How would that have made any difference?

The aircraft was off-track, not transmitting, and the only data that was subsequently able to give clues as to its possible whereabouts didn't emerge until weeks later.

What difference?
Maybe that areas which are now discarded could then have been searched and excluded as possible locations.
We still don't know for sure the aircraft flew the track it is said to have done.
We assume...

Today's Times (behind a paywall) says the following (in a story about the new sonar search about to start):I've seen nothing to suggest that anyone (particularly not the AAIB) any longer believes this to be a plausible theory. Have I missed something, or have The Times journos been at the sherry a bit early?

Underwater Search Now Set to Begin Oct. 5th or 6th

First MH370 deep search ship now due to be on site 5 October | Plane Talking


This is the tow fish that GO Phoenix will be equiped with.

SLH PS-60 Specs

Whitepaper

http://www.slhydrospheric.com/PS60_whitepaper.pdf


Fugro Discovery is nearing Fremantle where it will be paired with its own tow fish. This is the equipment it will be pulling.

2400: Deep Towed ? EdgeTech




EDIT: Video of Fugro Edgetech DT-1


http://media.watoday.com.au/news/wa-...0-5839201.html

It seems the underwater search has begun:
On Monday, 6 October 2014,GO Phoenix arrived in the vicinity of the search area and, following system checks and vehicle deployment, underwater search operations commenced on the 7th Arc. ( MH370 Operational Search Update?<br>08*October*2014 )

There is also an update about the search area: http://www.atsb.gov.au/media/5163181...ysisUpdate.pdf with some new (from my memory!) infos:
At 1707, the last ACARS transmission from the aircraft provided the total weight of the fuel remaining on board at 43,800 kg.
And discussion about the south turn (p.10) and BTO/BFO errors optimisation.

And a map of the first areas which will be searched: http://www.jacc.gov.au/media/maps/fi...earchAreas.jpg

Satellite communications company Inmarsat has written a "clear language" analysis in the Royal Institute of Navigation's peer-reviewed journal on the high-tech detective work that went into establishing the current search area for Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370. The download available at http://journals.cambridge.org/downlo...32fec41a70bb64

Missing Plane: Emirates Head Critical of MH 370 Investigation
 

"Tim Clark has been a senior manager at the airline Emirates since 1985 and has been instrumental in developing it into one of the world's largest airlines."

His views from an interview with Der Spiegel, German news magazine, at this link in English.

MH370 Emirates Head Has Doubts about Investigation - SPIEGEL ONLINE

Sir Clark raises some interesting points from a layman's POV, although by his own admission, he is an airline manager, not a technician. This interview, and those missing Libyan jets, will have the conspiracy theorists talking to themselves. Is there any wisdom in Clark's proposition that xponders not be turned off in the cockpit?

Shadoko the figure of 43,800kg fuel remaining was embodied in the last ACARS message at 17:07 UTC from the on board computer.

Fuel weight at departure was 49,100kg and reported gross T/O weight of 223.5 tons.

Expected FF/engine @ 490,000lb @ 35,000ft was 7,403lb/engine (3361kg)

IIRC MH370 reached 35,000ft @ 17:17. It was overhead Kenyir Lake, Malaysia at 17:07 UTC passing 27,675ft.

First engine flame out at 00:11 UTC and second engine flame out @ 00:19 UTC, therefore first flame out 7 hours 4min after this fuel figure.

I question how is it plausible that this aircraft could descend fly west through the Straits of Malacca make all sorts of bizarre manouveres and then climb again to 35,000ft before turning around the tip of Sumatra to fly to intercept the southern arc within the fuel burn parameters?

Inmarsat Paper
 

@megan - 8 Oct 2014 15:58 -- Thanks for the link to the Inmarsat paper! A very detailed explanation of their processing, and the evolution.

Some observations made in the paper:

"While the validation demonstrates the general accuracy of the BFO technique, it is important to note that agreement is only achieved with ±7 Hz accuracy during this flight, and to assume better accuracy for the measurements taken on MH370 would be unrealistic."

