MH370 Search Vessel turns off transponder for 3 days

MH370 search ship 'Seabed Constructor' , has turned off its tracking transponder for approximately 80 hours during its current search for MH370. The ship was contracted on a no find - no pay basis for a 55 million dollar contract to find the plane within 90 days after the initial failed search. The ship is only 30 days of so into its 90 day time limit, and is now steaming towards Perth.

www.dailymail.co.uk...

Pure speculation at this point and they are keeping tight lipped, but this could potentially mean they have located the wreckage and didnt want to give away its exact position. No comment has been made regarding the switched off or failed transponder. Considering that the ship is only 1/3 of the duration into its search, seems strange they would steam back to Perth for any reason other than an emergency or unless they found the wreck. Possibly they need resupply but it seems like a month in with 3 months to find the wreck and 55 million riding on it they would have adequate supplies or be resupplied by an ancillary vessel.

Will be watching closely.

a reply to: BeReasonable

The transponder may have failed, and they're heading back for repairs, or to get it replaced. I'd lean more towards them finding something and not wanting to give away a location, but it's always possible that they had a mechanical failure of some kind.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Zappo, if you've been following this story, then when the flight ended, the MH-370's ACARS stopped transmitting pings back to Rolls Royce, in the U.K. My dowsed take is that these ACARS kept pinging away, long after their aircraft's fuel ran out. If it went into the ocean's salt water, those pings would have shorted out immediately. But they went on and on, like the Eveready Bunny.
While I was worried that they were in a snowbank in the Himalayas, my Aussie dowser acquaintance got that they had landed, re-fueled, and left at or near sunrise, flying dark, and probably with no pressurized cabin. This meant low and slow, all the way down the West coast of India, out over the Maldives, and finally angling off, S.E., into the British Protectorate waters, but still a long ways East of the Diego Garcia Islands.

And this is why it's flotsum is washing up on places like Reunion Island, and Sri Lanka.

Long story short, the Big Players are covering up what happened, and that bounty hunter ship may have been chased off. Those hijackers should have made it all the way to Pakistan, but ran short of fuel, due to all the zigs and zags, after they took over the cockpit. The mystery airfield is in the Northern most province of India, in between Kashmir and Nepal. There are less than a half dozen up there which could have pulled off this Triple Seven ER's pit stop. But something really freaked out the Indian military, when that Triple Seven dropped in unannounced. But they still screwed up, thinking that Malaysia Airlines hadn't paid the light bill, to RR for their ACAR's service contract. Paid up or not, the MH-370's ACARS kept right on trying to handshake with RR in the U.K.

If two online dowsers can work this problem out. Then the big Spook outfits can do this in their sleep.

a reply to: BeReasonable

I would guess as with any company, profit is firmly behind this and $55 million finders fee is not chump change, I have no idea what the cost is for that ship to be at sea each day but it makes sense "if" they did find something the protocol would be to keep the location secret and high tail to port??..

However the whole situation from the day that MH370 went missing has just be strange, granted Governments cannot setup a pi$$ up in a brewery but I along with many others still believe that this plane was never meant to be found. I also question how the eye witnesses that put the plane well away from the so called expert flight path where discredited in a blatant manner. The women on the boat was "totally consumed with alcohol" the oil rig worker would not shut up so they sacked him and he lost his career. The search only got under way after the Black box was almost out of juice.

Granted the ocean is huge but anyone that looks at this and says nothing to see here cannot say that some of the decisions where down right bizarre??!!.

It is still of the up most importance to find this plane and the probable cause to eliminate any future issues if it is plane related.

The ship is scheduled to dock on the 8th Feb so I guess we will (maybe) know more then but I will not hold my breath, who knows it may have even been "scared" out of the area.


RA

originally posted by: Zaphod58
I'd lean more towards them finding something and not wanting to give away a location,

Why would they want to do that? They have a contract to find, so if they have found then why the secrecy? I would go for a mechanical failure on that basis.

a reply to: paraphi

Because they would want to keep the location a secret until they're ready for the salvage operation to recover the aircraft. That keeps someone else from sneaking out and recovering anything that might turn out to be important before they are ready to do the work.

originally posted by: paraphi

originally posted by: Zaphod58
I'd lean more towards them finding something and not wanting to give away a location,

Why would they want to do that? They have a contract to find, so if they have found then why the secrecy? I would go for a mechanical failure on that basis.

For the same reason that crew probably all had to sign an NDA before going out.

That plane is sunken treasure.

a reply to: Zaphod58

It's a a contract to find and not recover. By turning off the transponder they are just attracting attention. If they wanted protection of the site, then they just get on the phone to Australia/Malaysia (or whoever), who would then ensure the site was protected from interference.

a reply to: paraphi

I'm well aware of what the contract is. But them sitting in one spot waiting for recovery crews to arrive is going to attract more attention than a "transponder malfunction" and returning to port to fix it.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Once you have identified the area then you don't need to hang around. You don't need to engineer a problem to return to port. In fact, getting to port will blow the secret because the crew will talk. If you want to remain "quite" then you don't draw attention to yourself.

a reply to: paraphi

And you don't announce that you found something right away, if you're not ready to recover it. Not something like this. The crew might talk, but they're not going to talk about where they found it, because most of them aren't going to know exactly where it was.

Let's hope they can provide some closure on the whole saga of the lost flight. It's hard to accept that something as simple as a transponder fault would warrant a return to base for repairs when they surely have GPS and backups for backups on board as well as extensive communications equipment.

i have more to add to this thread - but that shall come later :

for now - AIS is a legal requirement for ALL vessels > 300t gross

and turning it of " for secrecy reasons " - SHOULD cause some dummy spitting from various legalsative and regulatory bodies

and before anyone replies - the regulations do give exemtipns for warships

originally posted by: Zaphod58
But them sitting in one spot waiting for recovery crews to arrive is going to attract more attention than a "transponder malfunction" and returning to port to fix it.

They just had to move to another place and wait there, nobody would know where they were when they found the plane.

honestly i'm just stoked that we might FINALLY get some answers, this one is probably Modern Mystery #1 and any return to researching/discussing it in the public eye is welcome news

a reply to: paraphi

The Malaysian "Navy" (or Air Force for that matter) isn't going to be "protecting" anything!

Not that far out at sea anyway!

still believe it landed secretly on Garcia.....!

a reply to: ressiv

Based on what and no CT's not being friends with Occam doesn't count.

a reply to: ressiv

Diego Garcia is tiny, and there is nowhere they could have hidden it. It's also very busy with military aircraft going through. Someone would have seen it there.

Paid up or not, the MH-370's ACARS kept right on trying to handshake with RR in the U.K.

Because it was the satellite network itself doing the "pings" not ACARS. ACARS uses the network.

edit:

The investigation believes the ACARS system was shutdown shortly before the time of the loss of location of the aircraft.