Low Flyer
Which explains why this particular boat was chosen. It is the sole member of its class that has not been retrofitted with the new sonar systems. So the 'ears' of those listening will be listening to history - and the only information is that whatever they hear, the new kit is better. :cool:

It's perfectly reasonable to try to find some debris, logical to listen for the recorders' pingers while they work, but why search further, exactly, with hardly a clue to location?

I don't believe for one moment the wrong kind of fire in the wrong place at the wrong time caused this aircraft to "disappear". Therefore I will step aboard certain B777s as usual. Rightly or wrongly.

I don't mind paying tax for RNZAF Orions, usually searching for lost yachties, but if we're going to be paying more for airline tickets the money would be better spent on safety, not satisfying curiosity, however nice that feels.

JoeBloggs2 Technology has moved on a little bit in the last 20+ years... :cool:


True for signal processing and batteries, but AUVs that can run a long distance (greater than 100km at a stretch) side scan sonar profiling run don't exist currently, at least afaik.
Constructing and then co-ordinating the fleet, keeping them on course to ensure gapless coverage, recovering them reliably to recharge/refuel them in challenging weather and then integrating the results is a novel task, one that would take years to do.
It would be quicker and cheaper to use chartered oil survey vessels, they exist in quantity, their operating costs are well known and they have the needed skills.

I have not seen posted here the fact that whilst the JACC has only minimal search information available on the media page, you can still access the search maps for the day from AMSA. Today's area is approx 1,000km WNW of Exmouth - one does wonder what the "further refinements of calculations" are revealing!

https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws....ch_handout.pdf

Aviation aircraft Hull & Liability insurance policies have an exclusion in their policies called "War, Hi Jacking and other Perils"....meaning the policy does not cover any of these acts.

Prior to 9/11 if the insurance market was soft insurance companies threw "War coverage" in for free but if the market was hard they charged for it...I am guessing after 9/11 you can not buy back "War coverage" it's just automatically not covered due to the catastrophic loss of 4 airlines/countless buildings in NYC.

Meaning "hi jacking" (criminal act) would now fall under this Montreal convention act that yyzjim is talking about limiting the liability of payouts to the families. Also the pay outs would be deflected back to the Malaysian airport security which if its like the US and most countries is run by the govt and here you can not sue the govt. It's possible that Malaysian airlines does have "war coverage" in their aviation hull & liability policy and this is the direction they are going in to get the insurance companies to pay all liability suits.

I think the malaysian govt/airline have had their lawyers manipulating the public/media purposely from day on for financial reasons.

Where did FL295 come from?
I've only seen one image of the radar information and that showed not a waypoint at O2.22 but a RADIAL295 200nms from Butterworth[

1. The pings tell us that almost without a doubt the plane flew until fuel exhaustion.
2. The only possible way for a ditching to occur with the plane remaining intact is if it was under the control of a pilot. Without flaps the speed would be too high to allow the plane to stay intact.

Getting the plane ditched intact would also require luck, lots of it, in an open ocean ditching. The planning behind this episode appears to be methodical - leaving the final chapter up to luck seems out of place in this episode.

I can't imagine anyone sitting around for 5 to seven hours just to dead stick a plane into ocean swells in the hopes of a repeat of the Hudson river landing, and if a person were to attach importance to trying to keep the plane in one piece, they would want to have the engines running when he or she tried the ditching. So this argues against flying to fuel exhaustion.

I believe the plane broke up and there are floating debris. I also believe that without floating debris, there is no place to even begin a seafloor search.

You can expect the search area to move as the surface search is looking for debris that is drifting in ocean currents and with the wind. It looks like they have settled on a crash 'point' or area, but not so much on debris drift and will be making very careful overlapping but not conincident searches

One gets the impression from the jumping search areas that they are targeting areas based on satellite photos of possible surface debris again.

Presumably there have been enough clear days now to have captured the entire region in high res.

Low Flier, :ok::ok:

A very refreshing breath of fresh air after wading through pages and pages of unmitigated rubbish.

I am involved with marine seismic operations and had done some back-of-the-envelope calculations about likely search times, but refrained from posting because of my lack of knowledge of deep-tow operations. It's nice to see someone with professional experience (and a sense of humour) posting some useful information.

It's an ironic coincidence that we in the SOL fleet have just sailed though the search area.

etudiant,

Sorry. Not in a million years. There ain't no oil under them there abyssal plains!

You are talking about the known ranges of the ATC radars. The track was created from a military radar, the ranges and capabilities are not public. And if we take a close look on the shown radar plot we will see no other traffic on it, which means it is an edited picture showing the assumed track of MH370 over a period of time, not one sweep, but multiple antenna sweeps put together.

A military PSR radar with a radar coverage of 60 NM would be useless, as incoming hostiles tend to fly with the transponder in off position. 60NM are covered in less than 7 Minutes at 540 groundspeed and would not allow for appropriate action.

