I watched the Four Corners doco on this the other day. Conspiracy theorists have a case in this one I reckon.
I agree. It's just getting too weird now.
I agree. It's just getting too weird now.
The search is now being scaled down.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Likely Ran Out of Fuel, Report Says Investigators Remain Confident Flight 370 Crashed into a Remote Stretch of the Southern Indian Ocean
May 26, 2014 11:59 p.m. ET
The Australian naval vessel Ocean Shield is due to give up the search on Wednesday. Reuters
SYDNEY—Analysis of the final ping transmission betweenMalaysia Airlines 3786.KU +2.86% Flight 370 and anInmarsat ISAT.LN -1.20% PLC satellite found the missing jetliner was likely descending after running out of fuel, according to Australian air-accident investigators.
Investigators remain confident Flight 370 crashed into a remote stretch of the southern Indian Ocean within around 25 nautical miles of the final ping transmission, despite an initial underwater search and lengthy air-and-sea hunt for floating debris failing to find any trace of the plane.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau said its conclusion about the plane's likely location relied on calculations of how long it took the plane to descend plus a five nautical mile margin for error in the analysis of the satellite data. The bureau's conclusions—outlined in a series of reports on its website—come as authorities prepare to open up the hunt for the plane to private contractors through a public tender next week.
Flight 370's final digital handshake with the satellite didn't coincide with previous regular hourly transmissions. That is likely due to its electrical systems resetting when the plane ran out of fuel, the ATSB summary said, confirming earlier reports in The Wall Street Journal.
Modeling of fuel burn at various flight paths and aircraft speeds support the idea that Flight 370 ran out of fuel near the final ping arc, it said.
The ATSB also said for the first time that the search area intersects the only air route that passes down through the southeastern Indian Ocean, route M641, which travels from Cocos Island to Perth through four way points.
The overlap of the Cocos-Perth air route and search area may be a coincidence, with investigators still unsure about the plane's navigation during its final hours. Air routes are preprogrammed into flight computers and can be navigated without human intervention, raising the possibility that none of the crew were conscious when the plane crashed.
Authorities are also trying a new approach to help refine the search area: listening to audio captured by special underwater microphones spread across the ocean, which are typically used to monitor signs of illegal nuclear explosions. The microphones have long been deployed as part of the United Nations Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
The Australian naval vessel Ocean Shield is due to give up the search on Wednesday, having scoured a narrow area close to where it detected electronic signals on four occasions in early April. Authorities believed those transmissions were consistent with locator beacons on an aircraft's black box flight recorders, raising hopes of a breakthrough in the hunt for Flight 370, which went missing en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur on March 8 with 239 people on board.
The Ocean Shield's departure will leave the Chinese survey vessel Zhu Kezhen alone in the search area, carrying out early work to map the seabed. The ATSB said it would take up to three months to map the entire area some 1,000 miles northwest of Perth, with an additional ship from a private contractor being deployed in early June to scan the ocean floor at depths of up to 6,000 meters.
The results will enable towed sonar equipment to be deployed without the risk of it banging into undersea ridges and mountains.
They're somewhere filming a reality TV series.
Given that the probability is that it's never going to be found now, I'm not sure we'll ever figure out exactly what happened.
And some laughed at my post ;)
It will be found. It might take decades for the technology to catch up to searching for planes on the ocean floor, but I don’t think there is any doubt it will be found.
No contact via an SMS or similar if the plane flew aimlessly for up to 10 hours. It's impossible to comprehend in this world of mass media that there was no contact with the outside world.
This suggests that there was either a cabin de-pressurisation or even worse.
Or...No contact via an SMS or similar if the plane flew aimlessly for up to 10 hours. It's impossible to comprehend in this world of mass media that there was no contact with the outside world.
This suggests that there was either a cabin de-pressurisation or even worse.
The plane was flying at night so most the cabin were either asleep or couldn't tell that they were off course.
No contact via an SMS or similar if the plane flew aimlessly for up to 10 hours. It's impossible to comprehend in this world of mass media that there was no contact with the outside world.
This suggests that there was either a cabin de-pressurisation or even worse.
it was over ocean, no floating mobile phones towers out there.
Malaysia plane 5 questions: Experts need time to analyze newly released data
(CNN) -- For the first time in several weeks, authorities have released information about missing Malaysia Flight 370 not previously available to the public.
The problem is, it's very technical and experts said it's going to take them weeks to figure out exactly what it means.
On Tuesday the Malaysian authorities published a 47-page document containing hundreds of lines of communication logs between the airliner that went missing March 8 and Inmarsat, a British satellite telecommunications company.
Is there anything in the data we didn't already know?
The data is dense and complicated, and even professionals will need time to analyze the logs, experts tell CNN.
But there is some key general information that has emerged. The data includes the seven "handshakes" investigators said helped them conclude that the plane ended its flight in the southern Indian Ocean, where the search continues.
"Handshake" is the lingo that Inmarsat uses. It means a signal between the satellite and the plane. The satellite sends a coded signal to the plane essentially asking "Are you there?" and the plane sends a signal conveying "I am here."
