MH370 missing (Part 2)

For this aircraft to fly back over the Malaysian peninsula into the Malacca Strait and passing by MEKAR and perhaps be at waypoint SANOB where the first handshake was at 02:29 Malaysian time it must have been flying with at least 475 knots which is quite possible.
What seems strange is the fact that this aircraft has had a lower speed over the Indian ocean, it seems more logical that it flew with the same speed as before.
Naturally the speed will not be the same in every direction, so let's say it traveled with 460 knots after it made a turn towards the southern indian ocean, it would be logical that it traveled in a strait line, not a great circle.
So a strait line path which is in accordance with the same distance traveled between each ping line would likely be the path which the aircraft has been flying until fuel starvation.

Images from yesterday's meeting.

blog.sina.com.cn...

Here is some more information told to families of the passengers by Malaysian officials on Tuesday:

Two pings (18:29 and 0:11) were initiated by the plane.

It’s beyond my knowledge in what circumstances the plane would initiated a ping.

If an aircraft-initiated ping (at whatever time) provoked by fuel exhaustion in one engine (or both), as you said, what happened the plane at the 18:29?

The reason why I thought a ping at 00:13 would be expected is that Inmarsat once said if the ground station hadn’t heard from the aircraft for one hour, it would automatically initiated a ping to check if the plane was still logged on. Because a satellite call was made at 23:13, the hourly ping timer started at this time.

Hope that makes sense. I’m Chinese and am not a native English speaker.

Duncansteel.com

originally posted by: earthling42
Images from yesterday's meeting.

blog.sina.com.cn...

Here is some more information told to families of the passengers by Malaysian officials on Tuesday:

Two pings (18:29 and 0:11) were initiated by the plane.

It’s beyond my knowledge in what circumstances the plane would initiated a ping.

If an aircraft-initiated ping (at whatever time) provoked by fuel exhaustion in one engine (or both), as you said, what happened the plane at the 18:29?

The reason why I thought a ping at 00:13 would be expected is that Inmarsat once said if the ground station hadn’t heard from the aircraft for one hour, it would automatically initiated a ping to check if the plane was still logged on. Because a satellite call was made at 23:13, the hourly ping timer started at this time.

Hope that makes sense. I’m Chinese and am not a native English speaker.

Duncansteel.com

Thank you so much for that link. I have one of his books "Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets" and find his info on MH370 fascinating from his perspective.

originally posted by: earthling42
it would be logical that it traveled in a strait line, not a great circle.

Sorry that's not logical it's impossible. It would have to fly underwater to fly in a straight line instead of the great circle. The great circle is the closest to a straight line path it can fly at a constant altitude (meaning without flying underground or underwater like it would have to do in a straight line).

Great Circle

The great-circle or orthodromic distance is the shortest distance between two points on the surface of a sphere, measured along the surface of the sphere (as opposed to a straight line through the sphere's interior).

In any case here are the flight paths Malaysia's transport minister released showing 2 possible flight paths based on inmarsat data (and there are other possibilities also at different speeds than those shown):

www.facebook.com...

I'm not sure of the exact methods they used to calculate those paths but they may not be great circle paths. They both seem to have a kink in them about halfway down, especially the red path, perhaps due to the magnetic field heading variations in that part of the world differing from a great circle geographic path or something? That part of the world is a little odd magnetically:

blog.tmfassociates.com...


Anyway Malaysia is supposed to release a report about the search today, but I'm not sure what time it's coming out. I'll be looking for it to see if it fills in any of the blanks regarding details.

Malaysia to release plane investigation report

Malaysia says it will release a preliminary report of its investigation into Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on Thursday, more than seven weeks after the plane vanished with 239 people on board...

The air search for the plane was called off this week.

Hishammuddin, who is also acting transport minister, said he will go to Australia next week to discuss the next phase of the search, a greatly expanded underwater hunt, and the cost involved.

The head of the Australian agency leading the search has predicted that the search could drag on for as long as a year.

So the air search is now over.

I wonder how the finances will be arranged to pay for the extended search if this thing drags on for a year. The costs of searching for MH370 have already exceeded the total 2 year costs involved in the Air France flight that was lost in the Ocean.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Yes i read that they are going to publish the report, i am curious what it will unveil.
From what i have seen in the last few days it will be somewhat different from what is known.

