[Merged] Flight MH370 to Beijing goes missing

[Peter B]

[media=]

[/media]

"Martha Mohammed" and "Kuana Lumpur"? His credibility would be improved if he actually knew how to say their names properly.

[psyche101]

"Martha Mohammed" and "Kuana Lumpur"? His credibility would be improved if he actually knew how to say their names properly.

LOL, sorry a tad OT, did you see Shaun Micallef last night by any chance?

He had Parliament time up, and we hear how we are now going back to the older style security measures and protecting our boredom's.

I am quite a fan of Shaun Micallef. Mad as Hell is a great show.

Sorry Back OT. And for my contribution, from the comments I see at the news sites, not too many people seem happy with the conclusion. Lets hope something surfaces soon to justify all the speculation.

[Frank Merton]

This shows all the signs of developing a conspiracy cult around it, and who knows, the sequence of events are pretty hard to believe. Still what we are told seems most likely, much as I would be pleased to see the passengers turn up safe somewhere.

[+susieice]

http://news.yahoo.com/mh370-search-area-shifted-credible-lead-014626793.html

[psyche101]

http://news.yahoo.co...-014626793.html

You have to wonder, we keep hearing this, to no avail.

Also, would a carrier be out of the question with Helicopters? The fly to Perth and back ever day seems a huge waste of time and fuel.

And still the people are not happy, further to my comment about comments, again, in the above link we see much of this:

Joseph 8 minutes ago

This is what I have read over the last 20 days. The plane is here! We found stuff here! Now we believe it went this way or that way! Maybe down the other way. It could have went here! We found an object here or there. REALLY People these are the people we trust to get us from point A to point B. Just stop telling people anything until you have a piece of this plane or a body in your position. This isn't a contest to see who can tell the biggest line of BS. You all suck! I bet is it was your family member on that flight you would be passing out all the BS info.

I am not big on conspiracy, but to be fair, we do seem to be hearing something new pretty much each day. Yet nothing at all so far to confirm anything at all. I can see why people are restless.

I heard the Cargo Manifest is still being withheld, and that the families were informed of the final conclusion by text. For those that have been investigating this closely, is there any truth to that - or the alleged 3 million dollars on board? I do not know much about that, but my wife keeps mentioning it.

Edited March 28, 2014 by psyche101

[LN_Mineva]

[psyche101]

Nope, your wrong, I am the last to stoop to conspiracy, these just seem like strange actions, and she is the only one I have heard this bit about 3 million dollars from, but I cannot seem to find anything about it, so I was wondering if it is just her and a couple of her friends, or is this some big story that I seem to be missing out on.

Then on one site, I read that texts were not sent to the families, then I read Malaysia is defending the action. We hear a "definite" new story nearly every day. What's with all this? We still do not have a single identifiable thing.

And the helicopters was a question, there are people here who do understand aviation, and might be able to tell me why we cannot refuel or use aircraft carriers instead if getting planes to fly for hours on end to have a short look and go home.

And is the cargo manifest being withheld? News on the TV seems to confirm this? If that is true, what possible reasons could there be?

How can we know where it is every day, but then we get there it "Oh sorry, no thats' not it" Honestly, I do not blame people for questioning this, it's hardly cut and dry, and the actions seem very questionable, which indeed may be simply my ignorance of the subject due to the many sources, but I thought asking in a non conspiracy thread might get me some honest straightforward answers and not a dozen tangents into why we cannot trust the Ebil Gubbermint. Those CT people are a bit over the top.

And the comment I copied and pasted from the supplied link simply reflected what I was saying, and it is not CT orientated, it's just saying "Why keep feeding crap when you don't really know?" And lets face it, the daily false alarms hardly give one confidence.

Interesting that you are in the middle East, and picked an Aussie scene to pick on me. Very perceptive of you there.

Edited March 28, 2014 by psyche101

[docyabut2]

The searchers are now changing the location where to look, they have to find those black boxes before they expire. What I don't under stand is the pings they heard from the plane do not give the direction the plane went in, only that it flew for seven more hours. They are really just guessing it went south in the Indian ocean.

[+susieice]

Sounds like everything is way too fishy doesn't it. I heard on CNN that the US won't send a warship, I'm thinking an aircraft carrier. They think planes will work better, but I don't think so. Not with all the fly time to and from Perth. They only have 2-3 hours to search before they have to head back.