"Combining the sensitivity data with the measurement accuracy of ±7 Hz indicates that inaccuracy in each individual BFO measurement would correspond to ±28° heading uncertainty and ±9° of latitude uncertainty."

Which helps to explain the size of the potential solution area.

At or above the tropopause in a standard atmosphere, the speed of sound is about 1062 km/hr. The speeds shown in their Table 9 range from about 0.75 M to 0.82 M for a standard day above the tropopause, a reasonable range for max distance cruise. Granted the table shows groundspeed, not airspeed, but the headwind or tailwind component would probably be small on a southerly track.

The latest charts from ATSB show that they have done the bathymetric survey on a fairly narrow swath about the 7th arc, and plan to search initially along that narrow swath. The bathymetric survey covered a broader cross-arc distance for regions more to the NE.

Will they need to conduct additional bathymetric surveys prior to expanding the search area on either side of the arc?

Please could somebody guide me, or correct me if I am wrong, but I estimate if MH370 reached FL350 @ 17:07 UTC the fuel remaining was 97,550lb and then given a further 5 minutes cruise to a minute flying beyond IGARI leaves 96,363lb fuel.

Then we are told it descended to 5,000ft and flew west until next seen at 18:02 UTC over Pelau Perak climbing @ 23,000ft. Thus MH370 covered 289nm from IGARI to Pelau Perak making a dog leg around the south of Penang in 40 minutes at full power and performing 433kt TAS?
... At low altitude?

Flying for example at 10,000ft at full power/310 KIAS would equate something like 1,350lb per engine/minute. Therefore in 40 minute segment MH370 burned 54,000lb?

So by the time it reached Pelau Perak at 18:02UTC MH370 had fuel remaining of 43,550lb and then commenced a 20 minute climb back to 29,500ft at MEKAR covering 154nm and burning say 12,000lb?

So by the time it reached SANOB where MH370 is supposed to have made its turn south to intercept the Southern Arc, MH370 had just 31,550lb fuel remaining to cover another 5.5 hours to the Southern Arc flying at 35,000ft with a fuel flow of 9,900lb/hr?

In other words at the time it turned past the tip of Sumatra it had fuel remaining for just 3.2 hours but is supposed to have flown another 5.5 hours?

The flight duration is known, the last ACARS message gives the fuel available then and the arc calculations give an indication of where the plane wound up.
The various climbs, doglegs and descents postulated after the last ACARS message are needed primarily to explain why the aircraft was not picked up by the various radars purportedly scanning the area. If there was not enough fuel to fly this route, then clearly there was a surveillance failure which people are reluctant to confirm.

Can it be made to work to match reported endurance?
 

Please could somebody guide me, or correct me if I am wrong, but I estimate if MH370 reached FL350 @ 17:07 UTC the fuel remaining was 97,550lb and then given a further 5 minutes cruise to a minute flying beyond IGARI leaves 96,363lb fuel.

Then we are told it descended to 5,000ft and flew west until next seen at 18:02 UTC over Pelau Perak climbing @ 23,000ft. Thus MH370 covered 289nm from IGARI to Pelau Perak making a dog leg around the south of Penang in 40 minutes at full power and performing 433kt TAS?
... At low altitude?

Flying for example at 10,000ft at full power/310 KIAS would equate something like 1,350lb per engine/minute. Therefore in 40 minute segment MH370 burned 54,000lb?

So by the time it reached Pelau Perak at 18:02UTC MH370 had fuel remaining of 43,550lb and then commenced a 20 minute climb back to 29,500ft at MEKAR covering 154nm and burning say 12,000lb?

So by the time it reached SANOB where MH370 is supposed to have made its turn south to intercept the Southern Arc, MH370 had just 31,550lb fuel remaining to cover another 5.5 hours to the Southern Arc flying at 35,000ft with a fuel flow of 9,900lb/hr?