Malaysia finally released what they have been concealing. Data from the Butterworth radar sightings in the Straits of Malacca on their Thales Raytheon GM400 system, specifically the timeline.

Independe nt Article

I can now prove that MH370 never flew west to the Straits of Malacca.

At a conference for relatives at Beijing on 29 April 2014, Malaysian authorities said that military radar at Butterworth detected MH370 off the west coast of Penang "nearly 20 minutes" after last voice communication with MH370 near IGARI at 17:19 UTC.

SITA kept tracking MH370's transponder northeast until 17:27 UTC. The transponder logged off with Kula Lumpur because pilots logged in with Ho Chi Minh.

By 17:24 UTC MH370 was located at 006.93'N, 103.59'E. The distance from this position to west of Penang is 250nm.

If MH370 turned west and flew at 35,000ft at its last known cruise speed of 471kt, then it would have taken 32 minutes, not "nearly 20 minutes."

At 35,000ft MH370 would have to have been seen by another GM400 military radar at Kuantan, plus civil radar at Bt. Chin Chin, but it wasn't. The GM400 at Kuantan has a range of 400 kilometres with coverage beyond IGARI

If MH370 dropped to 5,000ft then its maximum airspeed would have been 250kt and the trip would take an hour, not "nearly 20 minutes."

Malaysia concealed the time lines because it knew MH370 never flew west.

Civilian radar saw SIA68 flying past Penang at the exact same time ... Go figure

originally posted by: earthling42
For this aircraft to fly back over the Malaysian peninsula into the Malacca Strait and passing by MEKAR and perhaps be at waypoint SANOB where the first handshake was at 02:29 Malaysian time it must have been flying with at least 475 knots which is quite possible. What seems strange is the fact that this aircraft has had a lower speed over the Indian ocean, it seems more logical that it flew with the same speed as before.

The reason you can't make sense of it is because everyone is trying to adapt facts to the theory.

On Tuesday 29 April Malaysian officials finally admitted the timeline for their sighting in the Straits of Malacca. They told relatives in Beijing that "nearly 20 minutes" after last voice contact - 17:19 UTC military radar at Butterworth (allegedly) saw MH370 west of Penang.

The distance to west of Penang from IGARI is 240 nm. More if you consider MH370's location plotted by SITA until 17:27 UTC.

Malaysia has a military radar site at Kuantan which would have seen MH370 if it flew back at any reasonable altitude. If it descended to just 5000ft it would have taken an hour to reach Penang. If it flew at 35,000ft it would have taken 31-32 minutes (depending where you plot from).

Naturally the speed will not be the same in every direction, so let's say it traveled with 460 knots after it made a turn towards the southern indian ocean, it would be logical that it traveled in a strait line, not a great circle.
So a strait line path which is in accordance with the same distance traveled between each ping line would likely be the path which the aircraft has been flying until fuel starvation.

From last voice contact to engine cut out it flew 7 hours. If you measure direct from IGARI to the Ocean Shield search zone in the Indian Ocean that is 1,650nm which equates 235kt.

originally posted by: earthling42
Pilot suicide would look like this.

It changes direction and dives.

We have the Chinese autorities reporting that the aircraft suddenly went into a steep descent while it changes direction.

No Malaysian authorities made this claim on day 4. In fact Malaysia said that military radar spotted MH370 climb to 45,000ft, something it was not possible to do. Malaysia has never revealed any radar tracking data to corroborate this bizarre claim.

RR reported a plunge of 40.000ft within a minute according to the engine data.

The alleged plunge was not reported by Rolls Royce, it was claimed by Malaysian Authorities that MH370 dived to 5000ft to avoid detection by radar, again nothing but empty conjecture.

Vietnam reported that they picked up a signal from the ELT. Oil slicks, debris, and a tremor on the seabed.

Vietnam checked three oil slicks and each was marine diesel oil.

What ELT signal was that?
Please provide us with a link to that claim?

But they won't be trying to hide the possibility that the pilot could have commited suicide, in fact that is what the suspicion is. But why would he be going through all this trouble, he knows that he is not invisible, even without the transponder the aircraft is visible on radar, the difference is that there is no indication of identity, position, speed and altitude, only a blip on the screen which means that it can be qualified as a threat. But the transponder also provides the pilot with information, namely a collision warning if another aircraft gets too close, and they can use it to send a distress signal (squawk)

According to authorities the transponder was switched off when it entered into Vietnamese airspace.