Remember it was Malaysian authorities who, in late March, told relatives of the 239 passengers and crew that the aircraft crashed in the southern Indian ocean.
The Malaysian government's decided to release the data now, said Inmarsat CEO Rupert Pearce on CNN's "New Day."
The data constitutes "raw communications logs over our networks," he said.
"That's all the information that we have that passed between our network and the plane during the fateful hours when the flight was lost," Pearce said. "So it's everything -- we put everything out there."
Speaking of handshakes, what's this about a 'partial handshake'?
Inmarsat and Australian officials have addressed something they call a "margin of error" -- or how far the plane could be from the location where authorities believe it crashed. The focus of the search has been the so-called seventh arc, which represents the location of a "partial handshake." Authorities believe that area is where the plane ran out of fuel. When it ran out of fuel, the plane's on-board satellite communications system stopped, and the "partial handshake" was the battery-powered communication's equipment powering up following a power interruption, authorities said.
Angus Houston, the head of the Australian agency coordinating the search, first suggested at a press conference in early April that may have happened.
You've said it's going to take time -- how long exactly?
An international group of experts is reviewing the data from Inmarsat and examining an analysis of the plane's performance -- and that enterprise could take two to three more weeks, Australian Transport Safety Bureau Chief Commissioner Martin Dolan told CNN Tuesday.
On top of that, it's possible that continuing to review the data will further refine or even shift the search area from its current location, Dolan told CNN.
It's not just people involved in the search saying that.
Even Michael Exner, founder of American Mobile Satellite Corporation, a member of a loose confederation of experts who've demanded access to the information, said the information released Tuesday is too limited to verify Inmarsat's conclusion that the plane flew south, into the Indian Ocean.
He joined the chorus of others who called for more time.
But don't the Australians, the leaders of the search, have anything more to say?
For the first time, Australian accident investigators outlined in a detailed report why they believe the plane crashed in the southern Indian ocean. The report, posted Monday on the ATSB's website, includes a map with seven concentric circles representing the "seven handshakes" captured in the Inmarsat data.
This is where aviation experts -- who call themselves av geeks -- can begin their inside baseball debate. To start them off -- the Australians' report explains two key measurements: The first, the Burst Timing Offset (BTO), which allowed investigators to figure out how far away the plane was from the satellite at the time of each "handshake." The second, the Burst Frequency Offset (BFO), which helped investigators estimate the speed and direction of the aircraft, which led to the conclusion that MH370 flew into the southern Indian Ocean.
You've probably seen family members on the news, outraged at the Malaysian government, accusing officials of not being transparent during the investigation. How are relatives reacting to the release of this data?
"It is very technical and we are not experts, so we may ask some other people who can help us," said Steven ■■■■ on CNN Tuesday. His mother was a passenger.
Sarah Bajc, partner of American passenger Philip Wood, told CNN's "New Day" that she believes Malaysian authorities have more information they're not releasing. She suggested that the Malaysian government received the data from Inmarsat and manipulated it before releasing it to the public.
"They're clearly covering something up," she said. "Now, whether they're covering up their own incompetence or they're covering up wrongdoing or they're covering up on behalf of somebody else, for instance another more powerful government, it could be any of those scenarios."
She said that the families have reached out to their own hired experts who are analyzing the data, but that it is too soon to tell if they can draw any conclusions.
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/05/27/world/asia/malaysia-data-five-things/
It's a bit surprising that nothing has shown up yet. You'd think at least some rwreckage. Assuming some of it floats.
The Indian Ocean is roughly ten times the size of Australia.
So for scale, imagine you were asked to get in your car and find a hang-glider that crashed somewhere in Australia, "might be in the Simpson Desert, we're not really sure", and it's probably mostly disintegrated by now, and a dingo might have buried it.
2 years to find Air France and they knew where it ditched.It will be found. It might take decades for the technology to catch up to searching for planes on the ocean floor, but I don't think there is any doubt it will be found.
They're going to be a while.
Or...No contact via an SMS or similar if the plane flew aimlessly for up to 10 hours. It's impossible to comprehend in this world of mass media that there was no contact with the outside world.
This suggests that there was either a cabin de-pressurisation or even worse.
The plane was flying at night so most the cabin were either asleep or couldn't tell that they were off course.
Or could have been knocked out by de-pressurisation of the cabin.
A series of pings detected in the southern Indian Ocean and originally believed to have come from missing Malaysia Airlines jet MH370 are now thought to have been emitted from either the searching ship itself or equipment used to detect the pings, a US Navy official says.
Michael Dean, the US Navy's director of ocean engineering, told CNN that authorities now believed the four acoustic pings at the centre of the search off the West Australian coast did not come from the missing passenger jet's black boxes, but from a "man-made source".
"Our best theory at this point is that (the pings were) likely some sound produced by the ship ... or within the electronics of the Towed Pinger Locator," Mr Dean told CNN on Wednesday.
"Always your fear any time you put electronic equipment in the water is that if any water gets in and grounds or shorts something out, that you could start producing sound."