Edit: Found this article:

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/s...-kua-kia-soong

primary radar Langkawi
 

I dont know....But i found this old article from 2000 that mentions radar there...." To date a total of 5 primary and secondary radars have been installed at Kutching, Kota Kinabalu, Johor, Subang, Langkawi, Labuan and sepang airports"..
New Straits Times - Google News Archive Search

Australian radar and the new search area....Interesting.
 

The Australian OTHR radar coverage and the new search area is starting to tell an interesting story...

The fact that Australia has more or less taken over the search with a military team, is also starting to make sense....

New search area



AND...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...x-JORS.svg.png

Not in quantity - I'm not aware of any that are equpped to do sonar surveys at these kind of depths, although there might be a few in the Gulf of Mexico, Brazil and West Africa, using either deep-tow vehicles or AUVs.

The majority of the world's "oil survey vessels" are seismic vessels, which are completely unsuited for this kind of work.

@Irish21


I work in that area and from an insurance point of view location of wreckage in the area they are presently searching would be more beneficial to claimants than if it were found along MH370's intended course or somewhere along the Northern arc.

Fair sky
 

The flight level of 295 in the Malacca Strait was reported early by sources such as Reuters. I'm posting one such article here though it is very old now.

Since there's been no confirmation, and since Daud retracted some of the statements attributed to him, this is possibly now one more item to move to the "unconfirmed" basket in this frustrating case.

UPDATE 1-Missing Malaysian plane last seen at Strait of Malacca-source | Reuters

DocRohan - The CSIRO animated graphic is neat - but it's simplistic. The currents only play a major part in the movement of floating wreckage when the current is the primary controlling input.
For that to happen, the wreckage would have to be almost totally submerged for the prevailing winds to have little effect on its movement.
Light floating wreckage would be affected more by wind direction and strength, than by prevailing currents.

The prevailing winds in the South part of the Eastern Indian Ocean, during the Southern Hemisphere Spring & Summer (September to February by calculation, but more like late October to late March due to the heat latency of the Earth), are weakly Westerly, swinging from NW through West to SW - and occasionally, South for short periods.
In Winter, the prevailing winds are strongly Westerly, with strong swings to the NW and SW.

As we are in the early stages of Autumn (Fall), the prevailing winds have been relatively weak, due to the transition through the Summer equinox.

Therefore, the movement of light floating wreckage (seat cushions, light plastics and resins) will still be largely Easterly in the lower latitudes (30 deg and further South), but somewhat Westerly to stationary in the Northern latitudes above 30 deg, due to the still-strong Easterly surface movement of air from the Northern parts of Australia, out into the Indian Ocean.

The heavier, largely-submerged wreckage would be mostly travelling in the prevailing current direction, unless a strong storm pushed it Eastwards.
We have had no particularly strong storms in the Southern Indian Ocean search region since the search commenced there, so the heaviest portions of wreckage will be following the currents and eddies in the search region - whilst the lightest portions would almost certainly be nearing, or on, the West Australian coast somewhere.

Despite the strong Leeuwin Current (3kts) running North to South down the West Australian coast, it doesn't stop vast amounts of flotsam and jetsam being washed ashore regularly from the Easternmost section of the Indian Ocean.

Quite right. Malaysians are not Americans:

I am sure they have and the witch hunt will have started weeks ago. As you said, they are not Americans given to washing dirty linen in public.

What may be true is that the government hasn't been very enthusiastic in its media releases regarding the search. The Australians have shown the most vigor in its media releases.

Is most likely as not a cultural thing.

One thing about this incident is that it should teach us a little more humility.
A month has passed and we cannot find any trace of an object that when it was last seen was 200ft long 200ft wide and 60 ft high, using pretty much all our latest technology the answer is zilch, not a trace.

That is not to say we will not find it but in terms of inhospitable areas it seems to be perfect , Southern India Ocean is very deep with a turbulent surface conditions and a very tricky 'mountainous' sea bed. Even if some smaller wreckage elements are washed up how long before they are found on one of the longest most desolate and isolated coastlines on earth sea bed.

That 'loss of control' seems to have fed something of a media frenzy and that to a degree is replicated here. Much of the focus is on cover ups and subterfuge perhaps because it seems too un nerving to consider that in 2014 something the size of a modest apartment block could just disappear , at lest for a month.

In terms of finding anything , always assuming we are looking in the right part of the world anyway, it can only be described as very difficult. The sea bed in that area is not used for exploration , no telecom cables transit that region and it is of virtually no strategic interest to any nation even the Aussies. For those reasons no one knows much about it compared to other oceans and seas where oil exploration, deep sea mining or telecom cables mean extensive work has been done on sub sea and sea floor conditions.

Even if some evidence is found tomorrow we should use this to remind us that we are not masters of our own planet let alone the universe. Perhaps a few second thoughts too about some of the more exotic long haul routings that we take for granted these days too.

What the Airline CEO has to say.
 

This was posted on Malaysia Airline's page:


Saturday, April 05, 06:06 PM MYT +0800 Malaysia Airlines MH370 Flight Incident - Press Briefing by Hishammuddin Hussein, Minister of Defence and Acting Minister of Transport

1. Introduction

It’s been almost a month since MH370 went missing.