This is not what we see on FR24. At 17:21 the altitude changes and the indication is 0ft, the speed indication seems to stop too, but there is still an indication of identity, heading and position untill 17:23.

Now i am not a pilot, but to me it seems that it wasn't switched off, there was no indication of altitude and speed in the last minutes, how can this happen?

Would they be taking more risk with maintenance of the aircrafts to cut costs in order to be able to compete with other companies?

The transponder was not switched off at 17:21 UTC. Pilots were instructed to contact Ho Chi Minh at 17:19 UTC and they did this by entering a code to log in their transponder with Vietnam. The effect of logging in with Vietnam was to log off with Kuala Lumpur.

Malaysia uses a sophisticated automated air traffic system called FANS 1/A which draws data from the aircraft's own flight computer, composes it with a system in the aircraft called ADS-C. This ADS-C is contracted to communicate with only one air traffic control system at a time. It has to be logged-in via the transponder with the relevant ATS.

IGARI is just beneath the boundary of Vietnamese air space so pilots were required to log off with Malaysia. They did not switch off their transponder. SITA picked up their log on with Vietnam and Flightradar24's website uses that data feed direct from SITA on their website.

That is how we also know from the transponder that MH370 did not turn west.

You correctly note that after 17:21 UTC the altitude and speed data dropped off the transponder feed at Flightradar24. Quite correct.

Vietnam does not use a FANS 1/A system, but pilots still have to log on with Vietnam.

See release of part of the report below this. Have not found the link yet.
Why only "part" of the report???

PDF cargo manifest Download here


Putrajaya releases part of flight MH370 preliminary report

The Transport Ministry today released the preliminary report on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 and it included the cargo manifest and recordings of all communication that took place between the cockpit and air traffic control.

Also released to the media were maps detailing MH370's flight path and the likely area it ended its journey in the southern Indian Ocean, and a document regarding the actions taken (see table below) by the Malaysian authorities between 1.38am and 6.14am on the day the aircraft went missing.

"Last week, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak appointed an internal team of experts to review all the information Putrajaya possessed on MH370.

"The review was conducted with a view to releasing as much of the information as possible to the public," said acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein in a statement today. – May 1, 2014

==============================

Interesting snippit from pprune.org As they say "Collapse" may be a mis-translation...

Talked to a former colleague from Malaysia who I regard as a consummate aviator. He mentioned something very peculiar...investigators are ignoring the report from a NRT bound pilot on MH088 and the initial reports of a distress message intercepted by a listening station at Rayong, to the detriment of the whole saga.

The MH 088 pilot had reported positive contact on 121.5MHz with MH370 pilots who came back with incoherent mumblings and static. The listening station at Rayong-VTBU revealed a distress message about " cabin collapse " with need for immediate landing.

He reckoned that this mysterious episode would eventually turned out to be a mind-blowing paradigm shifting occurrence which will be VERY CONFRONTING AND CHALLENGING. He personally knows the captain of MH370 and " knows " that what happened, is certainly beyond the comprehension of many just like the " adventures of Admiral Byrd ". Hope this survives the cull.

--------

Collapse might not necessarily mean a structural collapse. In several other languages it could also mean "reduction" or "decompression".

================================

(chinese, translation below) I found this on another site which we may not have got on here. It says the US embassy reported the U_tapao base picked up an emergency signal saying the flight cabin( ockpit) was disintergrating on flight MH370 (8th March)

Translation through Google

Malaysia Airlines passenger plane lost contact, Malaysia, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and other five countries involved in search and rescue. Malaysia, Vietnam, flew lock may have lost contact with the sea search. According to the U.S. Cable News Network (CNN) reported that instant, one of Vietnam rescue aircraft have discovered oil and debris in Malaysia and Vietnam at the junction of the sea.

In addition, the U.S. Embassy said the 2:43 U.S. military bases stationed in Thailand U-Tapao SOS signal was listening to some of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 emergency call, said the aircraft cabin facing disintegration driver call, they want a forced landing . U.S. troops are currently stationed in Thailand, Malaysia has been providing this signal.

===================================

No more hotel stay for families of MH370 passengers after May 7

Families and next-of-kin of passengers aboard flight MH370 will have to return home soon as Malaysia Airlines will not be footing their accommodation bill after May 7.

MAS group chief executive officer Ahmad Jauhari Yahya (pic) said the national carrier was adjusting the mode of services and support.