[Peter B]

The searchers are now changing the location where to look, they have to find those black boxes before they expire. What I don't under stand is the pings they heard from the plane do not give the direction the plane went in, only that it flew for seven more hours. They are really just guessing it went south in the Indian ocean.

No, it doesn't seem like they're guessing. Instead they have a good reason for looking to the south, as explained here:

http://www.abc.net.a...inal-ro/5342690

From the time the signals took to reach the satellite and the angle of elevation, Inmarsat was able to provide two arcs, one north and one south that the aircraft could have taken.

Inmarsat's scientists then interrogated the faint pings using a technique based on the Doppler effect, which describes how a wave changes frequency relative to the movement of an observer, in this case the satellite, a spokesman said.

Britain's Air Accidents Investigation Branch was also involved in the analysis.

The Doppler effect is why the sound of a police car siren changes as it approaches and then overtakes an observer.

"We then took the data we had from the aircraft and plotted it against the two tracks, and it came out as following the southern track," Jonathan Sinnatt, head of corporate communications at Inmarsat, said.

My understanding is as follows (and I'm happy to be corrected by subject matter experts):

Inmarsat is in a geostationary orbit. That means its orbital altitude is such that it takes exactly a day to orbit the Earth. As it's orbiting above the equator this means it's effectively stationary with respect to the ground below: its ground track is a point. However, it doesn't remain perfectly in place. Instead it wanders a short distance north and south of the equator as it completes an orbit. This means its ground track actually traces out a figure '8' (although I don't know how large it is). This meant that whenever the satellite received a ping, it wasn't stationary but was actually moving a little either towards or away from the plane. That caused a tiny but measurable change in the signal's frequency (that's the Doppler Shift).

Now given that the pings gave a distance but not a direction, as you pointed out, that meant the plane's possible position each ping was somewhere along an arc which swung symmetrically north and south of the equator. However, given Inmarsat was itself moving north or south at the time it received each ping, that would affect the frequency change: assuming the satellite was moving north and the plane was too, the frequency change would be slightly less than if the satellite was heading north and the plane heading south. Therefore by correlating the satellite's movement at the time it received each ping with the frequency change recorded, they could determine whether the plane was following the northern or southern route.

It's worth pointing out that NASA used a similar system (recording changes in radio signal frequencies) to track the Apollo spacecraft as they orbited the Moon.

Edited March 28, 2014 by Peter B

[docyabut2]

No, it doesn't seem like they're guessing. Instead they have a good reason for looking to the south, as explained here:

http://www.abc.net.a...inal-ro/5342690

My understanding is as follows (and I'm happy to be corrected by subject matter experts):

Inmarsat is in a geostationary orbit. That means its orbital altitude is such that it takes exactly a day to orbit the Earth. As it's orbiting above the equator this means it's effectively stationary with respect to the ground below: its ground track is a point. However, it doesn't remain perfectly in place. Instead it wanders a short distance north and south of the equator as it completes an orbit. This means its ground track actually traces out a figure '8' (although I don't know how large it is). This meant that whenever the satellite received a ping, it wasn't stationary but was actually moving a little either towards or away from the plane. That caused a tiny but measurable change in the signal's frequency (that's the Doppler Shift).

Now given that the pings gave a distance but not a direction, as you pointed out, that meant the plane's possible position each ping was somewhere along an arc which swung symmetrically north and south of the equator. However, given Inmarsat was itself moving north or south at the time it received each ping, that would affect the frequency change: assuming the satellite was moving north and the plane was too, the frequency change would be slightly less than if the satellite was heading north and the plane heading south. Therefore by correlating the satellite's movement at the time it received each ping with the frequency change recorded, they could determine whether the plane was following the northern or southern route.

It's worth pointing out that NASA used a similar system (recording changes in radio signal frequencies) to track the Apollo spacecraft as they orbited the Moon.

No, it doesn't seem like they're guessing. Instead they have a good reason for looking to the south, as explained here:

http://www.abc.net.a...inal-ro/5342690

My understanding is as follows (and I'm happy to be corrected by subject matter experts):

Inmarsat is in a geostationary orbit. That means its orbital altitude is such that it takes exactly a day to orbit the Earth. As it's orbiting above the equator this means it's effectively stationary with respect to the ground below: its ground track is a point. However, it doesn't remain perfectly in place. Instead it wanders a short distance north and south of the equator as it completes an orbit. This means its ground track actually traces out a figure '8' (although I don't know how large it is). This meant that whenever the satellite received a ping, it wasn't stationary but was actually moving a little either towards or away from the plane. That caused a tiny but measurable change in the signal's frequency (that's the Doppler Shift).