He said other countries involved in the massive search for the jet, which disappeared on March 8 with 239 people on board, had also reached the same conclusion.
When the pings were first detected in early April, retired air chief marshal Angus Houston, the head of the search's Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre (JACC), said experts believed the signals were consistent with those of a flight data recorder.
He said the first two pings - detected on April 5 at 4.45pm and at 9.27pm Perth time - had been analysed by the Australasian Joint Acoustic Analysis Centre, based at HMAS Albatross in Nowra, on the NSW south coast.
"The analysis determined that a very stable, distinct and clear signal was detected at 33.331 kilohertz, and that it consistently pulsed at a 1.106-second interval," Mr Houston said at the time.
''They therefore ■■■■■ that the transmission was not of natural origin, and was likely sourced from specific electronic equipment. They believe the signals to be consistent with the specification and description of a flight data recorder.''
The final two pings were detected on April 8 - at 4.27pm and 10.17pm, Perth time.
But despite an extensive underwater search, no evidence of the plane has been found in the search area in the southern Indian Ocean.
Fairfax Media has contacted JACC for comment.
So they really have minimal idea where in the Indian Ocean it might lie, apart from an arc that's a couple of hundred kms wide, by several thousand km long. Good luck finding it.
It's not where they've been looking.
MH370 not in Indian Ocean search zone: ATSB
May 29, 2014 - 4:13PM
Date
The missing Malaysia Airlines plane is not in the Indian Ocean search zone where acoustic “pings” were detected, search co-ordinators have confirmed.
MH370 went missing on March 8 about one hour into a night flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
"The Australian Transport Safety Bureau [ATSB] has advised that the search in the vicinity of the acoustic detections can now be considered complete and, in its professional judgment, the area can now be discounted as the final resting place of MH370," the Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre said on Thursday.
The co-ordination centre announced on April 7 that a pinger locator towed from the Australian navy vessel Ocean Shield had picked up two acoustic signals, with one held for more than two hours.
At the time, it described the signals as consistent with flight data or cockpit voice recorders, the most promising lead yet and likely from a man-made source.
Two days later, two more signals were detected, holding for about five and seven minutes.
The JACC's statement on Thursday came hours after reports that the search had gone back to square one, citing US Navy deputy director of ocean engineering Michael Dean as saying the pings came from some other man-made source unrelated to MH370.
''Our best theory at this point is that [the pings were] likely some sound produced by the ship ... or within the electronics of the Towed Pinger Locator,'' he said.
JACC has also confirmed the end of the Bluefin-21 mission, with the underwater drone detecting no signs of aircraft debris since it began scanning the sea floor off the West Australian coast on April 14.
The Bluefin-21 has scoured more than 850 square kilometres of the ocean floor looking for signs of the missing aircraft, but has been constrained by depth operating limits and technical hitches.
Having earlier narrowed down the search area based on the pings, JACC is now casting its net much wider, saying it continues to review all existing radar, satellite and aircraft performance data to define a search zone of up to 60,000 square kilometres in the southern Indian Ocean.
That zone still follows an arc defined by British company Inmarsat based on the final "handshakes" between the Boeing 777 and satellites.
Relatives of the 239 passengers and crew were recently successful in calling for Inmarsat's data to be released publicly, not convinced that searchers were looking in the right place.
JACC said the findings of the data review would be made public "in due course".
And it is not only pushing ahead with sea floor mapping in the "defined" search area, it is also adding more vessels to the survey, which is expected to take about three months.
A fresh, potentially deeper underwater search will follow, beginning in August and taking up to 12 months.
A formal request for tender to undertake the search would be released soon, JACC said.
"A single prime contractor will be chosen to bring together and manage the expertise, equipment and vessels to carry out the search," it said
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/mh370-not-in-indian-ocean-search-zone-atsb-20140529-396ml.html#ixzz335E33EBR
there never going to find it
2 years to find Air France and they knew where it ditched.It will be found. It might take decades for the technology to catch up to searching for planes on the ocean floor, but I don't think there is any doubt it will be found.
They're going to be a while.
They also had some wreckage from air France
I detect some vital information has been withheld by the relevant authorities, and there are probably acute political sensitivities at play. The truth or most of it will come out eventually.
A series of pings detected in the southern Indian Ocean and originally believed to have come from missing Malaysia Airlines jet MH370 are now thought to have been emitted from either the searching ship itself or equipment used to detect the pings, a US Navy official says.
I thought I read that, wasn;t sure if I was dreaming or not.
EPIC LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!
So what are the conspiracy theories? The first one I heard was that it was shot down accidentally in a military exercise. What others are there?
I thought I read that, wasn;t sure if I was dreaming or not.
A series of pings detected in the southern Indian Ocean and originally believed to have come from missing Malaysia Airlines jet MH370 are now thought to have been emitted from either the searching ship itself or equipment used to detect the pings, a US Navy official says.
EPIC LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!
So what are the conspiracy theories? The first one I heard was that it was shot down accidentally in a military exercise. What others are there?
Someone used a USB stick via the inflight entertainment system to redirect the plane.