"Instead of staying in hotels, the families of passengers aboard MH370 are advised to receive information updates within the comfort of their own homes.

"The information updates will be on the progress of the search and rescue operation, investigation and other support by MAS," he said in a statement today.

On edit 2
Lastly on this post, a Freedom of Information request about MH370 was replied to and the requester was told that it was classified.

a reply to: sy.gunson

Agreed, that is simply impossible.
There are multiple conflicting reports about the time at which it was spotted above the Malacca Strait or above Penang.
I also agree on the fact that somehow everyone is trying to fit the available data between IGARI and the area where the signals were picked up.
The ping lines and frequency offset are being calculated by multiple bright minds around the world, but if the point of last contact (near SANOB) is false, it will be simply impossible to conclude that it indeed has ended in the ocean, west of Perth.

I am really sceptical of every news about this in the media, they can spinn it anyway they want it, so i like to go my own way and thus try to find early sources and see what we are overlooking in the data thus far.

The source for the ELT is this page

One part we have to think about is the gap between 17:07 and 18:29, the aircraft initiated the handshake (sent a message?) at 18:29 which leads me to think ACARS tried to send a report and thus was operative, not switched off.
and if we consider that after one hour a ping is initiated by groundcontrol to see if there is still a connection with the aircraft, one would expect a ping at 18:07.
But that did not happen, it has been said that a message was sent to the aircraft at 18:03 but it does not show up on the ping chart.

The preliminary report

This one is very interesting, in Cambodian airspace.

a reply to: qmantoo

unless they meant
type of ,,

"base picked up an emergency signal saying the flight cabin( ockpit) was disintergrating on flight MH370 (8th March) ,,

disintergrating???

curious.

a reply to: earthling42

Personally I found the radio intercepts far more interesting.

a reply to: Zaphod58

The edits?

a reply to: earthling42

The pilot saying the cabin was collapsing.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Yes, i read that too, but sadly there is no good reliable source to confirm it.
But that does not mean it ain't true, maybe a cover up.


Cloudbox.
Report
Actions taken
Cargo
Maps

The 200kg lithium ion batteries turn out to be 2453kg, that is quite a difference. (cargo page 5)

originally posted by: earthling42
a reply to: sy.gunson

Agreed, that is simply impossible.
There are multiple conflicting reports about the time at which it was spotted above the Malacca Strait or above Penang.
I also agree on the fact that somehow everyone is trying to fit the available data between IGARI and the area where the signals were picked up.
The ping lines and frequency offset are being calculated by multiple bright minds around the world, but if the point of last contact (near SANOB) is false, it will be simply impossible to conclude that it indeed has ended in the ocean, west of Perth.

I am really sceptical of every news about this in the media, they can spinn it anyway they want it, so i like to go my own way and thus try to find early sources and see what we are overlooking in the data thus far.

The source for the ELT is this page

It does not necessarily follow that MH370 did not impact the Indian Ocean where Ocean Shield located ULB pings.

The Maday heard at U-Tapao clearly suggests the pilots were grappling with an emergency before an explosive decompression which is what I have always said happened.

However it happened, it seems the aircraft was turned around to a southerly heading and flew on autopilot for another 6.5 hours. Whilst the INMARSAT data may be contradictory, two points on the satellite plot are indisputable, take-off and the final arc. That is because INMARSAT interrogates cells with very narrow radio beams. I still have faith that the Black Boxes are in the Indian Ocean.

I find it chilling that an MH370 pilot talked about collapse in the cabin. This is precisely what would happen in the event of a fire in the avionics bay beneath the rear of the cockpit.I have always maintained that a fire breached the hull and depressurised. This seems to corroborate that.

a reply to: earthling42

They're usually good about weights considering that it affects their CG.

originally posted by: earthling42
One part we have to think about is the gap between 17:07 and 18:29, the aircraft initiated the handshake (sent a message?) at 18:29 which leads me to think ACARS tried to send a report and thus was operative, not switched off.
and if we consider that after one hour a ping is initiated by groundcontrol to see if there is still a connection with the aircraft, one would expect a ping at 18:07.
But that did not happen, it has been said that a message was sent to the aircraft at 18:03 but it does not show up on the ping chart.

This Mayday call also means MH370 did not dive to 5000ft fly west zig-zag from VAMPI to GIVAL to IGREX.