Now given that the pings gave a distance but not a direction, as you pointed out, that meant the plane's possible position each ping was somewhere along an arc which swung symmetrically north and south of the equator. However, given Inmarsat was itself moving north or south at the time it received each ping, that would affect the frequency change: assuming the satellite was moving north and the plane was too, the frequency change would be slightly less than if the satellite was heading north and the plane heading south. Therefore by correlating the satellite's movement at the time it received each ping with the frequency change recorded, they could determine whether the plane was following the northern or southern route.

It's worth pointing out that NASA used a similar system (recording changes in radio signal frequencies) to track the Apollo spacecraft as they orbited the Moon.

However, given Inmarsat was itself moving north or south at the time it received each ping, that would affect the frequency change: assuming the satellite was moving north and the plane was too, the frequency change would be slightly less than if the satellite was heading north and the plane heading south.

Still don't understand the ping thing it seems in any direction the pings or frequency would have been the same, not less.

I think people are really questioning if the plane did crash in the Indian ocean, they can`t seem to find one thing. Like some one said if a plane that size would have crash there, there would have been a lot of bigger pieces to that plane found by now. A door, a wing, tail wings, installation parts, seats, a wheel, ect ect , and a lot of other stuff that floats

[Peter B]

Still don't understand the ping thing it seems in any direction the pings or frequency would have been the same, not less.

Let me have another go, although please note I'm not an expert in electronics so I'm happy to be corrected by an expert.

Each ping was a radio signal broadcast at a fixed frequency - think of it like a note on a violin. If you and the violin player are standing still, then you'll hear the exact note the violin player plays. But if you were moving towards the violin player when the note was played you'd hear it at a slightly higher pitch. Likewise if you were moving away from the violin player when the note was played you'd hear it at a slightly lower pitch.

Same thing with radio signals. If you move towards the source of the signal the frequency shifts upwards, and the faster you do so the greater the upwards shift. And if you move away from the source of the signal the frequency shifts downwards, and the faster you do so the greater the downwards shift.

In the case of Inmarsat, for each ping received the satellite's operators knew (1) what the frequency of the signal should have been, (2) the frequency of the signal they actually received, and (3) which direction Inmarsat was moving at the time the signal arrived. By cross-referencing the size of the frequency shift with the known direction Inmarsat was travelling when the signal arrived, it would be possible to tell whether the plane was following the northern track or the southern track.

I think people are really questioning if the plane did crash in the Indian ocean, they can`t seem to find one thing. Like some one said if a plane that size would have crash there, there would have been a lot of bigger pieces to that plane found by now. A door, a wing, tail wings, installation parts, seats, a wheel, ect ect , and a lot of other stuff that floats

I agree there should be a lot of debris to find. But the ocean is large, the weather is poor, the people on the planes have only limited visibility and the planes have only a limited amount of time they can spend in the search area. The debris is almost certainly out there, but planes haven't got to the right location yet.

As an analogy, my children have mislaid toys which they've never taken out of the house. They remain mislaid because I haven't searched the entire house for them.

(Apparently searching for toys is a Daddy job, not something for the children themselves to do.)

Edited March 30, 2014 by Peter B

[LN_Mineva]

Interesting that you are in the middle East, and picked an Aussie scene to pick on me. Very perceptive of you there.

Actually, it was not for you, but for general. Also I didnt notice the sheeps are Aussie, just a coincidence.

[SHaYap]

The weather conditions and a brewing storm is the only part of the difficulties currently faced by the S&R operation teams now ... the usual sea conditions is difficult enough on its own ~ the area is notorious for rough sea conditions ~ then there is the problem regarding the depths in the area ... up to 6000meters deep ...

One thing is quite definitive now is that the evidence gathered thus far from the investigation regarding MH370's whereabouts is quite conclusive - the only thing left now is to gather the physical evidence ~ it won't be long now ... or if past the 30day black box beacon functioning period ~ it will take very much a long time more ~

Nothing else that can be done except wait and hope ~ all the top and cutting edge search and detect technology available in the world is there now ~

~

Edited March 30, 2014 by third_eye

[mad6]

I think there is something "fishy" with this tragedy. There would

have been some evidence found after all this time in my opinion.