In other words at the time it turned past the tip of Sumatra it had fuel remaining for just 3.2 hours but is supposed to have flown another 5.5 hours?
Last edited by Jonfra; 11th Oct 20




Intriguing Jonfra - If not at full speed, using the 'reported' flight path, can a scenario be created in terms of slower speed for these sectors (before the last turn south), that would allow for the required endurance of 1.3 hours??

I see little benefit in Clark's speculation and I think he should not have entered into it. He could have just stopped at saying that he hopes that the case is resolved soon and that there is too little known about what happened. His talk about the plane being under control, maybe not being in the water etc. is just basically pub talk.

Packs off or bleed air off?

That is the type of basic question that needs to be addressed, whether any combination of systems management would allow the aircraft as configured to fly the route that is projected.
Jonfra makes a case that the known onboard fuel would not support the flight path that is assumed, a path incidentally that requires active and skilled crew input. Boeing engineers have the best 777 knowledge, they could tell what endurance is possible given this path, but they have been entirely mute on this thread afaik. The flight remains a mystery which erodes confidence in the integrity of the world civil aviation authorities.

As with a lot of things on this hamster wheel, they have been discussed before. There were a lot of assumptions made to come up with a flight profile based on claims (unverified) that military radar had seen climbs to 45,000ft and the aircraft was flying low level in radar shadow to avoid alerting the Thai's, etc etc. All this is assumption based on partial reports from military radars that have a vested interest in ensuring that nobody knows the bottom of their cover or their height finding capabilities. Whether these people have been more forthcoming to the various boards of inquiry as long as their reports are kept secure - we do not know. However, what we do know is that the aircraft was airborne until the last 'partial ping'/'SATCOM logon attempt. Therefore, we should discount the 30 minutes of aerobatics and then the flight low level in radar shadow, it is more likely that the aircraft maintained level for the zig zag transit to the Malacca straits and then around Indonesia before flying South. If it _didn't_ fly like that it is not easy to come up with a flight path that would cross the range rings from the INMARSAT satellite at the right times within the error bounds of the tracking methodology. So until there is a better idea, the search is on the ring of the partial ping out to the West of Perth.

news.com.au
 

Some interesting read.

MH370 search: Contrails could be key to finding missing plane

From The Guardian, to-day 21 October 2014:

Australian Prime Minister Abbott received no official briefing from his department or special envoy suggesting they were confident early acoustic noises detected in the search for the missing flight MH370 were from the flight’s black box.

In a Senate hearing on Monday night the Greens leader, Christine Milne, asked how the prime minister came to make a statement suggesting the search had been substantially narrowed and questioned whether he had acted recklessly.

In April Abbott said during an official visit to China that the search for the missing plane – which is believed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean killing all passengers on board – “has been very much narrowed down because we’ve now had a series of detections, some for quite a long period of time”. He added that he was “very confident” it was the black box.

But the comments were tempered later on the same day by the joint agency coordination chief, Angus Houston, who said there had been no significant developments in the search. The plane has still not been recovered, and no traces have been found in the Indian Ocean.

The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) confirmed on Monday evening that no briefing had been provided by them to the prime minister to support the assertions made in China.

DPMC assistant secretary Helen McDevitt said: “The prime minister’s statements on each occasion were made on the best advice available to him, and of course the prime minister was in discussions not only with the department of the prime minister and cabinet … but also with his special envoy, Angus Houston, and a range of experts involved in the process.”

Milne questioned how Abbott came to make the announcement, if it appeared that the joint agency coordination centre and DPMC had not provided any evidence to support the assertion.

“I’m asking where it came from since his chief envoy clearly clarified later in the day to say there was no breakthrough, Amsa [the Australian Maritime Safety Authority] said they didn’t provide the information to the prime minister, the bureau of transport and safety says it didn’t provide the advice to the prime minister, so I’m just trying to find out where the prime minister got this from,” she said. “It was pretty reckless, surely, to go and make a statement like that if there’s no detailed analysis at all of the substance.”

Tony Abbott not advised MH370 search had found black box, senators told | World news | theguardian.com

On 22 October 2014, the ATSB has again updated their MH370 operations page.

www.atsb.gov.au/mh370/