ACARS. Data was transmitted by VHF only; it stopped. There was an active aerial for the satellite phone, which continued (handshake) pings.

The China Rubber raft pings
 

There were initial reports that some of the first video releases of the china pings found via a fishing rod and rubber raft and mike in the water also showed on one side a hand held transmitter set on freq. Later video supposedly had cropped that potion out. :O


And as I recall- some sort of surface search for debris was made in that same area by a few ships before moving to the more north ( current ) area.

chinese pings
 

sampublis


I recall that HMS Echo was working in concert with the Chinese Ping ship. For a number of days.

I am sure someone can "cull" the reports to verify, or take my word.

JACC Media release:

Media Release
7 April 2014—am
Up to nine military planes, three civil planes and 14 ships will assist in today's search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
The search area is expected to be approximately 234,000 square kilometres.
Good weather is expected throughout the day with showers in the afternoon although this is not expected to affect the search.
ADV Ocean Shield is continuing investigations in its own area.
HMS Echo is en route to assist the Chinese vessel Haixun 01, which detected pulse signals in the Indian Ocean.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau continues to refine the area where the aircraft entered the water based on continuing ground-breaking and multi-disciplinary technical analysis of satellite communication and aircraft performance, passed from the international air crash investigative team comprising analysts from Malaysia, the United States, the UK, China and Australia.

I don't know if Malaysia has any satellite experts but have no doubt they have some very competent mathematicians & electronics ppl in their universities etc, the same applies to the other nations plus satellite experience.

Three of the nations UK China and Australia, have no direct involvement with MAH370, so there is plenty of independent experts on the board, so why all the continuing clamour for the data to be released?

For the same reason intelligent educated parents take their children to quacks when medical science fails them. We believe there is an answer to everything and for some people the "wrong" answer is better than no answer.

Not too long ago we would have blamed gods for such a mysterious disappearance.

I believe they will find the plane, whether there's anything approaching a widely-accepted explanation is another matter.

Sorry to disagree but in India a/c take off from airbase in just seconds(not minutes) and recently couple of times it proved right.

What controllers do is legally constrained. When a controller hands an aircraft to another agency particularly an agency in another jurisdiction/country there is a legal document called a Memorandum of Understanding that lays down precisely what the controllers each side of the boundary do on transfer of control and what legal responsibilities each controller and service provider have and how they will be enforced. This is why controllers always follow the regulations (the book). Once MH370 had been handed to Ho Chi Minh then Subang had zero responsibility to do anything. But more than that they were required to do NOTHING as it really confuses things if everyone and their dog starts getting involved bending rules because they think that they can help. Always ONE agency is the one with responsibility and in this case the agency was Ho Chi Minh center. They would have asked Subang - 'Is MH370 still with you - he's not talking to me' (an extremely common occurrence). Subang would have made a call on their frequency to MH370 to see if the aircraft was still on their frequency and if no response would have told Ho Chi Minh - 'no he's not with me'. The assumption would have been that MH370 was NORDO and still en-route to Beijing.

Ho Chi Minh center would have then been trying everything to contact the aircraft - and this was their task and their responsibility - NOTHING to do with Subang center.

This is the way the rules are defined. That is why [donning tin foil hat] it is said that this was an ideal place to break out of the system and stop cooperating with the surveillance systems. For a flight emergency to occur at precisely that moment is possible but highly improbable.

@ Ian W (25 May 15:25) and related posts:

Certainly the "one agency" only component of the way in which air traffic control and airspace management is handled across international borders as well as over international waters is as Ian W's post has stated it. At the same time, does not this situation call for asking a broader question? Particularly: is the current structure anything like optimum? Taking all the constraints of cost, international relations, and inertia of "the way things have been done for a long time now" into account, does "the System" actually accept this state of affairs as the best that can be done? Obviously by System I mean the web of ICAO (and IATA as well, probably) standards and recommended practices, subject matter MOUs, and presumably other components.

The several well-informed posts on interceptor scramble schemes and related costs seem incontrovertibly dependent for their pertinence on the observation that someone should have recognized the loss of contact sooner. But if the lost contact - and I hate to use a botched-up cliche, but it fits - "fell through the cracks", is it not a fair and reasonable inquiry to say "hey, is this as good as the System can do?", or are we left with, when reduced to simplest terms, a shrug, and an acceptance that this apparent gap in air traffic control and airspace management will be allowed to persist?

"Gaps" exist everywhere as far as human activities are concerned, specially the regulatory environment, few countries have resources to design systems that are prepared for the worst conditions or most unlikely scenarios, nobody builds levee that can withstand one-per-hundred years floods, only what you can reasonably expect short term, so to lament about "gaps" is simply like lamenting about strong earthquakes or some cataclysm. By the way, MH370 doesn't even register on a scale of importance where gaps should/could be mended.

Quote: "MH370 doesn't even register on a scale of importance where gaps should/could be mended." On the premise that the important gaps you contend can and should be mended would be off-topic, I'm asking just whether any of the gaps to which you refer - if they were fixed - would indirectly help resolve a situation such as this? Of course I'm also curious about the complete assessment you only encapsulated, but whether it would drift the thread, it's hard to know.

Ian W

Succinct and 100%.

Iam W " totally correct , it is how it is done and I would even argue how it SHOULD be done.

WillowRun 6-3 : You have to realise hat the current system works extremely well , it is based on years of global experience and cover all cases to 1 to the minus 9 .

It is indeed frustrating for everyone not to understand what happenned, but most of us believe it was most probably a deliberate act by someone who knew exactly what he ( or they) were doing.
I do not think changing ATC ,SAR or military regulations will prevent another case like this to happen again.

ATSB Info
 

The ATSB has established a sub-site for search info at
MH370

ATSB Report
 

http://www.atsb.gov.au/media/5205507..._FactSheet.pdf

The last ACARS message received contained the fuel remaining...

It will take at least another month to get the ACARS data.

Thanks VME. That first fact sheet is fascinating reading.

It appears Inmarsat have been looking at these techniques since AF447. Certainly the range from the satellite stuff anyway. The doppler derived estimated of course and speed may have been more recent.

They have the fuel remaining at time of last ACARS. From this they believe fuel exhaustion would have occurred close to the last handshake.

And they seem to think last handshake was logon request from aircraft, consistent with aircraft equipment powering up - possibly following fuel exhaustion. So that fits with fuel calculations.

They also believe aircraft was descending at this time.

Intriguingly, they quote that study (Russian from memory) that suggests that in loss of control accidents the aircraft is usually found within 20NM of the last known position. So is there a suggestion they believe there was loss of control at the end - as opposed to a long glide from altitude and a controlled ditching.

Lots of independent validation, which is reassuring.

No, no Russian study, they talk about Air France case and some work done in that case :E
There is no clear suggestion about whether it was loss of control or not.

From Considerations on defining the search area - MH370 :
Figure 4: MH370 timing (UTC) with corresponding rings arrowed
http://www.atsb.gov.au/media/4898475...gs_500x488.jpg

The center of each ring has to be the Inmarsat 3F1 Lat and Long at the time of the ring. How could they be concentric with the sat moving north-south?

Arcs, handshakes, and satellite
 

on the scale shown, the movement of the satellite would not be apparent:ugh:

And no doubt the other side of the rings showon would be thru area 51 !!

Alternatively, projecting the circles onto a sphere may be making them look more concentric than they are.