranges ... SSR coverage will be similar.

As noted (and illustrated in a link) previously, Malaysian coastal (Air Defence?) radars reached almost to the Vietnam coastline at the FLs we are looking at.

It is probably worthwhile noting that elt beacons are not the same as the underwater beacons attached to the CVR/FDR or similar. The former has a totally different frequency range (not sure about its water penetration and a quick search was shy to talk about max depths) and a much shorter battery life I.e. http://v5.books.elsevier.com/booksca...0750681377.pdf and the underwater beacons can work for over a month at up to 6 km deep (if that is the rating the reality might be better) http://rjeint.com/pdf/DK120.PDF plus the methods of activation are different. I don't know how rugged they are, if there was a colossal explosion or impact in flight, as to whether they would survive no matter what the spec sheets may imply.

Well if these flotsam snaps and location charts are to be believed and they would need to have seen them close up, not from 1000's then it looks like the doomed airliner hardly turned around but headed 40degs port in it's dying minutes. Hope they keep floating long enough til first light and get some part/serial numbers of the bits.

US NBC news report says that these items are not from MH370. Not the further information that we had hoped to hear.

From the Washington Post, the sequentially issued tickets to the two individuals with the stolen passports were sold by a travel agent in Pattaya Thailand. No information on routing from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur. Subsequent itinerary was Kuala Lumpur to Beijing to Amsterdam. At Amsterdam, one individual booked to Copenhagen, the other to Frankfurt. Seems like a circuitous routing to their final destination.

Would not immigration officials at Schiphol receive a passenger manifest of the incoming flight, and check that manifest against a database of reported passport losses, and identify that individual for special attention on entry?

SaturnV ... Depends on how intelligent the false passport bearers are, and what story they were told by the passport producer/seller as they handed over large numbers of baht.

Many illegals get picked up at passport checks ... that doesn't stop others following the same route, losing their money in the process.