The search operation has been difficult, challenging and complex.

In spite of all this, our determination remains undiminished.

We will continue the search with the same level of vigour and intensity.

We owe this to the families of those on board, and to the wider world.

We will continue to focus, with all our efforts, on finding the aircraft.

2. Investigation into MH370

As per the requirements set out by the ICAO in Annex 13 of the International Standards and Recommended Practices, Malaysia will continue to lead the investigation into MH370.

As per the ICAO standards, Malaysia will also appoint an independent ‘Investigator In Charge’ to lead an investigation team.

The investigation team will include three groups:

- an airworthiness group, to look at issues such as maintenance records, structures and systems;

- an operations group, to examine things such as flight recorders, operations and meteorology;

- and a medical and human factors group, to investigate issues such as psychology, pathology and survival factors.

The investigation team will also include accredited countries.

Malaysia has already asked Australia to be accredited to the investigation team, and they have accepted.

We will also include China, the United States, the United Kingdom and France as accredited representatives to the investigation team, along with other countries that we feel are in a position to help.

3. Formation of committees

In addition to the new investigation team mentioned above, the Government - in order to streamline and strengthen our on-going efforts - has established three ministerial committees.

Firstly, we have established a Next of Kin Committee. Hamzah Zainuddin, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, leads this committee.

This committee will oversee all aspects regarding the Next of Kin of those on board MH370, providing families with information on the search operation, and offering support after the search operation has been concluded.

The committee will co-ordinate with relevant foreign governments, and will complement the work already being done for the families by Malaysian Airlines.

The second committee oversees technicalities, specifically, the formation and the appointment of the investigation team. Abdul Aziz Kaprawi, the Deputy Minister of Transport, leads this committee.

The third committee takes over issues related to the deployment of assets for the search operation. Abdul Rahim Bakri, the Deputy Minister of Defence, leads this committee. This committee will work with foreign counterparts involved in the search operation, and liaise closely with the Australian Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre.

4. US-ASEAN Defence Forum

This morning, I returned from the US-ASEAN Defence Forum, which I attended in my capacity as Defence Minister.

At the forum, I updated our ASEAN counterparts, and the United States, on the latest developments in the search for MH370.

I also spoke to officials from other countries involved in the multi-national search operation.

The spirit of co-operation at the meeting, and the support offered, was commendable.

During my bilateral meeting with US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Secretary Hagel reiterated his commitment that the United States would continue to support the search operation, and will provide whatever assets are deemed necessary.

I thanked Secretary Hagel for the United States’ unwavering support, which has included both the deployment of naval and air assets, sophisticated underwater search equipment, and assistance from the FBI, the NTSB and the FAA.

At the Forum, I also received strong support from our ASEAN partners in the search for MH370.

I would like to read out the joint statement issued by the ASEAN Ministers, which I believe underscores the tremendous spirit of co-operation within ASEAN, in the face of this difficult search operation:

“We, the Defence Ministers of the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations express our deepest sympathies to the family members of the passengers and crew on board the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

We acknowledge that the member nations of ASEAN have participated in the search operations directly and indirectly since the plane went missing on 8th March 2014.

From the South China Sea, the Andaman Sea to the Indian Ocean - ASEAN has continued to assist in every way possible, true to the spirit of regional cooperation and friendship without any hesitation in sharing of information, assets and expertise.

We believe that Malaysia has done its level best in its response to this unprecedented predicament given the sheer scale of the Search and Rescue (SAR) operation which is the biggest and most complex we have ever seen.

We reaffirm our commitment for greater cooperation between each member nationespecially in the field of disaster management under the framework of the ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response. This incident stressed upon us the importance of information and resource sharing as we strive to be in the utmost state of readiness in mitigating potential calamities and risks.

ASEAN’s unity will remain solid and is totally committed to assisting Malaysia in coordinating this massive SAR to locate MH370. We are resolute in finding a closure to this tragic chapter in aviation history. Our thoughts and prayers remain with the families in these difficult times.”

5. Concluding remarks

Before I end, let me touch on some unfounded allegations made against Malaysia.

These allegations include the extraordinary assertion that Malaysian authorities were somehow complicit in what happened to MH370.

I should like to state, for the record, that these allegations are completely untrue.

As I have said before, the search for MH370 should be above politics.

And so I call on all Malaysians to unite; to stand by our armed forces as they work in difficult conditions, with their foreign counterparts, thousands of miles from home; and to support all those who are working tirelessly in the search for MH370.

---

Lastly, as I mentioned on Wednesday, while I was at the US-ASEAN Defence Forum, I spoke by telephone to the British Secretary of State for Defence, Phillip Hammond, regarding the nuclear-powered submarine HMS Tireless.

I hereby confirm that the submarine is now in the search area and helping in the search operation.

I shall now invite the Chief of the Defence Force to update you on the submarine’s capabilities.

-ENDS-