The search strategy and results to date may indicate the quality of the information they have!

Jetstream67
 

It wasn't primary radar. It was secondary radar. makes a big difference on a primary only target. (transponder off)

The only thing that could cut off all communications and all electrical power, followed by silence could only be some form of catastrophic structural failure.
That aircraft had damage history, a collision with a 747 while taxiing.
It could have placed un accountable stress on the starboard wing root fittings, that decided to give up while in cruise. due to some CAT how ever light or severe as the case may be.
If the airframe went into a structural failure dive towards terra firma or water the crew would be a little more than a tad busy during the horrific descent, and would not have been able to send a radio message or mayday.:(

Old Boeing Driver


You may be right . but


Fox news reported
"Earlier, Malaysia’s air force chief told reporters that military radar indicated that the plane may have turned from its flight route before losing contact.
Rodzali Daud didn't say which direction the plane might have taken when it apparently went off route.
"We are trying to make sense of this," he told a media conference. "The military radar indicated that the aircraft may have made a turn back and in some parts, this was corroborated by civilian radar."


Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 mystery: Jet's door may have been found, officials say | Fox News

thanks OLD BOEING DRIVER. it should be obvious to anyone that primary radar will tell the story if there was primary radar contact. someone asked who uses primary radar? everyone, but usually the secondary is selected. I imagine if the radar OVER THERE is even as good as our radar was 20 years ago there should be some record somewhere that can be viewed over and over.

and it should be.

IF anyone can ask the question of someone in authority, that would be great, speculation by others is not answering the question.

DOES anyone remember when stephen fossett was lost? He the man who flew the balloon on long flights? He was in a decathalon and took off from the area near a small nevada town. HIS plane was searched for and not found until someone found his driver's license. IT TOOK almost 12 months or so. And it was on the ground not the sea.

Earhart's plane is still missing from 1937!

Divergent Track.
 

The last radar position was already off-track - but does tie-in well with track to the position of the second debris field of HCMC..... If that info' is kosher.

Only guessing... having the map showing the two red dotted squares in mind the last known heading might have been in an westerly direction, otherwise they would not search in that area west of the peninsula.

Not a fact, but - from my point of view - a clear indication that somebody was able to follow the flightpath longer as we could via fr24.

On BBC News now as well:

Vietnam probes possible debris from missing Malaysia plane
BBC News - Vietnam probes possible debris from missing Malaysia plane

Only that? The only thing? Your certainty lacks supporting evidence at this point in time.
Repaired.
You go from the "only thing" to some probables ... if ... could have.

Verdict: There is not enough info, nor sufficient weight to your analysis, to support your confidence in that being the only thing that could lead to this flight going missing, or crashing.

Why do I say this? While a 777 is not an A330, a crew without any structural failure managed to hit the ocean in AF 447.

The Adam Air flight previously referred to seems to have hit the ocean without a structural failure initiating the problem, though the after action report indicates that they flew it into structural failure. :eek:

In the case of this crew and this flight, what is unknown far exceeds what is known.

That area they are searching must be like Harrods on Xmas Eve by now, they only have to see a floating cup, and they get excited, and the ATC must be thinking they are at Oshkosh. If they don't find anything today, it has to be back to the drawing board. So lets hope for a result.

Malaysia B-777 missing
 

I think many times before has been stated that we must deal with facts and keep our thoughts as what could have happened to ourselves.


If news releases by reporters on the spot release information, this should be recorded in this spread; after all they are in touch with those who are directly involved in the investigation.


Speculation is very misleading and, dare I say, sensationalising !

At this stage I find the most intriguing part of this is why they would commit assets like P3Cs to a sea search in the Malacca Strait.

Nothing so far released would justify that. "Evidence of an Air turn back"...?

That is not an air turn back if they are searching there. Some of the journalists, notoriously ignorant on aviation matters, need to start asking some pertinent questions such as;

Why are valuable assets being used to search an area diagonally opposed to the original flight path and what evidence has been found to support that search?

If a primary radar trace has been observed flying in that direction, why is a sea search being carried out there... I.e. what evidence is there that the observed trace went down in the sea at that spot?

The Malaysians seem to be withholding information.

Capt K, I seem to recall that the AF 447 ACARS info was a leak, not an official release, initially. With that in mind, there may be a bit of data with a time tag that, while not the usual data like radio call, transponder, etc, would take the datum of "last radar/transponder return" and expand a point datum to an area based datum (farthest on circle) on elapsed time.

Why haven't they shared that info yet? Perhaps due to security reasons opaque to you or I, but making much sense to those holding fragments of data and trying to make sense out of it.

If you've had a chance to get involved in a SAR operation, I think you'll appreciate how one has to account for the many unknowns one faces early in the operation.

Crew going through security
 

Things float. Even things from an exploded plane and falling from 30? whatever thousand feet. Once debris is spotted and an estimate on its drift at least there will be a Ballaprk to play in for wreckage. Next will require a deep sea submersible which are available ...at a price. Im not sure of the depth in that part of the world, but I do think its way over my head. Another big problem, but today not something that cannot be done.
Black Boxes are a must but even they will only tell configuarion and telemtry at the time, not the cause.

[Black Boxes are a must but even they will only tell configuarion and telemtry at the time, not the cause.]

Cockpit voice recorders may.

In an area where maritime rights are sometimes a matter of dispute, isn't it odd that no country's military has yet come forward with their military radar recordings showing how the aircraft tracked after transponders stopped transmitting.

So far, three days, they still haven't been found out.

The truth will come out eventually. Maybe.

I haven't read the hundred's of opinions both professional and amateur here but I have noticed a few comments re radar both primary and secondary. Allow me a minute to explain. Primary radar is a basic skin paint return and is subject to slant range error. So if an aircraft at 37,000ft overflies a primary radar head, the radar display will not show the return as overhead the radar head's location but will push the return to a point about 5 Nautical miles to one side. This is because primary radar is 2 dimensional. A secondary radar return is synthetically produced by one or more SSR receivers and via a Radar Data Processing computer, a SSR return is electronically produced on the radar display. Thus you could say that a Secondary radar return is in effect 3 dimensional. So if an aircraft was to overfly a co sited primary radar head along with one or more Secondary radar receivers, then as the aircraft flies overhead at 37,000ft a 4 to 5 mile discrepancy between the position of the primary return and secondary return will be apparent.
This is not relevant as to why or what has happened to the Malaysian 777 but is an observation made by a recently retired controller with over 40 years experience

No. We don't know that they haven't. All that is known is that nothing has been said publicly and the only people who need to know are those charged with conducting the search.

Jetstream67:
Military radar usually measures range and angles (and often closing speed too). However, at low angles, elevation angle measurements, and thus altitude measurements, can easily become unreliable because of multipath and possibly even ducting effects. At this point, the angle seems low enough that measurements may not have been accurate enough to usefully indicate altitude. Multipath effects can also cause the target to vanish.