I believe there is much more to this story...but I'm not smart enough

to know the details.

[docyabut2]

The weather conditions and a brewing storm is the only part of the difficulties currently faced by the S&R operation teams now ... the usual sea conditions is difficult enough on its own ~ the area is notorious for rough sea conditions ~ then there is the problem regarding the depths in the area ... up to 6000meters deep ...

One thing is quite definitive now is that the evidence gathered thus far from the investigation regarding MH370's whereabouts is quite conclusive - the only thing left now is to gather the physical evidence ~ it won't be long now ... or if past the 30day black box beacon functioning period ~ it will take very much a long time more ~

Nothing else that can be done except wait and hope ~ all the top and cutting edge search and detect technology available in the world is there now ~

~

In the Air France 447 crash they found the crash and two bodies within five days,in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. There were enough planes searching over the Indian ocean in the few days after flight MH370 went missing to have found something.

Orange objects spotted by plane searching for Flight 370 turned out to be fishing equipment, Australian officials said.

Edited March 31, 2014 by docyabut2

[Peter B]

In the Air France 447 crash they found the crash and two bodies within five days,in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. There were enough planes searching over the Indian ocean in the few days after flight MH370 went missing to have found something.

There are significant differences between the two searches.

1. The Air France jet crashed about 1000 kilometres from the coast of Brazil. This search is being conducted nearly twice as far from the coast of Australia.

2. The weather during the current search has generally been terrible, with low cloud meaning the spotters on the search aircraft can't see far.

3. The ocean where the current search is taking place is notoriously rough - the latitudes are known as the Roaring Forties, so debris would be quickly broken up and dispersed.

4. The Air France jet happened to crash not far from the point of last contact. As a result it's not surprising debris was found quickly. In the case of MH370 it took 10 days for the search to even start in the Indian Ocean. That would give debris a lot of time to break up and disperse.

[Bavarian Raven]

FYI but the debris the satellite glimpsed turned out to be junked fishing equipment, or so CNN claims. :/. Another dead end it seems.

[docyabut2]

Unless the plane went down in one piece, however someone said that's not likely it would have broken up in pieces, you`d think they find some small debris or items from inside the plane floating around or scattered in the ocean.

[RavenHawk]

Unless the plane went down in one piece, however someone said that's not likely it would have broken up in pieces, you`d think they find some small debris or items from inside the plane floating around or scattered in the ocean.

Isn't that the plot of Airport 77? I wonder if someone will pull a prank like that today?

[seeder]

Full transcript from cockpit released

Investigators are conducting a forensic examination of the final recorded conversation between ground control and the cockpit of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 before it went missing three weeks ago, the Malaysian government said Tuesday. Meanwhile Australia, which is coordinating the search for the Boeing 777, cautioned that it "could drag on for a long time" and would be an arduous one.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-full-transcript-from-cockpit-released-1.2593720

Transcript in full

http://www.malaysiaairlines.com/content/dam/mas/master/en/pdf/Audio%20Transcript_MH370%20Pilot-ATC_BIT.pdf

[+susieice]

Wait until they get the bill for this billion dollar scavenger hunt.

[docyabut2]

Isn't that the plot of Airport 77? I wonder if someone will pull a prank like that today?

I remember that movie, a possibility, but perhaps not a prank. What if the plane had all power short circuited and the pilot had to fly the plane manually trying to find a landing strip in the dark and over ran the land,flying until running out of gas and tried to land the plane like that one pilot did in the Hudson bay, that whole plane could be under water,it would be hard to find that plane anywhere.

Edited April 1, 2014 by docyabut2

[RavenHawk]

I remember that movie, a possibility, but perhaps not a prank. What if the plane had all power short circuited and the pilot had to fly the plane manually trying to find a landing strip in the dark and over ran the land,flying until running out of gas and tried to land the plane like that one pilot did in the Hudson bay, that whole plane could be under water,it would be hard to find that plane anywhere.

Well, I think it is unlikely, but it is possible. It depends on how choppy the sea was when he tried to land it. If it was rough, it would have ripped wide open and debris everywhere. If he went down, it was in the morning light but then what kind of control did he have? At every step there are just too many questions.

[docyabut2]

http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/01/opinion/goyer-search-for-flight/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Can help but think this plane will not be found soon, there are just so many possibilities.